#we r never getting a second season i hate this cruel world | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hhjs · 3 years

Text

love or lack thereof.

pairing — felix x reader

genre / trope — angst, fluff / exes with benefits.

word count — 7.7k

warnings — suggestive, heavy implications, swearing, some making out but no actual r rated stuff but i will say this is suitable for 18 and up audiences.

note — this is unedited, subject to change. spare me lol

There are two sides to every person. The side that you want people to see and the side that you keep to yourself.

You think you've come to discover all those aspects of Lee Felix. Given that he's sweet, unassuming and inexplicably kind to the naked eye but you know, the rising anger in you knows he's only ever been cruel to you.

"Move," you seethe, he moves to let you in but you unintentionally knock your shoulder against his. There's people on the subway, and you hate the way Felix's innocent gaze finds yours for a second and it makes you look like the bad guy.

You feel the disapproving glare of a grandma who has a crumpled catalogue about seasonal pie recipes on her lap, as if she can't believe how much of a cunt you were being to an absolute stranger.

A roll of eyes follows, fishing for your ear phones, if only they knew.

Seeing your ex boyfriend outside of your casual deal hits you with the force of a punch to the gut. But you hid it exceptionally well. Arrogantly jutting your chin upwards. Whilst he cowers beside you, having supposedly caught your sour mood.

To think you had spent an hour with him in a bedroom just formerly...is rather strange. You've been sleeping with him for the past few months now and where it had begun is slightly mysterious to you — was it Chan's birthday party or a clubbing gone wrong one night stand just after Felix had come back to town....? You aren't entirely sure.

Albeit the arrangement is ingrained in your head — what you have with him is a secret strictly kept from your friends who otherwise if even caught air of a mere conversation between you two would invite an influx of queries. This is simple, physical, you don't have time for a relationship, let alone one with him and to mend how utterly lonely you are with someone who hasn't already seen you naked, someone who you couldn't blindly trust, is too much work.

Even though Felix is indubitably affected by your unwavering indifference, something he wasn't used to when you were together because of how giving you were to sate his utterly needy tendencies. Now he feels himself clawing at your hardened exterior in search of just those affections to no actual avail —hurt crossing his eyes when you sneak out of bed without saying goodbye, when days pass and you don't call or text and most importantly, when you're in public and you can't be bothered to spare him as much as a glance. To you, it's nothing more and nothing less. You make it a necessity to keep reminding him.

See you liked to pretend you're a resilient person. That in your heart you really do forgive people and move on.

But he is an exception.

"Did you eat?" He perks up, his voice is small. Careful.

You keep your stoic expression, looking ahead. "No."

Then he blinks, like he usually does when he doesn't understand why you act the way you do. Impolite, communicating only in monosyllables.

Do you really hate him that much?

There's a hoodie pulled over his black hair, longer along the neck,headphones dangling from his neck and his backpack in his hand, he hopes when he holds onto the same railing as you are, that your fingers should brush just a little.

Despite the way you adamantly ignore him, Felix opens his mouth to utter a passing inquiry. Your jaw clenches. And you desperately begin to scan the city map plastered inside to navigate passengers to their destinations.

"Can we...do you want to get something to eat..." He swallows, "together?"

As if he's crazy for even making such a proposition, you look at him once but from the corner of your eye and he thinks that's a lot considering how often you look past him, through him, never at him. You shake your head, giving him a warning stare.

Across from you, his reflection is frowning at your negative response. Still staring at you with a marveling gleam in his eyes, how much you've changed over the past two years just as he has....still takes him by surprise. Suddenly and unexpectedly, his eyes flicker to yours and he finds you staring at his image against the glassed doors. And like a deer caught in headlights, your heart drops to the depths of your stomach.

The announcement above falls deaf to your ears as you exit in a blind rush of sheer panic. Ignoring the biting cold and unfamiliar station. Your stop is still quite far. Maybe you'd have to take the taxi... or walk.

But in the face of all those hassles you sense yourself feeling incredibly relieved...because frankly, you think, you could go to hell and back if gets you away from him.

—

"So you came to tell me you're just gonna give up? Is that it?"

Felix carefully glances at you through his lashes, silently pursing his lips as to convey the answer.

You stare at the speckles of light kissing up his freckled cheeks, his big beaming eyes, a slightly low bridge but rounded tip of his nose paired with a small upturned mouth.

You can't believe you won't see him again.

Whenever he'd catch a break, he'd take the 2 hour bus to town and come see you, meet you and those once in six months meetings alone, to you, compensated for his lengthy absence.

So it couldn't be the distance, you thought, if that were the case he'd have dumped you when he moved to the capital for university.

Felix just doesn't want to be with you anymore.

"You don't get it...." He closes his eyes, as if he doesn't want to see himself saying what he is about to say, you almost don't get the resistance in his tone. The subtle drop of his Adam's apple. "I don't want to hurt you." He starts, "Just think about this rationally... we're so young, what if I find someone else there?"

Someone...else?

Is it that easy to dispose of you? Aren't you enough?

How foolish of you to only ever think of him.

It felt like Felix was kicking you where knew would hurt the most.

Your sardonic laugh is cracked, garbled and it's so fucking embarrassing that you're crying in the middle of a fast food joint, your fries have gone cold. Had you known seeing him this time would be vastly different from usual, you wouldn't have ordered at all. Why didn't he tell you before? Why had he insisted on catching you unawares?

But then again...this isn't about you at all. This is about Lee Felix. This is about him reducing your worth to make room for himself.

Ultimately, you understand, what is worse than not being loved back is being loved by someone who doesn't love you as much as you do them.

"Well I won't stand in your way then,"

You clear your throat,

"Fuck..." you rub your temple, the sadist in you coughing up hysterical laughs. The ache inside your heart at this point has turned into physical pain, cracks fissuring out against its surface and gnawing at the flesh like its being torn apart at the seams.

You should've seen this coming.

Everyone told you and told you you could only drag on an opposites attract sort of relationship for so long before you start to realise how incompatible you are.

Felix has the audacity to reach over and place his fingertips on your knuckles,his eyes are sad, overflowing with pity. It makes you feel small, the way he looks at you, small, sad and abandoned.

What tips you over the edge, however, is how calm he seems, as if he had been precisely planning to dump you for days and months and years while you continue to make a fool out of yourself never have forseen his decision.

There are tears running down your cheeks, abusing your vision with a vicious sting. You bring your sleeve to collect the needless moisture in a sudden rise of temper that is oh so typical of you.

You snatch your hand away from his touch.

"Don't touch me." You say, the simple comment transfers pain to Felix's eyes, mouth parting in silent words. You want to scream at him, you want to shake him by the collar and tell say something, just say anything at all and I will forgive you. Goddamnit.

In a perfect world, you think, a world where things happened exactly the way they should, you wouldn't have said, instead,

"And don't you fucking dare come back here...ever again."

And...in that very perfect world, he would've listened.

—

Felix thinks he could, dare he say, love everything about you. Even though you most certainly deserve someone who hasn't hurt you the way he has.

Now it's funny actually, how the tables have turned...back then, he wasn't sure about you and now you aren't about him.

Felix doesn't really blame you though...because he knows he asked for it.

Your presence in his life has somehow become an absolute necessity to say the least. And ironically enough, while he had so confidently pushed you to let go of him, he realises he had been holding onto you all along.

Now what was he saying...again?

Right. Felix loves everything about you.

But what he loves most...is the way your hand instinctively finds his heart when you're kissing. It's just a simple movement of your fingers splaying against his chest, the warmth of them seeping through the fabric of his shirt. He doesn't even know why it means so much to him.

His hand drops from your ass to the back of your thighs to situate you closer to his chest. He moans into the kiss when your teeth comes to scrape against his bottom lip, your ministrations are typically rough and speedy but he is seemingly far too absorbed by the exhilarating feeling coursing throughout his entire form — it's not just blatant lust, he knows, but a much deeper understanding that he is inexplicably gladdened by the fact that he's touching you and you're touching him.

A shaky breath leaves Felix's parted lips as he cranes his neck to allow your lingering kisses to shift along his angular jaw.

Then without quite meaning to, his vision focuses on the table clock that reads it's well past midnight...you had run late tonight for reasons you neglected to disclose. Now that he really focuses, a strong musky fragrance akin to unfamiliar men's cologne wafts up his nostrils.

It couldn't be....

As Felix's suspicions run deeper, he restlessly begins to search up every aspect of his surroundings as best as he can in the limited provision of light. There is a large coat discarded on his bed, one he hasn't seen you wear before...then again it might not be yours at all...

You notice how he's stopped responding to you, so you pause, leaning back, still on his lap. "Is something the matter?"

Felix swallows, blinking up innocently at you. This deal is simple, isn't it? He knew what he was getting into the first time you got together and the second and the third and so on, so why had the possibility of you getting involved with someone else even bother him then?

Both of you knew why.

And what's worse is that Felix is sensitive by nature, never truly succeeding to hide his emotions, especially intense ones when faced with them. So he is hyper aware of the fact that what he is feeling in the moment is not jealousy, it's neither anger nor resentment but a deep seated insecurity that he will lose you.

Again.

"Were you...with someone?"

As expected, your hands resign from cupping his face, you avoid looking at him.

"What?"

Felix clears his throat, his accent thicker, voice heavy from disuse. He thinks about something being with you in the same way only he has...and it causes a dull ache inside his chest.

He rests his head back against the sofa and shrugs lazily. As if to prove a point, as if to say did he touch you here? his fingers ride up your t shirt, gently cupping your ribs, he tries not to look too satisfied when you quiver under the touch.

Still you lift yourself up and the sudden lack of contact almost makes him whine.

You stand before him. A hand at your hip.

"Why are you acting like this?" You say and he notes you sound more... curious than annoyed. Though what frustrates him is that you hadn't answered his question. "I thought I made myself clear...there are rules we agreed upon."

Oh he knows — no staying over, no personal questions, no jealousy.

Felix purses his lips. The downside of your forwardness, the same utterly admirable trait he finds really fucking hot, the one that conditions you to tell Minho off when he hogs all of Felix's brownies though the latter himself is too much of a pushover to say anything, the same one which had in times of recurring doubtfulness assured him of your strong feelings towards him, is that you say whatever comes to mind without sparing anyone's feelings.

"I'm just asking, [........]," he lies, trying to control the pain from projecting itself onto his voice. It hurts to see the way you jump to defend yourself around him, as though you're scared he'll hurt you again. The lack of faith you have him, after all this time, causes him hurt. "Why are you getting so upset...."

Felix is gentle. Communicating his feelings through his actions rather than words, cooly, slowly. And you are the exact opposite — there is an immediacy in your conveyance, a roughness. You mean what you say and you say what you mean so you think everyone does too. Which is why, he concludes, his present actions are insufficient to remove the seeds of resentment he'd left in the wake of his bitter utterances when you broke up.

But Felix was only 18 then, a kid completely unaware of his overwhelming need to have you in his life....what matters is, he's trying...he really is, to recover from his mistakes......shouldn't that least matter?

Thinking the slight inhibition in his tone is just a figment of your imagination and that he is simply and indifferently inquiring you, you feel a wave of embarrassment wash over you. Then you drop down on the bed, feeling for his remote.

You sniff through your nose and against your better judgement say, "I went out with an acquaintance,"

On weekends Chan usually wasn't home, you could come over. This is the routine, it has been for some time now...so, you've come to know Felix's room more intimately than your own, the walls are a deep blue, like the kind of blue out of a Holly Warburton painting. There's an old Coldplay poster on the back of his door and X-Men action figures from eons ago lined on the edges of his bookshelf.

You know where everything goes when though it's dark. But that doesn't mean anything.

It shouldn't.

"A acquaintance who gave you their coat midwinter...you must be close,"

You ignore his pointed comment, he ignores the way your eyes light up when you talk about this acquaintance.

"He's nice." You say, "He walked me to the station and everything."

A happy hum comes in response.

Because when was the last time you talked to him as freely as you are?

Felix plops down on his stomach beside you, elevating his form on his elbows. His fingers come to brush loose strands out of your eyes. Your gaze meets his for the second time that week. Slower. As if you hadn't minded looking him this time. He feels his heart being tugged at all possible angles.

Then, because he can't stop himself — he leans down and kisses you, tentative and indolent, like he has all the time in the world, like all he wants to do is kiss. Don't get him wrong...you've done downright unspeakable things with him, to him...but nothing mediates his adoration for you without the employment of speech like these little chaste...purposeless movements. His fingers coming to splay against your neck, thumbing along your throat when you gulp, the tip of your nose brushing against his cheekbone, eyes fluttering shut. They're...they're intimate. Utterly special. He knows you feel it too, from the way you look slightly surprised, searching his face, eyes skimming up any fragment of emotion conveyed in his features. But you don't encourage it, slowly shifting to turn your back as you lay quietly against his chest.

"Let me stay here tonight," you say, "I'm tired."

"Okay,"

Felix thinks you've broken not one, but two rules now. He hadn't expected you to answer. He hadn't expected you to get into bed with no intention of departing either.

Though he doesn't hold it against you, this is what he wants, for you to open up to him again...after all. These changes can't be bad changes, even if they are little, it's still progress...right?

—

You wet your fingers, dipping the moistened muscle against the clay mold. All around you is not as eerily quite as it is in your apartment, footsteps thrumming against hardwood floor, kiddish humming from the kitchen, the smell of sugar in the air, you've never worked outside of your home station and well...in class. You thought of yourself as a self sufficient individualist, you liked to believe that you didn't enjoy other people's company like you did your own, with the exception of your roommate. But that's only since you aren't close enough for her to disturb you.

Yet with Soomi moved out for good, the place felt...odd to stay by yourself.

So you found yourself spending more and more time at Felix's. It's nice to have a place to crash in every now and then, the sex is great and when you get hungry after, you don't have to think twice about scouring the fridge.

You don't know why you put off spending time aside from sleeping together at all, more time spent didn't necessarily add to your deal or subtract from it....because the action itself doesn't really mean anything. Everyone gets tired of being alone at some point. That's a universal fact.

Initially, you told yourself your presence was a consequence of Chan catching you two in the shower one night...so now that the cat's out of the bag, you two figured his place could become the only premise you didn't have to play pretend in. You both knew the elder would be more than willing to keep the younger's secret even if he didn't exactly approve of it.

With the increased frequency of your visits, bits and pieces of you remain dispersed all throughout the apartment, your body wash in his bathroom, your underwear in his laundry, the smell of you in his sheets, on his clothes. You had relaxed yourself through the periphery of his life and he had small glimpses of yours, habits and flaws, unknowingly...or knowingly....whatever. — Felix could only thank God that Chan had found out, in spite of the revelation itself putting you both in a compromising position.

With time, he starts to keep a few secrets from you too, here and there, knowing that if you knew you will stop doing it altogether. He can't have that...

You throw a leg around his hip when you're fast asleep, flinging an arm not a second later to cage him in your warm embrace. Felix likes the way your chest rises and falls against his back, how your breath tickles his skin and your mouth parts against his shoulder blade. Sometimes he stays awake and waits for you to do it, then when you do, he grins so hard his face hurts a little. Felix likes being the little spoon.

"Are you listening?"

His vision narrows down to the sight of you holding out your palms in the air, there's wet clay on them, as well on your cheek and legs, between them your pottery wheel is halted to desuetude, there's old newspapers layering the floorboard to prevent staining.

"Sorry...," he smiles sheepishly, "What did you say?"

It's your turn to shift your gaze to your feet. Felix thinks it's highly uncharacteristic, the way you seem almost...shy?

"Can you..." You eye the mug mounted on his study desk, he catches onto your request easily, "I'm thirsty—"

"Yeah yeah hold on... careful," Felix chirps, carefully guiding the rim to your lips to make sure it doesn't spill. He uses the tip of his thumb to wipe the corner of your mouth, you flinch first but then whilst the mild shock subsides, simply stare up at him as the pad of his thumb brushes against your skin. "There you go..." he trails, eyes bright with care.

You feel like a child being doted on, the mere emotion plunging you back to when you were 5 and had crushes on boys who shared skittles with you.

"Thanks."

Felix's ears perk up at the courtesy, you were never one to express yourself easily and when you did, every time, he felt inexplicably delighted.

The apples of your cheeks feel hot for some reason, by putting yourselves in in these small situations, you keep confusing him, you know, because you keep confusing yourself too.

You come out again that night but this time Bang Chan is shifting around in the kitchen. He hardly sleeps, you observe, but probably refusing to come out because he wanted to avoid bumping into you.

Chan doesn't seem to like you very much. Probably. You don't blame him. Before you came along, Felix and he spent more time together, now you had become a constant in his life without will.

You have to listen twice to realise he's speaking with you. Not an invisible being behind you.

"What?"

"I said..." His tone dropped dangerously low, he looks annoyed at something. "Listen I don't care what you're doing but don't hurt him." He's wearing a black t shirt and a pair of pajama shorts with cartoon wolves littered all across the baby blue fabric. He's trying to appear intimidating. It's not really working.

You stifle a laugh.

Frankly had you not known how deeply he cared for Felix, you'd not have cared about his advice. Or warning....?

"Fine," you respond, watching as the tension visibly left his body with one bating breath. "I hope this isn't about me stealing your yoghurt though."

"It's a little about stealing my yoghurt," he jokes, you think he's one of those people who'd apologise if you punched them in the face and spat in their drink. It's interesting...

Chan laughs a little. His eyes sparking with amusement for the first time of all the times he's looked at you. Did he trust your word that much?

—

"He talks about you a lot you know,"

You nearly spit out your drink. Seungmin isn't exactly the densest guy you know. Far from it exactly and he isn't discreet either. So your first instinct is to think he knows something.

You watch Felix from a distance, a solo cup in hand, he's laughing at something Hyunjin said, there's a crinkle along the bridge of his nose and his upper lip curls upwards to reveal his teeth. In reality, in everyone's eyes, your lives are separate. They walk on eggshells around you still...you assure yourself there's no way anyone could've guessed.

So you play dumb, glugging the whiskey into your cup. It spills around the edges, landing on the semi-lit neon counter.

"Who?"

Seungmin blinks at you. An unreadable expression on his face.

"Jisung." He says, "Who else?"

You feel yourself getting less excited, the breath you were unconsciously holding passing your entire form. Jisung is the newest addition to your life, a performing arts student who offered to portrait model for a project you'd been given in class. He's cute, forward, which you like a lot. And you notice whilst using him for inspiration, that he looks at you just as attentively as you had at him.

Only for different reasons.

Jisung asks for your number. You say yes. Half-heartedly. Though at the forefront of your mind you keep comparing everyone to the guy you go home to ever so often, you pick out their flaws and their perfections and you think to yourself he isn't like this, he is like this.

"Yeah?" You pose, sipping and wincing. "What did he say?"

"Just the usual stuff...." Seungmin tilts his head, he's not drinking tonight because he has an exam tomorrow. You think it's a little funny that he's carrying around water in a solo cup. "But I can tell he has the hots for you,"

You laugh this time. That's no surprise to you. "Well he's not so bad himself."

Seungmin narrows his eyes, shooting you a suspicious look.

"Of course you'd say that...." He taunts, "Heard you guys hung out...how was that by the way?"

"It was alright. Sort of just...happened. We bumped into each other and he offered to buy me dinner."

"And you...said yes?"

You give him a blank look, sarcasm dripping from your monotonous sentences, how else would you have spent time together?

"No, I didn't, Seungmin,"

The owner of the name rolls his eyes at your satirical comment, "No need to be mean, I'm just a little surprised is all."

"Surprised?"

You raise an eyebrow, Felix is still in your line of sight, it looks like he's stalling, waiting for your conversation to end so you could leave. He glances at you a few times and you quickly text him a 5 more minutes. "Why's that?"

"Cause every time you start to have feelings for someone, you take one step forward and ten steps back," he points out, "Think about it...you haven't been in like an....actual relationship after...well, you know," he postulates.

You glare at Seungmin, your pride somewhat injured.

"Hey! I've....dated."

"No....you slept around with people, that's not the same as dating." He retorts.

You snort.

Wouldn't you know.

Minho changes an upbeat pop song to something mellow. It's in a foreign language...maybe Spanish, you understand nothing but you don't have to to know it's a sad tune, the lyrics coming together in a melancholic harmony. Your eyes drift away, you feel your attention falter.

It was not unknown for you to have absolute control over your life, be it living your days by strict routine or building such a sturdy pretentious armour around yourself so that your organic self remained unscathed underneath. You had learnt the hard way that being yourself in front of other people would only bring you hurt...but if no one really knew you, no one could hurt you.

This game of hide and seek had become such a long standing practise in your life that it disconnected who you are from who you pretended to be. And every time the extent of your actual desires, monsters much beyond your control rose to the surface, they brought you shame, disgust.

You found those pretences withering away, the shell of protection around you falling apart whenever the thought of Felix crossed your mind. — his heavy noise of content against your neck, his fingers curling into your sheets, his open mouthed kiss against the arch of your hipbone, everything and anything...you had again, despite all your abrasions, become madly consumed by him.

And you must admit to yourself that you are becoming quite ridiculous because of it.

In this strange moment, you realise you almost need Felix to harp on about you even though you specifically asked him to keep all that you have a secret. You want his friends to come scurrying to you to start telling you that he cares so much he can't keep his mouth shut, to be so enamoured with you that his innermost feelings become painfully apparent, that it's utterly stupid of you to not see how he feels about you.

That's not how it goes though. Stuff like that only happens in movies.

Felix responds, texting, "Take all the time you need." Surprised, you steal a glimpse of him, but only when Seungmin isn't looking. You didn't know what you expected, something more crude, that would give away that he was jumping on the balls of his feet to only get into your pants, that would remind you that Felix is nothing but your fuck buddy. You find that you always look for reasons to resent him....because if you did, it meant that you didn't have to acknowledge how you're still in love with him.

You knew what you were in for. And hoping, wanting something more....is no more than wishful thinking.

Felix smiles at you, a genial smile, a simple curve along the corner of his lips which conveys patience, but also something deeper, like...understanding.

Again no matter how much you pushed him away he seemed to find his way back to you in some fashion, just to convey that your union is not all as black and white as you told yourself it was.

You down the entire drink in one swig. Seungmin makes a face at you, the kind he makes when you stick your fries in ice cream for shits and giggles,

"Well....we broke up a long time ago," You hiss at the awful taste stinging your throat, sounding slightly angry. You can't believe it matters still, but when you've been clutching onto something for too long, be it a painful emotion or a memory...you start to think it's the locus of your life, an integral part of you. It terrifies you to think who you'd become without it — vulnerable, malleable, sensitive.

You can't do that again.

The last few weeks, regardless of how good they were, didn't change a thing.

It couldn't. You wouldn't let it.

Seungmin is right, you think, you are taking ten steps back. Just not in the context he thought.

"There's no reason I shouldn't start now."

—

Turns out there is a reason.

Jisung asks you out the next day. He's so friendly that you feel overwhelmed. At all times of the day, he dresses like a frat boy out on his morning jog. A nike running shirt and loose fitted trousers, a baseball cap worn the other way around...it's a little silly.

You don't mind it, having the kind of apathy you would have towards someone you don't know very well.

Everything with him feels new, awkward. But also slightly exciting. He talks too much when he's nervous and you notice that he's almost always nervous because of your personality, as though he can't really put a finger on you and doesn't know what to do about it. Besides...he’s not a horrible kisser either, you muse, he just doesn’t know what you want.

Yet whenever you heard yourself thinking those compliments, you couldn't help but feel utterly guilty, a strangely deep seated feeling that you were doing something wrong.

Why did you feel this way....

Felix isn't your boyfriend anymore. You don't owe him any form of loyalty. You knew that. You're someone who sticks to their gut feelings and your gut had decided that something about seeing Jisung didn't feel right and not just because of Felix, but because you're not interested in a relationship just yet. And you're sure he could tell you aren't, he shouldn't quite expect a call back anytime soon.

"I had a nice time," you say, because it's true. He took you out for ice cream and bought you candy floss when you stared at it for too long.

When Jisung doesn't respond for a hot minute, you follow his trail of vision, which instead of focusing on you, has shifted to the semi-lit backdrop of your apartment. He's too obvious.

"Do...you want to come in?"

He flounders a little at your suggestion, embarrassed. "Would that be alright?....if I did...."

"That depends, are you gonna kill me?"

You say with a straight face. No matter much Jisung prodded at your exterior, you wouldn't budge, like you usually hadn't. Unravelling isn't really your thing so....he can't tell if you're kidding or not.

"No...?"

You snort, "Why do you sound so unsure?"

Jisung's face has grown impossibly red, he could feel his ears burning in indescribable shame. You just have this air about you that makes you incredibly hard to read and it's really attractive.

"I....I didn't..."

You keep your voice, steady, calm, "Relax," "I'm just screwing with you," you say, stepping aside for him to enter, "Make yourself at home."

—

You suppose you were born to study the arts.

You never could consider yourself a studious being. When you were in school, you remember falling behind in classes where the arduous process of revising was required, say mathematics or the sciences even.

Though that realisation hadn't come to you naturally.

Your parents wouldn't take kindly to you not taking up a "well paying" profession and you fell victim to the constant barrage of criticisms, of mockery which ultimately conditioned you to think some part of you, a large part just wasn't good enough.

And with Felix gone....

You were at your worst.

The two years you spent without him were the hardest, a set of years that obliged you to protect yourself from all the hurt around you, inside you. And while the security that you provided yourself is undoubtedly necessary for well...anyone, the process itself had its wicked way of rendering you unspeakably lonely.

You agreed to apply as an engineering major to gain your parents' approval and then transferred to the arts department by the time you'd successfully moved out. You haven't spoken to them ever since...and it hurt you more than you would deign to admit.

When your mum drops over for a surprise visit and chances upon your ex-boyfriend loitering about in your kitchen, fixing up midnight munchies, she takes a natural guess that you've gotten back together. (Which you think is far more agreeable than the truth. Knowing your mother, a staunch supporter of your relationship with him, she wouldn't take lightly to your arrangement.) And before you know it, you're all having dinner.

Felix makes an effort to dress up well, discarding his usual hoodies and joggers for a more formal look, you suspect it has something to do with the fact that you haven't attended any casual settings with him since you broke up.

Cutlery clinks against ceramic, coming down with a semi-loud thump as you try to swallow the enormous lump in your throat. Your mum makes a passing jab at you, saying how you had settled for a much "easier" major than say architecture or philosophy, she bitterly mentioned that everything worked out in the end. After all, your choice is a "much fitting" field of study for someone of your caliber, backhandedly insinuating that you're far too stupid to pursue anything else.

What inspires hilarity is how those insults still affected you. In front of Felix, you act like these few years have brought the fighter out in you and here you are trying to blink away the onslaught of tears prickling your vision. It feels like someone stripped you off your skin, off your flesh and picked out all your shortcomings for him to see.

You expect him to stay quiet, you expect him to think of you as the utterly shameful, selfish being you tell yourself you are,

But Felix's fingers find your shaky knuckles under the table where they rest on your knee, he implants the weight of them in a reassuring squeeze. "Well I think it's great," he says instead, smiling cheerfully at your mum. To which she, for the lack of support, sheepishly beams at him, "Not many people have the drive to do what they want to do. Or know what they want to do...take it from me, Missus [.....]" He laughs nonchalantly, the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention upon hearing the lovely sound. You always liked his laugh, the sound rippling against your naked skin, thick baritone when he'd just woken up and a kiddish falsetto when he's extremely happy.

You wonder when you started paying so much attention.

Felix glances at you, lingering for a long minute."I bet it took a lot of guts."

You feel your chest constrict with a sudden surge of emotion from the mere look, you can't remember if the Felix you knew in the past, or anyone for that matter, had ever beamed at you with such pride.

You wonder what he'd think if he knew about Jisung, why you had neglected to tell him at all....you knew, because this little moment is precious to you and you had no reason to tarnish it. Not when you had time.

You tilt your head, using your free hand to hastily find the back of his neck, drawing closer to him with little strength. The more he realised what you're doing, the more excited he got. See he found your newly introduced public display of affection immensely attractive, though obviously embarassed by the sudden motion...

You can do crazy things sometimes. Really crazy things. In public and he has never opposed to such exhilarating things, be it in restrooms or even in a similar setting when you were dating, there was a certain thrill to it which drove him to the brink of insanity. Felix would silently implode your attention when you were alone and when you were out in the open, in whichever way he was to receive it, the way which insinuated you were his was the best of them all. All that was fine though...because it was just the two of you.

But now...in this indecent time, he wishes he could hear what you're thinking.

Had... had you gone completely mad?! Your mum is looking!

Your face is stoic, Felix's mouth parts, then you reach over and kiss him shamelessly.

Over the years, all the things that have caused you pain were things you had endured on your own, in his absence. This realisation alone invites a heavy conviction inside you.

Because you know it just as well as he does, no matter how sincere he is to you — you don't need Felix. Not really.

But you want him.

—

You do a stupid thing. A stupid endearing thing and Felix's heart beats like it would jump out of his mouth if he opened it.

It was meant to be a secret, what you two have, a matter of uncomplicated lust which didn't require the attention of anyone because it initially or so you put it, wasn't important enough.

Then you charge to him, he supposes it has a little to do with the person who was blatantly flirting him in the middle of Changbin's Halloween party, he doesn't care though.

You don't like embarrassing yourself, so he doesn't actually expect you to wear a black cat hairband matching his white ears and feline tail. Felix wants to think it means something, how despite the coos and the caas, the giant wave of surprise washing over your friends, you interlace your fingers within his and kiss his cheek.

He doesn't what that makes the two of you now... but he would give you all the time in the world to figure that out if it meant you could be his again.

—

You trace your fingers against outline of his face. Splatters of moist moonlight kissing the high rise of his cheeks, dusting along the long fringe of lashes which cast shadows along his skin, his freckles are like dots of bronze dispersed on his skin. He's beautiful like this.

"You're thinking too much," he says with his eyes closed, smiling a little. "Don't think so much."

You laugh. "Or what, huh?"

Felix cracks an eye open, his grin big, kiddish. "I was hoping you'd say that," he rubs the tip of his nose against your collarbone, he snuggles closer to your chest. What you hadn't expected was how he shifted his entire weight onto you, lying entirely atop you as though he were a starfish.

You couldn't stop laughing at the motion, it's so cheesy and gross...you love it.

—

Here's something you don't know — Jisung tells his friends everything, about making out with you and taking you out...everything. News travels fast. Faster than you anticipated. Despite wanting to divulge the matter, you were too taken by the recent shifts in your feelings to confess to your little interaction. You had told yourself again and again — a little later, just a little later and I’ll tell him.

It could be too late now.

The entire campus knew of your little rendezvous, shooting you curious looks... it's not until Minho comes up to verify the floating rumours do you all but sprint to Felix's place. You think of Chan's trusting eyes, of don't hurt him, of laughing in the intimacy of your bedroom and swiping your fingers down his spine like you were trying to commit the undulating design to memory.

You're not sure where it all began.

but you don't want it to end.

Felix doesn't answer your calls or your messages. When he buzzes you up, just from his gait, just from the resigned look in his eyes, you know he knows.

You watch as he listlessly leaves you to enter, walking before you without saying as much as a word.

You grab Felix’s elbow, making him stop in his tracks. He looks at your fingers wrapping around the muscle, shrugging you off easily. It’s just a small gesture but its impact is so large...that you feel your heart break into a million pieces.

You had never seen Felix being so quiet, even when he was down, he found a manner to radiate a form of optimistic energy which baffled you. You can’t believe how much you could have possibly hurt him.

“I can explain.” you gulp, “We went out on one date. It wasn’t because I liked him, I know it’s stupid and...I should’ve told you. I’m sorry, that's not an excuse, but you have to trust me when I say it didn’t...it doesn’t mean anything to me—”

“Did you sleep with him?”

With his back turned away, he still isn’t looking at you, speaking to you with a surprisingly stable tone.

“No.”

Felix takes a shuddering breath, one which expresses the small relief of knowing that Jisung hadn’t seen, touched you, felt you in the way that he only had, but there’s still so much more he wants to know.

“Did he make you laugh?”

It’s a silly question, he realises belatedly but he can’t help it. Some part of him, a large part, thinks he’d be more hurt if you made someone happy and they made you happy than if you fucked them.

You shake your head even though he can’t see you. “He didn’t.”

Your fingers again reach for his, wrapping your index into his thumb. You slowly move your hands to his middle, clutching him close to your chest, chin hooking into his shoulder, suddenly...you feel him melt into the embrace. Felix’s voice falters for the first time, small trembles against you. You’re willing to answer all his queries if it could put his mind at ease. You put your heart on hold for too long.

"Do you hate me...?" He sniffles.

You blink....did you?

Felix had changed, like you, he had matured, the past version of him you had so stubbornly ingrained in your endless inner monologue is not the one you grew all too familiar with...

Familiarity does breed contempt, does it not? Well you think the line between love and contempt is untraceable, melded together as a mysterious whole. After all those years, you were still angry, still filled to the brim with contempt for him and more importantly, yourself because you still love him much more than you'd like to admit. After all you've been through. After all this time. The need to love him ultimately encompassed every other emotion which posed itself as a hindrance.

So the opposite of love, the absence of love, you think, isn't hate, it's indifference. An emotion you never felt towards him.

Felix has wedged himself into every aspect of your life, tainted every portion of your routine in his presence and in his absence.

You don't think you'd have it another way.

"You broke my heart," you explain, "I was angry....but I could never hate you for the sake of hating you."

"I can't..." Felix whispers, twisting his body so he could look at you now, “I can’t promise you that it won’t be hard but I'm not—I’m not going anywhere...you know that right?”

You lean your forehead against his, his eyes shifting to your mouth, hands rising to wrap around your neck. You smile.

“I know.” you say, "Me neither."

“I love you...” He says in a small voice, putting his hand against your knuckles. “Do you love me?”

Your eyes soften, cupping his face like this — carefully collecting a lone tear with your thumb before it could touch his cheek. This time there is not a shred of hesitancy, no pause, no pondering before you say,

“I never stopped.”

—

You enter in a blind rush of panic, thinking you might miss your ride, feet knocking together, elbows hitting elbows, bustling all around you and the sudden overwhelming stench of people hit you, it’s not an ideal setting, not at all actually.

But you couldn’t bother to be displeased a second you spent with him. A teenager rolls her eyes at how disgustingly in love you are, elderly couples tutting under their breath...albeit, you don’t fail to notice their subtle smiles, small shake of their heads which attested to the fact that the joy you both radiate is.. absolutely infectious. You stumble with him behind, Felix is laughing breathlessly, bumping into your chest as the train suddenly starts moving, you place a finger on his cheek and he raises his chin to look at you.

“Did you eat?” he repeats, mocking himself, a dialogue from a time which seems an element of the distant past replaced by a love which compensated for every hitch in your relationship. You still argue, still disagree and still make up the same. Felix was right, it isn’t easy.

But when two people love each other as much as you do,

it’s worth trying. With every fibre of your being.

“No.” You laugh, playing along, “But I could, with you.”

794 notes · View notes

sevlgi · 3 years

Text

what we want

requested: yes x2

group: blackpink

pairing: jennie x fem!reader

genre: angst, fluff

contents: idol!jennie, idol!reader, pr relationship

warnings: none

synopsis: Jennie’s lost herself somewhere along the way of achieving her dream. Behind that tough, cruel mask of hers, she doesn’t know what she wants, and maybe uncovering the mask you wear is what will help her realize it.

a/n: this is so much heavier than either of you guys asked for asalknasdfkj... but i wrote my longest fic yet in less than 2 days!!!! i think that’s an achievement :D

word count: 6k

Kim Jennie did not have a good reputation, and she didn’t really give a shit about it.

At least, that’s what everyone thought. That’s what everyone knew, with the numerous articles a week about South Korea’s resident fuckgirl, with Dispatch’s 20 cameramen hired just to follow Jennie. She was careless, she was cold, and she care what anyone else said about her.

What no one cared about was Jennie’s reasoning. Because while the first time sneaking out to a club and losing herself in fruit-flavored shots and skimming touches was simply for the fun of it, it was the aftereffect that made her keep going. Because with the articles of Kim Jennie’s newest scandal, Blackpink’s album sales shot through the roof, YG’s stocks completely flipped around, and Jennie herself decided it was worth it. It didn’t matter if her members looked at her a little differently, like they didn’t recognize her, or if she was the only one constantly excluded from appreciation tweets on Twitter. If acting out would help promote them more than her agency ever did, she could do it.

And she did. For almost a year, Jennie became Kpop’s most well-known idol, for better or for worse. For almost a year, Blackpink’s sales were unmatched by any group or artist around the world and Jennie couldn’t read her Instagram comments without wanting to throw up.

It took a year for YGE to finally do something, and by then, Jennie wasn’t sure she particularly cared anymore.

“Jennie.”

“Youngshik.” Her voice was scarily steady and her face just as calm; Jennie knew that the her from ten years ago, the teenager who was accepted into the company under Youngshik’s watch, wouldn’t be able to recognize her as she sat before the man with crossed arms and a blank expression. But as he stared at her with disappointment glazing his eyes, Jennie lifted her chin higher, almost daring him to speak.

When he did, he sounded almost cautious of his words. “Jennie, I know you. This isn’t like you at all, you can’t carry on like this.”

“What do you know about me?” She had to keep herself from wincing at her own tone, sharp enough to draw blood. “Huh? You haven’t cared about me for the past year, haven’t cared about us. And who the fuck said I can’t carry on? I’m doing just fine.”

Youngshik shook his head. “Please. Ch-- your members know. I know. All you may see right now is the attention you’re gaining, the fleeting ecstasy you get every night, but you aren’t doing yourself any favors right now.”

As much as she hated it, Youngshik’s words cut deep. She wanted to scream out that she was doing this for her members, for the company, and that it didn’t matter what her reputation was like, but Jennie schooled herself into the person everyone believed and knew her to be. “I’m the only thing keeping you afloat right now. You’re wasting them-- Chaeng, Lisa, Jisoo. They keep practicing but you waste them. I’m only doing what you won’t,” Jennie defended herself, anger seeping into her voice at the thought of her members.

“Jennie. MNet has threatened to drop you from the next season of Queendom.” The man’s voice was quiet but deadly, and Jennie couldn’t seem to open her mouth at the thought of her members’ practice being wasted because of her. Youngshik took that as a sign to continue, “I realize that what you’re doing is increasing sales, but netizens hate you right now. You know that, don’t you? We’re trying to help.”

“Oh yeah? How’re you going to help?” Jennie sighed. “Lock me up in your dungeon again?”

“Quite the opposite,” he answered, leaning forward. “We’re going to keep you in check. The only thing that Dispatch likes more than clubbing scandals is leaked couples, and that’s what we’re going to give them.”

She crossed her arms and leaned back. “And how is that going to keep me in check? Dispatch already knows I like girls, giving me a well-behaved boyfriend isn’t going to be believable.’

Just as the words left her mouth, a knock sounded on the frosted glass pane in Youngshik’s office door, and the man stood. “You’ll see once you meet her.”

Her?

Jennie didn’t turn even when she heard the door open, or when Youngshik murmured, “Junho, thank you for coming.”

“Of course. This is her?”

“This is her. Jennie?”

She finally turned, face impassive, but Jennie couldn’t stop her eyes from widening when she saw the person standing in the doorway. You-- she recognized you, specifically the polite smile you wore on your face as you offered a handshake. She remembered hearing you be praised for your constant professionalism, your sterling reputation, and your bubbly personality. “Hi, I’m Y/N. I’m a big fan of yours.”

“Jennie Kim, but I’m assuming you already knew that,” she said by way of greeting. You nearly winced at her flat tone, but the mask remained on and you gingerly took the empty seat just by her. “So. Am I the only one in the dark here?”

“Not anymore,” Junho smiled. Unlike Youngshik, he looked pleasant, a smile crinkling at the side of his eyes, but Jennie disliked him nonetheless. “The two of you know by now that you’re being set up in a fake relationship. Jennie, YGE’s main concern with you is your reputation. You club, you drink, you... sleep with people.”

She simply nodded, waiting for the point. Youngshik jumped in, “Y/N, on the other hand, has a stellar reputation. Never has had a scandal in her career, except when she publicly came out, and even that had a good reception.”

“How nice,” Jennie deadpanned.

Junho sighed, folding his hands in his lap. “Miss Kim. Despite your shortcomings and the methods that you achieved such fame, you are nonetheless the most well known female idol in the world. From this relationship, you’ll gain stability as well as a cover, a perfectly sweet girlfriend who’ll lighten your image up. And Y/N will receive more attention by your side, exactly what we want for her and her group. Is that clear?”

Jennie wished she could say no-- after all, you obviously weren’t going to-- but she also knew that the two men were right. She could profit, achieve exactly what she was trying to do, but with less damage done to Blackpink’s image. And as much as she wished she could rebel, she found herself sighing through tightened lips. “Clear. I agree.”

“You didn’t exactly have a choice.” Still, Youngshik slid a contract and a pen across the table, and Jennie signed in the blank without a second glance. “Good. Though we realize that this relationship is fake, we want you to at least pretend to be in love, so get to know each other. It’ll be a while.”

“Great,” you sighed. Jennie was slightly surprised by the hint of sarcasm in your voice, but she lost interest when you assumed a polite smile yet again. “How do we do that?”

Junho exchanged a glance with Youngshik but answered by himself, “If it was me, I’d start with a coffee.”

“Can I order something for you?”

“I’m good.”

Your smile was tight, and Jennie wondered how many snide comments she could make before you snapped. But apparently, one wasn’t enough, as you tugged your mask up. “Okay. I’ll get something for you when you feel like it, just wait for me in that booth.”

Without something to argue about, Jennie could only obey, sliding into the booth furthest away from any people. She sighed, staring at the ceiling; she hated that you were being pushed into the contract to save her, and she hated even more that she was purposefully being so difficult for you to deal with. But the truth was that Jennie couldn’t let you keep her in check, couldn’t let you get under her skin or change her from the way that she had been for years. No matter what YGE said, she was succeeding, and she wasn’t having the worst time in the world while she did.

“Uh. I got you a green juice, I hope you don’t mind.”

Jennie stared at you as you slid the bottle over the table to her, removing your mask just to flash her an annoyingly sweet smile. “I didn’t ask for it.”

You shrugged, “Oh, I know. But I read somewhere that you liked green juices, and I didn’t feel right letting you- letting my girlfriend go without a drink.”

“Don’t call me that.” Jennie cleared her throat when she realized how cruel she sounded, and rephrased it softer. “Don’t.”

“Okay. I understand,” you mumbled, clasping your hands over the iced Americano you held. “So. When did we start dating?” When Jennie frowned in confusion, you clarified, “We’re supposed to have a believable, synced story, right? To seem more real?”

The other girl bit her lip but nodded in agreement. “You’re right. Would two months be enough?”

Jennie wanted to tell you to stop pursing your lips when you thought, wanted to make you stop looking so approachable and sweet when you were sitting across from the most-hated idol in Korea. But she shut herself up, if only not to offend someone who she’d be spending a lot of time with. “I think so. We could say that we met at the Gayo Daejeon, since that was three months ago. I asked for your number,” you hummed and pulled out a notepad. “And a month after becoming friends, you asked me on a date.”

“Why did I ask you on a date?” Jennie asked, eyebrows raised.

“I asked for your number, let’s keep it fair,” you answered with a slight chuckle. “Okay. What would you want to do on a date?”

She considered the question, tapping her nails against the table. “The Han River? Lots of people go in masks, so it’s possible for us to have gone without anyone seeing us. There’s food, nice scenery, we could take pictures--”

“You’re a real romantic, Kim Jennie,” you smiled, pen scratching against the paper of your notepad. “Okay. And we don’t live with each other, since you have a dorm... one of us has to be caught on the route between to make it believable.”

“I don’t think we have to.” Jennie crossed her arms, not moving even when you turned your notepad so she could see. “We just need to be seen in public together a couple times, hold hands once. Dispatch will eat it up.”

You sighed softly and tucked the notebook away. “Okay. At-- at least add me on Kakao. So we can communicate and stuff.”

She stood, tugging her jacket on and her hat down to hide her eyes. “Don’t have Kakao. Have a nice day, Y/N Y/L/N.”

And just like that, with a jingle of the front door’s bell, she was gone, and you could only stare at the untouched bottle of juice across from you or the glass door swinging closed.

Jennie liked practicing with her members. Of course she did-- there was no one she loved more than those 3 girls, and spending time with them was always exactly what she needed. And practice reminded her of better, simpler times: learning a new choreo with Lisa for the next evaluation, practicing English with Chaeng, or asking Jisoo for help with vocals. There were memories in the scratches on the floorboards of the practice rooms, and Jennie liked feeling them every time she stepped inside.

But besides that, it was a secure place. No Dispatch, no cameras, and certainly no PR stunt girlfriends. It was supposed to be her happy place, her home away from the dorm, and the last resort for time alone.

Of course, you had to change that.

“Jennie, Y/N’s here to see you.”

At the sound of her manager’s voice, Jennie’s ankle twisted and she fell to the ground, still panting from dancing. Jisoo bent down to help her up, Chaeyoung and Lisa stopping their practices too. “What?”

He raised an eyebrow, tilting his head towards the hallway outside. “Your ‘girlfriend’. She’s here to see you.”

Lisa gasped at that, her head whipping towards Jennie. “Jennie unnie! You have a girlfriend? Since when?”

Jennie winced and waved Jisoo off before walking towards the door. “I... I’ll explain later. Don’t worry about it, keep practicing. I’ll catch up.”

As soon as she stepped outside, she found you standing there, your smile so wide, as if she hadn’t been so cold to you since the beginning. “Hi, Jennie.”

“Why’re you here?”

You barely faltered at the tone of her voice, holding out one of two bubble teas towards her. “I brought you boba, I thought you might need a rest from practicing. And don’t worry, Dispatch got the pictures they needed, I ‘forgot’ to put on a mask when I got out of the car just outside the building.”

Jennie sighed, but she accepted the offered cup anyway. She was thirsty; all she could hope was that you wouldn’t take it as a sign to keep coming to see her. “And? I thought we agreed that we only needed to be seen in public when our companies schedule it.”

“Well, I’m not just here for the PR,” you frowned. “You’re obviously opposed to actually dating me, or even from becoming friends with me, but it’ll be miserable if we’re both mean to each other. Let’s at least be civil, okay?”

Why? she wanted to ask. How? How can you be so positive even when faced with me? She pursed her lips, taking a sip of the drink. Somehow, you’d gotten her favorite flavor just right, and maybe the sugar rushing in her blood was what prompted her to say, “Civil. Sure. Thank you for the boba, Y/N.”

“Of course!” you grinned. You startled Jennie when you went to take your flannel off, even more so when you reached out to give it to her. “Here, take this.”

“Um. Why?”

Sighing jokingly, you pressed it into her hand. “Next time, you’re coming to see me. If you wear this while you’re caught on film, it’ll raise a lot of suspicions. Exactly what we want, right?”

Jennie nodded at that, closing her fist around the fabric. “Right. So, are you... planning to watch us practice?”

“Oh, no,” you shook your head, waving your hands. “No, I’ll probably just hang around. Unless you want me to?”

Some tiny, annoying section in the back of her mind wanted to say ‘yes’, but Jennie could hear Chaeyoung laughing in the practice room, and the thought of introducing you to her members wasn’t exactly appealing. “No. That’s okay. Thank you for stopping by,” she attempted a smile. Thankfully, you just bowed and waved goodbye again before turning around the corner, and Jennie relaxed with a sigh.

But your smile lingered in her mind. The first time she saw you, she thought it was genuine-- maybe you were just that polite, just that professional, even with how impossible it was. But talking to you on her own, she saw too many false grins, too much effort being put into keeping that likeable, fun personality up.

Perhaps she wasn’t the only one who was lying, but that fact did nothing but scare her more.

“So. Are we gonna talk about Y/N?”

Jennie sighed, keeping her eyes on the road. “No.”

“Really? Because you didn’t exactly look happy after talking to the person who’s supposed to be your girlfriend.”

The rapper raised her eyebrows even though Jisoo couldn’t see it over the phone. “Well, she isn’t exactly my real girlfriend.”

In the background, Chaeyoung asked, “What? Then why did our manager say she was?”

“It’s a PR stunt,” Jennie said bluntly. Her manager sighed in the front seat but didn’t speak. “That’s it. Y/N has a good reputation, I don’t. I’m in the biggest girl group in the world, she isn’t. We’re benefiting from each other.”

Lisa groaned into the phone, her voice tinny over speaker. “Is that seriously it? I only heard you guys talking, but she’s trying so hard, and you’re shutting her down. It could be good for you, unnie.”

Jennie pinched her nosebridge and pleaded, “Can we please not talk about this? I’m just doing this-- it’s a PR stunt. Nothing else to it. I gotta go anyway.” She ended the call before anyone could say something, leaning back and pressing her hands to her eyes.

“I don’t understand why you’re so opposed to this, Jennie.”

“Please. Shut up,” Jennie groaned, reaching for the flannel on her lap as the car lurched a stop. The smell of perfume swept over her as she tugged the clothing on, leaving her mask off but donning the sunglasses that she’d been paid to wear. “Thank you for driving me, I’ll see you in half an hour.”

Her manager called out, “One hour. Try to have fun, okay?”

It wasn’t like Jennie couldn’t hear the click of cameras following her as she buzzed herself into the apartment building, couldn’t see the flashes half-hidden in the surrounding bushes. But she schooled her expression and let herself into the building, engulfed in silence once again for the 7 minutes before she reached your apartment door.

“Hi, Jennie,” you greeted when you opened the door. It was disarming to see that perfectly crafted, perfectly kind expression, but Jennie followed you inside anyway. To be honest, the way you decorated your apartment was almost a perfect reflection of the you that you presented-- sweet, comfortable, but a completely blank slate that could be arranged easily. No pictures decorated the walls, just like how your easy smile never left your face, and the only things on your expensive glass shelves were awards and your own albums. But you smiled, “The flannel looks good on you.”

“Thanks. You can have it back,” Jennie mumbled, peeling it off and draping it over one of the acrylic chairs that tastefully decorated your living room. “It’s a nice place. You’re lucky to live alone.”

You hummed, clearing a pile of papers off the couch so that she could sit. “Sure, I guess. It’s a lot lonelier than the dorm, but it is nice to have all the space to myself.”

“Right.” She sat obediently and accepted the petite cup of coffee that you pushed towards her. “So, what are we supposed to do for an hour?”

“I thought we could watch Netflix and grab some takeout,” you chuckled embarrassedly, reaching for the remote. “I can’t really cook, but I’ll pay for anything you want to order.”

Jennie should’ve asked for pizza, jajangmyeon, something inexpensive but universally enjoyable. But the more she looked at you, the more she realized that for all your effort, nothing she did could possibly break you. Making dinnner for you once, even becoming friends with you and pulling away again, wouldn’t change anything when everything she saw of you was... false. So she stood, made her way to the kitchen, and opened to the fridge. “I can cook. What have you got?”

“Oh, you don’t have to,” you protested and followed her over. “I’m serious, I can pay for anything you want.”

The rapper ignored you and frowned at a tub of kimchi. “How does kimchi jigae sound? You’ve got close to nothing in here.”

You were silent for a moment, but sighed and moved to open your cupboards. “Kimchi jigae sounds great. You’re going to be carrying this dinner, I hope you know.”

“That’s no problem,” Jennie chuckled, turning to you slightly. “By the way, have you got any soju?”

“I thought you’d have a better alcohol tolerance.”

“Why?” Jennie groaned, head clutched in her hands. The steam from the cup of coffee that she convinced Chaeyoung to buy for her was absolutely going to melt her makeup, but under the LED lights of the waiting room, she wasn’t sure she cared.

Lisa sighed and patted her shoulder softly as she passed by. “I mean, wasn’t there a month where you went to a different club every night? It’d be weird if you did that completely sober.”

Jennie frowned; she wished she could tell Lisa that she actually spent every night of that month huddled in the corner with a mocktail, hoping to the heavens that Dispatch didn’t burst their way inside and find her hiding. But she shook it off and replied flippantly, “Drinking a lot doesn’t increase everyone’s tolerance, believe it or not. Maybe Y/N just had really strong soju.”

Before the dancer could respond, Jisoo opened the door and popped her head inside. “Hey, guys, they’re ready for us to start filming. And, Jen-- you have a visitor.”

“Who?” she groaned in answer, struggling to her feet and wincing as she removed her sunglasses.

Her question was answered as she reached the stage, finding a familiar face among the camera directors. “Y/N?” she squinted.

“Hey, Jennie!” you shouted with your hands cupped around your mouth. The smile on your face was a little wider than usual, poked into your cheeks differently. It was pretty, Jennie realized, and more genuine. “Good luck!”

Before she could ask what you were doing, huddling with the cameramen while she prepared to film her first Queendom stage, she was called up on stage. But for once, Jennie could feel a smile tugging at her lips as she got into formation, a smile that she hadn’t been able to pull off for a while.

You startled her by cheering her name just before filming began, and inciting laughter from the crew. Some warm flower blossomed in her chest as Jennie spoke her first line, her voice more steady than it had ever been during practice.

As soon as she finished the first attempt at the group shot, Jennie bent down at the edge of the stage and beckoned you forward. “Hey. What’re you doing here?”

“I’m cheering you on, of course.” Jennie found a banner with her name on it in your hands as you approached, the tip of your nose cold from the air-con in the studio. “You did great.”

“Thanks,” she chuckled softly, feeling the banner between her fingertips. “Where’d you even get this?”

You shrugged, “Bought it. I had to make an account and all, so you better be feeling more energized.”

“I am.” Jennie herself was surprised at how true the statement was; for some reason, seeing your dyed hair in the crowd of cameras was like a shot of pure adrenaline, just more intense and gratifying. She smiled, “I am. It’s really nice of you to come, Y/N.”

“Of course,” you said, waving the banner around with a grin creasing in the corners of your eyes. “We’re girlfriends, after all. And I’m your friend.” At the call of a director, though, you stepped back. “I should let you film.”

“Y/N?” Jennie called after you. When you turned to face her again, Jennie allowed her customary gummy smile to take over her face as she said softly, “You can call me Jen. All my friends do.”

You were too far away for her to hear your answer, but the excited little jump you made as you walked back to your spot kept the grin on Jennie’s face as she stood again. She missed the relieved glances her members exchanged behind her back, but she could feel a new kind of energy coursing through her as the director started his countdown again. And-- she kind of liked it.

You hated the popular belief that idols who presented the sweetest, kindest version of themselves to the internet got absolutely no hate. Fans, family, managers-- they all believed that never letting your smile slip and never having a single scandal would protect an idol completely. When you were deciding on your persona for your debut, you thought the same, and so you forced yourself into the happy, positive personality that the world knew.

However, for all your effort, for all the things you had to endure with that same smile on your face, people hated you. They called you fake, tried their best to get under your skin just so they could see you fall. But it was too late to fight back, because that wouldn’t become the kind, sweet Y/N. It was too late to ask for help, and it was too late to let yourself cry.

When you met Jennie, you were determined to keep her on the outside of that precious mask you could never remove. After all, what would she understand? She did what she wanted to, didn’t care what people said about her, and she was strong. Jennie was as strong as you wished you could be, and you were sure that she would never understand. But the more that you saw her and the more that you talked to her, the more you understood that you were one and the same. That tough, carefree version of Jennie was what protected her, just like your perfectly engineered smile.

The first time you saw Jennie laugh, you knew that you were in deep. She didn’t know a single thing about you, but she was letting her walls down and letting you in-- or at least, the you she knew. But you liked her smile so much that you wanted to keep it there, at any cost. And maybe it meant sacrificing yourself.

“Are you ready?”

“For what? Walking through the street, undisguised enough that Dispatch will recognize us but no one else will?” At your pout, Jennie stopped her grumbling and laughed softly, still adjusting her scarf in the car mirror. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

A beat of silence passed as she grabbed your hand and led you out of the parking garage and onto Garosu-gil. “Hey. Y/N, I want to tell you something.”

“Yeah?”

“I... I’m glad it’s you.” Jennie squeezed your hand, her skin slightly cold with the wind blowing softly around the two of you. “I’m glad you’re the one I’m doing this with.”

You wished that she wouldn’t say that. You wished she’d feel anything else towards you-- contempt, hatred, even, despite everything you’d gone through just to become civil. But you squeezed back, flashed a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes. “Me too. You know, it’d be a lot worse if they set me up with a guy.”

“Why would they?” Jennie frowned in answer. “You came out on your own.”

“Unlike you, I didn’t prove it. You know Korea, you aren’t gay until you prove you are,” you sighed, scuffing your shoes against the cobblestones. “They wanted to set me up with a guy at first, but they decided that accepting YG’s offer for me to date you would be more beneficial.”

The other girl paused, and you didn’t quite dare to look up. “Oh. So you didn’t choose to help me, did you?”

You shook your head quietly, expecting Jennie to react badly. But she huffed out a breath and pushed your arm softly. “That’s okay. We’re friends, anyway, and it was hard for you to get us here already. I appreciate you, you know.”

Opening your mouth to respond, you noticed yet another camera flash, just between two buildings ahead of you. “What?” Jennie asked, following your gaze.

“I-- Don’t hate me for this, okay?” you whispered, stopping in the middle of the road. Before she could say anything, you placed your hands lightly on her jaw, pulling Jennie towards you; before your lips actually met, though, you gave her a second to pull away. Instead, she leaned forward just the slightest bit, barely enough to connect.

You didn’t quite dare to move, but Jennie’s hands rested on your waist and pulled you into her, just enough that your lips slotted together. You could barely hear the clicks of the camera, the warmth of the girl that you were kissing completely clouding your brain.

Before anything else happened, you released your grip and stepped away, lips suddenly cold. “I think that’s enough,” you whispered, linking your hands again and lowering your head.

Jennie laughed breathlessly and continued to stroll along when you prompted her to. “That’s all you have to say?”

“Um. Sorry?”

She only giggled harder at that, shoving you slightly. “What are you even sorry for? You’re a good kisser, Y/N.”

“Shut up,” you groaned, heat rising to your ears as you shoved her back. “How do you even say that with a straight face?”

“Hey, I had to listen to Lisa say ‘bitch I’m a star but not Patrick’, I think I can handle this,” Jennie joked. Despite all your effort not to, you found yourself staring at her smile again, losing yourself and any other worries bothering you in it, and her, once again.

Jennie frowned at her phone-- or actually, at the blankness of her texting history with you. After the little PR stunt at Garosu-gil, you hadn’t contacted her once, and she didn’t dare to surprise you at your apartment or properly ask you what was going on.

“Haven’t you heard the saying that a watched kettle never boils?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a pot,” Jennie replied listlessly, still staring at her screen. “But I have heard it, yes. I’m just hoping the universe proves it false.”

Chaeyoung sighed and hugged her older member from behind, swaying back and forth. “Why don’t you just message her? Or go see her? Our manager won’t say anything about it if you just say it’s for PR.”

“It is,” Jennie frowned, turning to her member. The Australian girl raised an eyebrow, and Jennie bit her lip. “Okay. Maybe it isn’t.”

“It definitely isn’t,” Chaeyoung rolled her eyes. “I saw those kiss pics, you know. And no one kisses like that if it’s ‘just PR’. You like each other, unnie, and it’s time to face it.”

Jennie swatted Chaeyoung’s arm. “That’s so cheesy, shut up. But... do you really think I like her?”

“That’s a question for you to answer,” the younger girl pointed out. “But I’ve known you for close to a decade. If I’m right about this, and I’m sure I am, everything’s about to change for you.”

“Ugh, cheesy again,” Jennie groaned, but she stood hesitantly nonetheless. “But... I guess I’ll give it a shot.”

On her way down the stairs, the rapper dialed her manager on her phone and held it up to her ear while she waited for the dial tone to fade. “You’re driving me to Y/N’s house,” she said by way of greeting. “And it’s not just for PR.”

She was sure that no car ride had ever gone slower; Jennie fidgeted the entire way, cursing every bus that blocked her way and scowling as the sun began to set behind a set of buildings in the distance. The more she thought about it, the more definite it was-- she liked you, more than she thought she could like a person. And while that fact would’ve scared her, should’ve scared her, it didn’t. Because it was you, and nothing about you could scare her anymore.

Somehow, the process of buzzing herself in at the building’s front, taking the same elevator up to the 67th floor, and hurrying her way down blue-carpeted hallways had become familiar. Jennie knocked persistently on the door of your apartment and called out, “Hey, Y/N, let me in. It’s Jennie.”

It took a while for anything to happen, and Jennie was almost backing away by the time that the door finally cracked open. For once, the smile on your face was missing, replaced by a guarded, harsher expression than the other girl was used to seeing. “Jen. What’s up?”

“Uh,” she hesitated, “can I come in? I don’t think we can talk in the hallway.”

You looked like you wanted to say no, but with a pleading look from Jennie, you backed away and let the door swing open. Jennie shut it quietly, following you into the living room, where you stood with your arms crossed. “So. What can’t we talk about in the hallway?”

Jennie wanted to say outright the words that were beating in her throat, but the expression on your face alarmed her. You were like a stranger-- or, maybe, she realized that you had finally let your mask down. “I... Y/N, are you okay?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” you responded. Suddenly, the roles were reversed; Jennie was the one reaching out for you, maybe even chasing after you, and you were somehow the one who was turning away.

“Okay,” Jennie said quietly. You were about to turn away, probably assuming that she was going to leave, but if Jennie had learned anything from you, it was that she couldn’t give up that easily if she wanted you to open up. “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you,” you responded instantly. Your words only hurt more when you didn’t look up from the television, continuing, “I don’t want you, and I don’t want anything from you--”

“You don’t get to say that to me.” Anger was once again rushing through Jennie’s veins, though not the kind of anger she was used to experiencing. No, she wasn’t mad at your words in the slightest, or even offended-- she was simply pissed off about the fact that you were shutting her down, and she didn’t know why. “Not when you were the one who started this. Y/N, you wanted me once, you don’t get to go back on that without an explanation,” Jennie gritted her teeth, gripping your forearms in her hands.

You finally turned when she shook you lightly, your face blank. “What, I don’t get to shut myself down? You did it the entire time I was trying, giving my all so that you’d talk to me or even just be civil.”

Jennie pleaded, “You succeeded, didn’t you? You’re right that I was a total bitch when all you were trying to do was be nice and make this tolerable for the both of us, but you succeeded. Okay? You-- you’ve made your place in my heart, and I’m not even angry about it. I just... I just like you that much.”

A derisive scoff escaped your lips as you twisted your arms out of her reach, stepping away. “You like me? Jennie, you don’t even know me. This me, the smiles and boba and everything, it’s a facade.” You threw your hands up in the air, biting down on your lip before sighing out, “It’s fake. All of it.”

“I know it isn’t,” Jennie shook her head desperately. She searched your eyes, scanned the sea of the color she’d grown to love, for some semblance of the person she remembered kissing her. “Look, you kissed me. And I know it was for the cameras, but you can’t tell me that you felt nothing from it. Y/N, you’re a good liar, but you can’t lie to me, not about this.”

You were quiet at that, glancing down at the floor as if you had nothing to say. “I didn’t,” you finally answered, tone firm. “Maybe you did, but I--”

Unable to stop herself, Jennie rushed forward again and tugged you into another kiss, her hands scrunching into the hair splayed over your shoulders. She was almost afraid that you’d push her away, curse her and throw her out of your apartment, but she felt your lips moving against yours. She felt your hands splay on her back, and she felt tears slipping down your face.

When you finally did push her away, it was gentle, though you were rough when you wiped the tears off your face. Jennie wished you’d speak first, but she brought herself to speak. “If your smiles were fake, think of the real ones you brought to me. Even if my smiles were from your facade, that’s still a part of you. I know that though you weren’t trying to, you let me see the real you. And I’m willing to see the rest of you,” Jennie smiled, clasping your hands within hers. Sometime along the way, she’d started crying too, but the salt of those tears was almost honeyed on her lips. “If you want me to.”

“I do,” you sighed, accepting the kiss that Jennie pressed to your forehead with a teary smile. “I want nothing more than that, Jen. And-- I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she laughed, wiping the tears of your face so much gentler than you did. “I know what I want now. It’s you, and it has been you since you tried buying me a green juice in that damn coffee place. I like you, Y/N. So much.”

You tucked your face into the crook of her neck and snaked your arms around her waist again. “I like you too. More than I ever thought I could.”

And maybe, just maybe, you knew what you wanted too. Somehow, that mask you wore had long been tossed to the side. Somehow, each kiss pressed to your face by the girl you never knew you needed to find lingered on your skin like the touch of a miracle, and the smile on your face was finally, finally genuine like you had always wanted it to be.

932 notes · View notes

thewickeddevil · 3 years

Text

A Study In Jean Moreau

(tw: mentions of Jean's past, violence, mental health and suicidal thoughts/intention to die. let me know if there's something else)

ok, so, i say all the time that Jean Moreau is my favorite and comfort character in All For The Game (i know. it literally hurts but also brings me joy sometimes) and i would literally kill for that man. so, that said, i think too much about him and, consequently, i have too many hcs about him. on request, i will now do what i'm gonna call A Study In Jean Moreau

(my beta reader and best friend helped me a lot with this. thanks @jostenrun)

i'll start with this quote from one of my kerejean fics (https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146540)

During Jean's first four months at USC and playing with the Trojans, he would always ignore Jeremy and put a frown on his face whenever he was in the same place as him. It obviously wasn't the best of strategies to put distance between himself and all the Jeremy glow, but it looked exactly bad enough to work.

Still, Jeremy was all pompous and charming looks at him, always smiling and being polite even though he received much less in return. It pissed the shit out of Jean.

He was used by the Ravens for many years, treated exactly like the exchange item he had been, just possession and obliged to follow lines and lines of rules too strict even for how he should breathe.

Riko was violent, the Ravens were cruel, the Moriyama family was wrong and he needed to repeat this to himself on a daily basis to be able to just keep going.

Back at the beginning of those days, many times he would fight back until he was taught that it was only worse. Many times he would beg until he realized that it encouraged Riko more than it prevented him. Many times he would cry until he was taught that it was wrong.

He would often bleed.

He would often wish to bleed until there was nothing left in his veins, no thoughts in his brain, no air in his lungs, no words on the tip of his tongue—

And he would often try to do just that on his own.

That was his daily life for a long time. Evermore was what he knew, the Moriyama family was who he belonged to and all of that was for what he served. That was it.

How was he supposed to know back then that suddenly overly nice twenty-eight other people would replace all of that with magnificence?

How was he supposed to know that they wouldn't look at him with disgust whenever he accidentally let a curse in French slip away?

How was he supposed to know that the Trojans had complete freedom within the team, instead of having to walk in pairs like the Ravens?

How was he supposed to know that Jeremy wasn't going to hit him whenever he made a mistake?

Or how would he know that Jeremy never considered anything that he made a mistake?

It was all a very big break from reality and so, so suddenly. Jean felt confused at first. Lost, wrong, out of place, stupid and scared.

And Jeremy was always determined to be the best he could be. Jeremy was safe.

Until Jean felt comfortable, confident, fine, and satisfied. He was someone instead of something and he really felt like that.

i think Jean would take years to relearn how to live instead of surviving. sometimes he would fail at that, but so many failures can only lead to success eventually.

he really didn't want to keep playing exy after everything, he doesn't think exy is good at all and trauma made him hate it, but he needs it because of the deal with Ichirou. fortunately, the Trojans are a team big enough to put him in the background for a while, to give him a little rest. but he knows he can't relax too much

he starts therapy. he needs it badly and it takes time for him to really be able to do it, but Jean was never anything but strong, and when he sees the chance to finally heal he knows that, despite how tired he is, despite how many times he wonders if it's worth it to keep going, he needs to grab that and at least try. just one more time. he never wanted to work for anything in his life because nothing was important before, but now he thinks that maybe things are changing

the Trojans get a dorm exclusively for him at first, because they don't want Jean to force himself to share space with someone he doesn't know and still doesn't trust. they want Jean to have his own space and feel safe before anything. he needs that solitude and he knows that it doesn't mean loneliness because his team will always be just a call away from him

he relapses sometimes. days without taking basic care of himself and without getting up from bed, and he no longer remembers whether he’s alive or not. sometimes he's able to call his therapist when that happens, but sometimes he isn't

this is how he gets into the habit of learning poetry. and eventually, writing poetry. he needs a coping mechanism and words seem to be safe enough to float around in his mind and make space in his core

(French poetry that Kevin always dissects for him and tells about the history behind the period in which those texts were written, or about the authors of each text)

the process is slow but it’s progress nonetheless

so, we know about therapy, about not being easy, about difficulties and things happening slowly during the healing process, now let's talk about the little details when things finally start to work out positively. when the best part of Jean's life finally begins

he finds out that his eyesight isn't bad only because of the beatings he took in the nest, and finds it ridiculous when Jeremy offers to help him buy glasses because, according to him, all the glasses Jean likes make him look like a middle-aged man that curses people for fun. Jean doesn't hate it though

Jean learns how to swim and likes it more than he thought he would. he likes the fluidity and movements of the liquid around his skin, how he cuts the water with his body when moving around and how it doesn't hurt him, and he just feels light

Jean likes nutella and chocolate with nuts, because Jeremy used to give it to him after nightmares or difficult days, and it became a comfort food for him (something he wasn’t even allowed to eat in the nest)

Jean's musical taste is a big mess of R&B, soul, pop art, folk, dark pop... he likes artists like Lorde, Aurora, Marina, Sigrid, Sleeping at last and the list goes on

Before he left France, Jean's family had a farm and he was responsible for harvesting fruits and vegetables there. this is one of the last memories he has about France, so he likes to harvest fruits and vegetables whenever he has the chance in the US

Jean loves to read fantasy books. he is a hufflepuff and part of cabin 6 in camp half-blood (children of Athena)

he likes geography. pedology, topography and weather are his favorites. he likes to look at the sky and know how to name climatic phenomena regardless of where in the world he is

(he also likes history and sociology, but only because he can hear Kevin and Jeremy — respectively — talking for hours and hours about those two subjects)

he hates biology

he absolutely hates croissants, tea and coffee. in the morning he always drinks juice or chocolate milk (the latter is Jeremy's fault)

the first time he willingly got wasted on alcohol, he, Sarah and Laila woke Jeremy up in the wee hours of the night while singing in Spanish (Jean barely knows Spanish). he passed out after that and woke up the next day in his room. his first thought was that he was fine even though he lost control of himself around other people, and he cried because of that. Jeremy was concerned because he thought he was crying from a headache or something related to a hangover

Jean can never find shoes his size in conventional stores because he's very big (fucking tall, muscular but not too much, with large shoulders and hips, and eventually a tummy) and, consequently, his feet are also big. he needs to have it personalized and he completely hates it

he loves dogs but is easily scared by them. he couldn't get out of the dorms for almost an entire day after Jeremy's mom's dog barked too loud and it scared Jean. he felt guilty and didn't want people to be mad at him for being so scared of a simple dog

he loves cats though, and after some time into therapy, he adopted a service cat. Kevin and Jeremy always joke about it looking like a replica of Jean himself

Jean doesn't understand the purpose of MMA competitions, because he doesn't like violence and thinks martial arts should be only for self-defense, so he doesn't really understand why people choose to compete over something so aggressive

he also doesn't like the violence in exy, but he forgives because, at least, violence is not the main goal of the sport, but to score points

he learns to draw and starts to open art commissions on the internet. this is his first job and he's proud of it because it was something he achieved by himself

Jean and Jeremy fell in love on the beach

Kevin and Jean take time to forgive each other, especially Jean. the broken heart Kevin left in Jean hurt more than being abandoned by his parents. he suffered from it for years but he didn't really want to blame Kevin. he also knew Riko, after all. he knew how capable of driving someone insane Riko was. it didn't make things easier or less painful though. Kevin and Jean took time, but they never loved each other less

Kevin and Jean fell in love for the second time (the time they could, the time they were allowed) after one of the matches in which their teams were rivals

Jean is very picky for food consistency, and he hates ketchup and mayonnaise for that. he insists all the time that if people knew how to season the food well, they wouldn't need those condiments

(he secretly loves Dijon Mustard though)

Jean was born on 08/31. he’s a virgo

plushies are the first resource that Jean uses when he feels alone but is unable to be around anyone at the moment, so he unconsciously starts making a collection of them. they're all small, except for two that Kevin and Jeremy gave him and are, respectively, a fox and a red and gold trojan. he eventually distributes his plushies to children in local orphanages but keeps those two to himself out of sheer emotional attachment

he doesn't stop suffering because of his trauma throughout his life, but he learns to deal with it. that's the point of everything. he never thinks he will magically forget or get over it, but now he is in a different place in his life and he can start working his way to be the best version of himself he can. he doesn't fool himself into thinking it will be easy and fast, he never thought it would be less difficult than it really was, but he takes things slowly and carefully and hopes it works

his entire healing process is too complex and extensive to explain everything here, but i did the best i could and now i really need to stop because i could stay here ranting for days. xx

#Jean Moreau #all for the game #aftg #the foxhole court #the raven king #the king's men #Jeremy Knox #Kevin Day #USC Trojans #Healing #i love him too much for my own good #this man deserves the whole world and i'll stand for that #Kerejean #Jerejean #Kevjean

82 notes · View notes

magicofthepen · 3 years

Note

For the character thingy, romana and leela?? ❤

ROMANA - I’m going to answer for Romana I, since I already did Romana II!

favorite thing about them: so I fell in love with Romana I instantly when I watched The Ribos Operation. I was like “wait no one told me that Romana’s basically a recent graduate who always thrived in school but has now suddenly been thrust into the Real World and is a bit of a mess” and oh my god why is she so relatable, also I love that about her. I love that she doesn’t quite know what she’s doing, and her academic brilliance doesn’t necessarily help in the situations she’s finding herself in, but she keeps trying and learning, so by the end of season 16 she’s much more confident and capable on her own than she was when she started. I just absolutely adore the premise of her character and how she develops during the key to time quest. also her banter skills are so excellent. (….this wasn’t one thing whoops. 😄)

least favorite thing about them: I feel like it’s something about how she’s portrayed in the Gallifrey audios, but I can’t quite articulate what? but I feel like somehow, some of the things I really liked about her on TV (her witty fun banter, her determination even when she’s out of her depth) aren’t represented as much when we get glimpses of Actual Romana I (not Pandora or an alternate universe version). idk if this is even fully true, it’s just….she doesn’t quite have the same vibe as the character I remember from the TV show (but this is also tricky because the Lies scene, the Matrix projection in Lies (which *isn’t* really her technically) and the remains of her consciousness in the body that Pandora’s using are the only times we get Actual Romana I - which isn’t that much time to express all the nuances of her character.)

(continuing to skip the favorite line question because it’s too hard)

brOTP: her and the Doctor!! (like I said in the Romana II ask, I used to ship them more, but lately I’ve been more into a platonic interpretation.) I just as instantly fell for their dynamic in the Ribos Operation - two people with very different personalities who don’t get along but are forced to work together and gradually become friends?? this is exactly the kind of relationship arc that I adore. Their banter and snark is So Good (I was so entertained by their interactions in Ribos Operation that my brain refused to pay attention to anything but their scenes, and I ended up having issues following the plot later oops). And I love their growing respect and care for each other - how they go from being mutually dismissive of each other to valuing each other and being a solid Team and just really genuinely liking each other! their friendship is just Very Good (…..and now I really want to rewatch season 16….I’ve only seen it like one and a half times but I loved it very much….)

OTP: I don’t think I have any ships with Romana I that I would consider an ‘otp’? (the closest would be her and the Doctor since I have sometimes shipped them and I adore their relationship in general)

nOTP: Brax/Romana again….and tbh with Romana I it’s more of an actual nOTP (rather than ‘kinda nOTP, kinda ‘it’s complicated’’) because this is the time frame when she’s actually his student and so my discomfort with student/teacher relationships really rears its head (although there’s still one fic out there that I just think is so well-written.....but it does show the relationship as very unhealthy).

random headcanon: .....so sorry to continue Sartia posting, but oops the first thing that popped into my head is my new maybe-unrealistic headcanon that Sartia was Romana’s first kiss. in a teenage “I’m curious and want to try this thing and you’re the only person I hang out with, but it doesn’t mean anything....or does it??” way. (.....this is so self-indulgent in such a terrible way rip.)

unpopular opinion: Armageddon Factor is my favorite Key to Time story! (I gather this is an unpopular opinion in Doctor Who Fandom At Large, it doesn’t seem to be liked as much as some of the earlier stories in the season.) technically I’ve only seen it once and it was a couple years ago, but I remember loving it as a Romana story, there were a lot of really interesting character bits for her!

song i associate with them: hmm I don’t really have one? my Romana playlist is specifically for Romana II in Big Finish so....yeah.

favorite picture of them: anything with her Ribos Operation outfit (with the full cloak), it’s iconic and beautiful! on a similar note, I love this Romana I art by @volucris-liga, it’s the first Romana fanart I ever reblogged and it’s so pretty!

more under the cut!

LEELA

favorite thing about them: her resilience and her kindness. Leela goes through so much grief and pain, she has her world upended again and again, she never really finds a place where she belongs. and yet she still keeps choosing to love, choosing to keep fighting for what she believes in, choosing to rebuild again and again. and sometimes it’s really hard and she doesn’t want to go on….but she does, and she finds moments of happiness again. and that strength is really powerful. and no matter how cruel the universe (and other people) are to her, she is still relentlessly kind - she listens, she protects, she wants to help, she cares.

least favorite thing about them: I mean, the “savage” stereotype that her character references is a racist/anti-indigenous trope (especially the whole dynamic of the Doctor trying to “civilize” her ugh). and I hate that characters keep calling her “savage” (even when they’re the Bad Guys, it’s still bringing up this trope again and again, and it’s even worse when it’s the Good Guys). why are they still doing this.

brOTP: see all characters listed under otp, every relationship that I ship is also an incredibly important friendship in Leela’s life and I love all of them <33 as far as relationships that I see as entirely non-romantic….I really love the version of Leela and Ace’s relationship that exists in my head (and in fandom) - they didn’t get to interact enough in the audios, but I absolutely think they were really close, because of their shared experiences and the ways their personalities mesh. (I feel like I should also say the Doctor here, but tbh I don’t remember her TV stories that well, so I don’t really have a solid memory of what their relationship was like.) and of course, Leela’s parental relationship with Rayo is very important to me!

OTP: once again, ot3 my beloved <33 and Leela/Romana first and foremost (I already rambled about them here, so I’m just going to second everything I said earlier).

and I also ship Leela/Narvin, although I’m not quite as invested in that pairing? (due to a combination of ‘Romana is my favorite character and so I’m just more interested in her relationships with other characters,’ ‘I joined the fandom when things were pretty much all Leela/Narvin all the time (I say with great respect and affection for the artists and writers putting out amazing content for that ship) so I was motivated to write fic primarily for R/L and N/R to balance out the ot3 content,’ ‘apparently I have a contrary streak with Gallifrey and the more the writers push a romantic interpretation of a relationship, the less interested I am in actually shipping it,’ and ‘I’m not really into Leela/Narvin as a pairing on its own - although I do love a lot of fic that portrays them that way bc it’s just very well-written.’) But just. how they form a grudging alliance for Romana’s sake and then develop genuine respect for each other and then build this really solid foundation of teamwork and fondness and care and really relax and feel comfortable around each other….the way they become ride-or-die for each other and just trust and love each other so much….it’s Very Good!! (And I did love writing scenes with the two of them in Call It Home - I might not focus on them, but I do genuinely love their relationship.)

And of course Leela/Veega <33….I debated if they even interacted enough in the actual audios for me to consider it an otp, but I love the idea of their relationship and the story of them in my head so much?? going to link to this post because it really captures my feelings about them - they’ve both been through so much grief and pain by the time they meet, they’ve both lost people they love before, so the idea of them choosing to love each other and build something together against the odds is just. very powerful. plus I have a whole playlist for the family they’ve built together, which is a strong indication that I really love this ship. 😊

nOTP: Leela/Andred. last time I answered an ask meme about Leela, I had this complicated response about how I hated Leela/Andred when I watched Invasion of Time (bc it’s so abrupt and arbitrary), and then Louise Jameson’s voice acting Convinced Me To Care because oh she really did love him....alas i am a Leela/Andred detractor at heart, and I have been nudged back to my default state by re-listening….I simply hate how he treats Leela in Gallifrey.

random headcanon: I really like the idea of Leela being more politically involved in her own right after they all return from the Axis. She’s just spent a lot of time leading a group of people who don’t have a voice in the government, fighting for their rights against the established injustices of Gallifreyan society. I don’t think she’d easily slip back into only being Romana’s bodyguard after experiencing more political autonomy on the other Gallifrey. What exactly this looks like in practice I’m not sure about - in my one fic ‘verse, I wrote about her being more directly involved with the Academy as a political liaison and guest tutor, and also advocating to Romana for policies that would benefit those who live outside the city on their home Gallifrey. but there’s probably a lot of options to explore here!

unpopular opinion: hmm I don’t think this is necessarily unpopular but idk and I want to talk about it: even though Leela identifies so strongly as a warrior, a “happy ending” for her would, I think, need to involve getting away from fighting. too often she throws herself into a fight to try to avoid thinking about how much she’s hurting, and it doesn’t work, it doesn’t stop the pain. and in the Time War, she’s tied her identity so strongly to war (it’s inevitable, inescapable, and she will Fight and Defend because that’s all she has left). there’s a difference between “I am a warrior” and “all I am is a warrior,” and Leela’s slid too far into the second one, and she needs to untangle her own identity from war to heal.

song i associate with them: Freedom by Karmina (it’s a song about going on defiantly in the face of heartbreak - “Tearing my room apart, I’m starting over” / “Take my pride I can still survive I’ve got my freedom” / “Hunt me down you’ll never find me now that I’ve got my freedom”)

favorite picture of them: the first one that came to mind is this gorgeous art by @laurelhach (which I didn’t realize was based on a picture until I stumbled across the original picture and was like oh my god!! it looks exactly like the art!!)

#thank you for sending these!! <33 #sircarolyn #asks #gallifrey audios #romana #leela #ramblings #gallifrey spoilers

5 notes · View notes

edendaphne · 5 years

Photo

As promised, some angst starring Chat!Felix and Marinette (using some of the earlier concept art/designs)

Note: I'd been working on this oneshot and illustrations since before the most recent season 3 spoilers were released (the ones with episode titles and synopses) so everything in here is strictly an AU.

You can also read it here on Ao3

"I’m in love with you, Felix."

Felix stared at Marinette for a few seconds, then scoffed. He didn't have time for this today; he was planning his own love confession to Ladybug tonight and he didn’t appreciate any unnecessary distractions. Marinette’s abrupt declaration of love was merely one of numerous others he had received; call it another curse he was inflicted with, although this one wasn’t of magical origin like his ring.

"You don’t love me, Marinette," he snorted. "You love what I represent. Fame, money, fashion. You think you can get a taste of those things through me.” Looking away, he added, “Just like all the others."

Marinette faltered, "Th-that’s not true! I like you for you, not just because you’re an Agreste!"

"Is that so?" He replied sarcastically. "How could you? You don’t even know me,” he spat, words dripping with unveiled disdain.

Gathering as much determination she could, Marinette argued, "But I do! I’ve noticed things that you try to hide from others. You’re always very reserved and serious on the outside, but I know that inside you’re actually a very warm and loving person." She added a bit more quietly, "I know that you act a certain way because you’re afraid of being vulnerable, of letting people in and getting hurt, just like you’ve been hurt in the past."

Felix glared down at her from his height. "So you’ve been studying me? I don’t appreciate being psychoanalyzed, Marinette."

"No, that isn’t—! I didn’t—!" she stuttered, panicking on the inside, desperately fighting the urge to run away or hide, anything to escape from his judgmental gaze. "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry or upset you! I just want to understand you and figure out—"

"Figure out what?” He interrupted. “How to impress me? How to talk or what to wear to make me notice you? Have you ever taken the time to actually get to know me?"

Marinette recoiled and curled in on herself, the sting of his words chipping away at her heart. "That isn’t it! You say I don’t know you at all, but you never accept my invitations to go on activities or dates! How can I get to know you better if you won’t give me a chance?"

"Maybe I don’t want to give you a chance. Have you ever considered that maybe I just want to be left alone?" He crossed his arms and said with finality, "Stop hounding me, Marinette. I can’t stand groupies."

Marinette gasped in disbelief. Bristling at being called a groupie, her stomach churned unpleasantly, suddenly feeling the need to throw up. With her voice as even as she could muster, she uttered quietly, almost whispering, “R-right. As you wish. I won’t bother you anymore, I promise.” She turned away from him, hoping she could force one foot in front of the other despite the sudden feeling of lightheadedness. “Take care of yourself, Felix. Goodbye.”

Felix sighed heavily in frustration as she walked away. He could have sworn he heard sniffling, but it must’ve just been his imagination.

Hours later after dark, Felix ran across the rooftops as Chat Noir, getting some light exercise before his patrol with Ladybug and, if he were to be completely honest with himself, to get away from his stuffy mansion. He paused on top of the bakery by the school, enjoying the delightful smells of foods he didn't allow himself to partake in, when he heard Marinette tearfully talking on the phone. That was odd. Why would she be crying at this hour?

“No… I’m not okay, but I will be eventually. It'll just take time.” She sighed. “A lot of time." She paused, listening to the other side. "No… no, please don’t confront him. He made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want anything to do with me and I’m going to respect that."

Chat Noir became rooted to the spot. She was talking about Felix, about him, and the confession from earlier.

Marinette sighed and resumed tearfully, "Maybe he’s right. Maybe I really don't know him at all. Maybe I’ve just deluded myself all this time because I thought I understood him a little. Oh, how could I have messed this up so badly? I should never have confessed! …At least I know what he really thinks of me now. I’ve never seen him look at me that way, like I was the scum of the earth, like-" she choked down a sob. "Like I was lower than dirt! Like he hated me!"

Chat’s heart dropped and he felt like he’d been dropped into a tub of ice water. Had his words really affected her that much? He didn’t actually hate Marinette. She was a genuinely nice person, always helpful and cheerful, if a bit scatterbrained and lacking in punctuality. Still, the guilt settled uncomfortably in his gut and he felt slightly dizzy, his hands clammy underneath the suit. Part of him wanted to leave so he wouldn’t have to endure hearing the rest of this conversation, but another part deep within knew he deserved the torture of hearing how much he'd hurt her.

There was another pause as Marinette continued to sob. "No… I'm giving up on him. Maybe even giving up on love altogether. This kind of pain isn't worth it." She went quiet for a few moments, then replied, "Yeah, you're right. Thanks for checking up on me, Alya. You're the best… Yeah, I'll keep in touch… Sure... Love you too. Bye."

Flabbergasted, Chat Noir still couldn’t force himself to leave the balcony. Overhearing (okay, eavesdropping) this discussion had shaken him to his core. Marinette had been honest with him earlier. Her confession was authentic and heartfelt. And not only did she care about him, but she’d also been able to see past his aloof and unfriendly demeanor that he’d used as a shield from the world ever since he was a child. For as long as he could remember, he’d given up on trying to be understood, and Marinette was the only one that had ever even attempted to do so.

Choking back a hard, uncomfortable lump in his throat, he shook his head and stood up. He needed to calm his nerves before his meeting with Ladybug, so he attempted to convince himself that his actions were entirely justified. He couldn’t help the way he felt. He didn’t like Marinette the way she apparently felt for him. Maybe he could have been more kind in his rejection but that wasn’t who he was. Felix wasn’t a nice person like her. And Marinette was resilient. She’d get over it. She’d forget him. And eventually she’d find herself a person who was her type and would suit her better. It was never meant to be.

He ignored the large, empty pit in his stomach and with these thoughts in mind, he sprinted away into the night, blending in with the darkness where he belonged.

“I’m in love with you, Ladybug.”

Ladybug widened her eyes incredulously, staring first at Chat Noir, then at the ruby red rose he was holding. She felt prickles at the back of her neck, dreading a conversation she’d hoped she would never have to have again, much less within the same day.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and suppressed a groan. Chat Noir theatrically professed his so-called affections for her just about every other week, and this time was no different. She simply wasn’t up for any teasing this night.

“Chat, can we stop with the shenanigans today? I’m really not in the mood. In fact, I almost called off tonight’s patrol.” At his questioning look, she elaborated, “Earlier today I got rejected by the guy I like and he… he didn't let me down gently." She turned away, trying desperately to even her breathing and blink away tears lest she open the floodgates again.

Chat took a step forward and took her hand, stating dramatically, “Who could have possibly been so cruel to you, My Queen? Surely they must be blind or idiotic to reject an extraordinary creature such as yourself.”

She scoffed through her nose. “He certainly didn’t seem to think I’m so extraordinary.”

Chat’s mouth widened into his trademark Cheshire grin and he replied with a flourish, “It’s a good thing I’m here then, for I’ll sing your praises far and wide all over France, letting everyone know of my adoration for you.”

Ladybug huffed incredulously, taking her hand away, her voice trembling as she snapped at him, “Chat, don’t. Don’t do this to me. Not today. Not after what happened to me earlier. Can’t you be more sensitive to my feelings and stop being so damn pushy?” After a long pause she took a deep breath and continued, “You don't love me, Chat. You… ‘you love what I represent.’”

Chat’s eyes grew wide as saucers, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu that was too close to be mere coincidence.

This can’t be… No, it couldn’t be, it just couldn’t. There’s no way fate would be this cruel.

Pushing the intruding thought aside, he argued, “But Ladybug, I do love you! I’ve loved you from the moment we met!”

Ladybug let out a small scoff. “Chat. We both know that’s a lie.” A few moments passed and she stated bluntly, “I know about your curse.”

Chat’s mouth dropped open slightly upon hearing her revelation, feeling something akin to whiplash. She knows, he thought. But how?

“You just want to use me. You always have.” Ladybug declared hotly. “Well, I'm not going to fall for it! They’re lies, all of it! Never in our entire partnership have you been honest with me.” She looked up at him and the tears finally started flowing. “You couldn’t care less about me,” she seethed.

This conversation was quickly spiraling out of his control. Desperately, Chat argued, “You know that’s not true! I do care about you!”

“Oh, please,” she dismissed him bitterly as the tears fell. “You only care about yourself. All you’ve ever wanted from me was a kiss to break the curse from your miraculous, and then you’d toss me away when you didn’t need me anymore. If you had just asked me then I’d understand, but you couldn’t even be forthright with me about it... After all we’ve been through together, don’t you think I deserve at least that?” She squeezed her eyes shut, body shaking.

Chat felt his insides crumple and it was like his body was free falling. Despite Ladybug being correct in her assumption that he didn’t start their partnership with the purest intentions, he had sincerely grown to fall deeply, irrevocably in love with her. Did she really, earnestly think he didn’t care about her at all after all this time?

“Ladybug, you have to believe me, that’s not how it is!” he insisted. “You’re the love of my life! You’re everything I could ever need!” Ladybug countered sharply, “But what about me, Chat? How about what I need?”

Chat replied quickly, “I’d give you anything you could ever possibly want! Anything you wish for would be yours.”

Feebly, she replied, “I don’t even know what I want anymore.” She muttered, aside, “Maybe Felix was right. Maybe none of us truly know each other.”

Chat Noir paled. This couldn’t be happening. All this time, right in front of him. The compassionate, thoughtful, ingenious, most important person in his life. And he’d been too blind, his soul too bitter to notice her. Thinking of it now, there was no real difference between the way the two of them acted, save a bit more confidence and outspokenness as Ladybug. The same couldn’t be said about him though. His outgoing and theatrical Chat Noir persona was the complete opposite of everything Felix was behind the mask. There was no way she could have guessed that they were one and the same. He, however, had no excuse. It should have been obvious. But Ladybug was right. He was selfish. And he’d been dishonest. Not only that, but his heartless, cruel treatment of Marinette had ruined any possible chances he may have had with her. She truly was extraordinary and he was just…

I’m an asshole, he realized.

The pain etched on her face, the red and puffy eyes that were visible despite her wearing a mask, none of it belonged there. She deserved nothing but happiness but she was the one suffering. Because of him.

He inhaled sharply as a flood of memories flashed through his mind of all the times when harsh words were directed at him, memories of his younger self hiding inside a closet, sobbing, desperately wishing for even the smallest amount of love and warmth. Until eventually, years later after countless heartbreaks and disappointments, he’d finally adapted and became numb to it. And while this defense mechanism helped him to protect his own heart, it had also rendered him uncaring and indifferent towards others. It was only recently, due to Ladybug’s kindness and influence, that Felix was slowly beginning to learn how to feel again (although admittedly he was still pretty lousy at it, as his current situation could attest to).

Ladybug sniffled and suddenly paused, as if a thought had just occurred to her. She steeled herself, resolve filled her face and she took a few rapid steps forward Chat Noir until their bodies were almost touching. She placed a hand on his chest and looked up at him, and yet her eyes looked hollow and dispirited. Her other hand moved to gently cup his jaw, then she closed her eyes and closed the remaining distance between them.

As she leaned in, Chat panicked. "W-what are you doing?!"

"Giving you what you want," she said and puckered her lips.

He pulled his head back and she opened her eyes, revealing a now agitated look. Chat took a few steps backwards hoping to get some distance between them but she followed, never letting go of him, until he backed up against a wall and had nowhere left to go. She pinned him against it roughly, using both hands, holding him still enough for her to kiss.

“L-Ladybug, wait!” he stammered. “Don’t do this! You can’t!”

Exasperated, she cried, “Don’t you want to be free from the burden of being Chat Noir? You’d never have to see me again. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Your freedom?” she spat. “One kiss and you could get rid of all this, and we can stop this game. You don’t love me and maybe I’ll never be loved like I want to be, but I can free you from this curse. And from me.”

At that instant he did something he never believed he would ever do: he pushed her away. He couldn’t accept her kiss. Not like this. This wasn’t like her. She was hurting and lashing out and asking for help all at once. This wasn’t how he wanted to end his time as Chat Noir. It couldn’t end like this.

“Ladybug, listen to me!” he pleaded, holding her firmly by her upper arms. “I don’t want this and I know you don’t want this! I can’t let you do it! You mean so much more to me than this!”

She squirmed in his grip. “I don’t believe you!!” she shouted, barely able to see him through her watery eyes.

Not letting go, Chat replied quietly, “I don’t blame you. I really don’t. I haven’t been a good partner to you; I’ve been deceitful and crass, and I’m sure someone else could do a better job at being Chat Noir. It may not come as a surprise to you that I’m not a good person in real life. In fact, I’m pretty damn horrible.” He gave a humorless chuckle.

Ladybug ceased her struggling and looked up at him in confusion.

Chat continued, “But I believe that we’re together for a reason and I don’t want to give up. I’d like to stay with you and continue to fight alongside you. I want to protect you, to destroy anything that would dare try to hurt you… But if that someone is me, then…” He tightly squeezed his eyes shut. “If you really don’t want me here then I can leave. I can leave you alone and I promise I wouldn’t bother you anymore.” He looked at her pleadingly, eyes glistening. “But if you would have me, if you would tolerate me, then I would stay with you forever. I promise.”

Through his hastened speech, Ladybug stared at him, wide eyed and full of disbelief, but as he reached the end, she broke.

Gasping and staring, a horrified Ladybug cried remorsefully, “Chat… Oh, Chat, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” She sobbed openly, not even attempting to suppress it. Chat gingerly pulled her close, gathering her into his arms. She trembled and heavy sobs violently racked her small body. He held her, soothed her, whispered to her, stroking the back of her head gently, careful so that his claws wouldn’t snag on her soft, raven hair. They stayed that way for a long time, clinging to each other like a lifeline.

An hour later, Ladybug and Chat Noir sat on the roof side-by-side, legs and hips touching. Chat's arm draped loosely around her shoulders and his thumb stroked against her upper arm, while Ladybug rested her head on his chest seeking comfort. The two sat in companionable silence; Ladybug’s crying had finally stopped and she was exhausted. Her breathing had slowed considerably and Chat wondered if she’d fallen asleep. He wished vehemently that they could stay like this forever, but they had school the next day and Felix had a very long apology to prepare, so it was time to part ways.

Chat gently nudged Ladybug’s shoulder and she stirred slightly. “Are you awake, Choupinette?”

“Hmmm…” she sighed airily and nuzzled into him. “Barely.”

He chuckled lightly and gave her a small squeeze. “I deeply regret having to disturb you, but alas, the time has come for us to say our farewells for the night.”

Ladybug harrumphed and tightly wrapped her arms around his waist in mock indignation, which caused him to laugh.

He booped her nose playfully. “You are simply too cute, Ma Choupinette. But we absolutely cannot allow such rebellion from you. You are going home even if I have to transport you there myself.” With this said, he abruptly jumped up, carrying her in his arms bridal style, the sudden movement causing her to throw her arms tightly around his neck and squeal in surprise. He followed up by vigorously tickling her ribs with the hand that held her torso.

She squirmed in his hold and laughed freely. “Alright, alright, you win, I’ll go home! Now let me down, you doof!”

Chuckling, Chat set her back down on the ground, yet his hands remained on her waist, not quite ready to fully let her go. Similarly, she had released her hold around his neck but her hands had slid down onto his chest. He could feel the hair on his arms stand up and his face heat up, along with the butterflies fluttering wildly in his chest, and he was grateful that his suit covered most of his body so she wouldn’t be able to see it.

Her expression sobered and she said with difficulty, “By the way… I’m sorry I tried to kiss you. And I’m sorry I said all those awful things to you.”

Chat stroked her cheek and spoke to her softly, “You don’t have to say sorry. Not to me. I know you were feeling devastated by what happened to you earlier. I should have been more considerate to your feelings, acted more tactful.” He frowned and he spat bitterly, “That other guy… he’s a fool. He doesn’t deserve you. He will never deserve you,” he said emphatically. “You’re too good for him, too pure and sweet and kind. There is no excuse for the way he treated you and he doesn’t deserve your attention, nor does he deserve your forgiveness.”

Ladybug looked away from him and shrugged. “He really isn’t a bad person. Honestly, I can’t even be mad at him. He had every right to not return my feelings and reject me, even if he didn’t go about it the right way. Now I’m just dreading how horribly awkward things are going to be at school.”

Chat’s eyebrows rose in shock and his throat felt dry. How could she possibly be defending Felix even now? Was it because she was in love with him and she was seeing him through rose colored lenses, or would she have been just as kind to anyone else? Knowing her though, he suspected it was the latter.

Hesitating, he gulped but finally asked, “Are… are you going to speak with him about it?”

She exhaled and she shook her head. “He seems to really dislike me,” she replied. “I won’t be talking to him unless I really have to, like if we have a school assignment together.”

Chat frowned at this. Had he really cost himself the friendship he hadn’t realized they’d had?

“I’m sorry,” he replied remorsefully. “I wish I could make it up to you.”

She smiled weakly, yet it was the most melancholy smile he’d ever seen on her beautiful face. He never wanted to see her look that way again. He felt the protectiveness that he only ever felt around her overwhelm him, promptly followed by the crushing reminder that it was he who had caused her such pain.

She patted his arm. “Don’t be sorry, Mon Foufou. It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

Chat’s blood ran cold, the anxiety and self loathing he always carried within himself swelling exponentially every time he replayed that conversation in his head. He could never deserve her; not ever would he be worthy of her love. But... despite that, he still desperately longed for a chance. An opportunity to pursue her, to court her properly, to treat her like the Queen she was. Just one more chance to redeem himself, as much would be possible for a wretched person such as he, anyway. And maybe, just maybe, eventually she might forgive him. It was worth a try. She was worth the effort.

“For what it’s worth,” he spoke quietly, “I really did mean it. When I confessed.” He rubbed the back of his neck and felt his face redden. “I didn’t exactly say it the way I should have. I’m terrible at this sort of thing. Sharing my feelings and being sensitive to others. I’d like to try again sometime, and this time I’d like to do it right.” He wrung his hands together nervously. “You don’t have to say anything, I just…” he looked straight at her and said earnestly, “I just wanted you to know.”

Ladybug beamed at him, then nervously reached back to grab at one of her ponytails, developing a lovely blush that made her little freckles stand out. “Hmm… I wonder if that’s actually true. But in any case, thank you, Chat. Really.” She turned her body slightly, then added, “M-maybe someday, if you actually feel that way, and if you can prove it… Maybe we can--” she hesitated for a few moments, and continued, “Well… I won’t get ahead of myself. I don’t want to set myself up for any more disappointments. And I wouldn’t want to string you along, either; I’ll need time to get over my crush… a lot of time.” Chat felt his limbs stiffen at hearing those words again, the words Marinette had uttered back on her balcony. “I really did like him a whole lot.” She looked back at him and quirked her usual sweet smile. “But if you’re willing, then… I guess we can wait and see what happens.”

Chat Noir reached forward to take her hand, then lightly kissed her knuckles. “I’ll wait as long as it takes, My Queen. Anything for you.”

Big thanks to @imthepunchlord for letting me borrow Chat's nickname, "My Queen"

Mega super gigantic shout-outs to my amazing fabulous betas, @kryallaorchid and @chocoluckchipz who helped me with everything from brainstorming and editing to coming up with a title and summary (because I'm a hopeless hot mess) XD

#Miraculous Ladybug #Marinette Dupain Cheng #Felinette #Felix Agreste #Chat Noir #Felix!Chat #Ladybug #Eden Art #My Art: Miraculous Ladybug #Fan Art #fanfiction #Eden writes #oneshot #fanfic art #ML AU

6K notes · View notes

snkpolls · 5 years

Text

SnK S3E15 Poll Results (Manga Reader Version)

The poll closed with 321 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that these are the results of the manga reader poll. Anime only watchers are suggested not to read if you do not wish to be spoiled about certain events! Anime only viewers, click here to view your poll results!

RATE THE EPISODE 308 Responses

Overall the fandom enjoyed the episode, with the vast majority of votes being at either a 4 or 5.

Best ep of the season thus far, Bert's monologue/transformation was amazing. Some fantastic VA work by Tomohisa and Inoue as well. CG CT also looked far better than I thought he would. These next few episodes are going to kill me. I can't wait.

Fantastic episode. Bertholdt's monologue was the best part.

Great episode, very dramatic, awesome OST. I am not looking forward to the next few eps, except for Floch's villain origin story!

Can’t wait for the next episode, this one was so good!

Editing was a bit choppy, voice lines cut half a second too quick a few times.

First ep of S3P2 to get a 10/10 from me <3

The animation was pretty lacking in this episode. R&B’s running animation on the wall felt pretty lazy, there was that reused shot of the beast Titan’s throw from season 2, Bertholdt’s character design felt inconsistent as well as Zeke’s. They really need to get the old team back on the animation cause the current team clearly doesn’t know how to handle aot. It’s getting on my nerves.

The episode was absolutely awesome.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT? 308 Responses

The Bertl Bomb™ was the scene that respondents were most excited about. Following behind that was Mikasa’s brief skirmish with Bertolt, and closely behind that was Armin and Bertolt’s shouting match on the rooftops.

BERUTORUTO=GOD

I’m mikasasexual

As a huge Bertholdt fan, it was so great to see Bert as the centre of attention for once. It makes me really sad knowing what comes next.

Bert bomb made my bomb go off

I love Bertholdt's resolve. This scene made him one of my favorite characters.

Bertholdt vs. Mikasa was so fire 🔥

One of the best episodes without a doubt. Bertholdt's monologue before transforming was even more impactful than in the manga.

Explosion aftermath was disappointing. I expected a sea of fire. The one they gave us doesn't feel like something big just happened

That "Levi's 5 seconds of screen time" was good, too!

Why isn't "Mikasa comforting and protecting Armin" an option for favorite moment in this episode? Because those were definitely my favorite moments in the episode

The partner gesture between Reiner and Bertl is the death of me

Am I the only one who get's goosebumps in the scene before he transformed himself into the colossalus titan and said: 'I feel like, no matter how this all plays out, I can accept whatever happens. That's right, nobody's in the wrong. There's nothing we could do. Because this world....is just...that cruel.' This scene was impressive back in the manga and I'm proud how good Tomohisa Hashizume nailed it. He's an amazing voice actor, especially for Bertholdt.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE APETITAN AND YOUSEEBIGGIRL REARRANGES? 296 Responses

Overall the fandom was excited about the new versions of familiar songs with 71% of respondents feeling that they were “totally epic!” 18% agree that the rearranges were good, but that they can’t surpass the original versions.

The soundtrack was lit.

Music was awesome!

Ngl I've watched the episode many times bc the OST during some scenes is just SO GOOD!!

WHO WON THE SHOUTING MATCH? 308 Responses

Over ¾ of the fandom agree that Bertolt dominated the shouting match on the rooftop.

I feel Armin won the "debate" because Bertolt, in his zeal to convince himself that he wanted to kill people he used to see as friends, wasn't making any sense

HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT BERTOLT’S DEVELOPMENT AT THIS POINT? 308 Responses

46% of respondents were happy to see how far Bertolt had come as a character at this point in the story, while 34% were just happy to get more dialogue and thoughts from him. A small percentage had been curious where his character would go from here.

Godtolt on the way

He ditched the alter ego built up out of guilt, and it's cool to see him truly one of the strongest characters fighting off Mikasa while in human form

I wish we had more Bertl development! He could’ve been really complex, but just isn’t due to a lack of screentime. Compared to someone like Reiner or Annie, this was his one moment of pure raw character development

He reveals his true warrior colors

I loved it, one of my favourite chapters because of his resolve and how he himself was surprised about it.

He's only moving forward as a character and does what needs to be done. Bertholdt, your doing amazing sweetie!

With all this development just to kill him off was heart breaking.

Honestly, I’m so proud of him. He was amazing and it’s so nice to see a confident Bert. I don’t think it’s a development worth praising in terms of moral standards but it suited and made sense for his character

I feel like this is where his character peaked. It was pretty flat before season 2

I just don’t like bertolt in generalI really like his development but it's a shame that he severely lacked screen time before this episode

I'm not really a fan of Bertolt so I'm neutral on this

I still hate his traitorous guts and can't wait for THAT scene to be animated

Fucking loved it. It's one of my favorite chapters (and now episodes) just because he's talking so much and he's badass af. My boy is finally shining!

HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT ARMIN BLUFFING ABOUT ANNIE A SECOND TIME? 306 Responses

Just over half of respondents feel that Armin should have tried a different tactic with Bertolt, while 46% felt that it was worth another shot to try and manipulate Bertolt’s feelings for Annie again.

Has Armin ever convinced anyone of anything they didn't already believe?

He was so used to Bertholdt’s behavior and there was nothing that would’ve made Armin think Bertholdt would have the reaction that he did

Lame. He didn't use much of intelligence here.

It's low, I'm happy it didn't work again

He learned some pretty vital things - how far the Warriors are willing to go, what their priorities are, what Bert's state of mind is, and where his loyalties truly lie. I don't imagine Armin went down that track solely because he thought it would have the exact same effect, but rather to 'check something' - exactly the same as Bertolt.

I think it not only was a good attempt to take (it worked before, why not try it again), but I also think it is incredibly important to show Armin's flaws. Yes, he's an amazing strategist. He's also still sixteen and not always entirely confident. Having Armin make mistakes like relying on old ploys that worked keeps his character more grounded and realistic

Smart people tend to use the same tactics over and over again as long as they're successful and for good reason. After all, why wouldn't you use the same tactic if you know it brings success? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's only when said strategy or tactic doesn't work where the individual would entertain the prospect of changing it or never using it again.

That’s Very Unfortunate!

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT CGI COLOSSAL TITAN? 306 Responses

36% of respondents aren’t very impressed with the CGI colossal titan, while 29% actually found the effect to be pretty awesome! 13% feel it’s disturbing and a small 7% just find it cringeworthy.

Alright

CGI doesn't bother me. What bothers me is how animators overly rely on it. Several decades ago animators made great masterpieces without cgi, all by hand. I understand using it because it makes things easier, but exceeding quality should still be top priority. If you can't make it better with CGI, then go old school and do it right.

Decent but could be better

U can still notice it is CGI but I think their CGI has gotten better compared to some of their earlier uses of it

Doesn't fit with the art style, which is as bad as unfair splitting potatoes

Not too bad but could definitely have been better. Understandable since there has only been one full body shot of it before and that was a sharp backwards, down looking angle.

Don’t really care much for cgi complaints, animating that would be a lot of work, their efforts are better elsewhere

It was necessary and didn't look appallingly bad.

I don't get why people hate it so much? I think it's fine

I hated it in season 2 and I hate it more now

Bad

Don't like CGI anything in any anime so take from that what you will

Most angles he looks fine! The only part that he looked off was when we got the face shot of him panning out to the rest of his body

Thought it looked solid. There were some really great shots of him this ep imo. Hopefully the action bits will look as good, and they mix in some 2D shots as well.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE 104TH RIDING ON TITAN EREN? 306 Responses

Over half of the fandom agree that this detail is something that’s very adorable, while 22% feel it’s just pretty neat. A combined 21% of respondents either feel it’s not that big of a deal or simply don’t care about it.

>AMJCS who cares?

Good boy protecting his friends? Hell Yeah!

I want to ride pieck - Not an innuendo, i just want a go in one of her turrets

It's gay

Lads you would never get me off that thing, I'd be saddling him up to go grocery shopping

Save me a seat guys!!

HOW WELL DID THE EPISODE ADAPT THE CORRESPONDING CHAPTERS? 306 Responses

Manga readers are overall happy with the adaptation of chapters 77 and 78, with over 90% saying that it was close to being perfectly done.

DID MARCO’S DEATH AFFECT YOU AS MUCH AS IT DID IN THE MANGA? 305 Responses

41% of respondents felt more heartbroken to see Marco’s death play out in the anime, while 31% say they felt more sympathetic toward Marco. 14% weren’t affected when this scene played out in either story-telling medium.

About the same level, still utterly heartbreaking, though

DEATH TO THE TITAN TRIO!

Didn't feel as much. Not because it was a bad adaptation, but just because I've already read it and knew what went down.

I felt more sorry for RBA than Marco in this version

I still had lot of emotions with the adaptation, but there's no compare to experiencing it for the first time

I was absolutely sobbing when I read it in the manga. Anime-wise I was more prepared to handle the scene

Watching Marco die again reminds me of why, even in current manga, I still completely and utterly LOATHE/DESPISE/HATE RBA. No, I don't care about their "tragic backstory", they don't deserve empathy of any kind.

It had the same impact when I first watched the trailer for the Lost Girls OVA, which spoiled me his death

It was tough to watch, but it was necessary to deepen Reiner, Bertolt, Annie (and Marco)'s characters. It was very well done, dramatically

Oh fuck it was WAY WORSE animated. Actually hearing his cries and screams is something that can never be duplicated in written form

I did not anticipate being as affected as I was by the Marco flashback. That doesn’t give me hope for how I’m going to handle the rest of the RtS arc. The emotions of the characters are being portrayed very well this season.

NOW THAT WE’VE HAD A CHANCE TO LISTEN TO ZEKE HAVE MORE DIALOGUE, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HIS VOICE? 305 Responses

The majority of the fandom believe that Zeke’s seiyuu is a good fit for his character, although over half of the fandom had expected his voice to sound a bit different. 10% feel it wasn’t the best choice, while a small sliver of respondents don’t care for the voice at all.

I can't unhear DIO. Thanks Zeke, thanks Koyasu.

Zeke's VA also voices a lovely, kind character in Violet Evergarden, so his lines are making me really, really uncomfortable

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT PIECK’S TITAN VOICE? 307 Responses

30% of respondents are excited about Pieck’s titan voice, while 28% feel it’s not what they expected to hear. 18% find the voice “acceptable” while 17% want to wait and hear more before making a final verdict.

Pieck's voice was unexpected in that it was terrifying, much like Ymir's Titan voice

Holy shit. I'm gonna hear it in my nightmares

I rabu Piku.

REGARDING CURRENT MANGA EVENTS, DO YOU THINK REINER STILL WANTS TO STAY TRUE TO HIS PROMISE TO YMIR? 308 Responses

Nearly half of the fandom believe that Reiner would still like to honor his promise to Ymir, but feel that he will never actually get to pull through. 15% believe that he’s still determined to save Historia no matter what, and 18% believe that he’s actually stopped caring about his promise (or perhaps just Historia in general) altogether.

Good question. I really want to have a scene with him facing Historia, his reaction to her pregnancy should be interesting

He doesn't want to save HISTORIA because he doesn't know her. The one he wanted to save was KRISTA. But she is already "dead"

I think Reiner has done what he needed to

I'm not sure, I think his main concerns are the kids and stopping Eren

It has to be real low on his priority list right about now given the circumstances

Of course not, Reiner only cares about his own manpain

He still calls her Krista and she probably has already chosen a side most likely Yeagerist

ARMIN HAD WISHED FOR A CHANCE TO NEGOTIATE AT THIS POINT, SIMILAR TO CURRENT MANGA EVENTS. IS THIS PROOF THAT HE HASN’T BEEN CHANGED BY BERTOLT’S MEMORIES? 308 Responses

44% don’t want to say either way whether Armin’s pre-titan behavior is indicative of the influence that Bertolt may or may not have over the Armin we know in the current manga. 39% believe that this is proof Eren’s words to Armin were total B.S., and 12% think this isn’t really proof of anything.

Armin Has always been the diplomat, while Eren is a man of force. Mikasa is in between. It has always been that way.

Past and future are influenced the same when paths are concerned so there's no way to tell.

I don’t think it’s enough to prove or disprove but this is an interesting idea

I don't get this 'changed' shit. Of course having access to someone else's memories has its own influence on a person, but that's true of anyone on the planet who's read a memoir as well. Everything has its effect. The titan shifter thing is obviously a bit more invasive than that, but it doesn't mean he's now suddenly possessed by Beartoto's fucking undead spirit.

I'd like to think it is but with everything Isayama's been throwing at us from out of left field who knows

he's always wished for negotiation, but he seems to have changed in his methods for negotiation. armin used to be more abrupt and upfront, whereas now he seems more tentative

No, he wasn't chanced that much. He understands RBA better and has more sympathy for Annie (maybe even has a crush on her) but it has nothing to do with being a slave.

SIMILARLY, MIKASA POINTS OUT HOW BERTOLT FEELS LIKE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON. ARE THE MEMORIES OF HIS PREDECESSOR AFFECTING HIM IN THIS ARC? 306 Responses

Over half of the fandom feel that Bertolt’s current behavior at this point in the series is of his own will, and not influenced by any prior holders of the Colossal Titan. 38% think it’s possible he’s being influenced by memories of his predecessor(s) at this time, while a small percentage feel that he is definitely being influenced by someone else’s memories.

He was badass but I think he was affected by memories of the previous CT owner.

I think that Mikasa thinks he’s acting like a different person because he is. I think this is what Bertholdt is really like but with the 104th he was playing a role so he didn’t get too attached to them.

Still wondering if the "he seemed like a different person" comment was a note about development or supposed to foreshadow something about the Titans influencing their hosts.

I think it’s original Ymir controlling him through the paths

Probably. It seems like a bit of a drastic change to go from quiet, self-deprecating and remorseful to cold, outspoken, and trying to morally justify his actions. It's just too drastic a change.

Confidence boost is completely irrelevant to paths.

We don’t even know Bert’s previous predecessors!

Nope, that's have something to do with "character development", people change sometimes after time and grown more indepented and strong of their own shadow.

I always thought of it more as Bertie finally coming down on a side and the pair picking up on that. He was always so meek and indecisive, but now he's been forced to make a choice and to do it he has to shed his old skin and become more ruthless.

Not at all he ditched his guilt that made up the act they knew him for.

WHAT SCENE ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO IN THE PREVIEW? 307 Responses

The overwhelming majority of respondents are looking forward to the Survey Corps’ suicide charge against the Beast Titan and his flying boulders. Nearly 30% are looking forward to the moment that Levi gives Erwin his promise to kill the Beast Titan. A small percentage are most looking forward to Armin and Jean decide who’s going to lead the 104th to victory.

I am not ready for the next two episodes

I’m gonna get my ASS FUCKED SO HARD I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO. THERES GONNA BE SHIT EVERYWHERE. ERWINS GONNA FUCKING DIE. LEVIS GONNA BE SAD.

fuck next week's shit is good, hype

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

The "predecessor's memory affecting current shifter" is, as far as I'm aware, just a theory that I don't buy into. I've only seen a person "changed" because of the Founding Titan's vow. Otherwise, the shifter's personality remains the same. Armin has always been an advocate for talking and negotiation. We see this in the Trost arc when the Garrison nearly kill Eren with that cannonball. So no, I don't think anyone's memories are "affecting" anyone, including current Eren.

Loved pretty much everything in this episode except for the CGI CT. Didn't expect to see uncensored Reiner, which was weird because Mikasa cutting off Bert's ear was more censored. And I'm a bit disappointed we didn't see more shots of Bert with his V fringe off his forehead. He looked so cool in the manga!

This episode gave me anxiety 'cause I know what we'll going to deal in the next three ones. The soundtrack gave intensity in every scene that its put on it, plus the fantastic job of the VA, perfect work. And just thinking about how the next episodes will be.... *goosebumps*

Wit studio handled the cgi very well imo. It's very difficult to animate this action heavy arca with rubble, smoke, odm scenes etc. and I think they are adapting the manga very well with the right pacing per episode which is also a challenge to fit within 20 minutes.

Bertolt is best boi and this episode was the best of all 3. He deserved to survive and mature up. Hashizume nailed him JUST RIGHT and his interactions with Reiner this episode were on point. The scene where he outsmarted Armin and countered Mikasa was worthy of applause.

i wish it wasn’t too rushed some moments aren’t as emotional as they should be

mikasa looked so good this episode and i'm so happy with how wit isn't screwing her over

After seeing this episode and Marco's death, it makes me sad that Reiner lost his pal Bertolt. They should be suffer bois together. Even still, some of the animation this episode was reallyy not great, so I rated the episode a 4.

Bertolt has proved on this episode that he's one of the best character of the series

I miss berthold so much and seeing him at his best was awesome but it’s really hard knowing what’s going to happen next

This is shaping up to be the best season of Attack On Titan. Cheers for more!

zeke’s beard is the tenth titan shifter

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 295 Responses

Thank you to everyone who participated! We’ll see you again in a few days!

#snk spoilers #snk s3 #snk poll #snk polls #poll results

18 notes · View notes

randomly-random-jen · 6 years

Text

Center of the Night

Sleepless nights send Bellamy and Clarke on a crash course to finally fixing their friendship. Post season 3.

2043 words | [R]

I’m not even sure why I’m here. I was on my way back to my quarters, but took a wrong turn. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. But now that I’m here, I’m not sure what to do. The hall is dark, the power low to reflect the late hour, and it’s quiet. Everyone went to bed hours ago. I think about turning around. I think about going through with it. I think about running for my life because I’m sure this might be the biggest fucking mistake of my life.

All of this runs through my head in a matter of seconds. While my brain is trying to sort it out, my feet get a mind of their own. Next thing I know, I’m standing in front of Clarke’s quarters.

This is okay. Isn’t it? We’re friends. After everything we’ve been through, it’s perfectly normal for one friend to call on another. I ignore the fact that it’s three in the morning. She said we needed each other. That had to mean something, right? And right now I need her. I need to talk to her. She always gets me like no one else can, not even Octavia. I need to talk to her. I need to see her face. To assure myself that she’s still here. That she isn’t some cruel prank my brain is playing on me. That she’s real, and she stayed this time.

She needed me.

And now I need her.

I hover in front of her door, rooted by indecision. On one hand, Lexa just died. It’s not like I’m asking her to marry me—I just want to talk. To spend time with her. We’re friends. On the other hand, the world is probably going to end in another month. There aren’t going to be many more somedays. I pull my hand back to knock, but then I hear footsteps.

My heart leaps into my throat as someone rounds the corner, but it’s just one of the guards. Probably heading home from the late shift just like me. He barely gives me a nod as he passes, his heavy steps scuffing the floor. I let out a breath. This is ridiculous. If I’m jumping like a startled school kid caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar then I know this is wrong.

I spin on my heel and force myself to walk away. Without looking back. This never happened. I won’t even think about how close I came to making a fool out of myself. I’ll go home, take a hot shower, pretend I can sleep in my soft bed, and when I get up, she’ll have breakfast with me and our friends. She’s real. She’s here. She wants to be here.

Because she has nowhere else to go.

I hate that part of my brain that doubts everything. But I can’t turn it off. It’s been right more times than I want to admit. I still hate it though.

Before I know it, I’m rounding the corner of my corridor. I stop dead in my tracks as someone almost crashes into me. I reach out instinctively to steady the person. Our breaths hitch at the exact same time.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Clarke blurts out before I can even find my voice.

I nod dumbly. She bites her lip, eyes darting around like she’s afraid to see the expression on my face. But I can’t look away. She looks awful. In a beautiful way. Her hair is dry and brittle, still braided and matted. There are dark circles under her eyes and her skin is pale. Her cheeks slightly sunken. I know I’m not much better. The stress of living on the ground—the daily struggles just to survive—and the impending apocalypse have left us exhausted. Walking dead, the both of us.

I can’t look away, though, because she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen. My heart thuds painfully against my chest, threatening to tear free. I’m pretty sure Clarke can hear it. It takes effort to keep my breathing steady.

Her eyes finally meet mine, and her cheeks have lost that pallid look as pink tints her skin. It’s adorable. “You wanna come in?”

She furrows her brow, looking from me to the door then back. Her indecision and confusion are familiar. I shoot her a small smile as I punch in my access code, flubbing it twice before getting it right. The lights come on automatically when I enter, but Clarke doesn’t follow at first.

I can’t remember ever seeing her this nervous. That’s just not Clarke. Now I’m even more curious.

“You just got off duty; you probably want to rest. I should-” she finally says.

“Clarke, you obviously came by for a reason. Might as well come in now that I’m here.”

She grimaces. “I wasn’t really thinking about it. I just sort of ended up here.”

I grin. “You don’t say.”

Confusion contorts her face, and all I can do is chuckle. I open the door wider, stepping to the side. “Come in already.”

It takes her a second, but then she’s moving. She ducks her head as she scuttles past. I take a second longer than necessary to shut a door while I get myself together. The stupid smile on my face is going to be a dead giveaway. I lick my lips and watch her. She takes in my quarters. I don’t think she’s been in here before. Hell, I’m rarely in here.

“Um-” She looks up at me, the pink deepening. “I really didn’t think about what time it was. I don’t-”

“Sleep? Yeah, neither do I. So make yourself at home.” She still doesn’t move so I take her by the shoulders and force her to sit on the bed, and fuck if that doesn’t turn me on more than anything she’s ever done. Clarke Griffin is in my room on my bed. I’m done.

She fiddles with a tear in her pants, not looking at me. I hate that things have been so awkward between us. I wish we could go back. I’d even settle for way back when we were constantly at each other’s throats because at least we could look at each other without all of the regret and guilt. Now is not the time to be dwelling on that because I’m sure the smallest thing is going to make her bolt like a frightened rabbit.

I grab a bottle of water from a crate in the corner. “I’m gonna take a quick shower-” She starts to get up, but I gently press her back down. “I’ll be like fifteen minutes.” She takes the water but just turns the bottle around and around in her hands.

I watch her for a second until I’m sure she’s not just going to leave then I take the quickest shower in my life. My hair is still dripping into my eyes and my clothes are sticking to my wet skin when I leave the bathroom, terrified she’ll be gone. But she’s not. She’s stretched across my bed, a book covering her chest.

I try not to smile because Clarke sleeping has to be the cutest thing I’ve seen since Octavia was a baby. She snorts then absently rubs at her nose, face all scrunched. She must have been tired. I’m not really sure what to do now. Clarke’s taking up most of the bed. The floor doesn’t look very appealing, but there’s a certain lack of furniture in my quarters.

The whole predicament strikes me as humorous. After everything we’ve been through—the near-death, the fighting, and starving—how many times were we camped out next to each other or crashed wherever there was space? We’ve been through so much. Standing here like an idiot is stupid. Clarke came here because she wanted to be here. With me.

I keep telling myself that as I gently lift the book from her limp fingers, setting it on the table. I pull the blanket from the foot of the bed then slide in next to her. After a second she scoots over. I’m not sure she’s even awake until she grunts.

“You’re a bed-hog,” she mumbles.

“Me?” I can barely contain my laughter. “I’ve got like five inches over here.”

She squirms away until I can fit almost half of my body next to her. “These beds were not designed for two.” She giggles, sending a surge of warmth through my whole body.

The only way we’ll fit is if I tuck my arm under her head, but that seems to work for her. She scrunches up next to me, arm across my chest, her head cushioned by my shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And fuck, it feels natural. Like this is the way it should have always been. Like I can’t imagine sleeping any other way.

Clarke lets out a little sigh. “Read to me.”

“What?”

“The book. It looks interesting, but I’m too tired to read. I can’t even see straight.”

I pull the book over, flipping it to the last page I dog-eared and start reading. Only a few minutes pass before my tongue feels like lead and my throat starts to close up. I nearly drop the book when a yawn hits me. Clarke is sound asleep, though, her soft snores tickling my skin. I’m still kind of in awe about the whole thing—she’s really here. After everything that happened, I wasn’t sure she’d ever be a permanent part of my life again, but here she is. In my bed. Whatever the fuck that means. All I know is that I want this every night for the rest of our short lives. I slide my hand down her head, over her hair. She hums at the touch which sends all sorts of tingles through my body.

Clarke squeezes closer to me, burying her face further into my neck. I think she’s doing it on purpose because she’s driving me nuts. I set the book on the table then dim the lights before sliding further under the covers. I pull her closer when she starts to move away.

“Bellamy,” she says softly, voice groggy.

“Hm?”

“Is this okay? Me here?”

What does she want me to say? That I’ve been dreaming about this very thing for the last six months? Probably not. I work at keeping my breathing steady. “Yeah, it’s fine. It’s not like I needed a full bed to sleep on anyway.”

She slaps my chest. I hold her hand over my heart that is thudding so loudly I think they could hear it back up in space. “Yeah, this is okay.” More than okay, I want to tell her, but maybe it’s best to go slow. Rushing into things tends to get us both hurt. I’ve learned at least that much on the ground. “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

She yawns. “It can wait.”

I smile. “You wanna know the truth, Clarke?” I feel her nod. “I was on my way back from your place when we ran into each other. I don’t know how I got there. I was going home, but ended up there instead.”

“How come?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

“You don’t seem to be having any problems right now.”

Clarke shrugs. “I guess not. How about you?”

I look down at her little, upturned nose—the way her lashes flutter as her eyes move under the lids—and the soft roundness of her lips as she puffs out air. “If you stay here, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble sleeping.”

I hear her laugh, but she snuggles in closer. The tension falls from my shoulders. The world has been trying to kill us since we set foot on it, but if it’s my time to go right now, I’m good as long as Clarke is by my side. I press a kiss to the top of her head as she returns to snoring. I listen to the sound of her breathing, feeling the rise and fall of her chest against my own until the darkness swells up and everything else fades away. It’s just me and her and that’s all I ever need.

orignally posted at my blog on 1.29.17

#fanfic #the 100 fanfic #bellarke fanfiction #bellamy/clarke #angst #awkwardness #frienship

2 notes · View notes

trulisthetic · 6 years

Text

Note to Self (to read when I’m down)

So, which is it gonna be, self? Ugh, damn it, I always love the episodes and all this negativity online ruins them for me 😅😅😅 Gotta work on being so easily affected!

Anyhow, now that this half season has officially ended, I decided to white this ‘little’ positive note to myself to cheer me up. If you want to read it too, you’re more than welcome!

Warning: This is just what I would personally want somebody that could read my mind to tell me, you might not agree with some things I say and that’s totally fine. Peace.

Okay, self.

So you cope with the Jaggie situation just fine on normal days, that’s a fact right? You absolutely hate it, of course you do. Who ruins Japril for a couple with zero chemistry who popped up out of nowhere? Who turns Maggie into a black version of April simply so she can match Jackson when she was such a strong, brilliant character before? Of course you cannon believe this is actually happening to you favorite couple, the ones who helped you pull through your favorite person’s passing last year, your big exams, your parents’ stupid fights. They were your home, and now they’re getting ruined and you are incredibly mad and sad and devastated over that. But they still remain your OTP, they are still very much alive in your heart and your mind in the fanfiction world, and sometimes that’s just enough for you. Sometimes it’s not, and you wish with all that you have in you that this is just a phase and they will eventually fall back together after they take some time to miss and appreciate each other. But in general, you are copying. You have accepted that Jaggie is happening. You wish it would just happen already and yet you get goosebumps at the single thought of them kissing, but you have learned to live with it.

So why is it that you get depressed every Friday?

You watch the episodes. And the awesome thing is that even though last year you were so boooooooored because there were almost no Japril scenes and the show without them was just MEH, this year you find yourself squealing in excitement at the single sight of the Seattle shots at the beginning. Does that mean you are falling back in love with Grey’s Anatomy as a whole? Probably. It’s taken a 180 degree turn from last year to your eyes, and it’s somehow exciting again. You’re not just watching for Japril anymore, admit it. Because there is not Japril, and still here you are. You laugh out loud with the new interns, you live for those hilarious lines of Bailey’s, you really loved what they did with the Nathan/Megan storyline and you actually teared up at that last scene with the beach and the sunset. You come to like Meredith again -remember those times she was your favorite character back in the early seasons and you only breathed for MerDer? It’s a nostalgic feeling that comes over you when you think about how different your life was back then when you began watching. But back to the point, the show is so interesting to you again and that thrills you to no end. You had to pause the episode for five whole minutes to calm your breathing when Jo’s husband popped up a mere hour ago! You freaking love season 14 girl. Stop denying because you’re probably the only one. And don’t feel guilty for it, for god’s sake.

Then again, you get what everyone has been saying about April not having a stoyline, which is really sad come think of it. And Sarah Drew is such a precious human and such an incredible actress and she is REAL and she deserves better than to play a side-character. Yet she seems pretty happy at all those selfies and it looks like she’s having a blast with Kelly, but for sure that might as well be just for show. You don’t know what’s going on behind the camera’s, only they do. What you know, however, is that she clearly loves acting and feels blessed for being on Grey’s Anatomy, so who are you to decide if she should move on or not? She is a strong woman, more than perfectly capable to make that decision for herself, and you know that she could book herself a hundred movies in a split second with that talent and dedication of hers. If she feels like she is being wasted, wouldn’t she pack her things and go? And yet there she goes in every opportunity given, expressing how grateful she is for being part of something as big as Grey’s, how she loves the show and the people she works with and how she feels so lucky that she is able to provide for her family doing something that she loves. Why would she fake that, Truli? Of all the interview for the 300th, how many actors showed such genuine gratitude? She is happy working on Grey’s. And that secretly gives you such relief it almost hurts, because it means April is here to stay, and you couldn’t be happier about that.

Still, would you want April to have more scenes? DAMN RIGHT YOU WOULD. You miss your girl so much, you miss her being in things, having a story of her own. But then again that’s how you feel every season. No matter how much screen time she gets, it’s obviously never enough cause you only get one episode a week and barely two minutes of April! However, the truth is that the few scenes she has gotten so far this season you have found brilliant. Starting at the only Japril scene of the season, you were amazed by how much she has truly grown, how well she handled the situation with maturity and openness and honesty. You are so proud of your girl. And then she has been interacting with so many people this season, including Owen and Arizona and Alex and Meredith and Maggie and Bailey and Richard and Amelia and the interns and that just makes you so happy because for so long she seemed like she had no people to turn to, while now she has a whole village. And that cafeteria scene at the Amelia/tumor episode was you undoing, just like good old times! Then when she was shot -Holy crap! She had dodged it for eight seasons! :P And when she prayed for Amelia even though they weren’t that close, and then thanked God, with her baby girl in her arms. Ugh, the feels! So April <3 And then that flash-mob mention... how she stammered “that’s not the point” was just plain B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T. Oh, and this last episode you know she got all the good stuff. That “awkwaaaard” line was so well delivered you were laughing for an hour, and the “Stone age” and newspaper parts just killed you. And despite many, you loved how she took a couple of episodes to adjust to the new normal back when she first moved out, to find her way again, to be a bit sad. It was so April. And for fuck’s sake, being emotional doesn’t make you weak. On the contrary, it makes you freaking human. Being able to experience emotions strongly is not a flaw, it’s a gift. It shows mental maturity, and if anything overcoming stuff is making the person go through an entire emotional roller coaster, which in the long run helps them grow and makes them come out stronger and wiser. Let people have emotions.

But you also wish your boy had more screen time, with scenes you could actually watch. Because now most of them are with Maggie, who you can’t say you ever really liked but you just can’t stand her now, and you know that’s not fair to the character but it was inevitable. And you try. You try not to hate on her, you try to be nice because that’s what you were taught. To only spread love, not hate, to see the positive side of things. You credit your grandma for that, too. But man, it’s so damn harddd! And you sure as hell love Kelly and you feel so sorry and mad that they did this to her and her character, because she deserves better than to be hated by en entire fandom. Nobody deserves that, nobody. Remember back when April had a crush on Derek and EVERY SINGLE MERDER FAN hated on Sarah with all their might? How does that make you feel? Hm. Infuriated, mostly. With a very strong urge to run up to your girl and hide her in your arms and protect her from this cruel fandom who thinks it’s okay to hate on real, actual people with real, actual feelings just because someone decided the fictional character they get paid to portray should have a little, fictional crush on another fictional character. That is not okay. And it makes you wonder what kind of shallow, superficial and immature people still go on with it.

Jackson is also getting a lot of hate, and you absolutely hate that. Because despite many other’s that are absolutely in love with April like you are, you are just as absolutely in love with Jackson as well. You have two favorite characters. Jackson and April. Those names are linked together, and you can’t imagine one of them without the other. And just like you hated when April got all that hate back in 12a, you hate how Jackson is getting it now. Do you think he’s different? Yes. He’s definitely less warm and emotional than he used to be. And he’s acting a bit recklessly and immaturely lately, spending money, making rushed decisions... Do you think that makes him an asshole? No. No, you don’t. Because you recognize people have flaws, you recognize people have their moments of immaturity and that they sometimes make mistakes. That only makes them h u m a n. And this short of stuff happen in real life. Sometimes we look at someone and can’t recognize them. It sure has happened to me a couple of times, and I have been the unrecognizable one a couple of others. It’s just how life is sometimes. But Jackson, truly, has done nothing wrong. Not being with April doesn’t make him an asshole. Being with April and thinking about someone else does, and not once has he come close to doing that. He made his stance clear from day one, he didn’t stop April from moving out because he felt like they could never work, or because the idea of Maggie was planted to his head, or for whatever other reason. That doesn’t make him an asshole, not to your eyes at least. That simply makes him honest when it comes to his intentions, and it protected April from getting further hurt as well. Hating his grandpa doesn’t make him an asshole to you, the man was unbelievable! He viewed him as a five-year-old child, ignored his authority, disrespected his choices for his own life and career, compared him to his father -which he KNEW was a soft spot for him and his worst ever nightmare- and was overall an absolute asshole. You hated him too, more than words can express, and you cried in joy when he complained himself to death, don’t deny it!

And also, being interested in someone new, as much as you despise it, doesn’t make Jackson an asshole to you. He is single. April is single. April is obviously already back on tinder and “so ready to be dating”, and you don’t see how Jackson is faulted for wanting the same thing. If anything, you wanted him to start something knew, just for the sake of realizing how there was nobody that could make him feel the way April did, that affected him and made him a better person like she used to. On the other hand the last thing you wanted was for him to be in a relationship with someone he looked good with, so the lack of chemistry between Jesse and Kelly is a gift from heaven to your eyes. Do you like the fact that they’re step-siblings? No, you fucking hate it. Do you think it’s a deal breaker. Ugh, that’s another no. First of all because they didn’t grow up as siblings, and have only gotten relatively closer since her mom died a few months ago. You could have seen them as siblings, but that bond was never really explored -whereas even though Owen and April are not related, their relationship was evolved in such a sibling-like way through the years that you practically view him as her older brother. And besides, you’d be a fucking hypocrite if you said that the fact that their parents got married is a deal breaker for you, since you know that that fact didn’t stop you from having as your first ever OTP a pair of 17-year-old step-siblings (who actually lived under the same roof for at least three years) and you almost cheered yourself to death when they got married at the end of the series. Yes, you know I’m talking about the Greek comic series “Ευτυχισμένοι Μαζί” (Eytyxismenoi Mazi/Together Forever) you freaking dumbass, don’t play innocent on me. You loved that show growing up, and you loved Markos and Eva together, step-siblings aside. And you found their parents’ reactions when they found out absolutely hilarious. You will not find Catherine and Richard’s reactions hilarious, however, no matter which they are, since you don’t find the entire storyline okay at all. Still, you are hoping with all that you have in you that the embarrassingly obvious luck of chemistry between the actors, along with the fact that practically every Grey’s Anatomy fan not only doesn’t ship them but hates them together, will result in the eventual dropping of this ridiculous storyline, which would NEVER have happened, by the way, after what happened in Montana. If Montana had never happened you might be better at believing it, but after Montana you just find it plain ridiculous.

Overall, you don’t think Jackson is an asshole. He is your boy. He is your baby. you love him more than words can say. And so if he wants to try and buy himself happiness, you are happy to watch him. You’d buy all shorts of useless crap if you had money too, and a yacht... man, hell yes! Although the first thing you’d do is buy a farm, we all know that. And if he wants to explore his options in the romantic department, why the hell not? It kills you inside, of course it fucking does! , but he is not with April, he is trying to move on and be happy, and if your baby finds that again, you will be happy too. All you want them is to be together, but if they can both be happy apart, then you can live with that. You can live with them cherishing their time together and simply being friends raising a baby -if we ever get to see a scene with them again. Grrr!- as long as they are happy. After all, you have your perfect version of Japril all shaped in your head where they got back together after Montana and are living happily ever after, in a house with hardwood floors, a washing machine and one of those milk-frothier things, with their little miracle of a beautiful daughter and a puppy. Because, come on, what’s a family without a dog?

You hate the canon Japril/Jaggie storyline right now. You hate it, yet you have learned to accept it. Or rather, to ignore it’s happening. You watch the episodes and really enjoy them, and then when a Jaggie scene happens you just watch it as an average viewer and roll your eyes and even chuckle at how somebody ever believed they could pass this as something actually ship-able. You laugh. You roll your eyes. You cope.

And then you go online, and you fall apart. You watch all these posts and rambles about how horrible the show is and how everyone is to be hated, and how the actors and us the loyal Japril shippers deserve better (which is the one part you partly agree with), and all these do is depress you and make feel guilty, guilty! , for falling back in love with the show that has been your home even since you were thirteen. And why should you feel like that, Truli? Nobody is asking you to apologize for liking the show. Nobody. But even if they were, why the fuck would you even pay attention to them? You don’t have to apologize for still liking the show, as everyone else doesn’t have to apologize for not liking it, and it’s terribly wrong of you to blame them if reading about it makes you feel bad.

People have the right to have their own opinions. People have the right to express them. If someone hates the show, they are free to say it out loud. And if someone loves it, they are free to express that too. Nobody has to apologize to anyone about the way they see things. But we all have to respect that our opinions might differ. That we are individuals with different characters, different upbringings, different beliefs, we are different people that have different views and nothing in the world will change that or ever should.

So I see two options for you, Truli. One is you can just give up on tumblr. If it’s screwing you up, if it keeps making you depressed, it’s not worth it, girl. You can’t ruin your life and your happiness over some fictional show. It’s not even that important. You know what’s important? Whether you will pass your driving exams this Monday. Whether your parents will make up or get a divorce instead. Whether you will study again to try to get into vet school or become a community doctor instead. Whether you will get your dog fixed or breed her. When you’re going to have another sleepover with you cousins. If you’re going to get that rabbit you want or not. Those are the important things you should be worrying about, not the storyline of a fictional show you can’t control anyway. And since you can recognize all that by simply watching the show but forget all about them the second you visit tumblr, maybe you should just give up on it and only deal with the show once a week when new episodes come out and whenever you feel like writing a fanfic about Japril.

The other option I see for you is that you grow the fuck up and realize the majority of the fandom feels only horrible about what is happening and won’t stop or should stop expressing it. You can accept that and learn how to not let it affect you. It can be easy if you just freaking try instead of complain about how negative everything is to yourself all the time. You can make an effort. You can do it, if only you try.

So, which is it gonna be, self? If you chose to go with the first option, that’s fine. It’s the healthier one, if anything. If you chose to go with the second one, that’s also fine - it requires some extra self-control but I think you can pull it off, and it will make you happier in the long run.

This is a choice you will have to make every time you get put down. Every time you feel like quitting the show and Japril, because you know that this isn’t what you really want. Every time you lose hope. Every time those happen you will come back to this post and read it -the WHOLE THING, no cheating, smartass- and you will be called to make this decision again.

And every time you choose to stay, is a time you will come out of this stronger.

3 notes · View notes

cometsweepandleonidsfly · 5 years

Link

Great article. Well worth reading in full, not just the excerpt below:

“That tension between internal stories and desires, psychology and external pressures, institutions, norms and events was exactly what Game of Thrones showed us for many of its characters, creating rich tapestries of psychology but also behavior that was neither saintly nor fully evil at any one point. It was something more than that: you could understand why even the characters undertaking evil acts were doing what they did, how their good intentions got subverted, and how incentives structured behavior. The complexity made it much richer than a simplistic morality tale, where unadulterated good fights with evil.

The hallmark of sociological storytelling is if it can encourage us to put ourselves in the place of any character, not just the main hero/heroine, and imagine ourselves making similar choices. “Yeah, I can see myself doing that under such circumstances” is a way into a broader, deeper understanding. It’s not just empathy: we of course empathize with victims and good people, not with evildoers.

But if we can better understand how and why characters make their choices, we can also think about how to structure our world that encourages better choices for everyone. The alternative is an often futile appeal to the better angels of our nature. It’s not that they don’t exist, but they exist along with baser and lesser motives. The question isn’t to identify the few angels but to make it easier for everyone to make the choices that, collectively, would lead us all to a better place.

Another example of sociological TV drama with a similarly enthusiastic fan following is David Simon’s The Wire, which followed the trajectory of a variety of actors in Baltimore, ranging from African-Americans in the impoverished and neglected inner city trying to survive, to police officers to journalists to unionized dock workers to city officials and teachers. That show, too, killed off its main characters regularly, without losing its audience. Interestingly, the star of each season was an institution more than a person. The second season, for example, focused on the demise of the unionized working class in the U.S.; the fourth highlighted schools; and the final season focused on the role of journalism and mass media.

Luckily for The Wire, creative control never shifted to the standard Hollywood narrative writers who would have given us individuals to root for or hate without being able to fully understand the circumstances that shape them. One thing that’s striking about The Wire is how one could understand all the characters, not just the good ones (and in fact, none of them were just good or bad). When that’s the case, you know you’re watching a sociological story.

Tellingly, season eight shocked many viewers by … not initially killing off the main characters. It was the first big indicator of their shift—that they were putting the weight of the story on the individual and abandoning the sociological. In that vein, they had fan-favorite characters pull off stunts we could root and cheer for, like Arya Stark killing the Night King in a somewhat improbable fashion.

For seven seasons, the show had focused on the sociology of what an external, otherized threat—such as the Night King, the Army of the Undead and the Winter to Come—would do to competing rivalries within the opposing camp. Having killed one of the main sociological tensions that had animated the whole series with one well-placed knife-stab, Benioff and Weiss then turned to ruining the other sociological tension: the story of the corruption of power.

This corruption of power was crucially illustrated in Cersei Lannister’s rise and evolution from victim (if a selfish one) to evil actor, and this was clearly meant also to be the story of her main challenger, Daenerys Targaryen. Dany had started out wanting to be the breaker of chains, with moral choices weighing heavily on her, and season by season, we have witnessed her, however reluctantly, being shaped by the tools that were available to her and that she embraced: war, dragons, fire.

Done right, it would have been a fascinating and dynamic story: rivals transforming into each other as they seek absolute power with murderous tools, one starting from a selfish perspective (her desire to have her children rule) and the other from an altruistic one (her desire to free slaves and captive people, of which she was once one).

The corruption of power is one of the most important psychosocial dynamics behind many important turning points in history, and in how the ills of society arise. In response, we have created elections, checks and balances, and laws and mechanisms that constrain the executive.

Destructive historical figures often believe that they must stay in power because it is they, and only they, who can lead the people—and that any alternative would be calamitous. Leaders tend to get isolated, become surrounded by sycophants and succumb easily to the human tendency to self-rationalize. There are several examples in history of a leader who starts in opposition with the best of intentions, like Dany, and ends up acting brutally and turning into a tyrant if they take power.

Told sociologically, Dany’s descent into a cruel mass-murderer would have been a strong and riveting story. Yet in the hands of two writers who do not understand how to advance the narrative in that lane, it became ridiculous. She attacks King’s Landing with Drogon, her dragon, and wins, with the bells of the city ringing in surrender. Then, suddenly, she goes on a rampage because, somehow, her tyrannical genes turn on.

Varys, the advisor who will die for trying to stop Dany, says to Tyrion that “every time a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.” That is straight-up and simplistic genetic determinism, rather than what we had been witnessing for the past seven seasons. Again, sociological stories don’t discount the personal, psychological and even the genetic, but the key point is that they are more than “coin tosses”—they are complex interactions with emergent consequences: the way the world actually works.

In interviews after that episode, Benioff and Weiss confess that they turned it into a spontaneous moment. Weiss says, “ I don’t think she decided ahead of time that she was going to do what she did. And then she sees the Red Keep, which is, to her, the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago. It’s in that moment, on the walls of King’s Landing, when she’s looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, when she makes the decision to make this personal.”

Benioff and Weiss were almost certainly given the “Mad Queen” ending to Game of Thrones by the original writer, George R. R. Martin. For them, however, this was the eating-ice-cream-with-a-fork problem I mentioned above. They could keep the story, but not the storytelling method. They could only make it into a momentary turn that is part spontaneous psychology and part deterministic genetics.

...

The preference for the individual and psychological narrative is understandable: the story is easier to tell as we gravitate toward identifying with the hero or hating the antihero, at the personal level. We are, after all, also persons!

In German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s classic play, Life of Galileo,Andrea, a former pupil of Galileo, visits him after he recants his seminal findings under pressure from the Catholic Church. Galileo gives Andrea his notebooks, asking him to spread the knowledge they contain. Andrea celebrates this, saying “unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.” Galileo corrects him: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”

Well-run societies don’t need heroes, and the way to keep terrible impulses in check isn’t to dethrone antiheros and replace them with good people. Unfortunately, most of our storytelling—in fiction and also in mass media nonfiction—remains stuck in the hero/antihero narrative. It’s a pity Game of Thrones did not manage to conclude its last season in its original vein. In a historic moment that requires a lot of institution building and incentive changing (technological challenges, climate change, inequality and accountability) we need all the sociological imagination we can get, and fantasy dragons or not, it was nice to have a show that encouraged just that while it lasted.”

...

#THIS #game of thrones #got #got8 #spoilers #and yes while I enjoyed the 'deus ex arya' because i like the character it undercut the series theme/1 #the theme that everyone needs to stop their petty scheming over the Iron Throne and work together to defeat the existential threat of Death #it sounds like they will do that re the other existential threat of the *suddenly* mad queen who had a genetic snap #but abandoning that storytelling theme re the Night King/White Walkers made that entire 8 year plot feel worthless & ridiculous

0 notes

rockinrpmemes · 7 years

Text

Faerie Tale Theatre [Pt. 3] meme

{ ➤ Change pronouns and adjust to fit your muse! }

Beauty and the Beast

“False hope is not fair.”

“You steal my rose, the one I love the most. You could have taken anything but the rose!”

“Do not look into my eyes like that... “

“_______, would you mind if I watch you while you dine?”

“I’m not used to be served, but I see that you’ve done everything possible to help me forget the way you look.”

“There are men much more monstrous than you, but they hide it.”

“I will die of grief and loneliness if you never come back.”

“Everything I possess is yours, even the slightest whim, you shall have it.”

“What have you done? Your body is stained with blood!”

“My, my, my, getting quite fashionable aren’t we? Dressing up like a little princess!”

“His eyes, they’re so sad... he’s much more cruel to himself than the world.”

“A poor animal that has lost his love can only crawl away and die.”

“Love can make a man a beast, and love can also make an ugly man: beautiful.”

The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers

“You never had any sense when it comes to bad luck!”

“When I was a boy all I wanted to do was look at naked Greek statues...”

“Once he gets an idea in his head, there’s not a whole lot in there to distract him.”

“I thought I’d go to the haunted castle and try my luck, because I have this problem: I don’t seem to be afraid of anything.”

“No one that has gone into that castle has come out alive.”

“Would you like some food? We don’t want you dying on an empty stomach.”

"Do you ever feel bad because people think you’re different?”

“You’re going in there to prove something to yourself, that’s why you’ve lasted 2 nights.”

“No doubt you consider yourself valiant, courageous, heroic, and a worthy opponent; but you are wrong. So very very wrong.”

“You seek fear? I will give you more fear than you have ever known!”

“I’m scared! I’m scared! I’m terrified, ugggh I don’t like this!”

The Three Little Pigs

“Oboes aren’t loud, they’re expressive.”

“Unbelievable. I gotta get a pig for ______ They’re animals. They chew up the furniture.”

“I want to build a house that is fast, cheap, and with very little effort!”

“Tell me, Bacon Bits, where've you been all my life?”

“I’m building a nice wood house, something the ladies *would* love, and ladies love *wood.*”

“You ain’t nothing but garbage.”

“What is there a sausage convention or something?”

“Good. A coward. I like that in a man.”

“Listen, if I found out you’re lying, I’m gonna come back here and chew on your face.”

“Ever had your face chewed on by a wolf? It’s no joyride.”

“Hot pink lipstick for hot pink lips... oh you lucky mirror, you.”

“A lady of my, how shall I say---breeding---demands respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”

“I love the sound of an oboe. It’s so haunting, it just makes my bristles stand on end.”

“I’ll never bring home the bacon... “

The Snow Queen

“I’d never be mean to you, you are my best friend.”

“There’s more to the changing of the seasons than the games you can play.”

“Spring is like an alarm clock that wakes everything up, to start the business of growing things all over again.”

“If you believe in something strong enough it will happen one way or another.”

“Snowflakes are perfect! Roses are smelly and full of bugs!”

“I talk to everything, especially roses. I think anything less would be rude.”

“She meant no harm, she only wanted a child.”

“It is my function, my duty to marshal the forces of winter.”

“There is great danger in trying to be something you’re not.”

“I’m not one of your flowers, I am a human being!”

“If you run with the wolves like me, you gotta be quick as a cricket and brave as a bear!”

“What’s the point of being best friends if you’re only faithful when its easy?”

“It’s simple, it is a test. And like all tests, it will show you something about yourself.”

“Cold be hot and friends be kind, when love unites the heart and mind.”

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

“But I’m on holiday! What’s the point of being on holiday if you can’t stay up?”

“The innocence of children has less to do with the purity of their hearts but the weakness of their whims!”

“Since the alchemist did not pan out, the rats have had the upper hand.”

“Consider me yet another factor in mankind’s never ending vermin war.”

“The time may come when I wear out my current welcome.”

“You have my word I'll remember what I heard and give you my protection.”

“Dreams though potent, are no solution to the problems we face.”

“Oh no, not another necromancer!!”

“Your reservation is not unjust.”

“My powers have yet to fail a test.”

“Wide is my fame, famed is my role.”

“By the time the sun has changed to shade, you'll wish you all were never born!”

“You don’t think he’ll return with some fresh new vermin?”

“The music stopped, and I stood still.”

“Their fathers and mothers had risen out of some subterranean prison.”

“If we promise them_____ let us keep our promise.”

Cinderella

“I don’t mean to be rude, but isn’t this arrangement a little bit lopsided?”

“I will be in charge of being in charge.”

“I try to be kind and forgiving, but the nicer I am the worse you treat me.”

“In order to balance the scales of nature, which have been have been unfairly tipped in you favor, it’s only fair we treat you like dirt.”

“Would you like something to drink? Perhaps some ham?”

“Honey, I'm your fairy godmother. Didn't you see me ‘poof’ next to you?”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and if you do, just don’t!”

“I get tired of being recognized all the time.”

“It's hard to stay anonymous when your face is on all the money.”

“She/He was the most wonderful creature that ever walked the face of the earth.”

“Do you know anything about kissing?”

“I'm hopelessly in love and now I'll never see him again.”

“I wish there'd never been any magic, and I wish you had never come here... Because then I would never have known what I was missing.”

“What's reality, does anybody know?”

Puss n’ Boots

“You’re only saying that to prevent me from killing you, which I will DO! Once I quit brooding... “

“I’m looking for a boot that is light as air, makes no sound, leaves no tracks.”

“Before hard times and the ogre, I used to get such lovely presents.”

“Are you a cat gone high hat, or are you too big for your boots?”

“You can’t tell a scroll by its ribbon.”

“We’ve never had prince to dinner. We’ve never had a guest to dinner. Often times there is no dinner!”

“Are you suggesting I tell my master you offered him seconds on sow?”

“I would not want man to not be TOO perfect, for that is bad form.”

“It’s ALL part of the plan.”

“Whatever should befall you next few minutes deal with it strength, charm, good humor and sobriety.”

“Do you like to eat ice-cream and lick the plate when you’re finished?”

“I eat spiders, and dogs and children, and armies and.... cats. Without prejudice.”

“Everything angers me, it’s hard life hating.”

“Anything I see I hate, which is why I eat it, in order to get it out of my sight.”

#Meme #My Meme #Faerie Tale Theatre #Fairy Tale Theater #Movies and Series #Part 3 of 4 #lists

133 notes · View notes

my-hydeaway · 7 years

Text

Our Childhood

The best times of my life, let me share them with you. Approx 2k words

Remember the time you stood in a row of students and there was this boy beside you who could not stop crying? First day in kindergarten school and you were being looked up to as many by the brave and ambitious one, other parents in total envy of how their child is not as confident as you are while your parents stood meters away from the line of children and gave the proudest smile. Back to the crying boy beside you. His name was Minho. You never noticed it back then but he has the cutest round cheeks in the history of round cheeks. Up till today, he has not noticed how you managed to make a copy of his Polaroid childhood photo and keep it hidden in your wallet to be taken out at any time of the day for an adoring session. "Hey there! Don't cry!" You whispered to Minho, trying not to get caught by the harmless teacher.

"I wanna go home!" Minho continued to sob gently, eyes swollen and nose soggy with liquid.

"But we can play together soon!" Convincing him in the most sincere of ways, somehow he managed to calm down at the moment the word 'play' was said.

And that was probably the only thing you ever bragged about to Minho even after decades have passed, you wanted him to never forget how you took care of him on the first day of school, a complete stranger to you. He would always give the same shrug and warned you to never do that to a grown man crying on the street unless it happened to be himself. One of your favourite songs till date is the melodic harmony of xylophones and piano keys that gently carried the notes of the legendary Canon in D floating throughout the entire school. This meant that it was break time and before you knew it, Minho and you were out in the playground having a blast in the sandpit. He promised to built you a sandcastle, but wrestled so much with the idea he could barely get a bucket of sand to stand. Never did he knew, twenty years down the road he would have been trapped under the sand itself and embarrassed by his four buddies and childhood friend that he had to slur a cocktail mixture of vulgarities to be released from his sand prison. The years of classes involving nap time, break time and shower time soon passed as quickly as the seasons changed. The friendship between Minho and you remained concrete strong and the both of you made a pact to get into the same primary school by telepathy and dancing around a plate of animal crackers. The both of you continued this ritual every single time when it was required to choose a new school and it would always work. It was after much confrontation with your mother years later that you found out how your parents worked closely with Minho's parents to try and get the both of you into similar schools. You have stopped touching animal crackers completely ever since that hideous truth was revealed. Primary school was a lot more crazy and fun. Minho would come over to your place after school ends and the both of you would binge watch cartoon series and snack on chocolate waffles. It was also the time where Minho seemed to put on most of his weight. If you thought you had seen the chubbiest of his cheeks during kindergarten, the sight of how he managed to stuff thirty Maltesers into his mouth and the heavenly sound of biting and crunching into it all at once, chubbiest would be too mild of a word to call his cheeks by. There was this time another male student snatched your toy Pokemon and you were almost brimming with tears. No fear because Minho came to your rescue as he chased the toy thief around the playground as you watched Minho slowly ran out of speed as well as breath. Of course your toy Pokemon was returned to you unscathed but it seemed like a part of Minho's soul left his body as he laid on the floor panting crazily. "R-running.. is not my best forte.." He huffed and puffed, almost ready to blow the straw house down. "I can see that! But thanks for trying." You chuckled at his cheeks as you watched them jiggle when he exhaled deeply before extending a hand to help him out and brushing off the dirt that got onto the back of his uniform. You loved all of these innocent and child-like times. But what you loved even more, was when puberty began to hit Minho. For you, puberty hit way earlier than it did for Minho. Horrifying him at the way you squeeze the pus out of your inflamed pimples until there was a time where he refused to step into your house. When puberty finally dawned upon Minho, it hit him like a truck. "Why do you keep staring at me recently?" Minho asked nonchalantly as he balances his pen on his Cupid's bow, puckering his lips together while figuring out a way to solve his algebraic homework. "Do I do that?" You hid your tone, answering with absolutely nonchalance as well while you eyed at his broad shoulders. "Speaking of which, did you lose weight?" You sat up from his bed and closed the algebra book in front of you. It took you long enough to realise how his jawline emerged under all the baby fat that claimed the throne on his cheeks, broad shoulders that spanned out almost like the wings of a plane and the deep voice that dripped with honey each time he hummed his favourite song. It was no wonder you felt the deathly stares of other female species as you walk down the market with Minho, munching on spiral potatoes and chocolate sundaes. "Are you saying I'm fat?" Minho quickly turned around from his spinning chair and glared into your eyes. Things were just going so great in life. Not till his high school sweetheart crushed his heart into a million pieces and walked away without even looking back. Minho would always come to you and shared about all the romantic events he planned for her. On Valentine's Day, he stuffed petals of different kinds of flowers that belonged to the nearby garden into a transparent balloon and filled it up with helium. The way the petals did a little jump with every stride he took along with the floating balloon that glided through the air was absolutely stunning and you knew that she was one lucky girl. Sadly, she could not hold his hand for long and eventually decided to trample on his fragile heart. It was such a bad month for you because he hardly turned up for school. You had no one to walk with to school and no one to entertain your boredom doodle attacks during integration class. It got so bad that Minho did not even want to see anyone when you visited with some friends. It left you with your one last resort, one that could potentially break your legs if it went horribly wrong. It would be all worth it to make your best bud smile again. You climbed up the pipeline to his windowsill and tapped furiously on the window almost pleading to be saved from the jarring height. Because of this incident, Minho would always snicker whenever you stood near any kinds of window. Which is great, surely, because now there's at least two things you hate in the world so much - animal crackers and windows. After going through a dozen comfort movies, three tubs of ice-cream and two boxes of tissue paper, Minho returned to school the next day and normalcy was restored. Most first love almost never work out anyway and Minho recovered from his slowly but surely. Years of chasing dreams and painful rejections, the cruel world that seemed nothing like how you viewed it when you were in kindergarten. In fact, it made you wonder if the other children were crying over how the future will come too soon. In fact, it made you feel small and childish to be someone that brave. You were struggling through first year of university while Minho continued to chase his dreams. "You should have come to university with me." You pouted as you walked straight into the dormitory without even looking at Minho who stood at the door to welcome you in. "But I like it here." Minho was glowing, although he looked exhausted from all the training, he was in total glee and happy to see you after a whole month of confinement. "But learning is not the same without you anymore." Making your way to the fridge, you were so familiar with the house that wasn't yours, you could probably find the pots and pans with blindfolds on. "Ah come on, you're smart. I'll only be there to distract you." Minho dragged his feet, following you from behind, carefully examining your body to see if you have lost weight from the intense medical school. "Maybe we should have danced around the animal crackers." As if the can of beer you opened was not bitter enough, the thought of animal crackers made you cringe even more. "You? Trainee at YG? You've got to me kidding me!" The man wearing a black beanie matched with the largest rimmed spectacles teased you. It was getting incredibly difficult to spend time with Minho now. You had to go to school and had assignments almost every single day. On the other hand, Minho had to practice and train everyday in the company that he rarely saw the sun just as much as he used to when he was younger and more carefree. But I guess that's what being responsible adults are, even still, there are times where you would want to close all your books and head down with ice-cream and donuts to find Minho's great companion. "Just come down for a second, it'll only take a second I promise!" Minho pleaded through the phone, something that you cannot resist. "Okay okay, just for a bit alright, I have an assignment due tomorrow." You replied, finally feeling some excitement in your life after such a long time. Excitement turned to astonishment followed by a feeling that you have never felt in your life before. "Did you just end practice?" Hiding both your hands into the pockets of your hoodie from the late night breeze as you strutted towards Minho who waited at the empty park. Instead of replying, he whipped out a tub of ice-cream and sat you down on the park bench. The night was filled with ecstatic conversations and catching up with one another that felt all so familiar to you. It was as if time has rewind and gone back to the times where the both of you were kids again. The late night passed and the empty park was starting to show signs of life apart from the presence that Minho and you provided for the past four hours. Light slowly started to touch every part of the area, the morning dew that formed on the awaken leaves and elderly women coming out for a brisk stroll. "Oh my gosh, my assignment!" You shrieked after looking at the time on your phone before jumping up and getting ready to take off. "Before you go!" Minho stood up, got closer to your face and left a peck on your forehead. "You know that I'm always cheering for you right?" He smiled.

(to be continued..)

39 notes · View notes

tylersarchiverp · 5 years

Note

Esper has changed over the past year. As he approached Artem, she was now being called a queen or king by some, and now she was talking about attacking the Connellys? “They’re our friends!” Esper argues, his voice raising. “They protected me when you couldn’t! All they’re trying to do is make things right in the kingdoms!”

“They call you queen,” the lord commander scowled at Artem, both of them standing in his quarters.

“Aye, not of m-my own c-c-choice.” Artem rubbed a hand down her face, wishing that name hadn’t stuck. She had been happy being Artem Snow. None of this queen and king nonsense. Her father was rolling in his grave beneath Snowfall at the title, she could sense it.

“Your title isn’t recognized within Ostos. I have no interest in housing your wildlings or your--”

“They. Are. Freefolk.” She cut him off, making sure she was heard loudly and clearly. “They are u-under my c-c-command and y-you will not d-disrespect them by any other n-name.”

Picking up his stein, the man took a drink. “Look at you, growing balls because you found people as stupid as you to lead.”

Artem let the comment slide. Now was not the time to push too far. “Lord C-Commander, they c-c-can house t-themselves North of the S-Stockade until w-we march f-further. They c-can f-feed themselves f-from hunting.”

“Then I’m not in control of what our men do while they’re there.”

“You a-also d-don’t trust th-them s-south of the S-Stockade.”

“You’re smarter than you look.”

Rolling her eyes, Artem adjusted her stance, finding her legs too stiff to stay still.” I am a q-queen to t-them, but o-once I t-t-take back Sn-Snowfall, I will be Warden of the N-North.”

“If you make it that far.” The lord commander commented, going back to his paper work.

“And I w-w-will. W-With my army, the C-Connelly’s will s-submit. W-When I t-t-take it back,” Artem paused, letting it sink in. “I w-will have no pr-problem r-replacing you with s-s-someone more in l-line with my v-values.”

The man and young girl shared a silent stare for a few moments. Artem’s face remained unreadable, but only long enough for the lord commander to let out a heavy sigh.

“How many are there?”

“Th-Three thousand. W-We will be m-marching in a d-d-day or two. Long enough to r-restock and r-r-repair.” She relaxed her shoulders, knowing the worst had passed. They would be allowed through.

“Two days. That’s all you’ve got, Snow Queen.”

“I m-might hate that t-title most.” She gave a dry chuckle, nodding her head down as a sign of respect. At one time, she would’ve followed that man’s commands without thinking twice. How much time and life had changed her in such a short span.

“Snow,” he spoke up before she had a chance to move.

“Aye?” She answered, raising an eyebrow.

“Esper returned as well.”

Artem stopped cold in her tracks. Esper was here? Her eyes widened, her heart raced. Esper was alive, and he was here. “Where?”

The instant Artem saw Esper, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Not in a romantic way of how she looked at women, but the boy she saw as her brother was not the boy she remembered.

Esper wore Connelly colors. He was clean and well kept, if not more healthy than when she had him in her company. He had grown at least a foot, almost overtaking her small frame. But the smile he gave her when he finally recognized her? She could spot it from atop the Stockade.

She raced the distance between them, slamming into Esper and wrapping him up in her arms, holding him as tightly as she could. “E-Es!” The woman was nearly in tears, unable to believe he was actually there.

Her hands came up to hold his face, checking for any injuries or scars, anything that would speak to him having been harmed. As flawless as the last day she saw him.

She pressed her lips to his forehead, pulling him in for another hug until he wiggled his way out.

“Easy on the tunic!” He laughed, warming Artem’s heart. She wasn’t certain she would ever hear it again. “I need to talk to you. House Connelly--”

“H-House Connelly is going to pay for kidnapping y-y-you.” Artem finished, keeping his hand in hers until she was called by one of the freefolk. She couldn’t catch up with Esper right now. She had to lay down the rules before chaos broke loose. “I-I’ll fi-find you b-b-before s-supper. S-Stay inside f-for now.”

She suspected Esper wanted to talk about the horrors he faced in the Leaden Islands, but this was so much worse.

When Elisavet Connelly got her claws into someone, she dug them deep. Artem suspected she didn’t have to try too hard with Esper, but she indoctrinated him into her ideologies and mannerisms just the same. He spoke almost proper, talked of how he was treated with love and care, how Lady Connelly had given him lessons with her son, and wished to protect her as the child of her eldest sister’s husband.

“T-They aren’t our f-f-friends, Esper!” Artem’s voice rose in return, needing to be heard. Something had to break through that thick skull of Esper’s. “She h-hired Hiero t-to bring me t-t-to her to hold as a h-hostage to g-get Snowfall!”

“Hiero wouldn’t do such a thing! Hiero cared about us! More than that, Lady Eli never met Hiero! She told me so!” Esper pointed a finger at Artem, clearly frustrated.

“And y-you believe her?” Artem gestured. “She k-kidnapped you b-because H-Hiero couldn’t g-g-get me to her c-castle a-after months of leading us around to get her p-pay and she went off when she c-couldn’t face me wi-without you! Hiero didn’t care about us, and n-neither does that w-witch of a woman!”

“Don’t talk about her like that! Don’t talk about either of them like that!” Esper shoved Artem, but Artem was quick to grab his arms to stop him. “Hiero wanted to travel with us! Lady Elisavet will protect us until she returns!”

“Th-They took my h-home. They’re in the G-Gretter pockets and side with the McKormic’s in their l-loyalties. E-Elisavet will d-die for what s-s-she’s done to you, and I will m-make sure she s-s-suffers greatly.” Not only had she brainwashed her brother, she sent a woman after her that she loved, only to have her ripped away. “End of c-c-conversation.”

Esper fought back for a second while Artem held on, hoping to calm him down with a hug after a few moments like she used to when they had a fight.

He slackened one of his arms, his shoulder barreling into her chest and forcing him to let go long enough to get ahold of the dagger hilted to Artem’s belt. “I won’t let you hurt her!” He shouted, confusing Artem to what he was shouting about until she saw the flash of the fire against the blade of the dagger.

“Espe--” Artem went to shout, trying to talk some sense into him, but it was too late.

The boy she knew to be a brother, closer to her than the ones she was raised, pushed her dagger into her chest, piercing into her heart.

“E-Esp... Esper...” Artem gasped, letting go of his other arm to hold her chest, falling to her knees in front of him, gripping his clothes in her hand as she fell to the ground.

Like the times she fainted, or crashed from lack of sleep, her world went dark slowly around the edges until everything was black. Much like her heart breaking, it hurt to pump to continue to live.

So it ceased.

She didn’t know her purpose of being brought back. Lady Runa Jagger had found peace in the afterlife, be it her faith that allowed her such, or the husband and child that awaited her. Had she seen Arek and Rowan’s face? The face of her daughter-in-law and twin grandchildren? Runa no longer remembered.

It was shocking and painful to be brought back my any means, and without reason as to why. No one surrounded her when she woke from the lake in the Streamlands to give her any guidance.

Her bloated, decaying body stayed at a constant state of disrepair. Runa couldn’t attest to her being alive, but dead was not what she was. Death was peace. Her existence went against everything she believed in the faith of the Old and New Gods. If she knew anything, this was older magic than those of the first creatures to consider themselves men.

She wandered the forests and mountains of the Streamlands and Icelands for gods knew how long. Aimless, relentless, angry. At anything and everyone. They had taken her away from what she loved most.

One time, she could’ve sworn that she had seen her husband’s ‘bastard’ daughter wandering with her in the opposite direction of the Stockade. No, Artem Snow had more honor and sense than to leave the Stockade. How the mind played cruel tricks on those who were broken and left to their thoughts.

Runa kept going for months. Seasons changed, snow froze her, rain pelted her. Yet she still continued north, regardless of how often she froze and thawed. Something was calling her there. A familiar yet distant voice in the wind. The Stockade, she would find redemption and everlasting peace.

As she entered the empty expanse before the Stockade, she paid no mind to the shouts for her to stop. An arrow pierced into her shoulder and went through. Another to her stomach, but stayed lodged. They knew not what they were doing. Runa was here to fix what she could. Redemption was close for all.

She reached out to touch the first man who approached her, watching with milky eyes as he collapsed in front of her. Not dead. Sleeping. He didn’t deserve to die. His time would come to pass sooner than he imagined.

Each soldier to touch her fell into a deep sleep following, allowing Runa entry into the impregnable fortress with ease. Her sight took in the scene before her. A man and a boy lay slain in the court.

Lord Commander Senien Lybron. Esper Gale. Avenged deaths of the great queen.

The great queen. Runa repeated in her mind, though the words held no meaning to her.

Up the stairs, turn east, eight doors.

Following as she was told, Runa opened the last door, finding a body upon a wooden table, covered only by a cloth on her torso.

“Sweet child, this world has wronged you as well.” Runa said, her voice garbled from her voice box being slashed.

She approached the table, smoothing back the hair of the girl, finding familiarity in her face though dead for several days. Unconventionally beautiful. Bold brows, crows feet lines by her eyes despite her young age. A striking resemblance to her Arek. No... to the Jagger line. She could see that now. She was as beautiful as they always said she was. Her mother and father would be proud.

“Artemen Stannick,” Runa tilted her head, brushing a finger down her rounded cheek. She had at one time wished death upon her until she became so sick that her breathing was only knocks upon wood. Then she prayed for her wellness, a prayer of a mother suffering to see a child suffer, saying she would treat her like her own. It was a promise she could never keep.

You can change that, Runa. She’s not meant to die here, not for good.

Runa stood still for several minutes, taking in the existence of the woman since she last laid eyes on her. Battle wounds. Burn scars from working in the forge. She wasn’t meant to die here. She had a life left.

Leaning forward, Runa pressed her hands to Artem’s chest, kissing her forehead gently to ask for forgiveness from the child she shunned. To pass along a wisdom that she would need. Even if she wasn’t, she would always be a little too much Arek Jagger for her own good.

“Live, my child.” The once beautiful and honorable Lady of Snowfall kissed Artem Snow gently, feeling a tingle for the first time since she had been resurrected as her life and will was pulled into the corpse.

In the final seconds of her undeath, Runa felt a peace she hadn’t previously. A wrong on her slate wiped clean. She could die with one less heavy regret.

Runa Jagger fell to the ground in a heap, her consciousness no longer bound to the body she wandered so far in.

At the same time...

Being ricochet out of the endless darkness she had been wading was disorienting to say the least.

Artem shot up, taking heaving breaths of life and stretching her lungs back to capacity. Why did breathing hurt? Why did everything fucking hurt any more?

Wait, where was she? Why was she naked and why was the door open?

The woman whipped her head around, feeling every joint in her spine and neck crack from lack of movement. No one was around her.

What was the last thing she remembered?

Esper. Her and Esper arguing over the Connelly’s intentions, right before he jammed her dagger into her chest. Then darkness.

Artem looked down, and sure enough, right above her breast was a knife wound. She should’ve been dead... She should still be dead. It didn’t make sense.

Going to climb off the table, ignoring the fact she was dead and her heart really fucking hurt each time it clenched - but hey, she was living, she guessed - she nearly stepped on the body right below her. The cold, clammy feeling of it sent her back on the table, gasping in shock.

Taking in the appearance of the body, Artem slowly came to the conclusion, as baffling as it was. “. . . Lady Jagger?”

#v; sovereign gambit #nowwatchmeship

0 notes