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river-bottom-nightmare · 3 years

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Nightwing 83 Review

guess who isn't weeks late this time. my opinion of the series is going up a little bit. it's still not great, but i'm not actively put off by it anymore the way i was after 81. not going to tag as spoilers, but be warned that they are under the cut

i’m sure you all are well aware of this but now, but dear god i love bruno redondo’s art. like, an unhealthy amount. the pink and blue is getting to be a theme with either him or just this run, but i am definitely enjoying it. the movement in this cover is clearly obvious, but well done. you recoznize right off the bat that the cover was drawn to drag your eyes down the page until you get to the bottom, but you enjoy the whole ride there.

also, redondo’s way of drawing a character in stages of action so we can see just how much they’re doing in a split second of movement is quickly becoming something i like to see drawn with dick, and any other character that has that sort of ease of movement and body sense, like cass or sin or maybe a super.

and he’s in action the entire time! there’s shot drawn just to show off a shirtless comic book character, the way nightwing is so often subjected to. he’s shirtless because he’s changing his clothes, and that’s all we see, no more and no less. very practical, very well done. i like it.

he looks so cute right here oh my god. the little squint, the hair curls. it’s adorable.

but also like. unless melinda has specifically outfitted the door spyhole so that the person on the other side can’t see dick looking through it (and in all honesty she might have) then everyone on the other side can see dick looking through that door.

bringing your attention back to the “i can’t see melinda’s fbi file oh no!! it’s redacted!! whatever can we do!!” stupidity. redacted files are child’s play for oracle, and definitely doable for both dick and bruce. so that’s bullshit.

now, melinda apparently grew up with the maroni family, then took down part of the family from the inside. the maroni family is a large and notable presence in gotham, one that bruce pays a respectable amount of attention to. he definitely would have grown suspicious when two members of the maroni family were taken down, and with some investigation, he would have discovered melinda’s plan. and it should go without saying that the majority of things you see batman doing? dick can do it too.

it’s not so much that i don’t like how clever the villains/antiheroes are getting. i don’t like how dc heroes are increasingly written as less intelligent. they seem to be relying on pure fighting skills or luck, which may be the case for a couple heroes, but has never been the case for most of dc’s big name heroes, the bat family included. it’s irritating to me to see this sort of stuff pop up as a major plot point when i know that, if dick or bruce had been written with the amount of skill and power that they canonically possess, this entire mess would have been sorted out years ago.

unrelated but dick and melinda have the same hair

this may just be me, but i was always under the impression that dick doesn’t really have a “double life???”

yes, he’s talented enough to create enough differences between robin/nightwing and dick grayson’s mannerisms, way of movement, voices, and speech patterns so that it’s very difficult to put the two together.

but nightwing has never been separate from dick grayson, not the way bruce and batman is. he’s always leaned more towards clark in that aspect: his hero persona is an exaggerated, stately, larger-than-life version of who he really is. there’s no second persona, no real “dick grayson identity” and “nightwing identity.” they’re the same person with the same goals, ideas, and skills. one just pretends to abide by the law, and one gives up pretense of that.

oh good thank god. if he’d trusted her right off the bat (hehe. bat.) i would have slapped him upside the head. at least he’s still got instincts.

gosh the colouring on this is cool. the red has enough purple and pink tones to it that it doesn’t abruptly ruin the tone of the artwork. but it’s definitely glaring enough to take the reader outside of this personal moment they had slipped into between dick and melinda, to put them back in the present where they’re reminded that oh yea there are people hunting dick down.

the next panel keeps this up too, in a less severe way. melinda’s bodyguard shows up (i forgot her name sorry :[ ) and subtly places us in the middle of an action scene rather than a private, personal scene.

laughing so fucking hard have our little vigilantes grown so accustomed to breaking into places that it doesn’t even register as a crime anymore??? tim coming in through the fire escape to pick bernard up for their date and being very much confused as to why bernard is freaking out.

i really like melinda’s shirt and now despite all the work i have to do and the fucking conference i have to host on monday i want to spend hours scrolling through clothing shops online trying to find this shirt. the mock neck/neckline is so cool i want it

so roland just assumes that a very dangerous vigilante who is highly talented in combat and a very dangerous bodyguard who is also highly talented in combat had a fight that ended with this very dangerous bodyguard being tied up and she looks completely fine? roland just assumes that her having no visible wounds or bruises means that they got into a fight and she lost that easily? uh. aight then

dick what are you doing. legitimately what the fuck are you doing. why are you posing oh my god. you are injured and tired and in absolutely no position to go hand to hand with one of main enemies. jesus christ run away or head to lower ground or something. don’t just stand around letting the floodlights show exactly where you are.

i don’t understand what he’s trying to do here??? blockbuster fully bought the story that dick fought them both, won, tried to get info out of them and failed, then hightailed it out of there. he didn’t have to draw roland out for a fight.

but it does look cool. the way the light just highlights his silhouette and the blue parts of his costume does look badass. he does get style points in my book for this.

w h a t d i d i f u c k i n g t e l l y o u , d i c k ?

very classic superhero line and it does sound like something dick would say in a fit of righteous rage but also it makes me laugh so hard because all vigilantes think they’re so powerful that the law doesn’t apply to them. dick vigilantism is illegal. you’re acting above the law and pretending it doesn’t apply to you. hypocritical much?

it happens so often in superhero movies, tv shows, comics, whatever and it makes me giggle every damn time.

pretty decent comeback but before i start seeing people writing blockbuster as a thug i’m going to remind you that he made a deal with a demon for genius level intellect. if this turns into another bane situation i’m going to be a little miffed. he’s a smart man, which makes him a dangerous and infinitely more interesting enemy for nightwing.

this is so horribly in character i want to scream. (or. at least. it lines up with one of the versions of nightwing i have in my head.) he’s running right towards the bullets, miraculously doesn’t get shot, while making a sort-of pun. i hate this so much. i love him.

this is cool. this art is really really cool.

he leaped from a building right towards a helicopter that’s actively shooting at him, but none of the bullets are touching him. none of the corruption of the city can touch him no matter how hard it tries, because he’s too good to be corrupted. Comic Book Logic Can Be Good Sometimes Actually.

batman’s belt what??? swiss army knife who?? sorry, i only know nightwing’s bright blue escrima.

this is one of my favourite things about heroes with exceptional abilities, even more so if the hero is human. the things they can do are so far beyond the realm of normal human abilities that it’s equal parts terrifying and awe-inspiring every time they act.

he just used modified grappling wires to hook to the door of a moving helicopter, swung around the helicopter safely without hitting the blades, gained exactly the right momentum to swing upward again right through the opening of helicopter, then fought and tied up the men before they had any idea what was happening. that’s near impossible to do.

it’s stuff like this where i just sort of sigh in contentment. no matter how many times they leave out dick’s detective skills or conveniently forget that he’s actually a master planner and team leader and make him out to be this forgetful dude who makes everything up on the fly because of his “circus roots,” at least they won’t ever take away dick’s sheer physical ability honed to perfection.

the art, too! in a few panels, dick’s drawn a little lightened or blurred. he’s moving so quickly and fighting so efficiently that he can barely be seen by the enemy. he’s got perfect form all the way through.

and THIS!

there was a helicopter that had five men shooting at him with what looks like machine guns. most people would be dead. some would run away, and be nimble enough to survive without fatal hits. there are very few people, even in fucking comic books, who can look at that hopeless situation and turn it around so quickly and thoroughly that he benefits from it instead.

i just. love nightwing.

it was funny the first time as a comic reader aware of the meme. it’s really not anymore. why the hell would you, in universe, be wearing a shirt that has a picture of your boyfriend being hit in the face by his father.

okay that was funny.

look at lil bitewing, so concerned for her human!!! love her sm.

also a question as to the timeline of things. is nightwing happening before or after urban legends?

i was so distracted by dick wearing a robe and briefs and nothing else that i didn’t register the second part until later. he slept for two days?? babs, baby, he recently had a very traumatic brain injury. why do you sound so nonchalant?

@TIM X COFFEE SHIPPERS GET FUCCCCKKKKEEDDDDD

ngl i totally forgot about that dude oops

this comic is giving so many reaction pictures. you know how you always use the worst possible picture of your friend for your friend’s contact picture? i’m just getting so many of these.

leslie!!! the titans!!! lucius!!! dick going to go see old friends!!!! the titans!!! this part made me so irrationally happy it really did. gar being the one to just. offer dick solutions with open arms. this was the best

i wish i could just copy and paste this entire scene, but that would take up way too much space, so i’m just going to talk about it instead.

you gave me my name, nightwing, and you gave me some of the best advice i’ve received in my life: beautiful little throwback to nightwing’s origin. you’d be surprised at the amount of people who don’t know where the name came from, or who don’t know how much clark means to dick. and the fact that dick still looks up to clark as a hero, recognizes that clark isn’t always perfect and yet continues to hold him in such high esteem, and still looks back on advice that clark gave him fondly just warmed my heart so much.

for a man who has fearlessly stood up to darkseid, bruce will do a lot to avoid a conversation: “grrr. i’m the BATMAN. i’m so DARK and MYSTERIOUS. nobody knows the true me. no one ever will. i will be LONELY for the rest of my CURSED LIFE. such is the price of a hero. ignore my farmer himbo husband in the background”

but i don’t think there’s anything heroic about being a billionaire: another nod to how much dick follows clark’s example rather than bruce. yes, this was a very poignant and important criticism, and i think it’s wonderful that this was published in a pretty popular comic book. but the thing is, there is a way to be a heroic billionaire, but only in fictional universes. the way bruce, ollie, t’challa only ever use their wealth to help people. they donate massive amounts of money to charities that they themselves create so they know exactly how the money is being used. they hire people who aren’t likely to get jobs anywhere else and pay them much more than what a base living wage is. they use their power to help push progressive laws and social change. they are helping.

dick doesn’t fully see it that way. he spent more than half his childhood the son of a billionaire, but still believes that one could be more heroic when one doesn’t have obscene amounts of wealth. whose example do you think he followed to come to that conclusion?

superman looked up to alfred pennyworth?: i mean yea alfred may have been a wildly irresponsible guardian and one hell of an enabler but goddamn if he didn’t love his kid.

you don’t need my input. you’ve thought it all through: ooooooh this line made me grin. for so long, dick’s treated clark as a mentor and a guiding figure. he’s still seen as a kid, an up and coming, snot-nosed titan with dreams of a better world. clark still thinks of him as a kid, despite watching him grow up. but this little line was something i think dick needed sorely to hear. he doesn’t need anyone’s guiding hand on his shoulder, he doesn’t need to ask for permission. he doesn’t need clark to support him the way he did when he was a teenager. he’s all grown up now, and he doesn’t need clark’s help. i imagine it was a bit of a surprise for dick to hear that.

honestly, i couldn’t think of a better role model: ohhh but it doesn’t stop there. clark just straight up turns the tables on dick. imagine you’re dick, and you’ve looked up to this one hero your entire life, and then one day he turns to you and says that he thinks you’re so kind and smart and worthy of a person that he wants you to mentor his son!? goes to show just how much clark trusts dick.

i swear to god dick probably cries every time he hears clark compliment him because bruce is so rare and sparing with his praise that clark giving him the slightest hint of approval is just a dopamine rush.

also, now deathstroke and superman have both asked nightwing to mentor their kids. the juxtaposition is fuckin hysterical. imagine either of their reactions when they realize what kind of company they’re with

lets talk colours for a second, because i absolutely adore how classic colour tropes have been subverted in this comic, and in this general run really.

warm tones have usually (usually, not always) been associated with light and comfort and friendship and,,,,,well,,,warmth. whereas cool tones are usually used to unsettle, or make a scene seem colder and put the reader on edge. this varies if a comic only uses cool tones, or only uses warm tones, but if a comic uses both, this is generally well-used.

that isn’t the case in this run.

dark red, orange, and other warm tones have been used to symbolize danger, action, attacks. hot pink isn’t usually included in this colour group, but it’s definitely part of it in this case. in contrast, scenes that have cool colours give us the impression of slipping into a comfortable, calm scene with babs, tim, the titans, and other allies. even the beginning scene with superman has this blue, but then it transitions into something more golden coloured. dawn broke over dick, as his new idea came to light, and that was reflected in the art (and the sunrise setting.)

have there ever been times when dick’s longed for the comfort of his mask because he didn’t feel confident as dick grayson? i can’t think of any. i may be wrong, but this struck me as pretty ooc.

am i just??? gay and reading this all wrong??

cause i was under the impression that when someone says they are grateful for your friendship you don’t immediately kiss them.

or is this like. normal straight mating rituals.

i mean he’s smiling afterward but still babs aren’t you supposed to at least make sure it’s okay first? you guys broke up a while back after you said something along the lines of “i want to be coworkers with you and nothing more because i don’t trust you or feel comfortable around you as a civilian anymore.” like lmao after you say something like that to someone i would assume that you don’t have the permission to just kiss them whenever you want.

show of hands who else got real sad when they realized dick was talking about himself in this.

sure, he could be referencing the things he’s seen blockbuster pull, and the children on the streets. but “i’ve seen money used for enforcement,” sounds a little too close to dick’s entire life being destroyed by one man threatening the circus to pay protection money for me to completely ignore. and “i’ve seen the poorest and most vulnerable blamed and punished rather than assisted” becomes a lot worse when you remember dick was thrown in juvie for a couple months until bruce was able to obtain legal guardianship, and in there, not a authority figure believed him when he told them his parents were murdered.

he’s lived this before.

a. mother. fucking. typo.

fucking why

i mean i’ve stated my distaste for the batfamily groupchat before but like. this is reaching new levels of ridiculousness. jason sounds like he was written by a fanfic writer. tim sounds like he was written by a fanfic writer. steph sounds like she was written by someone who doesn’t know the first thing about steph and wanted to include her for “family points!!!!!” damian’s supposed to be completely off the grid, and everyone’s searching for him. i do love the way cass texts tho.

well god fuck now i’m crying

dick got a phone call, a sorry, and a thank you out of bruce. i feel so much secondhand happiness for him, if that’s a thing. we’ll just ignore the way bruce looks ugly af and focus on the good parts okay?

and again with the colour symbolism here!

i’m either going to love this or hate this. who knows, we’ll see.

something something hearts something something pink is an evil colour something something. i need to know more about this guy but there’s definitely symbolism there.

is it just me or does this dude look like the backstabbing traitorous absolutely motherfucking piece of shit villain that killed tadashi hamada in big hero 6?

taggggg list: @woahjaybird @birdy-bat-writes @anothertimdrakestan @subtleappreciation @screennamealreadyused @bikoncon @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @maplumebleue-blog-blog @sundownridge @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy @red-hood-redemption @capricorn-stark @batshit-birds @comics-observer @buticaaba

#river thinks too hard #nightwing #dick grayson #nightwing 83 #dc #nightwing review #nightwing meta #dick grayson review #dick grayson meta #nightwing 83 review #nightwing 83 meta #dc review #dc meta

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oodlenoodleroodle · 3 years

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My spouse is currently undergoing a course of electroconvulsive therapy aka shock treatment. They've had it four times and they have another four to go.

I've been using my extra balance hours at work to take off the days of their treatment, because the hospital don't like to let the patient go away alone and the patient shouldn't be alone on the day of the treatment, and while it could be arranged differently (like they'd have to wait on the ward until I get off work or smt) it's just nicer this way plus I manage to spend my extra balance finally.

People at work have been really good about it, really flexible and understanding, and sending good vibes and wishing well to us both but especially my spouse.

It's been a little bit funny even, because all the doctors and nurses involved in the process have been really good and explaining things thoroughly and doing their best to put us at ease - which they genuinely have. Like they bring up One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Next and say it's not like in the movies. But of course all these other people haven't had the same benefit, so when you mention ECT everyone's like "omg that's a big and scary thing omg!"

And the funny thing is that it is, but just not in that sense. Like we have to get a taxi there and a taxi back and in order to have the taxi trip covered by public health insurance (Kela), you have to book the taxi from a particular phone number and you have to get the specific taxi they assign you (despite there always being taxis galore at the hospital), so you have to wait (sometimes even an hour!) for the specific fucking taxi, and that is shitty and stressful. And also everything to do with Kela is shitty and stressful.

Or the fact that my spouse also has anxiety and having to take the taxi and having to go to the hospital and being on the ward with the other patients is all stuff that makes their anxiety worse and as a result they are absolutely exhausted by this regimen - not from the electricity but from the anxiety. And I am also extra stressed and tired and confused from the lack of normal routines.

Or like even with the procedure itself, the biggest problem has been the IV being super painful and leaving weird ginormous bruises on their hands. Which is nothing to do with the ECT itself and more with anesthesia nurses being fooled by the way my spouse's hand veins look (apparently the veins aren't big enough - but they look big on the surface?)

So like yes it's a big thing - but not in the way people think.

Here's some stuff that doctors and nurses have said about ECT:

It's basically an artificial, electricity-induced epileptic fit. They have no idea why epileptic fits lessen depression, but this effect was first observed in epileptic people with depression, which is where the idea for electricity treatment came from.

They all say it's not like the movies. The patient is under anesthesia, the "seizure" last like 20-30 seconds. This part is funny to me because the only movie with ECT I have seen is a Korean movie called I'm A Cyborg (And That's Okay) in which the ECT charges the cyborg's batteries, enabling her to then (in her delusions) shoot all the orderlies of the hospital. So it's not a horrible torturous experience like in Cuckoo's Nest nor will your toenails light up as an indication that your cyborg batteries are fully charged.

ECT has an absolutely bananas success rate. Something bonkers like 95% of people get relief to their depression from ECT, even depression that hasn't responded to anything else. The ECT doctor mentioned he was sad that still so many people go for ECT as a last resort, when if it was tried earlier people could save a lot of pain (and money) by skipping unsuccessful medicine attempts. The ECT nurse said that in his 18 years of working there, max 5 people have not been helped by ECT.

Your hair needs to be clean, otherwise the greasiness will interfere with the electricity. Same with face in case they need to put the stickies on your forehead (sticky placement depends on something, not sure what).

Some antidepressants will also interact with the electricity, making it stronger than is necessary, so you need to lower the dose of some meds before starting ECT.

Yes a possible side effect is some sort of effects on memory - but not like you'll forget your name or family or something. More like you might not remember that morning. And the memory usually comes back with time. My spouse has not had any memory related side effects so far.

#we have a system at work where you dont get paid for overtime they just build up in your excel #and then you can use them to take time off #so thats what extra balance hours are #my spouse is sitting next to me and im checking with them that this is all okay to tell #they feel very strongly about doing things to lessen the stigma of mental illnesses and ECT and such #so i wanted to post too to reach more people

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cateringisalie · 3 years

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Village: Resident Evil ramblings

(Some spoilers)

Ethan Winters is a goddamn idiot.

I say this without a shred of nostalgia; I first encountered him in RE7 and feel less than nostalgic towards the guy. RE7 without the benefit of the former entrants was a FPS horror and pretty good. Though you couldn’t escape that the characters you remembered were the Baker family and Mia; Ethan was a walking camera with a gun and some very simplistic emotional responses (fear, rescue wife, escape, swear occasionally). Having now run through the whole sequence of games, Ethan stands out starkly as the blandest and least interesting protagonist the series ever produced. He is possibly worse than Piers. Village updates Ethan’s personality. A bit. Well. Not really. Still got that fear, still got the swearing. Still got a mind to escape. But rather than rescue his wife, it’s about rescuing his daughter. I mean; Mia was gunned down and shot a further 9000 times by infuriating series stalwart Chris Redfield a little under ten minutes into the game proper. Not that Ethan really comes to terms with the trauma. By minute fifteen of the game the van you’ve been shoved in by Chris (who doesn’t shoot you for no reason he feels like explaining) has crashed and Ethan’s daughter is missing. Mourning Mia doesn’t actually enter into Ethan’s thought process. Goddamn idiot. Not to say that life with Mia was exactly picturesque; a few years after RE7 the couple are now somewhere nebulous in Eastern Europe in a very lovely house with a distressing number of empty wine bottles in the kitchen. A happy marriage this does not seem to be given Mia doesn’t want to get into the events of RE7 anymore, but Ethan does – but also failing to understand that the cover-up of the incident might be why no one is talking much about the whole mess in Louisiana and that bringing it up both distresses and angers Mia. But; the inciting incident has occurred and we’re propelled into our new scenario. Ethan; once again fish out of water, and its not like we have a choice. This is not to say Village does not repeat the same narrative trick of changing POV character, but there is both less of that, and the Half-Life-style regimented first person view jarringly completely goes out the window in the last quarter. It was less than consistent at points, but sparingly when occasionally and jarringly camera angles shifted to depict an introduction. But the game is also perfectly happy to render whole FPS sequences with gun visible and everything as it plays out a story beat, so... I don’t know? Fortunately Ethan’s environment and the setting are much more interesting. The unnamed Village is a satisfying knot of tangled streets, locked doors and environmental obstacles. Enemies don’t respawn per se, but additional enemies are added on subsequent visits to the effective hub of the game. There’s livestock to kill and give the Duke – the merchant playing a similar role to the pirate-like guy from RE4. Duke’s an entertaining character (some have objected to his physical and hugely overweight depiction); chatty and far more knowing than he will let on. He has a dangling thread come the end so perhaps will reappear elsewhere. He’ll sort the gun upgrades, supplies, let you sell treasure and point you towards your next destinations. Which is just as well as the human population of the village dies out somewhere between the first and second hour. No one left and any futile attempts to save people end in almost hilariously disastrous tragedies (no Ethan, don’t go higher in a building that is on fire). Leaving you with Lycans, zombies and gargoyles to fend off. Occasionally there’s some bigger foes on the level of the Executioner from RE5 but nothing on the level of the Tyrants. That kind of thing is left to the Village Lords. The villagers – before they all die – have a curiously unfamiliar religion and praise a figure known as Mother Miranda. She reportedly kept the village safe, but something has changed and now the Lycans run amok and without restraint. Not hard to pin that the reason for the change is Rose’s arrival (or could it be Ethan? COULD IT? No. Man is a goddamn idiot). The only door out of the village you can open is to Castle Dimitrescu and... It feels unnecessary to even get into what awaits. Given fandom have been so noisy about the tall lady and her vampiric daughters since the first trailer. She is so very, very tall. The castle is the first mode of Village. Possibly closest to RE7; Dimitrescu’s daughters are vulnerable based on certain environmental details (read the notes!) but otherwise should be fled from. Dimitrescu herself is invulnerable to everything bar one weapon and you need to work at getting that, so she needs to be fled from. Otherwise, explore the castle, find treasure. Sneak. Solve puzzles. It all looks suitably gorgeous and you get multiple chances to see if as you loop through the rooms and unlock more doors. The Village macro mechanics wrought as micro here. There’s a canny hint at a late reveal in the blunt utility of in-game mechanics to be had too. But – really should have been obvious given their prominence in the trailer – given Castle Dimitrescu is the first level, it means we must say goodbye to the very Tall Lady with knife hands and move onto someone else. In between levels, we get the first reinforcement of a tease from the trailer; the symbol of the Umbrella corporation. Its engraved into a location called the Ceremony Site. Its daubed on a cave wall as high as the Tall Lady. Its on the strange structure you insert the yellow flasks each Village Lord guards. And it means... almost nothing. RE's meta-plot has always been a mess and everyone’s favorite pharmaceutical company hasn’t been so active for a while, so the idea that we might be getting into some interesting weirdness with them again is oh so appealing. And yet – I was disappointed. Despite the repeated glimpses of the familiar white and red logo, the connection ultimately comes down to one letter I found at about 7/8s of the way through. Oswell Spencer – founder of the company – visited the Village years ago and saw the cave painting and adopted it as his logo. Oh. That’s... underwhelming. The same letter does at least prod at wiring Village’s latter reveals into the formation of the company along with tying in some parts of RE5 but if you thought this would be the company or the family dynasty origins or anything like that, you are in for a disappointment. It’s a tease and one that goes nowhere and does little. Oh we might now see how Spencer got into the whole inadvertent zombie making mess but its not a factor in the plot of this game nor does it really change the stakes of the previous. Perhaps I should be glad it’s so frivolous given other retcons in certain other franchises, but it feels so suspect to have drawn the attention and then shuffle the implications out the side-door. At least the other village lords have their own appeals. The second level is RE once again stealing PT (the PS4 demo to announce Silent Hills) given Konami outright don’t care about it anymore. Stripped of your guns and inventory, it’s a claustrophobic puzzle level requiring you to hide with mechanics familiar to both Evil Within and Alien Isolation. That same loop of rooms as you seek out puzzle solutions and hide from a staggeringly distressing malevolent entity. The third is combat light until the final confrontation; the fight staged in a flooded village – oh and Chris who still doesn’t shoot you but refuses to explain anything. And the fourth cheats. Heisenberg is thoroughly entertaining and grabs two levels for his own; an assault on a stronghold and his horrible cyborg factory outside of town. He has Magneto metal powers. Heisenberg is the camp villain to outdo the other camp villains. He’s having fun, he kinda likes Ethan and is oddly on his side. He found time to put together massive signposts to direct Ethan onto the last two levels (a good thing too given his lack of sense). But both levels are lacking. The Stronghold is a relentless firefight against hoards of mook enemies; the factory is overly long and maze-like. I am as tired as Ethan when he exclaims “What more?” And after Heisenberg is dealt with; the long, convoluted lurches to the ending. First person goes out the window. The game dabbles in characters toying with your understanding of what was going on but in a strangely limited way and completely ignoring the other implications of the reveal. Suddenly you mow down more and more enemies than ever before, bullets scarcely a concern. The final reveals of who/what/where/how come through. Not exactly explicable for what’s on-screen, but the effort’s been made to tie Village’s overt supernatural tendencies back into a world setup in RE. Its not magic and those are not truly werewolves. And the villain’s motivation is! Hugely disappointing. Connected as it is to the Umbrella letter, you might hope for something completely out there, but its unsatisfying and feels pretty sexist too. Or at least lacking in imagination to an astonishing degree and yet here we are. The game feels sloppiest as the final boss fight arrives flitting between characters without the shaky but workable character hand-offs RE7 deployed. Back in first person mode to talk to Duke one last time before engaging in.... a relatively simple boss fight. All the boss fights have been pretty easy – there’s nothing on the level of RE6’s sometimes horrendous contextual fights, or the annoying two-player RE5, nor the demanded accuracy of hitting specific weak-points as in RE7. And I don’t mind that. Unload all your weapons and keep your health up. And victory. There are fix-it fics already, but really, I don’t see the point in trying to fix the issue these people have. There’s an obvious setup for a game past this one with a strange throw-away reveal in the end-sequence (whither RE9, Revelations 3 or something else there are no clues as yet). There’s a spoiler for the sting given the end-credits lists a character who didn’t appear in the main game. The sting itself might wind up drawing on the sting from Revelations 2. Village is not RE at its best, but is at least more in the spirit of goofy, campy nonsense than 7. It at least is more at home with playing with the trappings of horror while not actually trying to be outright scary. As with 7, the villains are more interesting and more memorable than the good guys. And – as I found out after completing the game – we were robbed of Ada Wong dressed up like a Bloodborne character somewhere in the game. And that I think is the biggest shame of all this.

#village spoilers #resident evil village spoilers

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ghostmartyr · 4 years

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SnK 124 Thoughts

Have some faith, Reiner.

As if we’d ever forget Han Solo.

The only nice thing about what’s happening now is that it’s forced the right priorities on people. Despite Eren saying, way back in Trost, that people all uniting to face one enemy is too rosy an idea to have a place in reality, for this one island, in these final, traumatic moments, no one wants all these people to die.

With various faces painted on it, most of our main cast on either side has always been focused on one thing: survival. Now Eren rejects that entire concept for the protection of one group. In the barest of bones, that is what every single villain of this manga has always done. Of course the only option is to reject him.

And of course Gabi, who has always been compared to Eren, who has had the most traumatic series of experiences of her young life, stands up and starts fighting.

(One in shadows, one in light. Winning all the high school book reports here.)

This is the best of Eren, in a child who has been ruined by this world just as thoroughly. Gabi will bring back her friends.

Eren chases after slavers to save a girl he doesn’t know.

Gabi runs into streets full of monsters and saves someone who hates her.

I’ve always enjoyed Eren as a protagonist (his dip into antagonist, not so much). In Trost, he takes on the burden of being a symbol of humanity’s hope, but I’ve always felt that his true symbolic nature is that he’s the one who lays claim to humanity’s outrage.

There are things in this world that are simply wrong. Righteous fury without limits is a satisfying reaction to that, and at the start of the manga, it’s something that all of Paradis has basically lost. They’ve grown complacent with their lot in life. Even when the titans invade, they don’t dream beyond reclaiming the territory that they’ve always known.

Eren’s status as a rage monster is very much a meme, and he’s very much more than that, but it has always been fitting that the main character is a bonfire that lights the sparks of the rest of the cast. Eren inspires motion. Before he has any touch of competence and plot magic, he talks and his comrades find themselves listening.

Gabi takes up that torch here.

Reiner is done (again. sorry, Reiner). The world is probably done. Gabi has spent this whole arc being some kind of done.

Gabi gets up, and goes to look for her friend. Falco follows her onto an airship; she follows him into hell.

Gabi gets up, and protects the girl who wants her dead. She faces down a titan with a weapon not meant for the job, and she wins.

Just like the young woman she murdered.

Sasha joins the Survey Corps after Trost. She comes face to face with a titan, and she falters. She fails to kill it, and it comes after her, and she’s scared. She wants to leave. She considers leaving.

Dot Pixis’ speech reignites her will.

Sasha stays, and a month later she saves her little sister.

Her little sister protects a pair of enemy child soldiers.

One of those child soldiers saves her life.

Paradis begins without a spark. Even the people who are signing up to be soldiers are mostly doing it so they won’t be seen as cowards, or so they can go further into the walls as Military Police. People who want to go outside and kill the titans are nuts. The Survey Corps is nuts. They’re a waste of taxes, and anyone who wants to join them is a suicidal idiot.

Enter Eren. Enter enough fury and impact that the fire can’t be contained in one person, and the sparks start spreading. The people who have been left to tend their own fires for years are given kindling. The people who don’t know what it’s like to not be freezing cold are given a taste of warmth.

For a series that begins in stagnation, a protagonist devoted to movement is going to inspire the most change.

Then he decides to commit genocide and ruin everything, but hey, look at how much that’s inspiring people to get along!

Eren, you’re a fucking disaster.

Niccolo basically hands us the series’ thesis on a silver platter, so I’ll refrain from trying to fit his quotes into anything resembling a paragraph.

Niccolo is not Eldian.

Eldians are the one with the ability to literally transform into monsters. A physical manifestation of the horrors all humans are capable of if you take away their reason. That’s why the world calls them devils. They’re all a bunch of ticking time bombs just waiting to go off; why wouldn’t the world condemn, hate, and fear that?

Those ticking time bombs always take at least one more person willing to start the timer for them.

In the current era, Marley has been the force happily strapping bombs to children’s chests.

Niccolo hits on the truest point. From someone who is not Eldian, who cannot physically manifest the horrors all around them that could not exist without certain genetics--

Niccolo has a devil inside of him, too. He’s given in to it. He has been a monster, so lost in his despair that he’s willing to kill children.

The true enemy of this world is not titans. It’s falling prey to the demons every human carries inside. That is the universal human experience, and everywhere people fall in that fight, evil follows.

Titans exist because a man rapes a slave and has her children eat her.

That evil is a fault of human nature, not blood.

Niccolo and Gabi have been the monsters.

Unlike most titans, they have the option of coming back. They’ve had the fortune to live long enough that they can come back. Hell, it might be because she hits the bargaining phase, but even this chapter Gabi goes from suggesting killing Eren to talking to him and using his power for something actually useful.

-pats Gabi on the head-

Not bad, kiddo.

To the left, we have Jean and Connie.

Hell.

Connie’s simplest (as well as the most exciting, because he’s running off to Wall Rose territory with Falco, who has Ymir’s memories), and rather devastating. For four years, his mother has been a titan. Unable to move. She’s his only remaining family. Everyone else in his village, Connie spent their last night alive praying that they would die. He’s one of the three people left who remember Utgard.

Being trapped on a tower in the middle of the night, being hunted for sport by people he’s known all his life.

On Zeke’s command.

The man Paradis is forced to consider an ally. The man Connie is not allowed to touch. The man who is still, years later, turning people into titans. The man one of his closest friends ostensibly betrays them for.

After all that, his friends have someone who can save his mom, and they try to tell him no. Because that might hurt the feelings of their enemies. People like Reiner, for instance. The guy Connie still cries for in Return to Shiganshina.

Don’t worry about your mother, Connie. Worry about the feelings of everyone else.

Also Sasha is dead and this kid’s bestie pulled the trigger.

But seriously Connie, chill.

[chill not found]

Connie has, frankly, done a fantastic job holding everything together. The fact that he’s only snapping now speaks greatly to his character, and leaves me not too concerned about Falco. Connie ranks as one of the lowest on who’s left of people who would be willing to kill a child. Even if it’s for his mother, if Falco’s awake, I don’t think Connie can do it.

...If he can, the manga will have actually found a way to get even darker, which, if we’re being honest, I sort of thought we were beyond at this point, so flip a coin I guess.

Jean likewise has some of my favorite material in this chapter. He’s grown into a far better commander than he was at Trost, and having the terrain duplicated so well only emphasizes it.

But as ever, the true entertainment comes from Marco.

Who is also dead.

Yes, still.

“You’re not a strong person... so you can really understand how weak people feel.”

Jean is not wrong that destroying the rest of the world sort of fixes Paradis’ main problems. The issue is that it’s horrifically immoral, not that it wouldn’t be effective (until a civil war breaks out).

Because everyone spent all their time hating them, their only protection was murdering them all. And it’s all on one person’s decisions. They’re hardly involved, aren’t they? If they sit back and do nothing, it’s just karma, right? What could they possibly do at this point?

“But you’re also good at recognizing what’s going on at any given moment. You know exactly what needs to be done. I mean... most humans are weak, including me... But if I got an order from someone who saw things like I do... no matter how tough it was, I’d do my damnedest to carry it out.”

Jean’s right. They do reap the benefits of this horrible choice. No more complicated politics. Just a blank slate to do better on. Everyone on Paradis gets to live. Without putting too fine a point on it, that’s an argument we’re probably all familiar with, and here a character is, pointing it all out.

This fixes all their problems. Good, right?

No.

Because standing back and doing nothing while genocide is committed is fucking wrong.

That’s a question this series has grappled with from the beginning; which is more important, survival or doing what’s right?

In the start, we have a protagonist who is fully comfortable throwing his own life away in the name of doing what’s right. At the moment, he’s giving every appearance of being fully comfortable throwing away everyone else’s life in the name of keeping the people he cares about alive.

This chapter, we have Connie arguing for his mom’s life over someone more politically relevant’s.

Bringing back another fandom favorite, Serum Bowl pretty much locks these arguments in a cage and pokes them gently with an assault rifle.

Survival says Erwin. Armin doesn’t matter, except to Eren and Mikasa. Erwin matters to Levi in a way he doesn’t to them. What’s right falls to the floor except to be brandished like a machete against the other side’s wants. Hange has to swoop in and pick it up, and by then Floch’s involved and clubbing everyone over the head with his newfound fanaticism.

Once it’s gotten to that point, humanity’s continued survival still says Erwin.

It’s still saving a man’s life.

A man who will die without this intervention.

For the reason of bringing him back to life to suffer in everyone’s place.

It’s pragmatic, and it truly is best for humanity’s survival beyond the walls.

It is also deeply unkind.

Send these thousands of people to their deaths so the rest can live. Eat each other. Die, die, and die until someone can live. Anything that promotes survival is, in fact, the right choice.

In the Female Titan arc, when Armin and Jean are watching the full extent of Erwin’s plan in front of their eyes, Armin says that Erwin might very well be evil for it, but given where they are, that’s a good thing. That someone strong enough to be that measured with their few remaining lives is in control--even if he’s committing a moral evil, he’s protecting something more important.

It is the preliminary version of Floch’s eventual conclusion.

They need a devil to ensure their survival.

Levi ultimately rejects that.

He doesn’t bring a man back to life so that he can bear their burdens.

It’s one of the smaller goods of the series. After a life of suffering through what is necessary, Levi chooses to release Erwin from it, even though he’s still tactically essential. Again and again people have discussed how much it would help if one more strategist was out Paradis’ table in these times. Levi’s decision is what prevents the most experienced from taking a seat.

Levi picks to be kind over making the choice that more properly secures survival.

Because the survival of what? More choices leading down the exact same road? The endless cycle of sacrifice that’s turned human bodies into resources instead of recognizing them as people?

Titanization at its core?

In the Serum Bowl, Levi doesn’t choose who he wants to survive. He chooses what. He chooses to recognize a man as human instead of a commodity. Something the two brats screaming at him couldn’t let go of. Something he couldn’t let go of.

Do you want to survive, or create a world worth surviving in?

Eren’s actions will destroy the world beyond the walls he always wanted to see. Indiscriminately. Some of it deserves destruction and worse. The parts that don’t will be swept away all the same.

This plan creates the world the First King told them they all lived in; there is Paradis, and nothing beyond it. The rest of humanity is dead.

Thanks to forfeiting all humanity.

And I guess if anyone on the island has a problem with it, kill them too. Also anyone who encourages anyone to have a problem with it. Just set up your secret task force, give the names, and keep those named living in terror for a century until one of them becoming a serial killer in response seems perfectly reasonable.

For those in need of the reminder, Karl is a douche.

Karl thought genocide was such a bad thing that he committed genocide over it, but it’s okay because his genocide was smaller.

Eren thinks genocide is such a bad thing he’s set up to commit genocide over it, but it’s okay because his genocide is going to be so big it’s going to end all genocides. Until Floch remembers he has a gun, probably. Which seems to be always. In which case this genocide will lead to a series of smaller genocides, eventually leading to not enough people being alive for genocide to be committed.

Curing the world of genocide once and for all.

Yay.

What I’m saying is that genocide is bad.

Full stop.

Genocide is bad.

-draws underlines-

-draws angry grrr face-

Bad.

Perhaps maybe these people should stop doing it.

For all the moral reasons, sure, but since we’re clearly beyond that point, maybe someone could just quietly suggest with the force of the world ending that maybe imitating the exact behavior that led to literally all of our cast’s problems is not the best move.

Also, Floch shouldn’t get to point a gun at Yelena’s head. Only Yelena gets to hold guns to people’s heads. She makes it cool. Floch makes everyone wonder why Floch still hasn’t died, only to remember that ah, yes, of course people like Floch don’t die.

BUT HEY, AT LEAST THEY KILLED ALL THE TITANS THAT USED TO BE THEIR COMMANDING OFFICERS. I’M SURE THAT’S NOT RELATED TO FLOCH’S GOOD MOOD AT ALL.

You know, it’s not that things are continuing to get worse. They are simply following the roadmap of horror we were handed in the brochure for this arc. None of this is new, it’s just now in play. So it’s not getting worse, it always was worse.

...Yelena, just take the gun and shoot Floch before you die. I feel like that’s the fastest path to something good happening.

Let’s see... points to all our kidlets being a dominant force against titans now. Them Trost Redux feels. Points to Jean realizing that Eren has power of friendshipped himself into villain status (allegedly). Points to Armin remembering how Pixis gave the humans of Paradis their first victory. Points to all of Sasha’s family because I like them.

Then that’s the chapter.

HOW YOU FEELING, ANNIE FANS?

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 124 #Gabi Braun #Connie Springer #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #tl;dr #chapter post

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sociopath-analysis · 4 years

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Sociopath Profile: Malty S. Melromarc

Adventurer name: Myne Sophia Other names: “Bitch”, “Whore”, “Witch” From the web novel The Rising of the Shield Hero (2012-2015) and its light novel (2013-present*), manga (2014-present*) and 2019 anime adaptations Voiced by Sara Emi Birdcutt (JP) and Faye Mata (EN) *Present valid as of mid-June 2021.*

There are plenty of good reasons that she has become one of the most hated characters in anime in 2019. Notably since she is completely detestable, thoroughly remorseless, and utterly heartless. Renaming her “Bitch” is putting it mildly. In the anime, she proves to be the main antagonist and unsurprisingly, she fits almost all the symptoms of psychopathy.

[SPOILERS BELOW; SPOILER-FREE VERSION HERE]

It should also be noted that she is revealed in the original story to be a soul fragment of the goddess Medea Pideth Machina. She is basically the culmination of Medea’s worst traits without the power to back it up. (I will make a profile for her later.) As such, she makes for a textbook psychopath. Everywhere except the web novel, Malty is just a terrible person.

Pathological Selfishness. It is abundantly clear from all of her actions that she doesn’t care about anyone who’s name isn’t Malty. This is shown by her readiness to continually backstab others even when they assist her.

Grandiose sense of self-worth. When her mother determines that her sister Melty is a better fit for the throne, she completely disagrees. She believes that she is entitled to the throne despite all the evidence to the contrary. Not only that, but Malty is incredibly bratty and deeply believes that everyone is only around to benefit her.

Lack of empathy. Malty fails to show any true emotional attachment to anyone. Not even her own family. She once tried to burn Melty alive with her fire magic and also marked her for death purely out of spite. Her mother notes that she takes pleasure in the suffering of others, pretty much confirming how little she cares about other people.

Superficial charm. Her flirty and charming exterior is only a front for her extremely loathsome personality. She acts nice and will be supportive to Naofumi, but she shows her true colors after accusing him of rape. One main tactic of hers is behaving in a friendly manner all while secretly plotting to use someone eventually.

Pathological need for stimulation. Ruining people’s lives is something that she deeply enjoys doing. She’s also rather sadistic seeing as she’s basically a serial killer who doesn’t even personally get her hands dirty. She has manipulated circumstances to have people executed under false pretenses for nothing other than her own entertainment. Not only that, but her mother implies that she’s definitely not a virgin and sleeps around quite a lot before becoming an adventurer. She also frivolously spends the kingdom’s money on her owns personal whims.

Pathological lying. To the point where it is outright compulsive. She literally can’t help herself from lying all the time. It should be noted that much of the plot was kickstarted when she accused Naofumi of rape for no reason other than just her own amusement. And even when telling the truth would help her, Malty will still lie. It’s to the point where she has to be forced to tell the truth by using a slave brand. This is how pathological her lying is.

Conning and manipulation. Her lying and superficial charm are not just there for no reason. She uses both to her advantage to get whatever she wants or screw over others. Malty doesn’t feel normal emotions, but she is more than willing to fake them whenever it is necessary. When joining Motoyasu’s party, she continually strokes his ego to use him as a pawn. After she and the party abandons him, she pulls the same trick on Ren, only to betray him later as well.

Short-sighted decision-making. Her biggest problem is this. She does not see any further than the opportunity to hurt people she doesn’t like. If telling the truth would be beneficial, she would basically be forced to tell the truth by threat of pain. She constantly makes sadistic decisions even if it would be disadvantageous for her. Where other villains would know when to back down, she fails to ever know when to just. Fucking. Quit. The only think keeping her being a legitimate antagonist is the fact that she’s protected by her royal connections. Without that, she is not nearly as clever as she initially appears.

Lack of remorse and personal responsibility. Finally, it seems that Malty is completely incapable of accepting responsibility for her own mistakes. If anything goes wrong as a direct result of something she did, she will never fail to find someone else to pin the blame on if she can. Even as she is being tried for her crimes, begging for her life, she’s never truly apologetic since she never even takes the time to apologize for anything she did. She’s just trying to get herself out of the horrible situation that she got herself into. And it was all her own fault.

Female Sociopath List

#Malty S Melromarc #Malty Melromarc #Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari #Tate no Yuusha #The Rising of the Shield Hero #character analysis #spoiler profile

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wolfenm · 4 years

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Wei Wuxian’s story fixed what Tony Stark’s broke ....

Prefacing this to say that I do love RDJ and Tony Stark and Marvel, etc (though, for many reasons, I still refuse to see Endgame). But I was just struck a moment ago by how much more I adore Wei Wuxian, and how much better / more satisfyingly I feel he was handled on a couple of story points that are similar to Tony’s. SPOILERS for the MCU to-date, and for The Untamed / Chen Qing Ling (and technically Mo Dao Zu Shi, but I prefer the show’s depiction of the character, over the book, so this is written with the show specifically in mind).

One thing I’ve argued with people about in the past is how, I feel, it was character assasination to have Tony Stark get / stay angry at Bucky (and thus Steve, for defending him) for the death of Tony’s parents. Hell, when I ficced Bucky being found before Civil War, I had Tony see getting Bucky’s mind back as the perfect revenge on HYDRA! So I was thoroughly baffled at Tony going apeshit against Bucky in Civil War. I loved that movie in general, but that storypoint felt hella contrived just to have some excuse to depict an “iconic” moment from the comics (from a plot I likewise felt was a bit too contrived / threw Tony under the bus for drama, but I digress).

I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe that Tony Stark, the man who created BARF, wouldn’t grasp, sooner or later, that Bucky was fucking MIND-RAPED by HYDRA, and was thus as much a victim as Tony’s parents. And so I then ficced Tony coming to his senses and using BARF to help Bucky … only for me to subsequently be disappointed again on that front by the MCU canon. (I also refuse to believe that Tony couldn’t understand how and why Steve would put his love of Bucky before everything and everyone else – Tony had two {or three, if Happy counts} people like that in his life during Civil War {Pepper and Rhodey}, and then Peter and Morgan. Digressing again, sorry.) But people have been all, “It totally makes sense for him to be like that!” – even though he’s supposed to be a good guy, a hero!

I’m even more disturbed by the sentiment I’ve often come across that Tony *needed* to die to complete his arc of learning to be selfless. Last time I checked, he already tried to sacrifice himself in The Avengers, when he took a nuclear warhead through a wormhole! I’ve seen so much hate towards him for all he did in Age of Ultron, but THERE, his actions actually made sense to me, more or less (even if I didn’t exactly agree with them): he *thought* he was doing a good thing. I could see the logic in his conclusion, and things COULD have turned out well, if not for certain data points he’d missed / him being overconfident. Atonement is about cleaning up your mess, not specifically about dying – especially if you still have people to live for!

So then we have Wei Wuxian. Like Tony Stark, he’s brash and confident and inventive and can sometimes run roughshod over people – and certain things he does are highly frowned upon by others. He comes to regret, at least for a time, the controversial path he carves for himself (like Tony regretting being a weapons manufacturer).

But when a group of innocent people, survivors from the Wen Clan – the same family as a couple of the show’s villains, but a different branch – were being mistreated and even killed because everyone else felt they were as guilty as the true villains (for not standing with everyone against the evil members of their clan, never mind that they had been threatened by them too – Bucky under HYDRA, anyone?), Wei Wuxian – who, mind, had gone on a murderous spree to slaughter the truly evil Wens via malicious means – sacrificed everything, getting exiled by his clan, and living in poverty and under threat, to defend those innocents. Even after feeling extreme wrath towards his mortal enemies, he understood right and wrong enough to not paint everyone with the same clan name with the same brush. He could have *just* saved Wen Qing and Wen Ning (to whom he owed a mountain of gratitude, even though his clan brother Jiang Cheng, who owed the same debt yet didn’t stand up for them them, faulted Wei Wuxian for putting them over his own clan), but no – Wei Wuxian went against the world, *even his loved ones*, to do the right thing, saving all the survivors of Wen Qing’s people from deadly servitude.

And then there came a point where Wei Wuxian’s world was ablaze. It’s understandable that Wei Wuxian was initially furious with Wen Ning’s part in what went down (Wen Ning killed Wei Wuxian’s brother-in-law, unknowingly under someone else’s control, but that wasn’t discovered until much later), but Wei Wuxian still was immediately horrified and extremely distressed by the idea of Wen Ning giving his life in atonement (and later, Wei Wuxian was endlessly concerned for Wen Ning).

Anyway, Wei Wuxian had reason to believe it was his OWN fault that certain horrible things happened (he didn’t know about outside interference by someone with murderous intentions and little concern for collateral damage). And so, Wei Wuxian committed suicide, feeling that the world, including his "lifelong confidant"/"soulmate", was better off without him and his disastrous creation (the Stygian Tiger Amulet, which he’d actually controlled better than he’d thought, but the concept of it did end up being misused by others, so …).

BUT THAT WASN’T THE END OF HIS STORY. In fact, as all versions open with the announcement of his death, in media res, it’s technically the *beginning*! Years later, he’s resurrected, solves a series of murders, acts as a mentor for some youths, learns a lot of truths (including what had really happened with his brother-in-law’s death, and that there were those who’d actually loved and missed him when he’d died), and presumably goes on to a bright future – a LIFE with his soulmate, putting his talents to further use for the benefit of humanity. He doesn’t pay the ultimate sacrifice to stop someone else’s mess (like Tony does with Thanos) – his death never made him a hero, just was a tragedy. In fact, many people in his world had said “good riddance” when he’d died, but we learned that they were demonstrably wrong in feeling that way – we were supposed to be sad over it, and relieved when it was undone, and thrilled at his second chance, feel a great wrong had finally been righted! Not feel that it was the best possible outcome!

(Even some of the people I’ve talked to who DO agree that Tony’s end was a tragedy, not deserved / needed for his character, still seem to have WANTED it, felt somebody dying was the best way to end Endgame, and I just can’t relate AT ALL. To me, his best end, the best way to write Tony out so RDJ could retire from the franchise, would have been him just retiring to the lab, as promised to Pepper, and maybe consulting by phone now and then.)

Considering Wei Wuxian went on to save all the clans from annihilation, it’s a good thing he DID come back! And considering how he solved mysteries and saved a few people after THAT, it’s a good thing he didn’t die saving the clans, either!

So poor Tony. Poor Pepper. Poor Morgan. Poor Peter. And poor us.

Thank the gods (and the novel author, and the Untamed showrunners, and actor Xiao Zhan) for Wei Wexian (and his Lan Wangji, his Lan Zhan), healing my little fan heart after Marvel devastated it!💖

#the untamed #wei wuxian #Marvel #tony stark #marvel cinematic universe #anti endgame #character study #mine #2020 #chen qing ling #mo dao zu shi #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #mcu #wei ying #the yiling patriarch #compassion is what we need examples of not how to die for a cause which is what governments want young people to romanticise and yearn for #dying tragically is not an ideal to strive for but rather a tragedy to avoid inflicting on those who would left behind #I reckon the avengers could have all banded together to use the stones the way the guardians used the power stone together #why does our society want our heroes to die? Ive never gotten to the end of a story & felt it would have been better if my fave charrie die

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moviebuilding · 4 years

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Shoebox Adventures- the power of space in Roy Andersson’s “A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence”

In 2014, Swedish commercial-maker Roy Anderson tried to bring his school science fair project to the Cannes film festival. A series of solemn set-pieces on the human condition shot in hyper-real grey spaces that simultaneously evoke familiarity and discomfort, his odd little diorama was bound to make a storm.

Except Cannes rejected it.

But Venice let it in! And thank god they did, saving this cinematic gem from public negligence and (a mere 6 years later) bringing it to my attention! “A Pigeon”, as I will now be referring to it, is almost certainly the strangest film I have ever seen. It might also be one of the most wonderful, thought-provoking and funny films as well. Characters, plot and setting are largely absent or deliberately vague, instead thrown in the all-consuming mixing pot known as ‘mood’. But when you’re telling a story about the nuances and complexities of humanity, it seems stupid to make it like a story. Much of it is left for the viewer to assert their own personal interpretations, to feel what they feel from the film’s peculiar exhibits. Not because “A Pigeon” has set out to confuse or provoke different audiences, but because different people see life differently. And this film has something for those different views. Who knows, it might even help them live alongside one another.

As part of my recent architectural fad, I thought this would be a great chance to explore the power of spaces within films, which is probably the medium in which we consume the largest quantity and variety of architecture. What Anderson has done with his little spaces is all kinds of captivating. Natural and alien, his scenes grow and decay off the tiniest differences. Now, to work!.

The opening scene puts everything on the table as to what we’re in for. Peering at a talcum powdered women scolding a talcum powdered man peering at stuffed birds in the world’s greyest museum, accompanied by plinky strings, you can already tell this isn’t going to infringe on The Fast and the Furious’ turf. The camera sticks 10 feet back from the ‘action’ and never once zooms or pans, so we can continually survey the scene without any distracting close-ups, leaving the characters spied-on but not fully known. The open doorways and windows are everpresent throughout the movie, a clever trick to alleviate feelings of claustrophobia. This also serves to give us a view to equally stately goings-on in the background, which helps to create Andersson’s diorama world. Every wall is flat in colour and texture, the lighting uniformly gloomy with no hint of natural light or shadow. And the cages that hold the taxidermy are metaphors for our cages of loneliness in the modern world, but you knew that already.

This hospital scene starts out as static, a painting-like arrangement of a classic scene, the children witnessing the gradual passing of their mother. Andersson keeps it uncluttered by having the dialogue occur two doorways away.

And yet after pleasantries are dispatched and pretence discarded, the whole scene swirls like Vertigo; the brothers contort, the sister slumps in her chair, the presumed-still body of the mother’s body squawks out in alarm as her bed is dragged sideways across the room. We do not zoom in to see her anguished face, making her all the more powerless and the viewer confused at what to feel. The nurse arrives silently at the threshold, hesitant to cross into this family’s hysteria. She watches the painting come to life and ruin itself, just as we do. The notion of characters watching characters is one that Andersson returns to a lot in “A Pigeon”, which ultimately provides a heavy dose of the film’s realism. In traditionally-shot movies, the two-way dialogue close-ups obscure the silent characters from our interest. Andersson lets us see them gawp, knowing we do too.

A romantic getaway might seem like a departure from the film’s predominantly urban setting, but whilst the sand and soundtrack provides the impression of a beach-scene, we are actually in another of Andersson’s dioramas. The intimacy of the couple is uncomfortable, and not just for the man’s awkward movements or their judging dog. The wall-like dunes rise up, obscuring the horizon as a pair of far-off high rises intrusively leer into shot. The sky is a pastel blue, withholding any sense of time or importance on the moment we’re presented with, the mutt our audience sleeper agent who stiffly watches it unfold.

The closest the film gets to any main characters are a pair of grey-clad salesmen who potter about the scenes with mixed financial success. Throughout the film we get to know them, and thus Sam and Jonathan carry the largest targets on their back for Andersson’s gentle ridicule, here pictured bursting into the bar like outlaws into a wild-west saloon, in which they explain that they’ve gotten lost looking for a mythical shop named ‘Party’. The gorgeous painted background, viewed through a window, is our first glimpse of a horizon- a grey/green wasteland dominated by gargantuan transmission towers. our heroes have traversed this wilderness, by foot or car we are never told, to find the Party and reap the rewards! Unfortunately for them such a place does not appear to exist, and fortunately for us they are cut off from their usual sales pitch by the arrival of the army of King Charles XII.

You need to go and watch it!

Sam and Jonathan’s spaghetti western (perhaps Swedish meatball western?) journey is revived somewhat later, with what looks like a briefcase-wielding standoff inexplicably located next to a railway. This normally charged setting is relieved of all potency by their slow hobbling around the mid-ground, exchanging insults and emptying briefcases. Which makes it more pathetic, more silly and more real. Probably the three words I’d use to describe the film.

The cruelty sequence of the film begins in a stark grey laboratory. A monkey is hooked up to electrodes and shocked according to a time. The scientist talks vapidly on the phone. In the room behind another technician feeds the remaining inmates. The monkey is closer to the camera than almost any other character through ‘A Pigeon’, close enough to see it writhe. Out the window are more grey high-rise buildings, now somewhat more suspicious and responsible for the monkey’s torture. Andersson’s world is the same palette and yet it’s ever-changing, the mood altering with each new skit. The monkey has nowhere in the film to escape to, you can’t imagine a happy ending for it and thus it’s the most blatant moraliser of the film (until the next scene).

The scene in question witnesses African slaves forced by British colonial soldiers to march into a giant cylindrical drum with horns protruding out. It’s then set alight, and we squirm as it spins, implying the frantic scrambling of those inside to produce a resonant rumble while we watch from a safe distance. I won’t spoil what happens next, but it’s sufficiently sobering.

Waking from this horrible dream, Jonathan wails to Sam to make sure the viewer got the point the point of this sequence- “Is it right to benefit from the pain of others?”. Andersson makes his plea the more pathetic and powerful by giving us a view to his sink and mirror, the latter a reminder of his role in the pain.

Once Jonathan is told to go back to sleep, the camera stays resolutely on the corridor. It is a bizarre space. The flat doors defy depth, the corridor is long yet finite, grubby yet sterile, lonely yet constantly surveyed by the permanently grumpy security guard.

i hope you enjoyed this dip into “A Pigeon”, and I say dip because there’s about 39 scenes in total and I wasn’t going to do all of them (for free *wink wink*). I thoroughly recommend that you watch this film (and currently you can for free on all4 in the UK) and then maybe re-watch it two more times. You may not like much of it, some of it or most of it. But I think you will love part of it. And that can be your bit of it, to take to parties and share with everyone else. Because like the hokey cokey, that’s what it’s all about.

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c-sand · 5 years

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You said that GOT kept pushing that Sansa could betray the Starks/Jon any minute but I wonder: did it? Or was that fandom's interpretation whenever she was in conflict b/c Sansa can do no good to them? Maisie said Arya was supposed to come off to the villain in the Winterhell plot; but fandom's love of her made them take her side. Idk it's possible they never meant for Sansa's conflicts to be judged so b&w (but they f'ed up the execution enough for fandom to have the wiggle room to blame her).

(forewarning that this answer is a hot mess express and i’m just rambling)

I think it did, yeah. Not on the show, really, but outside of it. In Show, fandom interpretation is a massive part of it, that’s for sure. But, I also think that GOT had the idea constantly pushed in cast interviews. Because, while we had people like Maisie saying such about Arya (and people subsequently not listening, because everyone loves her and Arya and haha isn’t she funny??) (she is funny, what a great gal, we stan), everyone else was constantly talking about Sansa’s tensions with This Character, That Character, That Character Over There �� even when the tension barely existed or wasn’t relationship ending. Sansa’s questionable motivations.

It’s almost like people came to GOT each season waiting for “THIS season!!” or “OKAY NOW THIIIIIS season!!!” to be the one where her “real colors” were shown and she pulled off her wolf hat to reveal her flayed winged lion’s mane billowing in the breeze – and the interviews seemingly reflected that.

(Which is fair, if you don’t like Sansa and were hoping it was all going to come to light. I mean, I’ve thought Dny was a villain for seven and a half seasons and had been waiting for the day she inevitably destroyed Kings Landing, so people waiting for Sansa to drop kick Jon Snow into Sparta’s big ‘ol hole out back isn’t that much different, I guess. Apart from the fact that the main thing suggesting Sansa was going to do that was a first round draft outline that GRRM had long ago discarded.)

Before S7, they were constantly talking about how Sansa and Jon were at horrible odds and struggling with each other and how she undermines him and his authority (”undermining him” being having literally three differing opinions: we need to have some sort of standard on actual treason, you can’t immediately abandon me and our people to go to a foreign invader you don’t know who’s family has a history off killing us, and I agree The Dead is Very The Most Serious because I actually have faith in you, but I’m telling you we can’t forget the Cersei exists, because she is dangerous too).

But, then we actually watched them and he wouldn’t tell her his plans (so obviously she’s frustrated), then they would disagree about something about the plans he didn’t tell her about and he’d tell her not to speak against him in public about things she learned on the spot…in public, and then she would extend an olive branch to mend the small tiff before it became anything more. But, the way it was spoken about before any of it aired was that it was going to be succcccch a bigger deal. Which, of course, everyone heard and latched onto, because they wanted her to turn against him and the family and the North.

When it came to the actual show, as opposed to interviews, fan interpretation is where the narrative comes in. They had the whole Arya V. Sansa plot line about how Arya thought Sansa was trying to take everything from Jon, but everything from Sansa throughout her and Jon’s entire relationship up until that point (and after) never agreed with Arya’s point of view. So, really she ended up looking like a psycho who needed to calm down and Sansa looked like a girl who was afraid that her seemingly assassin sister was literally threatening to murder her and cut her face off. Understandably afraid that her seemingly assassin sister was literally threatening to murder her and cut her face off.

And Fandom Interpretation? Most of the GA seemed to be on Arya’s side of that messy plot line, taking it to “Sansa’s the biggest Bad Guy in Game of Thrones, Arya has nailed it!”

Which was ironic, because it was literally a moment of, “People are getting Sansa’s motivations wrong.” The letter. A double down of the fact that Sansa was a child who was being forced and manipulated into writing a letter that everyone immediately knew she was forced and manipulated to write. (Which echoes with Sansa “””agreeing with Joffrey and Cersei”””” about the fight, which had been immediately followed up with our North Star, Ned Stark, saying she didn’t betray Arya or the family, she literally had no choice but to agree) (And she didn’t even agree, she took a risk and said she couldn’t remember).

And then triple down on all of those sorts of things by her constantly having Jon’s back, even when she’s frustrated and being shut out. And her big act of betrayal also being made in with the intention of his benefit and survival.

I’ve read a lot of good meta recently about how towards the start of the show, they did intend to make her actions be looked at as b&w, because they simplified her so thoroughly into as much of a stereotype as possible, potentially not knowing how important Sansa was for the story going forward. I think it might’ve even just been, “It’s first season stuff, it’s Sansa, she’s “””not that important””” we’ll flesh it out better later,” because I think they really already get adjusting by S2. (Although I do think she’s got levels in S1, even in the simplified state). She doesn’t have all of the qualities she’s got in the books (from what I know, I’m only just reading them I haven’t even hit Sansa’s first pov yet lolol), she just sort of walks around and is physically and mentally tortured. But, still they already start adding in layers more.

I’m rambling, this isn’t coherent. But, essentially, I think in show (apart from S1, potentially) they weren’t intending for her choices and actions to be so b&w “she’s against the family!!!”, it’s just that everyone hates Sansa (grasps tightly to their S1 interpretation that she wants the fairy tale life and so she’s evil and will do anything to get it?) so that’s how they read it and her going forward, for.ev.er. And it wasn’t their goal to make her choices really come off so simple, it’s just everyone else simplified it to, “Oh she’s being docile? She loves her captors, she hates her family, she just wants to be Queen, she’ll kill Jon for it, she wants power more than anything in the world!!!”

When it’s actually more of, Sansa wants power over self, what happens to her and her body and her name, and wants to keep all of those she loves safe and take care of the people it is their responsibility as Starks to protect.

But, in interviews and such, they pushed the concept of the first (”Hey maybe she’s power hungry and Jon should be concerned!!!? Watch season seven, watch season eight!!! ;D !!”), because they knew people were basically placing bets on when Sansa was going to make it plain that Sansa is out for Sansa and no one else, despite the fact that that wasn’t the narrative within the actual show.

#ask #sansa stark

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go-diane-winchester · 5 years

Text

Why I stopped liking Misha after eight years.

I loved all the guys at one point. I don't stan anyone. Some people may think I am crazy about J2 only. Well, yeah. I loved everyone, once upon a time, until they gave me a reason to hate them. Now only the Js are left and despite being flawed [like every human being on earth] they are still decent human beings. They are not manipulators or provocateurs. They are just flawed. So my admiration has gone back to season 1 to 3, when it was just J2 and they were enough. With some side order of John. I like all the Winchester boys, but not blindly. Even if one of my boys do something wrong, I will acknowledge it. I wont ignore it, or make excuses for it. Nor will I dog him down for it. Unless he is a repeat offender, like Misha. Misha is not one of my boys. He is barely a man.

Before I started to really hate Misha, I had a soft spot for him. I didn't ship him. I don't ship. I mix and match according to my mood. That is how classic slashers used to do it. Because pinning your happiness on one ship, when the are a bevy of beauties out there, is a silly thing to do. I was going to write an epic story for Jared and Matt, where Misha was going to play a pivotal role as Matt's brother because I always felt Matt and Misha had similar fraternal features. It was going to be an epic. I was also going to do a suspense-ish story with Jared and Misha, where the epilogue was going to be Misha brutally killing an old woman, but he was the hero of the story. That story was actually close to my heart. Unfortunately I got sick, and didn't write anything for years, which is a good thing because I would have regretted wasting such a nice story on that leech.

I was going to write a Cockles story about two years ago, with Jared, JDM, Gil McKinney and Tahmoh playing supporting roles. I am meh! about destiel, but never begrudged others who liked it. Hey, different strokes right? Its all fantasy anyway. Or so I thought. I heard some canon talk on YouTube, here and there, and thought that ''this girl doesn't understand slash''. How was I to know the majority of them don't understand slash. Then the hellers started to really misbehave in YouTube comment sections, on Twitter and at cons. You had to blind not to notice it. And I was shocked. I said, ''I wish I could meet Misha. I will tell him about these fans. They are giving him such a horrible name.'' I liked him and thought he would make everything better. How stupid I was.

Then I realized that everyone else is a either a jerk or leeching off J2's fame. I realized that Speight was a Trump supporter and that put me off. Misha blurted it out on a panel and Richard looked angry about it. Its the first and last time I appreciated Misha having a big mouth. At that time though, I still liked Misha. I realized Matt was following a heller on SM, who was bashing Jared continuously, so he can get lost. Osric was nice and I paired him with Jared mostly, because the big and small thing does something to me. Sevin was my jam. This was my honest thoughts when I encountered Kevin zig-zagging and outrunning Sam "Oh, let this cutie be Sam's pairing. Poor Sammy is so left out because of destiel. At least now he will have his own stinking cute pairing''. Not even knowing how I was going to come to regret supporting destiel.

I felt sorry for Misha, because he was poor and lived on handouts. I remember him saying that Random Acts was inspired by a woman who bought gifts for him, his brother and mom on Christmas Eve when he was very little. I felt sad that he cut himself, because he was a bullied teen. I was furious when he got mugged. I wanted those pigs caught. ''Ok, fine, steal his stuff, but there was no need to hit him''. In other words, I believed everything he said. I was a sucker. And I was livid when I realized that he played me and all his other fans.

The first thing he did, which I didn't like, was bashing the Bible. I am a Muslim and found that very offensive. That made me think back on that lady who showed him kindness as a child. Why would he bash her beliefs when she was so nice to him? But I thought, first time offence, and let it go. Then I realized that he was too provocative on stage. Whether it was swearing or talking abut sex, he didn't care whether children were in the room or not. I am fairly sure he curbed his language when West was on stage with him. I cant remember though. When it came to slash, I was always baffled at why he was talking about it at cons. As far as I knew, slash-related questions were banned. Later I realized it was because he was breaking the rules, which was essentially making Jensen look bad.

Once there was a heartfelt complaint from a minion that fans were asking Misha very sexual questions in a panel. I was angry. Why are fans being vulgar with an actor? He's not your boyfriend. Later, when I checked for myself, I realized he was being provocative too. He also made some blasphemous remarks. Later he complained to one of the handlers ''I didn't know where to draw the line''. I forced myself to give him the benefit of the doubt even though, that incident stayed with me for all these years. So he creates the environment that he is complaining about, to make himself look like a victim. Well sow it and reap it, hypocrite.

Jaxcon 2017 is where I started to pay attention to Misha and his hellers, and Jibcon was where my mind are fairly made up. It was only when I looked into Travis Aaron Wade's case that I fully made up my mind, that Misha might be a shadier character than I thought. Misha has said some very scandalous things about Jensen and Dean followed by ''oh, I am going to get a phone call about this. I just know it''. If you have been told not to do something, then why do it? It was Jensen's death threat that made me really hate this guy. When I first heard about it, I thought, ''Misha is going to give them a stiff kick for threatening Jensen''. Months went by. When Misha kept on pandering and pandering despite the abuse online, that is when I realized that this man is a manipulative, heartless creep who only thinks about himself. I regret my Misha admiration and I feel a little ashamed that he suckered me.

Edit:

A reader added this and it thoroughly surprised me:

Agreed on all, but one point I think is off and I’m almost certain I’ve heard that Mishas kids actually swear and he’s ok with it; jokes about it in his panels. I saw a clip once where J2 and MC are on stage and he talked about it and J2’s reactions were almost comical.

If anyone knows which panel that was, please let m know. I want to see J2's reactions. And what Misha said.

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avengers-nextgen · 5 years

Text

We Are One IV

“You okay?” Penny questioned, sitting on the edge of Enzo’s bed. “I heard what happened. Must have been hard.”

“You don’t have to baby me.” Enzo mumbled.

“I’m not. As a friend I’m genuinely concerned.” Penny frowned.

“I’m fine. Just angry and confused.” Enzo blinked fiercely trying to keep from crying, “I thought Max was my friend, but I was wrong.”

“They’re as confused and scared as you are,” Penny sighed. “Having this burden is tough. It’s a big responsibility that not a lot of people want.”

“So now you defend them?”

“No! I just see it from Max’s perspective! I understand their point of view.” Penny stammered.

“I don’t want to talk about it okay?” Enzo croaked. “My sister already tried. She wants to throttle Max.”

“Sounds about right,” Penny laughed.

“Yeah. Real fantastic times going on.” Hugging his pillow Enzo stared angrily at the wall.

“Listen, maybe I’m not helping right now but I am here if you need me,” Penny assured him, anxious to leave. Enzo gave no recognition of what she’d said. Lost in thought, Penny shuffled back to her room.

“How’d it go?” Arthur asked, hanging upside down on her bed.

“Horrible.” Penny frowned. “He’s so...sad. I don’t like it.”

“It’s tough.” Arthur agreed.

“No kidding.”

“You tried though, and that’s what’s important.” Arthur assured, sitting upright at last.

“Thanks.” Penny smiled thinly. “I just feel like everyone’s on edge.”

“It certainly is an interesting atmosphere at the moment, but it’s understandable,” Arthur shrugged.

— — —

“You’re going to murder that poor training dummy,” Chloe noted dryly whilst taking a bite from her pear. She flipped the page in her book and glanced up to see Nathaniel pounding once more at the silicone mold. “Someone make you mad? Touch your pointy sticks?”

“They’re arrows,” Nathaniel huffed, “and yes, I’m mad.”

“About the Enzo thing?” Chloe took another bite.

“About all of it.”

“I think you’re just mad you’ve got a challenge for once.” Chloe leaned back against the bleacher stands designed to hold classes of twenty.

“Oh yeah? What makes you say that?” Nathaniel arched a brow pausing in his assault.

“Someone roughly your age, challenging your beliefs, attacking your family, and you’ve always been the protector. It’s no different than wolf packs.” Chloe shrugged.

“Are you insinuating I’m some sort of alpha running on animal instincts?” Nathaniel scoffed, resting his hands on his hips.

“Well, something like that. Nature doesn’t lie.” Chloe smirked.

“And what if you’re right?”

“If I’m right? Things will escalate until conflict boils down to one survivor. One alpha over another.” Chloe explained.

“I’m no murderer.”

“Under the right circumstances anyone is a murderer.” Chloe’s words sent a chill down Nathaniel’s spine. “Would your mother kill for you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m not wrong.”

“I suppose not.” Nathaniel nodded. “Why tell me this though?”

“Because you need to be careful. Some people around here care about you. You know that loss isn’t easily healed or forgotten. Don’t be the cause of someone else’s.” With that, Chloe collected her book and bag. Tossing the remnants of her pear into the garbage she left Nathaniel to his own devices. He didn’t feel angry anymore, and he turned away from the dummy.

— — —

“Your family ties you down,” Killian noted from where he leaned against the door frame.

“My family is the only reason I give a damn about anything anymore so can it Ben Franklin.” Harper glared, plopping onto the worn sofa. “You’re lucky I scrounged up enough to rent this shit hole.”

“Which we appreciate,” Max quickly remarked.

“All of this waiting is making me...” Drew frowned searching for the right word, “restless.”

Harper looked at the alien with distaste. The girl was odd, completely apathetic, and in her own world a majority of the time. Not to mention the random splitting headaches that practically incapacitated her. “If you even point your axe at me I’ll kill you.”

“I’m certain she would kill you first.” Kubu replied dryly. “But the alien has a point. I am restless too. I have an agenda to accomplish.”

“We know, your little diplomatic revolutionary mission.” Harper smirked, “but if I didn’t know better I’d say you’re just looking for an escape to America.”

“My mission is for my people!” Kubu glowered, “I wouldn’t turn my back on them.”

“Everyone says that until the moment comes to make a choice. I would know.” Harper replied coldly.

“Enough.” Killian’s voice echoed off the walls of peeling paper. “We have to be careful. They have the numbers, the experience, and the coordination.”

“How would you know?” Drew asked in genuine curiosity.

“I’ve grown up watching them come into themselves as heroes,” Killian explained, “I know each of them like the back of my hand. There’s only a few wild cards. The new acquaintances. Luckily, each of you is familiar with one of them.”

“So you need us,” Kubu stood straighter jutting out his chin.

“I said that the moment I gave my offer,” Killian reminded them, “we all benefit from this. Drew claims her bounty, Harper gets a good chance at life, Kubu takes down oppressors, Max gets a normal life, and I no longer have to watch my mother waste away at the hands of others.”

“As you’ve said,” Harper sneered, “but I don’t see results.”

“You would be wise to know patience.” Kubu suggested.

“I know patience!” Harper snapped, “I know patience better than any of you. Prison, prison makes you patient. You don’t have obligations like I do. People depend on me. What the hell do you know about family?”

“My people are my family,” Kubu growled, “the only one here who has no family is Drew!”

Drew arched a brow as everyone looked at her in curiosity. “What?”

“That’s if she’s even telling the truth,” Kubu continued, “for all we know she’s lying. How is it someone doesn’t remember where they are from?”

“It’s possible,” Max stammered, “I know someone. They’re not too different from Drew.”

Kubu regarded Max in silence before accepting the reply and leaning back against the wall.

“Thank you, Max,” Killian smiled kindly at the young boy, “but bickering gets us no where. I have a plan, but each of us needs to trust one another entirely.”

“Please tell me this isn’t some bonding exercise?” Harper frowned.

“It is.” Killian nodded with a glint in his eye both enchanting and terrifying. “Only one thing brings people closer together than anything else.”

— — —

“I don’t believe it,” Piper snickered, watching Thalia sharpen her sword on the couch.

“What?” Thalia asked, glancing about as if it were an obvious thing to notice.

“You got laid!” Piper cackled, tugging at Thalia’s tank top to expose some sort of healing mark on her shoulder.

“I don’t understand,” the blonde frowned, pulling away from Piper’s touch. She may not have comprehended the expression, but she was aware enough to feel thoroughly embarrassed.

“Of all people,” Piper whistled, “I thought you’d be the last of everyone.”

“For what?” Orion asked, moon walking into the living room to retrieve his shoes.

“Thalia got laid.”

“Nice.” Orion nodded, collecting his sneakers, “but I don’t think that’s something she wants you to brag about for her.”

“I still don’t understand,” Thalia stammered, “what did I do? Doesn’t everyone lay down? You make it sound like something unpleasant.”

“It’s okay, Thalia, don’t worry about it.” Orion gave her an apologetic smile and patted her on the shoulder. “Piper’s being nosy again.”

“Am not! I knew something was up when you two came back. You were more inseparable than ever and don’t get me started on other things.” Piper beamed. She’d noticed very quickly how Thalia and Siyanda had acquired the habit of subconsciously maintaining a form of contact with one another. Of course, Piper hadn’t pin pointed whether or not her suspicions were correct, but now she was positively certain.

“Ranting again? I’ll be taking my sandwich and leaving,” James sighed, immediately turning to the kitchen.

“It’s not ranting! It’s discussion.”

“About what? Some device you plan on blowing up?” James arched a brow.

“No, that Thalia got laid.” Piper shrugged.

“Seriously?” Orion looked incredulously at the youngest Stark.

“Uhm, okay.” James shook his head, “I didn’t need to know that. Uhm, congrats? Good job?”

“Good job? What did I do?” Thalia asked again, feeling her face heat up more and her heart hammer. She was beyond confused and frankly she was so embarrassed she wanted to cry. “Why won’t you explain?”

Piper pursed her lips in thought for a moment before coming up with as plain an explanation as possible, “You and Wakanda’s tech genius slept together.”

“That isn’t strange. We do that all the time.” Thalia’s brow furrowed.

“You what?” Piper blinked.

“I’m leaving!” James held his hands over his ears and abandoned his mission for a sandwich.

Glancing between Piper and James, Thalia decided she wasn’t understanding something key once again. Swallowing hard she abandoned her sword and went in search of the one person who’d set things straight.

“Did we do a bad thing?” Thalia blurted as Siyanda lifted her welding mask.

“That depends on what I am being accused of,” She replied vaguely. Thalia sat down across from her and explained everything in rapid succession leaving no room for a response.

“We did something wrong didn’t we? It was a bad thing.” Thalia wrinkled her nose to keep from crying.

“No, no it wasn’t a bad thing.” Siyanda shook her head. “Piper’s just teasing you. She forgets sometimes you’re not up to date on all of the slang. It’s not nice teasing or fair teasing, but you’re okay. No need to be upset. You didn’t do a bad thing.”

“Good,” Thalia nodded. “I don’t want to do anything bad. I want to be a good person. And I don’t want to be the reason you do something bad and be a bad person.”

“I know,” Siyanda smiled attempting to kiss Thalia only for the welding mask to fall down, “I should have seen that coming.”

“Metal mouth.”

“That’s what my dad said when I had braces.”

“Smart man.”

“Yeah,” Siyanda laughed, pulling up the mask again, “but do know-I won’t ever think of you as a bad person. Not ever. No matter the circumstances.”

“I won’t think of you that way either,” Thalia promised.

“Good,” Siyanda grinned, “now with that settled I have some ass to kick.”

#avengers #avengers next gen #marvel #black widow #captain america #mcu #natasha romanoff #pepper potts #romanogers #scarlet witch #we are one #phase3

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

Text

the tangled web of fate we weave: x

because no episode today and I obviously have many feelings. I am sorry that the quotes above the readmore still look messed up, because tumblr is a stupid website with stupid problems. it should be fine once you click through to the blog, or on mobile, or as a reblog. or just read it on AO3. idek.

part ix/AO3.

In any other circumstances, the fact that Garcia Flynn is presently crushed in the backseat of a vehicle that can only generously be described as “economy size” would be the worst thing about this situation. His knees are practically rammed through his chin, he may develop a permanent crick in his back from hunching, and he suspects, from catching her smirks at him in the rearview mirror, that Emma goddamn Whitmore is thoroughly enjoying watching him suffer. Except, of course, that this isn’t the worst thing about the situation. Emma is in the driver’s seat, left hand on the wheel and right hand cuffed to Lucy’s – she doesn’t have the box cutter blade at her wrist any more, but Flynn can’t try to dive forward and grab the wheel (assuming he could even get up enough leverage to move) without hitting Lucy, and then obviously endangering her in any resulting crash. If it was just him, he might take his chances, but her –

He blinks hard until the memory that has just flashed through his brain goes away, and tries to focus on the task at hand. He doesn’t know where Emma is taking them, or who they might be meeting. He’s still trying to figure out how this just went so terribly, horribly, no-good-very-badly wrong. Should have guessed that Wyatt Logan sending them a too-good-to-be-true willing Rittenhouse defector was some kind of trick – and frankly, Flynn wondered, but ignored it. Getting the files was more important. And now the files turned out to be a fat lot of nothing, and he has no idea what the situation is, much less how to get them out of it. All his training is screaming at him that this is what you avoid, you have no control, and you especially don’t want to get mixed up in it with a non-combatant. Wonderful.

Lucy sits stiffly in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, as Emma pulls out. They seem to be heading for the interstate – 95, if Flynn had to guess. They drive in silence for several minutes. Too much to ask that she at least put the fucking radio on. Then Lucy says, with admirable composure considering that this is the second time in less than six weeks that she’s been snatched by Rittenhouse, “So where are we going?”

“Just to sort some things out.” Emma accelerates up the merge ramp – yes, 95 northbound, they’re headed somewhere in New England. Flynn’s mind reels feverishly through potential Rittenhouse possibilities or important sites in the area. He isn’t entirely sure that Emma is working for them, as her statement in the library left just enough ambiguity that she could be in this for herself, or Mason Industries, or even as a double or triple agent, but it has to be deemed the most likely. “You’re in no danger, princess, as long as you cooperate.”

“Stop calling me that,” Lucy says through her teeth. Flynn could have warned her that this was a mistake; never show your enemy that they’re getting to you. “And yeah, the threatening me with a box cutter part made me feel really safe.”

“That was just to get his attention.” Emma throws an amused look over her shoulder at the fuming Flynn. “He doesn’t really do subtle. I had to prevent him from doing something stupid. Stupider, that is. It was the most direct.”

“So what was that beforehand?” Flynn barks, not that he has any expectation of a proper answer. “Show up playing the wounded fawn, run away from your evil overlords, want to go to London – that was all a lie?”

“Oh no. I want to go to London. It’s important to get our overseas operation established, just like I said. That was entirely true.”

“Overseas operation meaning Mason Industries or Rittenhouse?”

Emma gives him a demure, nasty little smirk, enjoying even more the fact that she isn’t going to tell him. Flynn curses viciously under his breath. He’s gotten himself into a lot of dicey situations, admittedly, but this ranks up there. He makes a mental note to throttle Wyatt when he sees him again – it won’t fix anything, but it will make him feel better. Assuming he does see him again. It has not escaped Flynn’s attention that Emma has promised Lucy’s safety in exchange for her cooperation, but said nothing about him. Well, he’s been a major pain in Rittenhouse’s ass for several months now, and if he had gotten a proper chance, would in fact have rushed back to the Bay Area with the intention of destroying this purported time machine, no matter what. Great way to make friends with a multi-billionaire tech mogul and all his likewise important buddies, but Flynn has never cared about making friends.

There is silence for another few minutes as they drive. Emma cuts someone off, they honk, and she raises her middle finger without looking back, in a gesture of such utterly unconcerned fuck-you that Flynn almost (almost) can’t help but admire it, considering that is how he operates most of the time. Then Lucy says, “So the turning up and promising to help us research Rittenhouse – that was strategic, wasn’t it? Get a few boxes of unimportant papers, make it look like you were really helping, find out how much we knew, and not actually give anything away. But why bring in the Nicholas Keynes stuff?”

“You might have really learned something, if you looked at those,” Emma remarks lightly. “They were mostly for your benefit, Lucy. But your boyfriend blew it.”

“He’s – not my boyfriend.”

“Oh? So when I walked in and you were about to run into each other with your faces, you just tripped and ended up that way, did you?”

Flynn can make out the flush in Lucy’s cheeks, even without her turning around. He looks down, just because whatever is on his own face, he thinks it’s better if neither of them see it. He clenches his fists, trying to forget the sensation of touching her, after diligently avoiding it for several days, since – well. And then since all his self-control went out the damn window when he did, perhaps it’s for the best, in a sick way, that Emma interrupted them. Definitely not the opportune moment, but when it comes to this, when could it possibly be?

Some interminable time passes in silence. There is obviously not a lot to gab about on a road trip with your mortal enemy, after all. They seem to be heading for New York – there have to be half a dozen Rittenhouse installations there, don’t tell Flynn that Donald Trump isn’t up to his ears in it – but Emma bypasses the city, continuing up 287. Apparently they are headed upstate, though how far isn’t clear. They can’t really do anything (or rather, Flynn can’t do anything) until they arrive, though he refuses to give Emma the satisfaction of asking if they are there yet. (It might annoy her, at least, but still.) Finally they take the freeway exit for West Point, and Flynn’s hackles go up. Are they visiting the academy? What the hell is going on there – target practice, using him? Emma’s got his damn gun. Shit.

Flynn is almost inclined to be relieved when they do not drive through the gates of a heavily secured military facility, but rather down a bumpy dirt road to a stately old house at the end. It looks like a colonial museum, handsomely restored, but the two black cars parked out front makes it clear that they’re not expecting hordes of Nikon-wearing tourists and their sticky-fingered offspring to descend. This is… not necessarily an improvement. If they disappear out here, nobody is likely to be any the wiser.

Emma parks the car and opens the driver door, swinging out. Since her right wrist is still cuffed to Lucy’s left, Lucy obviously cannot get out the passenger door, but is dragged awkwardly after her, banging her shoulder into the gearshift and getting her shoulder wrenched over her head in a way that looks painful. Flynn reminds himself that he needs to be careful, but his blood is boiling and he is sick of being careful. He’s already broken the cardinal rule, has let his enemy transport them from the scene of the crime – even basic police advice tells you that if your assailant takes you somewhere else after they nab you, they’re planning to rape and/or kill you. This is deep on their ground, and Emma has his gun. He is going to have to get that back posthaste.

Flynn yanks the door open and bursts out of the car, wrathful as only a six-foot-four man who has been packed in an orange crate to be kidnapped possibly can be. Emma jerks Lucy pointedly in front of her. “Watch it with the sudden moves.”

The whites of Lucy’s eyes are showing, but she’s calm. Coldly she says, “What was that about how I was in no danger as long as I cooperated?”

“Are you cooperating?” Emma asks – fairly enough, Flynn supposes, but he still hates this woman with every inch of him. “I’m not sure.”

“Yes, well, you people don’t really make it easy to like you, do you?” Lucy explodes. “At least Cahill tried the sweet-talking approach, get me a dream job, see the world, all the stuff that an ordinary human might like! This, now – ” she rattles the handcuff – “just went straight for the ropes and chains, didn’t you?”

“Look.” Emma seems impatient. “Just tell him not to make any trouble, and this can be a lot easier for everyone. Like I said, it’s really him we want. You just happened to get in the way. I can’t release you just yet, because you would run off and call someone and make it messy, but stop fighting me. You might not believe it, but this is the gloves on. I have orders to treat you gently. But out here – ” she waves at the house – “who knows if I do?”

A chill goes down Flynn’s spine. He’s met a lot of people in a lot of wars, some of whom like killing and some who do it because it’s their job, and he is belatedly realizing that yes, that wounded-fawn act, even if it didn’t entirely take him in, has blinded him to Emma Whitmore’s full danger. Not because she’s a woman; it has nothing to do with that. Just that she straight-up wants power (he thinks that’s Rittenhouse’s lure on her, at any rate), wants control, wants pain, and she has been given plenty of enjoyable opportunities to explore her talents. He doesn’t know what she has in there. He has to get Lucy out of this.

“Fine,” Flynn says in a growl. “I’ll play nice, for the time being.” The tone of his voice leaves it clear that if Emma takes her eyes off him for an instant, she’s dead, but she probably expected that. “Now let’s get this over with, huh?”

Emma smirks primly, then turns and starts toward the door, Lucy perforce accompanying her. She enters a code in a secret keypad, too many digits for Flynn to follow, and the door swings open, leading them into a dim, dusty front hall. An elegant chandelier tumbles crystal droplets from the ceiling, a grand staircase leads off into the gloom, and by the reverent look on Emma’s face, they might be walking into some old cathedral, some hallowed hall of power. Flynn doesn’t know what this is, but when Emma opens a glassed French door and they step into a study crammed to the brim with clocks, his stomach begins to turn. Clocks of every description, large and small, ancient mahogany grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, handsome brass navigation instruments, ornate gilded ones that look as if they’ve been ripped from a fin-de-siècle train station, fancy golden pocket watches in various stages of assembly and repair… a mad clockmaker’s lair. And the thing David Rittenhouse was known for, aside from astronomy, was –

“Yes.” Emma seems to have been following the process of realization on his face. “This is Rittenhouse’s house. You don’t realize how lucky you are, you both are, getting to see a special place like this. Ah, Millerson, Vincent. About time, boys.”

Flynn glances up to see two men, clearly the owners of the cars outside, entering the study from the other side. They both are wearing suits and have sidearms strapped to their torsos, as well as any other possible number of hidden weaponry, and they are not here to appreciate the historical value of the place. (Well, maybe, but still.) These are clearly Emma’s Rittenhouse cohorts, the muscle of the goon squad, and they come to a halt, looking at her for orders. It’s clear that she isn’t just some random piece in the system, but one of its essential and high-ranking cogs. Of course, they’d want their agent in Mason Industries, right next to the time machine, to be one of their best and brightest. Flynn feels sick.

“Got him,” Emma says briefly, jerking her head at Flynn. “It wasn’t even that hard. Like I said, don’t send a man to do a woman’s job. Boys, you take him upstairs to debrief him. We need a full and complete account of everything he knows, everyone he might have passed intel to, all his sources of information, how long he’s been on the case – everywhere. We need to make sure we have it airtight, any more leaks cut off. I know about Logan, we’ll be dealing with him, but anything else – remember you need him to talk.”

“Good luck with that,” Flynn snarls. “I’m not going to.”

Emma eyes him again, then rattles her handcuffed wrist, making Lucy’s arm shake. “Are you?”

That takes him like a punch in the gut. They can beat up on him all they want, but if they go after Lucy – and these people are exactly the kind who would do that – he doesn’t know if Emma is bluffing, if Lucy’s pureblood status (and where has he heard that before?) is enough to protect her. Lucy has rejected Rittenhouse, after all, and made things plenty difficult on her own. But if – but if –

For the moment while Flynn’s defenses are down, Millerson and Vincent swoop in on either side, grabbing hold of his arms and twisting them behind his back. They march him away – they’re good-sized gents, but it’s still taking considerable effort from them both – and up toward the stairs. He doesn’t know whether to fight. He thinks he hears Lucy yell, but then the door slams behind him, and he is in darkness.

Once the women are alone in the creepy clockmaker parlor from nightmare land, Emma undoes the cuff from her own wrist, fastens it to the old sofa instead, and obliges Lucy to sit down with a short push. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Be real,” Lucy snaps. “Like I’m drinking anything you’d give me.”

“What, princess? Think I’d give you a poisoned apple?”

“I don’t know, wicked stepsister. You might.”

“Wicked stepsister?” Emma laughs. “That’s the best you can come up with? It’s almost kind of adorable. As I said, you’re still safe, for now. But it might be a long wait.”

Lucy doesn’t answer, because she is straining with every inch of her to hear any sound from beyond the door, or from upstairs. Flynn was shot barely a month ago, she saw the wounds herself, they’re not totally healed. If they start hitting him in his bad shoulder, or pulling out the waterboard or the pliers or whatever other terrible idea they have – Rittenhouse’s idea of debriefing him is clearly not going to be a pleasant and gentle experience. This must be a major Rittenhouse black site. If she ever did get back to a godforsaken normal life, could she call someone and tell them to check David Rittenhouse’s mansion in West Point – Lucy never knew he lived in New York, what was he doing here? Or would they get here and find nothing but a handsome old historical house, all illicit tracks expertly covered, or a Rittenhouse agent waiting to shoot them and hide the corpse in the root cellar? It might be a regular Cask of Amontillado situation down there. Her heart is hammering in her ears. Oh God, oh God, this is bad. She has not the first idea of how to fight her way out of this.

“So,” Emma says at last. “You and Flynn, huh? Garcia Flynn. I suppose he’s cute in a tall-dark-and-psycho Eastern European way, but really, what else does he have going for him?”

Lucy cannot believe that Emma really thinks they will sit here and girlfriend-gossip about boys (she probably doesn’t, she’s just trying to get under Lucy’s skin) and thus maintains a dignified silence. It’s broken by a distinct thump from overhead, and Emma’s eyes swing up toward the ceiling. In that, despite the fact that she very much is still handcuffed to an antique piece of furniture, has only that Krav Maga class going for her, and is terrified out of her wits, Lucy Preston lurches (it is not nearly anything as graceful as leaps) into action.

She jumps up, wrenching her wrist in the cuff, but manages to headbutt Emma solidly under the chin, hard enough to make her teeth click. Lucy shoves a hand into Emma’s jacket and her groping fingers find the butt of Flynn’s gun, which she hauls out, trying to find the safety and switch it off. She somehow manages it, clicks the trigger to cock it, points it at the chain, and shoots.

The sound of the gunshot at close range is deafening, making her madly flash back to seeing Flynn shot in front of her in the car, and it’s like using a flamethrower to kill an ant, but it does the job. Lucy pulls her freed wrist out of the blown-apart couch, feathers floating everywhere, just in time to hear another heavy clunk, and freeze. Emma has recovered herself enough to grab a spare gun from a nearby drawer, which she is pointing dead at Lucy’s head with hands far steadier and more accurate than Lucy’s own. “I wouldn’t do that. Princess.”

The tension crackles almost unbearably as they stare at each other, as Lucy struggles with the idea of pointing it at Emma, at some vital part of her, and actually doing it. Not that there is any guarantee she’d make it, since it would be the grand total of a second time she has fired a gun and beginner’s luck is nothing to count on in this situation, but still. She feels nauseous even trying to train it on Emma’s arm or shoulder, much less her head or heart. She is not Annie Oakley, cannot shoot the gun deftly out of Emma’s grip without hurting her. And frankly – Emma has hurt them, has her thugs upstairs probably beating holy hell out of Flynn, works for an incredibly evil organization and enjoys it remorselessly – does she deserve to be treated nicely? Does she deserve to die?

Lucy can’t breathe, can’t focus, feels like she’s having a panic attack, which is obviously not conducive to firing a gun in any circumstance, much less this one. Her hands rattle hard enough to make the muzzle wobble crazily in all directions. Emma clearly doesn’t think she can or will do it, but she’s not an amateur; she’s not going to laugh off someone with motive to want her dead pointing a heavy Glock at her. Her eyes don’t leave Lucy, waiting to see what she’s going to do, what she’ll possibly –

And just then, there’s a sound at the door, it opens. One of the goons has clearly heard the gunshot and rushed down here. “Emma?” It’s Millerson. “Emma, are you – ”

“Ryan, you idiot, don’t – ”

Lucy swings around, brings the gun up, and fires in the direction of the door. There is a yell and a heavy stumbling sound, and she ducks low and sprints across the parlor. There’s another door on the far side, she doesn’t know if it leads upstairs as well – Emma is shouting, swearing – Lucy hit Millerson somewhere, he doesn’t sound like he’s dead, but she shot him, put the gun against his head pulled the trigger now he’s – no, she didn’t, he’s not, not Bohemian Rhapsody, not now, this is stupid, this is demented, this is –

There’s a staircase on the far side, which Lucy hurtles up, not sure what she’s going to find at the top and not sure she wants to, but driven on with blind panic. Halfway up, she runs very hard into someone coming down, screams (or tries – it gets choked in her throat as a gurgling squeal) and raises the gun again, just as they grab it. “Lucy! Jesus!”

She almost faints again, for a different reason. It’s Flynn, blood running down his face and shirt torn, as he wrenches what is, after all, his own gun out of her hand. This is probably a wise idea, as he can be much more effective with it, and by the looks of things, he caught Vincent in a moment of distraction after Millerson had hurried downstairs to check the gunshot. Vincent is probably soundly unconscious on the floor, if Flynn didn’t have time to do anything else, Lucy hopes he’s dead, with a savage, burning need that scares her. She hopes he's fucking dead.

There is a lot of banging and crashing behind them, and Flynn grabs Lucy’s hand, half-throws her over his shoulder (they seem to spend a lot of time escaping from Rittenhouse-owned properties in this fashion) and runs down the back corridor. They reach a door, which he wrenches open, and they spill out abruptly into the muggy spring afternoon beyond, into the thick tangles of untrimmed greenery that abut the back of the house. They bash and barge through it, branches lashing at Lucy’s face as Flynn does his best to break a path, feet slipping out from beneath them in six inches of mud. Nonetheless, they keep running, sliding down gravel and splashing through a murky green rivulet, through more trees on the far side, and finally out into an abandoned play park, which is exactly as creepy as it sounds, but looks like a warm and sunny daycare after the Rittenhouse of Rittenhorrors. Graffiti defaces the slide, the swings hang off their chains, and by the looks of things, local teenagers or junkies come here at night to get high. Lucy sways, grips hold of the monkey bar post, and goes to her knees, hoping not to stab herself on a stray heroin needle. Then she is very sick.

Flynn is likewise breathing as if they have been chased by a train, but he crouches next to her, almost but not quite putting a hand on her back, as if she is still a piece of dangerous ordnance that will explode if approached unwisely. “Lucy,” he says hoarsely. “Lucy?”

Lucy can’t answer, because she’s still throwing up, but finally spits and shudders, remaining on her knees, hair hanging loose in her face. She can feel herself shaking, a fine and constant tremor, and doesn’t know how to make herself stop. Her wrist is still in the cuff, the broken chain dangling. She feels half as if she is watching this remotely from above. Shock, she thinks. This is called shock. It’s entirely understandable, but you should have a blanket and somewhere to put your feet up. Probably also liquids and deep breathing.

All of those things seem as far away as Mars at the moment, and she retches once more, but doesn’t bring up anything except a dribble of sour bile. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. Her voice is hoarse and deep when she speaks. “What’re… we going to do?”

“We need to get out of here.” Flynn glances edgily back in search of pursuit. If Vincent is unconscious or dead, and Millerson is shot, hopefully Emma has been delayed, but they would clearly be foolish to think it was forever, and they’re still far too close. “Can you walk?”

Lucy obediently tries to struggle to her feet, but her knees immediately give out, and Flynn catches her, swinging her across his chest as he did on their escape from the first Rittenhouse shindig back in Marin County. (That one looks much more civilized and preferable, really – maybe Cahill is not so bad after all.) She can feel him shaking too, ever so slightly, as she tucks her head under his chin and buries her face in his shoulder. There is a wet spot of fresh blood on his shirt where the thugs must have broken his scab, and she shifts restlessly, pressing her hand to it. “Garcia, you’re…”

“Shh.” Flynn doesn’t break stride. “It’s fine, it’s nothing.”

“What did they – did they – ?” To judge from that and the blood on his head, he must have taken at least a few good licks, but thank God they didn’t get enough time to really dig in and go to town. “Are they – did you – ”

“I didn’t tell them.” Flynn hesitates. “Much.”

In that, Lucy can sense that whatever he did tell them, however deliberately misleading and unhelpful, was to make it sound as if he was cooperating, so they would not have any occasion to try to hurt her. Her abused heart clenches almost unbearably. They have crossed some kind of Rubicon here, some point of no return. Rittenhouse is not going to stop. They are going to keep looking for Flynn – and for Lucy, and probably for Wyatt, by the sounds of things. They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop.

Lucy falls into a fevered half-doze despite herself, worn out with exhaustion and terror, as Flynn keeps going. Finally, she stirs as he is stepping into the parking lot of some backwoods motel, two-story whitewashed cinderblock with garish pink doors. Flynn goes in and tells the receptionist there’s been a hiking accident, his wife is hurt, they really could use a room, at least for a few hours. He will take care of phoning the emergency services, and he has a little money, but still – if she could find it in her heart –

The receptionist, clearly alarmed by their appearance and hoping this is not the start of a TV horror series, quickly agrees. Five minutes later, Flynn is awkwardly unlocking the door of the end second-story room, carrying Lucy through, and setting her down on the bed with its polyester floral bedspread. The portable air conditioner wheezes in the grey, stuffy air. He shuts the door and swears, for which Lucy can’t really blame him in the least.

“Is this going to be our life now?” she asks weakly, eyes closed. “Hiding out in shitty hotel rooms from Rittenhouse? Running from one to the next? Having to hope we don’t get caught and do it all over again?”

Flynn doesn’t answer. It’s plain that he can’t, that he has no idea, that he has not had anything to recommend him at keeping her safe – that every time he reappears in her life, trouble and danger inevitably follows. Lucy cracks an eye to see him still standing there, staring down at her. Then he sits down on the bed and carefully picks the handcuff off her wrist, smoothing his callused fingers lightly along the abrasion. “Did Emma hurt you?”

“No, she…” Lucy feels her stomach revolting again, even though there’s nothing left to bring up, and pushes herself clumsily upright. Flynn is looking down at her hand, very small between both of his, still not quite meeting her eyes. “She just. . . she said I was safe for the time being, and gloated. I… startled her, I stole your gun and got the chain off, and…” Her words stutter to a stop. “I shot Millerson.”

At that, Flynn does lift his gaze, startled and pained. He looks at her for a very long moment, the way she can’t stop her lip from trembling, the way her eyes are wet, how she feels as fragile as porcelain. It’s clear he can’t quite decide how he wants to respond to that. He lifts one of his hands as if to tuck her hair behind her ear, still not entirely touching her. At last he says, “Did you kill him?”

“I don’t think so.” Lucy’s stomach turns over once more – and then, weirdly, it stops. She should be feeling worse about this. She, like any godless liberal academic, has plenty of opinions about American gun culture, about gun control (or lack thereof), about all the ways it’s ridiculously easy to kill someone in this country even if you aren’t part of an evil secret society. And while she does feel bad, obviously, it’s a worryingly less degree than she should. She might be able to do it again. She might be able to shoot somewhere less easily mended. This is not, is not, how Lucy wants to feel about it. And yet.

Flynn glances at her under his eyelashes again, her hand still in his, which Lucy feels as if she shouldn’t remind him of in case he pulls back. Finally he says, gruff and awkward, “Well. Good – good job. Getting away from them. Someone should teach you how to properly shoot, though. In case it happens again.”

Lucy does not want to know how to properly shoot. She wants to go home to her books and her papers and the safe, ordered, settled nature of her old life, which might have had its problems but at least was not an active turd volcano. She doesn’t know why Flynn still won’t entirely touch her or why she even wants him to, doesn’t know, doesn’t know. She is the one to pull her hand loose this time, and stands up. Has an overwhelming urge to wash until her skin comes off. “I think I’m going to take a shower.”

Flynn glances at her with a pained and haunted expression. All he can fucking bring himself to say, however, until she almost wants to slap him, is, “Should I go look for some food?”

“If you want. I’m not really hungry.” Lucy sits up, and her head reels. He automatically reaches out to steady her, and their fingers lock. His tension is clearly evident, and after a dumbstruck instant – as if they haven’t been holding hands this entire time, because he has to make everything as difficult as possible, always – he tries to pull back.

Lucy, just then, has had enough. He clearly cares about her, gave up his gun when Emma had a box cutter at her throat, and even before that, in the reading room, he wasn’t exactly cringing in horror from her ugliness. But with this and everything, she isn’t in the mood to just patiently and graciously overlook his inexplicable, yo-yoing behavior one more time. This is not really a smart or healthy thing to do, but neither has been the rest of it. Lucy leans forward, catches his chin clumsily in her hand, and kisses him.

After all this time, and their multiple near misses, it’s – well, it’s as exactly as awkward as kissing someone you can’t decide if you love or hate for the first time, angry and messed up and just off a near-death experience, can possibly be. Lucy almost misses his mouth, and their teeth scrape, their noses knock, his head is not at quite the right angle and he momentarily seems to have had a heart attack anyway. His hand floats up, ghosting over her hair. The angle gets adjusted, and she cups her free hand at the back of his neck. His lips open. It turns into a proper kiss for five or ten glorious seconds, Lucy sliding forward on her knees and leaning down into him, eyes half-closed. It feels so much better than shouting at him. Then, since he must have gone too long without making a clanking emotional gaffe, he pulls back, turning his head just enough to separate their mouths. “Lucy. . .”

“Can’t we just. . .” Lucy slides up on him again, knees on either side of his hips. She has solid evidence, if you will, that he does not mind this at all. “For once, can’t we just. . .”

Flynn glances up at her with that same expression from earlier, that almost-anguished, disbelieving, tender, adoring look, that contains all the emotion he is such utter crap at articulating aloud. “You’re not in the right – ” he starts, then stops. “You’re angry, and you’re feeling like you want to lash out, and – you need a shower, Lucy. A shower, and maybe some food, and to sleep. You do.”

This may be, and indeed probably is, entirely true. Lucy, however, is aggravated beyond belief that the one time he’s able to come up with a mature, rational emotional response is the one time she doesn’t want him to. She also can’t tell if this is the “this isn’t the right moment, but we’ll get to it later” kind of gentle shutdown, or the “you’ve definitely read it wrong and I’m trying to let you down nicely” kind. You wouldn’t think so, given everything else, but she has given up on his guessing games. Fine. This has already been the worst day of her life, what else can really go wrong at this point?

Face burning, Lucy collects herself, slides off him, and retreats to the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror until her eyes cross and the image blurs. Then she undresses and turns on the tap, trying to get it past a tepid trickle. The ancient boiler seems incapable of running properly hot, and the water pressure isn’t great either. It feels like standing under a dribble of warm spit, which is far from the soothing deluge that Lucy envisioned, and isn’t helping her tension or her frustration. She runs her hands over her face, through her wet hair, still possessed of the phantom urge to scrub. There’s a hard bar of blue soap that feels like gravel when she scrapes it over her skin. She sits down and watches the water circle the drain. She would like to think she’s handling this relatively well, but she has no idea.

Lucy remains where she is until the water has run completely cold, then gets out of the shower and dries herself with another sandpapery towel. She looks at her clothes and can’t really stomach the idea of putting them back on, doesn’t feel released or relaxed. Finally, she just struggles them back on, fingers fumbling. She doesn’t look at herself in the mirror this time. She’d rather not see.

Flynn is gone when she emerges back into the room, and she goes tense, staring out the window at the mostly-empty motel parking lot. There aren’t either of the black cars that must have belonged to Millerson and Vincent, but that doesn’t mean anything. They could have stolen the decrepit seventies RV parked at the end and turned it into a mobile surveillance unit. Did Flynn leave his gun here? No, that would be stupid. After what just happened, he will probably only be parted from it on pain of literal death. The world is turning out from under her, it feels like the walls are closing in. This isn’t nearly a small enough room to trigger her claustrophobia in the ordinary course of things, but –

Breathe, Lucy instructs herself firmly, locking her knees. You’re fine. You’re fine.

And in fact, since she is, in some terrible way, fine, things level out the next moment. There’s a rattling at the door, and Flynn enters with a brown grocery bag, probably from the general store down the road – this seems like the kind of place that has a general store down the road. He sets it down, regarding her cautiously. “Dinner.”

“I’m – not very hungry.” Lucy turns away, crossing her arms over herself. “If you were thinking of a shower, it’s terrible.”

Flynn raises one eyebrow, but doesn’t immediately respond. The tension in the room is thick as maple syrup, but much less enjoyably so. They have reached the limit of their polarities, cannot continue to be forced apart without some sort of major explosion, but it’s less certain if it would not then be a bigger one if they came closer. The way Flynn is standing just inside the door, watching her warily, is proof of that. They don’t know if they are arguing or on the verge of making out or slapping each other or sobbing (or perhaps that’s only Lucy). She feels like a rack of dishes tilted over and slammed on the floor. Whatever is in the bag smells good, but she can’t get herself worked up to actually eating.

At last, after another painfully awkward silence, Flynn penguin-shuffles closer, digs the food out – looks like a deli chicken special, some rolls, a couple prepackaged Caesar salads and two bottles of fruit juice – and sets it on the table. “Hey,” he says, in that gruff but gentle voice. “Come here, Lucy.”

She pauses, then walks closer, feeling rather light on her feet and glad to sit down. Flynn opens the chicken box and pulls out a leg, then hands it to her. Despite herself, Lucy almost laughs, as he reminds her of a concerned mother bird anxiously testing out the juiciest worm for an ailing nestling and trying to force it down her beak. She nibbles a little, just to placate him, as he stubbornly keeps up the process with torn bits of the bread roll and salad, handing her the juice every so often as if to get her sugars up. As food tends to do, it helps. Lucy’s head settles a little, she feels less fragile and off the handle, able to breathe more deeply and clear out the knot in her chest. “Thanks,” she manages at last. “Thank you.”

He inclines his head, watching her carefully. “Better?”

“Yes.” Lucy lets out a long sigh, then nods timidly at his cooling portion; he’s barely paid any attention to it, too involved with feeding her. “You should eat yours too.”

Flynn shrugs, then economically dispatches it, clearly as an afterthought. The silence has tipped toward the easier, and there is less chance of a stray spark blowing the whole room sky-high, but the conversation is still not bountiful. At last he says, “I still think this is too close, but without a car, we can’t move anywhere tonight. That piece of shit is not worth it.” He aims a disparaging look at the RV. “Tomorrow, when there’s daylight, I’ll find something else.”

By the sound of things, Lucy thinks, Flynn is going to steal a car. This is possibly something she should talk him out of, but she can’t be arsed. She eats a final bite of salad and then pushes it away. “So. . . I’m guessing interviewing at Kenyon would be out?”

“I think you should.” Flynn swigs the last of his juice and tosses it across the room into the garbage, with a casual skill that Lucy can’t help but admire. “Get out of California. Away from all this. It might be safer.”

“And you?” Lucy tries to speak as offhandedly as she can, but her voice trembles. “What are you going to do?”

Flynn’s eyes are shadows beneath his drawn brows. “I’m going to fight them.”

Lucy was afraid of that. She doesn’t know that she expected anything different, or that Flynn would be content to go back to whatever life he used to have before this, but it still turns something over cold in her stomach to hear it confirmed. “Garcia. . . this thing with the time machine, whatever’s going on at Mason Industries, I don’t pretend to understand it, but if that’s the scale of what you’re up against, how can you. . .” How can you do it alone?

Flynn looks back at her steadily, gently, very sadly. “Do I have a choice?”

Lucy doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, doesn’t know if they are both fooling themselves with the comfortable, comforting delusion that she can take the job at Kenyon and recuse herself from all of this. As if moving to Ohio would be any kind of deterrent to Rittenhouse, if they were determined to catch up to her. She could change her name (ha, like that’s a foolproof method). She could move to Australia. She could run. It’s all possible.

And yet. Lucy has tried to run away from Flynn enough times by now, for whatever reasons, that she’s not altogether sure there’s going to be any different result this time. And she doesn’t want to, she still doesn’t want. Yet going with him down this path is unimaginably dark and dangerous, so far out of her comfort zone that it can’t even be spotted with the Hubble Telescope. She doesn’t owe this to him. She doesn’t have to risk it.

And yet.

Lucy leans forward slowly and takes Flynn’s hand where it lies on the table, clenched and tense. She doesn’t know what she’s saying, doesn’t know what the answer is, other than that she wants their stars to align for a little while. She doesn’t want to try another move on him and get shut down again, doesn’t know what his problem (rather, problems) are. Just links their fingers and lets them rest together on the table. It is getting dark in the room. Headlights waver past on the country highway outside, a brief flash of illumination, and fade.

At last, Flynn stirs from his reverie, gently lets go of Lucy’s hand, and stands up. He strips off his shoes and belt, then shucks his shirt, revealing his undershirt beneath. There is more bruising around his wounded shoulder, deep in the muscle and continuing down the arm where Millerson and Vincent must have hit him, and Lucy sucks in a breath. It’s not like there’s much she can actually do for it, but she makes half a move to get up. “Garcia. . .?”

“It’s all right, Lucy.” He prods at it, and grimaces. “You should get some sleep.”

As there is again only one bed in the room, Lucy does not feel up to facing another bizarre repeat of the Sheraton incident, where he insisted on sleeping on the floor and then wouldn’t look at her. Her pulse is fluttering in her throat as she pulls off her own shoes and socks. Taking off her own shirt would leave her in just her bra, and that definitely seems a little too forward. Is he going to flip out again? He’s managing to act remotely normal right now, but who knows. It’s as if he can be a disaster all he pleases, but the instant she’s in worse distress, he somehow acquires the magical ability to pull himself together and try to support her. It’s almost cute, in a tragic way.

Tentative and careful, they get into bed, still in their clothes. Flynn is not insisting on the floor, so there is that, at least. The sheets smell slightly musty, and the pillows are not the most robust item of bedding ever produced. They lie there side by side, staring up at the ceiling, neither of them clearly getting much sleep given the way they jump at small noises. Then very slowly, Lucy lifts her head and moves it to his good shoulder, settling into the broadness of his chest. It’s more comfortable than the scanty pillow, and it makes her feel safer to be close to him (his gun has been left in easy reach on the bedside table). She listens to the beat of his heart, deep and strong and slow, and rests her hand lightly on his arm.

Slowly, tentatively, Flynn wraps his own arm around her, gathering her closer. Lucy edges close against him, curled into his side, still afraid of him going haywire again and doing something else regrettable. But for now, the fragile, unspoken truce is holding, and she could swear he presses the ghost of a kiss to her hair. If she’s not dreaming already. It’s the same way they spent last night (God, was it just last night?) in the same hotel bed, and yet something, yet again, has changed. Later. She’ll work it out later.

Lucy closes her eyes, and although she hears screaming in her head, she sleeps.

#lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #timeless ff #the tangled web of fate we weave

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dove-haunted · 7 years

Text

Healthy Communication in a Relationship

When my boyfriend and I first started dating, we were both so thoroughly trapped in our own minds and different experiences that it seemed as if were trying to contact each other from separate dimensions. Like a ouija board, we could only make sense of a word or two here and there: hello, yes, no, until finally, we had to say goodbye. Yes, it's true. At the time, our differences seemed so insurmountable, that we broke up. Well, he broke up with me. But we did eventually (almost immediately) get back together, and while there definitely are still some things about the break up that hurt me, I think it was ultimately a good thing. It taught both of us some very important lessons. For me, it taught me how to live without him, and for him—well, I think it taught him just how much he cares for me. However, one of the most important lessons, one the break up taught both of us, and the one I sat down to write about today, was how to communicate in a healthy way. In the process of breaking up and getting back together, we took our evening seance of a relationship and turned it into a full-on haunting. Before I begin, I'd like to offer some background information, just so everyone can get the full picture. He's a 32 year old photographer with a Masters degree and a laundry list of past sexual and drug related experiences. In comparison, I'm a 23 year old on a break from college who doesn't really even like smoking weed and is just now dating my first boyfriend. He's a cynic, I'm a romantic. He has committment issues, I'm always kinda sorta at least casually looking for a husband. On paper, we're complete opposites. And that's one of the main reasons why we couldn't understand each other at the beginning. I think another reason is because we both had very different goals for the relationship. I can't know for certain, but I think, at least at the beginning, my boyfriend treated the relationship as a kind of fling, or at least, not very seriously at all. He wanted something easy. Unfortunately, I am not that. At all. I am emotional and idealistic and incredibly intense. And so he was scared off. But as scary as all of those qualities I possess may be, they also make me incredibly loving, considerate, affectionate, and loyal. When I wasn't there anymore, he realized just how hard it was to live without that. Once he realized just how much I meant to him, his goals for the relationship changed completely: now, he wanted us to stay together for as long as possible. Not quite marriage, of course, but I also wasn't seriously looking for marriage. One day, yes. But with him? I could only answer with a maybe. I mean, I'm only 23. So, while he became more passionate about the relationship, my passion decreased, making me something at least close to rational. And that's because, learning the hard way, I found out that I actually could survive without him. In that way, our intentions for the relationship came into alignment and we started treating each other with the same goals in mind. This is important because I believe having the same goals for the relationship is the first step in developing a healthy form of communication. After all, our different life experiences didn't change and magically become the same after breaking up and getting back together. We were still just as different as we had ever been. The only difference was that we both cared the same amount about being able to overcome those differences. And that gave us the patience we never had before to work through them. Before, whenever we would get into a disagreement, usually because, perpetual bachelor that he was, he would say or do something insensitive and I would get hurt, I'd cry. Cry a lot. And he'd either get angry or get so exasperated with the conversation that he'd give up trying to come to some mutually beneficial conclusion. At the time, it was just too messy for him. But now, because of this newfound patience and care, he actually takes the time to understand where I'm coming from. He also apologizes a lot more, which is important. And because he takes the time to understand where I'm coming from and to atone for his mistakes—well, that makes me act more patiently and take more time to understand him. Because I can see that he is at least trying to navigate relatively unknown waters to him (ie. being in a committed, meaningful relationship with someone who cares about him) and actually getting better at it, I cut him a lot more slack than I ever did before. For example, the other night I got in a huge blowout fight with my mom. I'm talking screaming and tears and slamming doors. Truly atrocious stuff. Well, obviously I was incredibly emotionally distraught when it was all over and texted my boyfriend for support. I told him I'd had a bad day and that I wish I were with him instead. When he asked me what was wrong, I told him I'd had a fight with my mom, but that I didn't want to talk about it. I just wanted to let him know how much I appreciated having him in my life. All he said to that was, "I'm sorry!" And then for two hours didn't say anything else. I thought, "Well, maybe he's at work." Nope! When I asked him, he told me he was at home. So, of course I, the already huge monster of snot and tears, became infuriated by this lack of much needed attention from my boyfriend. I wanted to give him the cold shoulder and teach him how it felt to be ignored, which is what I thought he was doing to me. But that's what I would have done before, and in the course of the last few months, I've come to realize that that's not a healthy reaction to have. Mostly because, if I don't say what's wrong, he won't know that there's a problem and nothing will get fixed. I've also come to realize that, because he is so different from me, he usually reacts differently to situations than I would have had the tables been turned. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just that sometimes his reactions aren't what I need at the time and he, the recuperating bachelor, is completely unaware of this. Because of this, it isn't always his fault for not knowing. I've learned to remember this. So, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I very calmly explained that, although I told him I didn't want to talk about the actual situation, I still wanted to talk to my boyfriend. I told him I needed some emotional support from him, to be told that he cares about me and that he's there for me if I need him, and that, due to his limited response, I was feeling ignored and alone. And do you know what his response to that was? Surprise! He thought I didn't want to talk at all and that what I needed was space. He apologized for making me feel lonely and then, guess what—proceeded to give me what I needed, which was really just a conversation with my boyfriend to distract me from the horrible day I had. The conversation could have ended there, but I wanted to make sure he didn't feel vilified for the situation and that I understood that he just didn't know. So I told him it was okay and made sure to tell him in detail what I need whenever I'm in that kind of emotional situation again. He continued being very sweet about it and promised to change his response in the future. This is just one example, but both of us have come so far in regards to communicating with each other. Whereas before, I would have gotten upset and acted moody until, finally, maybe he'd ask me what was wrong, now I act calmly and gently explain how I'm feeling. And instead of reacting defensively or derisively, now my boyfriend takes the time to understand and promises to do better in the future. This isn't me offering a cookie-cutter shape of what healthy communication should be, because truly, it's different for every couple. But I think the most important lesson I learned and that hopefully you can learn from reading this, is that you should feel comfortable going to your partner or partners about issues you have in the relationship. Although one side might get angry, there should never be any fear that you'll be treated badly or left because you voiced your concerns. Eventually, the two or three or however many of you should be able to calm down, come together, and work on the situation. If your partner shouts and screams and tells you you're a horrible person and threatens to leave, there's an issue there and that person is probably not the best person to be with. It's also important to remember that, although a couple might be bad at communicating at one point, that doesn't mean that will always be the case. If the people involved care enough, they can find a way to communicate in a healthier manner. But it requires work and if one person in the relationship doesn't want to put forth that work, then it's hopeless and everyone involved should move on.

#relationships #communication #lgbt

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fallen029 · 7 years

Text

Clandestine

They were hardly dating.

Which was the point, of course. For it to seem that way. They weren't, like, hiding anything (considering who she was, it would kinda be impossible; she'd even gossip on herself at times). Rather, they just didn't...act like a couple. At all.

Laxus was always rather reserved. Even in his younger days. Not with his opinions, of course, if they were disparaging towards others, but his true emotions and feelings were typically guarded and buried deep within himself.

Then there was Mirajane who, of course, was the polar opposite. Externally, at least. The truth was, rather, that she shared the shallow tidbits of her deeply personal problems, easily putting up a facade of complete sincerity. And her relationship with Laxus was not shallow.

But...they had to seem that way. Because relationships complicate things. Especially deep, significant ones. Not just around the guildhall (though it would there as well) either. Whenever Fairy Tail was in trouble, they both were frequently involved in the melees and the last thing they ever needed was more people tacked onto the list of ones that could be used against them. Laxus had his Thunder Legion and Mirajane had her siblings; but secretly, honestly, they were both on each others list.

No one would ever know though. Even their guild friends, at best, knew them as occasional dates. Sometimes Laxus would offer to take her to see a band play at some bar or Mirajane would beg him to go to see a play with him. All played out in front of the others, of course, with Mirajane blabbing about anything and everything they didn't see.

Weeks, if not over a month, could pass between the next one. And sometimes even then they had to cancel. Mira had work or something came up for Laxus and it was practically platonic, other than the few times (that the others knew of) they went home together. Which Mirajane would immediately go on and on about the next day to any of the women that would listen and Laxus would just mostly grunt if anyone brought it up in his presence.

To most everyone, they were nothing more than friends with very limited benefits.

Behind closed doors, however, it was something much greater.

That was part of the fun, probably, in the beginning, for Mirajane. The sneaking around. Laxus truly didn't care much for it, but she seemed to get a thrill out of meeting in other towns and at hotels and, oh, did the demon just love it when he'd be in the hall and she was ignoring him and there were just these occasional...knowing glances between them.

Mmmm. Yes, that was definitely one of the best parts.

As time went on, of course, this got rather stale and boring, but was made up for in other ways. Laxus thoroughly enjoyed the few times Mira would take a few days off from work and meet up with him in some far off location just so they could spend a weekend completely unencumbered. They'd have nice dinners every night and he'd buy her things, all sorts of things (as considering she was on vacation, she could tell the others when she got back that she bought it for herself), from jewelry to new clothes. For him, that was one of the great things; watching her wear something he bought for her. Even if no one else knew, he did. And that was all that mattered.

Mira, rather, learned to find comfort in the attachment they grew for one another. As months turned into a year and a year rolled into two, Laxus was more or less completely enamored with her. Even if they couldn't be together often, when she did wind up at his apartment or in some hotel, he loved to just sit and talk with her. About everything.

And not just the way that Mirajane talked to everyone. It wasn't...gossip or who would look so cute together or anything even close. Laxus was the only person who honestly talked to her. About real things. Like what was going on in the world, just in general. They could have a conversation on the Kingdom or even just one on the horrible slave trade in Bosco.

Not a single other person took Mirajane's opinions seriously. And definitely not a guy that she was sleeping with. Which, of course, was partially by design. She was the one that, following Lisanna's presumed death, shut herself off and then dumbed herself down. It was what she wanted. And still, in many ways, did.

It just made what she and Laxus had so much better. The way they could sit around his apartment with beers and just chat. No snide remarks about her intelligence or her ditzy tendencies.

He took her seriously. He took their relationship (as hidden and not well-known it was) very seriously. There was nothing he seemed to enjoy more those days than when they met up somewhere and he was just able to toss an arm around her shoulders or press a kiss to her head.

"I love you," was started sometime around the year and a half mark.

By Laxus first, naturally, as Mira would never be foolish enough to ever let something like that slip out before a man. Especially one that only existed when they were alone.

It happened for the first time, once, when she was leaving his place. They'd gone out on a date that night, an actual one (though they just had a nice dinner in), and she'd told Lisanna she'd be home before midnight (she and Elf were leaving the next day on a job and wanted her help figuring out a map or something; she couldn't recall what). Laxus didn't want her to go though because he'd been out on jobs quite frequently, but she only wiggled her way out of his grasp and blew him a kiss as she went to slip back into her dress.

"Screw Lisanna. Stay with me."

"Awe."

"If you leave," he grumbled about then, "I have to make breakfast for myself in the morning."

"Less awe." He got a wink from over her shoulder, just as she was leaving the bedroom. "Bye, Laxus. I-"

"I don't even get a kiss goodbye? What kinda racket is this then, Mira? That you get to come in here, eat my fancy food-"

"The fancy food that you had me make?"

"-roll around in my fresh sheets-"

"The sheets that are only fresh because I cleaned them?"

"-and let you have your way with me-"

"I'll give you that one."

"All so that you could just leave? Without so much as a kiss goodbye?"

And then she turned, because he was being such a baby about it, and came to do just that. Only when she leaned over, Laxus wrapped his arms around her and pulled her right back down into the bed, laughing as she fought him over this as he only rolled, moving to pin her down once more.

"Laxus-"

"Mmmm. Stay with me."

"Why are you being like this?"

Because he'd missed her. A lot. More than usual. It hadn't been an easy job. He'd already told her all about it, but left out that the big fight he'd described to her was a lot less one-sided than he made out and he thought, at one point, that he might actually die out there.

And it got him to thinking. A lot. About things. Mostly things that didn't involve her that one or two that did and well, he just didn't see why Lisanna was so much more important than him.

Err, well, he did, in some ways, but given that the situation wasn't dire, but rather just Mira choosing between the two in very useless ways, he didn't understand why she'd pick her sister to spend the next few hours with.

But she was insistent, even as she giggled and halfheartedly attempted to fight him off. Eventually, with his head buried in her neck, he mumbled something against it.

"You can go." But he didn't let her up. "If you wanna."

"I do."

"Fine." And, finally, with a groan he fell off to the side, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. "You can go."

"I wasn't asking permission, you know."

"I know."

Pushing up, Mirajane stared down at him for a moment before saying, "You could come home with me. You-"

"That would look… If you left here and I followed you, it would just seem… So no. I can't."

"Mmmm." He got a kiss to the cheek. "It's for the best anyways. Lisanna and Elf are going on a super long job without, well, me, so we'll probably spend the rest of the morning planning-"

"It's not even one in the morning yet. How much planning could this possibly be going into this?"

"They're leaving rather early too."

"Still. I almost feel like you just wanna ditch me. Not to mention, shouldn't they sleep before their job? Or-"

"Who does that?"

"Normal people, Mira."

"No, you stay up the entire night with jitters."

He blinked. Then he glanced at her. "You still get...jitters?"

"Mmmhmm."

"One of the most powerful mages in Magnolia-"

"Well, that's a bit presumptuous."

"-still gets jitters."

"About many things."

"You're so silly." And he reached out to gently pat her cheek. "Man, I love you."

It kinda just slipped out of there somehow. In his defense, however, she was grinning at him and he was still feeling all good just from being home (and being with her) and they'd drank a bit, over dinner and...and...and…

"Oh, Lax." That one got him a kiss to the lips. Then, "I love you too."

But he was all rigid then, equal parts shocked as he was fearful of just what that little slip up meant, and Mirajane was able to get out of there without a problem. Laxus, however, felt like he had a pretty big one.

He was...in love.

Shudder.

Mirajane was very patient with him about it. Even when he avoided her after that, for a few weeks, on the pretense of training. And when they were together again, she made no mention of it at all. Just gave him his chance to, after a month or so, loosen his tongue enough for it to slip out again. That time got a giggle and kiss to, as well as a mummer of the words back.

It took a bit, but slowly, that worked into their regular routine. He had no problem with it, nuzzling his face down into her neck and whispering those three words there. Or when she was leaving him for the night, to head back home (or in the afternoon, to head into work; whatever), saying it out loud, though just between the two of them, as they kissed goodbye.

Honestly, that wasn't even the biggest step for them. That, rather, came around the two year mark when Laxus took her to meet his mother.

"I never knew that she was buried so far away from Magnolia," Mirajane whispered to Laxus as they stood over her grave one day in the fall. She was bent over, resting a bouquet of white lilies atop the headstone after glancing over it. "Dragon."

"Mmmm. She was from this town, so we buried her back here when she passed." He only stood above her, watching as the woman gently stroked the engraved dove in the corner of the grave. "You're the only person I've ever taken here."

Getting to her feet once more, Mirajane glanced back at him before smiling, softly. "It's calming, huh? That's the way I felt about Lisanna. When I would go and see her grave back when we… It just brought such a sense of relief."

Laxus glanced down at the stove himself then. "I don't come here very often. I used to. When I was a kid. And would come home from a job. These days though…I'm so busy-"

"I could come." And that time when Mirajane leaned down, it was to pull a weed that was growing close to the gravestone. "And look after it for you."

"Look after it?" He frowned. "What could you possibly look after?"

"I dunno. I think your mother at least deserves some nice flowers every week. If I could...go back to my village and visit my mother...I would. And bring her flowers. And just talk to her. My father too."

With a blink and then a rub to the back of his neck, the man only said, "I mean...I don't think it would make a difference. I've never done this. Bring her flowers." He nodded at the ones she'd laid over the grave. "I'm not really… I mean, she's not here. Err, well, her bones are, but-"

"I think she's here." Mira smiled then, down at the grave. "I think she's with you always, but I think she's definitely here, right now." But, with a slight shrug, she said, "If it makes you uncomfortable, Lax, then never mind. I just thought it would be a nice thing to do. This graveyard is so beautiful too. Well, for a cemetery, at least."

More blinking. Then, dropping his arms, Laxus glanced up at the sky. It was a rather clear day and, for a moment, he watched a single cloud drift. Finally, girinning, just a bit, he said, "I don't think I was ever too good a son."

"W-What?"

"I was pretty selfish."

"Weren't you, like, eight when she died?"

Laxus nodded. "Selfish."

"Normal."

"Normally selfish."

"Lax-"

"I'm still selfish." He kicked at the ground. "I used to come here, when I was young, like I told you, but not to see my mother. Not to talk to her or anything. Just...just to make sure."

Mira swallowed. "Make sure of what?"

"That she was still dead."

"Dragon-"

"I never did any of that. What you just said." He glanced at the woman. "Brought her flowers. Talked to her. Ever. Didn't think about it. What she might want. Because, you know, she's dead."

"Yeah, she is. But-"

"Then I hear you over here, talking about how you would love to have what I have, to have the chance to be this close to your mother and father-"

"Laxus, I wasn't saying that as a slight to you. I-"

"-and it just makes me realize what I took for granted." He looked at Mirajane full on then. "And… If you wanna come here sometimes, demon, to do that… I would love that." Then he let out a slight breath. "I bet my mother would too."

Mirajane took it very seriously. She couldn't get away every week (it would be too suspicious), but no more than a week and a half would go by before fresh flowers were placed on the grave of the late Mrs. Dreyar.

Not soon after that, Laxus proposed to her the idea of her being the current.

"W-What? You're drunk."

"No." Well… "Okay, so yeah, I am, but I'm serious."

Mirajane, at that moment, was seated on his kitchen counter where she had been waiting to be stripped and fucked, but for some reason, the man felt the need to go all romantic on her.

Heh.

Laxus, who was standing in front of her, had his head buried where it always was. In the crook of her neck. He felt safest there.

"We can't get married." Mirajane frowned. "We're not even truly dating."

"We are too."

"Not...publicly. Seriously."

"Hmmm." Laxus lifted his head. His hands, with had been running up her thighs to, what Mira had hoped, tug down her panties, came up suddenly and, with a sigh, she moved to interlace her fingers with his. "Then let's get married and just not say anything."

"What good would that do?"

But drunk Laxus was far less likely to answer questions and much more likely to just blabber on all he wanted.

"And we could buy a house and live there together on, like, the outside of town," he slurred right along excitedly. "And we can have a yard and a place for your stupid stray dog and a garden and I'll have a pool too-"

"How much do you think the two of us would have saved away for a house?"

"Oh! And we can finally have a kid." And then Laxus was shaking his hands free of hers before moving to cup her cheeks in his palms. Mira leaned into this with a giggle as he said, "So, huh? What do you want?"

"Lax-"

"You have to make a choice."

"I really don't think I do."

In Laxus intoxicated view, she really did. "What's the fun in it if you don't?"

"I never really thought of you as the type to feel that way," was all she said as he stroked her cheek gently. "Like, at all. In the past two years, I don't think that has ever come up between us."

Which was odd. Mirajane, with nearly every other boyfriend she'd had, was already planning the names of their children by the fifth date.

With Laxus, however, everything was always on such an edge. They were hidden. And, yes, deep down, committed, but also not openly exclusive.

Or...maybe...somewhere deep down, Mirajane didn't feel the need to rush things with Laxus. To project onto him what their lives would be. Because she was having such a great time with what they are and confident that, while it might not end in bliss, whatever did become of hem would be for the best.

And she'd have had a great time the entire time.

Mira wasn't sure what that meant, if it meant anything, but it sure sounded promising.

"Really?" Laxus dropped her face then, though it was just to reach over on the counter next to her and pick up a beer. "You sure?"

"Very."

"Hmmm." He took a chug of his beer before saying, "Figured we would have. Sounds like something you'd be into."

"Are you?"

"Am I wha'?" Finished with that bottle, he went to toss it in the trash before retrieving two out of the icebox. Then he popped both caps before handing one to Mirajane who was realizing that all that alcohol, apparently, had taken Laxus out of the mood (though at least she'd found out before they got too far).

"Into...you know, thinking about having kids. And being married."

"I kinda just proposed to you, I thought."

"You thought wrong."

Heh.

"You sure? Because-"

"If that was your idea of a proposal, getting drunk and just saying it, with no thought behind it or even a ring-"

"Fine. I didn't propose. Whatever." Another chug. Then, "Since you'd apparently say no anyways-"

"I would not."

"Sure seems like it."

"Then you're not very good at reasoning."

"Well, I am drunk."

"Mmmm."

And they just stood there then, in his kitchen, both taking sips at their beers, but not really knowing where to go next. Laxus had kinda put it all out there (albeit quite foolishly) and Mira just wasn't helping. At all.

Until, you know, she was.

"I would say yes," she told him then as, slowly, she jumped down off the counter. Laxus just stared.

"Oh yeah?"

"Of course." Setting her drink down on the counter behind her, the woman said, "But it wouldn't do any good, Lax. For us to get married. We're still not… Nothing's changed, at the hall. It would still just complicate things and it's been better, really, just the way we have it now and I...I want a real wedding. I always have. So-"

"You deserve," he told her with a sigh, "a real wedding."

"I do wish though that we could," she offered with a slight smile. "I just..."

"Would it mean something to you?" he asked then after another sip of his drink. "If we did? Get married? Something more than a big ceremony and everyone knowing about it and fawning over you? Would it mean more that we were together, forever, than it would-"

"Of course," Mirajane said with a frown. "Us being...married would mean so much more than just-"

"Then why does a big affair matter?"

"It doesn't."

"Then-"

"But I want it." She sounded rather final on that. "I always have. I want a beautiful gown and my sister and brother and all our friends there and I want a huge cake and"

"Then what, Mira? Huh? Either...either we just tell everyone about how serious we are or-"

"That's sorta out of the question now, don't you think?" She cocked her head at him. "All these years, it'd seem fake now."

"I don't care. You think I care what people think? That's not why I ever hid this, you know." He was feeling indignant then. "It was so that the waters didn't get muddied. And that no one in the hall tried to break us up. Or accidentally did. Or made a whole ordeal about it. Not because I cared though, what they thought. I love you."

"I know." She gave him a soft smile then. "I love you too."

Laxus let out a short breath then, almost a huff, before nodding. Tossing back the rest of his beer, he went to toss it and, instead of getting another, just went to lift Mirajane up by the waist.

"D-Dragon-"

"C'mon." He carried her off, over his shoulder. "I'm done talking about this."

"Then what do you want to do? Dragon?"

"Mmmm." Carting her off to his bedroom, he dropped her gently on the bed when he got to it. "To be close to you. As close as you'll let me."

"You're in luck."

"Hmmm?"

When he fell into the bed with her, she wrapped her arms right around him. "Because that's right where I want you too."

Things stayed settled for a bit. Laxus actually took a lot of jobs. Frequently. And Mira worked, like usual. It was actually another month before she was able to get off around the same time as him and take a vacation.

"You sure do get off enough now," Lisanna grumbled when she found out that she was going to have to cover her sister's shifts. "Sis."

"I like traveling," was her only response. "A lot."

"Are you actually going somewhere nice this time?" Kinana asked as she helped them clean up the bar that night. "Instead of just to the beach?"

"The beach is nice," was her only correction to which Lisanna rolled her eyes.

"I think," her younger sister accused, "that you're not really going out to see these mysterious guys you're always talking about."

"Oh, yeah?"

Nodding, Lisanna said, "I bet there's no guys at all! It wouldn't be that big of a deal if it was. You have to be doing something else. Something...darker."

"Ooh."

"Oh, I know." Kinana giggled. "I bet your a smuggler, Mirajane. Of drugs or...something. Something devious. Is that it?"

"Maybe," was all she sang as Lisanna continued to give her the stink eye and Kinana giggled.

Kinana was right though. At least about something. Namely, she didn't take advantage of her surroundings at all. Rather, she and Laxus spent that weekend holed up in some hotel, only leaving for food and, even then, just when they were half starved.

Their last night before he left back to take a job and she went back home to work some more, Laxus was very interested in going to the market, to pick up some more cigars, he claimed, and Mirajane wanted to search for a gift for Elfman's upcoming birthday.

It was while they were walking around, hand in hand, and Laxus was grumbling about 'his cigar guy' not being around that day and he knew he should have gone earlier (although he'd rather enjoyed his earlier activity of getting as tangled up in the demon as was humanly, or subhumanly, possible), while Mirajane held off on what she wanted to tell him which was, basically, to just get over it; the cigars that guy sold couldn't be that great.

But they were. And, honestly, she'd probably make a note of it and come back to buy him some while he was away.

"I think," she told Laxus as he took to muttering under his breath rather than out loud, "that I'll buy Elf a chain for his birthday."

"Think Ever has you beat on that one."

"No, dragon," she giggled, tugging on his hand to make him walk faster and stop sulking. "I mean a nice chain necklace. Or, oh! A ring!"

"A ring?"

"Or earrings!"

"Does your brother even have his ears-"

"Or maybe I just want to go look at jewelry."

He had to give a slight grin at that, shaking his head as he glanced down at his girlfriend. "Or maybe just that."

Which is what it started as. Laxus was more than ready to buy Mira whatever bracelet or necklace she wanted. Even told her as much. Then he walked around the tiny jewelry shop for a bit himself and looked at some stuff.

And...neither was for sure how it happened, but somehow they both wound up at the front counter with the clerk, overlooking the engagement rings and it just sorta...happened. Somewhere along the line, Mirajane had given up on her big proposal surprise and Laxus had long resounded to the fact that he was just going to be with Mirajane forever, one way or another.

It just felt...right.

"Think you can convince Lisanna to cover for you?" Laxus mumbled to her much later that night after they went out and had a very nice dinner where they got very drunk and stumbled over one another to get back to the hotel, celebrating their engagement the entire way. "Get her on the lacrima and tell her you need a few more days?"

"Maybe," Mira yawned as she rested against his side. "But your job-"

"Can wait. I'm celebrating."

Heck yeah they were.

And, that morning, Laxus was ready for them to celebrate a whole new thing.

"W-What? Laxus-"

"Yes. Please. Today." He proposed that idea after their shower as she was toweling off and he was mostly watching her towel off. "Marry me today, Mirajane. You brought that nice dress with you."

"For when we went out to eat. I don't-"

"And I have a decent shirt."

"You have that stupid purple button up shirt you've had since you were-"

"And some dark jeans."

"You can't-"

"And I have a lot of love for you."

That got him a look, but he only gave her a grin cheesy enough to match his statement.

"One day," he added as Mira only stared, as if in contemplation, "whenever you want to tell the others about...us, then we can go back and have a real wedding. The whole shebang."

"Shebang? I really hope that's not what it sounds-"

"But for now," he said as he finally got tired of dripping everywhere and went to grab a towel of his own. "Let's just, you know, do it. Get married. I want it, you want it-"

"Why are you so serious about this?" Mira turned to slip something on. "Laxus? I mean, are you that into getting married?"

"To you? Yes. Definitely."

"Lax-"

"Then what's the plan, Mirajane? Huh? When are you going to be ready? To tell the others about?"

"Oh, now it's all on me?" That got him a heavy glare that time. "Last time I checked, you-"

"I didn't want people to know, Mira. No. I just went through that. But I'm confident in use now. In what we are. And that it wouldn't matter if some asshole trying to destroy Fairy Tail knew about us or not; I'd be saving your lfie above everyone else's anyways."

"L-Laxus, you can't-"

"But I am." And his eyes were heavy as well. "No one buys that family lines end at the door bull, Mira. You think Gramps wouldn't have given up everything if he knew he could fix Ivan through doing it?"

"You don't have to talk about-"

"And you think the damn Salamander wouldn't save your sister and his cat over anyone else? Either them or Lucy? Huh? And Elfman would kill us all before he let something happen to you or Lisanna. The Thunder Legion's more loyal to me. Macao would save his boy, Wendy would save her cat-"

"Stop it. You-"

"No." Huffing, just a bit, he said, "I love you. More than I love anything else. And you can't tell me that you don't care more for your siblings that you do the others. It just the same. For me, anyways. Is it not for you?"

"W-Well-"

"Look, I get it, alright? You're scared or something and-"

"No, Laxus, you don't get it.. You can't. Because you're talking out of both sides of your mouth."

"Uh, yeah, Mira, I think that's how talking works."

"It's an expression, dragon."

He blinked. Then he went over to where he'd left his pile of clothes. "Oh. Didn't know that one. Huh."

With an eye roll, Mirajane explained. "It means that you're arguing both sides of something. And you are. You're saying that you want to get married and hide it, but you're also telling me all about how we should just tell everyone about us. Which is it?"

"Both. I don't care." He even shrugged. "I want you, Mirajane, to be my wife. If it has to be a secret, fine. If it doesn't, even better. Both sides of my mouth are heading to the same end goal; to be married to you. And yeah, okay, so maybe I'm not thinking it through and am, like, romanticizing things-"

"Depending on the definition of that word, sure, you probably are."

"-but this is just something that I see us as heading to. And I really, honestly thought you did too. That it was what you wanted."

"But I do, Lax. I just don't know if-"

"Hey." And even though he'd only pulled on some jeans, he went over to press a kiss to her head. Walking out of the bathroom then, he said, "It's alright. Seriously, it's not that big of a deal. I get to be with you; that's all I care about. Let's just put this behind us, huh? Now get dressed; we're going out for breakfast. You wanna show off that nice ring while you can, huh?"

Definitely. And she did too, staring fondly down at the diamond many times as they walked around the town, not doing much shopping (he had just dropped some serious jewels on her, after all), but mostly just soaking up all the time they had left to be around one another.

And, when that got boring, Laxus skulked off to the hotel room, taking a less enthused Mirajane along, claiming he needed a nap.

"How old are you again?"

"Ha." Laxus wasn't sure if that was an old joke or if she was calling him immature. "But I need one. So-"

"I guess you did stay up awfully late last night," she remarked with some eye batting because, well.

"Awfully," was his reply, "isn't a word I would use, but sure."

He fell asleep almost as soon as they were in the bed. Laxus always seemed just as comfortable in random hotels as he was at home. Given the few stretches of times that he was in Magnolia, staying in his apartment, it was kind of self-explanatory.

Mira, however, took some time to drift on. Plus, she was still more than a bit keyed up about the whole proposal thing.

And thoughts of what was going to happen next…

"Hey, Lax? Laxus? Are you awake?"

No. Still, he grunted just a bit.

"Oh." Shifting closer to him, Mira laid on her side as she stared down once more at her brand new ring. "I just kinda wanted to talk. Is that okay?"

When didn't she? But, once more, he only gave out a slight grunt.

"I just don't want you to think that I'm not as in love with you as you are with me. Because I am. Believe me. I love you so much. You're, honestly, the only person that I'd ever take this step with. I mean, I've considered it before, like, a lot, but not seriously. Just childishly. But with you...since you brought it up before… It's stuck with me. And that means something. Right? That I've been more serious about it with you than I have been with anyone else? Literally ever?"

Grunt.

"And I can see us, you know, in the future. Being happy. And with...with a family. And we can have that, can't we? A family? Together?"

Grunt.

"But it's just… I've been thinking since...since this morning about us, you know, just doing it. And just telling everyone. And just getting it over with. About what would change if we did and… Honestly, Lax, I'm afraid that it's less that we feel like we can't tell the others for all those reasons you said earlier, but that we've become so comfortable in not telling them. And hiding things. And life just being about the two of us, together, without having to factor in the others. I think that it's scary, you know, knowing that we're going to have to factor them in now, that our relationship's about to take a big step. Not just in marriage, but in being outed. My siblings will be involved and your friends and…"

That time he didn't grunt. Instead, still lying there on his back, he slowly opened both his eyes before breathing out softly, "Mirajane-"

"I'm not trying to, like, discredit what we have," she said quickly, shifting closer to him still. "I'm trying to tell you that I think… We should just do it. Go for it."

"Heh? What-"

"I want to get married. Like...right now, I think."

"Mira, you're-"

"Not thinking? Coming from the man that's asked me on two separate, point blank, to just run off, get married, and live some sort of secret double life?"

"Not double life. Just half lives at separate times."

"Laxus-"

"I could have jobs and you could work and then, when I come back into town, it would be to some far out house that you would come to too where we have, like, a nanny or something raising our children."

"That sounds very much like a double life. And unfair to our kids."

"Meh."

"And how would I ever hide that I was pregnant?"

"Mmmm...baggy clothes."

"Lax-"

"I'm joking." Turning his head to the side to stare at her, he said, "I'm more on the wagon to just tell everyone, honestly. Aren't you?"

"Eventually," she sighed softly before leaning forwards to press a kiss to his lips gently. "But right now...I think I can handle not having my big wedding."

That startled him, just a bit. "You mean, like, right now? Right, right now?"

Nodding, Mira said, "Can we? Right now?"

"Well, yeah, but if you want, we can just go home, tell the others, and then have a grand ceremony. Make a whole event of it, yeah? Like you want? I mean, I'm not made of money, but-"

"And that's the thing that's been bothering me too." Mira glanced down at her nice, shiny ring before back at him. "I have all these fantasies about what my wedding will be like, I always have, but… When I think about you, I never think about those sorts of things."

"You're taking out of both sides of your nose here, demon."

"It was mouth, dragon, but you're not understanding. I'm saying that yes, I want to marry you, but no, I don't see us in some fancy church with a frilly clothing-"

"Uh, for the record, I was never wearing anything frilly to begin with, so-"

Giving him a look, Mira took a moment before saying, finally, "I just see you and me, when I picture us getting married. No one else. No games. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's what I honestly want."

"But if you've always dreamed of having a big wedding," he argued with a slight frown, "then I'm not going to let you just throw that away. I-"

"I can plan Elf's wedding. Or Lisanna's. Or anyone else's that I feel like." Smiling enough for the both of them, she said, "I don't want ours to be marred with drama or expenses or us fighting or anything silly like that. I've been with you for so long and now I really want to be with you. Don't punk out on me now, Dreyar."

He blinked. Then he smiled a bit as well. "Definitely not planning on it, babe."

But when he moved to roll onto his back once more, Mirajane took to tugging at his arm.

"Wha-"

"Come on. Get up! If we hurry, we might make it to the courthouse before-"

"Can't we tomorrow?" As in love with Mirajane he was, he honestly was still tired. And if he was going to be going back out on a job when their little vacation was over, then he would need all the sleep he could get. "Or-"

"Com on. Get dressed again. We have to hurry."

"How do you even get married?" he grumbled. "Do I need a passport?"

"Why would you need-"

"I don't have my passport if that's what I need."

"We're literally not leaving Fiore, at all, so-"

"Well, they better not ask me for my passport."

"Would you shut up about your stupid-"

"I'm just saying, if they do at, like, the very end of things and then we don't get married and I just sat through all of that, I'm going to be pissed. Might strike down the whole building."

"I said no drama, dragon. I know you can't help it-"

"I don't bring drama, woman. I bring pain."

Rolling her eyes, she said, "Well, whatever you bring, do it quickly. I want to get there-"

"I know, I know. Before the courthouse closes." Stumbling out of bed, he said, "Maybe I can look into getting a new passport while I'm there. Mine's been missing since-"

"Laxus, be serious!"

When pestering her was oh so fun? Not a chance.

Needless to say, Laxus and Mirajane were both all jitters the whole time. It was all worth it, however, when it was all said and done, leaving Laxus the very proud owner of his very own wife.

Mira didn't think that joke was very funny though and, after the demonic glare he got, he decided never to make it again.

"It's that easy to get married?" he asked at one point. "Damn. I'm shocked I never screwed up when I was drunk and did it then. I mean, if you don't even need a passport-"

"Don't make me strangle you on our wedding day."

Eyes glinting, he only grinned as he said, "Wouldn't think of it."

It had to end eventually though. And, three days passed when it was meant to, Laxus spent a lazy morning in the hotel bed, begging Mirajane to just stay with him, while she only prodded him to get up and get going; he had a job.

Still, he walked her to the train station, where she'd be departing (he hated trains and would be walking to his destination), and they had to kiss goodbye. Around Mirajane's neck then was a chain, just long enough that it plunged beneath the low cut of her dress, hiding a set of rings from it. Laxus, however, wore his new wedding ring with no fear, considering he wouldn't be going back home, and it felt cool against her flesh when he stroked her cheek.

"I'll see you when I get home," was all he whispered against her forehead. "Alright?"

Nodding with a giggle, she added, "And then we can figure out how to tell everyone?"

"Break the news, you mean, to those douches that I scored the hottest woman in the guild and they might as well go ahead and kill themselves?"

That didn't get a nod. Just a stare. Then a sigh.

'You're bad," she finally told him with a shake of her head and a kiss to the cheek. "But I have to go. And so do you."

Letting his hands fall, Laxus finally just gave her one last grin. "Love you."

Mira grinned once more. "I love you too."

When she returned home it was to nonstop questions from Lisanna and Lucy about what sort of mysterious getaway she'd gone off on that time. Kinana, ever loyal to her own ideals, only suggested once more that she was some sort of drug smuggler.

"Blink twice if you are," the other barmaid quipped.

Mirajane just played up her ditzy angle to the fullest degree, not out right denying anything they said, but certainly not agreeing to it, her rings dangling, the entire time, just out of their sight.

That was all good and well for, oh, three days. In those three days, nothing truly interesting happened in Lisanna nor Lucy's lives (this hinged, mainly, on the fact Natsu was off on solo jobs (plus Happy) in an attempt to impress for S-Class), leaving them with nothing to talk about, really, other than Mirajane's imagined perfect man.

"I bet," Lucy teased one day as she and Lisanna sat up at the bar, bothering Mirajane. She wasn't busy, what with it being S-Class time, and was mostly wiping down the bar and the bottles on display behind it, "That he's not a mage. Is that it? That he's not a mage so that's why you're embarrassed?"

"Or no!" Lisanna couldn't let herself be outdone. "I beet he's, like, super ugly. Huh, Mirajane? And you don't want us to know that you're with this hideous guy? Way to be shallow, sis."

"Still think it's drugs," Kinana called as she passed by while she was sweeping up.

Mira, for her part, just sighed a bit. "You guys are really uneventful these days. Why does it have to be either of those? Why can't I have just wanted to get away? On my own? And spent some time thinking and contemplating life?"

Lisanna leaned forwards, elbows resting on the bar top. "Because you're you."

"I have deep, honest contemplations about deep contemplative things," Mira argued with a bit of a grin. "There's tons of things that I contemplate about. Contemplation. Mmmm."

"Name one."

"Huh?"

"One of your deep contemplations," Lisanna insisted. "Name one."

"Mmmm… Nope. Private."

"Oh, whatever."

"What if we're looking at this all wrong?" Lucy suggested then. "I mean, we're trying to figure out why Mira wouldn't want us to know about this mystery guy. But what if it's the opposite? What if he doesn't want anyone to know about Mirajane?"

"You're with a man that won't even let you tell others that the two of you are together?" Lisanna tsked. "Way to have low self-esteem, sis."

"He isn't married, is he?" Lucy seemed most interested in that. "Come on, tell us; we won't tell anyone. Promise. Is he? Do we know him?" Then she gasped. "Or worse; do we know her?"

"You two are too much," was all Mira said, shaking her head. "You know that?"

"We try," Lisanna agreed as Lucy only giggled.

They didn't let up after that, of course. Rather, now that they had a knew favorite theory, they hammered that one home, asking Mirajane if the man had a family and if he told her that he was going to leave his wife and, the most important question, was he loaded and could he possibly think about sliding some their way, you know, so they'd keep their mouths shut?

Kinana, who heard the end of that, frowned. "Hush money? Then you are dealing drugs, Mirajane?'

And it wasn't so much that they were annoying her. Not at all. They were actually giving her something to do as with the hall so empty. At the same time, however, the more they spoke on it, as they had in days past, the more Mirajane kinda sorta just wanted to tell on herself.

It wasn't as if Lisanna hadn't pestered her sister before about her frequent clandestine trips. She had. Frequently. But it used to be fun, keeping the secret. And when that faded, it turned more into Mirajane wanted to keep Laxus all to herself and their relationship safe from the hands of anyone that might use it to either their own advantage or just muck it up on accident.

Knowing then though that she was going to be telling them about it, all of them, eventually, made it more of a gossip think than a guardian of her own secret thing. She knew something that they didn't know and inevitably would, so how could she possibly mange to keep it quite?

Honestly, what was Laxus expecting?

It was when Lisanna and Lucy started contemplating if not only was Mira seeing a married man, but also smuggling drugs for him (though Kinana was the one to suggest that as, once more, she passed by), that Mirajane, finished with tidying up, dropped her rag onto the bar before speaking.

"Do you honestly want to know what I was doing?" she asked, trying hard to keep the excitement and nerves out of her voice as she spoke. Lisanna and Lucy, who were enjoying delving into their never ending and equally as idiotic ideas of what Mirajane could be doing, only shrugged a bit.

What could it hurt?

When they nodded, Mirajane took a breath, thought, and then said, "I got married."

Her sister frowned. "How? I mean, if he's already married-"

"Lisanna-"

"Funny, Mira." Lucy gave her a grin. "You got married. Sure."

"I did. To..."

"To?" her sister prompted.

"To...Laxus."

At first, it was just a giggle. Then full on laughter.

"It's not funny. I-"

"Laxus?" Lucy got out around her giggles. "Laxus Dreyar?"

"Well, it's not a popular name, so-"

"Okay, sis, you got us," Lisanna giggled. "We were being mean and now you've gotten us back."

"It's not a joke," Mira kept insisting. "I got married this weekend to Laxus Dreyar. Honestly! We-"

"What? Did you just get drunk or something and run into one another?" It was suddenly becoming a lot less funny to Lisanna as, reading the expression on her sister's face, she didn't appear to be lying. "Mira?"

"No." Then, standing up straighter, Mira said with a straight face, "We've been dating for years."

"Yeah, I know. You guys, like, go out sometimes," Lisanna continued as Lucy was starting to get concerned as well. "But to get married-"

"We've been much more serious than that," Mirajane told her. "We-"

"You're not..." Lucy blushed then, not having any fun at all then as she looked off. "Uh, Mira-"

"What?"

"To get married so suddenly… You're not...You and Laxus aren't...Did you-"

"Are you pregnant?" Kinana was the one, it seemed, that was able to just come out and say it. Cocking her head to the side, she seemed to study Mirajane, as if checking for the signs. "Is that it?"

"W-What?" Mira stifled then. "Of course not. I-"

"That's literally the only explanation for why you'd marry a guy that you hardly ever even go out with," Lisanna carped and Lucy nodded. "Literally."

"Not literally." Then Mira frowned. "And I just told you, we were seeing a lot more of one another than-"

"I still don't believe you." Lisanna even crossed her arms. "At all. This is-"

"Here." Mirajane reached then for the chain dangling around her neck before showing off the rings. "Look. We got engaged and then a few days later I got this wedding band-"

"Oh my God." Lisanna snatched at the chain, jerking her sister forwards as she did so. "You are serious. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought I just did."

Putting her hands up to her mouth, Lucy bounced, just a bit. "You really are married?"

"Yes! I keep telling you guys that-"

"And you're not all knocked up?" Lisanna let go of the rings then to stare at her sister, gaze harsh. "Mira?"

"No." Making a face, she said, "I'm not…knocked up. Honest. Laxus and I have been talking about this for a long time-"

"How could you do this?" More than anything, Lisanna was a bit hurt. "I mean, you've been seeing him seriously for how long and haven't told me? And then not onlyl do you get engaged to him, but you also marry him? This is, like, a major violation of trust, Mira. If I pulled some crap like this-"

"It just happened, okay? We were out and he'd been wanting it-"

"I'm calling your bluff," Lucy said then. "I mean, Laxus wanted to get married?"

Mira shook her head. "He's a lot different with me than he is with anyone else. He- Oh, Kinana."

That time, Mira's shock came from the fact that the other woman had jumped to hug her, wrapping her arms tightly around her. Unlike the other two, the hangups on why Mira might have gotten married so suddenly didn't matter; she was just happy for her because Mirajane was happy.

"This is so great!" the purple haired woman exclaimed. "That you and Laxus both found one another."

"Well, it wasn't hard," Lisanna remarked, still a bit put out. "They have known one another since-"

"Don't be sour just because I did it without you knowing." Mira, after hugging Kinana, looked at her sister once more. "You guys are the first people I told, you know. That has to mean something."

Lucy forced a grin, but kept up by saying, "This is still a tad unbelievable. Although...you and Laxus both do some impulsive things-"

"I'm not impulsive." Then Mira paused. "Or, well, maybe."

"Once you get married on a whim, you more or less lose the maybe," Lucy reaffirmed to which Mira only giggled.

"I guess so."

Lisanna wasn't biting just yet and, crossing her arms over her chest, said, "I won't believe it until I see Laxus and he says that it's true."

"Here you are, Mirajane. That set of new glasses you ordered."

And they were joined then by Erza, who came over carrying a box of some sort, which set down on the bar top before nodding at Mirajane.

"Oh, thanks, Master." Mirajane moved to take the box then as Erza, even a year out, still had trouble adjusting to that monicker. Especially coming from Mirajane. "I really needed-"

"Did you know about Laxus and Mirajane?" Lisanna was the type to cut right to the chase. The swordswoman glanced at her before shrugging.

"What about them?"

"Noth-" Mira tried, but her sister wouldn't let her.

"That the two of them got married," Lisanna specified. "Did you-"

"W-What?' Erza blushed even more deeply then. Glancing at Mira, she just as quickly looked off. "Why would I know anything about that. And Mirajane, please tell me that you...that you have not-"

"Well, Laxus and I both talked it over-"

"You're not pregnant are you?"

That made Mira glare at her though she only went on, carrying that box of glasses off to the storage room. "Why is everyone asking that? Honestly."

Mira didn't realize at the time (though being the queen of gossip, she definitely should have), that being pregnant wasn't even the worst rumor that would sprout it's head. By the time she left the hall that night, she'd had more than one person come up to the bar and ask if Laxus really was paying her to be his wife as well as if it was true that she was a drug smuggler and had married Laxus after a drug deal gone bad and, to keep him from murdering her, she had to surrender her life to him (although Mira more or less knew how had no doubt started that one and figured she'd either praise Kinana for an imagination that rivaled her own or put her on toilet scrubbing duty for the rest of the week).

On the way home, she thought it was all funny.

Lisanna? Not so much.

"I don't understand why you're being like this."

"You don't understand, even a little bit, why I might be upset that you were hiding something this huge from me? That you and Laxus were…. That you got married with out even consulting me? You don't get why I might be put out by that?"

Groaning as they walked into the house, Mira said, "What do you want me to tell you?"

"Uh, try everything. From the beginning."

Which was a very easy thing to do then, as Mirajane, coming off the high of that magical trip with the man, just wanted to gust out all of her love of him to, hopefully, an interested ear.

And Lisanna was very interested.

Elfman was out that night, off on a solo job, prepping for S-Class as well, leaving the two sisters alone. They only went to Mirajane's bedroom where they both fell into the bed and the elder delved into her relationship while the younger listened intently, much how they had spent many late nights in the past, as Mira went over different boyfriends and dates while Lisanna absorbed her sister's tales, as the only ones she had anywhere close in her life involved awkwardly attempting to flirt with Natsu while he just as awkwardly ignored it.

Mira had so many different stories and tales to regal Lisanna with about Laxus and how they fell in love and how they decided to hide it, but they just couldn't anymore. She embellished, at some points, and left out the others where they'd fought and that once where they serious considered completely breaking things off. After all, she was attempting to convince Lisanna of how great they were together.

"We're just...meant to be. And I've never felt that way before. About a man. I've forced it or dreamed of it or hoped for it, but when I'm with Laxus, I just feel it. There's nothing else to it."

Lisanna wasn't sold yet, but Mira wasn't expecting her to be. She was, however, a tad more understanding and, when they called it a night, she agreed that, maybe, Laxus was the perfect match for her sister.

Mr. Right, however, was not very happy with his blushing bride when he arrived back home a few days later.

"Why," he grumbled as he showed up on her doorstep early one morning, "do I have the stupid Thunder Legion bothering me on the lacrima while I'm out on a job, worried about whether or not I'm married to you? And also possibly smuggling drugs, which, babe, I love you, you're my demon, but I can't do hard time. And especially not when I can make you just as rich by taking S-Class jobs."

Mira, how had been getting ready for work, only blinked out at him. "Um...which do I answer first? Because, honestly, I don't think I'd be a good smuggler either, so-"

"Mirajane-"

"I just wanted to tell my sister," she argued as she took a step back to let him in. "And Lucy. And Kinana. And then Erza found out, but-"

"Demon-"

"We were gonna tell people anyways, weren't we?"

Laxus let out a breath then, glanced around before slowly moved to take a step into the house. "Yeah, Mira, we were."

"You bombard me with too many secrets and I have to blow up eventually."

"Mmmm." He only reached out, cupping her face in his hands like he always enjoyed doing, before saying, "So everyone knows?"

Nodding, Mira said, "Everyone knows."

Another deep breath before, slowly, he moved to kiss her head. Against it, he whispered, "Good. Then you can come home with me now. Right?"

Oh, she'd more than enough time to figure all of that out. Nodding at him, she said, "Or maybe you could move in with-"

"I ain't livin' with Elfman."

And that was that.

Laxus went back to resting his lips against Mirajane's forehead and she was contemplating how to break it to Elfman, who was still out and had no idea that she was married, that not only was she moving out, but also that she was moving in with Laxus.

Depending on how she played up Laxus' friendship with Evergreen, it might actually go well.

Maybe…

"So not only do you think that you can just marry my sister without asking, but now you think you can fraternize in front of me too? Unbelievable."

And Lisanna was up. Great.

Laxus and Mirajane separated at the sound of her coming into the living room, her sister staring in shock at her, given that Lisanna, when she didn't have work, could very easily sleep till noon.

But she did have work. She had to work on Laxus. Or at least figure him and his intentions out.

Because no one messed with her and Elf's older sister. And if her brother wasn't around to (attempt) to beat out of Laxus just what he was doing, running away with their big sister, then Lisanna would just have to step up to the plate.

"Fraternize?" Laxus held Mirajane to him as she turned to face her sister. Resting his head atop the woman's, he only stared at Lisanna. "What is she to you? A prisoner?"

Lisanna leveled her gaze right back. "Maybe."

"Hmmm." Slowly, he let go of Mirajane before walking over to Lisanna. Swallowing, the youngest Strauss only stared up at him. With an unusual grin, Laxus raised a hand to her and...patted her on the head.

"You know, kid," he began as he left his hand atop her head, "this is new for me too. This whole...dealing with you thing. And probably your brother too. Then I gotta adjust to being a husband too? That's too much. So whatever it is you want to do to me, get it over with today, yeah? I don't want to fight with you, Lisanna. I love your sister. A lot. And I get that you Strausses are close. And you can still have Mirajane Strauss. But Mirajane Dreyar's mine. Yeah?"

Still, Lisanna only stared. "That doesn't even make sense."

"After you see Mirajane Dreyar, kid," he said with one last pat to her head. "You'll be beggin' to ditch Strauss too, yeah? And don't worry; I'll let you be my little sister instead of Elfman. If you beg."

And Lisanna shoved his hand off that time, but Laxus only laughed as Mirajane gave him a look. Before she had a chance to explain to him that bullying of her brother would never be allowed, he was rushing back over to her to wrap an arm around her once more.

"C'mon." He nuzzled his head against hers. "I wanna spend some time with my wife. I just got home and all. Isn't that how this is going to work?"

"I have work, dragon." Then Mirajane glanced at her sister. "Unless-"

"No." And Lisanna whined that. "This isn't fair. I was gonna go hang out with-"

"Just for the morning shift? Please?" Mira gave her the best sad look she could muster. "For the newly weds?"

"If this is how it's always going to be-"

"It ain't." And Laxus gave Lisanna this...look. Mirajane couldn't quite explain it, but whatever it was it made Lisanna look to the ground. "Mira'll be in at two sharp."

Lisanna only kicked at the ground. Then, "Yeah, whatever."

"And maybe," Laxus offered as he started to lead a shocked Mirajane out the door, "we can go out to lunch or something after, huh? And get this all settled?"

But he was tugging Mirajane out the door before he heard Lisanna's answer. It was just as well, as she wasn't too ready to give him one just yet.

"What was that?" Mira complained as she elbowed Laxus in the ribs. He only tightened his arm around her though.

"What?"

"You know what. You bossing around Lisanna."

"I didn't boss her around. I just told her what was going to happen. I'm a natural born leader, you know."

"Uh-huh."

"Besides." He gave a half shrug. "Me and Lisanna...we're cool. She's just all pissy about...whatever stupid Strauss sibling shit is going on. And from what I can tell, only children make the best in-laws."

"What would give you that idea?"

"Because we wanna be left the eff alone, so we'll leave them the eff alone. Win-win."

"Oh, dragon."

He was solemn then as he softly said, "I like your sister, Mira. So don't worry about it, huh? You got more important things."

"Such as?"

She got a kiss to the head. Then, "We got a marital bed to break in."

"You're so nasty!"

But she was giggling and he was grinning, just a bit, and it was done. The big thing that had been looming overhead. All of it.

Well, most of it. Laxus still had to contend with one Elfman Strauss (and one Evergreen who would no doubt be secretly seething that Laxus had locked down a Strauss before her) as well as the guild (thoguh, considering he didn't acknowledge most of them in any way on a daily basis, that was nothing).

And then, finally, he had to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Namely, being married to Mirajane Strauss.

Nee, Mirajane Dreyar.

Mmmm.

Oh, and then there was Makarov who was none too pleased to know that not only had Laxus, as he put it, 'tarnished Mirajane', but also...kinda...done exactly what the man had always dreamed of.

Heh.

But it was worth it. All of it. Just for those moments when Laxus could walk around Magnolia with his demon and not have to worry about it in the slightest.

So maybe they hadn't been dating. And Mira wasn't knocked up (yet, anyhow). And they definitely weren't smuggling drugs.

But...they were married. And, for the most part, Laxus had to say pretty happily.

What more could he ask for than that?

#Miraxus #Mirajane #Mira #Mirajane Strauss #Mira Strauss #Laxus #Laxus Dreyar #Fairy Tail #Fanfiction

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