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nevertheless-moving · 3 years

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Star Wars AU #20: MacenJar AU

Inspired by this meme and with permission from @simpskywalker

This au is dedicated to everyone who told me that this concept ‘gave them a headache’ or ‘psychic damage’. Especially that special someone who begged me to ‘please stop’ because ‘i hate this, i hate this so much’ and told me ‘please don’t say more words about this.’

Crack Lies Ahead, enough to consume a man. I have spoken.

“Ani. Ani. Anakin Skywalker.”

“Hmm?” The dulcet sounds of Padme calling his name dragged Anakin from sleep against his will.

“Anakin, you have to get up.”

He groaned, rolling over. “...here’s my face...I’ll...be awake in a second...just sit down...I’m awake...”

“No, Anakin you have to leave, remember. You have a 5 AM take-off scheduled, and you made me promise I would get you up early this time, come on.”

She cruelly yanked the covers away. He gasped in betrayal.

“My own wife...how could you.”

“Anakin if you’re not out of bed in the next 30 seconds the next time you beg to stay the night because ‘you can get up early, you swear’ I am kicking you out before anyone sits anywhere near anyone’s face, do you understand.”

He sat bolt upright and stumbled out of bed. “Ok, Ok, I’m up I- Padme!”

“Yes?” She asked sweetly, brushing her hair at the vanity.

“It’s 3 AM!”

“Yes I know, you were going to stop at that bakery I recommended, remember?”

“You woke me up an hour and half early so I could stop at a bakery,” he asked, disbelieving.

“Yes, Anakin, it was your idea. It was going to be your cover, in case anyone wondered what you were doing in the building.”

“That is-” before he could call it the stupidest idea he had ever heard, the memory of promising Padme that staying the night was a good idea because it would facilitate his cunning ruse (he was distracted, ok? Padme was wearing a lot of layers) came rushing back.

“-right,” he finished lamely.

Padme just hummed and began braiding in her cosmetic forcefields.

Anakin managed to stretch, complete his morning refresher run, and arrange his robes in a suitably decorous fashion by the time Padme had established the base layer of her hairstyle for the day.

A quick kiss- no goodbye, it hurt too much to say goodbyes in war - and Anakin was out the door.

He idly scratched his chin, vacantly looking out the lift and vaguely considering growing a beard. The pre-dawn view was quickly replaced by metal walls as the ride dropped below the skyline.

The transparisteel pod began to slow scarcely one third of the way down. Anakin suppressed a groan and tried to arrange his expression in Jedi-stoic manner, hoping that whoever got in the lift with him would be too intimidated by seeing a Jedi close-up to think about what they were doing in a Senatorial Apartment building at 3:15 in the morning. If they ask, I’m visiting the famous Bebbisun Bakery. Bennison? BELLASAN. I’m visiting the Bellasan Bakery.

Actually, anyone getting into the elevator this early was probably also doing the walk of shame so it’s probably fi-KRIFFING SITH SPIT THAT’S

“Master Windu!” Anakin cleared his throat, trying to lower his voice an octave. “Good- Good Morning!”

Windu’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “Ah. Knight Skywalker. Good morning to you as well,” he replied, stepping in the elevator, doors closing behind.

The lift descended as Anakin’s heart rate skyrocketed. This was it. Windu had to be here for Anakin. What other possible explanation could there be? WHY WASN’T HE SAYING ANYTHING?

Wait.

What other possible explanation...could...why wasn’t he saying ANYTHING?

Anakin scrutinized Master Windu out of the corner of his eye. Were those...the same robes he was wearing yesterday? They looked like the same robes but then again...pretty much all robes looked the same so this was probably a stupid way to figure things out. Fuck, it was too early for this.

Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t get a sense of the Master’s surface emotions. But his underlying aura seemed...happy? Typically Windu's serene presence had a tinge of righteous fury (something that had frightened him back when he was a child). But now that ever present vaapad edge was... softened? Anakin wracked his tired brain for a more reasonable explanation than- than the obvious but obviously impossible. He had to projecting. Right? Then again...couplings weren’t forbidden (even if Anakin couldn’t quite understand how people enjoyed just- having sex without any attachment).

The corners of Anakin’s lips twitched. The Master of the Order. Getting laid. Master Windu. In the Senatorial apartments. Mace Windu. What level had he gotten on? Above aides...diplomats probably. Should he ask? Force, this was too good- he couldn’t not ask.

Windu stared at him cooly and the knight instantly sobered. What was he thinking? Windu was obviously trying to trick him! If he said anything, Windu would turn it against him! Well, he wouldn’t be fooled so easily. Anakin spent the next several levels of descent staring forward, determined not to be the one to break the silence.

He was so focused that he didn’t notice the lift slowing prematurely again until the doors opened; an elderly Rodian hobbled in. The two Jedi moved even further apart to allow the man some space. The lift closed and newcomer glanced at the humans curiously.

“Aren’t you Jedi? What are two Jedi doing here so early?”

“Bakery,” Mace and Anakin responded in unison, heads snapping to stare at the other in surprise.

The Rodian chuckled. “Oh, that Bellasan place, right?”

“Yes,” Windu replied smoothly. “They have a famously unique caf blend.”

“And you can’t get Sweesonberry rolls anywhere else,” Anakin added quickly, not letting the opportunity to firm up his cover go to waste.

“You mammals and your carbohydrates,” The elderly reptilian clucked, bemused.

Knight Skywalker and Master Windu exchanged wary looks. The door pinged open on level 4848.

“Enjoy!” the overly entertained Rodian called out as they stepped out from the closing doors.

Anakin cleared his throat. “After you, Master Windu,” he said politely. CHECKMATE FUCKER.

But Windu just nodded serenely, striding confidently ahead, past the checkpoints and into the attached upper-crust market. After a very short walk, Anakin found himself in line behind Mace Windu at a pastry shop in the basement of his wife’s apartment building.

Anakin blearily thought that sentence through again, then subtly pinched the inside of his arm.

Nope, he was awake.

Every second that passed Anakin had to fight the steadily increasing urge to blurt out something stupid, and possibly incriminating, if not both. Just say something bland! Nothing about why they’re both here so early. Nothing about coming here before. Something casual.

“Smells good,” Anakin said.

Nailed it!

“Indeed,” Mace replied.

I’m a genius! He actually thinks I’m here for the bakery! He’s never going to suspect a thing! He was probably here for some boring pre-dawn meeting, and now I’ve got the perfect excuse to come visit Padme whenever! I can probably start sneaking off more often, I’ve just got to remember to bring back a pasty or something. And he can’t even say shit about un-Jedi like consumption!

“Skywalker-”

Oh no. Please be about the bakery. Pleasebeaboutthe

“Believe me when I tell you that I’d rather not ask-”

Oh NO. THIS ISN’T GOING TO BE ABOUT THE BAKERY. I’M AN IDIOT.

“-But did you fly here in a temple speeder?”

Cold sweat started to trickle down Anakin’s back as they shuffled forward automatically in the surprisingly long queue. Guess that’s why Padme woke me up so early.

“Knight Skywalker? Did you hear me?”

“Yes, Master Windu, sorry- I was, uh, distracted by the specials board. I, um, have my own hoverbike. Built it myself. No temple resources involved.”

“Sounds...distinctive.” Windu’s tone seemed neutral, but the way he pinched the bridge of his nose was obviously irritated. They stepped forward again. Why are so many people at this bakery so early? Guess we’re far enough down that day/night cycles don’t matter so much. Oh kriff, he’s massaging his temples now. Why is he mad about the bike? Is he going to ask where I landed it? Fuck.

Anakin swallowed the lump in his throat. “I- I thought it would be better to take personal property. Since this isn’t exactly order business.”

“That’s very responsible of you. Such...separation of personal from professional is an important skill for a Jedi.”

The trickle of sweat down his spine increased. The Chosen One discretely wiped his sweaty palms on the inside of his sleeves and prayed that his outer robe was hiding any growing pit stains.

Are we...actually talking about this? Is he going to admit to having an affair? Is he going to tell me to keep this quiet? I CAN BARELY KEEP MY OWN RELATIONSHIP SECRET! Does he know about Padme? Does he know we’re married? Is this conversation still about the bakery visit? Is HE married?

“However...such a vehicle might not be the most discrete. And discretion is also an important skill.”

Is he giving me permission to use the temple landspeeders to visit padme? Is he telling me to take the bus? WAIT! IS THIS A METAPHOR? Is he telling me to come here less? Is this still about the bakery? Did I actually check that I wasn’t still asleep or did I just dream that I checked?

“Do you understand, Knight Skywalker”

“I- uhh. I mean- well, ummm- OH look, it’s your turn to order!”

Master Windu stepped up to the counter.

“Hello, again! Same as last time?”

OH FORCE GODS HE’S A REGULAR. THIS IS IT. I’M NEVER GOING TO GET TO SEE OBI-WAN OR ASHOKA AGAIN AND PADME’S CAREER IS GOING TO BE RUINED AND

“The same blend please, but please add on one of your Sweesonberry rolls- a friend recommended them.”

...Did Mace Windu just call me his friend?

“Excellent choice! Your friend has good taste!”

Mace Windu stepped to the side and Anakin Skywalker stepped up. “...I’ll have what he had.”

A minute or two later, they were walking back to the lift, matching disposamugs and flimsibags in hand.

To try and delay the inevitable, the pale and now very sweaty young Jedi took a sip of caf. He raised both brows involuntary. “This is...really good. Holy kriff. I don’t usually drink caf for the flavor but...wow.”

“Worth the trip?” Windu asked. Anakin choked a little but successfully managed to swallow. He took another sip to avoid answering.

Windu took a bite of his roll, making a small noise of appreciation, “The pastry is also excellent. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth but this is remarkably smooth...I can’t say I’ve ever had anything quite like it.”

“Floral, right?” Anakin said, grinning into his cup.

“Yes, that’s a good description.” Ha! I told Padme I was paying attention.

They drank companionably as the lift indicator dinged closer.

“Skywalker...you’re parked on 4970, right?”

The knight nodded, too afraid to speak. The force seemed to swirl at the precipice of something.

The Master sighed. “Look- I’ve got an unregistered van- this one time only, stow the speeder, and I’ll give you a ride back. If you’re visiting the bakery in the future- please take something with a closed cab. Last thing we need is the tabloids wondering where you’re going...”

Anakin nodded again, more eagerly again. He was practically being given permission to visit Padme! That was totally worth an excruciatingly awkward flight back to the temple! He just had to chew slowly so he couldn’t blurt out anything marriage related! He was a genius!

The lift opened.

“Jar-Jar!” Anakin said, surprised and pleased. “Wow, are you also here for the bakery? This place really is popular!”

“Ani! Little Ani! Wassa you doin here?” Jar-Jar looked around wildly, then stumbled out, foot catching at the gap. Windu darted forward and effortlessly saved the Gungan before he hit the floor, while Anakin stuck his arm forward to catch the closing door.

“Bakery, Jar Jar!” he said as he stepped inside. “I’d love to talk, but we’ve actually got to get back to the temple!”

Windu struggled to untangle himself from Jar-Jar, who was being particularly unhelpful about it, even for him. Wow he’s even clingier than usual this early in the morning. It’s nice how patient Master Windu is being; I feel like even Obi-Wan can be too hard on Jar-Jar sometimes.

“Actually Skywalker, why don’t you go on ahead and stow the bike- I just remembered I meant to pick something up for Council; I won’t take long.”

“Uh. Alright,” Anakin said, catching the keys. I guess I can’t really be late if I arrive with Master Windu.

“Ossa no!” Jar-Jar exclaimed sadly. “I was justa saying to Macey lassa night thatsa I missed talkin wit little Ani!”

Anakin smiled reassuringly as the lift began to close. “Don’t worry Jar-Jar! We’ll- catch uh-HOLD ON did you say LAST NIGHT?!”

Mace’s eyes closed in resignation as the door shut on the pair, Jar-Jar still tangled around the Jedi.

AND MACE WASN’T EVEN TRYING TO PUT HIM BACK UPRIGHT ANYMORE HOLY KRIFF JUST PUT THAT TOGETHER.

Anakin stared blankly at the metal walls as they rushed past. The lone Jedi Knight took a long sip of caff, then carefully placed the pastry bag and drink on the floor. He systematically wadded up the sleeve of his robe and shoved in his mouth. He then spent the next few minutes squealing with unholy glee while literally bouncing off the walls in a manner only accessible to a force sensitive in an elevator. He was still panting slightly when the lift opened on the primary parking level.

We can double date! Padme and I can host! I can help Mace and Jar-Jar plan their wedding! We can reform the order to allow for romantic love! I can be Jar-Jar’s best man! Padme and I can have another ceremony and Obi-Wan can give me away while Mace officiates and and then we’ll all have sweesonbury cake and Jar-Jar can help teach our kids how to swim!

With those dreamy thoughts running through his mind, it was child’s work to follow the the force to the unremarkable hovervan. He was humming to himself when Master Windu opened the door.

He beamed at the older Jedi. Windu scowled in reply. Anakin smiled wider, unintimidated. He genuinely liked the Gungan, but anyone who could spend hours with Jar-Jar had to have a soft side.

“You know, Jar-Jar is a long time friend of Senator-”

“No.” Windu cut the eager words brusquely.

Anakin shrank back, a little hurt.

(Maybe a lot hurt.)

Mace glanced over at the obviously crestfallen young General and sighed before amending his words.

“Not- Not right now, alright? Maybe if you’re miraculously more discrete about this than you are about your affection for Senator Amidala, then we can talk, understood?”

Anakin nodded with absolute determination, glimmering images of fairytale weddings visible once more. Distant, perhaps- but the chance was worth any amount of tongue biting. Now that there was a real, possible future where he could have it all, now that he knew Windu had a heart somewhere under his robes- he could be patient.

He could be very patient.

Anakin calmed his grin down to a smaller, more Jedi-like smile, taking a sip of the cool but still really good caf. He channeled Obi-Wan’s most neutral diplomatic grace.

“Thank you for the ride, Master Windu. I appreciate it.”

Windu gave him an approving glance. “You’re more than welcome, Knight Skywalker.”

Feeling bold, he continued on with his best non-mocking impression of Obi-Wan.

"Have you had a chance to read the latest report on helmet redesigns? I think they might really improve peripheral vision without compromising concussive resistance.”

Mace hummed thoughtfully. “I have. I’m somewhat concerned about deploying such a radical change mid-campaign. Even better gear requires an adjustment period, and I’d rather minimize needless deaths while the troops readjust to hud flow.”

“Yes, that’s a reasonable concern, I was talking to Captain Rex-”

They spent the remainder of the flight chatting comfortably about troop safety and absentmindedly eating (or possibly stress eating in response to the prolonged absence of interpersonal conflict) the box of pastries Mace had picked up. When they arrived at the temple, they divvied up the remainder between them, quietly agreeing that there weren’t enough to share anyway.

They continued their conversation, Master Windu accompanying him to the orbital loading bay.

Obi-Wan rushed over in alarm at the sight of them approaching. “Anakin, there you are- I was starting to wonder if you’d make it. Terribly sorry Master Windu- I hope he wasn’t too much of a bother-”

“He’s not your padawan anymore, you don’t have to apologize for him. Though I do appreciate the reflex.”

“I suppose the concern isn’t completely baseless.” Anakin said, tone deliberately mildly. Mace chuckled slightly and Obi-Wan took a step back, slightly frightened by the sudden camaraderie. Anakin pretended to take a sip from his now empty disposamug to avoid fist pumping the air or cheering.

“I- Yes well- the important thing is you’re here in time for departure. What- what is that in the bag.”

Moment of Truth. Don’t freak out. Focus. Prove you can be discrete, THEN double dates, THEN Jedi Wedding Ceremony.

“Sweesonbury Roll,” Anakin answered placidly. He pretended to take another sip of caf. “Master Windu was kind enough to give me a ride from the bakery.”

“That’s- I’m sorry, what?” Anakin bit the inside of cheek to keep himself from reacting to Obi-Wan’s palpable bewilderment.

“I had to double back and get more, but we came straight here after,” Mace added helpfully, with zero hint of intentional mischief. “Oh and Skywalker- you can call me Mace if we’re not discussing temple business.”

Anakin SCREAMED (internally, of course). Outwardly, he simply bowed politely. “And you’re welcome to call me Anakin, of course.”

He deliberately avoided looking directly at Obi-Wan, his former Master’s bug-eyed reaction already pushing him to the edge, even just visible as it was out of the corner of his eye.

Windu nodded in return. “Safe travels you two. May the force with you.”

“And with you.” Anakin replied.

“May the force be with you,” Obi-Wan rushed to say, after a short delay.

Master Windu turned and exited the cargo bay doors. Anakin threw out the mug in a nearby bin, pulling out a roll and biting into it before turning to face Obi-Wan. They made eye-contact, each waiting for the other to break first. Usually that would be Anakin, but he had goals now. The Knight chewed. His Master’s eyes narrowed. The older man (who may have aged significantly in the last 5 minutes) finally broke.

“Who are you?”

Anakin just sighed, maintaining the Kenobi impression. “Come on Master, we don’t want to keep the troops waiting.” With that, he walked forward, hiding his smile as Obi-Wan followed closely at his heels.

“Since when does my apprentice visit bakeries with Mace Windu?” Obi-Wan asked, almost desperately.

“You’re making it sound like a bigger deal than it is.”

Master Kenobi sputtered as the pair opened the airlock for the short-range shuttle.

Anakin mustered up an earnest smile. “Master? Would you mind flying- I’m still eating and-”

Obi-Wan made an incoherent noise of horrified outrage before fumbling for his communicator.

“What are you doing?”

“NOTHING IS MAKING SENSE RIGHT NOW. EITHER YOU AND MACE NEED TO GO TO THE HEALING HALLS OR I DO!”

Anakin burst out laughing. “Relax Obi-Wan, I’m messing with you, holy shit. Obviously I’m flying.”

Obi-Wan slumped into the co-pilot seat, rubbing at his eyes. “Don’t do that Anakin! My nerves are stretched thin enough by the war as it is-”

“Sorry, Sorry!”

They strapped in and took off, Anakin still chuckling occasionally, Obi-Wan scowling in irritation each time.

They ascended above the towering skyline alongside the first rays of sunlight.

“So you didn’t go to a bakery with Master Windu this morning?”

“Uhh-”

#star wars #my au #macenjar au #star wars au no 20 #crack treated seriously #mace windu #macenjar #ok i KNOW this is crack but i actually worked really hard on it and im very proud #so i would appreciate if you gave it a chance before forming judgements #NOTHING GRAPHIC OH MY GOD #star wars au #crack #crackship #anakin and padme wake up in bed together and have a married couple anidala conversation and then its PG after that i SWEAR #G RATED EVEN #Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker #becoming friends is my comfort trope ok

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badass-at-fandoming · 3 years

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Just Little Malkavian Things ~

Malkavians these days can do nothing but de-conceptualize, Dement, eat hot chip, and lie.

Since people seemed to enjoy the #JustLittleVentrueThings VTMB adventure, here's a matching Malkavian one. Though I'm gonna be real with ya here, I had less fun D:

I finally figured out why I have such trouble wrapping my head around depictions of Malkavians in VTM media. Books, Storytellers, and fans say it's like having a mental illness and being linked to a massive group chat. But, listen, I've lived around and with mental illness all my life. I've been in massive group chats. Being Malkavian ain't like that.

It IS like being an early-twenties English major in the midst of an existential crisis, over-worked and cross-faded outta your skull and watching horror movies to Cope(TM)

So it's like drugs. It's like you had too much weed and too much wine and are let loose on Los Angeles. Which. My friends and I have and we, coincidentally, also "fought" a stop sign. The Malkavian PC never really seemed like a character to me: she's like a collection of cliches and dude-bros doing blunts while watching slasher movies. I named her Liotta after the Psychic Shop owner, and I'm sad Liotta didn't really get to be a person.

I wasn't surprised by any of the dialog. It's a pattern. Alliteration, allusion, animal joke. Alliteration, allusion, animal joke. It lost its charm.

Often, I didn't know what the FUCK I was saying. Which is the Malkavian Experience(TM), according to Rosa.

Anyway

Nonsense time

Most characters have an extra paragraph of dialog to Acknowledge That You Are A Malkavian. Some get an extra conversation branch. For example, there's lots of new Bertie dialog and he was all impressed Liotta knows about Gehenna and Thin-bloods <3. The Anarchs characters, especially Skelter, get a lot more. Skelter, Ash, and Liotta totally vibe.

If you sneak around the Santa Monica drug house, they talk about Mercurio?? Hello?? Mercurio, you bent Masquerade by not getting beat up real good.

Zero pretense about Voerman. Yes, I have DID; yes, I am making it your problem.

When Liotta talked to Beckett, he said the DID was "something to look forward to." Goddamnit, Beckett. That's not how the Bane or mental illness works! >:-(

I've never sneaked before!!! Did you know that the Tong AND the American gang downtown have fakes in their suitcases??? Like, Full On, "it's just stuffed with newspapers, brah." They were going to kill each other over newspapers. For some reason the Tong brought the REAL suitcase along too, but I'm so past having VTM make any sort of sense. It's fine.

Accidentally pissed off Nines. I meant farmer (affectionate) and Nines thought I meant farmer (derogatory). :(

The Dementation powers are (a) pretty purple loop-de-loops, (b) not as effective as Dominate (reaaaallyyy missed a good AOE attack), and (c) oddly enough, gave more compassionate dialog choices. I mean. In the pen-and-paper version, Dementation isn't conflict-focused, so the devs had to jigger it to use as attacks. But I was touched when Liotta made Hannah believe she was Paul, so Hannah got to say goodbye. Making Samantha believe Liotta was a pet turtle was funny and spared her the pain of her friend vanishing a second time. Heather thinks her entire experience was a dream and returns to her life, more or less unscathed.

Boris?? Asked Liotta to kill Venus for him???? DUDE, WHAT. I didn't know he could counter-offer!! What happens if you take up his offer? Who controls Confession? Does it close down??

Pro Tip: don't trust the pale woman in a cowboy stripper outfit who comes out of your vent and tells you everything's fine.

I went through an ENTIRE Ventrue playthrough without puking and Liotta ate one (1) unhoused person and blew chunks. I didn't realize Diseased Blood was a threat. What happens if you skip the Plague-bearer quest? Should you just never chomp on the Downtown unhoused community?

Strauss called Liotta "young one" and I was like, sir. You're not Beckett, you can't trick me.

A rat dances in the Downtown sewers and tells Liotta that the grass is greener in someone else's asshole.

And also will take you places.

Do you know what it's like for a Capri Sun to suddenly start speaking and offer taxi services.

LaCroix: how did Bach find me??? also LaCroix: [names his company after himself] [lives in Ventrue Tower]

Liotta told Beckett that Kindred are a joke and I got extra EXP for being so sneaky.

DMP produced snuff films even before Andrei???!!!! I thought all the blood was from the lil geo-dudes.

Liotta agreed with Andrei that Caine is here and boot-scooting around in his lil Angst Mobile. :D

As bad as Liotta was in group fights, she repeatedly made bosses cower and stand quietly while she beat them to death. Andrei had a full on lay-on-the-floor temper tantrum in his war form and Liotta just. Smacked him until he exploded. She didn't even take damage!

Imalia's computer password is ALSO "cleopatra." Just like Tawni's! Dual reference to the Embrace type

IDK why I never asked this before, but, um, who does Mitnick share the bunk bed with? Barabus..?

I went back to the Empire Hotel Penthouse suite to fetch the educational book and the Russian mob dudes were still there?? Hello, sirs, your leader is dead. You can leave now.

Liotta heard the real thoughts of the Red Dragon hostess...and also some debate about the Dark Father's presence in LA, heehee.

I thought it was fun that one of the "take me away, Cabbie!" taxi replies mentioned riding in a car like father and child. :D

"Why is the Mandarin giggling at me" is a sentence that came out of my face.

With the different dialog options, sometimes it's impossible to be polite to NPCs. For example: Liotta could only call VV "dolly/doll/toy doll" instead of her preferred names; the Chinatown gun seller felt frightened, thinking we were Police or Immigration.

Some great fourth wall breaks in the dialog: "I don't want to get involved either, but tell that to whoever is playing me!" to Beckett after the Giovanni Mansion.

"You can't spell success without whatever the hell my name is."

"If I cannot win with effort, I will cheat my way to victory. I am gone." Funnily enough, this was my first run where I didn't hack in to boost stats.

"I just want it to end. I feel like I've been playing forever."

Some nice wider lore references: "I devour knowledge like the great worm devours the corpse of society" could refer to how Salout, in tapeworm form, is devouring Tremere's body and destabilizing the Clan and/or Kindred night society.

"They should have a channel devoted to you in my head" to Beckett. In his Diary, Beckett witnesses Malkavians devouring Malkav and may or may not join the Cobweb (PS check out this great fanfic where he does).

This made me stare into space for a minute and question my life choices. During the Sabbat massacre, Liotta didn't snack on any of the blood doll ghouls (ya know, the ones with the eyes gouged out). She had such high Inspection + Finance that she had $4k in her wallet and could buy blood. I wanted to test a rumor that if you don't feed on the blood dolls, you get extra EXP. You do. BUT anywAY, right before the Tremere miniboss, Liotta was sword-fighting some goons and the blood doll...attacked him for her? Like. He moved on his own. When the goon was dead, the blood doll asked if Liotta was all right. This might have been a glitch but...the horrific implications that those men are still conscious, still willful, still feeling. ACK. I hope they got out the next morning.

RIP Ming Xiao. Flamethrower right to the tiddies.

I stole @ryttu3k's idea and noclipped through the werewolf section. Liotta still killed the Garou, but I didn't want the stress.

Caine is very Caine. "Don't you get it? We've already been judged!"

Liotta went Anarch because what little backstory I came up for her was she considered Smiling Jack her sire. Nines complimented her ability to murder.

Sheriff got sooooo dizzy that he fell over right onto Liotta's sword 27 times.

Dancing werewolf ending! Seemed fitting. :D

#vtm #vtmb #vampire the masquerade #malkavian #anarch #smiling jack #sebastian lacroix #nines rodriguez #cuthbert beckett #ming xiao #andrei the defiler #text post #my vtm nonsense

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marvelyningreen · 3 years

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Late-bloomer

[Summary: Professor Xavier once said that there was much more in you than you knew. You weren’t sure what he’d meant by that. Then again, when push comes to shove, who knows?

Warnings: mild language, references to injury

Notes: Peter Maximoff x reader, of the low-key established relationship variety. Sequel to “Linger.” ]

“You are gonna come with, aren’t you? Please?” Peter had laced his fingers through yours, swinging your hand playfully. “The professor thinks you’re ready, and I wanna be there for your first mission!”

The better part of a year had passed since Professor Xavier promised to spend more time helping you master your abilities and, true to his word, he devoted time every week to training you. To your own surprise – if not to anyone else’s – you’ve actually been improving. While you sometimes still feel that you’re behind the curve, you can’t deny that you’re much stronger than you used to be.

For your part, you kept your promise to the professor.

You’d always been too intimidated to speak to Jean, but one morning, you psyched yourself up and did it. You asked to sit with her at breakfast, and initiated a fumbling conversation that was mostly about the weather. Scott seemed baffled – and frankly embarrassed for you – but from across the room, Peter gave you a thumbs-up.

You did manage to find out that Jean’s fond of phlox and peonies, and resolved to add more to the garden. You must’ve thought it pretty loudly, because Jean caught your eye and smiled. She greets you when you pass in the hallways now.

You’d overheard Kurt mention that a certain disused alcove was probably once a little Mary garden. He’d sounded wistful to you. You did your homework, bringing in a small statue of Mary and filling the surrounding flowerbeds with irises, lilies, and roses.

The next time you saw Kurt in the gardens, you casually suggested that he walk over that way, trying hard not to sound like a try-hard and hoping that you hadn’t overstepped yourself. Not two minutes later, Kurt suddenly teleported in front of you and hugged you before you could say a word. Now, you often see him go out there to pray. Sometimes, you join him.

Summers are fairly quiet at the school. The students who were able to would go home for summer vacation. Some elected to stay around to further their training and some, sadly, didn’t really have homes to return to.

Your summer project has been an effort to revitalize the mansion’s disused kitchen gardens. You let the remaining students know that anyone who wants to is welcome to help out, and the response so far has been enthusiastic. You haven’t had any shortage of volunteers to help with the planting and weeding and watering. Some of the faculty joined in as well, when they were between missions. You think you might able to get a head-start on replanting the orchard.

And Peter, well…

Peter may not be inclined to gardening himself, but he’s definitely inclined to hang out with you while you garden. Apparently, you’d been the last to figure out that Peter was smitten with you, so it was to the surprise of no one when it was clear you two were seeing each other.

He’d even volunteered to help with your training. Of course, he was almost immediately banned from using the “think fast!” technique, if only because he was way too nice about it. The second it looked like you weren’t going to catch whatever he’d tossed in your direction, he’d zip in and catch it himself so it wouldn’t hit you. It was adorable, but not exactly helpful to your learning process.

He’d be gone for weeks at a time, though. He would get sent on missions here and there, and he took summer as an opportunity to spend time with his mother and sister. Your windowsills are beginning to fill up from all the souvenirs he brought back.

Just this morning, you’d promised him homemade apple strudel for breakfast, and he’d mentioned he might bring someone else along, if that was alright with you. You’d assumed that meant Kurt was coming home early. But no, Peter turned up at your door with Mr. Lehnsherr in tow.

It might’ve been nice to have a little advance notice so you could make a good first impression on your boyfriend’s very intimidating father – who happens to be an ex-supervillain – but at least Peter’s easygoing confidence managed to keep things from getting awkward.

And somehow – somehow – the offshoot of all this was that you and Mr. Lehnsherr both ended up tagging along on this mission. Whether it was the professor’s reassurance that it was strictly a diplomatic errand or Peter’s puppy-dog eyes that were more convincing, neither of you could say.

You’d managed to convince yourself that this was fine. The professor wouldn’t have brought you if he didn’t think you were ready, right? And all of your doubts were in your own head; you knew that. Nobody was looking at you and wondering why they’d brought the help along. Peter, who for some reason seemed to be enjoying the opportunity to spend time with you and Mr. Lehnsherr simultaneously, stuck close to you and gave your hand a reassuring squeeze.

And then everything went all to hell before you could blink.

Now you’re trying to telekinetically prevent a net-full of plastic waste barrels from falling into the harbor, Scott has just lasered a third shipping container in half, Mr. Lehnsherr is turning the wreckage into a makeshift holding cell, and Peter is zipping around tossing your assailants into it.

And just when everything’s finally been safely contained and you think you’ve got a second to breathe, the professor speaks up.

“I’ve lost Hank.”

The fairly upbeat mood darkens instantly.

“One of those guys was running psychic interference, wasn’t he?” says Peter.

“Yeah, but he got knocked out,” says Scott. “Nice shot, by the way.”

That last part is directed at you, with an approving nod.

“We’ll find him, Charles,” says Mr. Lehnsherr. “He can’t be far.”

“I’ll take a look around,” says Peter.

He disappears, and there’s a second or two of silence. The professor presses his fingertips to his temple and glances around worriedly, as if listening all the harder for any trace of Hank. Before you can suggest heading back to your transport, you hear Peter shout.

“Over this way! Hurry!”

Wordlessly, you all take off at a run. He’d only said to hurry. He hadn’t said that Hank was alright, which can only mean…

As you round the corner, you gasp in horror. There lies Hank – injured, unconscious, and bleeding out on the ground. As one, you all rush to his side, but Peter’s there in a blink.

“I can run him back to the mansion,” he begins, but Mr. Lehnsherr interrupts.

“If we move him before we stabilize him, it might kill him.”

Peter had looked worried up until this moment, not panicked. But at the thought that his particular skills won’t help here, his expression turns grim.

“If we don’t get help, he’ll die anyway,” Scott argues.

As the others speak, the floor seems to tilt under you, and you sink to your knees just to keep yourself from falling. You press your hands against the cold pavement, trying to steady yourself.

Is it because of the blood? No, it’s something else. Something pressing against your skull.

Hank, who’d always been kind to you, who’d become like family to Scott after Alex was killed. Hank, who’d been giddy as a schoolboy all week waiting for Saturday, when he was going to take Mystique out on a real date – dinner at a fancy restaurant, just the two of them.

It isn’t fair.

You feel Peter’s hands on your shoulders. You feel sick, like you’re about to faint, like you’re seeing double, like-

You are seven years old, playing out in your yard. A windstorm the night before has knocked several baby birds from their nest. The mama bird hops nearby, chirping and calling to no avail. You watch as the baby birds, featherless and helpless, struggle in the grass.

You feel a horrible crushing sadness in your chest. You’ve been told never to touch baby birds, and even if you did, there’s no way you could climb all the way up to their nest.

A heartbroken sob shakes your body. It isn’t fair. The birds are too small to fly, and too weak to defend themselves. And you’re too small, too.

It isn’t fair. You should be able to fix this. You should be able to help.

You aren’t allowed to touch wild animals. Why couldn’t there be a way to help without breaking the rules?

You reach out, and –

The mama bird shrills in alarm. Your sobs fade, and your eyes widen, and you watch as the little birds are lifted into the air – up and up and up – and set gently back in their nest. You know somehow, although you don’t understand, that you made it happen.

“I can fix this.”

The words leave your mouth before you know you’re speaking, and suddenly the others are staring at you in confusion. They know, as you do, that you don’t have any healing abilities, and yet… There’s an inexplicable certainty in your mind, in spite of the panic in your chest.

“I can fix this,” you say again, “But I don’t know how.”

You turn away from Hank, looking up at Professor Xavier. There’s worry in his eyes, and something unreadable along with it.

“Sir, please, can you help me?” you plead.

The professor nods, and reaches out to place his fingertips on your temple. Almost of their own accord, your eyes close, and your hand reaches out to Hank’s shoulder.

Through the chaos of your fear, there’s a calm presence in your mind.

Focus, it bids you. You can fix this. You can change it. Reach out to that which is damaged, and make it whole. Focus.

You reach out, and your mind is overwhelmed with a sensation that it struggles to comprehend. You’d thought that trying to use your powers was like trying to remember the words to a song. You see now that that’s not quite accurate. It feels like having heard a song played backwards your whole life, and finally hearing it the right way ‘round.

You are thirteen. A girl in your class has just seen her friend get pushed down the stairs by a bully. The girl shouts, and suddenly the granite steps rearrange themselves into a ramp, and the landing turns to sand, and the friend slides down into it unharmed.

The girl runs off before you have a chance to say anything. The following week, she doesn’t show up for class. You learn later that her family moved away.

You’re afraid, and you don’t understand, and you keep going. The effort of focusing is immense, impossible. You hardly know if you’re remembering to breathe, or if the pressure is inside your skull or around it.

You feel… What you feel defies description. It’s as though you’re at a beach, and you press your hand against the sand, and you can feel the pattern, the structure in the seemingly random grains of sand, and you know that it isn’t right. And if you focus – if you focus all your energy – you can will the millions and millions of grains of sand to rearrange themselves into the right order.

For a moment, the sheer vastness of the situation threatens to overwhelm you. But the professor’s steadying presence stays in your mind, like a hand holding yours as you lean further and further out over a ledge. Slowly, grain by grain, the sands are beginning to shift.

You’re in college. Yet another class has devolved into a debate about mutants – their existence, their rights, their purpose.

You don’t speak up in class under normal circumstances. That isn’t about to change now.

A voice, outside your head, drifts through the garbled static in your ears.

“His wounds are healing. He’s… he’s stabilizing. Charles, how-?”

You’re vaguely aware that the professor is answering him out loud, but you hear him in your mind: Come back now. Come back. You’ve done it; just relax.

Relax? You can try. The strange sensations fade from your mind, and their place is filled by the sounds of the world around you and an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. It feels as though the hand has pulled you back onto solid ground, but you can’t seem to keep your balance, and-

The instant you begin to fall, you find your head resting against somebody’s shoulder, and their arms are wrapped around you.

You’re twenty-five, and the entire world is shaken to its foundations by some catastrophe in Cairo. You try with all your strength, but nothing you do can prevent your apartment building from collapsing.

“Professor…?” Peter’s voice is beside your ear, strident with worry, but it seems so much further away.

“It’s alright, Peter,” you hear the professor saying, dimly.

You’ll be alright.

You are twenty-six. It’s far too quiet in this room. This building may function as a school, but it still feels like a mansion. You stare at the cup of tea in front of you. It smells wonderful, but you’re too nervous to take a single sip. Across the table, Professor Charles Xavier regards you with a thoughtful expression.

“I understand you wish to work here at my school. Is that right?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say. “I know I’m too old to be a student, and I don’t really have any experience teaching, but I… I want to learn, and I’m willing to work. If there’s any job that needs doing, anything at all; if you need a custodian, or help in the kitchens, or… or a groundskeeper, maybe. Anything.”

Your gaze darts longingly to the gardens outside the window. The grounds here are so beautiful. It’s one of the things you missed most when you lived in the apartment – having a garden to look after.

The professor takes a sip of tea and sits back.

“My school is open to anyone who wishes to learn,” he says. “What are your abilities, exactly?”

“My…? Well.” Your heart sinks. You were afraid of this.

Painfully aware of the professor’s eyes on you, you telekinetically lift your spoon into the air. Focus, now. Focus. The spoon dips into the sugar bowl, and – spilling a trail of sugar along the way – shakily hovers back to your teacup and stirs itself in before returning to the saucer with a loud clink.

“I know it’s not much,” you say, “But that’s why I want to learn.”

With hands trembling as badly as the spoon had, you pick up the teacup and take a sip, just to buy yourself a precious few seconds.

The professor nods. “I see.”

He leans his chin on his hand. You’re certain that you’ve failed. Just as you’re bracing yourself to hear him politely send you packing –

“We hire a local company to maintain the grounds,” he says, “But the gardens themselves could use better tending, especially from someone who cares about the work. There’s even a little groundskeeper’s cottage that’s only being used to storage now, if you need somewhere to stay. The job is yours, if you want it.”

You can’t believe your ears. Professor Xavier – the Professor Charles Xavier – is offering you a job, and a chance to learn, and a place to stay? You nearly upset the whole tea set as you stand abruptly, reaching across the table to shake the professor’s hand.

“Yes! Absolutely, yes,” you say, “Sir, thank you. I’ll work hard, I promise.”

The professor laughs. “I don’t doubt it.”

Are you ready to wake up?

No, you mumble. Five more minutes.

The voice in your head chuckles gently.

It’s been three days already.

Three days? Ridiculous. No one would’ve let you sleep for three whole days. The gardens would be overrun with weeds. The windowboxes would’ve dried up. Indignant, you open your eyes.

And immediately squint them shut again. The intense brightness of the room stings.

You feel a hand lift from your forehead, and a shadow falls over your eyes and lingers there. Beyond its merciful shade, you can tell that the light in the room has dimmed. Cautiously, you open your eyes once more, blinking a few times.

You’re disoriented for a moment, expecting to see the familiar walls of your room in the cottage. But this rather featureless room is in the infirmary beneath the mansion. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’d be doing there.

The hand shading your eyes withdraws, and you follow its movement to see Professor Xavier looking down at you. He smiles.

“Welcome back.”

“Back?” you repeat. “Back from wh- … wait.”

You remember. You remember all of it – the docks, the blood… Hank.

You have to get up. You have to find Hank.

The professor catches your shoulder, preventing you from sitting up.

“Easy. Easy, there,” he says.

“What happened? Where’s Hank? Professor, did I… Is he-?”

The professor speaks slowly and gently, like he’s calming a frightened child. And to be honest, that’s exactly what you feel like in this moment.

“Hank is fine,” he says, “He’ll need to take it easy for a while, but he’s going to make a full recovery. You saved his life.”

Relief floods through you, tightening your throat. For a moment, you don’t trust that your voice is steady enough to speak. You look away from the professor’s kind gaze and blink back tears. You’d been so scared that a good man might’ve died because you and the others were too late to save him. You’d been certain that, once again, you were powerless to help.

“I don’t understand what happened” you say, finally, “All of that… Was it you, Professor?”

He shakes his head.

“All I did was help you keep your focus. Everything else was you entirely. Didn’t I say that there’s more in you than you would guess?”

“I… I figured you were just saying that to be nice.”

Your sheepish honesty makes the professor laugh, and that puts you a little more at ease.

“I said it because it’s true.” He pauses, then continues on to answer your unasked question. “Hank has some rather complicated term for your abilities, but the more common expression for it is a reality warper. Telekinesis is merely the simplest manifestation of those powers.”

“Reality…? I’m still confused,” you say, and it’s the understatement of the century. The sporadic, barely-adequate telekinetic abilities you’d possessed since childhood weren’t really telekinesis at all?

“Within limits, you have the ability to alter reality. For example, it would be simple enough for you to change an apple into an orange, or freeze the water in a glass. It follows that you are able to take something damaged and repair it again. And if the damage is an injury, you could heal it. Of course, Hank was quite badly injured, so undoing the damage required tremendous exertion on your part.”

Your head is spinning as you try to process all of this. You can change things, transform them, fix them.

Your gaze drifts to Professor Xavier’s wheelchair.

If you can heal people, then maybe…

But when you look up, the professor is shaking his head.

“As I said, there are limits even to powers like yours.”

“But if I tried,” you say, “Maybe I could-”

“No.” The professor’s tone is firm. “You’ve been unconscious for days, and that was from healing recent injuries. Something new is more easily altered than something old. And an old wound… It’d only do you harm to try. I can’t allow you to do that, even for my own sake.”

The confused elation you’d been feeling starts to flag. You’ve been so used to feeling useless that it’s easy to slip back into that familiar territory. It startles you when Professor Xavier lays his hand on yours.

“Someday, you may be able to accomplish that and more,” he says, and laughs gently. “I’ve just told you that you have the power to reshape the world, and the first though that comes to your mind isn’t a way to use it for gain or entertainment. Your first impulse is to use it to help someone. I’m touched. Truly, I am. Thank you for thinking of me.”

There’s a deeper warmth in his voice as he says this, and you cannot doubt that he’s speaking from the heart. He’d know – he must’ve known, somehow – what you were when you came to him, offering to take on any job that needed doing just for a chance to learn. On some level, you’d always assumed he hired you out of pity.

But things are becoming clearer now – why he’d accepted you, why he hadn’t told you what you were, why he’d let you find your own way.

You’ve known the professor long enough to understand that his decisions are motivated by kindness. He had no choice in gaining immense powers at a young age, himself. Jean was just the same. You couldn’t fault him for wanting to spare someone else that burden.

The professor must be following your train of thought, because he nods slightly.

“I always had faith that your path would lead you here,” he says, “And that whatever the circumstance, you would come into your own out of an earnest desire to help others. That’s exactly what you did. I’m proud of you.”

Your hand closes around the professor’s for a brief, fervent instant.

“Thank you,” you say.

The sincerity of this validation warms your heart. You blink rapidly, trying to keep yourself from actually tearing up, when –

“Awww…”

You’re startled by the sound of another voice in the room. You look sharply over to see Peter sitting in the corner, his feet kicked up on a table.

“Peter!” you gasp, “How long have you been there?”

He shrugs. “The whole time. You just never looked over this way. And it seemed like you two were having a moment, so I didn’t wanna interrupt. Good morning, by the way.”

“Good… morning,” you say, haltingly, suddenly realizing that you have no idea what time it is.

Peter grins and pushes himself to his feet, walking over to stand at your bedside. The professor watches him with a smile.

“Peter’s hardly left this whole time,” he says.

“Not true,” says Peter. “I went out to try and help keep up on your groundskeeper stuff. Don’t, uh… Don’t look too impressed. I don’t actually know what’s a weed and what’s not, so I might’ve pulled up a bunch of your flowers. Sorry.”

Oh god, you can just picture the state the gardens must be in. You’re going to have a lot of work to undo whatever happened out there. But the mental image of Peter speed-weeding the entire estate is too amusing not to smile at.

“It’s the thought that counts,” you say.

“Tell that to the geraniums,” says the professor, shaking his head wryly. “Well, I’d better go tell Hank that you’re finally awake. I’m sure he’ll want to thank you in person. I’ll be back.”

The professor could’ve easily just called for Hank telepathically. You get the feeling he’s being polite and trying to give you and Peter a moment alone.

You start to sit up, and wow, apparently that’s a bad idea, because the room is no spinning. You close your eyes, reaching out as if to steady yourself against thin air. In an instant, Peter’s sitting on the edge of the bed, gently holding onto your arms.

“Whoa, take it easy,” he says. “I got you.”

You take a moment to breathe, and the dizziness slowly fades. “It’s okay. Just headrush.”

When you open your eyes, Peter’s still watching you intently. Never fully letting go, he moves his hands to hold yours.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Alright, actually. Just… tired. Not in a bad way.”

You smile, hoping it’ll reassure him, and it seems to work. Peter leans in to kiss you.

“Who’s exceptional and important and incredible now?” He grins brightly as he tosses your own words back at you.

“That’s not- You don’t- Um…”

He laughs as you trip over your tongue completely. You’d always felt a little inadequate in the face of compliments, and that’s a lot of them to accept all at once.

Peter rolls his eyes. “Alright, fine. Bite-sized compliments from now on. Got it. But you are all of that. I always knew you were.”

Though his tone is teasing, the look in his eyes is entirely sincere. And, to your surprise, you believe him. There’s not an insincere bone in his body; you know that for a fact. So, it stands to reason that his feelings about you must be just as genuine.

The rush of that feeling – the confidence in Peter, and in yourself – puts on you cloud nine, almost literally. You have to focus to keep yourself from actually levitating everything in the room.

“I can’t believe I’m just figuring all this out now,” you say. “I mean, I’m thirty, for crying out loud.”

“And I lived in my mom’s basement until I was twenty-seven. What’s your point?” says Peter, shrugging. “Just ‘cause it took us a little longer to figure things out – we both still got there in the end. Late-bloomer solidarity, am I right?”

“Late-bloomer solidarity,” you repeat, grinning back at him. “Wait, do you think this means I’m gonna be an official X-Man now?”

Peter’s face lights up. “Hell yeah, you are! I’m officially calling dibs on having you as a partner. Hey, have you thought about what your codename’s gonna be?”

Your brows furrow in a look of confusion that Peter seems to find amusing. You actually hadn’t thought about it at all. You never thought you’d get this far, really.

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” you say.

“Yeah, you’ve got a lot going for you. You’re a jack of all trades, a wild card. Oh!” Peter snaps his fingers excitedly. “Wild Card. That’s a good one. You don’t have to pick right now, but… I’m just sayin’- if you don’t pick your own, somebody’s gonna pick one for you.”

You grin. “That’s true. I mean, look at you. You’re fast, you’re full of sass, and you love sugar. In another life, you might’ve been The Amazing Hummingbird.”

The look of disgust on Peter’s face is priceless. “That’s tragic, and I’m offended.”

You can’t help but giggle.

“I like Quicksilver,” you say. “I think it suits you.”

You run your fingers through Peter’s hair, and he seems to melt. He turns his head to kiss the palm of your hand.

“You don’t know how glad I am that you’re back,” he says. “I didn’t realize just how boring this place can get without you.”

In spite of Peter’s frank expression, you can’t quite believe that. As a fairly reserved gardener, you know you’re not exactly the life of the party.

“Without me?” You laugh. “Be serious.”

Peter snorts. “Right, right. Baby steps. I forgot.”

By chance, your gaze drifts to the far side of the room, where Peter had been sitting before. You just now notice that there’s a cot set up over there, and it’s clearly been slept in. He really had stayed down here for the past three days, hadn’t he? It gives you kind of a warm fuzzy feeling that he’d wanted to stay close to you.

When you look back at Peter, you see that he’s frowning slightly.

“Y’know, you had me worried for a minute there, back at the docks. I mean, the professor explained that you just exhausted yourself because you never changed anything that big before, but…” Peter blows out a breath, shaking his head. “It really looked like you pulled some sorta equivalent exchange healing thing, and I thought, like, what if this is it? I guess what I’m trying to say is – there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

Before you can ask what he means, Peter leans in and kisses you.

“I love you,” he says.

You wonder if this is how Peter feels when he uses his powers – like being the only person truly awake while the rest of the world is frozen in time. In spite of yourself, you feel the gravity in the room loosen its hold just a little, and everything’s floating gently an inch off the ground.

“I love you, too, Peter,” you say.

The trace of apprehension in Peter’s face melts into a smile.

“Even though I wrecked your geraniums?” he asks, sheepishly.

“I can find more geraniums. There’ll never be another you.”

At that, Peter actually looks bashful. Is he… is he blushing? He absolutely is. Gently, you take his face in your hands, and even as you kiss him, he can’t seem to stop smiling.

#peter maximoff x reader #x men fanfiction #peter maximoff #mostly the result of my mind latching onto the idea of creating a character that’s the antithesis of a jean grey #not meant as a criticism of jean or anything #just... we get quite a few ‘my powers are too strong!’ x men characters #I was intrigued by the thought of a mutant who sucks at being a mutant #a true late bloomer if you will XP #if they existed in canon everyone would mistake them for an ordinary human at first #I also definitely thought out a scenario in which they’d become a villain #but that’s a story for probably never XP #just shouting into the void #peter maximoff fanfiction

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Text

Complications (aka trans!Jiang Cheng with a kid) - ao3 or part 1, part 2, part 3

A-Lian was as good a name as any for the brat, Jiang Cheng supposed.

He’d been spitefully thinking of additional names ever since Nie Huaisang, that busybody, had decided on the name he liked best, but unfortunately Jiang Lian had a better ring to it than any of the others he’d come up with so far and he wasn’t quite petty enough to condemn his son to a disharmonious name just out of spite.

Assuming A-Lian stayed a son, anyway. Jiang Cheng was still curious as to how the Nie sect had managed to get cursed with an entire generation of women – Nie Huaisang had let slip a few hints that it might’ve had to do with a very fat celestial bird that hadn’t appreciated a comment that had, truly, been meant as a compliment, and anyway they would have made for excellent drumsticks, and honestly the more Jiang Cheng heard about this story the more he wondered if marrying Nie Huaisang just to hear the full version might possibly be worth it – and obviously he wasn’t about to let the Lotus Pier continue to ignore the issue of misaligned reincarnations any longer.

Something he’d have to start enforcing once he was back on the war front, he supposed – which was going to be very soon, if he had his way about it; he was sick and tired of the (nearly completed!) post-pregnancy isolation period.

He couldn’t wait for the relative peace and quiet of an active battlefield.

Of course, the second he thought that, A-Lian started making ominous grumbling sounds, because babies were apparently psychic. Why had no one ever mentioned that?

“You can’t be hungry again, brat,” Jiang Cheng told A-Lian firmly. “I literally just fed you.”

He probably just wanted to burp again, so Jiang Cheng picked him up and started patting him with one hand, using the other to fish out Nie Mingjue’s most recent letter. The other sect leader was quite possibly the most relaxing person he’d ever corresponded with: his letters were practical and to the point, with no extraneous fluff that Jiang Cheng would feel obliged to respond to.

More importantly, it gave him an update on how his sect was doing, which was all for the best – Nie Mingjue had kept recruitment open for him, which he hadn’t needed to do, and that meant that each letter now contained not only battle strategy and requests for final decisions but also lists of the talent (or lack thereof) of new recruits so that he could make a decision on their admittance as tentative nominal disciples. Final admittance would have to wait until he returned, of course…

He hadn’t gotten a letter from Nie Huaisang yet.

That was to be expected, he supposed. Nie Huaisang had insisted on sticking around for nearly two weeks following the birth to make sure Jiang Cheng didn’t mysteriously expire from complications – the doctors had rolled their eyes a little, but Nie Huaisang’s mother had died from an infection that hadn’t been spotted in time and Jiang Cheng understood his paranoia – and he’d only reluctantly agreed to go, which meant he was probably dragging his feet.

Anyway, just because Nie Huaisang had agreed to tell Wei Wuxian about A-Lian didn’t mean that he could necessarily find Wei Wuxian. His shixiong could be anywhere, after all; contributing to the campaign, of course, but not necessarily in the Jiang sect’s camp…

Ah, yes. Just what Jiang Cheng’s day was missing: the stabbing sense of inadequacy and failure, with a nice slice of the sinking suspicion that his leadership was so bad that he couldn’t even convince his own shixiong to follow him and therefore everyone who was following him was simply humoring him.

“At least you seem to like me well enough,” he muttered to A-Lian, who gurgled happily at him now that the unfortunate burping incident was behind them. “You keep that up, you hear me? You may be a brat, and little more than a blob with arms and legs, but you still have to like me best.”

Nie Huaisang insisted that A-Lian was a gorgeous baby, but Jiang Cheng was having some trouble seeing it. Obviously A-Lian was a baby superior to all other babies, undoubtedly through sheer dumb luck (maybe it skipped a generation?), but he kept worrying that he’d done something wrong, either during the pregnancy or the birth or the care he’d been giving him, and that he’d end up damaging A-Lian for life.

It was easier if he thought of A-Lian as a very resistant blob that would always resume its original shape.

…he really wished Nie Huaisang would write to him and tell him what’d happened when he told Wei Wuxian.

He knew that Wei Wuxian would take it personally, but he wasn’t exactly sure how. Would Wei Wuxian be angry with him? Disappointed, that Jiang Cheng hadn’t just lost his core to the Wens, but his chastity as well? Disdainful that Jiang Cheng had been so desperate for family that he’d decided to carry the child to term, even knowing that its father was their parents’ murderer - that he himself had helped murder the father in turn? Upset, because Wei Wuxian had done so much to rescue him and care for him and even help him get his golden core back, and in return Jiang Cheng did nothing but create another burden that would fall on his shoulders?

Or worse – would Wei Wuxian feel like a failure, too, the way Jiang Cheng always did, and all because he hadn’t been able to save Jiang Cheng from the obvious consequences of his own stupidity?

(It wasn’t that Jiang Cheng hadn’t known when he’d allowed himself to be captured that he’d be tortured and most probably killed, and yet somehow it had never occurred to him that they would do what they did to him – he’d been a man so long that he’d forgotten, just like everyone else in the Lotus Pier, that he’d ever been regarded as anything else. He still didn’t regret the choice he’d made; he’d known that Wei Wuxian would do a better job of avenging his parents than he would and he was right about it, too, wasn’t he?)

Jiang Cheng was so immersed in dark thoughts that he almost – almost – failed to notice when A-Lian started reaching for the ink. Well, flailing around in the general vicinity of the ink, anyway.

“Don’t you even dare think about it, brat. Do you remember bathtime? You don’t like bathtime, and if you get yourself covered in ink, there’s going to be even more bathtime…”

“Jiang-xiong! Jiang-xiong! Are you and A-Lian awake in there?”

It was Nie Huaisang.

He’d returned in person instead of writing a letter; was that a good sign or a bad sign?

“Even if we weren’t, we would be after your yelling,” he shouted back. “What are you, an elephant?”

“A bull!”

“You’re too prissy to be a bull, except for the bullshit you always keep spouting!”

Jiang Cheng waited for Nie Huaisang’s response, which would inevitably be dripping with innuendo, and blinked when there wasn’t anything. That was strange; it wasn’t as if there was anyone here that Nie Huaisang would be embarrassed to –

Oh no.

“Can we come in?” Nie Huaisang asked from outside his door.

Jiang Cheng’s suspicions were confirmed at once when he heard that dreadful ‘we’. Nie Huaisang had returned not with news but with company – company Jiang Cheng still wasn’t sure he was ready to see.

“…fine,” he still said, because there was no point in holding it off any further. He braced himself for Wei Wuxian to sweep into the room like a hurricane.

He was not expecting Jiang Yanli to walk in instead.

“Jiejie!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed, and – damn him – felt his eyes start filling up with tears at once. He’d wanted so badly to have her with him during this excruciating process, and she’d even offered, writing him a letter full of concern about the ‘complications’ he was apparently struggling with. But she’d been safe in the Jin sect and he wouldn’t have been able to bear the guilt if something had happened to her on the way to see him.

And that meant he couldn’t say anything, not even in letters that were safe, not even in code, because if he’d so much as breathed a word about what was actually happening, she would have insisted on coming no matter what.

“A-Cheng!” she exclaimed, and rushed over. “Oh, A-Cheng, why didn’t you tell me…”

“I wanted to you to stay safe,” he sniffed. “Travel is so dangerous, and if something happened because of me –”

“Oh, A-Cheng…” She wrapped her arms around him. “I just wish I’d been here for you. You must have been so scared!”

“I have nightmares that say he was mostly just really angry,” Nie Huaisang put in, unhelpful as always; Jiang Cheng didn’t even bother to spare him a glance.

“You were here,” he assured her. “You sent me soup every week; I ate that when I couldn’t keep anything else down –”

A particularly vicious surge of late-onset morning sickness. It’d been a bad ten days.

“You still should’ve told us,” and that was Wei Wuxian, standing in the door next to Nie Huaisang with his shoulders up by his ears defensively, but Jiang Cheng was curled up in his sister’s arms so even if Wei Wuxian was horribly disappointed in him he would be able to handle it.

With Jiang Yanli there, he could handle anything.

“Probably should have,” he agreed, because Wei Wuxian was right. Opting to carry A-Lian at all was a stupid risk to have taken in the first place, given the likelihood of dying in childbirth and leaving the Jiang sect without a leader during their time of need, but – well, that’d been a risk he’d accepted the first time around when he’d given himself up to save Wei Wuxian. It hadn’t seemed so bad the second time, even though he knew he risked wasting all of Wei Wuxian’s hard work in rescuing and getting his core back. “Didn’t, though. You want to hold the brat?”

“Of course I want to hold the brat!” And when Jiang Cheng looked over, Wei Wuxian was smiling. Smiling. “I have to hold him! He’s my shizi!”

“What are you naming him?” Jiang Yanli asked as Wei Wuxian reached over to pick A-Lian up.

“…Jiang Lian,” Jiang Cheng finally admitted, and any embarrassing comments Nie Huaisang might have had to say about it – Jiang Cheng expected whooping in triumph, to be perfectly honest – were drowned out by A-Lian abruptly howling in indignation that this strange person had dared pick him up.

“Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng! The baby’s crying!” Wei Wuxian wailed. He sounded like a baby himself.

“Oh for the – give him here!” The second A-Lian returned to Jiang Cheng’s arms, the crying stop and the baby settled back down. He looked a little smug, even.

“It seems A-Lian likes A-Cheng the best,” Jiang Yanli said, covering her mouth with a smile. “Can I try?”

There were still tears, though not quite as many.

“He’ll get used to you eventually,” Jiang Cheng said, as if he wasn’t preening at his son’s excellent taste. “If you stick around, that is.”

“As if you’ll be able to get rid of us,” Wei Wuxian huffed, and that made something warm and happy and glowing appear in Jiang Cheng’s chest. “You know, it’s really unfair, Jiang Cheng! I put in all this work and effort into developing demonic cultivation and inventing all sorts of new things, and in a mere ten months you managed to make something even better.”

Jiang Cheng couldn’t help the laugh that broke free, his heart singing happily – Wei Wuxian didn’t hate him, wasn’t disappointed in him, was happy for him. “It wasn’t really something I was actively working on.”

“Rude. No need to rub it in.”

And just because Jiang Cheng was Jiang Cheng, he had to affirmatively check: “You’re not upset, are you?”

“Only that you robbed us of the opportunity to spoil you rotten,” Wei Wuxian said. “Oh, and for having Nie Huaisang tell me about it – I only found out because he and his brother were betting on the gender.”

Jiang Cheng twisted around in Jiang Yanli’s arms to glare at Nie Huaisang.

“I lost,” Nie Huaisang said, as if that would make things better, and weirdly enough it sort of did. “Never bet against da-ge.”

Jiang Cheng thought about it and nodded. That seemed like a good rule, no matter the circumstances – and anyway, if that meant that Nie Mingjue was there when Wei Wuxian was told, that was all the better. As far as Jiang Cheng was concerned, there was nothing in the world that Nie Mingjue couldn’t handle.

He wished he could one day be even half of what Nie Mingjue was. Confident and self-assured, an excellent sect leader beloved by all, a war leader and a filial son, righteous and terrifying…

“I hope he won something good off of you,” he told Nie Huaisang, who grimaced at him in a way that suggested Nie Mingjue really had won something good. “You deserve it.”

“You have no sympathy for me,” Nie Huaisang whined.

“Forget sympathy for you, what about sympathy for me?” Wei Wuxian put in. “‘Oh, hi, Wei Wuxian, nice to see you, been a long time, guess what, your shizi’s a boy!’”

Okay, that sounded really funny actually. Jiang Cheng kind of regrets missing it.

He smirked at Wei Wuxian, who saw it and made a rude gesture in return.

“It was traumatizing,” Wei Wuxian said with a sniff. “Really, truly. Shijie, you need to make me some soup to help me get over it.”

“No way,” Jiang Cheng said at once. “If she’s making soup, she’s making it for me.”

“You’ve apparently been getting her soup every week for the past few months; I deserve it more!”

“I’m the one getting my chest gnawed off by a wild animal three times a day –”

“I can make enough for both of you,” Jiang Yanli said patiently. “Nie-gongzi, is there a kitchen..?”

“I’ll show you the way,” Nie Huaisang said with a grin. “I’m eager to see how this famous soup gets made. I had to beg Jiang-xiong for three weeks to get a single spoonful, and it was worth every minute of it.”

“You flatter me…”

They left together, and Jiang Cheng used the opportunity to scrub the tear tracks off his face as best as he could.

“It really was pretty traumatizing,” Wei Wuxian said, pointedly only looking at an increasingly sleepy A-Lian instead of seeing what Jiang Cheng was doing. “Not as traumatizing as the lecture Chifeng-zun gave me afterwards about how badly I’ve been behaving.”

“Badly?” Jiang Cheng said, frowning. “What do you mean, you’ve been fine; the effect your demonic cultivation has been having against the Wens alone –”

“No, I haven’t been,” Wei Wuxian said, and his tone was uncharacteristically serious. “Not because of the demonic cultivation, but because I haven’t been standing by your side the way I promised I would.”

“You’re doing your best,” Jiang Cheng said firmly. “You have demonic cultivation now, and that means you can do a lot more things – it makes sense for your to be at the front line.”

“I’m not saying that I shouldn’t be at the front line. I’m saying that I promised you that you’d be my sect leader, that I’d follow you, and instead I keep treating you like you’re still my shidi. Making decisions on your behalf, insisting on doing things my way because I think I’m right…” Wei Wuxian shook his head. “I got used to doing things that way, all these years. But things are different now. You’re my sect leader. Decisions like how to best deploy me are your decision, not mine – if you want me by your side instead of on the front, I should do that; if you want me to lead the Jiang sect cultivators, I should be doing that. I can try to persuade you that my plan is better, but in the end, if I’m going to be part of the Jiang sect, I need to accept that it’s your word that’s final, because anything else would be disrespectful – and I don’t want to disrespect you, Jiang Cheng. Sect Leader Jiang.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jiang Cheng said, words sharp but only because otherwise he’d have to acknowledge that he was crying again. He hadn’t even known he’d wanted to hear that from Wei Wuxian until he had – he hadn’t realized how important it was that Wei Wuxian finally acknowledged him, that Wei Wuxian thought he was capable of being sect leader; he hadn’t realized how much his feelings had been tangled up by the fact that Wei Wuxian still treated him as if he was just a foolish child that didn’t know better. “Everyone else can call me that, but you call me Jiang Cheng, okay? Always.”

He reached over and grabbed Wei Wuxian around the shoulders, drawing him into a tight one-armed embrace.

“Watch the baby,” Wei Wuxian said, as if he wasn’t hugging back just as hard. “Don’t drop my shizi because you’re not paying attention.”

“I’m not going to drop him,” Jiang Cheng said, grateful for the mostly-a-joke. “Does that – does that mean you’re coming back to the Jiang sect? For real this time?”

“Yes,” Wei Wuxian said. “I am. No more running around outside, I promise.”

Jiang Cheng’s hands were busy, holding his shidi in one and his son in the other, so he had to bury his face into Wei Wuxian’s shoulder to help stop the flow of tears. “Wei Wuxian,” he said. “You really don’t – you’re not angry at me?”

“Why would I be angry at you?” Wei Wuxian said, pulling back and frowning at him and then frowning even more when Jiang Cheng made a flailing sort of gesture with his head towards A-Lian. “For - for that?! Jiang Cheng, it wasn’t your fault you got captured!”

It sort of was, actually, and Jiang Cheng has always been a terrible liar; he shouldn’t have let his insecurities get away from him enough to even ask, because now Wei Wuxian’s eyes were the ones filling up with tears. He’d never been an idiot.

“You didn’t,” he insisted, and his hands were white-knuckled where he grabbed onto Jiang Cheng’s arms. He was probably leaving bruises, and neither of them cared. “Jiang Cheng, tell me you didn’t! Don’t – in the marketplace, when the Wens were about to find me – Jiang Cheng…!”

“Someone needed to avenge our parents, and you were the better choice!” Jiang Cheng blurted out. “And I was right, wasn’t I? You did it! You even invented demonic cultivation –”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed. “There wasn’t any other way out of the Burial Mounds, and now I’m stuck, Jiang Cheng – you don’t understand, it’s not just, I don’t – I can’t – it’s demonic cultivation or nothing for me, and when the war ends, when it stops being useful and starts being horrifying, the entire cultivation world is going to turn against me, and I can’t bring you down with me –”

“Why are you talking like it’s the only type of cultivation you can do anymore?” Jiang Cheng demanded. “How can one type of cultivation block you from doing another? That doesn’t make any sense – even if it did block you, you could just stop, it’s not like you don’t have a golden core –”

Wei Wuxian didn’t say anything.

“You have a golden core,” Jiang Cheng said again, more urgently this time. “Wei Wuxian, you have a golden core, right? You didn’t –” He was starting to panic. “It was Wen Chao that threw you into the Burial Mounds, wasn’t it? He said it himself that that was what he did, and where there’s Wen Chao, there’s Wen Zhuliu – did he melt your core? And I took your name when we went to Baosan Sanren’s mountain, I took your birthright away from you –”

“Jiang Cheng, no! That’s not what happened!”

“You told me to tell her I was you!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed, because what else could it be? Baosan Sanren was a true immortal, powerful enough to fix a golden core, but everyone knew that her disciples weren’t allowed back onto the mountain once they’d left – the gift she’d given him, reviving his core, that must have been a once-in-a-lifetime offer. “I told her I was you so she’d heal me and now she won’t heal you; I did to you what Mother was always afraid you’d do to me –”

“I lied!” Wei Wuxian cried out, and he sounded as if his heart was being torn out of his chest. “I lied, Jiang Cheng, stop trusting me so much! There’s no Baosan Sanren, no mountain; just me, making stupid decisions on your behalf again, because I’m arrogant, because I think I know better, because I –”

“What did you do?” Jiang Cheng said. His lips felt numb. His whole body felt numb. “Wei Wuxian, what did you do –”

A-Lian burst into tears.

That knocked them both out of their self-absorption, turning at once to see what was wrong with the baby.

“Did we jostle him?” Wei Wuxian asked anxiously once they’d gotten A-Lian a little calmer. “We didn’t hurt him, did we?”

“I think we were just being too loud,” Jiang Cheng said after concluding his inspection. “And anyway, he’s kind of a blob right now – you pinch or pull at him and he goes back the way he used to be. The doctors all say that babies are very flexible.”

“A little bun,” Wei Wuxiand agreed. “With just a little dusting of sesame on top.”

Jiang Cheng looked at the very few scraps of black hair A-Lian had managed to grow. “…he does kind of look like that, doesn’t he? Come on, A-Lian, calm down, it’s okay, we’ll stop yelling, we promise –”

“Really?” Wei Wuxian said. He sounded skeptical. “You’re going to stop yelling?”

“Shut up, you sound like Nie Huaisang. Don’t think you’re getting away without telling me what you did…you gave me yours, didn’t you?”

No wonder his core had felt different, stronger, when he’d woken up – he’d assumed it was Baosan Sanren giving him a gift, but in reality it was only that Wei Wuxian was a better cultivator than he was, that he’d strengthened himself more.

No wonder, too, that his core had felt familiar – he’d pressed his ear against Wei Wuxian’s belly a thousand times, feeling the warmth of it, and he’d mistaken that familiarity for it being his.

Wei Wuxian nodded, and Jiang Cheng scowled. “Can it be reversed?”

“Absolutely not,” Wei Wuxian said at once. “For one thing, I wouldn’t agree; for another, it was only a fifty-fifty chance of it working successfully the first time, I’m not taking that risk again. Anyway, I have demonic cultivation now, and if we traded back, you’d need to be the demonic cultivator, and what would that do to the Jiang sect’s reputation?”

Jiang Cheng hated it when Wei Wuxian had a point.

“Especially now that we have an heir,” Wei Wuxian added, reaching out to rub A-Lian’s head. “You’ve got to make sure the Jiang sect is thriving so that you’ll have something good to hand down to him.”

Jiang Cheng really hated it when Wei Wuxian had a point.

“I can’t believe you did that for me,” he said.

“I can’t believe you got captured for me,” Wei Wuxian rebutted. But that wasn’t the same at all, it was –

Okay, maybe there were a few superficial similarities.

“At least that explains why you’ve been so distant,” he said, shaking his head and smoothing A-Lian’s minimal hair down as the baby started to fall asleep again. “I thought you just didn’t trust me to be a good sect leader…”

“What? No! Jiang Cheng, you’re a great sect leader. I just didn’t want to risk dragging you down.”

“How can you drag us down? I’m literally using your golden core to lead the sect!”

“It’s yours now,” Wei Wuxian said. “I built it up, but I can’t decide on how you use it – everything you’ve done since then, that’s still yours. You know that, right? It’s all still you. Your achievements, not mine. Saying it’s mine would be like saying that every person that Chifeng-zun has ever defeated was actually the triumph of whoever forged Baxia for him.”

Jiang Cheng would murder anyone who dared to say something like that, except he’d never get the chance to because Nie Huaisang would have ruined their life before he’d even gotten started.

“Fine,” he said. “But you’re still not dragging us down. We’ll just have to be careful, that’s all – we can even use it to our advantage: whenever we need something to happen that we can��t really admit to, we have you do it, excuse it as being because of the influence of your demonic cultivation, and tell everyone we’ll get right on fixing it right away. Just the way Father used to do with Mother’s temper tantrums.”

“…wait, those were staged?”

“Well, some of them were, anyway,” Jiang Cheng said. He was mostly sure. “But you have to run anything really crazy by me first, okay?”

“Right,” Wei Wuxian said, nodding. “Uh – does that count past actions?”

Jiang Cheng wasn’t even surprised. “What’d you do?”

“Promised a safe harbor to one of the branch families of the Wen sect?”

Jiang Cheng might be gullible where his shixiong was concerned, but he wasn’t dumb. “Wen Qing and Wen Ning? They’re the ones that helped you do – what you did.”

Wei Wuxian nodded guiltily.

“Well, in that case, I can hardly turn them down, can I?” Jiang Cheng said, pretending to grumble. “That’d make me ungrateful. Fine; I retroactively authorize your offer, they can come be guest disciples at the Jiang sect –”

Wei Wuxian hugged him again.

“If you wake the baby up again I will kill you,” Jiang Cheng said, but he hugged him back.

“I think they’re done,” Nie Huaisang’s voice drifted in from the door, and they both turned to look.

Jiang Yanli’s eyes were red, suggesting that she’d been listening – and Jiang Cheng hated that, hated that he’d ever caused her pain or sadness; his jiejie deserved the best things in life, always, not more pain and disappointment and everything he brought with him. But true to form she didn’t say anything, only smiled and said, “I knew A-Xian and A-Cheng would talk it out eventually.”

“Bet you didn’t predict the baby,” Nie Huaisang chirped, and then cowered when all three of them glared at him. “Sorry, sorry. Please ignore me.”

“In the future, there will be no such secrets, understood?” Jiang Yanli said to them, with more steel than usual in her soft voice. “A-Xian will tell us before he does something crazy, and A-Cheng won’t not tell us when something important happens –”

“Well, it’s hardly likely to happen a second time,” Jiang Cheng protested, but not very strongly.

“Hey, don’t be so hasty,” Nie Huaisang said. “We could want more kids after we get married.”

“Wait,” Wei Wuxian said. “When did –”

“We are not getting married!” Jiang Cheng bellowed. It was a good thing that A-Lian apparently found Jiang Cheng’s yelling soothing, or else he would’ve woken up again. “Nie Huaisang, stop telling people we’re getting married!”

“I don’t tell people we’re getting married, I only tell you!”

“That’s not better!”

“Wow,” Wei Wuxian said to Jiang Yanli, voice deliberately pitched obnoxiously loud. “It’s almost like they’re married already –”

“Wei Wuxian! I will throw something at your head, just watch me!”

“Just don’t throw the baby!”

#mdzs #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #nie huaisang #my fic #my fics #content warning: feelings

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downstarr · 2 years

Text

A Pirate’s Life For Us - Our Flag Means Death

My hypothetical S2. Ongoing fic on Wattpad. Click here to read more and follow for updates.

-----

Ed had just burned it all down. All of it. He had tried to stay the man he had become, but he couldn’t do it. He may have hated his old self, but it had kept him alive for a very long time. It protected him - and his heart. And now that his heart was broken, the urge to crawl back into that ugly, spiked suit of armor was far too strong.

But the psychic damage of pulling that ugly mask on him was intense. He could only hold it in the presence of others. Alone, like he was now, it all fell down.

He’d run out of tears some time ago and now sat numb in the bathtub of the captains’ quarters, face streaked with kohl from darkened eyes and painted beard. Blackbeard had always been a mask, an artifice - but now he had to reapply it every morning - to cover up the man love had revealed.

There was no going back to wearing the armor of Blackbeard full-time.

Not since he met a funny little man named Stede Bonnet.

Ed reached out and wrapped his fingers around a bar of lavender soap. Its surface was cracked, but it smelled earthy and just a little musky. And just past it, a tiny toy model of the ship, designed for a child to play with in the bath.

The sense memory hit him like a bag of bricks.

—

“Stede. Uh. Stede?”

“You alright in there, Ed?”

“Yeah. Well. No. I mean…”

“Do…do you want me to come in?”

“...I think you better.”

Stede very slowly opened the door to the bathroom. Or rather, he opened it a little, then closed it again, then shyly opened it a little more and poked his head in. “Ed? Oh my.”

Ed was in the tub. Stede had shown him how to fill it and about the various soaps and left him to it. Somehow, the pirate had managed to create a massive pile of suds that completely enveloped him and spilled out onto the floor. He was nothing but a bearded face in a mountain of white. “There were no bubbles. And then there were. Well, there were a lot of them.”

“I can see that.” Mirth danced in Stede’s eyes as he looked at Ed, enveloped as he was in a soapy cloud. His face was just about the only thing sticking out as the suds piled high and spilled over onto the floor. He slowly made his way into the room, slipping a bit as his elegant shoes hit a bit of soap. “That’s all right. Easy mistake to make.”

Stede picked his way carefully over to the other man and reached up to sweep the suds away from his head. He pushed a handful out the porthole. It floated out and he heard a shout from Frenchie. “Sorry! Fair warning though. More coming.” He giggled a little, then shouted, “SUDS AHOY!” and then scooped another armful out the window.

The crew gave a chorus of confused and delighted sounds.

“There, see? Your mistake brought a little bit of delight to the crew. So it’s not all bad, right?”

Ed shifted, now a bit more unearthed from his soapy prison. “I guess so. Now that I’m not breathing in bubbles, it’s kind of nice. Like swimming in a small bucket. On a ship. In the ocean. Which…doesn’t make sense. Why wash on a boat when you can wash in the ocean? But I guess you don’t get this in the ocean.” He grabbed a handful of suds and blew on them. The first attempt was nothing more than a sputter, but the second pushed bits into the air.

“Well, I suppose there’s sea foam.”

“But that smells…”

“...smells bad, yes,” said Stede in near-unison with Ed. “Certainly no good for getting clean, or relaxing for that matter.”

“I found this when I was getting in.” Ed’s hand emerged from the water with a tiny little toy replica of the Revenge .

Stede twitched a little, his face knotting in a slightly pained expression. “Ah, yes. I had that made for my children. When I thought they might be joining me on this little adventure.” His voice took on a melancholy, guilt-tinged sort of quality - one Ed had heard before when he spoke of his family.

Ed looked at Stede for a moment. He hated seeing the other man with that haunted look on his face. It was so much more delightful to see the childish glee or the shy little grin. As far as he was concerned, Stede Bonnet deserved only to experience things that made him smile.

So Ed slid back into the pile of suds that remained, taking the little ship with him. “Stede, hey Stede. Look.” And then he shot one tattooed arm out of the soap mountain and undulated it. “It’s the Kraken. Coming for the Revenge… ” He wiggled his arm towards his other hand and snatched up the little ship, then started tossing it back and forth, slapping it against the surface of the bathwater.

It was an absolutely ridiculous sight. But it had the desired effect of making Stede laugh. He moved closer to the bath and then scooped the soap back from Ed’s face. “But look, it’s not the Kraken at all! It’s Ed.”

“No it’s not! It is I, the Kraken!” Ed tried to sink back into the foam, but thanks to the suds tossed out the window and the ones now tipped onto the floor, he had less and less to disappear into. Now both arms wiggled back and forth in his impression of tentacles.

“Well, would the fearsome Kraken like me to wash his hair?”

Ed stopped gesticulating and instead studied the details of the tiny toy ship. “I already got it wet. That’s it, right?”

“Well, yes. But if you want a deep clean, there’s a little bit more to it. May I?”

Ed nodded.

Stede dragged over a stool and sat on it. Then he reached for a small pitcher and scooped the water over Ed’s head, sending rivulets of warm, soapy water over the long salt and pepper lengths.

Ed immediately closed his eyes and shuddered a little as the warm water trickled over his scalp and down the back of his neck.

Stede dipped his hands into the water by his shoulder and lathered up a bar of lavender soap. He then started working it into the pirate’s hair, massaging along his scalp and the back of his neck. He grabbed handfuls of his hair and rung it out, then slid the bar along its lengths. Soon, all he could smell was heat and lavender and soap, and the subtle, earthy cologne that Stede sprayed on his clothing to keep them fresh.

Ed had never felt more luxurious in his life. He melted into the warm, soapy water and occasionally opened one eye to see Stede taking his job of hair washing very seriously.

Then Stede reached for a pitcher of fresh water. “A warning,” he mumbled, “This is going to be a bit chilly.”

And then cool water trickled over his scalp and down into the bathwater. He felt currents of cold cutting through the warm, trickling along his body to his toes.

Ed arched his back. Stede poured more.

Then Stede meticulously and gently started to squeeze out his hair. Then, he began to section it. Before he realized what was happening, the aristocrat was plaiting his long hair. He opened his mouth to ask him where he learned that, but then he looked at the small toy ship he still held. His daughter. He must have done this to his daughter’s hair. He didn’t want to ask for fear of breaking the mood.

“There you are,” said Stede quietly. “Take your time, but give yourself a good scrub and rinse before you get out. When you’re ready, I’ll make us a cup of tea.”

Ed grinned warmly at Stede, now mostly extricated from bubble mountain, with hair neatly tied back. “Thanks, mate,” he murmured.

“No worries. Ah…”

The bubbles had dissipated enough that more of Ed was becoming visible by the moment. That fact was turning Stede’s cheeks slowly red.

“I’ll…leave you to it, then.”

Ed grinned at Stede, and shifted a little deliberately to the point where he was sure that the other man had to see something.

Stede pinkened, did a little piroutte on the spot, and exited the bathroom.

—

“Boss.”

Izzy Hands rapped on the door to the bathroom where Ed was once again steeped in the bathtub.

But there was no water. No suds.

No Stede.

Without him, the tub felt more like a coffin.

Ed had been in there for hours now. Night had fallen and a cool sea breeze drifted in from the porthole.

“Go away, Izzy,” croaked Ed.

“We’re almost at port. It should be a good place to recruit new crew. A proper one this time. Not a bunch of pansies who want to talk about their bloody feelings and do arts and crafts,” sneered Izzy from beyond the door.

Ed looked down at his hand. He opened it. In it was a tiny little toy model of the Revenge. He had been holding it so tightly that it had made indents in his hand.

I’m not the Kraken.

He heard Stede’s laughter. He smelled the lavender soap and the man’s fingers running along his scalp.

Not.

“Boss,” Izzy rapped on the door.

“Fuck off,” Ed growled.

He grabbed hold of the nearest object, which happened to be a small glass bottle, and threw it at the door. It shattered.

Immediately, the entire room smelled like Stede.

It was the man’s cologne.

You’re not the Kraken.You’re Ed.

Ed started to hyperventilate. He felt a wave of sadness cresting and colliding with a deep, stomach-pit rage.

But that scent, and that tiny toy ship grounded him. The monster inside him receded, its tentacles slipping back below the surface.

“I’m not the Kraken,” he whispered to himself. “With or without you, I’m not the Kraken.” He looked at the tiny ship again, then sat up and held it with both hands. He then set it gently on a shelf over the bath and slowly peeled himself out of the bathtub.

He stretched upright, loosening kinks that had built up along his body from hours in the tub.

Ed stood, weaving with the sway of the ship. And then, he stepped forward. There was work to be done.

Read Chapter 2

#our flag means death #our flag means death fanfiction #wattpad #our flag means death season 2 #our flag means gay #ed x stede #blackbonnet #blackstede

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that-bi-bitch-writes · 3 years

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P S Y C H (ch.2)

Notice: A lot of these chapters will pretty much be the plot of the manga just adjusted to be part of [Name]’s POV.

Warnings: Swearing, religious themes, violence, mediocre writing. references to other anime

Previous // Next

“This is hideous” [Name] thought aloud as he put on a cheap track suit his mother packed for him that morning. She said it was warm and stretchy and since he just needed something comfortable and convenient to wear he went along with it. For like the 15th time in one day he was honestly regretting the decision to become a hero. [Name] wasn’t exactly one to put tremendous efforts towards something if moderate effort would do. After all he was only becoming a hero for fun.

“And Begin”

[Name] didn’t move a muscle. Everyone around him stood still as well looking confused but [Name] knew what present mic expected of them, he just didn’t really run all that much. There were two parts to his plan of attack. First he’d let everyone in to do some minor damage. That would prevent them from trampling over him in a rush to get into the training grounds AND he wouldn’t have to run. Bonus is that they would make a mess destroying their surroundings and leaving scraps of robots around. That’s the essential part.

“What’s wrong? The test has started. Run! Run! The die has been cast”

The telekinetic gave everyone a two minute head start as he wrapped up his wrist just in case. When the two minutes ran out he raised his arms almost like he was about to do jumping jacks or flap his arms and take flight but kept his palms facing the ground. He then pushed downward and activated his telekinesis, hands and eyes glowing golden as he was launched in the air. Shooting over most of the kids near the entrance [Name] spotted three 2 pointers heading towards one area of the training grounds.

‘This is it’ he thought and let himself freefall landing in a superhero pose he’d been practicing. His landing was so strong he accidentally destroyed one of the robots upon impact.

“Aww man” [Name] whined. The other two pointers turned their attention onto what they thought was their new prey but [Name] just flicked his left wrist in a weird scooping motion that launched the remains of the destroyed robot at the remaining two. One of the 2 pointers had a robotic arm sticking out of its chest where its heart should be and the other got its head taken off from the force of the scraps that [Name] had launched through the air. [Name] levitated himself back into the air and started the search and destroy process over again.

Eventually he had gotten 50 points which he guessed was enough to get into 1A and spent the rest of his time telekinetically juggling rubble he’d lifted off of people before they were crushed to death. Some people thought he was just showing off and in a way he was, but others sincerely thanked him to which he just responded “What kind of a hero would I be if I didn’t help those in need”. It was a cliche statement but one he actually believed.

Apparently he was in the same training grounds as the blonde bombshell from earlier which was kind of a disappointment considering [Name] wanted to see All Might’s successor in action, but not too much because he liked how the blonde moved throughout the air. [Name] was definitely gonna copy some of those moves and make them his own.

There was no action until the zero pointer came. Blondie surprised [Name] when he retreated but it turns out Bakugou had only cared about destroying robots worth points. It honestly made sense to [Name] but he stayed nearby the zero pointer making sure to stay out of its eyesight. As the zero pointer stomped through the training grounds [name] would make snatching motions in the air as he dragged people out of its path. Saving dumbasses who were frozen in shock was a lot easier than expending the energy needed to take down the massive robot.

“IT’S ALL OVER!!!” Present Mic resounded. [Name] was gonna send that man to see god one day. He walked off the field unsure where he was in terms of ranking but he knew he’d hear back from UA soon. In the meantime he was gonna go get a matcha latte and some aspirin. Quirk drawbacks fucking suck.

“[Name] how do you think you did on the entrance exams” There was a loud thunk coming from his room as [Name] dropped some dumbbells. The ones in his hands and the ones he was lifting with his quirk

“That was like two weeks ago. Why ask now?” he called back to his mom

“Can you just answer the question”

“I mean- fine I guess. I’m sure I got in”

“That’s good because the letter is here. It’s kind of light so I was a little scared”

“Are you saying you don’t believe in me?”

“That’s not what I said but if the shoe fits, be back by midnight cinderella”

“Can you just bring me the envelope?”

[Mo.Name] giggled at their banter before walking to [Name]’s door which was actually opened for once. He must be a little more curious than he’s pretending to be.

“Here’s you letter young master”

“Whatever” [Name] snorted as he sat down on his bed to open up the letter. When he saw his mom lingering in the hallway he got up and closed his door, sticking his tongue out at his mother as she vanished behind the closing door. He could hear her thoughts as clear as day. Apparently it had something to do with their emotional connection but whenever they were thinking of each other fondly there was a two way link connecting their minds. It got annoying because she’d tease him about how much he loved her though he pretended not to like a teenage tsundere. Or honestly a normal teenager at that.

Though nervous, [Name] opened the letter with no hesitation and saw that it was some projector thing. He couldn’t figure out how to work the thing so he lifted it telekinetically and still couldn’t figure anything out. In a moment of frustration he grabbed it out of the air and threw it on his bed(so it wouldn’t break) while shouting at the thing to turn on and was shocked to see Present Mic cheerfully greeting him as he went through the results of [Name]’s test. He’d passed the written test with pretty good scores and apparently ranked number one with 50 villain points and 30 rescue points.

“Great now I’m the one to beat”

[Name] who knew just how excitable his mom could get had his hardest challenge yet. Avoiding her hugs after sharing the results. She wasn’t always as accepting and welcoming of his choices but she loved him enough to make an effort. She was proud of him for walking the path to become a hero but years earlier she would’ve scolded him for choosing to enroll so late and not trying for something practical like pursuing some career that would require further schooling past high school graduation. Now? He’d have to barricade his door with furniture and psychic energy. She was a powerful empath and if he’d let her get close enough to touch they would both burst into tears.

When his room was fully fortified [Name] picked up his phone and dialed his mother.

“I got in”

#bnha x male reader #mha x male reader #male reader #male reader insert #x male reader #x m!reader #xmalereader #P S Y C H #that bi bitch writes #that-bi-bitch-writes

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theblurplegirl · 4 years

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So I had my first bad and overtly sexualized experience when playing D&D last night. And I can't sleep until I write it out.

For context, I had decided to start looking for an other group to meet with (online of course) about a month ago. Within the last week I found a group that was in my time zone, and seemed to be an ok fit. When I added my character to the DNDBeyond campaign page I noticed that my character was the only one listed as female. Now I know that people can play whatever gender of character they want, but just the general vibe I got from my few messages with the DM lead me to believe that the players were all playing characters their same gender. I also learned that I was going in as the least experienced of the group, as well as being the only player who was not able to meet with the DM beforehand to run through character details. I was going in mostly uninformed. I immediately knew that this was going to be a lot more difficult than my previous campaign. I was a woman surrounded by men, playing a game that is gatekept by men, and stereotypically played by only men. My thoughts and mindset to not show weakness or inexperience and to prove that was just as good of a player as any of the rest of them did not however prepare me for the session.

First thing we did was describe our characters after we where given our roles within the group. This immediatly made me have to make some major chapter changes because I had planned for a more light-hearted character this go around, but the position she was given required her to not only be aged up but also her alignment changed. So I was already a little on edge and even more unprepared. I had known before how I wanted my character to act in general situations, but now, my overall plan was thrown out the window. The motivation I had put down for my character no longer applied. If my character had nothing to strive for, did I have anything to play with?

Within the first few minutes of the session, as a new group of people, the DM had our characters go through some "bonding activities". My character and another had an arm restling match, which my character lost in one role (7 to an 11). Two other characters bonded by teasing one of the other members of the group, a high born water genasi. Generally that went well except for the fact that the DM, when describing the towel the two were using to taunt the character with he described it as a rough towel, but not just any type of rough, rough like there was dried cum in it. This comment made me immediatly uncomfortable. We were within five minutes of this session starting (the first of the campaign!) and the DM was already making sexual comments. I think I probably would have still been uncomfortable if my other DM, who I have known for close to 7 years, had made that description. I let the comment slide, hoping that maybe it was a slip up on the DMs part and he would remember he was with strangers.

The next incident that happened was when the party entered the town tavern and there was a fight. Our warlock used thamaturgy to make each punch and slap sound louder than they actually were. The DM initially described this as deafening, what was a perfectly fine description. However, later on in the fight when thamaturgy was used again, our DM described the sounds as lude and as if someone was jacking off. This again made me uncomfortable, but I kept silent.

Another thing the DM made a quick comment about is that the barkeep gave the water genasi a glass of water instead of beer and it was the barkeep being racist. Which was a completely unnecessary thing to say.

A little later while still in the bar, it was discovered that our party's mark was also in the building, and that he was commenting about how he found my character attractive, especially since she was apparently the only women in the bar. (Which not only contradicted the DM's earlier description of "Men, women, and children crowed around watching the bar fight" but also the fact that it was the towns only tavern and we were supposed to believe there were no other women then? Not even barmaids?) It was then implied heavily by not only most of the rest of my party but also the DM that I was supposed to go over and seduce the mark and gain access to his house by doing so. I felt set up and nervous. This was by no means how I had ever intended for this character to be played (she was originally going to literally still be a minor before I had to age her up). To make matters even more uncomfortable the DM insisted on role-playing a good portion of the in bar discussion/seduction between my character and the NPC. I said that I was uncomfortable with the situation, and them tried to use the excuse that I was not good at role-playing and had never done it before, but the DM was insistent. Through out the experience other players kept commenting on different aspects or were just being overtly sexual. I ended the in bar role-play fairly swiftly before my character had to go over and tell the rest of the party where she was going, and for them to follow her and scout the house. One the the other players had his character turn invisible and come also in the house as a scout while the other party members where outside.

When my character got back to the house with the mark, his younger sister was apparently awake and waiting. She was decribed as an young girl looking around the age of 13. This immedatly set off some warning bells, because the oarty was meant to capture her and transport her somewhere, which made me worried about what the DM had in mind. In the moment nothing else came of the little girl except that she tried to shame my character for coming back with her brother.

Next, my character and the mark went to his bedroom, and the DM described the multiple tools and weapons hanging on the NPCs wall, I could have been reading into it at this point but it felt like he was describing them in hopes I would have my character use them in the coming moments. The DM again then had my try to role-play the instruction between my character and the NPC, to which I was fairly bland with my words and sped through the process again. My DM then made my character take a point of exhaustion, which gives you disadvantage on checks. I then had my character leave after the NPC had fallen asleep, to which she was met with the younger sister again, who once again tried to shame her for a sexual experience.

When the DM switched to the POV of the other party members two of the players made the comments that they were pretty sure that the invisible party member who was in the house was probably sticking around and getting a show from my character and the mark.

When our whole party met up later to compare intel from the evening my character was the only one that had nothing to add to the scout mission. She had been purely used as a distraction. She was utterly unimportant to the plot of the mission and the campaign. The only "good" that came out of it was when one of the party members asked if my character could show them what she had done to the mark I replied so quickly with an adamant NO (of frustration and annoyance) that the DM told the other player his character suffered 4 points of psychic damage. At this point I was thoroughly upset, annoyed, and bored with the session and DM. This was when one of the other party members (the one who had played the invisible scout) private messaged me and asked if I was uncomfortable. It felt like I was able to take a breath that I didn't even know I could.

The other player explained to me that he was also uncomfortable with the situation and that he was here to support me. We continued to message back and forth for the rest of the session. I honestly don't think I would have made it to the end without him.

In the middle of the night a man broke into the room my character was sharing with the party's orc fighter. But my character slept through the whole interaction between the two characters, which just made me more uncomfortable, but I at this point I was so uncomfortable with this whole campaign that it was just another layer.

When our party awoke the next morning there were comments from the party about how my character had slept so deeply because of being worn out from the night before. This just caused more annoyance from me. When out party stepped out of the tavern there was a man selling potions on a cart pulled my two humans and two drow elves. The DM stated, after the invisible scout's insight check, that the people pulling the cart were slaves and that the whole region we were in had slavery. The owner of said slaves (played by the DM) stated that they were better than horses because they fought back. This statement made me extremely uncomfortable, even more so than the sexual encounters.

At this point the invisible scout spoke up and said that our characters should free the slaves, in response my chracter was the only one that agreed so we set about to release them. This involved me casting blindness on the owner and then getting shot by his goblin lacky and taking over half of my HP in damage. Then the genasi cast sleep on the goblin (not to help us free the slaves, but to steal something off the cart), which allowed the scout and I to cut the chains and try to let the slaves free. By that point the owner had regained his sight and the slaves had not run away. One of the slaves then glared at my character and said "should I dispose of them master" and honestly I wish he had, because then I would have gotten to leave. Instead, I had to stick around because the owner insisted that I was merely misunderstanding the situation and that no further punishment should come to my character if she worked off the payment of the chains she had cut. There was no mention of the scout being punished. I wanted to cry at this point, out of frustration and annoyance.

The last few minutes of the session involved the party then splitting up to look at different locations around town that we also needed to scout, but at this point I was not paying attention to anything the DM or anybody else said.

Throughout the course of the session the DM and other players also made other unnecessarily sexual and racist comments, but there were so many that I only explained the major ones. By the end, when the DM asked how the session was, I couldn't respond. I felt assaulted. Yes, I had put myself in this situation, but there had been no prior indication before starting the evening that I would be subjected to a multitude of sexual and racist comments throughout the session.

The whole experience was horrible, except for the fact that the invisible scout player and I have continued to talk and have both decided to leave the campaign and look for a friendlier one together. I am just glad that I had him to talk to during the experience because otherwise I probably would have thought I was exaggerating things in my head. I have loved D&D for a long time and this experience has tarnished my love for the game. I just hope I can recover from it and learn to again love the game and the people who play that are truly loving, accepting, and kind.

Ps: If you are 18+ and in either CST, MST or EST and looking for a cleric and a ranger in your campaign, I've got you covered

Tl;dr

I joined an online group of D&D that was full of unnecessarily sexual and racist comments and it was the worst experience of D&D I've had so far.

Sorry for any typos I dont want to have to reread everything, it was bad enough going through it once.

#dnd #dnd memes #dnd rp #dnd ideas #dnd ocs #d&d #d&d 5th edition #d&d 5e #d&d oc #d&d character #d&d homebrew #dungeons and dragons #dnd 5e campaign #5e #dnd 5e #dnd 5e homebrew #racisim #sexism

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vaguely-concerned · 3 years

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The Mandalorian Chapter 11 reactions; the ‘the sea is a harsh mistress’ edition

- on first watch this wasn’t really one of my favorite episodes. I think it’s something to do with... one of the many things I love about the mandalorian is how it made the star wars universe feel HUGE. big and surprising and unknowable, there could be fucking anything out there man we don’t know. so having first bo katan show up and then ahsoka being set up right after (quite aside from who’s rumoured to play her, which is an entirely different can of wormy beans) in additon to opening the season on tatooine... eh. I’m not that into it, it feels like shrinking the world. we haven’t even gotten to see any other type of force user yet. it is only early/mid season tho so they’re probably going to pull some unexpected twists on us

my opinion might change with rewatches too, that happens quite a bit with this show!

🎶I’VE COME TO TALK WITH YOU AGAIN🎶

honestly I had kind of a hard day yesterday and watched this the next morning and kept pointing tiredly to the crest like ‘it me tho’

- I was unreasonably happy about seeing the calamari flan again hahaha he’s been keeping that shit in his pockets for a season and a half now (didn’t he pay with some at one other point too?)! also the sound effects for them are SO EXCELLENT, I keep thinking about how well this show does texture which is wild considering how it’s filmed

- the warm pat din gave frog lady’s arm when he thanked her and said goodbye 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 I love the small ways he’s thawing

my heart ached so much for him at this point, he just looks so small and tense and lost, like a kid who’s lost his parents in a supermarket

(he keeps his hand on the blaster the whole time too so he knows this is a bad scene but now they’re right out in the middle of the ocean already soooo)

- din’s very very very dry sense of humour is so blessed. ‘a bowl of chowder for my friend’ faklhfsadkjlfhsadkjhfsd

the baby’s look when he poked the squid thing with his knife too -- yodito’s like ‘dad is a wizard??’ haha. some good baby & dad stuff in this one

- oh din... side quest boy, side quest booooooyyy

- the shot when bo katan helped him out of the water is perfectly mirroring the scene of bb!din being pulled up to safety by the mandalorian in the flashback, which seems Very Intentional

I Extremely Do Not Trust Her in the larger scale tho. I think it’s important that din knows now that he was raised in a very specific offshoot of the mandalorians ant that there’s some Stuff he hasn’t been told, but I also think it’s crucial to remember that her pov is not unbiased either and she, in fact, already has an established tendency to selectively share information with him to manipulate him into fulfilling her goals. (which he realizes because he keeps saying ‘that is not my mission, my mission is the child’ and I could not love him more). hell, I’m not sure exactly how ‘the children of the watch’ were positioned within death watch, but she was fucking death watch too for the longest time! and she hardly left for particularly noble reasons, she just didn’t like maul! she already lost mandalore like twice, do we just have to trust that third time’s the charm or what!

she lied to him about the scope of the mission to force him into a position to do what she wanted (fully knowing he’s responsible for a child!!) and she called that ‘the way’ just as easily as the thing about not letting his bravery be forgotten! big red warning lights, NO! I think the thing is that din is having to find his own ‘way’ of being mandalorian (/how does one be a person exactly help?? relatable content, and he’ll get there in the end I’m sure he’s so good), but her way is no less fucked up to me than the children of the watch from what we’ve seen so far. she’s good at killing imperials though which is of course a mark in her favour

(considering that the episode gives her the epithet ‘the heiress’... yeah that’s probably a hint that she’s loyal first and foremost to her entitlement, getting the position she considers hers by right of inheritance. guess we’ll see if the text agrees with her)

- ‘mandalorians are stronger together’ yeah that’s probably why the cosmic balance makes sure they’re mostly engaged in being at each other’s throats lol

- so I might be feeling kind of sketch about these guys but on the other hand... when that one lady saved the baby and then promptly took off her helmet to reveal she looks like t h i s ?

you better BELIEVE I was ready to fall down on one knee and propose right then and there holy shit

- ...wow if he didn’t have the jet pack din probably would have just sunk like a rock and drowned there huh 😨 that armour’s pretty heavy, turns out

- in happier news: din has become so good at reading what the child is expressing and responding/labeling the feeling for him! that’s so important to his development! ‘I know you’re hungry’ and both telling and showing him there’s a solution! still a bit of an issue that he thinks he can inform the baby of things like it’s a reasoned adult and have it understand, but we’re getting there we’re getting there lol

- that poor lady guiding them in for landing and sounding more and more worried fhkasjdlhfkjsdlahf (and he fucking TURNS OFF THE RADIO or whatever he’s using to talk to her through sdkfhaksdfhjs he takes a precious split second just to cut her off asfdjhaslkdfsdfhsda I love my salty dad)

- when the fisherman asshole tells mando he knows where to find more of his people there’s the tinkling bell sound in the background music, I think it’s meant to convey almost childlike longing for belonging and connection, for finding someone who’ll know what to do?

- when they took off their helmets and baby looked up at din like ‘???dad what the fuck? can you do that???’. (or like he just sensed his father taking a shitload of psychic damage all in one go)

- the way din didn’t start breathing again until they got the baby up from the water and he had him in his arms... the way he held him... sladfhasdklfhsjakdhfjsakldhfsakjldhfsjkadhfjaskdhfskajdhfjsdakhfslakhfskladhfsakljdhfjskadlhfkjsld

that whole scene was like a nightmare, so desperately unpleasant, in a way it mirrors the way the mandalorians have been hunted down and pummeled these last few generations, this must sort of be what it feels like to him subconsciously

- din isn’t particularly inflexible as a person, after the initial kneejerk rejection he did listen to what they said and is carefully considering it (he did say ‘this is the way’ back at the end!)

- the baby’s babbling when he wakes up and looks around in the beginning sounds half like ‘baba?’ and I almost had a heart attack

- loved how greasy and awful and dumb all the empire dudes were (and the comedy on board the ship too it was good for me)

- the boob plates huh. shit they’ve shown with the armorer that they don’t have to do that in any way shape or form and they still brought the boob plates back :/ I guess it’s so they match up with the rebels/clone wars look, evoking that ~*era*~ and everything, but I don’t have to like it lol

- I feel so validated in my theory that the razor crest is symbolic of din’s sense of self (now with beautifully added commentary!) after this haha (and also so so scared now they might be ditching it for a new ship eventually). it’s in pieces, his world view is going to pieces and can’t be patched together the way it was before, from what he knows he’s about to deliver the baby to someone else who’ll understand/love/deserve him better (I do think that feeling is still in him) and he doesn’t even have the certainty of the code anymore to fill the void. oh buddy.

the discomfort I felt when we got back into the cockpit -- into where it’s supposed to be familiar and safe! -- and saw all the ocean junk lying around, making it feel weird and changed and dirty (it probably smells like rotten seaweed in there now :( no likey)... I mean it was also very funny to see the pilot’s chair held together with a literal fishing net, but please favreau leave my dad’s car/ego alooooone

- baby laughing his little bum off at din catching the small sea monster before it got him and then munching it......... the ‘there’s nothing in this world my dad can’t fix’ safe energy.......... I’m so scared we’re coming up on something din can’t fix

- knitwear in star wars: I didn’t know I wanted it, but I am ELATED with having been given it

- moff gideon’s amazing evil voice... back in our ears, in our hearts, I gleefully hate him

- at least din’s armour is clean again after that (awful) swim? one must appreciate some silver linings along the way I suppose

- din goes straight for the main pilot’s seat once they get the imperial out of it, so he must feel really secure that he’s probably the best man for the job; he is genuinely a good pilot! (and after this I am wondering even MORE who taught him. who raised you within the mandos din??)

- even while everything is new and scary and falling apart we can live safe in the knowledge that at least frog lady and frog husband had a good day and will have a good and happy frog life together with their frog children

couple goals tbh

(I don’t necessarily know how it works for frog people but I uh. guess they got busy quickly huh hahaha good thing mando didn’t turn up again until later)

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian meta #I've mostly seen people love this episode so I feel a bit like a buzzkill about mostly being 'meh' about it but what can you do lol #I actively disliked a lot of the clone wars mando stuff so I'm biased I suppose

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totempestsfromwhispers · 3 years

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To Tempests, From Whispers

[Prologue: Arrival]

It was early in the morning in Lumiose City as the sun hasn't risen up and a grey cloudy sky loomed over the airport. A Lucario in flannel and baggy pants looks toward the horizon then back at a Meowstic wearing a simple buttoned-up shirt underneath a bright blue hoodie and trousers, they're both smiling as an announcement is heard from the lobby that the flight will start shortly.

"Looks like you gotta go. Are you sure you're gonna be fine, Cipher?" The Lucario asks, addressing the Meowstic in a cheerful fatherly tone.

"I'm gonna be fine, dad. I'll call as soon as I get settled in, alright?" Cipher answers back holding his luggage with his right hand as he looks toward the plane bound for Sinnoh. "I'll remember our training too and- …"

He was interrupted mid-sentence as the Lucario hugged him tightly, holding back tears. "Have a safe trip, son. Promise me you'll do your best?"

Cipher just hugged him back as his voice breaks just a little. "Sure, dad … I gotta go now. Wish me luck." He wiped a little tear from his eye and proceeded to take his flight, as he turned back he saw his father waving back.

"Go get 'em, hero."

~~~

"Hello, Jubilife! Today … a hero will be born."

I breathed a sigh of relief as I went outside of the plane, greeted by the bright sunny day of Jubilife. The flight surprisingly took a few hours from my hometown of Lumiose but I guess they're just doing their jobs as usual.

I had my suitcase in tow as I made my way towards solid ground, it was a large wheeled suitcase that I had a bit of trouble carrying by myself which I didn't really mind. After all, I didn't really come here for just a vacation … I came here to apply to my dream school, the ever prestigious Stella Academy, a place that has honed the skills of the best heroes to have ever lived, from what I've seen at least.

It really took me a while to choose what academy I wanna go to. I could have just attended a simple hero academy back at Kalos but my father insisted I go here, he did graduate here after all and now he is one of the well-known heroes of Kalos. I still remembered what he said to me during one of our training sessions.

"If an aura tells you something, you best be listening to it. It never lies."

I took a measly stroll around the city just to see what I can expect here. After some time, I decided I should probably find an apartment somewhere to settle into. This luggage of mine is already putting a bit of weight on me considering I just been on a plane and I'm still feeling a bit of jetlag. Now that I've mentioned it, I was told there would be someone who's gonna help me settle in here and I have yet to find this 'mon.

Having nothing else to rest on, I just sat on a nearby bench putting my luggage next to me as I figured out where I should be heading next. Of course, I can't just run around the entire city just to find a single 'mon, not to mention this is the first time I've been here.

While I seemed to space out for a bit, I felt someone tap my shoulder. Turning around, I see a Lucario wearing a pastel-colored tank top and a black skirt who seemed to be inspecting me up and down. "Umm … can I help you?" I asked as she responded with a smirk.

"Are you, Cipher by any chance?"

"I … I am. Why do you ask?"

"Ah! Yes, yes … I was expecting someone to arrive here in Jubilife and was tasked to accommodate them." She extended her hand towards me and gave a hearty laugh. "Lucia Ferros. Hope we'll get along quite well!"

I instinctively shook her hand and smiled back, a bit confused and dumbfounded as to why she was here. But I can't really complain … at least I can finally settle down. I let go and stood up from my seat, clutching my luggage with me.

"Pleased to meet you, miss. Now … where to?"

"Ohh right, follow me and we should get started settling you in."

"Okay …" I just followed her as we walked along some apartment buildings and alleyways. I don't see any standalone houses and bungalows which were the type of housing I was used to so living in an apartment would be something new for me.

While we walked, I saw her looking around the buildings and taking a sharp turn as we seemed to come across the entrance to an apartment. She seemed to be leading me towards the backyard when she suddenly stopped walking with her back turned away from me.

"Think fast!"

I was going to question where and why did she take me here when she suddenly threw something at me, what looked like a Bone Club on fire heading straight towards me. Her eyes were glowing blue as her body was now covered in aura. Panicking a bit, I let go of my luggage and readied an attack.

Uh … umm … come on, Cipher … think!

"Energy Shockwave!"

I can feel my ears activate as I let out a pulse of Grass and Psychic energy while I closed my eyes. After seeing whether the attack hit her or not, she suddenly wasn't there in my line of sight. I can, however, sense her presence and it was too late for me to react as I turned around and got knocked back almost instantly.

"Aura Blitz!"

Dammit! Why is she so fast …

"Come on, give me your best shot! We aren't gonna be here all day …" She exclaimed back at me as I was standing my ground and not letting myself get knocked over. I attempted the same attack when she grasped my right arm and raised an eyebrow. "Too predictable … surely you had something else on your sleeve ..."

The grip was surprisingly tight, so tight that I can't even move my arm. This whole ordeal was happening way too fast for me to keep up and I needed a way to counterattack. Luckily, I still have my other arm as I sneakily readied an arm behind my back. Combining my Thunder Wave and Energy Ball, I managed to barely materialize the attack from my hand and sent it out.

"Paralyzing Shock Ball!"

Luckily, Lucia seemed to be taken by surprise as she shuffled back and let go of my arm. "Not bad, not bad … now can you handle this?" She was smirking rather than being annoyed that I hit her with my attack as she activated her aura again but this time her paws seemed to be on fire now.

I just braced myself as I am starting to get a little fatigued from having to manage two attacks while still feeling a bit of jetlag. I opened my ears again as I activated my aura as she dashed toward me still with quite an impressive speed, maintaining my form and getting ready to counter any of her attacks.

"Pyro-Combat Strike!"

I just managed to barely dodge it as the flames grazed through my right cheek, leaving a small burn mark as I grabbed her arm and used a weaker version of my Paralyzing Shock Ball with my free hand. "Still had it charged this whole time …" With that, I brought her down to one knee and I stood back to see if she's gonna attempt another attack again.

"Looks like I've seen enough … we're done! Impromptu training is over for now." She smiled as she strained a little while getting up to her feet. "Sorry about that, I just needed to make sure you were the one trained by Dominus himself."

"Well yeah … I'm his father after all …" I scratched my head and chuckled nervously. Father was a hero back in Kalos but I didn't know his legacy would also be known as far as Jubilife of all places.

Her eyes seemed to light up as I said that and immediately held both of my shoulders in awe. "Wait a minute … you are his father? What an honor! Now I feel really bad that I made you do all that … Ok how about this after we get brunch after I get you settled in? Just to make it up to you …"

I just stood there, blinking in disbelief and a bit dumbfounded. Who knew being the son of a well-known hero would be a big deal? I just came here already and I am already having some adoration. "Please … you don't have to do that …"

"I insist! It's all on me anyways and hey, I want to get to know you a bit more and have a little chat if that's alright with you."

"Alright, if you say so …"

"One more thing … Welcome to Jubilife, I'm sure you're gonna love it here!"

"I sure hope so. Still a little nervous about all of this you know …" I immediately grabbed my luggage which surprisingly wasn't damaged and was just a bit dusty from the battle earlier. "Should we head to an apartment now?"

"Yes, yes of course! I'll lead the way. Come on, let's get you finally settled in."

"Right behind you …"

~~~

"Cipher! Glad to see you've finally settled in over there! I hope Lucia wasn't too much for you…" It seems dad had immediately called back just as I rang his phone. I was just on my living room couch when I decided to call him and it was already afternoon by the time I had just finished setting all of my stuff here.

"No worries about it, dad! She was pretty dynamic but she's alright for the most part." I had just learned from her that she used to do some hero training under dad too to prepare herself in studying at Stella Academy. She is now in her third year and is one of the top students already, no wonder she was darn fast with her attacks…

"I'm glad. I just want to make sure you're in good hands … okay, I should be doing my work. I'm currently en route towards a flash fire and I don't want to slow myself down. Goodbye for now, son!"

He immediately turned off the call just after he said that as I stared blankly at my phone screen just to reign in all of what had just happened today. Entrance exams for the academy are tomorrow and I want to make sure I'm in my best shape for that so I'm going to do some training for the big day ahead.

"Don't you worry, dad. I'll make sure mom's gonna be proud of me too from up above. I’ll promise that…" I left him a voicemail just as Lucia was waving at me by the window to start my training.

#totempestsfromwhispers #pokemon au story #cipher meowstic #lucia lucario

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fictionadventurer · 4 years

Text

Christmastime Again: A Hallmark Sci Fi Presentation

When the room stopped spinning, Lacey found herself on Christmas morning again. The guests had all arrived, the tree was standing and a light snow was just starting to fall out the window. The start of a picture-perfect Christmas.

As long as she kept it that way.

Alright, from the top.

By now, she could navigate the first part of the day by muscle memory. Scoop up the cat and lock her in the carrier in the laundry room. Straighten the rug and move Uncle Wendell’s beer stein away from the edge of the counter. Turn down the Christmas music just in time to hear the timer buzz and bring the turkey out of the oven at the peak of golden-brown perfection. Stash the cookies out of toddler-reach and get every child at the craft table a red crayon before the hair-pulling started.

Since she could navigate these hours without thinking, her brain was alert to the rest of her surroundings, watching for any unexpected ripples that could upset this version of the Christmas timeline. She noticed nothing out of the ordinary, except for the stares of the guy in the sweater. She’d heard his name--Julian, some cousin of her sister-in-law who had nowhere else to go--but it was hard to remember it when her senses were distracted by the ugly sweater. It wasn’t cute ugly or ironically ugly; it was “I was raised by color-blind trolls” ugly. All beige and orange and yellow, displaying a big fuzzy reindeer with lopsided button eyes and trimmed with bits of bright green tinsel. If she could have made the loop go further back, Lacey might have tried to prevent him from wearing it. But she could only control the things that took place in this house today, so the sweater stayed, assaulting her eyeballs at every turn.

Not that the guy himself was hard on the eyes. With his dark hair, blue eyes, and a square jaw shadowed by neatly-trimmed stubble, he had a boy-next-door appeal--if the boy next door happened to be working as a model for the world’s worst sweater company. In the opinion of Lacey’s sister-in-law, Julian was only single because he was married to his work in some university department, but Lacey doubted that was the reason. If he stared at all women the way he was staring at her, the women had good reason to keep their distance.

Dinner was served and eaten with no mishaps. Cleanup was a breeze. Presents were handed out and unwrapped without disaster. And she still, in quiet moments, caught Julian studying her with unusual intensity. What was up with him? He hadn’t done this on previous loops--or maybe she’d just been too distracted to notice it. If he didn’t stop it soon, she’d miss a cue, tumble into disaster, and have to live this day all over again.

While the rest of the family wandered into the dining room for refreshments, Lacey stayed near the tree, picking up the last bits of wrapping paper and defending the tree from the handful of kids playing with their new toys. She moved on reflex, deflecting a rubber ball, a foam dart, a runaway remote-control car. One, two, three, like a dance, and then on beat four, in perfect time, she pivoted on one foot to catch a ball of crumpled wrapping paper.

And found herself nose-to-nose with Julian, his hand around her outstretched wrist.

Those blue eyes stared into hers. “You’ve lived this day before.”

It wasn’t a question or a joke. It was a statement of fact.

Lacey met that gaze straight-on. “What did you say you teach at the university?”

“Temporal mechanics.”

“Ah.” Lacey dropped the wrapping paper.

He let go of her wrist. “I don’t have much practical experience, but when I see my hostess unexpectedly developing superhuman reflexes and responding to statements before they’re spoken, I start to think that either she’s the world’s most boring psychic, or she’s making use of that pretty little bangle on her arm that looks alarmingly like an antique temporal elastic.”

Lacey tugged her sweater sleeve over the twisted copper casing and red control stones of her overworked time travel device. “It belonged to my grandmother.”

“How many times have you done this loop?”

Lacey pushed up her sleeve and counted the tally marks on her arm. “52.”

His eyebrows rose. “That’s almost two months of Christmas Day.”

Lacey’s shoulders fell. “I am sick to death of turkey.”

A silence fell between them that was louder than the chatter from the dining room. Finally, he straightened the sleeve of the Ugly Sweater and said, “Putting aside your obvious mental instability and the frankly fascinating paradox storm that must be swirling around us at the moment--remind me to bring some instruments here within the next twenty-four hours--I have to ask: Why?”

She looked at a fragment of ribbon on the carpet and rasped, “I have to get it right.”

The crowd started trickling back in, pooling around the couches while holding plates of goodies and glasses of wine.

As the noise rose, Julian gave her a significant glance “I think we should talk about this somewhere quieter.”

She stepped back, brushing the tree. “I don’t need to go anywhere with you.”

“I think you do. You’ve got two months of memories to work through. You can’t keep that to yourself. You’ll go crazy.”

He wasn’t wrong. She had already learned why the Guild recommended against these sorts of changes--holding onto these alternate timelines was exhausting. She could do with a debrief.

But she had no time for a break. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m hostess.”

“They can look after themselves for half an hour.” Julian opened the door to the hall and waved her through. “And if not?” He shrugged. “What’s one more loop?”

It was an odd kind of Christmas weather--cold enough to send fluffy flakes scattering, but warm enough that they needed only earmuffs and scarves and didn’t even bother zipping up their light jackets. She lounged with Julian on the wood steps of the back porch, watching the flakes fall while they sipped at mulled wine.

Julian threw back his head and laughed as Lacey finished telling him about one of the earliest of her failed Christmases. “The whole tree?” he gasped. “The cat just--” He held one arm upright and used the other to mime a cat clamping onto the tree and sending it toppling. “Why did you redo that one? No one would have forgotten that Christmas.”

“I know. That’s the problem.”

He sobered. “The cat didn’t get hurt, did it?”

“No, Fluffy was fine.”

“Anyone else injured?”

“No. “

“Property damage? Lost family heirlooms?”

“No. It was a gentle fall, and the only family ornaments on that tree were the pom-pom panda bears. They're resilient.”

“Then I don’t see what the problem is.”

“The problem?” Only a guy who wore reindeer sweaters would need this concept explained. “The problem is that no one wants the Christmas party interrupted by a toppling tree. It’s a nightmare. Chaos.”

“But memorable.”

“No one wants those types of memories.”

“Those are the only ones people actually remember. If Christmas goes smoothly, everyone forgets it in a month or two. But ‘the year Lacey’s cat took down the tree’? They’d go back to that story for years.”

“How does that make it better? I don’t want them constantly rehashing my failures as a hostess.”

“How is that failing? You provided good food, a comfortable home, a lovely tree. That’s not changed by a few mishaps.”

“This was more than a few mishaps.”

“Only because you’ve done it fifty-two times.” He leaned back against the wall of the house and lifted the steaming mug closer to his face. “What gave you this idea that Christmas has to be perfect?”

She twisted the time travel bangle on her wrist. “My mom...she died last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

She swallowed a lump. “She always hosted these perfect Christmas parties. She’d plan them for months and everything just ran like clockwork.”

His eyebrows rose. He pointed toward the bangle. “Did she...?”

Lacey pushed it beneath her sleeve. “No, never. We never knew it existed until we were going through my grandma’s things a few years ago.”

He relaxed. “That’s a relief. I thought I was going to have to get this place declared a temporal wasteland.”

Lacey chuckled. “Even if she’d had it, she wouldn’t have needed it. Her parties were works of art. Beautiful decorations, perfect food, everyone laughing and singing carols by the end of the night. When I asked her why she did it, she told me, ‘Lacey, these people are giving you their Christmas. It’s your job to give them the best Christmas you can.’” She sipped at her mug to swallow back tears. “When she died, that job fell to me. And when everything went wrong, I had to fix it.”

“Fifty-two times.”

She shrugged. “As many times as it took.”

“I doubt she’d have said your duties extended that far.”

“You’re probably right. But once I went in quest of the perfect Christmas, I couldn’t settle for anything less. It would have felt like dishonoring her memory.”

“It wouldn’t have been. I’m sure her Christmases had plenty of flaws.”

“Not as many as mine.”

Julian ran a finger along the edge of his mug. “You have this idea that everyone wants a Christmas of picture-perfect trees and crackling fires and cozy rooms without a speck of dust out of place. But if they wanted that, they could stay at home and look at pictures on the streambox. They come here because they want your Christmas. Burnt turkeys and cat-toppled trees and all. They want you experiencing it with them. Not fifty-two alternate versions of them.”

She fingered the fringe on the edge of her scarf. “I suppose not. But what’s wrong with trying for the perfect Christmas?”

“Lacey, there’s no such thing as the perfect Christmas. There’s never been one at any time, anywhere in the world.” He bunched up snow in one hand and tossed it into the darkness. “Even the first Christmas wasn’t perfect. Do you think Mary planned to let her child sleep in a feeding trough? Do you think Joseph planned to let strange shepherds gawk at his son? It was one long exercise in embracing the unexpected, and it created one of the most memorable stories in human history. Do you think your mother would call that a failure?”

This had gotten more abstract than Lacey had expected. A little dazed, she said, “No. No, of course not.”

“You want to control every little detail, but no one can do that.” He leaned forward and took her hand in his. “You don’t get the perfect Christmas by crafting it. You get it by appreciating the one you’re given.”

She knit her fingers into his. “A gift,” Lacey said.

He smiled. “Now you’re getting it.”

They stepped into the laundry room together, brushing the snowflakes out of their hair.

Julian held up his mug, which held one last swallow of wine. “To Christmas,” he said.

Lacey clinked her mug against his. “Whatever we’re given.”

Throwing back their heads, they drained the dregs, then set the empty mugs on the window ledge.

Then hand in hand, they crouched down and let Fluffy out of her cage.

#adventures in writing #the sci fi christmas special saga #hallmark #christmas #yes i'm publishing a christmas story on halloween #this is my blog i can do what i want #i'm just surprised that this came together as easily as it did and i'm riding this high #and yes it's not really sci fi just an ever so slightly tilted version of the usual fantasy plot #but it gave me a chance to make fun of hallmark tropes while also fully indulging my every saccharine impulse #so thank you for putting up with me

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calboniferous · 3 years

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Duality

Chapter 8 – Bant

Bant watched from a passenger seat as Master Koon brought the ship out of hyperspace and Garen, having talked his way into the co-pilot’s seat, hailed Naboo air traffic control.

Naboo from space was a truly beautiful world of verdant greens and sweeping blue. At this distance it was nigh impossible to tell that the planet had been party to a violent invasion and occupation. The only indication to these events was the glittering metallic cloud which was all that remained of the Trade Federation control ship.

However, descending over Theed favoured the Jedi with a clear view of the destruction. Bant’s heart ached in sympathy for what she saw.

The graceful pillars and red-tiled rooves of the city’s buildings were marked with carbon scoring characteristic of blasterfire and many of the buildings were reduced to rubble. Tents were tucked between broken columns and piles of debris littered the streets. And, pale grey in the wan morning sunlight, smoke still rose in parts of the city and climbed high into the sky in the absence of wind.

They landed in the main hangar of the Theed Royal Palace. While a number of the starfighter bays were glaringly empty, one of the ships had been decorated with roughly cut strips of red fabric and had ‘The Skywalker’ painted boldly across the fuselage. Bant hazarded a guess that it was the victory ship. The brief sent by the Naboo had summarised the battle and the Masters’ force presences went sharp and icy at the line “young Anakin Skywalker flew a Royal Starfighter to great efficacy and secured victory with his destruction of the control ship”.

No, Plo “Finder to a third of the creche” Koon and Vokara “mother nexu” Che were not happy that a nine-year-old was on a battlefield. After that episode, Bant decided she never wanted to witness ‘scary quiet’ Master Koon again thank you very much. And, in the interest of doing so, she made a mental note to strong-arm the young pilot into a mind healers’ office at the next opportunity.

Serene masks firmly in place, the Jedi descended the ramp before the whine of the engines shutting down faded and they were a small party of Nabooians approched. Bant immediately singled out the clean lines of the Healer’s uniform.

An elderly human man draped in plum velvet stepped forwards and opened his arms wide in greeting. “Ah, welcome, Masters Jedi, welcome! News of your arrival was a surprise, but we are glad of your presence nonetheless; indeed, we owe your kin a great debt although— “

Master Che gave no acknowledgement to the man and interrupted his filibuster, passing him to meet the mirialan healer. “Healer Renada,”

“Master Che,” they said, waving a hand for the Jedi to follow “he’s this way.”

The human man—a politician, Bant deduced from his impractical garb—sputtered as the Jedi swept past without so much as a hitch in their gate, his mouth gaping like those deep-sea fish from Mon Cala. If circumstances hadn’t been so grim, Bant might’ve found it funny. As it was, she was preoccupied with following their guide who, thankfully, kept up a brisque pace.

Bant didn’t have to guess which room Obi-Wan was in, feeling his muted presence through their creche bond. Unconscious, then. Still, the echoes of pain and flashes of light she could sense meant that he wasn’t shielding his end of the bond.

They pushed through the door.

Skin waxy in the blue glow of the monitors at his bedside, Obi-Wan was terribly still. There was a bacta patch on his cheek and white gauze peeked out from underneath the hospital gown. Worse, the mournful lament of a kyber crystal came from the crate on the floor where the silver-and-black hilt of Master Jinn’s lightsabre rested among folds of freshly laundered tunics.

Master Che laid a hand on his forehead and Bant rested her own on his shoulder, feeling the feverish warmth under her palm.

This close, it was impossible to miss the emotions radiating unchecked from Obi-Wan and Bant realised that his shields weren’t lowered, they were broken.

“Master Che,” she said,

“I feel it. Plo, shield us.” her mentor ordered and a moment later, Bant felt the force quiet as the kel dor master wrapped heavy shields around the two healers and Obi-Wan. Preferably, they would have had a team of healers to protect the patient’s vulnerable mind but they made do with what they had. And, Master Koon was no slouch when it came to his control of the force.

“Bant, with me,” Master Che said and, closing her eyes, Bant sunk into the force.

Delving into the force like this was difficult to describe to anyone who wasn’t force sensitive but, if asked, Bant would say that it was like diving into the sea.

The cool weight rushed over her skin and closed over her head, the sudden weightlessness and the pressure of the world around her were old friends. Bubbles trailed from her as she dived, the last vestiges of the physical world

The roar of the force in her ears muted the noise of surface reality but the moving parts of the galaxy are louder than ever. Sound travels faster through water

The sea was calm. A great seawall held back the powerful surge of the open ocean. Quieter, but no less present.

Down here the water was brighter and more tangible around her. Bant could feel the water in the spaces between all things, flowing, pushing, pressing through those crevasses and chasms. Cause and effect. A current rolled up from the sea floor, lifting glittering grains of sand up into the water column, and far above Bant’s head a wave crested.

Breathtaking.

From her earliest memories, Bant thought entering the force felt like coming home. She is not here to drift aimlessly on the current, though, and there is red in the water.

Obi-Wan’s presence ached under her hands. Floating like a strange, pale bloom in the endless blue. His lifeforce flickered weakly as water flowed through his lungs and blood flowed out though Bant could feel that what little strength he had was used to try and hold his wounds closed.

Reaching out to his mind, Bant surveyed the damage. The tear in his mind was undoubtably from a Split and she could see the remains of his bond with Qui-Gon. Bant hadn’t been on the team of healers that dealt with Master Sifo-Dyas’ Split but she had spoken to some of them. She’d listened to their accounts; she’d studied relentlessly and she knew what needed to be done.

Master Che was steady beside her, guiding and holding Obi-Wan’s mind still as Bant cut the mangled mess of the bond free. Unconscious though he was, Obi-Wan’s subconscious mind still tried to twist and pull away from the pain.

I’m sorry Obi-Wan, I’m so, so sorry Bant thought as she brought the clean edges of the wound together and began to close it, stitch by metaphysical stitch. He flinched with every suture.

Healing like this was invasive. A last resort. For Obi-Wan, Bant knew there was no other course of action. The damaged remains of the bond were vulnerable and would never heal properly. Even if it eventually scarred over, it would continue to cause Obi-Wan pain and be a weakness in his shields for the rest of his life. It needed to be removed.

Knowing all this didn’t make it any easier for Bant to do. Stitching skin, suturing the mind. Both involved inflicting a little more injury to bind the wound shut.

Hours have passed by the time Bant and Master Che have closed Obi-Wan’s psychic wounds and painstakingly constructed temporary shields in his mind. Emerging from her trance-like state, Bant blinked her eyes to clear the spots from her vision and stretched her stiff limbs.

“Well?” Garen said, seated at the foot of the bed on one of the hard, white chairs.

Bant gave him a thin smile. “Alive. We won’t know if there will be any lasting effects at this stage but he’s not at risk of dying right now.”

Relief coloured Garen’s force signature and he closed his eyes for a long moment.

“Padawan Eerin is right,” Master Che said, lekku curling as she too stood and stretched, “Obi-Wan will heal. Now, you two— ah, thank you, Plo,” she broke off to accept a cup of water from the other Master, “Much better. You two need to stay close to him. That much force exposure all at once is comparable to trying to hold up the whole Tranquillity Spire all day. So, Padawan Eerin what is the effect of this and what would you prescribe?”

Never a respite from medical pop quiz around Master Che.

Bant gathered her thoughts before answering, “Severe force exhaustion which in turn means he won’t be able to use the force until his connection heals further. When he wakes he’ll be under orders not to try until he’s been cleared.”

“Good,”

“And,” Bant continued, “since he can’t use that sense and doesn’t have Master Jinn’s bond, that means he’ll feel isolated in the force. Garen and I need to keep him company.”

Master Che gave her a look of approval

“Full marks, Padawan,” then, to the rest of the room, “Excuse me while I confer with Healer Renada.”

She exited to the room in search of the mirialan. No longer needing to hold up shields around Obi-Wan, Master Plo retreated to a corner and settled cross-legged on the floor to meditate.

Garen’s eyes flicked from the kel dor to Bant and back, questioning.

“Don’t mind me, young ones, chatter all you want,” Master Plo said, a moment later taking the deep, even breaths characteristic of meditation.

Garen moved his chair to sit next to Bant at Obi-Wan’s shoulder. He leaned his head on her shoulder and Bant rested her head on top of his.

“Thanks, Bant,”

She nudged his boot, “It’s Obi-Wan,”

That was all the explanation in the world to the both of them. Cradling one of Obi-Wan’s hands between two of her own, his stable pulse under her finger kept time as afternoon turned to night.

“We should message the others,” Bant said, who-knows-how-long later and Garen resurfaced from his light doze against her.

“Quin’s going to be mad,”

Bant hummed in agreement. “Reeft should be back in-temple today or tomorrow Coruscant time—whenever that is in Naboo time. They’ll have each other in hand,” Bant squinted and re-evaluated her words, “Reeft will have Quin in hand.”

“Better give him good warning, then,” Garen unstuck himself from where he’d been plastered to Bant and pulled out his com, beginning to type a message to their group chat. For all that they joked about him, Quinlan did have a good grasp on his emotions—he needed to in order to be an effective shadow—but when he was safe and off duty, he could express himself more freely.

Message sent, Garen settled back against Bant, sighing softly. By virtue of healer training, it was nearly inevitable that Bant would be a Padawan for longer than her crechémates. And, as Jedi rank was often equated to maturity by outsiders, her Knighted peers were often assumed to be older that her. Wiser. But among themselves, it was Bant who took that elder role.

With two of her four pseudo-siblings sleeping safely near her, Bant settled in to watch over them and guard their dreams.

#fic #my writing #force bond drift AU #bant eerin #garen muln #obi-wan kenobi #tpm

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paganvamp · 3 years

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Saving Grace: Prologue

1,000 years ago, a witch with powerful psychic abilities had a premonition that the family next door would commit an act so unholy, it would breed a race of monsters. And though she considers the family’s children to be close friends, she cannot risk the balance of nature. But just as Esther heard of the Immortality Spell, there are whispers of another... a spell which may leave a vital chink in the armor Esther is creating for her children.

But magic has a mind of its own, and Maja’s curse is not what she intended.

In present day Mystic Fall, Virginia, Grace Sinclair wakes one morning sure that her friend Elena Gilbert is returning to school after a four month absence following the death of her parents... only, Grace is apparently the only person aware of such a tragedy. Until that night, that is, when the Gilbert car nosedives off the Wickery Bridge.

So sets in motion a whirlwind of events none of the citizens of Mystic Falls are prepared for, including witches, psychics, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and hybrids... and that’s just the beginning.

Eventual Kol x OC (in the meantime, slight Damon x OC and Tyler x OC)

(A/N: Disclaimer - I do not own TVD or TO. Also, this has not been beta’d so any mistakes are my own) (Also the GIF is not mine, all credit to the original creator)

CW: Talk of blood, canon-level violence, eventual cursing and smut

1000 AD: The Originals

“Ayana, you mustn’t do this.” Maja had been begging the older witch to see reason for nearly half a day.

“Esther will not be swayed,” Ayana’s response had been the same for nearly half a day. “She wants to protect her children, Maja.”

“You know what I saw!” Maja protested. “You know how it will anger the Spirits!”

“Then it will be her consequence to bear, not ours.” Ayana bore no ill will against either the young witch in front of her or the woman of whom they spoke. But she had no desire to get any more mixed up in their business than she already was. She had conceded to Esther’s pleading out of pity, guiding her towards a spell that would give her the protection she so craved for her remaining family. The same night the child, Henrik, had died, however, Maja had Seen a premonition of the future, a rare gift no one else in their land possessed. Monsters, she had cried, you will breed a race of monsters! Esther, who had been a mentor to Maja as she learned alongside Esther’s own son Kol, had ignored her. Blinded by grief, Esther demanded Ayana help her gather the ingredients for the spell, forsaking the Ancestors she had been sworn to.

“I saw our home, Ayana.” Maja spoke softly, knowing that was the one bit of information she had yet to share, had left out of her recounting to both women earlier. The destruction of their village. “Overrun with unnatural creatures, bathed in the blood of innocents.” Ayana straightened, abandoning her basket of White Oak bark on the ground.

“Esther can’t have done that much damage.”

“Can’t she? A thousand years later, Ayana, and our descendants are still paying for whatever mess Esther creates tonight.” The older witch hesitated, then stepped closer and lowered her voice.

“There is… something.” She had heard of a tactic they could try, a story passed down from legend. “But it may not work.”

“I will try anything.” Maja vowed. She felt for Esther, she truly did. Kol and Rebekah, all of them really, were her friends – she didn’t want anything to happen to them; Henrik had been a joyful presence in her life. But she couldn’t let Esther upset the Balance so monumentally – she wouldn’t. Even if it the cost was her life.

——————————————————————————

The spell Ayana had found for Esther centered around blood – Black Magic. She was to mix it into their dinner, with a few other ingredients, perform the spell, and feed it to her children. The result would be their redemption; no one could hurt any of them ever again.

Ayana had found something that might put a dent in that plan.

“I won’t be part of this,” she warned Maja. “I gave you the spell, but if you want to stop Esther, you’re on your own.”

“I understand.” Esther’s wrath could be as ferocious as her husband’s. “Thank you.”

“This is not a guarantee. It is a legend, nothing more, and it may not work at all.” But Maja had hope. No premonitions had revealed to her the success of the spell, but she knew enough about her gifts to trust in her intuition. So, she got to work. She knew what Esther had used for the spell – who Esther had used for the spell – and knew that she had only a small window of opportunity. As Esther’s spell centered around blood, so did Maja’s – her own. It only took a bit, not enough to kill her, spelled and mixed in with Tatia’s. In theory, it would provide a loophole specific to her. Esther’s spell may make her children invulnerable, but Maja would be their weakness. By consuming her spelled blood, all six of them would be connected.

Sneaking as close as she dared to the fire pit outside Mikael’s home, near which sat a cask of wine she knew contained the magical elixir, Maja pulled a bottle of her own blood, previously collected, from under her skirts. As quickly as she could, she began pouring it into the cask, when Rebekah stepped outside.

“Maja? What are you doing here?” Only half-emptied, Maja was forced to let the small vial fall to the ground, where she pressed it into the mud with her foot.

“Oh, I was coming to say hello when I smelled your mother’s stew.” Luckily, any strange movements Rebekah might have noticed Maja making were hidden by the rather large spit and pot over the fire. “She really is the best cook in the village.”

“I would invite you to have some, but my father will be home soon.” Everyone was afraid of Mikael, with good reason. After Henrik’s death, his temper had been even more uncontrollable.

“I understand. Say hello to your family for me!” Walking quickly away, Maja prayed the amount of blood she’d gotten into the wine had been enough.

——————————————————————————

Later that evening, far too apprehensive to finish her supper, Maja stepped outside her home, hoping to find reprieve from the concerned looks of her parents and siblings. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of Mikael through the open window of his own home next door. She was just in time to see him drive his sword through Kol’s heart, an action that felt as though it were echoed in Maja’s own - Kol was, along with Rebekah, her dearest friend. The Sun for life, she chanted to herself, one half of her hoping the poor family would stay dead, the other pleading to see her Kol’s perpetually smiling face pop back up at the window. Mikael left, looking for something, and Maja stepped back into the doorway, hidden from him amongst the shadows. A few minutes later, Kol’s head did appear again in the window, along with the rest of his siblings, all looking bloody and extremely confused. Mikael returned, a sick-looking girl in his arms. Fresh blood. Maja didn’t want to watch anymore.

The next night, Maja was sitting under the White Oak in the middle of the village, one of her father’s hunting knives up her sleeve. The White Oak for Immortality… but if the spell had worked, would she be the exception? Mikael’s request, repeated to her by Ayana, rang in her ears. Stronger, faster, superior in power and senses. Perhaps, then, the trick wouldn’t be killing them, but getting to them. As Elijah walked past, off to do whatever errands he could no longer do during the day, Maja made her choice. Dear, sweet Elijah. The most mild-mannered, the most kind. The one least likely to snap her neck should he notice her intentions.

Knowing it was likely futile to attempt to be sneaky, as she and Elijah were the only two people out, she went for another tactic.

“Elijah!” He whirled.

“Maja? What are you doing out here so late?”

“I just… wanted to see how you were doing? I know this transition cannot be an easy one.” She stepped closer and he stiffened.

“No, no it… it is not.” Even now, his deep, calm voice soothed Maja’s anxiety, as it always had. “There are…unexpected challenges.” She imagined all of it was unexpected, but she knew what he was trying to say.

“Like what?” She stepped closer again, now within striking distance. Elijah was clearly uncomfortable with her line of questioning.

“Let us just say it is an exercise in control.” Suddenly, she lashed out, knife in hand. Had he been human, it would have gone directly into his heart. As he was not, however, he moved to the side in time to avoid most of the damage. She did leave a long gash across his chest, however.

It healed almost immediately.

“What are you doing?” Elijah demanded. Maja was numb.

“It didn’t work.” She felt her lower lip begin to tremble with tears of hopelessness.

“Of course, it didn’t work! You of all people should know better.” I meant the spell. But she didn’t correct him, and she didn’t seem to notice that she was being criticized, not for attempting to kill him, but for doing a shoddy job of it. We’re not connected at all.

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ghost1643 · 4 years

Text

The disastrous like of a Aromantic psychic

Saiki has never felt romantic attraction ever. Sure, it might seem odd to normal people but, this was Saiki, and Saiki wasn't like normal people. Oh no he was a very power psychic. One who almost always knew when anything happened. Mainly resulting in him knowing he was an anime character. Thus why he knew it was a fan fiction he was currently in.

Yet, even in this fanfic he was 'forced', (as he would word it), to help people and avoid getting attention.

He sighed listening to Nendo go on and on about this girl he saw in the hall with his other classmate, Shun Kēido. Both of which had refused to leave him alone for years now and considered themselves his friends. He usually could put up with them, but not today.

Not after this morning.

Saiki had Nendo fall down the stairs onto of him which hurt and was hard to tell was coming since his mind was told small to be read. Then Shin had spilt his drink all over him this morning. From there things just spiralled. Everyone he hung out with had either done something that could physically hurt him, done something to annoy him or damaged his property.

Yet, he would have ignored it. He would have ignored it all if it wasn't for what was just about to happen.

He was tuning his friends out, just as Teruhashi's thought came into his mind speaking over the rest. He quickly picked up his books just in time to save them as she slammed her hands down on the table but, he had been to distracted by the two males blabbering on to save his desert.

His beloved rice pudding dropped to the floor spilling all over.

Teruhashi jumped back apologizing and cleaning the mess. Then she threw it out like it was nothing. Then she proceeded to try and get him to talk to her. It was like nothing happene.

....and that was the moment Saiki broke. Years of putting up with these people. Years of putting with their stupid thoughts. Years of saving them from themselves and convincing himself that their fates would affect him. Risking possible damage to himself for these people. Heck, even saving a few of them from death and this was how he was relayed.

By losing the one thing that mattered most to him.

He felt the colour leave his face as his mind snapped. He just looked up at Teruhashi who was jus smiling, trying to flirt with him. After all it had been three years of talking to his body without him replying.

"I'm just saying we could totally hang out sometime. I mean all three of us can go to Karoke athis Friday-"

"IM DONE!" Saiki snapped standing up. He didn't seem to notice everyone staring at him. He didn't notice the tears in his eyes. He worked so hard and for what? The one thing he loved the most was being ignored.

"Wha-"

And then he did it before she could say another word. He came out in front of the whole school.

"I can't take the flirting anymore! I've tried to give you every hing I could! I'm aromatic okay?! I don't wanna date anyone! I-I can't do it anymore!" He snapped at god knows who anymore before racing off down the hall. He didn't hear anyone rushing after him.

So he rushed to the bathroom and opening a window in there. Once he opened it, he teleported back him seeming to forget all about his school shoes.

Once he got home he sighed taking off his school clothes. Then slowly he headed upstairs to rest in his room. When he laid back in his bed, he found himself smiling.

He had done it! He had finally freed himself of the chaos!! He had finally freed himself of those dumb asses!

No more teruhashi trying to go out with him! No more moments of Shin pretending he was an anime character! No more moments of Nendo being the dumbest creature alive! No more of Chio trying to flirt with him! No more Moments of Kashi trying to get him to work out so often! No more moments of Reita's stupidness!

How did he know he would be freed from these people? Well to put it simply Japan just wasn't as accepting of a place as people thought. If anything being part of the LGBTQ+, was a social death sentence in any situation. If it wasn't then..well people would start avoiding them.

So it was the perfect way to fix his problems! No more dealing with peoples problems! No more fixing things! From now on it was all about him and his little bubble.

Yet, if that was try then why did he feel so...upset?

He didn't know why but, his chest ached a bit as he buried himself under his sheets. He had no idea why though. It's not like he would miss his so called 'friends'. Instead he was now free from them. Yet, he felt so....so odd.

~time skip~

Two days later and Saiki was in bed every moment of that weekend that he could.He came home on Thursday night after coming out and hid in his room. And that's what he did for the rets of the weekend so far.

He missed school on Friday which had never happened before. Yet, he just felt more numb than usual. He didn't know why though. He didn't even feel good enough to eat rice pudding which definitely wasn't good.

This continued for all the next morning. Heck he even spent time in bed the entire afternoon. Maybe it was because he used so much of his powers Thursday. Like enough to make him feel so crappy. Yet, he knew that wasn't true.

As much as he hated to admit it, he realized he missed his classmates. Their interactions at least gave him something new to expect. They have him something to do other than study. Now he had nothing to do.

Nothing but miss them and eat rice pudding.

The power of rice pudding had motivated him to visit his favourite cafe. The one that served the best rife cakes. It was what he did every Saturday night, usually with one of his classmates as of recently, but today he was all alone. And that would be the way it would stay.

Saiki guessed he shouldn't be so emotional anymore. After all this was what he choose. If he didn't want to be alone, well then he shouldn't have come out. He sighed thinking to himself that it didn't matter anyways. He was graduating in six months. He would have been all alone again in a collage on the other side of town anyways.

He just sighed standing outside the cafe door. His thoughts filled his mind somehow being louder than all the other voices he heard around him. In fact he seemed to just tune out all of reality. Thus resulting in the conclusion he refused to admit.

His classmates were his friends. They had spent years getting to know each other while doing their little cycle of madness. Thus also getting closer together. In fact dare he even imply, sometimes his friends made him happy. He even dared to say he liked hanging out with them at times.

Yet, he had thrown that away over his own selfishness. And now he had nothing and no one. No one except his beloved desert food.

Just as he came to this conclusion h had his hand on the door. His mind seemed to calm down with it's own thoughts at this point as he slowly opened the door. He should have waited thought. Why? Cause the second he opened the door he caught the single thought that should have clued him to turn away.

"I hope I picked the right hiding spot."

The second he heard that thought, he had opened the door. The lights were out playing feeling so nervous. He assumed someone was there to attack him as he walked in. So he began getting ready to defend himself. If only he could focus his mind on relaxing. Maybe then he could hear more thoughts, but now his mind was thinking of his own worries.

However he took a step in the building the lights came back on. As they did his classmates jumped up screaming surprised as confetti and balloons were thrown over the room. He jumped a foot in the air as everyone smiled to him.

Every corner of the cafe was decorated with the A romantic flag colours. Heck there was even a flag over a table. Yet, what he focused more on was his mains group of friends. He moan friends were inches away from him smiling, as if they were seeing him for the first time in years.

"Wh-" he was cut off by Nēndo rushed over hugging him. His eye got bigger as his other friends held him close as well. He blushed before feeling the entire class hugging him which seemed to calm him down to hear all their thoughts. As he did he almost cried.

They were all about him. They were all thinking about him.

"How on earth am I gonna tell Saiki I'm sorry I've been forcing my feelings on him? I mean any way I word it makes it sound like it's all about me but, he's been there for me through so much. How am I gonna avoid hurting him." It was the only time he heard Teruhashi think about anyone other than herself.

"Saiki I'm so sorry I haven't reached out to you for so long. I hope you still wanna be friends even though I haven't been helping you as much as I can be." Reita thought smiling. Being the only one who knew he could do read minds, well, his words seemed more comforting than others.

"I can't believe I push everyone to drive for a happy life when I made Saiki feel bad enough that he ran away. I promise from now on Saiki I'm gonna give you as much as I can." Kineshi Hairo, always thought about how to motivate others. It was normal. Yet, it some how made the world to Saiki.

"You supported me through so much man! How am I gonna support you?!" Shun Kaidō always was full of thoughts about how he must be like a hero. Why on earth would he be thinking about anything else?

"Oh my. What can I do for you?! I mean you already payed for me to go on a school trip and help support my part time job here every week by visiting here. I mean I already got you some pudding for free today but, I suppose I could also offer you some time to just hang out when I get a free moment." Chisato Mera, has so many jobs but, this was her favourite. It was true Saiki came here for rice cakes every week, but something about her thought made him what to come every day.

"Oh gosh I'm gonna cry. I missed Saiki so much. I thought he just gave up. What would I do without a friend like him....No! No Chiyo! This isn't about you. Don't you dare start crying. Instead just focus on how Saiki and how to make him happy." Chiyo Yumehara, usually thought about how to woo men. Somehow this made him more happy than anything anyone else could say to him.

And that would have been it. He was being overwhelmed by his friends thoughts followed by other classmates thoughts about how much he had helped him and how they wanted to repay him. It was enough to touch his heart as he was lead to a table to sit down.

As he was, Nēndo explained it was a coming out party. One where they celebrated how brave Saiki has been for coming out. It was so odd to say the least, but it made him smile. It just made Saiki be overwhelmed by his emotions. So much so that he didn't lie when he was asked about why he didn't go to school.

"Well I figured you guys wouldn't wanna be stuck hanging around a someone like me." He admitted before finally eating his pudding. Just as he did he looked up to see guilty faces and hear guilty thoughts. Ones he was bound to hear again and had heard before.

That is Exocet for the one he heard at the end.

The only thought he ever heard from Nēndo.

"I made him feel like that?...why on earth would I abandon a best buddy like him? I mean what on earth would I do if he never existed."

Something about the guilty look and thought of gratitude finally broke him. Saiki was in tears. Like actual tears as he looked back down, eating a bit of his food. As soon as he did he felt his best friend Nēndo hug him again.

"It's okay. I'm always gonna be here for you." Nēndo smiled.

Without a second thought Saiki hugged him back.

The two just smiled clinging onto each other for support before everyone else slowly joined in. Each hugging and giving their support aloud for him. Each word just made him feel even more better.

Maybe standing out wasn't so bad.

If it meant he had friends like this and could be who he was, then he didn't mind standing out for once.

(The end)

#reblogs welcome #saiki k #anime #saiki kusuo no ψ nan #saiki kusuo #aromantic

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xandertheundead · 5 years

Note

18 +12 for reddie because what else lmao

“Don’t you trust me?” “It’s late. Shouldn't you be asleep?”

Warning: mention of parental abuse

Even though Richie had to be in bed by eleven o clock at night, his parents would let him stay up reading or playing his 3DS as long as it didn’t interfere with him getting up in the morning for school. He couldn’t wait till he was eighteen and the dumb bed rule was no longer a thing, but at least he wasn’t being forced to go to sleep like he had been when he was little. He had been just about to catch a Walrein when he heard something heavy smack against his window, Richie frowned when it was quiet after that and went back to his game only to jump when he heard it again.

He sighed as he paused his game, getting up and walking over to the window, ready to see some dumb bird who didn’t know how to fly. Instead, he found the face of Eddie Kaspbrak presses up against the window and he jumped back in surprise. “What the hell?”

Richie quickly moved to open the window, letting his friend clamber inside and stuck his head out the window to see how Eddie had made it up to the second story. “Is that my parents ladder?”

“Yeah,” Eddie replied softly. “Stole it out of your shed.”

“Huh.” Richie gave a shrug and closed the window, turning around to see Eddie standing in the middle of his room with his back turned to him. “It’s pretty late. Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“Shouldn’t you?” Eddie shot back, still not turning to look at him and Richie frowned a little.

“What’s going on? Normally I’m the one playing Romeo to your Juliet. What prompted the random balcony scene?”

“I just..” He watched as Eddie reached up to clutch at the sleeve of his hoodie, just now noticing the other had the hood pulled up over his head. Something was wrong with Eddie, the body language said so and after years of being Eddie’s friend, crushing on him and now dating him, Richie was fluent in Eddienese. “I just wanted to see you.”

In any other situation that would have warmed Richie’s heart, but today it made something cold slither in his stomach.

“What did he do?”

Eddie’s step-dad, Marvin, has been someone all the losers had liked when he had started dating Eddie’s mom. Richie had joked that he’d give up late night sexy visits with Mrs. Kaspbrak because he liked Marvin so much and couldn’t go on cheating on a guy that nice. Marvin Rody was a stand-up guy who took care of Mrs. K and Eddie and really took a lot of focus off Eddie with his mom so it was great. When they decided to get married, everyone was glad and the wedding had been actually pretty nice if you ignored how unhappy Mrs. K was about the losers being invited.

Only, things were different once Marvin started living with them.

It started out small, new rules for Eddie like a new curfew, how he was allowed to speak, how his grades were.

But soon things went bad.

Eddie would call Richie crying, telling him how Marvin had yelled at him for saying he didn’t like broccoli, thrown something at him when he had arrived after curfew ten minutes late, grabbed at him when Eddie took too long in the shower. Richie hated it and wanted nothing more than to keep Eddie with him and never let him go back to that fucking house, but Eddie begged him not to.

‘My moms finally happy’ he would say, ‘she’s doing so much better now.’

And even though it went against everything Richie felt was the right thing to do, he let Eddie have that. But when Eddie turned around to face him, Richie felt anger surge up at the sight of the large bruise that was starting to dark on Eddie’s cheek. He moved quickly, taking Eddie’s face in his hands and turning it gently so he could look at the damage.

“That mother fucker.” He growled. “I’ll kill him.”

“Rich…”

“I’m serious!” Richie yelled, both wincing at the volume and they were quiet as they listened for the sound of Richie’s parents. When there was only silence Richie turned back to Eddie, the need to comfort and also destroy making him feel helpless. “He fucking hit you, Eddie. I can’t-Jesus Christ, this looks bad.”

“I’m okay, ‘Chee.” Eddie whispered, hands coming up to cover Richie’s on his face. “I just...I was just surprised that he actually hit me.”

“We need to tell someone.”

“No!” Richie jerked back a little at the panic in Eddie’s eyes. “You can’t do that! It would mess everything up and-“

“He hit you, Eddie!” Richie tried to keep his voice down, but it was hard. “I’m not cool with that, not in the slightest!”

“I know, I know! But you can’t.” Eddie pleaded. “Look, we graduate soon and then I’ll be out of there and it won’t be a problem anymore. Just please.”

Eddie pushed up on his tiptoes so he could press his lips against Richie’s softly and Richie whined quietly against them. Eddie knew Richie was weak when Eddie kissed him like that and Richie clenched his fist before letting out a soft uncertain sigh and kissed back. He wrapped his arms around Eddie and held him tight, wondering if he was being the worst boyfriend on the planet for letting this sway him into being quiet.

“Please.”

Richie grit his teeth. “Fine.”

“Seriously.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“I do.”

Eddie voice was soft and Richie pulled him over towards his bed and they laid wrapped in each other’s arms, starting to doze when finally at four in the morning Eddie said he should go. Richie held him tighter, not wanting to let go of this boy he loved so much, not wanting to let the boy he loved so much trek back into a place that could hurt him. Eddie gave him soft kisses that were supposed to be reassurance, but Richie felt like cry as he watched Eddie slip back out his window and down the ladder. Watching Eddie walk down the sidewalk and disappear from view made an ominous feeling creep over him, but he convinced himself it was alright.

The next day Eddie didn’t show up for school.

Tag List: @tinyarmedtrex @oldguybones @queen-sock @richardtoz @thorn-harvester-ven @appojoos @pink-psychic @eddiefuckinkaspbrak @eduardoandale @moonlightrichie @thundercatseddie @lifesucksheres20bucks @madi-personal @nancynwheeler @kaspwitch @deadlighten

#writing prompts #reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #it (2019)#it (2017)#it stephen king #tw: parental abuse #losers club

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roswelldetails · 4 years

Text

RNM 2x13 - Mr. Jones

EPISODE SUMMARY:

SEASON FINALE — Having realized that a deadly threat has infiltrated CrashCon, the busiest event of the year, Liz (Jeanine Mason) realizes that she can’t save everyone she loves — and with Max (Nathan Dean) facing immediate danger, she and Isobel must make a heart-wrenching choice. Meanwhile, Michael (Michael Vlamis) finds himself caught up in the conflict between Jesse (Trevor St. John) and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) once again, even as Maria’s (Heather Hemmens) life hangs in the balance elsewhere, and Kyle (Michael Trevino) faces a moral dilemma when the enemy requires medical attention. Jeffrey Hunt directed the episode written by Christopher Hollier & Carina Adly MacKenzie (#213). Original airdate 6/15/2020.

DETAILS:

The episode opens with Isobel trying to hold back the fire. They don't actually show Rosa convincing Liz to go stop the explosion. But she runs up to Isobel and explains her science:

"I have to activate the ingredients first, but once I introduce my solution to the system it should kill the cellular matrix."

Liz literally squirts the console with her "solution".

Rosa is doing CPR on Max and praying. Max wakes up just as Kyle runs up. Immediately Max directs Kyle to Flint instead of himself. It's interesting. When Max previously killed with his hand, in 1x06, he instantly knew that he killed the drifter. This time he wasn't sure (and he didn't. We eventually learn). Rosa and Kyle take Flint to the hospital.

Meanwhile Helena is saving Charlie's life.

"Jesse Manes was the only one supposed to get hurt."

Which is...not what happened. Jesse, Flint, Max, Maria...even Liz got hurt. She burned her hand on the console.

Maria is being rolled into the hospital. She got there really really fast. Cam is by her side.

Liz is still squirting her solution onto the console. It turns red. Liz asks Isobel to get people away but Isobel refuses to leave Liz alone.

Jesse, Greg, Michael, and Alex are still mid-standoff.

"Gregory, listen. You and I have had our differences in the past, but you should stand with me now."

"You're not well, Dad."

Jesse hits Gregory with the atomizer and appears to knock him out. He tries to shoot Michael, but Alex tackles him.

"Guerin, get the atomizer! Get it away from my brother!"

"Alex, I can't."

Jesse gets the upper hand in the fistfight with Alex and steals Alex's gun. Turns to shoot Michael again.

Liz makes more solution and squirts more of it on the console. This time it starts to crack. Isobel pulls Liz to safety and the console shrivels and dies.

The dying console just doesn't work as well in still form, so @maxortecho giffed it for me! Thank you!! 😘

Max runs up to them.

"You disabled it. You saved everyone."

"Is Flint dead? Did you kill him?"

He looks at Liz with some heavy heart eyes for her being the hero. She looks at him with fear.

Back to the Maneses and Michael. Jesse has a gun on Michael. Michael has the atomizer.

"Drop it, Guerin. Drop it!"

There's a gunshot. Jesse Manes falls and Michael has blood on his face. Gregory shot Jesse from behind.

"I should have defended you from him a long time ago."

"There are no more Manes men left."

Jesse dies.

Indeterminant time jump. Liz is late for work.

"Sorry, Javi. I just...I haven't really been sleeping."

"You've said that every day since CrashCon. You still having nightmares? …Did you read the papers this morning."

"Oh, I've kind of been trying to avoid the papers."

"Did you hear about that veteran who died at the carnival? They're going to have a parade, build a statue. Did you know he was disabled?"

Customers at the counter are discussing CrashCon:

"The CrashCon discourse is saying aliens invaded and killed the guy."

"That should be good for tourism."

"Newspaper said it was smoke inhalation though."

"He was making sure all the kids got out safely and the smoke overwhelmed him."

"We need more people like him."

Soooo much to unpack here. And most of it is addressed by Helena and Rosa's exchange at the end of the episode. But the big question to me is… who is spreading the rumors and covering this up? Is it Flint? Is he even well enough to take the lead on that? Is it someone else with Project Shepherd that we haven't met? The mayor? I mean, Jesse was shot! There was a lot of blood! Plus, remember what happened in 1x11 and 1x12: it's a small town. People notice gunshots.

Liz goes to take a table's order and, surprise! It's Diego. Who had gone back to Denver after CrashCon. He brought Dr. Margot Meyerson to Roswell to meet Liz.

Michael is visiting Maria at the hospital:

"What are you doing?"

"Oh they cut your bracelet off during surgery. How are you? You look better."

"Liz has been dropping by every day to inject me with witch serum."

"Ooh the synthetic nucleotide excision repair genomogenate? We're lucky you're only part alien, otherwise there wouldn't have been enough left of you for her to save."

"Listen, do you think you could use your telekinesis to open this box? Mimi left it when she visited. It's a family heirloom, but she forgot the key."

"Mimi hasn't exactly been leading you in the right direction lately. Her psychic visions led you toward a bomb instead of away from it. Seeing you like that -- all sick and pale and quiet -- I started praying."

Max and Isobel are at Max's house. Isobel is studying the photos of the console and alien symbols.

"I wish I understood why Louise and Nora would spend a year building an alien weapon of mass destruction."

"I don't think it was a bomb. I think it's a communication device. It's like a remote, you know, it just happens to be combustible."

"Are you mad at me, Max? Did I do something wrong? Is it that we're not related, or are you upset about the abortion? Because I…"

"Whoa, hey, God no."

"Because you're not talking to me."

"You're not the only one. I didn't want everyone to worry, you know, 'cause I've been taking some of Liz's antidote. And things are coming back to me. Little flashes, sort of, mostly. Like vague memories."

"Michael said that you kind of zoned out when you touched that alien bomb...remote thing. Did it trigger a memory?"

"When I touched the console, I heard whispers that I could almost understand. All right, it's like the same with those symbols. I mean it's like their meaning is just beyond reach. Except for one word. I took this from Graham Green's display at CrashCon. See that? It's an aerial photo of some crop circles from Roswell in 1948. This farm belonged to a guy called Jones. Pretty sure it says savior... This is my name. Maybe that means you and Michael's parents weren't the only ones that survived the crash. Right, maybe I had a family too. You know, maybe my mom was just across town."

"Max. I really wish that you could just focus on the present. You know, I mean, as a recently deceased man, I really feel like you should be enjoying the simple pleasures in life, you know, like reading nerdy books, the smell of leather, and that feeling when you wake up before your alarm and the person you love is still asleep and they're kind of snoring a little bit. It's like the best thing that ever happened to you. Stuff like that."

"I want all those things too. But I feel like if I only know half of myself, I'm only half living. And I know you understand that, Iz, because I've watched you this year become your entire self. And it is so beautiful. Okay, I am not at all mad at you. Are you kidding me? I am so proud of you. I am so proud that you're my sister."

Michael and Alex in the shed. For all that the shed is such a key location in this show's canon this is the first time we've seen it since 1x06.

"Maria made me bring food over. I gave it to Gregory. Seems to be holding up okay."

"Everything my family touches turns to crap. My dad used to talk about how my Grandpa Harlan built this she'd with his bare hands when he was, like, seventy. For a long time it was my safest space. And the one night my dad destroyed it."

"You're right. This place sucks."

Michael and Alex start destroying the shed. In the next scene Michael breaks a floorboard revealing a skeleton. The skeleton is wearing dog tags, so Alex grabs them. In his shirt pocket Michael spots and grabs the key to Maria's box. The tags say Eugene Manes III. So this is Tripp's body. Which confirms for Alex that his grandfather killed Tripp.

Max and Liz are walking in the plaza.

"I don't understand the violence, Max. Flint could have had brain damage given how long he wasn't breathing. You risked your life to hurt him and he had already thrown the weapon away, Max, so why? I can't get that image out of my head. You trying to kill Alex's brother."

"I know. I snapped. Last year Noah told me that we were energized by killing and not by healing. Even then I knew he was right. I… Obviously I can usually fight that, but I guess this time my better angels just didn't show up."

"We have to stop keeping secrets from each other, Max. There's a scientist in town. She's a supervisor at Genoryx. She has a job for me in California. She's offered to sponsor my dad's citizenship. And it could put me in a position to help Rosa too. I mean, I'd be able to do a lot of good with the grant money they're offering, and I know that all sounds too good to be true, but…"

"It sounds like someone finally realizes how valuable your mind is."

"I think that a change of scenery will be so good for us. I mean, we could get a place by the beach and you could write."

"You want me to come with you?"

"Of course I do."

"Well, I mean, I just told you I have this killer instinct, and you want me to come to California with you."

"We'll figure it out. Okay? We'll figure all of it out together. Run away with me, Max Evans?"

"Anywhere."

Max goes to see Cam at work. She picks on him for getting arrested and has his mugshot as her desktop background because friends!

Max asks about Charlie.

"Yeah she texted me from a burner phone that she was all right and then she vanished again."

Max tells her that he has a doctor's appointment and then asks her to do some undercover work for him.

Michael visiting Maria at the hospital.

"So Alex thinks Harlan found out that Tripp was an alien sympathizer all that time and he offed him."

"So Mimi must have known that you would find it. That's why she left the box. Look, I know you don't trust my mom's visions, but I was the only one who could grab that atomizer and run with it. If it had been you, you'd be dead."

Maria takes off the bracelet.

"What are you doing? Maria, that prevents brain damage."

"I'm only part alien, but it is a part of me. Even if it's dangerous I can't just turn off a piece of myself."

"So I'm supposed to sit around helpless as you fade away? Maria, I cannot watch you disappear. I love you."

"I love you too."

"So can we just let this go?"

"You have it wrong. Mimi hasn't disappeared. Yes she can be inconvenient, she can make people uncomfortable, but maybe she's supposed to be an uncomfortable inconvenience that saves lives. And now I need to be inconvenient, and I don't want to be someone that hurts you. I think that we should find out what's next, apart from each other."

"Wait, so you think that if we break up, I'm gonna be able to stop caring about you?"

"I learned so much, being with you. You sacrificed yourself without hesitation when Alex needed you."

"I would have done the same for you."

"I know. I don't doubt your capacity for love, 'cause you made me so happy this year. And I loved being someone that made you happy. I just think that we should leave it be, before I wonder if someone else could make you happier. Open the box, Guerin. Let's see what comes next.

Skip forward to the Crashdown where Michael has the box in a booth with Alex and Isobel. He opens the box and pulled out a journal, which they in turn read aloud.

I did a separate post on the journal's content and the Tripp and Nora flashbacks here:

Kyle visits Steph in the hospital

"What do you think will happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"When I die, idiot."

"You know, Socrates thought that death was a blessing, because only one of two things could happen. Either consciousness ceases, and it's like falling into a dreamless sleep. Or you go to where all who have died before you have gone. Your loved ones, people you admire. If you lived a good and just life, you will be surrounded by goodness and justice, in a place without fear. Sorry. I thought a lot about this when my dad passed, so I…"

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I'm putting you through this again."

"No...I want to be here."

Liz interrupts them. She clearly wasn't expecting Kyle to be there and comments on Max's appointment. Kyle gets up to leave.

Diego and Margot are talking in the Wild Pony:

"I was very impressed with her work when we first pursued her, but when I met her today, not so much."

"Why? 'Cause she had a little ketchup on her uniform?"

Undercover!Jenna staggers up to them and spills her drink on them, tells Margot that she's beautiful, and plants a listening device.

"Anyway I think we should move on."

"Okay, wait a sec. Liz has been working on something recently, but she signed this NDA. Although I guess she can't be blamed if we took a peek, you know? Without permission."

The line that will haunt me for the next year. Kyle to Max while showing him what appears to be chest X-rays.

"You know what I'm saying here, right Max?"

Cameron calls:

"You were right. It is too good to be true. Diego just told some woman he can get her access to Liz's lab. He must have followed her there."

"Well, there's a security system."

"The way he's talking, it sounded like Diego's pretty certain he can get access. They just left here, Evans. You need to tell Liz to get anything incriminating out of there - now."

Max arrives at the lab and immediately sees that the security system was manufactured by Genoryx. He uses his powers to break the system and get into the lab. He quickly searches through all of Liz's records and then pours what appears to be gas or lighter fluid or some other flammable substance all over the place and then uses his powers to set a fire.

He listens to the notes on Liz's recorder, which by the way has 22 minutes of recording on it. Some of what we hear:

This is my record of the dissection of specimen NB.

... immunoglobulin harvested from alien DNA can be transferred to a human recipient.

Commence dissection of the dorsal side of the spinal nerve.

I hypothesize that the female specimen's plasma…

Bracken's seminal cells indicate a pH level double that of a human counterpart.

I'm now extracting the grey matter to measure alien voxel signals.

Note that Max doesn't seem to have any chest pain this time when he uses his powers.

Right as Diego and Margot show up the lab explodes.

Max comes home to find Michael and Isobel waiting for him. He's clearly exhausted and upset after the lab.

"Can whatever this is wait until tomorrow?"

"Jones? That's the guy who grew the crop circles in the shape of my name."

"Nope. We spent the day reading Tripp Manes' journal. Caffeinate, Max... Okay, so, when I asked Sanders about this photo of Nora, he said he didn't know whose hand this was. He was all, Mr. Bernhardt, Mr. Jones, Old Man Gibbons. Could've been anybody."

"Ten points to Hufflepuff."

"So in October '48, Nora decided not to finish building the ship with Louise. She decided to go to the reservation with Tripp."

"But then little Walt convinced her to go to the fall festival, where after successfully avoiding him for a year, she finally ran into the alien stowaway who had crashed the ship. He'd been masquerading as a farmer."

"Mr. Jones."

"Tripp saw Jones approach Nora, and he recognized him from the night of the crash, but he didn't have a chance to ask Nora about it before Harlan called for a raid on the farm."

"Yeah. And after the massacre, Jones was never heard from again. Crop circles were all that was left."

"If you were in hiding, why would you grow corn in the shape of an alien symbol?"

"Maybe they just grew that way. It's the same way that this symbol just shows up everywhere, you know?"

Michael reveals his tattoo and it's the first time Max has seen it.

"Wait, when did..?"

"Oh, I got it when we weren't sure if you were coming back. It didn't feel like it was ever gonna be the same again."

"All right. There. Now can we all cowboy up and focus, please? Let's feel our feelings after we've solved the mystery of the unknown alien. After the raid on the farm, Nora was held by Project Shepherd."

Note...not actually accurate. Michael didn't get the tattoo until Max was out of surgery.

See Journal and Flashbacks post for the flashback.

Jenna and Charlie reunite. Relevant quote to remember:

Liz and Rosa find the destroyed lab. Liz sees the fractal burn that indicates that Max is the one that destroyed it.

"I fought so hard to become who I am, and I just trade her in every time I get scared? No. I don't want to be on the run anymore."

Back to Max's house:

"Whatever happened to that thing that she and Louise were building out in the desert? I mean, did she ever tell him where it was or what it was?"

"Nope. And when Tripp asked Louise about it, she was silent."

Liz walks in and interrupts.

"Why'd you do it, Max?"

They go into the bedroom to fight.

"I'd been asking you for weeks to clear out that lab, okay? I knew it wasn't safe."

"Alex installed a military-grade security system."

"A system designed by Genoryx, okay? Diego could have hacked it. He could already know everything."

"And his nefarious plan is to what? Set us up with a condo in L.A.? Give my family a second chance?"

"Okay, I have a family to protect too."

"Yes, and you could have stopped Diego without destroying a year of my work!"

"I had to act fast."

"So your first instinct was to go with the one method that would break my heart?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking about your heart when I'm staring at jars with Noah's liver and his brain. I mean, what else did you harvest from us, Liz?"

"Those are just cells. I wasn't hurting anyone. I don't know what you thought love was gonna be like when we were 17, but it isn't just sunsets and horseback rides."

"You can't put this all on me. Okay you were sneaking around behind my back…"

"I apologized. I stopped. Max, you died this year. I was all alone because of a choice that you made, but still every single thing I did was for you and about you and with you. So when you were back, when I could finally touch you. When I could finally breathe. I needed to take just one moment to remember where I end and where you begin. To just be whole in who I am. I am a scientist. I am fighting for something that is bigger than me. I am trying to leave this world a better place. And I am in love with you. And right now, I hate it."

Liz leaves and Max takes another dose of the antidote.

Time jump. No idea how long or what has happened in between. Liz and Rosa on the Crashdown roof saying goodbyes.

"Dad is checking your oil and making sure you have enough chile...also you left this in our room. Mom's been texting."

"Trying to come up with a better response than, go duck yourself… You should come with me. The Ortecho sisters take California."

"I wish. But I can't. I'm going back to rehab tonight. I want to see the program through. Sorry."

"Don't be. It's the best possible thing you could have said."

"You know… Max should be your road trip buddy. You love him. You're gonna forgive him. Besides, we both know if you try to leave town without him again, he's just gonna show up with some big, grand romantic gesture to stop you."

Open mic night at the Pony. Alex and Kyle have a drink together.

"So how does it feel to have your father's murder officially avenged?."

"Feels like my dad's still dead. Flint should be okay. He'll live to become the new Jesse Manes."

"No he won't. I'm not gonna let it happen."

"After everything you still believe in redemption?"

"Well, I have a pretty good example of it right in front of me."

Alex sings his song. Michael, Isobel, Greg, and Forrest are all there listening.

Flash to Kyle going to Steph's hospital room. The bed is empty...because she's up doing her makeup, her hands steady.

"Your hands are better. Did they give you morphine?"

"I woke up this morning feeling incredible. Look at my chart. My numbers are up. It's a miracle."

"Or just really good science."

Liz is preparing to leave, her suitcase beside her in the empty Crashdown as she stands at the juke box one last time. Kyle runs in.

"What you did was reckless. And dangerous. And unethical, Liz. Thank you."

Back at the Wild Pony, Michael watches Forrest listening to Alex sing. He turns to leave. Isobel tries to stop him.

"It's a sad story, me and Alex. I have to walk away so we can start a new one someday. It's not our time right now."

"But it will be."

"I think so."

Rosa walks up to a bar. She hesitates before going in, her hands shaking.

Liz buckles into her car, ready to leave. She looks in the rearview window and waits. She's clearly expecting Max to come. But he's at home studying his alien symbols. She gives in and pulls away, leaving Roswell. Her season ends with her looking out over the ocean.

Alex finishes his song and Greg and Forrest are still there and are proud of him.

"Well, damn. How do you feel?"

"Like I just sang a song about a guy in front of a bunch of cowboys, and...I don't care."

"Oh, lucky guy, with a song like that."

"Yeah it was a long time ago…can I?"

Alex and Forrest kiss.

Rosa walks into the bar. Helena is there.

"If you came to tell me what I did wrong, your sister already texted."

"Did you get what you wanted, Mom? Is your score finally settled?"

"No. I wanted everyone to see Jesse Manes humiliated and weak. I wanted him to die knowing shame. But the papers say it was a tragedy. People like him - bad white men - they die heroes, no matter what they've done. People like us - we die villains."

"Yeah I know. I've done it. But I also got a second chance. So I get to leave a different legacy. The last time that I saw you, I said that I hated you. That's not true. I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, mija."

"I also told you to leave and I was right about that. Liz was free and it should have stayed that way. Manes is gone. There is no revenge to be had. No closure and no redemption. Don't come back, mom. Don't bother Liz again. I really hope you get better. Maybe you can have a second chance too."

Another possible time jump. Michael and Isobel pull up to where Max is out in the desert.

"How'd you guys find me?"

"Freaky twin thing. What's going on?"

"I took more of the antidote. Sorry, I should have called you guys."

"Save it. We are sick of being pissed at you for being so obnoxiously yourself. Why you look so scared?"

Pod Squad is investigating a cave. There's a door or opening covered by alien text with the alien symbol on it. It sorta looks like there's something behind it.

"Um, well, when I touched the alien console at the fair, something happened. I heard whispers that I couldn't understand...until now. I think when I touched it I unlocked something... Like a cage? The whispers led me here. I know it sounds crazy, but would you guys help me find a tunnel?"

"It's sealed up."

"I feel like we should learn more before we just busy that door open."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

There's a knocking sound and a voice calls out.

"Help! Is someone there?"

"If Max unlocked something at CrashCon, whoever that is has been down here for days without…"

"I need water. Please."

"There has to be three."

Note that we now know which symbol represents each of them.

The door shatters and they all react (Isobel's face is priceless).

We flash back to the mysterious stowaway/alien hoodie dude/Jones. Louise fighting him. Now we can see that it's Max. Nora kneeling after the crash with the hand on her shoulder. It's Max's face. He attacks/burns the military men/Hector Valenti.

The stowaway/Jones looks exactly like Max. Only with a really bad beard.

"Howdy partner."

MUSIC:

1. Hootie & The Blowfish "Time"

2. Tyler Rich "Leave Her Wild"

3. Clay Rigdon "That Kinda Kiss"

4. Marc Danziesen "See Yourself"

5. Gloria Hart and Art Kassel "Frankie And Johnny"

6. The Score "Legend"

7. Sarah May Byrom "Rhythm Of A Memory"

8. Tyler Blackburn "Would You Come Home"

9. The Well Pennies "The Echo And The Shadow"

10. Valerie Broussard "Dark Side"

#roswell new mexico #rnm season 2 #details #episode details #long post #rnm 213 #mr. jones

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