#we all gonna get sued for posting fics after this

[itsjustaninchident]

To the moon and to Saturn 🪐

Lando Norris x Model!Reader

socmed au

summary: where they give the audience chaos because of their rumored "breakup"

warning/s: sexual innuendos (if you squint)

author's note: just a little something to get me out of writing slump 🥹 there's a part 2 to this fic if you wanna check it out🫶

yourusername

liked by danielricciardo, lilymhe, and 203,839 others

yourusername busy week

view 2,394 comments...

user1 MOTHER IS MOTHERING

user2 PLEASE MARRY ME

user3 mother is living her best life and im here for it

user4 GET OUT OF THE WAY LANDO IM GONNA STEAL HER

user5 kinda sus no lando in the comments simping over how hot she is

user6 TRUE he usually comments and likes her post like a second after she posted it 😭

user7 there's got to be something

user8 no there's just something wrong in y'all's head...

user9 yeah leave them and their relationship alone

yourfriend back and better in black

liked by yourusername

user10 interesting...🥴

user11 what do they mean by this😭

user12 maybe because it's been awhile since yn got back in modeling after her supporting lando and going on a vacation with him?

user13 you guys are reading into this too much

lando.jpg

liked by maxfewtrell, pierregasly, and 897,475 others

lando.jpg parties and a tad bit hungover...

view 23,495 comments...

user1 YOU CAN'T JUST POST THE 2ND PHOTO AND GET AWAY WITH IT

user2 i believe he's thirst trapping his way out of the issue

user3 what issue?

user2 some are saying him and yn broke up

user3 lol people are too obsessed with their relationship im not surprised we won't get any posts from them anymore lol

user2 true

maxfewtrell nice music but please don't throw up on me next time

maxverstappen1 why was i not invited

landonorris you were busy with something else🙄🙄🙄

maxverstappen1 oh i see you're still on it...

user4 am i delusional if i think this is about yn ?????

user5 babes im gonna be delusional with u

user6 yeah no❤️

user4 what if they just fought?

user6 what if you all leave them alone lol

danielricciardo nice party, hoping for that one more important invite next time😜

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 237 others

user7 don't mean to ruin the vibes but where's my girl yn :((

yourusername

liked by charlottesine, isahernaez, yourfriend, and 890,938 others

yourusername welcome to new york

view 23,103 comments...

user1 THE GIRLS ARE BACK

user2 THEY'RE SO HOT

user3 WAIT SHE'S IN NEW YORK???

user4 CAN'T BELIEVE MOTHER AND I ARE BREATHING THE SAME AIR

user5 im sorry but it's been like a month of them not posting each other😭

user6 it's been a bad month for us😭

user7 my parents :'(

user8 them in one frame is too much to handle

user9 uhmmm why is she hanging out with the exes????👀

user10 maybe because they're still friends and her girlfriends' breakups has nothing to do with their friendship???

user11 ikr... is she like a member of the club now?

user12 i hope not lol

isahernaez missed you so much! And im so happy for you❤️

liked by yourusername and 1,790 others

user13 her liking it...

user14 she's happy for her meaning she's like in a better place now????😭

user15 don't do this to me

user16 geez they cant even say anything that you guys do not to relate to her relationship lmao

via twitter...

via instagram...

landonorris

liked by carlossainz55, maxfewtrell, and 2,347,987 others

landonorris just married my best friend, the love of my life, and my better half. I love you until one can reach the sky.

tagged: yourusername

view 89,739 comments...

user1 WE WERE MOURNING THEIR "BREAK UP" ONLY TO BE WOKEN UP TO THIS POST😭

user2 this is my childhood bestfriends to lovers trope!

user3 no cause where's mine?!

user4 this is so much better than a black background and default font ig story announcement that they broke up😭

carlossainz55 i hope yn can make it through the night when she hears you snore

landonorris I don't snore!

carlossainz55 sure and birds cant fly

yourusername some birds can't

landonorris see???

yourusername but you do snore love

user5 IVE MISSED TIMES LIKE THIS😭

maxverstappen1 can't believe you got married before me

user6 you better watch your step mister, I'm literally right behind you.

landonorris 🫡 i would not dare

yourfriend oh yeah you'll never hear the end of it

yourusername stop threatening my husband😭

user7 "husband"😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 all of us are crying

lewishamilton congrats mate!

liked by landonorris, yourusername, and 72,309 others

yourusername

liked by carmenmmundt, lilymhe, and 1,295,670 others

yourusername Love you to the moon and to Saturn❤️

tagged: landonorris

view 50,405 comments...

user1 no because you don't know how happy i am for them😭

user2 i can finally sleep in peace at night with a smile on my face knowing my parents literally got married

user3 i have never once cried over celebrity couples getting married but this😭

user4 kinda valid knowing how much they went through just to be where they are now😭

user5 from them being childhood bestfriends to being enemies to being best friends again and now they're married?!😭

user6 im so happy for them 🥺

lilymhe congrats love! just tell me if lando hurts you I will literally snatch you from him

yourusername you're first on my contacts

landonorris hey! no fair

charlottesine gotta admit i shed a tear seeing you walk down the aisle🥺 so happy for you!

yourusername love you cha!

user7 yn is so blessed with her husband and her friends🥺

user8 and they're very blessed with her too🥺 she's like the gentlest most loving person ever

liked by landonorris and 29,654 others

landonorris very lucky to have her as my wife

user9 THEY JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF CALLING EO HUSBAND/WIFE😭

user10 im gonna bathe with my toaster

user11 gonna lay down on the road

yourusername awww are you trying to ask for more lasagna?

landonorris did it work?

yourusername nope :P maybe kisses will do for now?

landonorris never mind the lasagna, brb gonna get it you owe me about a hundred ;)

user12 not them flirting under the comments!!😭 Get a room!😭

user13 oh they're abt to

#lando norris x oc #lando norris x reader #lando norris au #lando norris #f1 socmed au #f1 #fluff #f1 fic #f1 fluff #lando norris social media au

[theyluvkarolina]

hi hi!!

i just read your lando angst fic. so good ahhhhhh😩🤌🏻

um.. and if your requests are open… could i request a max verstappen x manager! reader where she is real madrid’s or mancity’s social media manager or something and she’s sorta famous herself and has a really good relationship w her team. and max goes to one of the games and meets her and all the guys are teasing her (like how brothers tease their sister over things haha) and they get together after a while ?

sorry if that was so specific😅 love your works!! and i understand if you don’t want to do it!! have a lovely day <3

𝐁𝐈𝐆 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐒

· . ୨୧⭒๋࣭ ⭑ ` ` you break her heart, i’ll cut your dick off. ` ` ⊹ ‧₊˚

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘 ୨୧ Meeting a f1 driver at your job wasn’t on the bucket list. However, crushing and getting teased by your new team members as if you were their little sister makes this much more worse interesting.

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 ୨୧ max verstappen x fem!reader

𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌 ୨୧ none!

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 ୨୧ GOOGLE TRANSLATED SPANISH!! I’M NOT AT ALL A SPANISH SPEAKER PLEASE BEAR WITH ME!, Y/n is a major fangirl for Max 😭, i made y/n a bit more… sassy? sex jokes again

𝐀/𝐍 ୨୧ i’d like to apologize for how long this took and that i definitely could have done this request better than this considering how happy I was to do this but my writers block has been out of control lately :( as for the teasing, i went the more “over-protective brothers” route. I hope that’s okay with you!

𝐀/𝐍 2 ୨୧ … safe to say i did NOT plan for this to be finished and come out on the one race max got a dnf 😭😭

INSTAGRAM, 1 year ago.

realmadrid ✔︎

realmadrid ¡Al Real Madrid FC le gustaría anunciar a nuestra nueva gerente de redes sociales, la Sra. Y/N L/N! Nos gustaría felicitarla por esta increíble oportunidad y por su dedicación no solo al Real Madrid, sino también al equipo. ¡Bienvenido Y/N!

-

Real Madrid FC would like to announce our new Social Media manager, Ms. Y/N L/N! We would like to congratulate her on this amazing opportunity and her dedication to not only Real Madrid, but to the team. Welcome Y/N!

INSTAGRAM, present time.

fabriziorom ✔︎

fabriziorom ✔︎ Who’s gonna win 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐠𝐮𝐞? 🏆

𝐒𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐒 ⤵️✨

Atlético or BVB 🆚 Barcelona or Paris Saint-Germain.

Real Madrid or Manchester City 🆚 Arsenal or Bayern.

5,643 comments

username1 Real hardest matchup again

username2 Let's all laugh at vardrid we're going to see 5-1 aggregate again 😂

→ username3 bro thinks barça has been doing shit for the past 5 years 💀 → username4 at least we don’t rely on VAR → username5 at least we have 14 champion league wins

username6 Real Madrid revenge arc coming soon.....

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ WTF

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ guys i can’t do this

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ i’m stressing

username6 someone check on Y/N rn

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ me because we are versing Man City in Champions League.

2,345 comments

judebellingham ✔︎ what is that photo of me.

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ art.

username7 DON’T REMIND ME

username8 girl aren't you supposed to believe in your team?? 💀

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ even it's okay to admit defeat once in a while. → judebellingham ✔︎ BE CONFIDENT BLOODY HELL 😭 → y/n_l/nmadrid IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN YOU'RE THE ONE WATCHING 😞😞

tonirudiger ✔︎ BELIEVE IN US 💪 💪 🔥

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ i wish I had your positivity toni 🥹 → tonirudiger ✔︎ don’t worry y/n! we will win! 💪 💪 🔥 → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ i think you can stop with the emojis → tonirudiger ✔︎ 👍

y/n_l/nmadrid

y/n_l/nmadrid you guys are in a crisis…. i’m on my way.

2,341 comments

camavinga ✔︎ jude has been influencing you too much.

→ judebellingham ✔︎ and? supernanny is a good show. → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ someone is jelly they haven’t seen peak british tv. → judebellingham ✔︎ it’s telly you fake 🙄

vinijr ✔︎ those headphones look familiar 🤔 🤔

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ shhhhh

username9 what even is the “crisis”???

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ man city. → rodrygo ✔︎ stop this rn.

y/n_l/nmadrid has posted a story 1 hour ago!

realmadrid ✔︎

realmadrid up up and away! ✈️ Onto Manchester 👊

5,423 comments

username10 i still forget it’s y/n making these posts for the team 😭😭

username11 i love how she does a whole 360 with the actual team insta posts than her own 💀

username12 WE DEMAND MORE LUKA POSTS!!

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ I WOULD BUT THE OLD MAN IS GETTING ANNOYED BY IT → judebellingham ✔︎ yeah because you have an entire album dedicated to him and then cry when you think about him retiring??? → username13 EXCUSE ME??? → username14 y/n crying because of modrić being close to retiring 🥹🥹 → username15 WHY ARE WE IGNORING THE FACT SHE HAS AN ALBUM DEDICATED TO HIM??? →username16 because who wouldn’t cry about him retiring → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ @ username16 is right → judebellingham ✔︎ @ username16 i second that → rodrygo ✔︎ @ username16 make that 3. → camavinga ✔︎ @ usernme16 4. → fedevalverde ✔︎ @ username16 5 😅 → lukamodric10 ✔︎ I’m retiring not dying 😓

TWITTER

INSTAGRAM

realmadrid ✔︎

realmadrid ✔︎ Miss Y/N hard at work! What do you think she is writing? 🤔 ✍️

3,456 comments

username17 how to win against Man City

username18 how to not piss herself watching the game.

ardaguler ✔︎ she works?! 😧 😧

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ you get playing time?! → username19 SHOTS FIRED 😭 → ardaguler ✔︎ :( → username20 WHAT DID HE DO TO YOU 😭😭 → judebellingham ✔︎ be nice to the baby he hasn’t been here that long to know your harmless 😞 → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ @ judebellingham don’t say that as if you haven’t been here for less than a year either. → judebellingham ✔︎ this is what you sound like: wah wah wah

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ congrats to my favorite boys!! onto the quaters! 🫶🫶

2,479 comments

username21 she’s actually so unserious 😭

pablogavi imgagine not believing in your own team

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ imagine being on a team that lost 7-2 in the champions league against bayern munich → pablogavi you won’t let barca live this down will you? → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ nope. 🫶

judebellingham now you believe in us??? 😒 😒

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ shush. be happy i even posted about you guys.

tonirudiger ✔︎ working hard! 💪 🔥

lukamodric10 great teamwork! 👏

toni.kr8s what a game 😮

username22 toni and luka are such parents 💀

y/n_l/nmadrid has posted a story 1 hour ago!

judebellingham replied to your story!

judebellingham Y/N YOU ARSE LOOK AT THE GROUP CHAT PLEASE y/n_l/nmadrid … y/n_l/nmadrid should I be scared? Read at 5:32 PM y/n_l/nmadrid wowww okay i see how it is

mxverstappen1 has posted a story 5 minutes ago!

TWITTER

iMessages

INSTAGRAM

f1 ✔︎

f1 ✔︎ Max wins it in Silverstone! 🦁 An outstanding performance once again by the Dutchman! 👏

6,432 comments

username22 another day, another gp max ate.

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ NO WAY THIS IS THE MAN THAT KEPT ME COMPANY WHEN I WAS LOST

→ username23 no way homegirl didn’t recognize THE max vertsappen 💀💀 → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ damn i’m sorry my entire sports knowledge is the one i work for 😞

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ lowkey… he kinda fine 🤭

→ judebellingham ✔︎ bloody hell → camavinga ✔︎ we need an intervention for her rn → fedevalverde ✔︎ euthanize her. → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ FEDE??? → usernme24 y/n gets the appeal → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ when you do work with men in sports your forced to see apeal.

username25 DU DU DU DU 🔥 🗣️🔥 🦁 MAX VERSTAPPEN 🏎️🔥 🗣️

maxverstappen1 ✔︎

maxverstappen1 game of padel before race day!

tagged ; landonorris, fernandoalonso, danielricciardo

3125 comments

username25 f1 is just a jobby for him at this point 😭

username26 the goats and some guy named lando

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ is he single

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ that’s a handsome man right there 🥴

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ he can paddle me anyday 😊😊

→ username27 MA’AM ??? → username28 the Real Madrid boys are NOT gonna be happy → judebellingham ✔︎ WHAT IS THIS??? → rodrygo ✔︎ i wish i can bleach my eyes out rn. → camavinga ✔︎ tell luka to giver her meds now. → tonirudiger ✔︎ already messaged him! 🔥 → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ CAN I THIRST IN PEACE???

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ fun trip to manchester and london!

2,347 comments

judebellingham ✔︎ we should have left you at the flower shop

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ but then who will make you guys do silly dances that the fans demand 😞

lukamodric10 ✔︎ moja kći ❤️

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ lukita 🥹 → username29 the day luka leaves is the day i die.

maxverstappen1 ✔︎ very pretty lady 🙃

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ 🤭 🤭

maxverstappen1 ✔︎ is she single by chance 🤔

→ brahim ✔︎ woah woah woah → aurelientchm ✔︎ what do you think you are doing? → vinijr ✔︎ back up dutchie → judebellingham ✔︎ away from our girl → tonirudiger ✔︎ no she’s not actually ! → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ yes i am very much single 😚 → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ don’t listen to them!

iMessages

maxverstappen1 ✔︎ ; Date #1

maxverstappen1 ✔︎ karting and fifa is my kind of date 🏎️ 🎮

tagged ; y/n_l/nmadrid

5,628 comments

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ ofc you use Barcelona 🙄 🙄

→ maxverstappen1 ✔︎ is it bad to support my favorite team? 😅 → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ if you wanna be with me then it is 🤨 → maxverstappen1 ✔︎ noted.

toni.kr8s ✔︎ is this why you took the day off??

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ …noooo… → rodrygo ✔︎ she’s lying lock her up in the locker room. → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ no thank you i don’t need to smell you stinkers → camavinga ✔︎ okay we don’t smell THAT bad after a game. → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ 😬 about that..

username30 HELLO???

username31 the sports collab we didn’t know we needed

username32 this was NOT on my 2024 calendar…

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ Date #2

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ busy trying to make a new Madridista 🤍

tagged ; maxverstappen1

3,456 comments

maxverstappen1 ✔︎ you’d look good in blue and red 🥴

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ i was going to agree until i realized what you were doing. → maxverstappen1 ✔︎ i don’t know what you are talking about.

username33 they are lowkey so cute

judebellingham ✔︎ why are you collaborating with the enemy.

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ he literally drives fast cars and is not a barca player?? → ardaguler ✔︎ that’s what he wants you to think 🤫

pablogavi ✔︎ why convert him if you can join him? 😉

→ vinijr ✔︎ get out of OUR pr managers comments. → pablogavi ✔︎ make me → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ i’m literally gonna block both of you if you don’t stop acting like kids. AND THAT’S COMING FROM ME → vinijr ✔︎ …yes ma’am. → pablogavi ✔︎ 😶

rodrygo ✔︎ stop acting like a couple in the stands. it makes me wanna puke.

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL WITH YOU AND YOUR GIRLFRIEND.

TWITTER

maxverstappen1 ✔︎ Date #3

maxverstappen1 my good luck charm 💙

tagged ; y/n_l/nmadrid

7,346 comments

y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ stooopppp you’re making me blush 🫣

→ maxverstappen1 ✔︎ liefje 🫶 → vinijr ✔︎ ew 🤢 → maxverstappen1 ✔︎ sounds like someone is sad and single. → landonorris what’s wrong with being sad and single 😞

redbullracing ✔︎ wonderful job out there 👊 🔥

→ ferrari ✔︎ hey @ redbullracing ! please stop winning so some of us have a chance! 😊 → realmadrid ✔︎ no thanks @ ferrari! we like that the newest golden boy of the family i winning :) → judebellingham ✔︎ oh! → ardaguler ✔︎ :( → lukamodric10 ✔︎ since when was there a new golden boy?!

username33 DU DU DU DU 🔥 🗣️🔥 🦁 MAX VERSTAPPEN 🏎️🔥 🗣️

username34 it’s them against the world

TWITTER

INSTAGRAM

f1

f1 Max Verstappen and his #1 Fan! 👫❤️

tagged ; maxverstappen1 & y/n_l/nmadrid

6,734 comments

landonorris ✔︎ okay maybe i am sad and single

→ ameliadimz ✔︎ ??? i’m right here 🙄 → landonorris ✔︎ your right my bad 🫶

judebellingham ✔︎ …fine i’ll let this relationship slide.

→ maxverstappen1 ✔︎ am i bellingham approved?? 😮 → judebellingham ✔︎ don’t get your hopes up mate. i’m doing it for her not you 😑 → y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ jude 🥹🥹

lukamodric10 ✔︎ ti razbiti ona srce, odrezat ću ti kurac.

→ y/n_l/nmadrid ✔︎ i’m

→ maxverstappen1 ✔︎ yes sir.

→ username35 ✔︎ HELLO???

→ username35 ✔︎ LUKA??

→ rodrygo ✔︎ i don’t know much croatian but i know that is not good.

TRANSLATIONS

cro: ti razbiti ona srce, odrezat ću ti kurac.

eng: you break her heart, i’ll cut your dick off.

#☆ﾟ user ↳ theyluvkarolina ◝ #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #formula one x reader #formula one x you #☆ﾟ smau ↳ theyluvkarolina ◝ #f1 imagine #f1 smau #f1 social media au #formula 1 #max verstappen #jude bellingham #rodrygo #vinicius jr #real madrid #max verstappen x reader #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen fanfic

[no-droids]

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long).  As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession.  You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets.  The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it.  The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to.  You don’t even really feel like a person right now.  The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life.  It feels sick.  Wrong in your bones.  Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop.  Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops.  Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago.  Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground.  It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception.  What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all.  You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now.  No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams.  No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move.  The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again.  It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence.  Silence.  You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement.  You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are.  You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder.  You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something.  Reality, maybe.  A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands.  “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows.  Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying?  They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat.  Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy.  It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be.  Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately.  It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances.  Oshua Ryler.  Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened.  A stormtrooper?  His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense.  What is he doing here?  Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them.  They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers.  “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.”  You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done.  You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet.  You hate looking at his face.  It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust.  His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat.  He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby.  You know what needs to be done.  Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over.  It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.”  You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears.  “They hold no power anymore.  Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!”  The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green.  “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…”  He stares wide eyed at you and gulps.  “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now.  “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?”  He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?”  You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side.  “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?”  The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around.  “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!”  You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him.  Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about.  “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!”  He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight.  “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty!  They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling.  You could still kill him.  You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit.  “Who put the bounty out on you?”  You ask sharply.  It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder.  “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!”  Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it.  You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask.  Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something.  Din was cut off before he finished.  Help?  Know what to do?  You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by.  The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice.  The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry.  “How many of you are there?”

“At the base?  Around three hundred,” he immediately spills.  “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours.  There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,”  You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker.  “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground.  “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of.  In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence.  That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector.  If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon.  And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel.  “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…”  He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands.  “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally?  Sure.  Realistically?  You don’t say anything in response.  Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do.  The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it.  They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip.  Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you.  Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease.  It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression.  Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood.  Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color.  Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?”  You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder.  Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again.  “I need as much information as possible about the base.”  You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm.  Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard.  It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest.  While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking.  Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now.  Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission.  Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides.  What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors.  Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger.  Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next.  His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears.  When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much.  He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread.  If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces.  He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind.  Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers.  Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base.  He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man.  If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go.  With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get.  He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat.  Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range.  Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind.  He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl.  Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard.  Not far from here, three minutes or less.  The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers.  It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers.  “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask.  Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible.  Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.  The turrets, then.  “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old.  Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel.  “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport.  TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?”  You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got.  You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?  

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here.  Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here.  The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here.  Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not.  He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul.  If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator.  “Mando?”  You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway.  Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it.  That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to.  Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction.  Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose.  Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily.  It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?”  Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls.  “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit.  “You cover your face like one.  You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.”  Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now.  “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he?  He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan.  All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge.  You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood.  This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby.  In a sense, it still feels that way.  The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family.  The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch.  He’d know, you tell yourself.  If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow.  Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore.  The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response.  In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet.  These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back.  Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms.  The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes.  Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?”  Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter.  The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh.  “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add.  “How were you able to find us?”

Silence.  The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now.  He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red.  Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality.  The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead.  Useless, then.  Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor.  Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention.  “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon.  The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite.  It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened.  But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it.  The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what?  This Mandalorian?”  The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms.  “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.”  The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head.  “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees.  “He must want the beskar.  I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive.  He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!”  A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed.  There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury.  It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues.  “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth.  He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize.  Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible.  You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety.  Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually.  It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive.  Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk.  They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost.  You’re both long gone by now.  They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest.  Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response.  His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it.  How the fuck did he know?  He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile.  Who’s this, Mando?  She’s just darling, isn’t she?  Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods.  “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides.  Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man.  The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul.  His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun.  He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?”  The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember.  He’s panicked before.  He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time.  This is different.  This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection.  There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now.  The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat.  You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it.  Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you.  Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out.  His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision.  For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground.  There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about.  Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed.  It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground.  Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him.  Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up.  Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?”  You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on.  Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them.  If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways.  The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge.  Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!”  You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull.  You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door.  “Now!  We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up.  Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel.  Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears.  The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping.  You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense.  Deadly tense.  Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once.  One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life.  It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it.  All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking.  You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before.  Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear.  Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship.  But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap.  Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared.  They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is.  You can’t seem to breathe like he is.  It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand.  Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh.  A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now.  Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing.  You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you.  When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain.    You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment.  You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through.  You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now.  However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest.  Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline.  Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you.  His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time.  It’s… cold.  A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin.  Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood.  You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word.  You can’t find a single word to say.  The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones.  It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet.  There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden.  Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement.  He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip.  It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features.  His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to.  You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there.  He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor.  You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves.  Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly.  Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself.  “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly.  Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t.  Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult.  You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive.  There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment.  One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty.  There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t.  “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it.  Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones.  You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands.  He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from.  It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you.  The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood.  Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face.  The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground.  It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet.  Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back.  Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand.  It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang.  You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground.  The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead.  So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state.  He doesn’t move.   His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last.  If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else.  Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying.  You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him.  You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor.  Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes.  Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done.  Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown.  Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain.  The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert.  You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy.  If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him.  It was… isolating.  Lonely by yourself.  The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp.  Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner.  Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath.  One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet.  You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What?  At least what?  Comfort you?  Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions?  What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him?  You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically.  He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you.  You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do.  If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself.  At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment.  Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul.  Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover.  You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on.  You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again.  You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand.  After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone.  After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in.  The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings.  It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent.  You don’t feel anything as you do it.  You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm.  Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster.  The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything.  They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower.  Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy.  Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent.  When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls.  Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today.  You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep.  You don’t even try, it’s pointless.  The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself.  You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking.  You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago.  You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong…  They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation.  You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point.  In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this.  You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure.  How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices?  Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t.  You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him.  You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance.  You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course.  Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been.  Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you.  A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone.  Multiple people, this time.  He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done.  The end result won’t change.  You own this now.  You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice.  He wouldn’t argue with you.  He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them.  It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount.  You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned.  You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive.  You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him.  If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it.  Focus on them both, alive and well together.  Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness.  It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself.  Hours, maybe.  Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are.  You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways.  After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair.  He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet.  “Don’t say anything.  Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes.  You did save him.  You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent.  “I tried.  Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself.  I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul.  Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you.  It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up.  “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat.  They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses.  “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out.  The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body.  “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself.  The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking.  You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.”  Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes.  “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold.  Again, everything turns numb.  It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today.  It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it.  For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks.  “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me.  I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger.  I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe.  And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II.  Do you know why I did that?”  The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart.  “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand.  You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up.  Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away.  But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you.  Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying.  It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die.  You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t.  “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones.  Especially the trained ones.  Anything else was meant to be your last resort.  Not your choice.  Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself.  The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him.  Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried.  You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen.  “I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you.  He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words.  “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?”  You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster.  Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care.  “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.”  It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless.  Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against.  It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively.  “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean.  Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.”  The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child.  Never.  You’ll die before that happens.  “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that.  Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing.  Not even you.”

Din stares at you.  His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant.  It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become.  You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both.  He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet.  It happened.  What’s done is done, you can’t change the past.  He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so.  This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child.  You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them.  Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers.  It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak.  Broken.  “You wore mine once before, and it was…”  He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away.  “It wasn’t real.  It didn’t fit.  It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out.  I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?”  You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad.  You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but…  Not a Mandalorian, he’d said.  Of course not.  Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.”  Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again.  “It was you covered in blood.  It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger.  You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship.  And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too.  You…”  He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice.   “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you.  “You don’t fly into war zones.  You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me.  You said you tried to be brave… like me.”  His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand.  “I’ll never ask you to be brave.  I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight.  They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time.  Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again.  It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside.  You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?”  He murmurs to you.  You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?”  You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory.  “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that.  Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain.  You’ll never be able to change it, though.  This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else.  Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come.  You need to tell him.  You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?”  You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor.  “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat.  “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.”  He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time.  He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine.  You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before.  It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms.  His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing.  “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today.  All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty.  You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now.  If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer.  Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him.  “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #mando x reader #mando x you #reader insert #fanfic #star wars #rough day #no-droids

[alazystranger]

zolu fic recommendations? (i can take reading angst now)

Ooh, this is going to be bit of a long post. i have tried to include a mix of both angsty and otherwise.

*cracks knuckles* alright let's get down to it! I have included the summaries as given by the authors below the link.

let thy sword be thy tongue by queerweather. A personal favorite! I go back to this one a lot.

Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and Zoro is not afraid of Luffy handling his swords; Zoro is afraid of how Luffy handling his swords might unravel him.

Love you by willoffire123. Both angsty and sweet! Kind of like my comfort fic

When Luffy goes overboard one night during a winter storm, Zoro dives after him and the two are separated from their ship. Stranded on a winter island, slowly freezing to death, Luffy and Zoro come to realize their long dormant feelings for each other. Can they say their love in two words or less? Or will the winter island take their lives before they get the chance?

Loyal Till Death Do Us Part by StygianHeart. You said you can take angst now, anon? *cackles maniacally* this one has it all- whump luffy, traumatized zoro and what not. It has 13 chapters and it's absolutely worth it

Roronoa Zoro knows he’s loyal to a fault. And maybe that loyalty is only for his Captain and Crew. But realizing his loyalty for Luffy is also something more, something more personal and emotional, was not what Zoro wanted. And he definitely didn’t want the voices in his head to get so loud. But hey, we never get what we want, do we? In which Zoro figures out he’s in love with his captain and is in great denial, all while struggling through emotional repression and a bunch of shit he doesn’t deserve. Go figures.

running just to keep my hands on you by nevermordor. another fic i love to read again and again.

The thing they do is kind of like a game, because Luffy likes games, but it’s also kind of a competition because Zoro can’t not turn anything and everything into a competition. It doesn’t have a name and there are only two rules, because more than two would just be making things boring and overcomplicated. 1. Whoever takes out the most guys in a fight is the winner 2. Whoever is the loser has to do whatever the winner says “Why’s it gotta be a whole game and stuff," Luffy says. "That’s gonna take too long.” “It makes sex more fun," Zoro explains. "You gotta win it, you gotta earn it. Like anything good in life. Like pirate king or greatest swordsman.” Luffy considers this.

A gamble on love by SnailorBee. short and fluffy. had me grinning like an idiot. perfect fic to recover from the angsty ones.

Pre-Time Skip! "We have a bet amongst the crew, minus Chopper. You want in?" "A bet?" Brook repeated, mystified. "About what?" "If those two idiots are dating or not." Nami jerked her chin in the direction of the nap pile behind him. Strawhats and their bets about Luffy and Zoro.

To cut your teeth on love by freckledshoulderblades. basically a series of snippets from their first meeting to just after timeskip but full of zolu feels.

Zoro meets Luffy and gives himself over wholeheartedly the instant Wadō is placed between his teeth again. Luffy meets Zoro and decides in a heartbeat that Zoro is his.

poly philtatos(the most loved by far) by swordsmans. another personal favorite!

He keeps moving forward at a steady pace, resisting the urge to run because how fucking embarrassing would that be, running because he missed them, and as he breaks through the treeline he shouts, “Oi, oi—what took you guys so long? It's been—” And then he freezes, because yes, actually—something is very, very wrong. The Sunny is anchored just off shore, close enough to see the deck but far enough away that the crew has had to take the Mini Merry to make land. Scattered across the beach in various stages of chaos—rolling around, yelling, fighting—are his crew but not his crew, so similar and yet so, so different. They look younger, fresher, and whatthefuck there, on the deck of the Sunny just peering over the railing, he catches a flash of green—his own green hair— “Ah, fuck,” he grunts, and then immediately turns back around because no, actually, he does not want to deal with this.

These are a few of my picks. if you want more/shorter fics/if you were looking for something else, don't hesitate to send me another ask!

#zolu fic recs #zolu fanfic #these fics are really so precious to me it's insane #my second ask yay #zolu

[blackbird-brewster]

Meta: Jemily Queerbaiting

With the huge influx of posts saying 'Jemily is gonna be canon', I really appreciated seeing this post because OP was completely correct. I didn't want to write an entire dissertation as a reply, so I'm making my own post with my personal opinion on this. (All sources are noted in footnotes)

Before I began this rant, for anyone who thinks this is anti-Jemily. It is not. I have shipped Jemily for 18 friggin years and that's never going to change. This post is specifically my thoughts about queer baiting.

First off, I need to note that the showrunners (and the cast members who use social media) KNOW what a huge queer following this show has and that's why we got pansexual Tara Lewis in S16 [1]. Which, in itself, was SOOOOOOO important!!! Our first canonically queer main in SIXTEEN seasons was a middle-aged Black woman!!! That's phenomenal. (The fact it was horrible rep, because they instantly ruined her relationships once her queerness served it's plot point is a whole other post entirely)

In my opinion, the 'big Jemily moment' Paget posted about on Twitter [2] (and AJ hinted at during a recent IG live) is simply queerbaiting to get people to watch S17. I know a lot of you are newer to the fandom and I love your enthusiasm, I really do, ship and let ship, but listen, let's be real, Jemily is not going to be made canon. The showrunners aren't going to suddenly say (after 17 seasons) 'Surprise, Jemily is endgame'. This show has never cared about queer rep and now that CBS/Paramount have already ticked their queer rep box with Tara, they won't be in any rush to add any other characters to it.

Please buckle in, I've got a lot of thoughts on this matter --

What is Queerbaiting?

If you aren't aware of what queerbaiting is, here's a good definition:

Historically, queerbaiting has carried two meanings: the first is an act of aggressive heterosexuality to shut down queer subtext on screen while still teasing and catering to the queer audience in advertising, public relations, and fan engagement strategies; the second is an existing homoerotic tension between two characters played up on screen while met with derision by the professionals behind the scenes. [3]

The Medium article quoted here is from 2017, a time when parasocial relationships were really starting to take over social media. In 2024, actors are now only a mention or tag away online, they have direct conversations with fans, and this process has allowed for an even deeper form of queerbaiting.

Oftentimes online, actors are asked directly about certain ships and while some ignore these questions (usually to avoid breaking their contracts or other repercussions), others (looking at you, Paget) choose to instead tease fans about queer ships. She's done this for years upon years and if I've learned anything in the past twenty-years of existing in fandom spaces it's this -- don't hold your breath. In it's original meaning, for something to be deemed as queerbaiting there had to be malicious, or at least, purposeful intent to string queer fans along by teasing them with suggestive content about the ship in question, while knowing this ship will never come to fruition in canon.

The thing to remember is, Paget and AJ aren't the only ones who know about Jemily shippers -- the network and showrunners are well aware of this ship too. When networks/showrunners figure out they have a strong sapphic fanbase, they love to use that to their advantage to get more viewers and higher ratings. Queerbaiting is a goldmine to keep fans watching long running shows, look at Rizzoli and Isles, Supergirl, and OUAT for examples of this.

Jemily and Queerbaiting:

Ever since Emily joined the BAU in S2 (2006), there have always been fans who ship JJ/Emily (shoutout to the old LJ forums!). Way before celebs were just a tweet away from fans, back when all our fics began with disclaimers so we wouldn't get sued by networks, we went to great lengths to keep our fanworks far removed from actors/showrunners attention.

As far as Jemily goes, this reply from Paget in a 2009 interview with TVGuide.com [4] (which has now been deleted from their site unfortunately, but there are quotes on Tumblr still [4.a]) confirmed some fans' worst fear -- the actors had found our fanworks online.

TVGuide.com: Of course, a band of fans want her to hook up with Hotch.

Brewster: I know! I didn't realize that fans make these videos on YouTube? A.J. Cook sent me a hilarious one that made it look like Prentiss and J.J. were having a secret lesbian affair. You know, when Hotch was blown up in the SUV, we shot this scene where he's in the hospital and I'm standing next to him, looking at his bleeding ear. Our director came in and said, "Paget, you're looking at Hotch like you're in love with him. It looks really weird." So now, every day, Thomas [Gibson] and I flutter our eyelids at each other.

This was the first time I recall anyone acknowledging Jemily shippers publicly and at the time (Jan 2009), the show was still in Season Four (just before CBS fired both AJ and Paget [5]). Paget genuinely said it's 'hilarious' that fans shipped JJ/Emily. Even now, I'll see people say 'We know Paget and AJ have seen Jemily fanvids, so they obviously ship it too' -- but those same people rarely acknowledge the full context of the original answer. Paget not only thought JJ/Emily were 'hilarious', but then she doubled down and turned her reply back to how she and Thomas liked to play up the chemistry between Emily/Hotch.

While no one can say for sure which video it was that AJ sent Paget, just knowing they were watching JJ/Emily fanvids sent a bit of a shockwave through the femslash side of the fandom. To some it felt like an invasion of privacy, fanworks are by fans for fans -- knowing the cast were poking around in fandom spaces added an extra layer of worry around what we fans were posting online. Fifteen years ago, it used to be quite taboo for actors to outwardly discuss shipping or other fanon for whatever show they were in, and we fans were usually comfortably removed from the actors altogether.

Of course, now it's the norm for fans and actors/showrunners to co-exist online and interact with one another. This connection has opened new ways for shows to queerbait their fans. Pretty much every show has some form of social media account now and there is no doubt that the people running those accounts keep up with the most popular ships and hashtags. Not to mention that actors are constantly barraged with questions about whether they ship their character with x,y,z, or whether they think a ship should be made canon, etc. These interactions only serve to benefit the shows themselves, because whether the conversation is for or against a certain ship, it's all just free publicity (Why do you think CM now has a TikTok account?)

Every time AJ or Paget say anything about Jemily, the queer side of the fandom loses their minds. But this has been going on for YEARS now and every single time, it turns out to be nothing but social media hype and queerbaiting. Remember this AJ post? [6] Or what about the notorious reply by Paget to a fan, where she talks about how she and AJ held hands under the table 'for the shippers' [7] I've seen this cycle over and over again, so perhaps I am cynical, but I'm not getting my hopes up that Jemily will ever seriously be canon.

It's widely known now, after both Kirsten [8] and Paget [9] have talked about it, that there was an early idea where Prentiss was supposed to be queer, but that was ultimately scraped before it ever made it on screen. For context, please remember, this show has been airing for nearly twenty years. It began in 2005, during the highly conservative Bush administration. Queer people didn't have rights in the US, we couldn't get married, we were rarely protected under discrimination laws, and we could even be fired for simply being queer (in some states). Diverse queer representation on screen was extremely limited to things like 'The L Word' and 'Queer as Folk' (both aired on Showtime, so they were behind a paywall. And as far as tLw goes, that show was extremely male-gaze focused and is horrible in nearly all regards if you try to rewatch it now). As far as prime time shows went, queer rep was even more rare. Which is why Emily wasn't queer from the get-go.

Yes, things have changed since 2006 in terms of queer rep on TV. We have a myriad of queer identities represented in TV and film nowadays, which is why I think it's so easy for newer fans to say 'lf she was supposed to be gay anyway, they should just make Emily queer in canon!' I know this is what fuels most fans' demands for Emily being confirmed queer, and I get it, I DO. I would be all for it! However, I do not, in one hundred years, actually believe that is going to happen after they already canonically queer confirmed Tara in S16. The fact we even got ONE queer character is ground-breaking for this show.

It's also worth noting, that in the time between Paget's departure in 2012 and her return in 2016, she became very active on Twitter. This was when more and more fans began asking her about Jemily and after Kirsten's AfterEllen interview, fans also pushed for Paget to address the possibility of Emily being gay. 'Pushed' is actually an understatement for some of the outright harassment she would receive. (AJ received some of this harassment too, but less so because she doesn't use social media ass often) Back then, neither of them replied to these things directly. Yet, no matter what either woman posted, the replies were full of Jemily stans begging for her acknowledgement. (Did you know 'stan' is literally a term coined for stalker fans?) I remember one time AJ's friend was missing and she posted info on her IG about it, you know what the replies were? People asking her about Jemily. It was genuinely sickening.

Within this context, it was no surprise to fans when Emily came back in S12 , she and JJ's friendship was seemingly erased. The two women were rarely on screen together in the late seasons, plus the writers saw fit to even give Emily not only one (Mark in London, but two, on-screen boyfriends for the first time in the entire series. I personally do not think these changes to Emily's character were coincidence, I saw the hellscape of what people would say to AJ and Paget online and I fully believe that upon Paget's return to the show, the showrunners purposely tried to distance JJ and Emily to dissuade the more abusive side of the fanbase.

Can I prove that, no. But it is the only reason I can think of as to why Emily S12+ seemingly didn't care about JJ anymore, despite their deep and meaningful friendship. I mean, they both CROSSED THE WORLD to go rescue each other in prior canon -- but when Emily comes back, they acted like they barely knew each other. This was even more prevalent in S16, when JJ's main storylines all revolved around Will, and Emily barely looked at JJ in the entirety of ten episodes. (Remember how Prentiss didn't even hug JJ after bomb, but she did go hug Luke?)

So, do Paget and AJ earnestly ship Jemily, or are they continuing the long tradition of queerbaiting us? Who fucking knows, not me. But based on the history of this fandom, I think I can make a safe bet. (Interestingly, if you search all of Paget's twitter for the word 'Jemily' [10] she only has 3 direct tweets mentioning the ship. I don't think it's a coincidence that two are within the past few months since they started filming S17 (the other one was a RT of Kirsten (who tagged something Jemily)

This is all to say --

Just because Paget and AJ have publicly talked about Jemily,, this doesn't mean it's ever going to happen on screen. And you know what, THAT'S OKAY!! There has been this constant outcry (after Tara became queer confirmed) of 'Do Emily next' or 'Why wasn't it Emily with a girlfriend!?' and 'Jemily needs to be canon in S17!' -- as if people believe their ships aren't worth anything unless they are canon.

That couldn't be further from the truth! Fandom is built on headcanons and fan interpretations and rare pairs and all types of shippers. Your ship does NOT need to be canon for you to enjoy it. I will ship Jemily forever, no matter what. I don't think there will be some magical queer plot in S17, at best, we might actually get to see Emily/JJ on screen together again and after the train wreck that was S16 -- I'll take whatever I can get.

And hey -- if I am completely wrong, if Erica Messer pulls a Korrasami out of her hat, I will be ecstatic. I will be happy to be proved wrong, but at the same time, I'm not going to lose sleep over it and I'm DEFINITELY not going to go hound the actors about it on social media.

Sources:

[1] 2022 Digital Spy article about the importance of Tara's coming out

[2] 04/18/24 Paget Tweet

[3] 2017 Queerbaiting article from medium.com

[4] 2009 Broken TVGuide link

[4.a] Tumblr quote from the above TVGuide Interview

[5] 2010 Kirsten interview screenrant.com

[6] 2019 AJ Instagram Post

[7] 2020 Paget video on Twitter (via @karasluthqr)

[8] 2015 Kirsten interview AfterEllen.com

[9] 2016 Paget Interview CriminalMindsFans.com

[10] @PagetPaget search 'Jemily'

#criminal minds #emily prentiss #jennifer jareau #paget brewster #aj cook #cm commentary #queerbaiting #cm meta #criminal minds evolution #cm evolution #my writing #long post

[daydreamsandcrashingwaves]

My writing so far!

At the moment all these are DCx DP w Danny and Damian being twins

Keeping It Close to the Chest:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Touch-Starved Prompt "Is this okay?"

Part 1

Part 2 (2/20/24)

Ao3 - Come read the updated version of KICTTC :3

Please if I can have a moment of your time,

I've been hearing talk of people binding fics into books for profit, I will make this clear Fandom is supposed to be fun. Its something people do for free. We do it to spread joy. If you print out fics for your PERSONAL enjoyment or make them into books for a PERSONAL collection (a friends or families personal collection as a gift) thats kosher in my head.

If you wanna steal people's work to make money, you're gonna discover real quick that A) fanfiction writers don't own the material and you're gonna get sued REAL quick, and B) people are not gonna share their stuff and there will be nothing for us to enjoy and for you to disrespect.

We as writers KNOW consequences can happen even if you don't intend to, it's why we saw the wave of I DO NOT OWN THE SOURCE MATERIAL OR CHARACTERS IM JUST PUTTING THEM INTO SITUATIONS THANKS because creators were worried these big companies would take them for everything they had for a silly little story that they never claimed to own. All it took was one person to get slammed. We Do Not Claim we just play. Thanks.

I don't think it's hit this fandom yet because it's not as popular as some of the others and because in my experience the DC x DP fandom is pretty chill, supportive and we love to encourage each other to create- no nastiness or pushiness that i've seen BUT

I do not condone that type of behavior and I will be keeping an eye on the situation, I would hate to have to take my stuff down so soon after finally getting the guts to post them for all of you to see and enjoy too so lets all continue to be good sports okay?

Tell your friends, spread the word in your circles, we stand together and united against monetizing the stuff we do for pleasure.

~Ren

#ddcw.txt #daydreamsandcrashingwaves #dp x dc crossover #danny and damian are twins #danny fenton whump #danny fenton #damian wayne #tim drake #dick grayson #alfred pennyworth #bruce wayne #my writing #fic writing #new writers on tumblr #writers on tumblr #masterlist #Keeping it close to the chest #Transference #bound fics #Can we just not ruin one thing thanks

[nouies]

hello and welcome to this month’s fic rec featuring my favourite works from what i’ve read during the past weeks. as always, please check tags before reading. if you liked the fics please reblog their posts, leave kudos and write a nice comment. happy reading! rec tag | more rec lists

— harry/louis —  

໑ I See You Shiver With Antici-- (SAY IT, SAY IT) by @homosociallyyours (G, 666, strangers, meet-cute, the rocky horror picture show references) Harry has elaborate costumes planned for each night of the Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings at the indie movie theater downtown. The cute guy taking tickets seems appreciative.

໑ Lazy mornings by @lvinlou (spanish, E, 1.2k, established relationship, pwp, morning sex) Las mañanas perezosas eran definitivamente las favoritas de Louis. El sol ya iluminaba toda la habitación y un nuevo día ya había comenzado para otros, pero no para ellos dos. Y Louis presentía que, a juzgar por la mirada hambrienta del ojiverde y la manera en que apretaba su trasero, no saldrían de la cama en al menos un par de horas más.

໑ always tell the truth by anditsonlyforthebrave / @HARRYSC1NEMA (NR, 5k, acquaintances to lovers, dentist harry, patient louis) Harry is Louis' dentist and getting a wisdom tooth removed shouldn't be the end of the world.

໑ You Were Always Mine by GoldenSunflouervol6 / @sunflouervol6 (E, 6k, enemies to lovers, a/b/o au, blood, injuries) Prompt 45: A/B/O fic where Louis and Harry have a lot of mutual friends but they don’t get along (mostly Louis doesn’t like Harry). One day, Louis turns up on Harry’s doorstep covered in blood and asking for help. (Inspiration: Prompt #126 from the BLFF 2021).

໑ Spaces Between Us, Hold All Our Secrets by Whoopsiedaisiesss / @shining-louist (NR, 6.4k, enemies to lovers, anxiety attacks, mean harry) The one where Louis suffers from anxiety. His rivals with Harry makes this even worse. Until one day he accidentally calls Harry duringone of his panic attacks.

Harry just wants Louis to feel better. He always does.

໑ Leave Like The Summer Breeze by @larringiscaring (E, 6.5k, strangers to lovers, farm au, farmer harry, stranded louis) When Louis and Zayn are stranded in Alabama, a farmer offers them shelter. He just asks for one thing in return.

໑ The Writing on the Wall by @stylinsonwritingpalace (E, 6.7, exes to lovers, teacher louis, author harry) When BookToker Louis receives a gift basket filled with all his favorite sweets, wines, and stuffed animals alongside the new Harry Styles book, he's shocked at the story he finds in the pages.

໑ we can follow the sparks by moon_rose25 / @darkinfinity (M, 6.7, a/b/o au, strangers to lovers, scenting, implied omega drop) “I, uhm, this is gonna sound weird, but my friend is an ER doctor and he kinda taught me what to do in this kind of situation,” the man takes a step closer to Louis, “He said a close presence of an unmated alpha and light scenting should keep an omega from dropping, so I, uh, I can help you.”

or

Louis nearly drops in Harry's bookshop and sparks fly from then on.

໑ Muffins & Cigarettes by sweetkalachuchi / @neverforpickles (M, 7.5k, established relationship, rich harry) Louis pouts.

“You can’t pout your way into this, Louis”, Harry said as he was fixing his tie, watch and rings glinting against the soft sunlight filtering through the window.

“Of course, I can. Watch me.”

໑ Please, don’t say you want me by pjinkfleur / @pinapplouis (T, 9.3k, strangers to lovers, a/b/o au, royalty, arranged marriage) Prompt 496: ABO/royalty AU. Where Omega Prince Louis is forced to marry alpha King Harry by his father for the benefit of their kingdom. After the wedding, Harry lets Louis know that he didn’t want a mate and to not expect a relationship from him. Since they are already mated, Harry has to officially reject Louis’s omega to break ties. This practice is so taboo that he doesn’t know the omega has a maximum of a year left to live after rejection. As time goes on, the omega gets weaker and weaker.

໑ Hello, my name is Louis by tedtokat / @tektokatt (M, 9.7k, strangers to lovers, mean harry) Prompt 148: Louis is a scam caller. Now this isn’t exactly the job of his dreams, but it pays well enough for him to continue doing it. Louis is a very anxious person, making it hard for him to talk, so he’s very shy when he inevitably scam calls Harry. Harry ignores the scamming, but after a certain number of calls, he’s had enough. Here ensues mean Harry at the beginning, sensitive Louis who doesn’t know what is going on half of the time, and if the author is up for it, autism-coded Louis too!

໑ is ur mother worried? by @outropeace (E, 12k, acquaintances to lovers, college au, fraternity, himbo harry) In retrospect, Louis should’ve seen it coming. Way before, his ex tried to “spice” their sex lives with a threesome, they simply didn’t work as they should, not just in bed but outside of it too.

From early on in the relationship, it was evident that Leo wished for someone different from Louis, not better or more, just different. And Louis was very aware of this, but Leo was his very first love and no matter if said love was nothing more than a memory, it was difficult to let go.

At the end, Louis didn’t have to do a thing because Leo decided to pull the plug in the worst way possible.

He cheated on Louis with Harry Styles.

໑ we can start a family who will always show love by @lvinlou (spanish, E, 12k, a/b/o au, single mother louis, PE teacher harry) "¿Les gustaría pasar por un helado? Quizás podamos seguir esta charla allí".

Alfa y omega se sumieron en su propia burbuja, concretando el flechazo que sintieron al verse por primera vez. Louis aceptó con un leve sonrojo tiñendo sus mejillas. Ambos adultos se sonrieron, sin reparar en la confusa mirada que les envió el adormilado cachorro, quien durante el viaje a la heladería se preguntó por qué su mami había decidido cambiar repentinamente sus planes habituales de jugar un poco y tomar una siesta junto a él.

Sin embargo, no se quejó cuando frente a él tuvo su helado de fresa y chispas de colores favorito, agradeciendo a su profesor y, ahora, amigo de su mami.

໑ part time soulmates (full time problem) by localopa / @voulezloux (M, 12k, enemies to lovers, a/b/o soulmates au, physical pain) sworn enemies harry and louis are soulmates. everything is going smoothly until the pain hits.

໑ Wait until you're sure by tommilfson / @tommilfson (E, 13k, friends to lovers, a/b/o au, best friends pact) Prompt 465: Louis and Harry are best friends who made a pact. If neither of them has found love by the time they’re 30, then they’ll get married. It was all laughter and fun until Harry realizes they’re celebrating his 30th birthday and in a few months, Louis is gonna be 30 too. So, he struggles to find someone for Louis to avoid being together, but Louis just keeps rejecting all men Harry introduces to him (because he has feeling for him, of course), which really upsets Harry. They argue about that and Louis says something like “wow, it’s that bad to be with me?,” accepting that Harry simply doesn’t feel the same. Louis moves for a couple of months with another friend and Harry has all this time to understand his feelings, realizing that he loves Louis too and wants to be with him. But when he goes to tell him, Louis is already seeing someone else. So what’s Harry gonna do to get Louis back?

໑ Kiss Me Once, Kiss Me Twice by @harriblou (M, 13.4k, enemies to lovers, college au, baseball player harry, physics major louis, arguing) “You’re a fucking brat, you know that,” Harry muttered through clenched teeth, bones already burning with the pure desire and hatred mixing in his body. It was an intoxicating rush of adrenaline and something else that probably came with fucking Louis Tomlinson. He squeezed his neck just a little tighter. “I can’t stand it.”

Their lips were brushing against each other, just moving with the ragged movements of their mouths and harsh breathing.

“You’re a lying piece of shit dickhead,” Louis muttered right back. That was all he did, challenge and nag. He loved to have the last word and Harry let him because he used all his energy to fuck him mindless.

໑ in deep devotion by ifthat / @lovehl (E, 15.6k, friends to lovers, a/b/o au, mistaken identities) “I think the folk here think I’m an Omega,” Harry voices out loud.

His suspicions began shortly after he arrived to Wright. Wherever he goes, this strange behavior follows. That type of treatment reserved for Omegas.

໑ Bend the Rules by @youreyesonlarry (E, 16.8k, friends to lovers, chef harry, video game developer louis) Prompt 588: Lous hires a ‘ghost cooking’ service because his family is worried he’s not eating well and he wants to impress them by showing them what an amazing cook he’s become. The service includes sending a discreet cook to your house and have them get everything ready so that you only serve and take the credit. Problem is, his sisters (can be OCs if that’s more comfortable) get to his flat earlier than planned and the actual cook has to hide in the master bathroom for hours. Louis is mortified. The cook is amused and helps him to clean and well. Gives him a thorough service. Feel free to pick your fave as the cook.

໑ give my heart a holiday by Ashisinlove / @ashisinlove28 (NR, 17k, friends to lovers, university au, bad puns, pining) AU where Louis and someone else both like Harry but Harry obviously likes Louis and is oblivious to the other person with scenes like Harry’s sitting with his legs on the coffee table and the other person wants to walk across and Harry doesn’t see them, so they have to say excuse me, but when Louis wants to cross he doesn’t even have to say anything because Harry sits up, puts his feet down, and gives his undivided attention to Louis.

໑ Wait For Me by cherrygelb / @cherrygelb (E, 17.4k, neighbours, single dad harry, student louis) Moving to a new place always comes with a few challenges. For Harry, it’s trying to start over after his divorce, while still doing his best taking care of his son. Though just like every parent, he is not infallible, so some mistakes are bound to be made, settling into his new role as a single-dad. For his son, Davie, moving means he has to get used to all the changes happening in his life through no fault of his own. Discovering a secret passageway on their new property lets him form an unlikely friendship with the young man and his dog he finds on the other side.

໑ Heart Eyes by @smittenwithlouis (E, 21.5k, enemies to lovers, incubus louis) Harry is a dedicated sentinel with a strong aversion to demons, and Louis is the lovesick incubus who will go to any lengths to win Harry's heart.

໑ Impractical Magic by @crochetsunsets (M, 21.6k, strangers to lovers, curses, witch louis, royal harry) "You're a witch?"

"Yes."

“So all of this–us–it’s all a lie?”

"No."

or Louis and Harry have both been cursed since birth. What happens when they're forced into proximity? Will their curses reign, or will they have their happily ever after?

໑ Death Wish by Speechless / 0__Speechless (E, 22.6k, enemies to lovers, vampire slayer louis, vampire harry, banter) Louis hates vampires, he lives his life trying to kill as many as he can, night after night, year after year.He hates them.Then why the fuck is he kissing one?Again.“I mean it, Harry.” Louis says, into his mouth this time. “You need to get the fuck away from me.”   Based on Prompt 403: If having more chemistry with a villain than with your own boyfriend was a crime, then Louis would be in jail. Or the hero slowly falls in love with the morally grey character AU

໑ There is Thunder in Our Hearts by thecheshirepussycat / @the-cheshire-pussy-cat (E, 39.7k, hellcheer au, acquaintances, cheerleader louis, musician harry) 1986, Hawkins Indiana.

Stoner, nerdy, metalhead Harry Styles sells drugs to the boy of his dreams, seemingly perfect overachiever, head Cheerleader Louis Tomlinson. It wasn't supposed to become a Thing.

OR, a Stranger Things HellCheer au (without all the death)

໑ Define me again by Hazzascul_07 / @hazzascul (M, 54.3k, established relationship, amnesia au, accidents, read tags and author’s notes) His entire life literally flashed in his mind, vision growing more and more weak and he fought unconsciousness. Memories and the picture of Louis lying unconscious in front of him altered and flickered, so rapidly that he felt dizzy with how fast his mind was whirring.

What happens when you die? God he was so, so, so, fucking terrified.

All his senses gave out, last thing he felt was Louis' hand in his and then, everything went black.

໑ the face of love's rage by @outropeace (E, 67k, a/b/o au, royalty au, enemies to lovers, murder, read tags and author’s note) Seven kingdoms, two sinners and one big secret.

— rare pairs / categories —  

໑ In The Dark by LadyAJ_13 / @ladyaj-13 (gen, T, 666, haunted house, choose your own character) It’s the dreams.

He’d be fine without the dreams… suggesting things. If he could face all this - whatever this is - with a clear, rested mind.

໑ Crush by @allwaswell16 (louis/niall, T, 1.4k, co-workers, office au) When Niall stops smiling around the office, his co-worker Louis sets out to lift his mood with the help of their office mates.

໑ it's the summer of our love by localopa / @voulezloux (louis/ryan ross, G, 3k, gym bros, sexuality crisis) ryan is in love with his best friend and gym bro, louis. the problem? ryan is straight.

໑ Got My Chaos Automatic by LetTheMusicMoveYou / @letthemusicmoveyou28 (louis/liam/zayn, E, 3.1k, established relationship, canon) The one where Louis comes home from tour feeling exhausted, yet antsy. Luckily, Liam and Zayn are there to put him back together.

໑ softer than satin by cinnamons / @sunbellylou (louis/joel miller, E, 4k, established relationship, pwp) “Wanna go back to bed,” Louis whispered languidly, voice partly muffled by his boyfriend’s lips on his. “Mm, but we just got up, baby,” Joel murmured. Lips touching softly with each syllable. Hands groping the soft flesh around Louis’ hips, kneading at the skin there and feeling his curves.

໑ Feeling Feline by LadyAJ_13 / @ladyaj-13 (louis/niall, T, 4877, magical au, animal transformation) “I’m telling you,” drifts through the cracked door, and Louis’ ears prick, twitching with interest. “There’s something wrong with that cat.”

“Have you talked to Liam?” asks another voice, worried. Louis thinks it’s the tall one with curly hair. Taller one. They’re all tall when you’re ten inches high.

“Not medically wrong,” the blond one says. “But I swear, and I know this sounds nuts, but I don’t think he’s a cat?”

໑ lonely in [paris] by f_ckromeoandjuliet / @louiesonlyangel (louis/awsten knight, T, 5.8k, strangers to lovers, canon au, coming out) Summer flings are complicated and healing comes from the strangest places.//Alternate version of Louis's tour where he's in a secret relationship with Awsten Knight from Waterparks. Based on Awsten tweeting at Louis.

໑ if i'm being honest by @disgruntledkittenface (girl direction louis/niall, E, 22.2k, acquaintances to lovers, falling in love, cats)

Niall is perfectly happy in her dating life, always finding a reason to break things off before her relationships get serious. When she finally gets a chance with Harry, her dream girl, their friend Louis makes her promise to give her a real chance. The only problem is that Harry has a cat… and Niall is not a cat person. Instead of running like she usually does, Niall has to figure out how to live with an adorable menace. And when it starts to feel like love, Niall has to decide: Is she ready for the real thing?

Inspired by Must Be Love.

໑ all tumults and feelings by camilevol6 / @svnflouwervol6 (louis/carlos sainz jr, E, 24.4k, strangers to lovers) The search for euphoria in a world that seems to be spinning out of control is perhaps what drove Louis to visit the heart of a city as vibrant as Barcelona. Everything is warm and bright on his holidays, even at night, where he finds solace in desperate lips and comfort in beautiful brown eyes that break his heart by making him realize that he has always been more fond of emerald tones covering the irises of his lovers.

#28th appreciation #1dficvillage #1dsource #hlcreators #hljournal #trackinghome #ficsfor4am #* #*rec

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

There's a common theme in Zutara fics where they put Zuko and aang against each other... Mostly to fill some fantasy of two guys fighting over a girl

They always forget that Zuko and aang are like, really close friends post canon (there's a whole monologue of Zuko talking about how much of an influence aang had on him in the legacy of the fire nation I think).

Also aang isn't one to dictate who Katara likes? When Katara was crushing on Jet (and possibly haru if you wanna go there) he just let it be. He wasnt jealous or angry, just sort of went on his business

I give them a pass when it's done in good fun - as in genuinely going "I'm just gonna have this happen because I like the drama". I also excuse it when Aang is given actual reason to feel insecure/like he's losing the girl he liked to someone else (remember, he only took the Ember Island stuff to heart because he had assumed he and Katara would get together after their kiss during the invasion, while during the Jet and Haru things he did not seem to believe he'd have a chance with Katara either way so he wasn't really losing anything).

What I cannot stand is the "This is totally what would happen in canon" or worse "This is exactly the same as that scene in which Aang wants to sit next to Katara, but Zuko won't let him because he' wants her too/is trying to protect her from Aang"

My guy. My dude. My pal. Aang was not really mad at Zuko on that scene. He wasn't happy about not sitting next to his crush, or about the play forcing to ackowledge his anxiety that the reason he and Katara are not together yet is because she doesn't think of him that way - but he doesn't take it out on Zuko. Hell, when he confronts Katara about it, he asks if it's true that she thinks of him as a little brother, not if it's true she's into Zuko because he knows that part isn't true.

As for the idea that Zuko either felt he needed to "protect Katara from Aang" or was into her, and that's why he doesn't give up his seat to Aang, we need to remember that this is ZUKO we're talking about here.

The guy who saw the same girl coming to his uncle's tea shop repeatedly and assumed "She must know we're Fire Nation is planning to take us down by ordering tea!" before he went "Maybe she's into me, or just likes the tea."

The guy who shouted "SHE'S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" in the middle of his date because he felt awkward about acknowledging he liked a girl, and didn't even register she could take it as him not enjoying their date. The guy who interrupted their kiss at the end of said date because he just had to give her a freaking cupon.

The guy who saw Suki trying to sneak into her boyfriend's tent, in the middle of the night, and acting all sus when she was caught and then went to talk to Sokka without having a damn clue that he interrupted their romantic night until he saw Sokka with a rose on his mouth, practically telling Suki to draw him like one of her frenc-I mean Kyoshi girls.

The guy that is related to miss "That's a sharp outfit, Chan"

That boy cannot read the room to save his life. When he told Aang "Just sit somewhere else, what's the big deal?" it wasn't him being passive-aggressive, or possessive, or jealous, or trying to do literally anything. He just didn't realize that Aang wanted to sit there because it was the seat next to Katara's. Hell, he probably didn't even know about Aang's crush on her.

#anti zutara

[missmaywemeetagain]

PINK SCARF AND LIFE UPDATES

Hello my babies! I wanted to jump on and give you some updates since I know I’ve not been posting/responding much since PS ended…

The long and the short of it is that I’ve been rather overwhelmed. Life is being A LOT. One of my sisters is very, very ill with late stage cancer and we are currently gearing up for her to (hopefully) get a stem cell transplant within the next month. This process is very involved and complex and scary and it’s one of those things that could just as easily kill her as make her better. This coupled with the family dynamics involved as we all try to navigate the situation has been emotionally exhausting.

In addition to that, I started temping back at my old job a couple weeks ago which is not what I wanted to do, but I gotta pay the bills, but it means my time is more limited and I’m way tired cuz my stamina is for shit lol.

And whilst all that’s been happening, I did some research and discovered that there is no way I can publish Pink Scarf as is. *sobbing* Turns out after Elvis died, Tennessee had to create a law specifically for him to protect his rights and image posthumously. This includes using not just his image, but his name and likeness as well. All this meaning I could get sued if I publish, and I DEFINITELY do not want to invoke the wrath of EPE.

Needless to say, this made me very upset cuz I know how much y’all want Pink Scarf on your bookshelves.

HOWEVER, before we all slide into the pits of despair, I think I have come up with a bit of a solution/compromise. I’m planning to rework PS into something just slightly different, changing some things that make it too specific to Elvis. I’ll likely have to change the title, too. But the plot and much of the writing will stay the same. But at least this way, I can still get it out to y’all in paperback form! (And lord knows I certainly can’t help who y’all picture in your heads while you read, soooooo…😉)

I know this is disappointing, y’all, and I’m so sorry I can’t make PS happen in published form as is. I am hoping that this new version is good enough for y’all to still want, and I’m gonna make it the best I can for ya. Honestly, I am thinking having something really close is better than having nothing at all. And of course, PS will still be online in its original form, so it’s not going away!

So, in the midst of all this insanity, I’ve started working on this newer version which is a project in its own right, but it’s taking time and my energy has been zapped with everything that’s going on. 💗🧣💗

For those who have asked about if there are any new Elvis fics in the works, the short answer is yes! I have a post-army fic that I am verrrrryyy slowly working on. The vibe is different from Pink Scarf (more of a slow burn), but I hope y’all will still enjoy it!

Anyway, thank you as always for your support and I’m sorry I haven’t delved into answering all your wonderful asks and comments. I very much appreciate them, I’m just a bit depleted at the moment. I’m still lurking around, just maybe not as active for the time being. But maybe I could jump on Discord or something next weekend if that would be fun for people!

Love ya always 💗🧣💗

Madisyn 💜

#pink scarf #pink scarf update #pink scarf the novel update #elvis #elvis presley #if you’re looking for trouble #you came to the right place #elvis 2022 #elvis movie #elvis presley x reader #elvis x reader #austin butler elvis #austin butler #austin!elvis x reader #Elvis fic #elvis smut

[padfootastic]

Hey padfootastic,

Was scrolling through hp posts and saw a post where people were fighting over Remus situation. So just wanted to know your opinion bout it. Do you think Remus could have done better in PoA? He was a professor, responsible for the safety of others.

No matter how much I love Sirius but at that time he wasn't innocent in others mind, so hiding a big detail that could have affected the whole situation, hell, had Sirius really had been behind harry, he would have been dead cause our little innocent Remus here thought that it was a good idea to not tell them how Sirius had all the resources at his disposal. How easy it was for him to sneak into Hogwarts and harm harry and others.

It really was dangerous and well indirectly he did prove Snape right no? What do you think could have happened had Remus had guts to tell Dumbledore about Sirius being an animagus?

On the other side, oh man! I can imagine Sirius being all furious and depressed at the same time. He'd need to go for another plan, he'd think that now he won't be able to even see Harry easily and many more difficulties. Ugh

Imagine the angst after after innocence thing, Sirius letting go any single drop of love he might have had for Remus and treating him like a any other person. No different. Remus hating himself more and more and Sirius just. Not. Giving a. Single. eff. About the whole damn thing. I cant-

Please tell me what you think bout the whole situation.

yoooooo

i love this lol people asking me for my remus opinions never gets old bc i have endless salt to provide. i will never not be annoyed by that cretin.

okay so. PoA. i don’t often focus on that part of his whole arc (which is, funnily enough, one of the only concessions to remus’ ‘flaws’ that i’ve seen the remus fans give lol) but it’s honestly so??? like it’s literally one of the best examples we have of how self preservation is literally built into his core. iirc he doesn’t do it bc he’s afraid of how dumbledore would perceive him? doesn’t want him to know how they (he) broke his trust? and he’s willing to damn an entire school of students PLUS his best friends son to an alleged mass murderer for it. he will have that on his conscience rather than self introspection a bit and get thru the hard part.

i’ve seen people call him brave for a variety of reasons which all begin and end w his lycanthropy but i’m gonna be honest, he’s one of the most cowardly characters in the series in my opinion. every single time he has to make an active decision that might compromise his sense of self/perception or even just his peace of mind, he backs off. retreats. runs the fuck away. attacks outward. doesn’t take responsibility.

i think snape was both right, in that remus was helping sirius but wrong, because it wasn’t out of any friendship or responsibility. it was just a way to save face for himself. also probably him not wanting to confront any difficult feelings or memories.

wrt if he had told dumbledore? man idek. i literally can’t imagine it and surprisingly, haven’t read any fics exploring that option either 🤔 sus, that. also very telling lol maybe tightened security? disappointed dumbles? i cant see any major changes tho bc even sirius as a grim was pretty well hidden except maybe anti animagus wards if those r a thing?

also yes!!! i think sirius should be allowed to be angry and disappointed more often. he should be spitting mad about the fact that not only did remus not care a lick about harry, he also gave up so easily on sirius. i think he should be allowed that space.

#remus lupin critical #sirius black #gonna be honest #if i wanted to think too much about remus #and look too deeply into things #psychoanalysing him—as much as u can words on paper—is actually rly fun #like how his sense of self is tied into presenting this decorous version of himself when the monster lurks close underneath #except the monster isn’t even the lycanthropy #it’s just his shitty personality lmao #sorry sorry. ‘difficult’ personality #wrt sirius. #i think. he forgave remus pretty easily in the shack bc there were bigger things at hand #but i have a feeling if he got proper treatment and food and a roof and a decent support system #that’s when he’ll actually be able to process the trauma of his betrayal #esp from the closest quarters #and i include mcg in this btw. #and that’s when he’ll really be able yo read them all to filth #or someone doing it on his behalf (except i can only rly see harry or james doing that. or maaaaybe lily) #but yeah. emotional sirius except done the right way #pen’s asks

[cagedchoices]

About using AI to write replies... Why does it matter if people do or not? Maybe they don't have time to come up with a reply on their own but still wanna be active on tumblr. I just don't see why everyone paniced the minute this came up and jumped to banning anyone who might use it.

It matters because as of now, there's not really very many restrictions on what writing AI language models are allowed to pull from or not.

OpenAI is being sued in California because reportedly their AI was found using material protected by copyright from two best-selling authors. The authors were hosting both published and unpublished work on SmashWords. This means that the artists who created the work that the AI used and Frankensteined together, weren't paid or credited for their contribution to its dataset. This is currently a HUGE concern being observed with AI art and AI voiceover capabilities as well, with the fear being that if you can just use an AI to make a painting or replicate a voice for free or otherwise at only a small cost, then why would you pay an artist or actor for their time and effort? And I believe it is a valid concern.

I saw a thumbnail for an AI cover of A.rthur M.organ singing on YouTube just yesterday. I didn't even click on it. I blocked the channel, which was called "Made With A.I." or something like that. Because what this means is that R.oger C.lark, the actual artist who portrays the character of A.rthur M.organ, is most likely not getting paid for his work even though the AI is pulling from audio/video clips of dialogue he recorded and then emulating the voice by cutting together and simulating all the different sounds it needs to process to make it sound like A.rthur singing. Thus, now YouTube is profiting from the site traffic and ad revenue that video is creating for them (because they put ads everywhere now regardless of if the video is monetized or not), and the company that built the AI voice program is profiting from its use, and possibly the channel creator is profiting off of posting these kinds of videos. The actor is not getting paid even though it's his voice on the line.

When it comes to fan works such as fanart, fanfiction, tumblr roleplay, we are in a different boat. We legally cannot claim copyright infringement or make a profit off of our work in any way. Everything we do and everything we make falls under a social contract.

Most of us believe that stealing is stealing. When people repost art and other graphics or writing and claim that they made these things when they didn't or they trace over or repaint someone else's fanart, we call them out for it and tell them to reblog from the source, give credit to the original poster and stop being an art thief. That's generally what the social contract is. AI as it stands right now, violates our social contract. It doesn't give credit to anything it finds on the internet. It assumes that everything it finds is fair game.

Now all of that said, I have not personally picked out anybody using AI in the rpc yet. What I have seen is a confession blog in which somebody stated in one confession post that people were starting to use AI chat bots to write positivity for them and they hated the idea of that. I found some evidence that something like this has been happening on ao3. Bots are allegedly using the usernames of existing ao3 members to leave anonymous comments, most likely after datascraping fics so that the number of hits don't look as suspicious in proportion to the number of comments and kudos.

There have also been more than a few comments on anti-AI posts in which other users admit to using AI language models to continue unfinished fics they stumble across, with some feeling entitled to do so because "well if you leave a fic unfinished for a year i'm gonna assume you're never coming back and take matters into my own hands to get the ending i deserve" Which is an insanely entitled cold take.

And for another thing, we can't trust the companies who are developing all of these AI programs, because they could be lying to us. Currently there's a bit of a panic going around concerning Google's new beta AI assistant. There have been several conflicting reports. Some have been saying that the AI scans all of the Google Docs you've saved, public and private. Others claim that it only looks at documents you have set to public, and still other claim that it doesn't scan or save anything that it scanned without your permission. The problem is that Google as a company has shown us repeatedly through past experiences that they cannot be fucking trusted. Remember when they said they would never sell your data without permission? And then they got caught and 'apologized' for selling everyone's data without permission? Yeah. It's that lack of transparency surrounding how the AI actually works that truly makes it unethical.

I'll admit that yeah it may have been a little hasty of some of us rpers to start adding rules against using AI to write as quickly as we did and with only a minimal 'wait are people actually doing this?' mentality, but the way I see it is, I would rather outline my stance on it now before it becomes a huge problem, than risk leaving it alone until it's effectively too late to matter.

And as for being a roleplayer in a hurry to get replies done... I think we should address the root of the problem there. People are so anxious and afraid that their writing partners will ditch them and move on or that they won't seem interested enough in writing if they aren't pumping out replies all day every day and honestly, that's sad and it's really reflective of how transactional fandom spaces have become in the modern day, I think.

Using an AI to poop out a reply so that you don't have to feel anxious about not replying fast enough is not going to help us get out of that situation. It's just gonna make it worse. What we should be doing instead is encouraging people to go at their own pace. Not driving them right into the arms of AI authoring by stressing and pressuring them to respond within [x] amount of hours/days.

#mobile tbt. #long post. #i...went off i'm so sorry 😭 #the thoughts kept coming and they didn't stop #mel vs AI

[insomniac-jay]

Another Giftedverse Fic

It's a complete (allegedly) version of the first Giftedverse draft I posted a while back

Giftedverse Story

If you asked Splendor what she'd rather be doing at the moment, she'd answer anything. At the office working, inspecting the newest lab grown jewels, playing with her kids-- anything to get her away from a press conference. Why was it a requirement of her "public duties" as a hero anyway?

And her husband wasn't there to keep her company.

"It's alright, minha dama. It's only a few hours." She imagined Inkstain reassuring her while massaging her shoulders. Even though he knew she didn't want to hear that right now, his attitude was still chipper and upbeat.

"They said that last month and by the time we got back home, we had to pay the nanny for overtime," Joou grumbled.

But she wasn't the only one-- other heroes were getting ready for the press conference as well.

Sirenia hummed as she applied brown lipstick while Chargeman tied up his hair into a ponytail. Superficial it may seem but looking their best was important, or so their contracts said.

"Five minutes!" The director's voice rang throughout the room as he poked his head inside. "Finish up any last minute touch ups or whatever!"

Splendor huffed silently as she adjusted her jewelry. Nothing too flashy or fancy; just a nice diamond necklace with matching earrings. This better be worth my while or else the Association is gonna get it.

Once the five minutes of last minute prep were up, the heroes walked out to the stage greeting a crowd of reporters and journalist along the way. Cameras flashed as some of the heroes did their signature poses, igniting cheers and applause from the audience.

And with that, the press conference started.

"What is the current status of your relationships with the Heroes Association?" one reporter asks.

The room went silent while the heroes glanced at each other wondering who would be the first to speak up. Discussing something as controversial as their professional relationships with the Heroes Association was something they did in the privacy of their homes, not to openly to the public. If they did, many of them would've been expelled and had their certificates suspended.

"I'll go ahead and answer that."

All eyes were on Chargeman as he spoke into the mic. He was a large, imposing man with bluish black hair tied into a ponytail.

"As you all may or may not know, my wife Stormchaser was expelled after being given an infraction for something she was well within her right to do; and as a result she sued them for wrongful termination," he replied.

"My husband was also expelled because he stood by me, further strengthening the case," Stormchaser added. "Eventually both of us won but refused to rejoin the Association. We requested our contracts be terminated and went our separate ways."

"Stormchaser, have you and your husband joined any other hero organizations?" Another reporter asked.

"Not yet. We're free agents for the time being," Stormchaser replied.

"As of recent, we've been getting requests to join some, including some from the Justice Bureau," Chargeman added.

With how effortlessly they finished each other's statements, there was a reason Chargeman and Stormchaser were a superhero power couple. They always had each other's backs all the time, building the foundation for a strong marriage.

Now that the controversial foot the press conference started on was behind them, room for more appropriate questions opened. Which was a relief for the heroes that they would only have to talk about the state of their careers and a bit of their personal lives.

"Good evening, Mrs. Petrocelli. How can I help you?" Lancelot rocked a small infant in his arms. The baby cooed softly as he swayed his arms side to side. "Of course I can have a meeting with you tomorrow. Is it about the court orders?"

Then, a small woman poked her head around the corner, catching Lancelot's attention.

"Are you on a call?" she mouthed.

Lancelot nodded and walked towards her as she held her arms out. Quietly he handed the baby to her before returning to his call.

"Make sure to have as much evidence of him violating the orders as possible. I can plead a stronger case with that," Lancelot paced around the room. He then sat down at his desk and began writing down all the information.

"Also get Children's Services involved if he refuses to hand them over. Though I doubt they'll do much," he mumbled that last part.

Once Mrs. Petrocelli hung up, he went to go check on the baby.

"Kiran? Is Hotaru alright?" Lancelot asked to his wife Kiran, who was coming out of Hotaru's, the baby, room.

"Yep. He's asleep," Kiran replied. She gently closed the door behind her. "Wanna help me with dinner?"

"Of course." Lancelot headed down to the kitchen following behind Kiran. He set out pots, pans, and the ingredients while Kiran lit the stove. She then pulled out a knife and began cutting up some vegetables.

"How was the press conference?" Kiran asked.

"Long and tiring," Lancelot replied while cleaning the chicken. "One reporter asked a really loaded question. Thankfully that was the only one of its kind."

"How long was it this time? Last time it was all the way until 10!" Kiran was no stranger to the monthly press conferences the heroes would have. After all, she was one of the few people aware of who her husband really was. 

"That one was a nightmare to get through. I remember you texting me about sending an SOS to get me out of there," Lancelot chuckled.

May's press conference was memorable because it was so long. They arrived at 5 but didn't leave until 10. By the time Lancelot got home, both his wife and children were asleep. Not to mention he had to stop a few crimes along the way, which didn't help his already exhausted state at the time.

"Do you see how tired you looked?!" Kiran exclaimed. "I was convinced they were holding you hostage to milk viewership."

Joou sighed happily as she rested her head on the velvet pillows. She was glad to be home after the long conference-- especially back with her children. As she laid on her back, her phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hey, minha dama. How was the press conference?" Irefumi greeted.

"A waste of time, as always." Joou sat up and turned on the TV. "I've never been more bored with something in my life. What's the purpose of even doing them? It's not like I'm getting paid more."

"So what I'm understanding is that this month's one was shit. Want me to get you anything on my way back?"

"Of course. Could you stop by that bakery in the metro and pick me up some strawberry bolo de rolo? I have champagne here." Joou replied, switching the channels looking for something to watch.

"Strawberries and champagne. Classy lady."

"Mommy?"

Joou looked to see her son Fuyuhito at the door holding his Monster Wars toy while rubbing his eyes. He looked like he'd been crying.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Joou asked.

"I had a nightmare," Fuyuhito replied. "Can I sleep with you, Mommy?"

Joou nodded and picked him up once he made it to her bed. She then tucked him under the covers beside her.

"Cozy, Fuyuhito?" Joou asked while kissing the little boy's head.

Fuyuhito nodded as he yawned and a few minutes fell asleep while still holding onto his toy. The scene of him sleeping peacefully warmed her heart.

"Was that Fuyuhito?" Irefumi asked.

"Yeah. Though, we won't get going to bed too early when you get back."

Rei hummed as the sponge cleaned off the grease and sauce from tonight's dinner. If either of her parents saw what she'd become they'd be infuriated; but alas, they're not here to do that.

Ever since she retired from being an idol, a sudden longing for a simpler, more humble life surged inside her. While others in her field went into the greater entertainment industry, she faded into the background.

But being in the background was better than being the face.

"Mommy, Mommy!" Two small hands tugged at her apron. Rei looked down to see Mani, her daughter, looking up at her with a wide and bright smile.

"Yes, my dear?" Rei dropped down on one knee to be at her daughter's level. It was advice her mother-in-law gave her four months into her pregnancy with Mani.

"Sing me to sleep!" Mani cheered with that same smile she had before.

"Of course." Rei picked her up and headed upstairs to Mani's bedroom.

The walls were painted a soft periwinkle decorated with glow in the dark stars and posters of all of Mani's favorite superheroines and characters. Plugged into the wall was a nightlight themed after her favorite fairytale princess.

Rei gently laid Mani in the bed and began to sing to her. Her thumb gently stroked her hair, lulling the young girl more. After a few minutes, Mani was asleep.

A smile crossed Rei's face as she bent down and kissed her on the forehead.

"Good night, my little princess. Sweet dreams."

Rei walked downstairs and picked up a white envelope addressed to her. It was in her mailbox by the time she came home from the conference.

I wonder what it is, she thought while opening it. Inside was a paper with some information about her recent performance.

Haunting Heroine: Phantasm AKA Miyano, Rei Status Report

Public Duties

Public Relations: B-

Notes: Has great appeal to the public but is unwilling to share details of personal life in interviews and conferences. Has also attacked or got violent with paparazzi on several occasions

Public Endorsements: F-

Notes: Has failed and/or refused to make any public endorsements

Advertiser Friendliness: C-

Notes: Refuses to comply with advertiser friendly policy when featured on Heroes Weekly Show

Press Relations: F-

Notes: Refuses to let journalists take photos, avoids questions at press conferences, and refuses to appear on magazine covers

Final Verdict: At risk of termination

Rei crumpled up the report then threw it in the trash. She wasn't offended by the low grades, she was offended by the fact that they even sent it to her.

"Dumbass report," she mumbled. "I don't need to play by their rules when it's my life."

@floof-ghostie @calciumcryptid @beyonettta @opalofoctober @elflynns-horde-of-stuff @pizzolisnacks @peachyblkdemonslayer @milf-percy

#giftedverse #jay's writings

[thesandsofelsweyr]

WIP Wednesday

Just some snippets from some stories I've got in the works! If you see this post, consider yourself tagged (and be sure to tag me if you share your WIPs!)

Mmm... scars 😋 From Part 2 of The Sus Boy Next Door (ao3):

That’s when you notice the scars. You’d never been close enough to him to see that his face is absolutely covered in them. Faint white lines that cut through his features: his dark brows, his full lips, his freckle-dusted cheeks, the bent bridge of his nose. The worst one (aside from the J on his cheek, that is) is a deep gash that slashes across his right cheek and his nose, all the way up to his forehead. Another knife wound? Is this guy a masochist with a knife fetish or is there some freak out there who gets off on slicing up this poor guy’s face? Those marks on his neck imply the latter—the more sinister of the two—and that sends a cold chill shuddering up your spine.

Some Joker / Jason dialogue from His (ao3), Chapter 3:

“Oh, I get it. You think you have a future outside these walls.”

“No sir I swear, please!”

“You think that maybe someday you’ll find yourself a Mrs. Todders, and if the missus wants a couple a’ Jason Juniors running around… well, you’ll need the right equipment for the job.

“Hate to break it to you kid, but even if you did manage to escape from me... no one’s going to want you. Batman didn't want you. Ol’ Daddy Warbucks didn’t want you, either. And those junkie parents of yours? Couldn’t even give you away—yeah, I heard that story.

“How long have we been playmates now, hmm? Eight months, give or take? You’d think after all that time someone would come looking for you, but it doesn’t look like anyone even noticed you were gone. 

“Face it, kid. I’m all you have now. I’m the only person who cares about you. The only person who’ll ever care about you.”

“I know, sir. I’m yours. I’m yours.”

An Arkhamverse Jason kid-fic one-shot I started for the Touch-Starved & Flinching Febuwhump prompts:

Jason didn’t understand what he did wrong. 

When the bad men came they beat his dad up. They were punching him and kicking him, and one of them even had a gun! The long-haired man put the gun beside his dad’s head, and his dad was crying and begging the long-haired man not to kill him, while the other two men laughed. Jason was so scared that he was gonna shoot! His dad kept swearing that he’d get them the rest of their money. That made Jason’s heart do a flip in his chest. He knew his parents didn’t have much money. His dad always said it was Jason’s fault, that if he hadn’t been born then they wouldn’t have to pay to feed him and put clothes on him and stuff like that. His dad even said that he and mom tried to sell him when he was a baby but no one wanted him because he was a loser. Was it his fault that these men were hurting his dad then? He had to do something!

From a dark & smutty reader-insert fic 👀:

His men had followed his orders to the letter. The girl was bound to a wooden chair with heavy ropes. Handcuffs encircled her tiny wrists. A black canvas hood was pulled down over her head. Muted, muffled whimpers echoed off the concrete walls of the cavernous hall—sweet music to his ears. They were in one of the many safehouses he’d established across Gotham. This one was hidden deep within an abandoned subway tunnel, deep in the bowels of this godforsaken city. No one would hear her screams, not even Hanover and Lopez, two of his most trusted lieutenants that he’d stationed outside the heavy steel door that soundproofed the room.

#my wips #jason todd #joker #robin #willis todd #salvatore maroni #arkham knight #arkhamverse #dcu #wip wednesday #jason todd x reader #arkham knight x reader #jason todd x you #jason todd fanfiction #whump #jason todd angst #jason todd whump #fic: his #fic: the sus boy next door

[liminal-zone]

Seeing as how mind control is canonically a power Sauron has, do you think he's ever gonna just try and use that to get Galadriel to work with him?

Obviously not like brute force, but trying to subtle mystically influence her mind to his position (maybe even manipulating Nenya into her hands to make it easier?)

WHO IS TO SAY THAT HE HASN'T ALREADY, ANON. Remember how CeleyB is like "[states sauron's purpose]" and Gal is all "what now? who said that? was it Halbrand?" and he's like "idk man" as if it's a foggy memory AS IF SOMEONE SPELLED.

AND THEN REMEMBER that Gal just marches into the forge post reveal and is all WE ARE CONTINUING THE WORK after Finrod!Sauron is all "continue the work." Sus.

And with the Tolkien line of "he gropes ever to see me and my thought", one can assume he is relentlessly trying to mind control her deeply into the third age. WHO IS TO SAY we won't see him try and maybe succeed a little? And certainly in fic, I would like to see it dot gif.

What I'm desperate for OF COURSE is that they have mind palace visitations throughout the second age because IN THEORY they're never in the same room together again, and I need them to be. I NEED IT, ANON.

#text post #anon #sauron #galadriel #saurondriel #MIND PALACE IS EVERYTHING TO ME #the rings of power

[victoria1676]

A bit of heads up of 'Leave me alone and let me build my s**t interlude' is that it will be in different perspective of characters such Rubedo, Paimon, Zhongli, Yae Miko and Ei and then to Dainsleif.

The build up of the characters perspective will be hard fore as I try my best to make them in character and also it will be very angsty so prepare your tissues and heart begin clench but also enjoy the suffering in this interlude XD

Honestly I really wanna finish this so I can go to the Prologue part 3: Doomsday when it's a mixed of my old Doomsday SAGAU Villain and now being used for my story

Cries that I have to replace Kaeya for another person since in the original doomsday fic Kaeya is in reader's side but now I have to change and revise some stuff since Kaeya is one of the people who hurt and hunted down reader. TwT

Also I apologize if I keep saying my interlude is coming when I'm legit stuck at revising and trying my best to finish it TwT legit idk why I made the interlude but then I'm a sucker of building up stories so it would give out the tension and to make you guys understand why the acolytes didn't recognize reader as the true creator or why they keep ignoring and letting Mallory (Reader's imposter) keep up her tyranny when they are alot of obvious signs why Mallory is the true imposter.

I will do my best to make it how the characters didn't realized Mallory's actions and since I hinted how Celestia helped Mallory in this for the plan the gave to her.

Honestly I Celestia is sus and we all know they are gonna be the true villain but if Hoyoverse suddenly makes Celestia the good guy the whole time or idk I will be shooked.

But anyways right now I'm currently Building up Zhongli's perspective or rather it's on Madame Ping's perspective and then to Zhongli. I legit didn't wanna make him suffer and same goes to the other characters however they will get their redemption with reader but unfortunately that will take a long time since I'm gonna give out what the first chapter of my story will be.

After all the Prologues are finished Chapter 1 to ??? Will be focused on Reader's past, Dream SMP lore and then the start of the slow imposter sagau hunt. Right now I already planned ahead how things will go down and going back to the present like when will reader or the other characters like eachother or something?

'Leave me alone and let me build my s**t' will be a series that will have a lot of angst, build up, dream smp lore crossover with the SAGAU lore and most of all slow burn.

Yes you may be wondering like "Victoria are you really gonna make her genshin characters fall for reader or reader fall for the characters"

Yes I will do that but not in a fast pace because I need a build up and then we go to the slow burn. Plus my reader is very different to the other SAGAU reader's and my reader is very much a hard person to get her forgiveness because of her past, the Dream SMP and of course the wild goose chase-I mean the imposter chase. She is not the type who will get like traumatized or go forgiving characters easily when I want to break everyone's expectations of how different my FIC is and of course make it different to every SAGAU fics.

I'm not a fast typer like the other SAGAU artists and have a shit schedule of trying find time to finish my FIC that is currently very long (And I thought the interlude would be small but brain keeps giving me ideas 😭😂👌) also busy with irl. Plus also busy playing genshin impact as well XD

Also regarding about me posting my arts. I'm currently trying to find time to when I will draw and I will also be a post here of my commissions that will opened on soon in both my instagram and my tumblr here. I really need money so I'll try my best to make my price okay and not that expensive since my art isn't that expensive or eye catching to others 😂😭💔

But anyways that's all I can say so I hope you guys understand where I am going in this fic and hopefully you will stay to love it despite some of you guys are really excited or impatient to see the interlude.

That's all goodnight!

#genshin impact self aware #genshin self aware #sagau #self aware genshin #genshin impact #genshin sagau #self aware au #genshin self aware au #genshin impact x dream smp crossover #sagau dsmp reader #genshin au #genshin impact x dsmp #sagau x dsmp #sagau x dream smp #genshin impact x minecraft crossover #genshin impact x dsmp crossover #genshin impact x reader #self+aware+genshin #genshin angst #genshin crossover

[sunnikko]

Hi mikko it's me again! Yesterday at around 5am I finished rewriting the fic! I call it kelbrey!au for lack of a better name haha... Here it is if you're interested tho!

The day of the recital

Aubrey has just finished wearing her dress that she saved up for a whole month to get, and is now climbing down the stairs of her home. She enters the living room and sees her mother passed out and her dad not home, probably at work but she couldn't be sure. She sighs and grabs a post-it pack and writes a note for her mother.

The note reads: "off to Sunny's and his sister's recital! Kel's parents are driving me, in case you forgot you agreed to this! I'll be home before 10:00!"

After sticking the note to the fridge she rushes off her house and walks happily -practically skipping!- to Kel and Hero's house. After a bit she reaches the doorway and knocks two times. She hears footsteps thumping from inside the house and then she suddenly sees the door fly open to see an ecstatic Kel with his nice clothes on.

"Aubrey! You're late!"

"Mijo! No running in the house!"

"Sorry mama!"

Aubrey looks at Kel's clothes, it's a white shirt with a black jacket and an orange tie, black pants but he's only wearing socks, orange socks...

"You can't blame me for being late when you're not even wearing shoes! You also need to cover up that atrocious color!"

As Kel and Aubrey banter about pink and orange Hero comes in the living room to calm them down. He looks absolutely dashing, but especially so, it's his lover's big day after all! He needs to look good for her! After Hero calms down his two very energetic friends he changes the topic away from colors: "Alright guys listen, there's been a change of plans, we're going to be driving Sunny Mari and Basil to the recital as well since the theater people needed their parents to go in advance to help in ordering of the arrangement, and since they planned to take the three of them and can't, we'll be doing it instead, so in ten minutes from now we'll go over to them to pick them up! Fortunately our car is plenty enough for all of us though so no need to worry." The kids nod in excitement and Hero thinks to himself and then he speaks again: "Actually, in order to make space for both Mari and Sunny, two of you kids might need to stick together in one seat..." Aubrey and Kel start screaming "What? I'm not gonna sit so close to Aubrey? I'LL GET COOTIES!" "Shu- Stop it kel, cooties aren't real! Plus I don't wanna sit with you either but we need to make space!"

Kel agrees with a groan. Ten minutes pass of Aubrey and Kel bantering about seating rules and Hero looking in the mirror. Afterwards Kel and Hero's father yells at them to gather in the car.

Once they arrive at Sunny's and Mari's house hero gets out the car to go get them, but Kel and Aubrey couldn't sit and wait so they followed to go get their friends.

Hero rings the doorbell but the door takes time to open. It's basil and he seems... Distraught... He's crying! Everyone rushes over him and ask him what happened and the only thing he could say as he trembled was "Su... nny... ...rry..." Hero got up to look for Sunny and Mari and Kel and Aubrey took Basil on their shoulders as they followed Hero, they tried to comfort him in the meantime but nothing worked... Hero sees sunny huddled in his knees next to the glass door to his yard, saying "Mari.... Mari..." over and over. Hero looked outside to the yard and then he froze up for a few seconds, something he saw... Terrified him to his core... After he snapped out of it he tried to open the door to the yard In a panic and rushed towards the big tree in Sunny's yard. Kel and Aubrey followed him, still with Basil on their shoulders, but he refused to go to the yard so they left him in the entrance to follow hero and then, while they were a few steps behind hero who was standing still as a statue in fear and shock... They saw her. Mari, Hero's lover, Kel's beloved friend, Aubrey's sister that she wished to have,was hanging from a tree, on a jump rope, her hair covering all of her face but one of her eyes, and she gently swayed to the wind... Hero tried to take a step closer but he fell to his knees, his arms fell down to his sides and his mouth wide open. Aubrey bell behind and started to cry, she held on to Kel's jacket while Kel was still frozen in place, in utter shock.

After a while Kel and Hero's father comes and sees what happened and he immediately calls 911, he goes over to Mari and unties her and drops her down to the grass, while he looks for any pulse. None found. Hero's silence turns into uncontrollable crying and Kel looks away in pain while he can't control his tears and he finally hugs Aubrey back,he couldn't dare to take another step close to Hero... To Mari... He was terrified, and so was everyone else. Kel and Hero's father escorted everyone but Hero in the living room, who wasn't responding to anything, he just cried over Mari's silent chest, until 911 arrived and forced him off of her. That night everyone went home without exchanging a single word, everyone cried themselves to sleep, if they slept at all.

A few days later, it's Mari's burial ceremony. Everyone was there, except for Hero, who couldn't get out of bed no matter how hard his parents and Kel tried to convince him. Sunny was emotionless, he looked broken, and yet, to Kel and Aubrey's eyes for the first time in their lives, he looked unapproachable. Basil was Next to him though, holding his hand. Not saying a word,but crying with hiccups. Aubrey cried a lot when they started throwing dirt on her casket, and she grabbed Kel's sleeve who happened to be close, kel noticed that, and amidst his crying he hugged Aubrey. They may banter a lot but Kel recognized that this is a difficult time, and that she needs affection, as does everyone in their group. Aubrey continued to cry in his shoulder, and so did kel.

The tombstone read as follows "Here Lies Mari. The sun shined brighter when she was here"

After everyone started leaving the graveyard the last people who stayed were Aubrey, Kel and Kel's parents, sunny and basil left for their homes without saying a word.

"Hey mom *hic, me and Aubrey are gonna stay a little *hic longer, I'll come home later..." Said Kel while looking away from his parents. His mom and his dad hugged both the children and his mom said "I'll be waiting at home, and Aubrey, you can also come over if you want". Aubrey nodded amidst her crying and then they walked off, thankfully they lived only a few blocks away so it's not a big deal to leave them there.

Kel and Aubrey sat next to each other in silence, the only thing breaking it every once in a while was a hiccup or a sniffing sound from both their crying. Kel thought of holding her hand to make her feel at ease but he didn't know if that was appropriate,so he just scooched a little close to her, so she can feel a little warmer.

After a while the sky starter turning darker, and Kel stood up. "Aubrey, let's go." He said while wiping his tears. "I... Don't want to leave her alone..." Said Aubrey while trying to stop her tears.

Kel sat back down and took a deep breath before speaking

"Y'know, mom says that people who pass on, don't feel lonely as long as we remember them. So in a way, as long as we never forget her, she's still with us..." He said and then looked at the tombstone that had his friend's name...

"I won't forget her. I will never *snifffff* forget her." Said Aubrey.

"And neither will I." He said as he finally held her hand. "It's getting cold though, she wouldn't want us to catch a cold I think" said Kel. Aubrey smiled softly amidst her pain "No, no she wouldn't..."

They both get up and leave the graveyard,as they were about to part ways, Kel invites Aubrey over to his house, but Aubrey says that her mom wanted her home soon and that she's stayed out for a little too long, so Kel offered to walk her home. "What?! My house is so far away from yours though!" "You're right... I just thought you might need the company, I know I do." He said letting out a weak laugh. "Well, it's getting late now, how about we hang out tomorrow? Say around 12:00am?" "Yeah, sounds good. Goodnight Aubrey." "Goodnight Kel" and as they waved goodbye they both headed home.

Stares at this oh so lovingly

#SORRY FOR RESPONDING TO THIS SO LATE I FORGOT AB IT ARGH #miko talking #OMORI #omori writings #asks