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smol-and-grumpy · 3 years

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To Be Free - CH01

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: Escaping and hiding away, that’s what she wants to do. Her parent’s remote cabin in the mountain sounds like the best place for it. There, she meets someone from her past — a green-eyed mountain man.

Chapter Warnings: A little back story, cheating (not Dean), language, threats being made, car accident

WC: 2481

Beta: @winchest09 <3

A/N: So, this is the beginning of the Mountain Man!Dean AU. I hope you’ll like it!

Read ahead on Patreon!

Series Masterlist ~ SPN Masterlist

The phone buzzes on the seat next to her. Again.

It hasn’t stopped ringing since Y/N had gotten into the car and drove away. She’s so close to just throwing it out of the window but then again, the rational side of her brain tells her that she would endanger the automobiles around her on the highway, and she doesn’t really want to cause any damage, or accidents, if it can be avoided.

“You’re a goody-goody.” Mick always used to say, “It’ll get you in trouble if you don’t toughen up.”

Perhaps Mick was right. She probably was not made to work in that firm where she has to help fucking criminals. But then again, he made it seem so plausible and she can’t believe that she fell for it all. Y/N had fallen for the prestige, for the fame, and most of all, she had fallen for Mick, and that was the worst fucking mistake.

The events of that night flash before her eyes once more.

It’s 9 PM. Mick usually doesn’t have a reason to work so late unless he has a meeting with the mob family that they have under their wings. She never liked to go to their meetings, always found an excuse to opt out. The way the men always stare at her like she was a piece of meat rather than a woman with a brain, always sent a chill down her spine.

When she stepped out of the elevator, the floor was dark. There’s only minimal light coming from the reception area that’s vacated at this time of the night. Y/N never liked to be here after hours but it’s the only place she thought she could find Mick. He didn’t pick up his phone when she called him which was highly unusual. Somehow, she was a little afraid of what she would find. It could be him just laughing and joking with the mobsters, but it could also have been him bruised and beaten beyond recognition because the Family wasn’t happy with his work, or it could be worse. He could be dead. Today was his birthday too and she even ordered catering for the both of them to enjoy at home. She guessed that she would have to pop the dishes into the microwave because by the time she decided to check here, it was already starting to turn cold.

Walking further along the hallway, she noticed that the lights in Mick’s office are still on and a sense of relief washed over her, while the sense of dread built up in the pit of her stomach at the same time.

“Oh god, Mick.”

There was a faint moan that carried through the hallway of the offices. It made her blood freeze, but it forced her to walk faster.

“Mmh,” she heard Mick humming. “Always so fucking tight for me, Eve. Such a good pussy.”

“Better than Y/N, I’d hope.”

Mick chuckled, “I’d rather you not talk about her while I fuck you. You know you’re my best girl, baby.”

The dread in Y/N’s stomach intensified and something began to churn inside of her. She had to clutch it so as not to just hurl out the whole contents into the next pot plant she could find.

Eve was her friend. Her best friend since she moved into the city two years ago. She was even the one who helped Eve to get a job at her boyfriend’s firm.

Well, not her boyfriend anymore, she guessed.

She reached the door, fingers clutched around the frame for purchase as she took in the image before her. Eve was bent over the table, Mick half undressed, fucking into her from behind.

He threw his head back as he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he turned his head and their eyes met.

For a brief second, she thought she saw a smirk twisting at his lips when he noticed her. He kept on pounding into Eve, though, his pace never faltered.

Y/N retreated, tears pooled in her eyes and she moved on autopilot. Before she knew it, she found herself in her office, packing the things that she needed into her laptop bag.

‘Stupid! So fucking stupid!’ she thought. She should have seen it. Why hadn’t she seen it? The red flags were always there. Mick always gave her assignments that would see her traveling all over the country for a long stretch of time. She would find receipts of hotels laying around in the apartment, or when she did laundry, but he always had a good reason. They hadn’t been intimate for a long time, too. Mick was always too tired and if he wasn’t then she would be. And if that happened, he would get out of bed and said that he needed a drink and was out of the apartment before she could even say anything. She was so engrossed in her work and too oblivious to what was going on, that she ignored all the warning signs.

She was crying now, the tears not stopping. But it’s not over Mick. She would never cry over a man who had treated her like this. She cried for herself, for being dumb enough to let someone play her.

Bending down to pack the remainder of her things, she opened her last drawer, revealing a little safe that was neatly tucked inside. Without hesitation, she punched in the combination and it sprang open. It contained a single USB stick.

Picking it up, she clutched it in the palm of her hand. She had forgotten about the small device and now she knew why Mick kept her around. She was the only person who had a copy of the shady business his clients are doing, because she was involved as much as Mick. He was never going to give her up because if the information got leaked, he'd be taking the fall.

There were footsteps along the hallway, the thumping sounds getting louder as someone rushed to her office and she quickly let the stick slip into her jean pocket.

“What are you doing?” he asked too casually but with a bitter undertone, acting like he hadn’t just fucked her best friend.

“What does it look like?” she snarled, patience wearing thin. “I quit. And don’t even come by my apartment anymore.”

He walked in further; his hair was ruffled and the buttons on his shirt were hastily done up, the material lopsided as he had fastened them wrong. She was so disgusted by his appearance.

Mick rubbed his hand over his chin, carefully thinking about his next words. “I need the USB stick before you leave.”

She snorted. That’s typical. All he could think about is his fucking business. “I don’t have it.”

“Liar!”

“Oh, look who’s talking.” Maybe, just maybe, she shouldn’t anger him but screw that.

“Y/N.” Mick rounded up around her desk and came to stand right before her. The scent of sex hit her nose in waves. It made her nauseous. “You’re going to get into so much trouble if they know that you have it and believe me, if you walk out of here, they will find out because I will tell them.”

“I’m not scared of those men.”

Mick laughed. Fucking laughed.

“They’ll come for you, Y/N. Those men are not to be fucked with.” He was still chuckling when he said, “They will find you and they will kill you.”

She cocked her eyebrow, and maybe she should have been scared of Mick and his threats but she’s still got the upper hand. If she got to expose him first, she has bargaining leverage. Maybe she’d get to be in a witness protection program. By the time it hits the fan, she will hopefully be long gone.

“I don’t have it,” she said again as she bumped her shoulder against his on her way out, shoving him to the side.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” Mick called after her, his voice echoing in the almost empty hallway.

With her head held high, she descended the stairs, too impatient and not to say scared to wait for the elevator.

The phone buzzed again after having only stopped for a short time. It actually hasn’t stopped ringing since she drove back to her apartment to pack her duffel with enough clothes that should last her for a couple of days. She wanted to get out of here, clear her head, think about what to do next.

It’s after she stopped for gas that she remembered the remote cabin that belonged to her parents. They hadn’t been up there for a while as the health of her father was deteriorating but she knew where they kept the spare key, and it’s the only place she knew nobody would come looking for her because she hadn’t been with Mick long enough to let him in on the existence of the cabin, nor on the memories the place held.

Buying enough food that would last her a couple of days, she drove towards the foot of the mountain.

It was February and the roads were icy as it had snowed just last night. She hoped that her car would have enough power to get her up there, as she didn’t have snow chains with her. Not that she knew how to put them on in the first place. If worse comes to worst, she’d have to abandon her car and hike up the last bit, which was totally fine with her too. Anything to get away from civilization.

As she made her way up the snowy road and rounded up the twelfth bend in the street (There were fourteen - she had counted them from the drive up there every winter), her phone buzzed again.

She glanced over to the passenger seat to catch the caller ID. It could be her mother for all she knew and that one, she would pick up. Y/N would maybe tell her that she was on the way to the cabin so that they wouldn’t be too worried if they can’t get a hold of her, because the reception could be pretty spotty up there.

But no, it’s fucking Mick again. She rolled her eyes upon seeing the name flash on the screen before turning her gaze back to the snow-covered street in front of her, but it was already too late. Out of her periphery, she caught it. The deer that ran out of the woods, its eyes wide when it saw the headlights of her SUV. Her foot hit the break immediately, but it was too late. The car swerved on the icy ground and she hoped she didn’t hit the animal before her vision goes black.

Dean was sitting in his recliner in the cabin while he enjoyed his glass of bourbon. It’s his downtime, one of his favorite pastimes, next to spending his days out with Stevie, his Bernese mountain dog.

He had been coming to this cabin since his early childhood, having only missed one Winter out of the many. There were times where he would only spend a week up here but also there were times where he would be there for the whole winter. It’s his favorite place, always has been.

The cabin is not as big as the ones that surrounded it, but it’s enough. It has only one bedroom, yet it was cozy. He remembered back to when he was younger, when he and his younger brother would sleep on the fold-out couch while his parents took the bedroom. Sometimes if Sam was upset with him, Dean would spend the night on the rug in front of the fireplace instead, and it was the best thing. He almost felt bad for wanting to get into a fight with Sam more often so that his sibling wouldn’t look at him funny when he wanted to spend the night on the floor instead of on the worn-out couch.

Once his parents stopped their annual visit up there, and they wanted to sell the cabin, Dean had saved enough money to buy it from them. There were just too many memories tied to the little property, too many of them that he wasn’t willing to just forget.

While he took a sip from his tumbler, Stevie lifted her head and twisted her ears.

Dean noticed, and immediately reached down to pat the dog's head, “What's wrong, Stevie?”

The dog ignored him to get up and walk over to the door, letting out a whine as her nails started to scratch at the wood.

“Easy, girl,” he soothes the agitated dog. “You wanna go out for a walk again?”

Stevie whined some more, her scratching becoming more frantic.

“Right,” Dean sighed as he got out of his seat. He took his time to empty his tumbler before setting it down on the coffee table. “Let’s go then.”

The snow had started to fall again as they got out of the cabin, and he ducked inside once more to grab his hat that’s hanging on the hook right behind the door. Stevie was not impressed that it was taking Dean so long to get ready and started to bark.

“Easy, Stevie,” he chuckled as her wet nose nuzzled against his palm. He reached down to scratch behind her ear, a motion that seemed to calm her down. “Good girl.”

They made their way down the street. The old snow crunched underneath his boots. Fresh layers of the white powder would cover over it soon enough, erasing their prints when it settled. He thought about doing their usual nightly walk around the perimeter, wondering if maybe they’d see a deer or two. Stevie had a way with deer. They love to meet her and Dean’s always mesmerized by the unusual bond they had. Stevie was always good with other animals and people, the dog’s sense to protect everyone is highly admirable, and Dean really couldn’t wish for a better companion.

As they rounded up the second bend in the road, he saw the car. Its headlights were still on but the front was wrapped around a tree which was the only thing standing between the car and the abyss. It was not a strong pine and the wood was already creaking under the weight.

Stevie rushed forward and Dean followed suit. The tree was going to give in at any minute, he just knew and if he couldn’t save the car, maybe he would be able to save whoever was stuck in there.

Dean thankfully reached the vehicle in time, yanking the driver’s door open and the sight of the girl slumped over the steering wheel made his blood run colder than the icy road he was standing on.

“Y/N?”

CH02

Please share your thoughts with me, I’d love to hear your feedback.

#to be free #dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #dean x reader #dean winchester fic #dean winchester fan fic #dean winchester fan fiction #mountain man!Dean #nathalie writes

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its-warm-in-here · 3 years

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Playing Pretend

I’m sorry I didn't get this up sooner. I gutted the end but here’s the first part of the first chapter of a Heisenberg x reader fic that will probably go on too long. This is more of a prolog. No smut yet! Written with a female reader in mind, but I may have versions for both m and f when the final product goes up. Gonna start out kinda fluffy before we get darker. Comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated!

Summary: This summer trip to Romania was supposed to be momentous, life changing, and the bases for your master’s thesis. Too bad the villagers want you gone and this ‘Mother Miranda’ won't even see you. Luckily, you run into a greasy engineer who says he can help.

Karl tries to take a day off from being ‘Lord Heisenberg’ with the cute stranger who wandered into the village. Things only spiral from there.

~2080 words

Miranda loved the yearly festivals. She always made a big show of the village, flowers and banners everywhere. The townsfolk would bring out their best clothing, even if their best was still black and brown. The dreary village would come alive with drinking, dancing and merry making. Even some of the neighboring villages would join in the festivities. The town would be near bustling, the local tavern would be full, laughter and song would echo from the church to the castle.

He hated it. All of it. Heisenberg avoided the celebrations, instead opting to stay holed up in his factory as much as possible. And it wasn't just because of the excess of people, while that didn't help. No, it was an insidious purpose for these gatherings. He exhaled a ring of cigar smoke.

First, boost morale through the village and reaffirm the people's faith in Mother Miranda. Second, and far more insidious, was to widen the flock, to expand her influence and bring in new blood for her experiments. The surrounding towns were just as small and removed from the rest of the world as Miranda's village. Made it easy to bring new blood under her wing. Youth would meet and marry, a drunk or four would go missing, and some of the visitors would become new members of Miranda's community. More meat for her Cadou grinder.

Heisenberg flicked the ash from his cigar and watched it float down before the wind caught it. The early morning view from the top of his factory wasn't bad. It was his own part of the world: no view of the village, the stench of the reservoir was nonexistent, and the most he could see of Castle Dimitrescu was a massive wall keeping their territory separated. Just him and his machines. He took another puff. As much as he planned to avoid today, Heisenberg knew that he would have to make at least some appearance. All the Lords did, even if it was just for a moment. Just another way to show her power; having all of her ‘children’ before the townsfolk. He grimaced at the thought. Târgul de Fete was set to start soon. At least that gave him the morning to get shit done. Heisenberg kicked a bit of metal scrap off the roof and it bounced off the scrap heap below with a ping! before landing in the dirt. He rolled his shoulder. Time to get to work.

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"Well fuck you too!" You slammed the door behind you. Why even bother going through the proper channels? No matter what, they turn you down, tell you to leave and treat you like an outcast. You spoke to towns folk, to village leaders, hell, you even wanted an audience with their 'Mother Miranda,' but she refused to even see you! You stormed along the path and the few people that had not made their way to the Târgul de Fete celebration steered clear of you, opting to give you a side eye and shuffle to their destination. All you wanted was to observe their festival, and maybe take a few pictures, but even that was negotiable. You had even offered to leave your camera behind with them for the day. Why hadn't you gone to Sweden with the rest of your class? No, instead you went to some culty, backwater town in Romania!

You kicked a rock, hard, sending it flying into the tall grass. "God Damnit!" This was supposed to have been your thesis! Supposed to be life changing! No, now you were just stuck, miles from any true civilization and being kicked out of some stupid, ramshackle heap, whose plants can't even grow right in a Romanian summer. Some of the plants were barely green, most appeared dry or yellowing. The flowers were either wilted and falling apart or hadn't even bloomed. You were no botanist, but you were certain that wasn't healthy.

You kicked another rock, it soared through the grass, but it struck something metal this time before landing with a thud. They didn't want you here, didn't want you at Târgul de Fete? Fine, but they didn't take your camera. Without thinking, you dug the old DSLR out of your bag and snapped a picture of the church.

And immediately deleted it.

You signed. Even if the villagers were a bunch of jackasses, this was their culture and they made it very clear that you were not welcome. Even if they had agreed to all this three months ago. And even if they had called you a bad omen, a poison and a danger to the whole village. You weren't about to infringe. Crestfallen, you huffed your bag over your shoulder and began the trek back out of town. It was at least a four hour walk to your rental car and a good chunk of that walk was more of a hike. Not like there was much you could do other than leave after cussing out the town speakers and nearly slamming the door off its hinges.

The village had felt abandoned when you walked in, and now that everyone had headed off to a celebration, the village was positively desolate. No traditional brightly-colored dresses or intricate belts to be seen. And no wary or hostile glares from the inhabitants either. It was... quiet. Aside from the occasional crow, you might as well have been in a ghost town. It took you a bit to find the correct path out of the grave yard, but after spinning in circles for a good moment, you pushed past a red door and were back on your way. The village wasn't large, most of the paths were poorly maintained and the whole place was enveloped in a strange fish smell.

You bit the inside of your cheek. This was a good thing, really. Who would've wanted to stay in the ramshackle place for more than a few hours, let alone a few days? You groaned and kicked at the ground again. While not lacking in repellent attributes, the pagan worship of the place fascinated you. They had their own religion but had incorporated traditional Romania holidays into their culture. Where else in Europe could you see that happen in real time? Of course, you could think of a couple of places, but you had picked here in the Carpathian mountains in particular! While you did have a second choice, you couldn't stop the self pity from setting in.

Ugh.

The village was relatively small and was quickly fading to forest, the castle that overlooked the town vanished behind you as you shuffled down a particularly steep part of the path. The trees here looked more normal, less sickly. While it was only marginally, you felt a bit better, a bit less mad. Stepping away from that place was a breath of fresh air.

Your boots skid a bit as you reach a flat spot. With a huff, you grip both backpack straps to center yourself. If this couldn't be your thesis, that didn't mean you had to hate the walk. This was Romania afterall, when was the next time you were going to be here? The sky may be overcast, but it sort of added to the eerie charm of this place. You sidestepped your way down another steep incline, using one hand to grip overgrown branches for balance. The last step is a bit further, but you find your footing easily.

And the rock gave way under you, tilting forward with an abrupt grinding sound. A burst of panicked adrenaline rushed through as you struggled to stop. You pitch forward, stumbling over branches and underbrush, your eyes forcibly losing focus.

"The fuck?"

That wasn't your voice. You slammed full force into something, another body? And it gives under you. The other person takes the brunt of the fall, landing on their back with a distinct, "oof."

For a moment, you don't speak, too focused on catching the breath. Finally, your vision swims back and you find your voice, "Damnit... are you ok?"

The man under you goans, sitting half way up to look you over. His hair is grey, and a bit too long, but he couldn't be any older than forty, possibly younger. "Get off." Your eyes go wide and that panicked beat fills your chest. "Ya deaf? Off."

"Er, right," you scramble to your feet and, without thinking, extend a hand to the stranger, "Sorry about... that." You gestured vaguely to the path. "Lost my balance."

He lets out an exasperated huff, and knocks your hand away. For a moment, he doesn't acknowledge you, instead retrieving something from the grass behind him. He's wearing a loose linen shirt, sleeves rolled halfway up with black leather gloves. You force yourself to look somewhere, anywhere else, nervously bouncing from foot to foot. When he turns back to you, he has a tattered, wide brim hat in place and is looking over a pair of broken sunglasses. One of the lenses was clearly shattered, but he hooked them over his shirt collar, his attention finally turning to you. "You're not from around here, huh?”

You couldn't help but snort, "What gave it away, the wind breaker? Don't worry, I'm leaving."

"Leaving?" He repeats.

You start moving back to the path. "Yup, your village speaker has made that very clear."

"They were clear? Not all back and forth on it?" He chuckles, "That's impressive, they must really not like you."

You stare at him, was this a friendly face? It was certainly a handsome face, even with scarring and stubble. But a trustworthy one? "You sure you're ok? Didn't scramble that brain when I ran into you? The rest of the town was pretty dead set on driving me out."

" 'Cause they're a bunch of morons, sweetheart," he insisted, "All part of Mother Miranda's big, idiot mob."

"Huh," you are walking ahead on the path, and he's not but a footfall behind you.

"But they don't matter."

"No?"

"What matters is, why didn't they want you here?"

You stop, turning to face this stranger. He was gruff, and more than a little rude, but in comparison to the townsfolk, he was downright friendly. Hell, you were surprised he was so forward with you. "Masters thesis," you put plainly, hoping he'll leave it at that.

"On what?"

"Anthropology."

He leaned in close. He wasn't that much taller than you, but you couldn't help but move away from his imposing figure. From this distance, you could smell motor oil and some kind of smoke on his clothes. "That's it?" You scoff, the sooner you are back in your car the better. "I just mean, it's surprising they'd want you gone. You sure there's nothing else? Didn't kick over any goat statues?"

"Not that I noticed," you started back down the path. You'd wasted too much time talking to this weirdo anyway. Just based on his demeanor and dislike of the rest of the village, you wonder if you'd maybe tripped over the town pariah. He certainly wasn't dressed like anyone else from the village.

"I could get you back in."

You stopped, not fifteen feet from him. "You're assuming I want to go back in." And didn’t you? You just risk getting yelled at again. But if there was a chance to write your thesis...

“Well, if you're not interested,” he turned to leave. You grit your teeth, your nails digging deep into your backpack straps.

“Hold up!" It doesn't take much to catch up to him. "How exactly are we going to do this?"

"My word carries a certain amount of weight," he carried on, "Though, the village doesn't meet on these matters till next week."

"But what good does that-"

He isn't listening, "For today, I know a place you can watch the town. Besides, you're an Archeologist, you probably want an interview, right?" Of course he gestures to himself with a sort of half bow.

You roll your eyes, but still follow, "Anthropologist." He gives you a blank look. "I'm studying Anthropology, not Archeology."

He doesn't seem to care, instead pulling a cigar and lighter from his pants pocket. "Got a name?"

"Oh, (y/n). You?"

The stranger is part way up on the path you had tripped down. "Karl," he had extended you a gloved hand. You look from him to his hand, before brushing past him, pulling yourself up next to him without the offered aid.

#Karl Heisenberg #Re8 #re8 heisenberg #karl heisenberg x reader #karl heisenberg x you #Ill keep this going as long as i can #wow creativity is hard #karl can be nice if he tries

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kaypeace21 · 3 years

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Rebel Robin podcast (ep 3 &4 analysis)

For those who haven’t read them yet. Here’s the analysis for podcast ep 1&2. Analysis of Rebel Robin book-here. And eastereggs from rebel robin novel- here.

So the main things I noticed in ep 3 was how Robin spying was shown as a huge NEGATIVE-and Mr Hauser got upset over her doing so. Robin listens to mr. Hauser’s phone call (like Karen with Mike in s3/ us gov spying on calls in s1) & on a different occasion Robin also eavesdrops on a private convo he is having with someone else in his classroom ( like El spying on Mike talking to Lucas in s3). And when he finds out about this he tells her how wrong it was to spy on other people like that. In the past, I also talked about how the theme of spying is shown for many other st characters ( in the show) and how it isn’t romanticized like people think it is- here .

Anyways , Ep 3 ends with a call from a h*mophobic teen( Dash) telling Robin to “stay away” from Mr. Hauser cause he’s “dangerous”. Why he thinks he’s dangerous is solely for the fact he’s gay.I think this theme may come into play in s4 Hawkins (in relation to the satanic panic). In ep 4 Robin jokes to (gay) Mr. Hauser : “ So what are you into... satanism?” (Sadly most queer people have been told over and over we’re going to hell for being gay/lgbt+. it’s sadly an almost universal experience.) For those unaware- the ‘satanic panic’ was a right wing christian movement in the 80′s that WRONGLY associated certain things with supposed satanism. Just some of the many things they demonized : rock music , stephen king , wearing black, horror/fantasy media, and of course queer people and d&d (hellfire club - the name is a a xmen ref but in the show it’s probably an inside joke about the satanic panic and people being scared of d&d). We see foreshadowing of the satanic panic hinted in s3 (in relation to d&d)- on tv the narrator asks if “satanism” (pans to d&d set) is to blame for the odd occurrances in Hawkins. And given how the s4 el-trailer had the clock say 3:00am for the “witching hour” also called “the devil’s hour” since it’s supposed to be a subversion of jesus dy*ing at 3:00 pm. And the possibility s4 may take place around Easter. I think we’ll see that religious (Christian) extre*sm causes many people in Hawkins to interpret the supernatural as ‘satanic’. And no , I’m obviously not talking poorly about all religious/christian people).

After this Mr. Hauser jokes how Hawkins is like “lord of the flies” and how he “worries” what would happen if teens were left to their own devices-like in the book. The themes in the book mostly focus on the dangers of ‘mob mentality’ and how human beings can become v*olent and turn on each other- if the safety of civilization disappears...

This I believe is foreshadowing - i mentioned in a post a while back (here). How movies on the s4 list had the theme of : a supernatural event indirectly causing towns people to act irrationally and turn on eachother v*olently. Despite literal monsters attacking them from outside (they chose to turn on eachother instead). In the end some townspeople become the real monsters via mob mentality/v*oence/false witch hunts (the mist, the birds, etc). In ‘the birds’ (while people are hidding in a store)- they wrongly blame certain characters for the supernatural chaos. Similarly, in ‘the mist’ (crowd of townspeople are trapped in a store) and some start interpreting the monsters as being sent as punishment by god- some town’s people start quoting the bible and saying the only way to stop the punishment is to start “sacrificing the s*nners and nonbelievers”. BIG YIKES.ST references mapple street (where the wheelers and sinclairs live). It’s based on the twilight zone ep of the same name “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” .The ‘monsters’ of that episode -were the townspeople turning on eachother because they incorrectly think their own neighbors are part of an invading supernatural army. The enemy was actually the paranoia/mob mentality-not the supernatural force they feared. And yes i do think this concept is linked with 80s satanic panic and will cause some town division/obstacles for our heroes to deal with . **I also think the s4 bts of the Hawkins blood clinic-may be used to show h*mophobia (linked to satanic panic) in the town. Like in one s4 movie “paradise lost”the punk rock boys who were into black clothes, rock music , horror/stephen king books- were accused by the town’s people of being gay AND have demonic powers that are k*lling fellow town’s people.

Mr Hauser says he thinks steve Harrington is Ralph from lord of the flies. And Robin disagrees saying he’s Jack. Personally- since this was when Robin didn’t know/hated Steve. I think Mr hauser is right that Steve is Ralph (one of the oldest boys) who’s “commitment to civilization and morality is strong”. But Jack (perhaps the popular s4 kid Jake?) and his savage crew take control of the group and start trying to attack Ralph and his friends (steve’s crew- over satanic panic?). How this begins is -

Jack, torments Ralph and others. And some kids begin to develop savage personalities, after someone claims to have seen a Beast (demongorgan?) in the woods. This creates fear among the boys, which allows Jack to access more power.Ralph gets into an argument with Jack, who splits from the tribe. Many of the other boys follow Jack, who uses fear to manipulate the boys into leaving Ralph. And Jack’s crew begin attacking Ralph and his friends.

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Ok, next topic of ep 4- the sentimental part of my brain got emotional when hearing how upset Robin was. And than Mr Hauser-telling her she’s wrong and she’s not “broken” or “rotten” and “nothing about her needs to be fixed’” (got me right in the feels) . As a queer person- I feel like every lgbt+ kid/teen needs to hear what Mr. Hauser said to Robin.

However, the analytical part of my brain -did notice some easterggs/ series parallels.

The convo starts with them talking about music Mr hauser likes (such as Bowie). And transitions to Mr Haauser asking about things she likes, whether she’s being bullied, and he later tells her “ DON’T let other people’s small mindedness make you fell bad about yourself. you don’t need to change yourself-no matter what anyone else says” . And Mr Hauser than says him calling her the “weirdest girl in Hawkins” was a compliment (not an insult-like she initially assumed).

This is remarkably similar to certain scenes in s1/2. In s1, Jonathan mentions musicians he likes such as Bowie, asks Will about what he likes, and tells Will “don't like things cause people tell you you’re supposed to-especially not him (their dad who called him h*mophobic names)” . In s2, Jonathan tries to cheer Will up after asking if he's being being bullied. And calls Will “a freak” (and says it’s a good thing) and he should be content with being a “freak “ and compares Will to Bowie ( who was openly queer since the 70s) .

In ep 4, Robin also mentions how sad she is that her parents won’t let her ride her bike anymore cause their paranoid about her safety (like what happened to Will in s2).

Robin (before Mr. Hauser comforts her) says she feels like she has a “rot” inside her . This is a s2 eastergg that could be linked to either Will or El. Will says his now-memories are “growing”, spreading”, and killing.” Later Kali says the emotional pain caused by her father caused a “wound” to “spread”. Later allusion-Brenner tells El she has a “terrible wound “ (“a rot”) that Will “grow, spread, and kill.”

The reason Robin rants about feeling like she has a “rot” inside her is because she’s being bullied, and lost all her Hawkins friends and says “maybe I’m broken maybe there is just something about me that drives people away? I’m the only common denominator-there’s something wrong with me! There’s something inside of me that’s just rotten and there’s nothing i can do to fix it”. Which 1)-poor Robin. 2) I feel like could easily be How Will feels in s4(who will be the same age as Robin is here in the podcast)- his dad abandoned him, all his hawkins friends are gone , the st s4 movies have h*mophobic bullying in them (and he was bullied in the past). In a interview Noah said Will in s4 “doesn’t really get along with people-it’s just him and Mike.” I think it fits more so with Will than El . But they may feel similar: it’s implied in s4 audition tapes she’ll be bullied too, she moved away from her friends, and her father (Hopper) fake “passed away.” It could easily be how both Will and El feel in s4- that there is something “broken”/ “rotten” about them . In fact, in the rebel Robin novel there is even a character named Sheena. Sheena reminds me a bit of a mix between Will and el . She is very quiet, queercoded, and is often bullied. And she finds mean notes and other things stuffed in her locker- placed there by bullies. A bit like how Will found the zombie-boy note in his locker. A teacher doesn’t stop her bullying just blames her and says “ This wouldn’t happen if you made it just a smidgen easier for PEOPLE to understand you.”(sort of reminding me of that Noah quote about s4 Will not getting along with most people/Jonathan saying not to change himself cause “people” say to). But sheena can be another name for Jane (there was also a 80s show character named Sheena who was psychic) so ...maybe foreshadowing of el/jane being bullied in highschool? Along with Will?

*It’s not a eastergg/parallel...just speculation. Unlike the rebel robin book... in the podcast (in multiple episodes) almost every time she opens up to Mr Hauser about her problems she says it’s ok for him to do the same and she’ll be supportive and listen. However, Mr Hauser (so far) always rejects her offer-much to her hurt/frustration. In ep 4, she asks if he has someone his “own age” he can talk to about his problems-which he says he does. Now... since in ep 4 Mr hauser is paralleled to Jonathan maybe Jonathan will have someone his own age to talk to about his problems (maybe his new friend Argyle?) We see similar to Mr Hauser giving advice/pep talks to (gay) Robin. Jonathan is always giving advice/peptalks to our (gay-coded) Will. But so far- Jonathan has no one he really emotionally leaned on in the same way (Will does with Jonathan). I also wonder if Will in s4 starts gets tired of how he always confides in Jonathan (but Jonathan never does the same with Will in return)? Like Robin with Mr. Hauser?

#robin buckley #steve harrington #will byers #el hopper #jonathan byers #stranger things #stranger things theory

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theprincesslibrary · 3 years

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#26: Quid pro quo

She had a plan. A good plan, flawed of course, but a good plan nonetheless. She would march into the Azure dragon’s lair, offer him a deal he could not refuse, and spend the rest of her days in relative peace. She would not be burned alive, nor have her body desecrated postmortem. It was a good plan, albeit a bit of a crazy one.

She had carefully designed said plan for months, spent countless hours with her nose buried deep in obscure literature, practically harassed the head of the royal guard into telling her every tiny detail of his encounter with the sand dragons - the man used to boast about his tale of glory, now he couldn’t bear to utter the word dragon - but for all her effort she still wasn’t ready for the Azure dragon himself. There were a few key elements about the beast which were not accounted for in those dusty grimoires: for one, he was a man rather than a scaled monster; and two… he was incredibly handsome. He had ordered her to sit opposite him, and she had since spent a stupid amount of time staring at his face, which wasn’t all that smart considering her current predicaments. Yet, one could hardly blame her; she had been expecting a blue lizard - a giant lizard, with wings, and teeth, and claws - and she was now sitting in front of the most gorgeous man she had ever met. Nothing during her months of research had prepared her for the day's events, and she was a bit lost and quite unsure of how to proceed.

*****

When she had walked past the entrance on the north side of the snowy mountain, she had expected a cave or an abandoned mine; a place dark and humid, where the air would be stale, almost putrid. There would be spiderwebs on the walls and maybe a few rotting corpses lying in the shadows of a dusty corner. The place would be grim, quiet - save for the few drip drops of a leaking roof - and extremely scary. But the halls she was wandering in looked nothing like old collapsing tunnels. There were sculpted columns where she expected old support beams, and vast rooms with smooth walls instead of rough rock and loose stone. It looked more like an underground palace than it did the belly of a mountain, and she couldn’t help but be a little bit in awe of the craftsmanship required to achieve such a feat. Her father’s castle could never compare to the dragon’s lair, nothing could.

As she made her way from room to room, she found no pile of gold or shiny jewels, not that she hoped to find any, she had specifically chosen the Azure dragon for its peculiar taste in treasure. She had however expected a few rotten corpses, maybe some dead knights, or discarded armors, but again she was pleasantly surprised: not a dead body in sight. Just books, shelves after shelves for as far as the eye could see. They occupied every surface of the place: wooden tables covered in parchments, rare volumes piled up on the floor. Some piles were so high, she had to crane her neck up to see the top and almost lost her balance more times than she’d admit to. Some books were torn or half-eaten by mice, soot-stained or with missing their spines, others were brand new and carefully ordered by author and date. And everywhere the dry scent of paper mixed with the faintest bit of charcoal, a good indication that she was in the right place. Which might sound confusing to some: what kind of princess would willingly seek out a dragon? But she was desperate, and desperate times called from desperate measures. Crazy measures, some might even say.

Now that she was deep into the beast’s lair, she was faced with two issues. One, for all her planning, she hadn’t come up with a solution to prevent the dragon from killing her without hearing her plea. She had a proposition for the creature, one that required some explaining, and she could hardly do so once reduced to a fuming pile of ashes. She had thought she’d come up with something eventually, but as her twenty-first birthday grew closer things accelerated, and now she was here, with no idea how to speak with such a being. Maybe she should send words in advance? Did Dragons get mail? And If so, who would be brave enough to deliver such correspondence? There wasn't any protocol on how to converse with a dragon. She was taught how to politely greet foreign emissaries, but somehow her etiquette lesson didn’t cover “how to greet a mighty dragon without being toasted”. Clearly a gap in her royal education. Most people - knights in search of gold and glory - marched into a dragon’s lair with two goals in mind: kill the beast and steal its treasure. They either succeeded or died, adding to the long list of nameless fools no one remembered. There was hardly any tale of them having a civil conversation with the beast.

And either way, if she knew how to politely engage the Azure dragon, she would first need to find him. One would think a creature this size would be easy to spot, but so far she only passed by empty rooms (saves for the mountains of books) and deserted halls. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think the place to be abandoned.

As she continued her discovery of the underground palace, she stepped inside a dimly lit room, more vast than the rest, that looked like a library. There had been books in every room she visited so far, but this one looked like it was meant to hold paper and manuscript. It was dark, save for the few candles and the fire roaring in the hearth.

“Excuse me.” She called out to the shadows, not expecting an answer. She had been doing so in every room, and only got an eerie silence as a reply. So when the shadows moved in a corner of the room, she nearly jumped out of her skin. The shadow was in fact a man sitting in a chair with a heavy book in his hands. Her heart was in her throat, and it took her a few minutes to regain her composure.

“Forgive my intrusion,” she started, “I'm looking for the Azure dragon.”

The man barely lifted his eyes from the books to give her the most unimpressed look. He was handsome, almost painfully so: silver-white hair, high cheekbones, a jawline that could cut through glass. But his most striking features were his eyes: icy blue, pupils slit in the middle. And then everything clicked: the hair, the pointed ears, the haughty look...

“You're one of the Elezens” she whispered dumbfounded, “It was said that your race had passed into legend.” “Sorry to disappoint.”

Panic ran through her, insulting the very being she had come to beg for help was a mistake, insulting one of the Elezens was a death sentence. She quickly dipped in a graceful bow, knees almost touching the ground, and lowered her head as much as her spine would allow.

“Forgive me, your grace, I spoke out of turn.”

She did not dare look at him, but she could feel his eyes on her. She could sense his disdain and perhaps a hint of curiosity. She kept her head low and her knees bent, waiting for him to speak, to dismiss her, or worse, to kill her. Her muscles screamed at her, and she secretly thanked her mother for her rigorous etiquette lessons. Lya might look frail and delicate, but she could curtsy for hours, her body well-trained to the princessly art of lowering oneself (literally) to please powerful men.

“Sit.” He finally said. “And pray tell, why is a princess seeking me out. That ought to be an interesting tale.”

For a brief moment, as she sat opposite him, nervousness overwhelmed her. Her hand clenched into her skirt, her fingers tugging at the fabric. She had not planned for this, hadn’t even considered the possibility, his kind was supposed to be extinct. This changed everything. Elezen were stronger than most dragons, smarter too. Knights didn’t kill Elezens, they simply ceased to exist; or hid in the heart of a snowy mountain, it would seem. Still, she couldn’t help but stare, he looked so… human.

“Speak.” He ordered, “all the fidgeting and staring is deeply annoying.” “I’m sorry, your grace, I expected you to be…” “Taller?” “Bluer actually, with more scales perhaps?” “I can hardly read with a full set of claws,” he pointed out with a haughtily condescending tone.

She swallowed heavily and nodded. She had been willing to face a beast breathing fire, surely she could converse with a man reading a book. She hadn’t escaped her father’s dungeon and portaled all the way up north to give up now. She brushed off her skirt, took a deep breath and raised her head to meet his gaze.

“I've come to request the honor of being your captive.” Words stumbled out of her mouth so fast she wasn’t sure she had been intelligible. “Do I look that feeble that you’d rather be my prisoner than some baron’s wife?” He said, weary and just a little bit sharp. “Do you not fear me?” “I do, very much fear you, your grace. Even more so now that I know of your true lineage. But I wish to live, and being held captive, given the proper circumstances, seems rather small compared to losing my life.” “I don't follow.” “I was born under the blood moon, your grace…”

She didn’t finish her sentence, didn’t need to, they both knew what it meant. Silence stretched between them, only broken by the sound of a log cracking in the fireplace. When the dragon spoke again his voice wasn’t thunderous nor loud, it wasn’t “ dragon-like ”; it was soft, barely a whisper, with a hint of sadness to it, and something else. Empathy? Pity? Most people pitied her.

“I didn’t realize humans still followed the old ways. And they call us beasts… Very well, I can see how this agreement would benefit you, but what's in it for me?” “It is my understanding that a dragon’s reputation among his peers is correlated to the size of his hoard and his ability to keep a princess captive.” She started, glad her voice didn’t betray any of her fear. “Your hoard is rumored to be quite impressive, but you never…”

She hesitated for a while, she needed to be careful with her words, she had insulted him once, it would be a mistake to do it again, dragons weren’t known for being magnanimous. Still, there wasn’t exactly a pleasant term to describe the situation, ‘prisoner’ seemed a bit excessive considering she was offering to be locked away in a tower of her own free will. Well, maybe not locked away, and there was no tower…but ‘guest’ would be most inappropriate. Hosts had duties towards their guests, she could not insinuate that he’d owe her anything.

“You’ve never ‘harbored’ a princess before”, she finally settled on. “I suppose you find the task bothersome, fending off knights can be quite tiring, believe me, I know.”

He laughed, barely a huff, but she heard it, and she liked it. It spurred her on, and she smiled in return. Maybe their shared disdain for knights could bring them to a quid pro quo.

“I'm the thirteenth princess of the sand kingdom, hardly the golden prize, and even if a knight wanted to risk it all, well, rumor has it your hoard is made of books…” she let her eyes wander around the room, her stare landing on yet a precarious tower of volumes, minutes away from collapsing on the ground. “Not exactly the type of treasure knights tend to seek out. They're not very well-read. So you see, this agreement would benefit both of us.”

His eyes narrowed at her as he studied her. His stare was neither cold nor disdainful, but calculating. He was appraising her, measuring her worth and deciding whether she was worth the hassle; and for those interminable seconds, she held her breath in anticipation of his response.

“I can clean too. And sing.” She hastened to add. “I'm fairly good at enchanting animals. I could sing the rats away from your books.”

He huffed once more, amused at her outburst.

“No need to oversell it, Princess. You have yourself a deal.”

#FFxivWrite2021 #FFxivWrite #ffxiv #ffxiv fanfiction #estinien x wol #Estinien Wyrmblood #my writing #soulmate AU #AU #dragon Estinien is the hill I'll die on

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aethelflaedladyofmercia · 4 years

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Time - Good Omens Fic

Goal was to write three fics for this weeks @bingokisses prompts. Well, I got two! The first is “Time” a Night At Crowley’s Flat/Pre-Body-Swap/Wing Grooming fic. It’s for the prompt “Wrist kisses” which I had twice on my card, the first paired with “Wing Grooming.” I’m going to do edits before I move this to AO3, so let me know if anything sounds off!

“So that’s it.” Crowley lounged against the wall, arms crossed. Not looking at Aziraphale. Not looking at anything.

“Yes. I pretend to be you, you pretend to be me. Hellfire. Holy water. We survive.”

It wasn’t easy, keeping his voice steady. Aziraphale mostly managed it by not looking at Crowley, not thinking to hard about it, acting as though the entire problem were simply some clever logic problem. Most certainly by not imagining what would happen if they failed.

“Don’t like it.”

“Come now,” he tried to smile. “Let’s not start over again. We’ve considered every angle. The plan works, and it’s our – our best chance.”

Crowley grunted as if regretting his promise already. “Not going to argue. Just. Don’t like it.” He’d been belligerent since the moment Aziraphale had suggested the swap, inspired by his own recent experience with discorporation. He’d expected Crowley to dislike the idea, but the demon had fought against it, tooth and nail, every step of the planning process.

Not that Aziraphale didn’t have his own doubts. He’d struggled to keep them at bay since stepping off the bus. Now he pressed his hands together, ordering them not to tremble, as the fear started to grow in his gut, building, pushing out into his limbs and his heart.

Choose your faces wisely – that was clear enough. But playing with Fyre could mean many things, only one of which Crowley was immune to. What if he’d missed something? What if there was more to it?

What if the prophecy wasn’t intended to save both of them?

He imagined Michael’s sword, blade aflame, swinging towards Crowley while he was bound to a chair—

It wasn’t a noise, just a sharp intake of breath as he pulled himself back to reality, but it was as loud as a scream in the silent room. Crowley’s head snapped around, eyes pinning the angel through his dark glasses. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“Nothing.” Oh, his voice didn’t sound certain at all, his eyes still burned in the imagined light of Heavenly swords. Aziraphale cleared his throat and tried again, but no words at all came out this time, just a strained squeak.

Heaven would see this coming, surely. They would suspect as soon as Crowley stepped into the flames. He needed to outsmart them, needed to think of the next step, and the next, a hundred moves ahead, but he didn’t have time…

“Angel.” Crowley’s voice was sharp, a whip crack cutting through the silent room, and Aziraphale cringed, huddling into himself instinctively. “Bless it, Aziraphale, if you’re having doubts too, we need to rethink this. There’s still time, we can – can take off, be out past the Oort Cloud before either side notices. I know plenty of stars they’d never think to look.”

“Crowley, no. We’ve been over this already.” His voice didn’t sound calm but at least it wasn’t breaking anymore. “We can’t hide forever, they’ll – they’ll find us eventually.”

“I’d rather they chase us across the galaxy than – than stand around waiting for them to grab us. At least we’d have a chance. At least we’d have time.”

Aziraphale wanted that. Time. More than anything, he wanted time to think, to plan, to prepare. To stand beside Crowley and not be afraid.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? There was no future if they ran, no earth, no them, just this one terrifying moment, stretched on and on for eternity, poised forever at the last moment before the attack. Always waiting. Always afraid. He couldn’t take a life of this, he couldn’t even take one night of this.

He was so lost in his own thoughts – torn between wanting time and wanting it to be over – that he didn’t even notice Crowley’s approach until the hand landed on his shoulder. It wasn’t rough – it was the gentlest touch, barely felt through his jacket – but the suddenness of it startled Aziraphale, making him stumble away.

“Crowley! There’s no need – I’m – please—”

“You aren’t fine, don’t try to tell me you’re fine,” he spat. Then, in a lower voice, “Talk to me.”

It was too much. Already he’d nearly given in to the fear, but this – this moment of concern – it tugged at him, threatening to break his last thread of dignity, of control, and that was the only thing keeping him going right now.

“There’s nothing more to discuss.” He tugged at his waistcoat, trying to school his expression. “And if – if you’re just going to argue, I’d rather you left me in peace.”

“Aziraphale…” A warning.

“I mean it, Crowley.” He interrupted, fighting to keep his mind from shattering. “That’s enough. Go!”

Crowley spun away, with a noise halfway between a snort and a snarl, and stalked through the enormous revolving door, disappearing into the next room.

Leaving Aziraphale alone with his thoughts.

Crowley glared at his trembling plants, burying his fingers in leaves, tugging at them for any sign of weakness, of spots or yellowing, any imperfections. But he didn’t really see them.

His mind kept shifting, jumping between a bookshop in flames, a voice in a bar, and the sudden appearance of Aziraphale at the airbase. A hurricane of worry and relief and fear and longing with nothing remotely like calm at its center.

He wanted to run to Aziraphale. Override all his objections, drag him away. Haul him off this world, to the stars, to Andromeda, to the farthest corner of the universe, far from the beings that wanted to hurt them, had hurt them again and again for thousands of years.

It wasn’t the first time. He’d wanted to at the airbase, run up, grab Aziraphale by the lapels. Make sure he was unharmed, shout at him to stop taking foolish risks. The same at the church in 1941, the Bastille in 1793, again and again, across centuries of companionship –

Wanted to reach out, pull him close, promise that everything would work out.

But he didn’t. Couldn’t. Never could. Maybe never would.

He’d always blamed it on their sides, needing to stay apart to stay safe. But he didn’t have that excuse anymore, did he? And that’s all it was. An excuse.

It was Crowley’s nature to be cold and distant. Aloof. Project coolness and confidence so that no one could see what lay underneath, the shattered worthless wreck of demon. Keep them all at arm’s length, even the being he least wanted to push away, and where did that leave him?

Alone in his solarium, shredding the weakest leaves off a fig tree, on what could be the last night of his personal eternity.

Had he always been this way?

Crowley didn’t think so. There had been a time when he’d been open, inquisitive, carefree. Long ago, before the Fall, before six thousand years in Hell and on Earth, before he learned…everything.

He could never go back to that. You couldn’t unlearn the truth of the world, once you’d learned it.

One glance over his shoulder, back at the door. He could go back. Apologize. Open himself up to the one being he knew would never hurt him. Say the words that had sat on his tongue for countless centuries.

He could, but he wouldn’t. Not tonight. He needed time. Time to get his head on straight, to learn to be honest with himself, to know what it was he even wanted.

And time was the one thing he didn’t have.

Aziraphale rested his hand on the door frame, wishing he had the courage to step through.

It was his own fault, of course. He’d pushed Crowley away. As he always did. It was easier.

He didn’t belong here, among humans, beside a demon. Simple fact: he was an angel, and he belonged in Heaven. There was no place else an angel could exist and feel whole and happy.

That, he’d always told himself, was why he had this aching emptiness inside – because he was far from his home, corrupted by earthly influences. A degraded angel.

Heaven talked a great deal about love. Angels love Creation, they love the humans, they love God most of all; they love each other, and they love him. In spite of all his flaws, he was constantly reminded, they loved him.

And he believed it. For a long time, he believed, because not believing was dangerous, and painful, and terrifyingly. And because, well…because that’s what he believed love was. How was he supposed to think otherwise? It was the only thing he ever knew.

But six thousand years on Earth slowly eroded his ignorance. He saw humans develop friendships, saw them fall in love, saw them care for their children, their parents. Saw some become cruel, or manipulative, or negligent; saw others be loyal, and warm, and welcoming even to strangers.

He learned all the ways that love could be expressed. All the things that masqueraded as it. What it could look like. What it should look like.

And even then, he could keep pretending that he found that in the cold, distant praise of Heaven, but only so long as he could pretend he didn’t find it anywhere else. That he didn’t have a being in his life who always supported him, always stood by him, never made him feel flawed or broken, never abandoned him.

Even now, when it might mean destruction for both of them, still at his side.

In the face of that, how could he ever believe that Heaven loved him?

He pushed the thought away, back into the dark recesses of his mind, where he’d carefully hidden it from himself for longer than the lifetime of civilizations. It was still a dangerous thought, a dangerous word. A distraction.

It wasn’t the time for such things.

He had to put their survival before everything else. It meant staying here and facing their former sides head-on, not running away and waiting to be caught. It meant deceiving Heaven and Hell, not angering them from some foolish desire to fight or take revenge. And it meant facing the challenge with cool logical minds not clouded by any newly acknowledged emotions. It made sense.

The best thing he could do for himself, for Crowley, was to keep his distance tonight.

I need a new plant mister.

For ten minutes, Crowley had managed to keep himself focused on pruning the trees, silently clearing out some leaves or stems to make room for new growth. The emotions raged somewhere deep inside, but the surface was as calm as ever. But then he noticed the echeveria was a little dry, went to give it a bit of water, and realized the bottle was gone.

Hastur had destroyed his plant mister, and he needed a new one.

He could simply manifest one, he supposed, as easily as he’d created the pruning shears. But the ones at the corner shop were so cheap, it was easier to just grab one on the way to Aziraphale’s bookshop, and take a few moments to see what new sprouts had arrived, then stop over at the bakery for some coffee and one of those crispy pastries.

Except.

Except there wasn’t a bookshop anymore, was there?

Which meant he wouldn’t be heading over tomorrow, or the next day, or ever again.

No more surprise breakfasts before the first customers of the day. No more late nights sharing a dozen bottles of wine and arguing about philosophy. No more perusing the poetry section when Aziraphale wasn’t looking, or thumbing through the latest illustrated guides to botany or astronomy that always found their way onto the shelf beside his sofa.

No more secretive walks in the park to share secrets and feed ducks. No more shoddy pretenses for a weekend drive. No more weaving the Bentley through four lanes of traffic.

The world had ended, but only for him and Aziraphale.

It wasn’t fair.

After everything they’d done, everything they’d suffered to save the world, they still lost everything and it wasn’t fair!

The knot of emotions he’d been holding back broke free in a flash, flooding him faster than he could control it. With a shout he hurled the little plant at the wall, cracking the pot, spilling soil everywhere. Then he grabbed the aloe vera, the orchids, the antherium. One after the other, thrown against the wall, the floor, the window.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He screamed, pulling over the umbrella tree, shredding all its leaves. “All of you! You worthless pieces of shit!” He kicked over a dragon tree. “You had your fucking chance! No more excuses, no more second chances.” A glass bowl full of air plants; he snatched it up and smashed it hard against the table, shards spinning off in every direction. “Make your fucking peace with the soil, because every one of you is—”

“Crowley!”

He spun around to find Aziraphale watching, wide-eyed, from the doorway.

Fuck.

Well. That’s the end of that, he supposed. After that sort of display, Aziraphale wouldn’t want anything to do with him ever again.

He clenched his fist, turning away, but that sent a sharp pain through his hand. Hissing, Crowley looked down to find a shard of glass, stuck in the side of his hand. Of course. Exactly what this day needed.

“Are you hurt?”

He shot a glare at the angel, suddenly beside him.

“Just a scratch. Leave me alone.”

Aziraphale’s hand landed lightly on his wrist, pulling the hand over for closer inspection. “You need to be more careful, Crowley.” He ran his thumb lightly up the side of Crowley’s palm and the little triangle of glass fell free.

“I’m not going to – to die from a little cut, Aziraphale.”

He’d meant it as a joke, of a sort, but Aziraphale’s hand tightened around his. “Don’t.” The angel’s thumb brushed across the cut, making it disappear in a small burst of healing. “You need to be more careful.”

“It’s a bit late for careful.” He tried to pull his hand away, but Aziraphale ignored it, bending over as if to inspect his palm for damage. “Look, Angel…”

“What a mess!” Aziraphale tutted. “An absolute disgrace.” But he hadn’t so much as glanced at the graveyard of ruined plants all over the floor. Instead, he was inspecting Crowley’s nails. “And you expect me to go out wearing these tomorrow?”

“You’re one to talk. I saw the state of your wings earlier. Have you groomed them this millennium?”

“Even if I hadn’t, it still wouldn’t compare to this – this—” He held up Crowley’s hand, nails caked with dirt, cracked, uneven. “I thought you took pride in your appearance.”

“I’ve been a bit busy.” Crowley snatched his hand back and tried to walk away.

“I don’t want an argument tonight.”

“Then stop trying to start one!” He took a deep breath. “If it bothers you that much, I’ll go take a shower. You wait in the kitchen, or wherever you want.” He glanced around at the mess he’d made. “Don’t bother cleaning. No point, is there?”

“Crowley, stop!”

“It was ‘go’ before, now you want me to stop? Make up your blasted mind.” But Crowley stood still, glaring at him. “What is it? What do you want?”

“I want to take care of those nails.”

“You what?” But Aziraphale’s face was dead serious, set in his most stubborn frown. “Look, you fussy bastard, this isn’t – we don’t have time for this!”

“You have somewhere else to be tonight?” But when his hands reached for Aziraphale’s again, the touch was strangely gentle. “Let me take care of these. Please.”

The demon groaned, but what was he supposed to do? Not say yes? “Fine. If you insist.”

Crowley stared at Aziraphale, sitting cross-legged on his bed. Between them was a bowl of warm water, an array of tiny torture implements, and a towel, which Aziraphalehad used to briskly brush the dirt from Crowley’s fingers. Now he held the demon’s right hand, turning it this way and that to inspect each nail in the light of his halo.

“That’s a little better,” Aziraphale murmured, picking up the clippers and starting to trim.

“You know, I can do this myself.”

“Can you? Really?” It was strange, having his hand held this way. Entirely in Aziraphale’s power, unable to move, yet it was only the lightest pressure, really. Firm, but gentle. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you chewed them.”

“Only when they break.”

“That isn’t funny. Look at this.” He lowered Crowley’s right hand and picked up the left, pinching the thumb between his fingers. “Just look!”

“Looks like a thumb.”

Another tsk, and Aziraphale set to clipping again, not trimming each nail as low as he could (as Crowley usually did), but instead quickly removing the sharp edges or cracked portions, leaving a few millimeters on each. When he was satisfied, he picked up an emery board. Crowley expected him to start scrubbing roughly, sandpapering his nails smooth. Instead, with a few quick delicate motions, he reshaped each nail into a perfect oval. Now and then, he paused to scrape underneath with the point of a nail file.

“What is this, anyway?” He held up the tip of the file, covered in hard flakes of black residue. “I thought it was soil, but it isn’t the right consistency.”

Crowley gulped. He remembered charging into a burning shop. Driving for almost an hour in a flaming car. Falling to the ground at the airbase more than once—

“Dunno,” he said weakly. “Could be – lots of things…”

Aziraphale’s hands hesitated over Crowley’s smallest finger, and he could see how the emery board trembled. Yeah, you’re cleaning the last of your bookshop out of my nails. How does that feel? Crowley wished he had something comforting to say, but he just felt hollow. The day had left him without anything to offer.

With a deep breath, Aziraphale steadied his grip and got back to work.

“Why?” Cowley found himself saying, as the angel moved back to his right hand. “Why are you wasting your time on this?” On me?

“Don’t be foolish. Time spent with you is never wasted.” Blue eyes flickered up again to catch his gaze before focusing on the nails once more. “Although I do wish you’d put a little effort into basic maintenance without my needing to nag you.”

“But—” He bit his words off, not knowing what to say. “Why?”

“Why? Why? You spend an hour every day on that ridiculous hair, not to mention weeks spent putting together your – your ‘new look’ every few years. I would think you’d agree that personal grooming is its own reward.”

“No, I…” He watched the long, thin board move back and forth. His fingers were curved slightly in Aziraphale’s grip, pinned in place by his thumb. “I just thought you’d want to be alone.”

Silence for the length of two fingers. “Why on Earth would you think that?”

His stomach was hard as a rock, twisting with emotions he couldn’t name. “I…I’ve been awful,” Crowley confessed. “All night long, since we got back, I argued, I snapped at you. Threw a tantrum. The other day, I shoved you against a wall. And…and this morning I called you stupid…I’d think you’d want to be as far from me as possible.”

“As I recall, you were the one who wanted to abandon me for the stars.”

“No…” But he had said that, hadn’t he? “I didn’t…I wouldn’t really…”

“Oh, hush.” Aziraphale frowned and moved to the last nail. “I’ve known you for six thousand years, Crowley, I’m well aware you have a temper. I have never held against you the things you said, or did, when you were angry.”

I have plenty of other people to ‘fraternize’ with. I don’t need you.

“Never?”

“Never.” Aziraphale put down the file and pressed Crowley’s hands between both of his. “I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear.”

He lowered Crowley’s hands into the bowl of warm water. Aziraphale had added some sort of soap, and it clung thickly to his fingers in a pleasant way.

“Still…I don’t like you to…to see me like that…”

“You’ve seen me at my worst,” Aziraphale reminded him. “Do you think less of me?”

His worst? Crowley couldn’t even imagine what that would mean. The embarrassing smile as he showed off his latest magic act or shouted encouragement at the actors in a play? The possessive gleam when he saw a priceless first edition, whether one of his own or one he was about to acquire? His incorruptible desire to see the good in absolutely everyone, even Gabriel, even Crowley?

“No,” he whispered as his heart surged anew. “No, I never have.”

Aziraphale nodded, watching Crowley’s hands as they soaked in the water. “It’s good, you know, to-to have a simple ritual in a time of stress. Something you can walk through, step by step. Unhindered by, ah, by emotions. Very calming.”

“I do feel a little better,” Crowley admitted.

“I expect you do. But…I meant for myself.” He lifted Crowley’s hands free of the water and gently patted them with the towel. “I’m…I’m…well, I’m rather convinced I’m going to let you down tomorrow. Not play my part well, or…or lose my nerve…or overlook some vital clue…”

Crowley felt the tremors in Aziraphale’s hands before he suddenly pulled away, fingers twisting in the towel, pressing it against his mouth. But he couldn’t hide the wave of emotion that overtook him before Crowley’s eyes.

“Angel!” Crowley grabbed his shoulders, newly manicured fingers feeling more sensitive against the fabric of his shirt. “Aziraphale look at me.” Slowly, the blue eyes came back into focus. “We don’t have to do this.”

“We do. Crowley, it’s the only way.” The towel crumpled further as he crushed it in his grip. “I – I – I won’t – I’ll find a way, I just need to – to buck up…”

“Are you scared?”

“What? No, I – I—”

“Because I am.” Crowley let go with one hand to pull his glasses free, toss them aside, then reached up to brush the back of Aziraphale’s hand. “Have been for…longer than I can remember, but then I lost you. Last night, and this morning, and then…the fire…” He swallowed. “And you know what? Each time it felt more real and more painful than before, and I don’t…I can’t…”

His gut heaved. The hollowness he’d felt after the fire opened again, threatening to devour him, permanently this time. “Aziraphale. I am more terrified right now than I’ve ever been in my life, and I don’t know how to stop it. So. If you’re scared…that’s fine.”

The towel fell, and Aziraphale took Crowley’s hand in both of his again, but this time clinging to it, clutching it, pressing Crowley’s fingers against his lips where the towel had been a moment before. Crowley reached with his free hand and…what? Touch his face? His hair? What was he supposed to do?

Before he could decide, Aziraphale seemed to blink his eyes clear and look again at Crowley’s nails. “Just a few hangnails to trim, and then we’re done.”

“Nh. Yeah.” He settled more comfortably. “Whatever you want.”

Aziraphale held Crowley’s hand, carefully massaging moisturizer across his palm, between his fingers, and into his nail beds. Memorizing the shape of them, the knobby knuckles, the veins on the back of his hands.

He’d wanted to do this once before, when the thoughts that needed to be hidden, even from himself, had threatened to overwhelm him. 1941. He’d longed to sit Crowley down and wash his feet, check them for burns and injury after his walk across hallowed ground. Let the activity distract his mind from the thoughts and emotions he couldn’t afford to acknowledge, and just be there, in the moment, caring for Crowley. Appreciating him. Holding him.

It was just as well he hadn’t attempted it back then; evidence tonight suggested it didn’t work.

He ran his thumbs across Crowley’s palm one last time, smoothing in the moisturizer, feeling the skin plump up, taking note of the calluses here and there just below the fingers. He didn’t want to let go.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, when his fingers had lingered perhaps a bit too long. He looked up to meet the demon’s golden eyes. They were soft tonight, and vulnerable, and filled with pain that tugged at his heart. But that pain seemed to be fading, replaced by…by one of the things Aziraphale was not supposed to be naming. What with the thunderous pounding of his heart in his chest and the blood in his ears, Aziraphale almost missed Crowley’s next words: “Thank you.”

Very suddenly, his heart went absolutely still.

“You…you’ve never…said thank you.”

“Grave oversight.” Crowley turned his hands over, running his thumb across his newly manicured nails. “This is…yeah, this is nice.”

“Ah. Well.” Aziraphale waved a hand, neatly teleporting his supplies into a different room. It was his usual method of cleaning up – eventually, things would wind up where they were supposed to be – but he realized alarmingly late that this now meant he and Crowley were simply sitting on a bed together. “I…I suppose I should thank you. For, ah, for indulging me—”

“Should I…return the favor?”

“Ah!” He snatched his hands against his chest, as if afraid Crowley would steal them entirely. Well. That wasn’t quite what he was afraid of. “Return? How – how would you – Crowley, my nails are – are already in tip-top shape, and you wouldn’t—”

“Your wings. Like I said,” Crowley went on, familiar sharp edge slipping into his tone, “absolute mess. You’re one to talk about grooming, carrying around two disasters like that.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale was about to snap something else, but his eyes accidentally met the demon’s, and there was nothing mocking about them at all. Anxious, shy, almost waiting to be hurt. Did he always hide that expression behind his glasses?

“I, ah…I’ve never…how do we do this?”

Crowley’s eyes went wide. “Ngk. Unh. I mean. Sit there or…or maybe…lay down? On your stomach?”

“Ah, yes, I wouldn’t want to – to get tired, holding them up.” Aziraphale stretched out across the top of the duvet, resting his cheek on one of the pitch-black pillows, and extended his wings.

He could have sworn he heard a heavy breath – maybe a gasp, maybe a sigh. “Just as I thought. Look at this utter disgrace. When was the last time you preened?”

“Well, as I never walk around with them out—” Aziraphale was cut off by an impossibly gentle touch, two fingers brushing lightly across the leading edge of his wing. It felt…good, an electric shiver that ran down his wing and up his spine.

“Oh! S-sorry.” Crowley sounded embarrassed, which was something Aziraphale had never heard before. “I shouldn’t have…is this alright?”

“Yes. It’s…it’s very much alright.” He wrapped his arms around the pillow, feeling the need to brace himself, and stretched his left wing slightly. “Please, continue.”

The touch of Crowley’s palms against his wings was electrifying, yes, but also gentle, soothing. He carefully explored down the length of them, not stirring any feathers yet, just learning the ways they lay against each other, where they grew thick, where the flight feathers emerged. Aziraphale could feel the feathers that were out of place now – they snagged and tugged against Crowley’s hands, bunching in the wrong spots. Uncomfortable, the way sitting in a chair too long could be uncomfortable without even noticing.

“You’re lucky you didn’t need to fly,” Crowley remarked, scolding, as if it was an everyday risk, instead of something that hadn’t come up in five thousand years. His fingers now flicked around the shortest patch of Aziraphale’s coverts, just shy of the leading edge, finding one of the culprits. Manicured fingertips burrowed deep into white feathers, hot against the skin and muscle beneath, and with a few quick but gentle scratches twitched it back into position. “Does this hurt?”

“No…That feels…” Crowley traced the feather from base to tip, pushing the barbs back into the correct alignment. A few more strokes ensured it lay, flat and neat, alongside the rest.

“One down, dozens more to go. And that’s just this side. Hope you’re comfortable.”

He was, though. Aziraphale closed his eyes, sinking into the gentle rhythm as Crowley moved – feather by feather – across his wing, setting each to rights. He felt as though a burden were being lifted, the worry in his stomach slowly unknotting, bit by imperceptible bit, as if the world were fading away, leaving nothing but that touch.

By the time Crowley reached Aziraphale’s alula feathers, the pain in his gut was gone. As he worked his way back across the primary coverts towards the scapulars, Aziraphale began to forget what he’d been worried about. Then the warm fingers ran down the first of his flight feathers, and time stopped entirely.

Crowley had never imagined Aziraphale’s feathers could feel so different from his own, but they did, so soft and delicate he would have believed they were pieces of clouds if not for the warmth that emanated through them.

Was it because angel feathers were somehow more pure? Or was it simply a matter of familiarity – that his fingers had stopped even noticing the texture of his own wings?

He was nearly finished. Really, he was done already, but his hands still glided across coverts and primaries, feeling for anything out of place, any excuse to delay longer.

“Right there, please.” Aziraphale suddenly interrupted. “Just…just a little itch. Could you…?”

“Got it.” Crowley let his fingers sink in again, scratching gently at the base of a feather. “Here?”

Aziraphale just murmured in relief, a little sigh. Crowley had knelt beside him to better reach the wing, but now Aziraphale shifted, pressing their hips together. “This feels simply marvelous.”

“Y-yeah,” Crowley said, clearing his throat. “S’why you’re supposed to do it regularly.”

“I should have asked you to, years ago.”

Crowley smoothed the feathers back into place. He was finished. It was time. Time to switch and part ways, possibly forever.

He didn’t lift his fingers from the edge of Aziraphale’s wing.

“Would you have?” Crowley wondered, surprising himself to hear the words out loud. “Would you have let me, if I’d asked?”

Stirring, Aziraphale tucked his wings away, all that glorious heat vanishing to another plane. He rolled over and considered Crowley, but didn’t sit up yet. “I’m not sure. I…I would have wanted to. But…well…”

“And if I’d – I’d asked for other things?”

“I don’t know. Would you have asked? If I’d indicated my interest?”

Somewhere, the sun was rising. Somewhere, the day was starting. Time, never any time.

“I don’t know,” Crowley confessed, the words ripped from his soul. And then, not letting himself think, he fell forward, onto the pillows.

Aziraphale caught him, pulled him into an embrace. “I want to find out, Crowley. What we are. What we can be. I wish…I wish…”

Long fingers reached up to cradle Aziraphale’s cheek. “I know, Angel. I know. We’ll get our chance.”

Aziraphale nodded, though the tears in his eyes said he didn’t believe it. A brush of fingers on the back of Crowley’s hand, and Aziraphale turned to kiss his palm, his wrist. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I wasted our time. And now…”

“No, you didn’t waste anything.” He pulled Aziraphale roughly against his chest. “You hear me? Nothing. I’m…I’m glad for every moment we had.”

The angel didn’t respond, just sobbed, once, face pressed into Crowley’s shirt.

“Shhh. We’ll survive this. I swear it. And then we’ll have eternity to figure this out. Alright? You and me. And…and things will be different this time. I’ll be different.”

“Don’t you dare,” Aziraphale said, his arms locking behind Crowley, strong enough to break his spine. “Don’t you change a thing, Crowley. I don’t want anything to be different.”

“Really? You’re happy with how things were?”

“Oh, yes.” Aziraphale pushed back, just enough to meet Crowley’s gaze, eyes wide and wet and earnest. “So…so very happy, when we were together.”

“Well, then.” Crowley bent forward, resting his lips on the top of Aziraphale’s head. “That’s what we’ll do, yeah? Be together. Forever.”

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #ineffable husbands #Wings #crowley's flat #aziraphale and crowley #angst #good omens angst #emotional h/c #pre-body swap #night at crowley's flat #aziraphale #crowley #manicure #tumblr fic #my writing

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1kook · 4 years

Text

acatalepsy

— 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐰𝐨 ; 𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐦

chapter summary; The amount of times he’s seen you stretch yourself thin for this place was unreal. Jungkook liked Oleander as much as the next person, but occasionally he’d get hit with doubts. What would they do once the entity found them? Jungkook thinks he’d run. He’d take you and run far away, leaving this whole place behind. He’ll never tell you this, though, because he knew you loved Oleander too much. And if you didn’t, the responsibilities that tied you to it would never let you abandon the people like that anyway. overall warnings; gorey scenes, depictions of death, appearance of weapons, survival!au, apocalypse!au, super l o o s e bird box!au (no birds - jk is the bird 👀), eventual smut, dark and angsty, major character death chapter specifics; nudity, mentions of masturbation, unreal levels of horniness from jungkook, mentions of death, 1 fight scene, use of weapons, jungkook abusing tf outta pet names, loads of pessimistic jungkook word count; 10k

notes; as always ty to my amazing editor rumu 🥺<333 this part isn't as dark as part one, but anyway enjoy in love but on edge jungkook lmao

part one ⇠ part two ⇢ part three (soon!)

[ twelve months later]

“Rise and shine!” Taehyung sings, ripping the flap of his tent open for the world (the base) to see, sunlight filtering in through the gap like the trickling of water over a brook. Satisfied with the disruption, Taehyung flounces off to wake another poor soul from their sleep, leaving Jungkook to fend against the rays of the sun by himself. There’s a breeze this morning, one that makes the flimsy flaps bristle with each gush of wind, sunlight roving over him in intervals that leave Jungkook groaning in annoyance.

He can only stand it for so long, eventually rolling off his sleeping bag when he hears more voices outside beginning to grunt, the pop of bones as people do their morning stretches. With a final yawn, Jungkook decides to show his face to the outside world, stumbling out of his tent with sleep crusted eyes that have him bumping into a kid first thing in the morning, a slew of apologies thrown his way.

“Sorry, Jungkook!” The group of them call, skirting off in a fit of giggles. Jungkook waves them off, stretching his arms out in front of him as he waits for Namjoon to wake up.

The man in the tent next door is usually pretty good at rising before Taehyung’s wake up call, more often than not waiting for Jungkook. Today, however, is seemingly an off day. Five minutes roll by and Jungkook's patience is as long as his pinky— short. Such is proven when he barges into the tent only to find Namjoon sprawled out like a starfish inside.

“Hey,” he says, nudging his foot against the unconscious man’s calf. “Joon, we gotta go if you wanna get the good spot by the river.” More silence. Eventually, Jungkook gets mean and leans down to pinch his side, an action that not only wakes Namjoon, but also has him squealing at the touch.

“I’m up, I’m up,” he gasps, scrambling far away from Jungkook in a frenzied rush. Only after he’s knocked over his plastic bottle and the makeshift twig drying rack he dries his clothes and towel on does he calm down. “Oh, Kook. It’s you.”

Jungkook nods, eyes struggling to stay awake. “Yes, it is I, Jungkook, who would love to take a bath before __ yells at me for being late to breakfast again.”

Namjoon grunts as he gets up, taking his towel and day clothes with him as they exit his tent. At the creek, Jungkook drops his boxers—one of the four he owns and wears on rotation—and has to endure three minutes of Seokjin catcalling him. Him and some other fellow are guarding the creek bed today, guns cradled against their chests as Jungkook, Namjoon, and a few more people crawl into the water.

When Jungkook had first arrived, the thought of bathing with so many people made him uncomfortable. His nude form wasn’t something he went around showing everyone, and now he was expected to just show it to a bunch of strangers? Even worse, the people who stood guard against the river, eyes peeled for any potential threats. It all made him very nervous.

Now Seokjin’s calculated expression as he glances over the treeline behind them comforts Jungkook. The world was weird like that.

“Holy shit,” Jungkook groans, the same way he does every other day they bathe, muscles jumping at the cold water that tickles his toes. He sighs as he walks deeper into the freezing coldness. He rinses himself off, half heartedly splashing his body with water; at its deepest it only reaches above his knee.

Namjoon is off today, probably from the extended watch they had last night, eyes scanned over the dark forest as they waited for you and some other people to return from a scavenging trip that took about three days. It was just before dawn when you returned and his replacements relieved them of their duties. When they sit down to wash their hair, he nearly falls face first into Jungkook’s knee.

Jungkook cackles at the sight, trying to pretend like his nipples aren’t freezing as he fully envelopes himself in the water. “You alright, man?” He asks, running his fingernails through his hair. A couple of the people bathing further down the creek get up and leave, dressing by the bank. He knew they were a little late today, but Jesus, were they fast or what?

Namjoon nods, and the poor guy doesn’t even have the energy to defend himself when Jungkook childishly slaps a wave of water his way. “Just tired,” he admits, beginning to wash his own hair. With most of the people finished, Seokjin lets the other guard go early, leaving just the three of them at the creek.

“Hurry it up, ladies,” Seokjin calls, and Jungkook is only a little disappointed that his splash doesn’t reach him all the way over by his perch.

Luckily, before he can retort, there’s a silkier voice drifting through his ears, one that immediately makes every hair on his body stand straight. “What are you trying to say about ladies, Seokjin?” You ask as you come up behind him, and Jungkook is immediately flooded with warmth at your early morning appearance. Seokjin flounders for an answer you pay no mind to, eyes snapping to where Jungkook is instead.

“Need you at the armory in five, Kook,” you tell him, and he wonders if you know the way your voice makes his chest pound.

Pushing those juvenile thoughts away, Jungkook quickly slaps on a goofy grin for you. “Oh? You hear that, boys? Our great leader needs some alone time with me,” he boasts, and Namjoon rolls his eyes at his antics.

“She’d rather choke than be with a pleb like you,” Seokjin snorts, finally dropping his guard stance as Namjoon and him get out of the water. “Jesus, Kook—again?” He groans, covering your eyes with his rifle as Jungkook stands up, half-hard boner and all.

He’s grown used to it, the occasional hard on he gets in the water, like he’s some superhuman who’s developed immunity to the usual effects of cold water on a hard dick. But he can’t help it, it’s been over a year since he last got his dick wet, and being disgustingly in love with a woman who didn’t know certainly didn’t help. “What’s wrong?” You frown, hand wrapping around the barrel of Seokjin’s gun that blocks your vision.

Namjoon tosses him his towel, and he’s just knotted it around his waist when you catch his eye again, unimpressed as usual. “Don’t worry about it, baby,” he teases, turning his body away from you as he shimmies his clothes on. He can still feel your glare on his exposed backside, but living in Oleander has made him comfortable in his birthday suit, so he really doesn’t mind. When he’s halfway dressed, pant legs haphazardly stuffed into the big, chunky boots Namjoon had brought back for him once, he turns around, shirt tossed over his bare shoulder, to follow you back to the base.

“And you’re requesting my presence so early in the morning, why?” He hums, toweling his hair dry as the two of you finally reach Oleander. There’s significantly more people milling about now, kids playing a game of soccer in the middle of the grounds, while others travel to and from the mess hall. There’s a wonderful scent emanating from the mess hall’s open front, and Jungkook wishes desperately you’ll lead him there instead.

You don’t, politely bidding people good morning until you reach the door to the armory, waving Jungkook in. “Needed you,” you explain, clattering around the space in search for something. The armory has gotten some pretty good upgrades in the past year he’s been here, graduating from a shabby box to full on storage container. It took a while to get it to this size, the wood working process more difficult than any of them thought, but they were all proud of it now.

Over the past year, Oleander has grown in size, a fact which causes great turmoil in Jungkook. On one hand, he’s glad he and the others have been able to save more people, take them under their wings in this scary new world. On the other, he feels like he’s always on edge.

It was a known fact that the entity was drawn to established civilizations, and with each new person that joined, Jungkook is left wondering what exactly that means. The last he heard, they were sitting somewhere near one hundred seventy. That was about one hundred more than when he first arrived. Was there some unknown number they had to avoid? Would the entity sense their presence once they reached two hundred residents, deem them an established society that needed wrecking?

He doesn’t know. They’ve been lucky enough so far, never having been caught by the entity on Oleander grounds. But other groups of scavengers hadn’t. Despite their growing numbers, they’ve lost people as well. Some they knew were caught up by neighboring bases—the Magnolians in particular, who killed on sight—and would return in groups smaller than when they were dispatched. Others never returned at all, presumably infected with the madness.

Nonetheless, Oleander continued to grow. They weren’t a spattering of tents and loose rules anymore, erecting more shabbily constructed buildings along the way. Like a privacy room for a pregnant woman they’d found and another small storage for the vegetables they began growing last fall.

Jungkook groans as he settles into a seat across from you, tugging his shirt over his shoulders. “That’s what I like to hear.”

You level him with an unamused glare, tossing a dirt-caked bullet at him. He catches it in one hand, twirls the bronzed metal between his fingers. “What happened to the quiet guy who couldn’t even look me in the eye?” You huff, pulling up a crate to sit before him.

Jungkook squints at the bullet, finally catching sight of an engraved brand name he’s almost certain they don’t have. “Life,” he murmurs absentmindedly. “Where did you get this?” He asks, finally glancing back at you.

Your arms are crossed over your chest, and he’s come to learn you do this one of two times: one when you’re feeling especially confident, unconsciously garnering everyone’s attention with such a pose, and the other when something is bothering you. Judging by the quirk of your lips, Jungkook guesses it’s the latter.

“Found it on our way back,” you relay, huffing as you recall the memory. Jungkook raises a brow at the news, gesturing for you to elaborate. “By the mouth of the creek.”

That’s a couple miles away, he thinks, sitting back in his seat in a pose that mimics yours. He and Taehyung had spent an entire day following the creek behind the base, traced it miles out until they’d reached a larger river that Jungkook only barely remembered learning about in high school geography. A river meant fish, a revelation that had excited them both after eating nothing but canned foods for the past few months. Of course, you hadn’t been as thrilled when they returned to base hours later, having left without telling anyone. He still remembers the watery sheen to your eyes as you had cursed them to hell and back.

“Our creek?” He asks, just to make sure, and you confirm with a nod. “Damn,” he scoffs, rubbing a hand over his chin in a habit he picked up from Hobi. “We gotta go check it out.”

The handful of bases they stumbled upon this past year were far and few between. Most times, you, their leader, would approach any camps you saw first and meet with their respective leader. They hardly ever interacted with you again, because there was always that looming sense of competition between survivor camps like yours.

In fact, the only group Jungkook could think of that blatantly went out of their way to cause problems was the one that had so lovingly almost beat him to death when he was at his lowest: Magnolia. It feels like a lifetime ago.

You agree. “That’s what I was thinking,” you sigh, raising to your feet. “But I don’t wanna risk anyone getting hurt if it is dangerous, y’know?”

He follows after you, leaning against a folding table he and the guys snatched off some lawn during their last scavenge. A bitch to carry back, but it was definitely worth it. “Yeah, keep it small,” he suggests, running through a list of all their active scavengers in his head. “Maybe five?”

You shake your head, nibbling your lip nervously. “Too risky. I was thinking less.”

“Less?” Jungkook chokes. “Babe, you can’t send a smaller group than that, that’s suicide.” Never mind the fact he and Taehyung had been completely okay with dallying off like that just a few months ago. Semantics Jungkook refuses to acknowledge. “Besides, I don’t think anyone would volunteer for that.”

You glance at him for a moment, and he can visibly see your brain working overtime, before you’re turning away with a determined look on your face. “Listen,” you sigh, hands flat on the table. Jungkook peers down at your twisted features. “I’m not asking anyone to volunteer,” you explain. “I’ll go.”

Jungkook scoffs. “Like hell you will,” he retorts. “And when those fuckers catch you all alone and kill you?” You don’t say a word, lower lip caught between your teeth as you glare down at the bullet.

“Then you move on,” you finally breathe. “Get a new leader. Probably move the camp.”

Jungkook could gouge his eyes out. “Babe, what,” he stresses. “No. You’re not gonna go on a mission like that alone.”

Finally turning away from whatever trance the bullet has you in, you cross your arms over your chest. “Really? And what’s stopping me?”

“Me,” he enforces, stepping into your space. “You aren’t gonna go and confront whatever psycho is out there. Baby, do you even realize how reckless that sounds?”

“I do!” You snap. “Which is why I don’t want other people going.” You step away, rub your fingers against your forehead as you lose yourself in an even deeper train of thought.

“Then I'm going too,” Jungkook announces, whirling away before you can tell him no.

A hand catches his shoulder, forcefully tugging him back around. He’s met with your wide eyes, flickering over his face in worry. “Jungkook, now’s not the time to play hero,” you plead.

He scoffs. “Could say the same to you.”

Groaning you push him away. “Please,” you huff. “Just stay here. It’s probably nothing and I’ll come back after sunset.”

“If it’s nothing then I don't see the issue with me going,” he points out. In the back of his head, he’s vaguely aware he’s volunteering himself for the very same plan he claimed no one would volunteer for just a few moments ago. It was crazy what one woman and a thundering heart could do to him. But he’d follow you on a thousand stupid missions if it meant keeping you safe. “When are we leaving?”

To prevent inciting any panic among the Oleanderians over one bullet, the only person you tell about this trip is Hoseok. Jungkook thinks it’s dumb. Actually, Jungkook thinks this whole idea is pretty dumb, and that they could benefit greatly from taking at least one more person along, even if that person was half-asleep Namjoon.

You don’t share the same sentiment as you haul a tiny bag of supplies over his shoulder, gesturing for Jungkook to get moving.

Right as the two of you step off Oleander grounds, Seokjin’s voice comes barreling around the corner. Jungkook sees the noticeable displeasure in your features as the two of you pause, watching the nurse torpedo towards the two of you. “Where are you two going?” He immediately begins interrogating. You glance at Jungkook who only glances back at you, urging you to respond to Jin. Normally, he would’ve told the guy to simply fuck off. But since this is your secret plan he wants to see what lie you’ll toss out this time.

With an indignant roll of your eyes you turn to face the older man. “I’m taking Jungkook out for some practice,” you fib, and Jungkook is a little offended you would even insinuate he needs more practice. “His knee has been hurting again so we wanna take it slow.”

It’s probably the lamest excuse you can give. Seokjin was well aware of the ache in his knee, caused by years of training on the field and torn ligaments that have long since healed over. He knows everything there is to know about Jungkook’s knee, especially the fact it only hurt after a scavenging trip, and as far as he was concerned, Jungkook hadn’t gone on a trip in the past two weeks.

“Uh huh,” Seokjin says, and Jungkook can tell he doesn’t believe the words coming out of your mouth for one second.

At this point, he’s desperate to start down the creek, prove there truly is no harm down there as you suspect, and whisk you back to the O quickly. If that means he has to put the charm on Seokjin, then that’s fine by him.

“Listen, big guy,” Jungkook steps forward, pushing you behind him. “Me and the boss are gonna get some practice,” a greasy wink he’s glad you don’t see, “if you know what I mean. So do me a solid and lay off this once?”

Jungkook’s excuse only makes Seokjin even more wary, but sensing he won’t get a serious answer out of the two of you, he backs off. “Fine,” he agrees, stepping away. He throws a glance over at you, “let me know if this sleaze tries anything with you.”

You nod, tugging Jungkook down towards the creek bed hastily. “Really? That was your best excuse?” You snap with a unbelieving look in your eye. “Another sexual joke?”

Jungkook shrugs. “What can I say? It’s my brand,” he halfheartedly defends, soon falling into step beside you as you hurry alongside the creek bed. He doesn’t see the need to rush, considering this will most likely be a long trip.

It takes about three and half hours to get to the huge river the creek trickles into. The long distance is the main reason fish hadn’t become completely integrated into the mess hall’s admittedly small menu like he and Taehyung had dreamt about. Normally he doesn’t mind the seven hours to and from if he’s with the guys, a scenic walk that’s filled with countless jokes here and there.

With you, however, every nerve in Jungkook’s body is lit ablaze, his thoughts bouncing wildly in his head as the realization he’ll get to spend the whole day with you alone dawns over him.

Despite the fact he’s known you for the past year, there’s still a lot of unknown mystery that surrounds you.

Well, not really a mystery.

Mostly just little things he wants to know about you, the woman who saved him when he was so alone and lost; the woman he feels himself growing more and more enamored with as the days go by.

From what he’s gathered, you were in a master’s program when the entity first appeared, living in a small town just outside the city. You had escaped the entity by sheer luck.

You were on a jog when it happened, you told him, headphones blasting when the calamity hit. Slowly, the world around you had crumbled, people falling victim to the madness and ending their lives before your very eyes. So terrified, you had dropped to the ground in a ball, sobbed to the soundtrack of some Top 50 playlist for hours amidst the dead bodies that littered the streets of your neighborhood. Until, eventually, the entity had left, losing your presence amongst all the death that surrounded you.

This was all something Jungkook had only learned about a few months ago, in a rare moment of vulnerability. That moment had been the only time you had ever laid your heart out like that, shared with him a piece of yourself. Ever since then, he was desperate to learn more.

Not wasting a second longer, Jungkook jumps headfirst into it. “Soooo, what’re we doing for your birthday this year?” He hums, peering down at your features.

You say nothing, eyes glancing furtively through the vast amounts of trees ahead of you for any signs of life. There’s no one out here, a fact both of you know, but he supposes it never hurts to be cautious. “You don’t know my birthday,” you remind him.

“How am I supposed to know it when you hide it away like it’s some mind blowing national secret?” He says cheekily. “I’ll tell you mine. It’s September first.”

Most men would feel discouraged by your lack of interest in the conversation, but not Jungkook. He’s grown used to your aloof exterior, finds it kind of endearing actually. After a moment, you pointedly announce, “Jungkook, I haven’t known what day it is for months now... birthdays practically mean nothing to me.”

“It’s June second,” he says right away, and his confidence surprises you if the way you pause is any indication. He stops beside you, tilts his head at your reluctant gaze.

“How would you know that?” You ask in disbelief, one hand on your hip. The semi-automatic pistol you have strapped to your waist bounces against your thigh. “We haven’t seen a calendar in months, and if we did, we wouldn’t even know what day it was.”

Jungkook shrugs. “It’s mostly just a guess,” he admits, pointing at a patch of pink flowers sprouting near the water. “Oleanders usually bloom at the end of spring. I’m surprised you didn’t know considering you named your little campgrounds after them,” he playfully jabs, crossing his arms over his chest as your eyes trail over toward the pink flowers beside your foot.

His heart falls straight out of his ass when you begin crouching down, fingers outstretched towards the flora. “They’re poisonous, you idiot,” he scolds, yanking you up by the elbow.

Jungkook can count on one hand the moments he’s truly left you flustered, and part of him is a little disappointed that it’s some stupid death flowers that make it onto the list. But your lips are adorably puckered, gaze flickering away from him in embarrassment at your slip up, and Jungkook can’t believe the hammering of his heart. “Oh,” you murmur, and then, impossibly quieter, “sorry.”

He sighs, quiets the thumping in his chest. After a moment, he throws a hand over your shoulders, guiding you back down the creek as if your little moment of stupidity didn’t just happen. “Wow, our brave leader sure is a dummy,” he exclaims, nearly faints at the small smile you hide from him.

“Shut up,” you retort, but there’s no malice in your words and you don’t push Jungkook’s arms away. “I’m bad at remembering which ones are harmful, okay? That’s more down Hoseok’s lane.” It certainly was down Hobi’s lane, considering the man had run a floral business prior to this catastrophe. Jungkook knows he’s the one who gave Oleander its name, at first just as a warning for the younger kids to avoid the flower, but it never hurts to tease you about it.

It’s little things like this that he treasures between the two of you, moments that nestle their way into the cracks of his heart. Not that you’ll ever understand.

The walk to the river ends up being shorter than he remembers, and after a few hours of bantering the tinkling trickle of the creek is replaced with the rapid currents ahead. “Where was it?” He asks, all traces of glee wiped from his face as he keeps his eyes focused on the tree line. He hears your telltale shuffling behind him as you retrace your steps, calculated steps that suddenly come to a halt. “Babe?” He calls out after a moment.

There’s a soft breeze in the air that ruffles his hair. It’s not the gust of wind that precedes the entity, but it still sets Jungkook on edge, hand reaching for his rifle.

A scuffle behind him causes him to whirl around, gun out and pointed at whatever made the sound, only to find you with a gun pressed to your temple. Jungkook swears.

Some guy he’s never seen before holds you captive, gloved palm pressed over your mouth uncomfortably, your hand clutching at his wrist. Jungkook takes comfort in the fact you at least put up a fight, matching the barrel against your forehead with a pistol to the guy’s neck. All in all, it’s pretty even on both ends. Well, not completely, Jungkook thinks, finger tightening on the trigger.

Before he can so much as think, there’s something prodding against his lower back, a low voice purring, “drop it, lover boy,” against his ear.

Knowing when he’s been outdone, Jungkook lowers his arms with a frustrated sigh, letting the guy that snuck up behind him tug the sack you carefully prepared off his shoulders and dump it onto the ground. He catches your gaze, dark eyes seeming to convey a message he doesn’t understand, not the least bit bothered by the man holding you at gunpoint. “Anything good?” The one holding you asks.

The one behind Jungkook steadies the weapon pressed to his back, nudges through the pile on the floor with his foot. “Some snacks, but nothing long lasting.”

The dark haired one cusses, tightening his hold on you. Jungkook wants nothing more than to lunge forward, tear the guy apart for laying his dirty hands on you. “Hey, lover boy,” he barks, and Jungkook’s glare only intensifies. “Where’d you find this stuff?”

Jungkook snorts. “I’m not telling you shit,” he spits, much to their dismay, and Jungkook groans when the one behind him slams the butt of his weapon against the back of his skull, sending him onto his knees. Another flurry of movement, and when his vision clears back up you’ve got your pistol pointed at the man behind Jungkook this time, leaving yourself completely defenseless against your captor. Jungkook curses at your recklessness.

Just once he wants you to put yourself first, value your life the same way he does. Now the both of you are left vulnerable, held at gunpoint by two men presumably from another camp.

“Well,” his attacker leers, “you sure managed to find yourself a good girl out here, huh?”

The second the words leave his mouth Jungkook knows they’re in for a show.

If there was one thing you hated more than anything in this fucked up world, it was being reduced to a man’s accessory. Anyone in Oleander could rave about how great you were—hell, Jungkook did it every chance he got. A lot of the Oleanderians held a lot of respect for you. You were their leader, a title they had pushed onto you until you accepted. To have your grueling efforts, your hard work, brushed aside because of your appearance enraged you like no other.

Just as he predicted, the flame in your gaze grows tenfold, the strength you’d been hiding coming out of the container you usually locked it up in. Your body moves swiftly, knocking back forcefully into your captor before leaning forward, using the hand on his wrist to haul him over your shoulder like a sumo wrestler. Neither of them see it coming, and in his shock, the dark haired one pulls his trigger, a bullet shooting into the ground with a loud crack.

The sound startles Jungkook and the other man but Jungkook capitalizes on their shock first, whirling around to meet the guy’s face for the first time, greeting him with a clenched fist. The intensity of his punch leaves the man recoiling, blindly stumbling back as Jungkook pushes on. When the man falls back, bloody nose and all, Jungkook reaches for his weapon, only to find a steel pipe in its place. Fuck, who were these conmen?

Eventually Jungkook corners him against the base of a tree, fuming at the fact these idiots had fooled him with empty threats, tricked him into thinking he was seriously in danger with a fucking scrap of metal.

Despite the way they had stealthily crept up on the two of you, these guys have neither the experience nor support to successfully pull off a stunt like this. This much is evident when he glances back and finds you wrestling the other guy’s arms behind his back. Following your example, he hauls his attacker up by the collar of his shirt, slamming him against the tree. “Who are you with?” He hisses, watching the guy squirm in his hold. “Who the fuck are you with?” He repeats, and the guy finally breaks.

“No one! No one. It’s just the two of us, me and Yoongi, no one else,” he rambles, and Jungkook glances back at you. You were significantly better than him at detecting lies, and one solemn nod from you has him releasing his grip, angrily kicking the damn piece of tubing far into the distance.

“So you’re strays,” you announce a few moments later, arms crossed over your chest in that famous power stance, eyes scanning over the figures of the two men Jungkook had pushed to their knees in front of you.

“Yes,” Jimin, the one who had originally attacked Jungkook, confirms. “It’s been just us two for a few months now.”

You let his answer sit for a few beats. “Where did you get this gun? This is the same one the Magnolia carry,” you state, and Jungkook wants to laugh at your stern approach, because just minutes ago you were fighting off a smile at his fourth knock knock joke. Instead, he schools his expression, gathering their things back into the sack Jimin had so lovingly dumped earlier.

Yoongi sighs, and Jungkook is extra wary of him, because it seems he is the one who orchestrated their little attack. “We attacked two of them. Took the gun and some other things before they could call for help. We’ve only had it for a few weeks now,” he confesses.

Jungkook snorts. These guys sure were brave, he thinks. One measly gun and they became bold enough to pull a stunt like this. If it were up to him he’d take their admittedly small resources and throw them back out into the forest with nothing for their half-assed efforts.

Sadly, it’s not. He watches you mull over their responses, can practically hear the invitation sitting on the tip of your tongue. It’s not the first time he’s found himself in a situation like this with you, your overwhelming need to invite nearly every stray you stumbled upon back to the O. In fact, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen you turn someone away.

Briefly he wonders if you had the same doubts as him. How many people constituted a functional society? They’d never know until the day the entity shows up. Until then, he knows you’ll keep taking strays in.

As predicted, the offer appears. “We have a place,” you begin, and Jungkook’s eyes can’t roll far back enough. Leave it to you to invite these half-assed clowns back to Oleander.

Silently, Jungkook walks off to sulk elsewhere, still mad that he’d let some idiot take advantage of his lack of sight to trick him into believing he had a gun to his back.

Later, when you’re wrapping up your extensive history of Oleander to these two strangers, you wander back towards where Jungkook’s been leaning against a tree. The two men follow behind tentatively, and you gesture for them to start up the creek bed, pointing toward the general direction of Oleander.

Jungkook levels you with an unimpressed glare, one you have no problem returning. “Really?” He drawls. “Inviting back the guys who tried to kill you?”

You ignore him, falling into step a few meters behind the two men. Jungkook follows. “They don’t have anywhere else to go,” you mention. “Besides, they’re not dangerous.”

Jungkook rolls his eyes. “Babe, these guys were willing to kill you over a bag of granola bars and water,” he emphasizes, throwing a glance their way. “You think they won’t try that at the O?”

You shrug. Jungkook could strangle you.

“Kook, one of them had a pipe. He can’t really kill you with that,” you remind him, as if he isn’t embarrassed enough. “They’re obviously smart guys,” you add, your arm brushing against his. “It wouldn’t hurt to have people who can think like that back at Oleander.”

Jungkook rolls his eyes. “I can get creative, too, y’know,” he huffs.

His childishness makes you snort, a small hand patting the small of his back comfortingly. “I know you can,” you smile. “But for every smart Kook idea, I have ten dumb Namjoon ideas. It would help to have someone else to balance them out.”

Placated, Jungkook lets it go. “I just want you to be careful, babe,” he murmurs, watching the two men ahead of him with caution.

Nodding along to his concern, you call out to the men to carry on left when you reach a break in the creek. “I know, and I’m always grateful to you for that,” you reply, the hand on his back drawing soothing circles. He hates how easily you can calm him down. “Just please trust in my decisions this once.”

It’s a cruel jab that makes his heart ache.

Jungkook doesn’t want you to think he questions your decisions as their leader, even if sometimes he does. He knows how stressful it is for you to have all these people depending on you, so he’ll never tell you you’re doing a bad job. Still, you have your moments where you’re a little too reckless, a little too careless.

Like today. If you had come out alone, Jungkook doesn’t know what these men would have done to you. He doesn’t like when you make decisions like that, sacrifice yourself for others like that, but he also doesn’t want to make you think you’re a bad leader, because you’re not. Just a little dumb sometimes.

Jungkook says nothing, sensing this is a losing battle. They trek back to Oleander in relative silence, a three hour walk that ends a little past sunset.

Jimin and Yoongi get the same golden welcome as every new person does at Oleander, with Hoseok cheerily showing them around the grounds and letting Seokjin check over their health. It’s the exact same process Jungkook went through when he first came here, and perhaps that’s why he feels so put off by the way you skirt around your discovery of them when Hoseok asks. You lie and say you found them on the way back from your training, not mentioning the fact they attacked you.

They end up moving into Namjoon’s tent, with Namjoon moving in with Jungkook. He doesn’t seem the least bit critical of Jimin and Yoongi, and Jungkook guesses no one besides him ever will.

With summer upon them, the seeds they planted last fall sprout beautifully. The chefs at the mess hall serve the most organic pizza Jungkook’s ever had, made in the clay oven Namjoon spent hours on last fall. He eats and leaves right away, ignoring his friends’ confused expressions when he skips out on their evening gossip session at the hall.

The tent feels smaller with Namjoon’s sleeping bag squeezed inside, his casual clothes and Jungkook’s blue tracksuit pushed against the opposite end of the tent.

He wonders how he’s supposed to jack himself off now that he doesn’t have his own private space. The longer he thinks, he realizes this current moment might be the last semblance of privacy he ever has, and scrambles to take advantage of the opportunity. His hand has just unbuckled his belt, the zipper on his pants halfway down, when you suddenly appear unannounced.

“Holy shit,” he yelps, covering his crotch with his hands. You pay him no attention, eyes flickering over the newly remodeled space. “Can you knock?!”

“Jungkook,” you say, dropping down to sit beside him on the ground. He hurries to close the front of his pants. “Are you upset with me?”

“No,” he drones, his last peaceful masturbation session slipping between his fingers. “I was actually quite horny before you broke in and gave me a heart attack.”

You frown, glancing at the front of his pants as if you’re just realizing you interrupted a very precious moment of his. “I didn’t realize,” you mumble apologetically, but Jungkook waves you off quickly.

“Forget it,” he sighs, leaning back on his palms. “What’s up with you, doll?” He asks instead, suddenly aware of the worried pinch between your brows, lips downturned as you regard him.

“Nothing,” you assure him, hands cutely folded into your lap. In another life, in another universe, he imagines you would have sat like that on a first date, fingers nervously fiddling with each other. “It’s just…” you hesitate, something he rarely sees you do. “I get the feeling you’re still upset with me for bringing Jimin and Yoongi back to Oleander,” you confess. “You skipped out on dessert.”

Frankly, he is.

Despite the talk you shared on the way back, Jungkook can’t help but feel bringing those two back was a bad idea.

Sure, they’ve encountered and invited other strays who’d reacted in similar states of distress, refusing to believe that sane, kind people still existed after the appearance of the entity. They’d lash out, hiss at Jungkook and the rest, until they reached a point in which they could calmly talk it through. People lose themselves after being in solitude for so long. Jungkook had only been alone for a little less than a month, and even then he remembers being terrified of you and the others.

But never had a stray pointed a gun at them, at you, and that’s what bothers Jungkook the most.

Part of him worries these guys aren’t the strays they claim to be, but masked members of another survivor camp here to take them over, kill them off. Realistically, they’re baseless worries. One of them is thin beyond belief, and the other had told them their whole life story the second they arrived back at the O. They don’t have that killer aura that the Magnolians have, and Jungkook wants to believe they by no means have the expertise to be specially trained assassins.

If anything, they’re just really cunning strays who happened to draw a lucky card when they got that gun.

On top of that uncertainty was the worry that stemmed from your actions both today and for the past year if he’s being honest.

He’s never questioned your motives for bringing someone back to the haven before, usually trusting in you to do what’s right. After all, Jungkook was hardly the poster boy of moral decisions, so he always left that up to you.

That being said, he feels… disappointed by your lack of logical thinking today. He understands that Yoongi and Jimin are just doing what they can to get by, something he would’ve done too if he was alone. But Jungkook isn’t as forgiving and empathetic as you, which is probably why he feels like this.

“I don’t think it was a good idea,” he admits, listening to the quiet inhale you draw in at his admission. “I get that they’re strays and all… I just think you need to be more careful.” It’s rich coming from him, probably the least cautious person at the base.

You nod, the same understanding one you’d given him on the trip back.

Jungkook knew you had a tender heart. You and Hoseok both did, hence the reason you established Oleander in the first place. Admittedly, Hoseok is even worse than you, which is the main reason he doesn’t go out on scavenging trips, choosing to keep watch over the people they already have.

Before you can reiterate your reasoning from the afternoon, Jungkook cuts you off. He catches your hand, turns it over to knot your fingers with his. “Babe, I need you to take care of yourself first,” he says, watches the befuddled expression that crosses your features.

You blink. “I do?” You defend, and it’s so weak Jungkook could cry.

He sighs, squeezes your hand in his. “You don’t,” he feels a little weird explaining the state of your thoughts to, well, you. “I get that you wanna keep everyone here safe, but what about yourself?”

You say nothing. The quiet bustling of the base outside fills the silence between you.

Jungkook looks away first, choosing to stare a hole into the tent walls before him. “I know you have this huge responsibility on you and that it’s a lot of pressure, __,” he murmurs quietly. “But it’s okay to ask for help, y’know?”

Beside him, your knees curl up into your chest, chin resting on them. You don’t let go of his hand, so he takes it as a sign to continue.

“What’s happening is scary,” he admits. “But you’re not going through this alone. I want you to tell me when things become too much for you,” he emphasizes.

The amount of times he’s seen you stretch yourself thin for this place was unreal. Jungkook liked Oleander as much as the next person, but occasionally he’d get hit with doubts. What would they do once the entity found them? Jungkook thinks he’d run. He’d take you and run far away, leaving this whole place behind. He’ll never tell you this, though, because he knew you loved Oleander too much. And if you didn’t, the responsibilities that tied you to it would never let you abandon the people like that anyway.

From between his fingers, he can feel your hand trembling. His heart throbs painfully in his chest. Jungkook wishes he could freeze this moment in time, keep the two of you inside this tent away from the crumbling world around you. In another life, in another universe, he reminds himself.

Eventually you let out a shaky exhale, eyes burning into the side of Jungkook’s face until he returns your gaze. Ever so quietly, you murmur, “Kook, I’m so scared.”

It’s the quietness of your confession, like you’re afraid admitting as much will lessen your credibility, that has him leaning forward, forehead knocking against yours gently.

“Oh, baby,” he frowns, doesn’t say a word when you throw yourself into his arms. Your face finds its home buried in the front of his shirt, shoulders shaking. He rubs your back soothingly, the same way you do to him every time he’s riled up, listening to the quiet sniffles that escape you.

“I don’t want people to get hurt,” you cry, your voice small and muffled against the front of his shirt.

His heart falters in his chest, suddenly realizing how small you are curled up in his arms. He can’t even begin to imagine the expression on your face, one you still hide from him, but he guesses it’s nothing less than glossy eyes and puffy face.

For the second time in the past year Jungkook’s known you, he gets a peek into your frail interior. A brief glance to see the woman who had watched the world around her crumble, all alone amidst wave after wave of deaths.

The city had been a horrible sight to see, but at least there he’d been comforted by the fact he was with a group of people he’d known and escaped with. It had been the first of many instances. For you, he can’t even fathom how you managed to pull yourself from the wreckage, maintain yourself until you found Hoseok.

“I’m sorry,” you choke, voice but a thin whisper he barely catches. He brushes you off, leaning his chin on the crown of your head as he continues to rub your back.

Eventually, you calm down.

The trembling of your body slows, and your muted cries disappear. When you lean away, Jungkook keeps his hands on your shoulders. Your eyes are still coated in a thin sheen of tears, the skin around flushed. Jungkook runs a knuckle along your cheekbone, following a faint trail of tears.

You rub the heel of your hand against your eye as you regain your composure. You don’t meet his eyes, but Jungkook doesn’t push. “Thank you, Jungkook,” you tell him, sniffling one last time. “I… really needed that.”

“Of course,” he murmurs, suddenly aware of how close you are. He could lean in and kiss you, but he doesn’t want you to think he’s taking advantage of your emotions. So he doesn’t.

You pat his cheek gently. He leans into the touch, eyes flickering over your bashful expression. “You were amazing today, Kook,” you quietly praise, and he’s never felt this light before. His cheeks flush red, the warmth slowly creeping up his face at your compliment.

Something in Jungkook has him leaning forward, puckered lips pressing against your temple. It’s only when his plush lips meet the skin of your forehead that he suddenly becomes aware of his actions. He stills, tries to find the perfect moment to pull away that will still make it seem friendly.

When his brain has dipped itself into frying oil three times over, it’s you who leans back with a soft smile on your features. You pat his knee once before standing up. “Actually, I heard something interesting today,” you mention, completely ignoring the redness of his face. “Follow me?”

“Anywhere,” he murmurs as he trails after you, passing the rowdy mess hall and the occasional group wandering about the grounds. Eventually you lead him into Seokjin’s medical tent, where Namjoon seems to be interrogating the hell out of Jimin. “What’s going on?” he asks, gaining everyone’s attention, and you motion towards where Jimin is babbling away.

“There they are,” Seokjin claps, “two experiments from the same lab.”

Jungkook flicks him on the forehead as he walks in, ignoring the sharp calling of his name coming from your mouth. “Not a lab experiment,” he defends, not that Seokjin cares. He squeezes around Jin, coming to stand beside Namjoon. Jimin is very quiet in his presence, probably still reflecting on their first meeting. Good, Jungkook thinks, he could drown in his guilt for all he cares.

“This guy says he knows where the new Magnolian base is set up,” Namjoon fills him in, eyeing Jimin. Jungkook doesn’t doubt it, after all, that’s apparently where they got their weapons from. Not that anyone besides you and Jungkook know that. “You believe him?”

Jungkook shrugs. He doesn’t know what to say, because none of you really suspected anyone would ask about Jimin and Yoongi’s origins after the lame story you had made up earlier. Jimin, it seems, is more of a chatterbox than he thought.

“I’m telling you, man,” he whines. “Me and Yoongs saw the damn camp. That’s where we—“

“-Were running from,” you intercept. Jungkook rolls his eyes at your feeble attempts at keeping a secret that was inevitably going to be found out. “Jimin and Yoongi were running from there when we found them.”

Jimin nods frantically. “It’s about twenty miles from here.”

Namjoon nods along, looking deep in thought as he ponders on what exactly that means for Oleander.

Jungkook can help. Basically, it means this: Magnolia setting up a camp in close range of Oleander can only be a result of one of two things:

Either they, A, are unaware that Oleander is in close range and most likely settled due to the various water sources around this area. When they eventually find its current inhabitants, they’ll undoubtedly attack on sight.

Or B, they have caught wind of Oleander’s presence here and have promptly come to, you guessed it, kill them all off just because they can. In both scenarios, Oleander remains at great risk, and everyone in the tent knows this.

“So now what?” He says more than asks, sensing they’ve all more or less reached the same conclusion.

Your foot taps against the ground, lower lip pulled taut between your teeth as you work through a dozen plans in your head.

Namjoon, ever the “wise man”, jumps to the forefront. “We have to do something about their base,” he says.

Jungkook laughs at that, plopping down beside Jimin. “Yeah, let’s just go run up on some psychos with no moral compass and kill them before they kill us. Except, wait—“ he exclaims with a little staged gasp, before leveling Namjoon with the most bored stare he can muster. “None of us have the guts to kill someone.”

Namjoon is very obviously flustered by Jungkook’s dry jab, looking at you to defend him. Jungkook simply brushes off the disapproving frown you send him.

“And when they realize we won’t kill them, guess what, guys?” he asks no one in particular, mimes someone breaking his neck. “We’re dead.”

Silence falls over the medical tent at his blunt descriptions.

Jungkook knows he’s being annoyingly pessimistic, but he can’t help it. His first encounter with Magnolia had left him bleeding at the mouth, body aching for weeks. Occasionally, he has nightmares about that day, about what would happen if you and your friends hadn’t shown up. In most of them, Jungkook’s mind conjures up violent scenes of his death.

You suck in a sharp breath that catches everyone’s attention. Straightening your spine, you step back into the middle of the space, hands on your hips like a superhero. “As much as I hate to admit it, Jungkook is right.” He grins in satisfaction. “Even if they’re not part of our community, I’m sure having too many people congregated in the same area will draw the Thing‘s attention.” Finally, some logical thinking. “But,” you suddenly add, snatching that cocky smirk straight off his face. “That being said, I think it’s best if we look for ways to—“

“No,” he cuts off, surprising everyone in the room with his curt tone. He never outwardly disagreed with you before, always hyped up your ideas like you were the greatest person alive. You were in his eyes, but there was some plans even Jungkook thought were stupid. And given the fact this would be your second stupid plan of the day, he’s more than happy to go against you in front of the others. “It’s stupid.”

“Hey,” Seokjin chides, leveling him with a cold glare he hasn’t seen in a while. “Let her speak.”

“No,” Jungkook repeats, turning his attention back to you. You don’t look the slightest bit pleased with him, and he already knows this will lead to days of you ignoring him like the time he and some of the guys snuck down to the creek after curfew one night. “Baby, going there is reckless—you know this,” he emphasizes, can’t help the gentle way he explains this to you like you’re nothing but a child.

“You haven’t even heard my idea,” you snap angrily. It takes every nerve in Jungkook’s body to keep him from crumbling beneath your hardened gaze. He hates when you look at him like that. “You won’t even let me say what I’m thinking, but you already think it’s stupid.”

“Because it is!” he yells, startling the other men in the tent. “Someone could get seriously hurt, and you know this,” he seethes, suddenly feeling like that whole heart-to-heart moment at his tent meant nothing to you. He deflates, rubs at his temples as if to rid him of the headache pounding behind his skull. “Doll, these are the Magnolians,” he murmurs. “They won’t just threaten you with a gun like Yoongi and Jimin, they will kill you on the spot.”

There’s a shared look of surprise between Seokjin and Namjoon at the news, and Jimin shifts nervously beside him. Jungkook could care less about his slip up, too engrossed in the way your lips pinch up indignantly.

“Fine,” you sneer. “Whatever we do, I’ll make sure to leave you off the list.” And with that, you’re exiting the tent with an angry tug against the door flaps.

A beat of silence as they all stare after you in shock. Jungkook has never been left off the list of scavengers.

“Kook,” Seokjin goes to soothe him, but he's already slipping out of the tent, eyes wildly scanning over the dark perimeter of the base in search of you. He finds you stomping in the direction of your tent, a small thing pressed against the side of the armory.

The ache in his knee be damned as he sprints across the clearing, narrowly avoiding the people who are still out. He catches you just as you duck inside, tearing the flap of your tent wide open.

You jump in surprise, but quickly pull on an expression of annoyance as he towers over you, arms crossing over your chest defensively.

“What did you say?” he seethes, letting the flap fall shut behind him, shrouding the two of you in darkness.

“I said you’re off the list,” you snap without missing a beat, anger rolling off you in waves. “Since you hate my ideas so much, your ass can stay here.”

Jungkook exhales loud and hard, stepping closer to you until you’re nose to nose. “I’m not off the fucking list,” he announces, jaw twitching. You go to retort, pushing him away with a palm flat on his chest that he catches in a flash, tugging you forward until you’re stumbling into his chest. You gape in shock at the hand that tightens around your waist, Jungkook’s steely eyes aiming to pierce into your soul. “If you wanna be stupid and break into the Magnolia base that’s fine by me,” he hisses, “but don’t think for a second I’d ever let you go without me, understood?”

You struggle in his arms. “I never said I wanted that,” you snarl, pushing yourself off and away from him. “But you wouldn’t know that because you wouldn’t even listen to me.”

Jungkook’s arms tighten around your waist, refusing to let you run straight into the hands of danger. “Maybe I would listen if you weren’t always trying to off yourself,” he barks, narrowly avoiding your elbow when you begin flailing in his arms.

“Jungkook— let me go!” you huff, growing more upset the longer he holds on to you. “I don’t wanna talk to you right now.”

He ignores you.

But he greatly underestimated your strength, which ends up being a huge mistake. He had watched you toss Yoongi over your shoulder just this afternoon, so he should’ve known better than anyone about the adrenaline-fueled feats you can do when you’re riled up.

You still, deluding him into thinking you’ve calmed down enough for him to loosen his grip. It’s in that tiny moment of weakness that you strike, wrapping your arms around his waist and throwing the two of you to the side. Luckily, you’re not blinded by fury enough to destroy your own tent, and end up slamming him against the wooden wall of the armory that sits flush to one side of your tent.

“Holy shit,” he gasps, the intensity of the push having a bounce back effect. He staggers forward, arms still around your waist, until the both of you stumble into the ground in a mess of limbs. You yelp at the heavy weight of his body on you, and Jungkook only has half a mind to roll off. “Oh fuck,” he groans, rubbing the back of his head.

The way you’d surged the two of you, him backwards, into the wall had left him vastly unprepared, skull slamming painfully into the wood. That on top of the good thwack Jimin had given him earlier with the pipe had his vision spotting now.

“Jungkook?” you call, shuffling to your knees over him, all traces of anger gone as worry floods over you.”Jungkook, oh my god,” you choke, sitting him up slowly, but given the fragile state of his head it seems fast anyway. The movement makes his head spin like a carousel. He’ll definitely need to see Seokjin for this. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I didn’t think you’d hit your head,” you cry, fluttering around your tent for something to give him. “Here, drink this,” you intrude, thrusting a water bottle into his hand.

He takes it in one hand, rolling his head around once. “Shit, babe, calm down. I’m not dying,” he cracks, though it ends in a groan. He definitely needed to sleep this off.

His joke only makes you more upset, and you lean forward to brush his hair from his face until your beautifully bothered expression is looking down over him. “No,” you groan, “please don’t try to make me feel better. That was a horrible thing for me to do.”

You tug him to his feet, Jungkook wincing at the sudden motion. “Yeah, that was pretty shitty,” he agrees, letting you throw an arm over your shoulders as you guide him out of the tent.

In all honesty the pain had subsided the second he’d sat up. Now he was just left with a slight pounding behind his temples, like a headache on steroids, but he played soccer his whole life; he knows when an injury was serious. This just seems like a mild concussion at most.

Still, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to milk every second of this. He leans into your side, your arm tightening around his waist.

“You know what’s even more shitty, though?” he prompts. You hum, more concerned with getting him to the safety of his tent. The base is mostly silent now, and the forest surrounding the camp is eerily dark. All the squirrels and rabbits they see during the day have gone to sleep, the only sound being that of the occasional owl hoot. The only people Jungkook sees are the ones on night duty sporadically standing around the perimeter of Oleander. Jungkook doesn’t answer right away, lets you sit in suspense, before announcing, “leaving someone off the list.”

You groan, finally stopping inside his tent. Upon getting closer, he’s reminded of his new roommate waiting for him inside, loud snores surely keeping everyone in a twenty foot radius awake. “I’m sorry,” you frown, moving to stand in front of him. The weight of your apology feels like you’re sorry for multiple things at once. Normally he would press, but you look like you’re about to cry just from upsetting Jungkook. For some reason he gets some twisted excitement from seeing you so torn up over him.

He shakes his head, lets the hair you pushed off his forehead fall back into place. “Don’t worry about it,” he assures you, reaching up to cup the side of your face like you did to him earlier. You lean into the touch, covering his hand with your own. Jungkook’s heart swells.

How could such a pretty little thing be this reckless? he thinks, watching the lashes that tickle your skin with every blink. “Go to bed, doll,” he commands, and you nod cutely, like a bobblehead. “Be stupid again tomorrow.”

He’s rewarded with a soft kick against his shin, a tiny smile curling around your features. “Okay,” you concede, fingers tracing over his knuckles as he finally pulls away. You watch him get into his tent, stay put until he’s glancing at you through the flaps to get moving. “Goodnight, Jungkook,” you make sure to say, waving goodbye as you begin walking back in the direction you came from.

It would’ve been the perfect night, mild concussion and all, if he had been able to truly savor your expressions that day. Instead, he goes to bed with a half hard cock and a snoring bear beside him.

#goldenclosetnet #networkbangtan #ksmutclub #jungkook smut #jungkook fic #jeon jungkook smut #jeon jungkook fic #jjk smut #mine #ahHHHHHHH!!!!!

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allgirlsareprincesses · 4 years

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A Saga in Ruins: How the sets reflect the empty nostalgia of the Sequel Trilogy

To the great surprise of many fans, the Skywalker Saga ended in the ruins of the Lars moisture farm on Tatooine. Perhaps this was intended to be circular, to be a coming home of sorts, but it was an odd choice for many reasons. Why would the youthful heroine find herself in an old, empty home to which she had no real connection, instead of on a verdant green world that she had so clearly craved earlier in her journey? Wouldn’t a place full of life be more fitting for a young woman starting a hopeful new chapter?

Of course, the dirty little secret is that there is nothing hopeful about the end of the Skywalker Saga. In fact, if we look across the Sequel Trilogy, we can see the theme of destruction, aging, death, and decay in many of the settings. Notably, the only sets that look truly new are the interiors of the First Order ships, and the rich luxury world of Canto Bight, but these sleek structures actually contain a moral rot.

It was appropriate for the Prequel Trilogy to be filled with shiny new sets as the Republic and Jedi were at the height of their power. The beauty was intentional, both so that we would appreciate the civilization that would be lost with the ascension of the Dark Side, and so that we would see it as the deceptive shell hiding the moral destruction within. In the Original Trilogy, the sets have an older, worn appearance, but are rarely what could be termed “ruins.” Given that the Sequel Trilogy takes place 30 years later when the galaxy has presumably been rebuilding since the Galactic Civil War, why then are SO many of the events set in ruins, or in places that become ruins?

Ruins in The Force Awakens

The first movie of this final trilogy started on Jakku, a ruin of a world home to the destroyed imperial fleet that made a last stand at the end of the Galactic Civil War. In the first scene of the film, new ruins are created when First Order troops destroy a village. Not long after, Poe and Finn crash-land into the desert, the ruin of their TIE fighter swallowed up by the sand. Later, we meet Rey, a lonely scavenger who is picking at the guts of a downed Imperial Star Destroyer. The shots in this sequence emphasize the scale of these ruins, along with the utter emptiness of the desert. Next, we see Rey in a little trading outpost cobbled together from disparate parts. She gazes dolefully at an elderly woman working the same task that she is, clearly seeing in the aged woman her own barren and lonely future. Finally, she travels to her own home, which turns out to be a collapsed AT-AT Imperial Walker. In an endearing but somewhat macabre moment, Rey dons the helmet of a Rebel X-Wing pilot. In a parallel scene, Kylo Ren is seen talking to the charred helmet of Darth Vader, beseeching his grandfather to speak to him. It’s nostalgia, yes, but for a past that is ruined, destroyed, and dead.

She next escapes Jakku in the Millenium Falcon, which might not be considered a ruin since it still (barely) flies, but it has clearly seen better days. Rey heaves the decrepit freighter through yet more bones of downed starships, finally escaping Jakku only for the Falcon to malfunction again. Han and Chewie, elderly yet vigorous as ever, join Rey and Finn and they all travel to Takodana, where Maz Kanata lives in a castle. From there, they witness the destruction of the Hosnian system, and then the First Order arrives and completely destroys Maz’s castle, creating yet another pile of rubble. The group next travels to D’Qar, a Resistance base nested in an old Rebel Alliance base from the Galactic Civil War three decades prior. Again, everything is old, aging, and recycled; nothing is new.

Starkiller Base is shiny and new, but it is also a tool of destruction, and before long it too collapses into space debris like Alderaan and Hosnian Prime. Meanwhile, we learn that the Skywalker-Solo family itself is in ruins, with Han and Leia split up, their son Ben fallen to the Dark Side, Luke missing in exile, and Han soon killed by his own son. Rey then travels to Ahch-To, where stand the ruins of the first Jedi Temple, to find the aging and bitter Luke Skywalker.

Ruins in The Last Jedi

On Ahch-To, Rey comes to find that the Jedi religion itself is in ruins, with their ancient texts abandoned and their one avatar, Luke, having cut himself off from the Force itself. In the course of her stay, she shoots a hole through the wall of her hut, slices through a large rock on the island, and emerges from the ruin of a hut that Luke explodes when he finds her with Ben Solo. Though Ahch-To is teeming with life, death is equally present, with Luke chatting with Force Ghost Yoda and watching the Jedi tree burn.

Further, Luke is a ruin of his former self, his moral certainty destroyed by regret. In the series of flashbacks to his last encounter with Ben, we see the hut collapsing, Luke rising from the rubble later, and his training temple in flames. Luke’s legacy, his relationship with his nephew, and now the physical manifestation of both is in ruins, as well. Even his X-Wing, once a symbol of his daring, sits submerged in water, presumably unusable and possibly scavenged already for parts.

On the Supremacy, the shattering of the Skywalker legacy is made visible in the breaking of Anakin’s lightsaber in the destroyed throne room. The ship itself lies in ruins after the battles that have raged across the ship and Admiral Holdo’s brave sacrifice, and even Ben and Rey’s fledgling relationship has been shattered by the end of the sequence.

Meanwhile, after the destruction of their fleet, the Resistance escapes to Crait, to yet another old Rebel Alliance base in the hope of escaping the First Order. Their speeders are so decrepit that Poe manages to punch a hole through one with just his foot, and the remaining forces are decimated before he makes the decision to pull back. With their massive laser cannon, the First Order punches a hole through the blast door to the base, effectively destroying it and rendering it unusable as a defensive position. By the end of the Crait sequence, the Resistance, their fleet, their base, and the central relationship of the movie between Rey and Ben are all in ruins.

Though destruction and ruins abound in The Last Jedi, the framing is notably different from the other two films because the purpose of all this imagery is to show hope for the future springing from the rubble. Rey states this theme explicitly when she’s meditating for Luke on Ahch-To, saying she sees “death and decay that feeds new life.” The breaking of Kylo Ren’s mask and the legacy lightsaber are intended not as endings but as steps in the cycle of rebirth and renewal. Luke manages to shed his broken shell and become the young hero he once was, later achieving transcendence as he passes whole into the Force. Despite the massive wound dealt on Crait, the salt cleanses and covers the carnage, suggesting rebirth with womb-like imagery. Ruins in The Last Jedi tend to serve less as nostalgic settings and more as visual symbols of brokenness that must and will be healed.

Ruins in The Rise of Skywalker

As the final film of the sequel trilogy opens, we see Kylo Ren fighting a group of cultists, whom the TROS Visual Dictionary tells us are Vader loyalists. Leaked images from the art book and cut scenes suggest that this scene actually takes place in the shadow of Vader’s castle, also now a ruin in the absence of its dark master. Using the Sith wayfinder, Kylo flies to the Dark Side planet of Exogol, entering what appears to be an ancient temple of the ruined Sith culture. There he finds the resurrected but still deathlike Palpatine, who is clearly such a ruin of his former self that he must be kept alive by machinery and dark arts.

In returning to the forested, hidden Resistance base, Finn and Poe nearly destroy the Falcon yet again, with the old ship catching fire as she lands among a small collection of similarly ancient ships that appear to be in questionable flight condition. While running her Jedi training course, Rey uses the same pilot’s helmet and training remotes that Luke used over 30 years earlier to practice her skills, and cuts down a number of trees in the process, leaving a path of destruction in her wake. Not only does the continued use of old, OT-era objects confound logic, but the wanton destruction of the natural world seems at odds with the Jedi philosophy’s reverence of the life which creates the Force.

Rey’s vision leads her to the barren desert world of Pasaana, where she meets the now-elderly Lando Calrissian, then finds the wreck of the ship that pursued her family when they were fleeing the resurrected Emperor. In the ruin of Ochi’s ship, Rey finds D-0, a broken and abandoned droid who yet again mirrors all the broken and abandoned characters (literally, ALL of them) in the Sequel Trilogy. When Kylo Ren appears, Rey first destroys his TIE Whisper, then when he crawls from the wreckage, the two have a Force tug-of-war over a transport ship which ends in Rey destroying it, as well. Of course, it later turns out that Chewbacca was not aboard that transport, thus continuing the pattern in this film of laying waste to the new planets, ships, and characters that were created for the sequels, while those from the original trilogy are miraculously preserved.

The gang next travels to Kijimi, where they apparently need to destroy C3-P0′s memories in order to unlock his ability to translate an ancient Sith language. As with Chewie, this is merely a temporary “death,” and Threepio’s memories are restored later. Kijimi, unfortunately, is not so lucky, and it is rather unceremoniously blown up, like Alderaan and Hosnian Prime. It seems that even with their allies, the Resistance heroes leave nothing but destruction in their wake.

Rey and friends next land on another moon of Endor, and the poor Falcon takes another beating. While her friends work yet again to repair the old ship, Rey escapes alone to the most imposing ruins of the entire film, collapsed shell of the second Death Star from Return of the Jedi. Calling back to not only Luke’s ordeal there, but also Rey’s own origins scavenging in the carcasses of Imperial Starships, the partially-submerged battle station serves as the backdrop for still more violence and destruction. When Ben Solo arrives, Rey engages him in another duel, which ends with Leia dead and Ben mortally wounded. Though Rey heals Ben, she next flees to Ahch-To, abandoning him and taking his TIE Whisper with her.

On Ahch-To, Rey burns the TIE, standing before the flaming ruins and attempting to throw her lightsaber into the fire. Luke stops her, then leads her to an abandoned hut to find Leia’s lightsaber, a remnant of her aborted Jedi training. Lastly, Luke raises his X-Wing from the water, offering it to Rey inexplicably space-worthy and no worse for the wear having been underwater for the better part of a decade and being at least 35 years old.

Finally, all the characters converge on Exogol, where they continue to engage in as much destruction as possible, including the apparent annihilation of an entire Sith civilization who lived on the planet as part of Palpatine’s Final Order. Ben Solo also arrives on the planet to help Rey (in another OT-era fighter that is miraculously space-worthy and moreover made it across the galaxy WITHOUT A HYPERDRIVE), but Palpatine sucks the power from him and then throws him painfully down a chasm, leaving his body broken. The climactic sequence ends with thousands dead, ships destroyed, and even Rey dead (or something) on the ground. Ben drags his broken body up and across the wreckage of the arena, and dies after resurrecting her, thus ending the Skywalker line.

After a celebratory hug with her friends, Rey flies the Falcon to Tatooine, to the literal ruins of the Lars Homestead. This is the place we last saw belching smoke as Owen and Beru’s charred remains splayed grotesquely across the scene of Luke’s destroyed childhood. Recalling again Rey’s beginning scraping a meager and lonely existence from battle wreckage, she slides down a sand dune on a loose piece of debris, and precociously explores the place. Finally, she buries Luke and Leia’s lightsabers (further cementing this place as a graveyard since Shmi is also buried here along with the Lars), and declares herself to be a Skywalker, the heir to these ruins.

Nostalgia as Love of a Dead or Imaginary Past

So, what does it all mean? If the Sequel Trilogy relies on ruins as a setting more than the other two trilogies, why does that matter? Isn’t it just paying homage to all the stories that led to the saga’s conclusion? Doesn’t it simply tie everything together?

Most critics and fans agree that the Sequel Trilogy relies heavily on nostalgia. In particular, JJ Abrams is often criticized for using nostalgia to such a degree that many of his films are direct copies of the stories they’re referencing: Super 8 is a mash-up of films like E.T. and Stand By Me, Star Trek: Into Darkness is a copy of The Wrath of Khan, The Force Awakens is nearly identical to Episode IV: A New Hope, and so on. Nostalgia is defined as:

“A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”

Most of Abrams’ movies succeed in creating this feeling because they rely on a shared cultural childhood memory. We fondly remember iconic moments from the films we loved as children, so seeing those moments again creates a feeling of remembered happiness. These movies encourage the viewer to recall how they felt the first time they saw certain images by repeating those images.

The first problem with this approach is that nostalgia is for the audience, not for the characters. The believability of the characters’ actions suffers when they are forced to act out scenes from a story that is not their own, from lives and perspectives that are not theirs. The audience might love seeing a lightsaber battle because that’s quintessential Star Wars, but if the two (or more) characters have no logical reason to fight other than as a spectacle for the audience, then the scene will lack any emotional depth. Likewise, a character revering someone whom they either barely knew or openly loathed makes no sense. In the case of settings or props, characters must respond to them in a way that is believable based on their actual history (or lack thereof) with the place or object. If the main characters of a story function only as a sort of modern Greek chorus, mirroring the nostalgic reactions of the omniscient audience, then they fail to be characters at all and become the most reductive versions of a self-insert.

This video explains the problem well, from 7:09 to 10:58 (the whole video is good but fair warning that not all of his takes align with what I believe about Star Wars, especially as regards Kylo Ren/Ben Solo):

youtube

Another problem with this reliance on nostalgia is that in order to speak to a shared childhood experience, everyone in the audience must have had similar childhoods, or at least belong to the same generation so that they all fondly remember the same things. This is necessarily exclusive, as different generations have vastly different collective experiences and memories. The members of the audience who were children at the time of the Original Trilogy’s release or shortly after grew up in a very different world than those who were children during the release of the Prequel Trilogy, or from the generation living through childhood now. Some things that older generations remember fondly carry uncomfortable or even traumatic associations for younger generations, so something intended to be nostalgic will not impact all audiences in the same way.

The legacy saber is a great example of this: an older Original Trilogy fan might be delighted to see Luke’s inaugural lightsaber from the very first Star Wars film being passed on to the new generation, but a younger fan who grew up with the Prequels might see it as a tainted symbol of Anakin’s fall to the dark side and a weapon stained with the blood of innocent younglings. A family sword meant to press the nostalgia button in The Force Awakens instead invokes a feeling of dread and horror in fans with different associations. While Rian Johnson mentions deliberately referencing the Prequels in his creation of The Last Jedi, JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio make no secret of the fact that they don’t acknowledge those films, and it shows.

Lastly, Star Wars has always been a story of youth, of coming of age, growing up, and becoming one’s own person. Luke’s story in the Original Trilogy was about him learning who he was independently of his father and mentors. He is merely a boy, young and defiant, and through his own mistakes he learns how the elder generation was wrong, resolves to do better, and thereby redeems them. Anakin’s story was similar, except that he was unable in his youth to learn the right lessons from the failures of his mentors, his defiance taking a more destructive form. In contrast to both of them, Rey learns.... that all her mentors and parental figures were right all along. In the end, she defies no one, discovers no new and better way, and ultimately brings nothing new and different to the galaxy. She brings no peace or renewal, adopting a legacy of death and destruction to cap a life that has featured only the old, dead, and destroyed.

This is where Disney and Abrams tip their hand and the true philosophy underpinning the Sequel Trilogy is revealed: in an effort to appeal to the nostalgia of older Star Wars fans, they fail to tell a story of youth and instead offer an orgy of death-worship and aesthetic decay. Rather than having the Star Wars conclude with Star Peace, the final trilogy seems to say “Weren’t those wars great? Don’t you miss them? Don’t you want to be reminded of all those wars?”

In her book The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym defines the term a little differently than the dictionary:

"Nostalgia (from nostos - return home, and algia - longing) is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but is also a romance with one's fantasy."

Boym points out that memory is often faulty, and that fond recollection is often a reaction to current despair. If things are bad now, it is natural for us to imagine a more comforting past, as with popular references to “the good old days.” In fact, another translation of the root algos is “pain,” thereby associating the return home with pain. Is it pain that prompts our longing to return home? Pain that creates the fond memory of home in the first place? Perhaps home itself is a source of pain, and so our minds construct an imaginary home that is better than the reality. In any case, it is typical that our rose-colored glasses distort the truth of what we long for, so the danger of nostalgia is a disassociation from truth.

One of those truths that we might deny in our fantasies is the ephemeral nature of human life and experience. All things age, decay, and ultimately cease to be. They may be evergreen in memory, but in a contiguous timeline like the Skywalker Saga, every location, object, or person must inevitably show the passage of time. Thus it is that the youthful heroes of the Original Trilogy become wizened and less vital when they reappear in the Sequels, that old ships break, and symbols of better times shatter and burn. As Boym states, however, the nostalgic lives in denial:

“The nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into a private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.”

Nostalgia cannot hide the steady march of time, which is why most stories look to the future and the creation of the new. Not so the Sequel Trilogy. At no point in the story does there appear to be a goal outside of “defeating the latest bad guys, who are identical to the old bad guys.” There’s no vision of the future toward which the characters are striving, neither on a galactic level (achieving peace) nor a personal level (starting a new family on a vibrant living planet). As such, with nothing to look forward to, the story can only look backward, trapped in nostalgia for a past that appears worse the closer you look at it.

This is why the Sequels are filled with characters, objects, and places from the Original Trilogy that are revered in spite of their violent and even traumatic pasts, not to mention visible signs of age. Ultimately a story that has nothing new to say or offer, only weak attempts to recreate a half-remembered childhood feeling of an aging generation, can ONLY logically end in a graveyard. Viewed in this light, it makes sense that the young protagonist builds her life around fond memories that for her are only imaginary, surrounded by the visible evidence of death and decay to which nostalgia blinds her.

If this is all the fan in the audience is looking for, a faded echo of their favorite memory, then perhaps that is enough. But for those who do not share the reassuring memory, or those who look forward to the future and how things might change for the better, the ending of the Skywalker Saga offers only knowledge that all things fade and die. Without the lens of nostalgia, the Sequel Trilogy is merely an empty tale of death.

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vancampemily · 3 years

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Emily VanCamp On Reprising Her Role As Sharon Carter And Those Power Broker Theories

Sharon Carter’s dark, bitter, and vengeful return in ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ could mean many things—or nothing at all.

You’re always one decision away from a totally different life, and that rule applies doubly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A simple choice in the heat of the moment can have grave consequences for our beloved heroes; Peter Quill punching Thanos just as Iron Man and Spider-Man almost pull the Infinity gauntlet off the villain’s hand is a hotly debated Twitter topic every other week. The current Marvel conflict on everyone’s tongue? Why on Earth is Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) an enemy of the state, when the Avenger who got her in this mess in the first place is roaming his past life worry-free?

Last we saw Sharon, she was the wide-eyed, determined Agent 13 of S.H.I.E.L.D. and a CIA operative whose loyalty to Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) prompted her to defy the Sokovia Accords and steal Cap’s shield and Falcon’s wings from the government. Her allegiance to Steve landed her a kiss from the Avenger but not without controversy: Sharon is the grandniece of Peggy Carter, Steve’s true love and the woman he traveled back in time to be with at the end of Endgame. Sharon’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it romance with Steve was just as short-lived as her residence in the MCU timeline, but thanks to the newest Disney+ series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Sharon gets a second life—just not the one the former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent envisioned.

When we meet Sharon in episode 3, titled “Power Broker,” the glow of the woman who longed to live up to her grand-aunt’s accomplishments is eclipsed by a dark cloud. She’s traded in her button-up shirts for hoodies and operates as an art thief out of a sprawling mansion in the eerie fictional town of Madripoor. She hasn’t spoken to her family members in months. When Sam reminds her he was also on the run, she reminds him, “Was. Is. Big difference.” She’s cynical, bitter, and vengeful, which apparently turned her into a stone-cold killer. She murders three bounty hunters with a steel bar and darts a knife into the shoulder of another. Sharon Carter is long gone, her one driving force the desire to be pardoned. Who is this new person? Well, Marvel devotees have their theories. Ahead, Emily VanCamp talks reprising her role as Sharon Carter, those Power Broker theories, and more.

Let’s go back to your Marvel introduction. What qualities initially drew you to the character of Sharon Carter?

I loved her dedication and devotion to Cap [and] to the cause. She was in this bloodline of agents, and this kick-ass woman who was a little bit more idealistic at the time. Now some of those qualities have been stripped away, unfortunately, based on her circumstances and the sacrifices she made. She’s wondering whether or not it was all worth it. She feels abandoned.

Knowing what she knows now, especially with Cap out of the MCU timeline, do you think Sharon would have made a different choice in Civil War?

I don’t think so. One of the things I love about her is her integrity. And to her, that’s what she believed in and that’s what she thought was the right thing to do. So I think it’s less about Steve and more about her devotion to the cause at that time. No, I don’t think she would go back and do anything differently. Do I think that the character would have liked a little bit of help, with all these other characters being pardoned, and she’s just sort of been left on the run as this fugitive? Yeah, I think her reaction to it would have changed. But I don't think she would have changed her choices.

At the end of Avengers: Endgame, Sam and Bucky were able to get closure from Captain America. Do you ever wonder what closure would look like for Sharon, had she had the opportunity?

I’m sure she would have wanted that, but I think that she's moved on from that. Now she just wants to be pardoned to get her life back. That ship has sailed in so many ways for Sharon, and we don't even really address [Steve and her] in the show. It’s so much more about where she is now and how to move forward and make that deal with Sam: Listen, I’ll help you out if you can get me out of here. [Sam and Bucky] are on this mission and she's reluctantly helping them, and that’s what the dynamic is now. Does she want to? Probably not. But is it her ticket out? Probably.

What did you have to understand about her mindset now in order to play her in this new phase?

I think it was just important for me, one, that we address all this time that’s passed and kind of discuss, “Where has she been? What has she been doing?” And we talk about it a little bit in episode 3, that she’s been hustling and dealing in stolen art and living in Madripoor. You get the sense that things have not been easy on Sharon. And she’s definitely made her way and she’s thrived in this environment, but it’s not an environment she would have chosen. She was sort of, in her mind, left behind, so there’s a chip on her shoulder that I think it would be really hard to get rid of at this point. And she even says at one point, “The superhero thing is a joke.” She’s definitely lost that kind of idealistic, young agent mind.

How did you prepare for that change in her?

I think it’s great to dig a little bit deeper into all these characters and their perspectives. And with Sharon, it’s so much about her resentment and her tenacity. She’s thrived in this new environment, even though it’s not ideal. So that’s something that’s carried through in her personality. She didn’t lose that. But I think just her goals, her thoughts have just changed.

What is a Marvel training session like? Sharon killed so many bounty hunters by herself.

It was months of prepping even for that sequence in episode 3. Sharon doesn’t have superpowers, so everything is just with her bare hands. We wanted it to look as gritty and raw and real as possible, so we trained a lot. Every day that I wasn’t shooting Falcon or The Resident, I was in that training center going over choreography, doing the footwork, doing boxing, doing jujitsu, all the things that I need to do to prep my body and mind for those sequences. You hope that when you get there to shoot it, that muscle memory and that adrenaline kicks in, and off you go. But Marvel is amazing at preparing you for those moments. I was welcomed to go and train every moment I could, and I did. But to have that available is just such a gift, especially when you've got a sequence like that, where you can't really hide from anything. It’s just you.

Sharon’s dark return reminded me of your Revenge character Emily Thorne. Do you prefer these darker roles over characters like Nicolette in the soapy drama The Resident?

They’re all so different. I think that’s part of what I like—just embodying totally different characters. Revisiting Sharon was very cool because we get to see her, as you said, in this totally different light. I don’t have any sort of preference. It was definitely difficult because last year I was doing Falcon and Winter Soldier and The Resident at the same time, so sometimes getting home at night I was a little bit screwy in my brain as to where I was headed the next day and what mind frame I should be in. But it’s not to say I enjoy playing one more than the other. It was fun to get back to Sharon, though, and see this new, kind of hardened version of her.

What was it like shooting both The Resident and Falcon in the middle of a pandemic?

Even before the pandemic, it was hard because it’s two different characters, one of them being very, very physical, so even that in itself was a challenge. Then the pandemic happened, and luckily I didn’t have to do both at the same time. We only had about a month left on Falcon and Winter Soldier, and I finished that up and then went straight into The Resident. It was nerve-racking going back to work after months of being isolated and at home, but also really nice to have a sense of normalcy. Even though it’s not normal at all on set anymore, it’s nice to be around my colleagues, to be at work. We’re kind of lucky to be able to do that and just to deliver new content. Everyone’s streaming everything Marvel. It's made our jobs a little bit more challenging, but also more rewarding in many ways because we’re able to deliver that joy.

When you pay close attention to Falcon’s episode titles, they’ve been very descriptive of each episode. So when the third episode was titled “Power Broker” and we see Sharon return, Marvel theorists ran with it.

We see Sharon return. We see Zemo return. It’s kind of like, yeah, episode 3 was always a big blast of so many things. There’s a ton of theories going around.

Have you ever envisioned Sharon going to the dark side, going against the heroes? What do you make of those theories?

Sharon’s always been this kind of idealistic personality, but I also think there are so many gray areas now between heroes and villains, and that’s something these Marvel shows are really exploring more in-depth. I think anyone at this point is capable of anything. There are so many characters that haven't even appeared yet. There's a lot going on in these six episodes. So for me, I don’t want to say too much because there’s just so much more to come.

source

#emily vancamp #sharon carter #the falcon and the winter soldier #the resident #revenge #interview #*

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kibybun · 4 years

Text

It's not over yet! Part 1 here and part 2 here!

Platonic Yandere Hawks x reader pt. 3!

Tw: Yandere, gore, body mutilation, animal killing, delusions

Enjoy!

💛Hawks takes out of the city, deep into the woods. There you help him fix up a cute little cabin and start your new life.

💛Admittedly, it took a month or two for you to adjust but now you love your new life with your big brother!

💛You changed your last name to Takami so the delusion that the two of you are related grow. Hawks also bleachs the ends of your hair to match his hair color.

💛For food everything is homemade. You bake, with his help, with some berries and herbs the two of you collected earlier in the day. Hawks also hunts wild animals for meals.

💛You've tried asking him to teach you how to hunt so you can help but he only replies with a "You're too young," "I can't let my 'Baby' sister get hurt".

💛So you stay complacent inside.

💛On the off occasion you wander outside and meet a friendly animal, Hawks makes sure no other animal wanders by. He ends up brutally slaughtering the little animal and showing off the heads to warn other animals to stay away. It didn't matter if it were rabbits, foxes, deer, or even other birds.

💛At night he shares the same bed as you, holding you close and making sure you couldn't get away even if you wanted too. Bedtime stories, snuggles, wing blankets, and lullabies. The best a big brother can do.

💛One night, after months of bo other social interactions that made their delusions grow, his hands wander your back. It felt so empty.

💛If you were his little sister, where were your wings?

💛He pondered this question for a few days. Why didn't you have your wings yet? Maybe you didn't have his quirk... No. You did. You're just a late bloomer.

💛Or maybe they were stuck beneath your skin.

💛He traces lines on your back where your beautiful wings would sprout, imagining them to be a deep red just like his.

💛Time goes on and he grows impatient, wanting to teach you how to fly and how to groom your feathers. He slowly starts killing all the birds he sees, plucking all their feathers and storing them away for later use.

💛He drugged you in preparation, heavy sleeping medication being put into your food and drink before bed.

💛Its now or never.

💛He carefully carves long divots right next to your shoulder blades, setting room for your new wings. He starts layering and placing in the bird feathers he collected into your back, using many if his own feathers to help keep the others in place. He could always regrow them.

💛Hawks applies healing ointment and bandages the bases of your new makeshift wings.

💛When you wake up all you could feel in your drowsy haze was that your back was in pain. You try to move but it only makes it hurt worse. You call put for Hawks, not knowing what's happening as well as scared.

💛Hawks smiles fondly at you saying you didn't need to worry, it was only your wings growing in.

💛Excitment overshadowed the pain as you try to get a good look of your wings. It hurt so bad sitting up and twisting to see your multiple colored wings but you didn't care.

💛Hawks explains how it's going to hurt for a while because your body is adjusting and how it's going to be a bit before you can move them.

💛A week or two passes and you're stuck in bed. The pain in your back didn't subside, it only grew to a insufferable amount. It left you paralyzed with pain.

💛Occasionally, the bases of your "wings" would ooze puss and blood, heavily indicating that it was infected.

💛Maybe Hawks should've waited a little longer, taking his time to wash the feathers before attaching them to you.

💛He begins to worry, looking for places to discreetly go and have your back healed. That's when he remembered the Shei Hassaikai group.

💛Hawks carefully takes you in his arms and sets off for the city in the veil of night in hopes of not being seen.

💛He arrives and enters the groups hideout. The people inside immediately take defensive stances, worried the former pro would attack.

💛They were surprised when he asks for help instead of a fight.

💛Overhaul approaches Hawks, wanting to take the opportunity of a possible business deal. He listens intently on what Hawks is asking of him befors asking what he gets out of it.

💛Given Overhaul's quirk, he could practically do anything. Hawks was going to take advantage of this.

💛In exchange of healing your back, giving your wings nerves and muscles, and inserting his DNA in you so the two of you ars related biologically, Hawks was willing to give them all the information the heros had on their little group and to let Overhaul test out his special quirk erasing tool.

💛Overhaul was conflicted on doing such a grotesque thing but agreed to do it, it would greatly help his group in the end.

💛Hawks was more than happy to carry you to the backroom, holding your hand the entire time.

💛He watched as Overhaul stumbled back in surprise at the horrific sight of your back. The area was agitated, rashes all over due to the feathers constantly rubbing against your back, and the thick puss mixed with blood constantly oozing out.

💛It was disgusting. Overhaul almost wanted to put you out of your misery but he couldn't compromise all the work he did to achieving a world without quirks.

💛He has Hawk's blood drawn, preparing to rearrange your molecular structure.

💛He takes off his gloves and begins, hives quickly covering his body. Your body disassembles, leaving all parts separated. He quickly separates a bit of your blood away from the rest, incorporating Hawk's and meticulously changing the DNA code for many more blood cells. After that he adds in the nerves and muscles into the makeshift wings, bringing life and feeling into them. As a final touch, he puts you back together and fixes the infection in your back.

💛You were barely conscious as you felt Hawks wrap his arms around you, gently as to not hurt you.

💛Your body didn't feel like your own. It felt as if your skin wasn't yours, your back also became incredibly heavily.

💛You suddenly became so hyper aware of everything on you. Every stand of hair, your breathing and blinking, your fingernails, the feeling of air on your skin. It felt so familiar yet foreign at the same time.

💛You were interrupted by a sharp pain in your arm. Looking over you see an unfamiliar man in a bird mask and hives injecting a serum into your arm.

💛You look to Hawks for help but he only gives you a reasurring smile.

💛A few moments after the syringe was emptied into your arm Hawks asks you to use your quirk. You try your hardest but nothing happens.

💛Both of the men are pleased by the results.

💛Hawks stays true to his word and tells Overhaul what he knew. The last time he looked at the investigation they had located multiple people in the group. By now they must've pinpointed the hideout. Hawks heavily suggests fleeing somewhere more abandoned and secluded.

💛With that, he flies away holding you tight and leaving you confused on why you didn't feel like yourself.

💛Your eyes were also incredibly irritated.

💛Once home, Hawks soothes you back to sleep. You needed rest after all.

💛When you wake up your eyes remain irritated. You also feel you back twitching which really bothered you.

💛You bring it up to Hawks, earning an estatic response from him. He picks you up and spins you around, saying how happy he was because you were finally going to be able to fly. To think, his little sister flying in the sky with him!

💛In the next few days to come you gain more and more controll over your new wings. You also gain identical eye marks to Hawks, as well as part of your eyes shifting to gold to mimic his.

💛The two of you really look like siblings now.

💛He teaches you everything you need to know about being a bird. He slowly teaches you how to fly, how you clean your feathers, and how to bird call. He preens your feathers as you do him.

💛Over time the two of you make your own language, composed solely of coos and chirps.

💛The two of you forgot about civilization, more than happy with just having each other.

💛You wanted nothing more.

Look out for part 4!

Kiby~💚

#bnha hawks #hawks #hawks x reader #keigo tamaki #mha hawks #my hero academia keigo takami #yandere hawks #yandere bnha #bnha #my hero academia #yandere keigo #yandere #yandere x reader

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delicrieux · 4 years

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Hello! May I have a one-shot with Kylo being injured and reader, who is part of the resistance, finds him and takes care of him? Thanks!

idk how this turned out to be 5k words but WHEW i mean if ppl want me to continue it im down so send in sum request of wat u think should happen!! xoxo gossip girl

requests are open! | masterlist | part 2.

Fear. The kind that makes it hard to breathe as if you are kept underwater; the kind that makes your muscles clench and freeze as all senses flow out one by one. Today had been almost too typical — you woke up, you trained, you talked to your comrades and learned battle strategy — and you were certain your evening walk would be just as uneventful. The breeze in your hair was playful; the setting sun provided warm light and set your surroundings in a pleasant, rosy glow. You like the fresh air; you like exploring; you like the freedom that comes with being alone in wilderness. And in turn, it serves as a reminder for why you are fighting in the first place. To preserve this peace, this freedom, that now has been tarnished when you stumble upon a body.

For a heartbeat you think he’s dead — his expression is lifeless and his face, pale as first snow, is bruised, covered in soot and dried blood. Willing your legs to move, you approach cautiously, not breathing, afraid to break the shrill, sudden silence — no birdsong, no wails of wind passing through trees… nothing. Life had, at that moment, stilled completely. But as you draw closer, grass crunching under your feet softly, you intake a breath of both relief and surprise. Dark locks of hair spray on his forehead and obscure the minuscule knit of his brows, his trembling lashes. He’s alive. The thought consumes you and you fall to your knees, skidding beside him, pushing his hair from his face and landing your palm on his forehead.

It’s awfully cold. Chilling. Almost biting at your sensitive flesh, urging you to pull away. It rolls in waves, this sudden cold, sudden sickness, as if it is a virus that spreads and you have caught it with this minimal contact. But you don’t pull away, despite the near overwhelming urge to do so, despite the fear returning with a new blow. Instead you glide your fingers down his jaw and press on his neck, breaking into a small, crooked smile once you feel a slow drum against them. He is alive, but barely. You glance about him, looking around the area. Nothing out the ordinary, no branches broken, no bushes disturbed and no trails left on the grass. How he got here is a mystery that will have to be solved a different time.

You hope he will tell you once he wakes up, if he even wakes up at all.

That, and, his name, too.

Your base is small and tugged away in a dense jungle, the tall trees and heat warding from unwanted visitors — the First Order. The compartments are small; there are barely above a few dozen people here; it serves more as a safe haven for lost wanderers looking for a cause or shelter, or a backup base in case others were destroyed and the rebels had nowhere to go. It is far away enough from war. Everyone here is, to some extent, safe.

You had never been on the front lines. You had never faced a Storm Trooper, had never seen the Force at work — if there even is such a thing, speculations speculations, nothing consistent, merely gossip — and you had never seen a dead body. Perhaps that is why you froze up so terribly at the sight of him. Perhaps that’s why you felt as if a void opened within you, swallowing up the last shred of light, of life, and leaving you hollow.

You should get used to the sight, though. There will be many dead in battle.

He’s the only one occupying a bed in the Medical Wing and he hasn’t woken up for two days now. His vitals are stable — no internal bleeding, no disease detected, nothing out of place as it seemed. But he is lost in deep sleep, constantly dreaming about something that made him tremble and muss and toss and turn, but never wake. It is entirely bizarre how his state is simply there, caused by no injury, no blow, nothing. And the more you take care of him… the more questions you get.

You eat in the cafeteria, a vast enough, pale walled space occupied by few people during lunch time. Next to you sits a blue eyed, blonde haired cherubic woman – she serves as the doctor, the only doctor here. She smiles lightly at you when you catch her gaze. You had always wondered why her name is Vendetta.

The amount of denizens is small here, so small in fact that the only ones serving under this branch is a rag tag team of scavengers, travelers, nobodies that had abandoned their old lives to fight in this war. Rebels, quite literally, with a cause. Many have taken new names. Vendetta, too, had a name before this, a life, a different purpose. Though her odd choice leads you to believe that what ever had happened to drive her here was painful and severe, deserving justice. In front of you sits a tall, bony, brown haired, brow eyed mechanic with a scar running down half of their face – Q. And beside them, July – you had never seen him smiling, had never heard his voice hold a tender note in it. He is always displeased. Always with a frown.

“Seven.” Vendetta calls you, noting your blank stare, the untouched food in your plate. Seven. You chose this because you were the seventh child in your family, and, subsequently, the seventh person to join the Resistance when this base first opened.

“She’s probably thinking about the stranger.” Q mutters, taking a sip, “His origins are…” They glance about, leaning in slightly, “ A hot topic, after all.”

“We get injured wanderers all the time.” Vendetta waves them off, “As if he’s any different.”

“I don’t think we should be so quick to dismiss him, V.” July grumbles, his voice low, the sound of crunching gravel. He sits with his arms crossed over his chest, observing the three of you with something akin to hostility, “You never know who may be working for the Order.”

“You can’t just assume that.” You pipe up, “He might just be another gambler dropped by the Floating Casino because he couldn’t pay his debts.”

“Or he might be a spy.” July stresses, glaring.

“No one knows there is a base here.” You continue, unrelenting, “Half the Resistance doesn’t know it exists, how can someone from the Order?”

“Still, I advice we exercise caution.” Q says calmly, a pleasant smile on their face — if anyone can defuse an argument before it starts, it’s them, “You never know what people are hiding, Seven.”

“Okay,” Vendetta chimes, “I will certainly not disclose this vital information when the man awakes from his comatose state. I shall make sure to confuse and frighten him further by chaining him to his bed.”

“Good.” July says.

“That is not what I had in mind, and you know it.” Q mutters, a tad disappointed, “I was thinking more along the lines of… An interview.”

“Too civil.” July mumbles, “I say we go with Vendetta’s idea.”

“That was not an idea,” She hisses, “it was sarcasm.”

“Fine, interview.” You submit, “Either way, I doubt anyone from the Order would not say they are from there. They are feared. Probably would think he has the upper hand, or something. Plus, our disguise is impeccable. We look like a research facility. Better yet, a shelter if no one wanders up to the main rooms.”

“I also sincerely doubt anyone, Order or not, is so good at lying first thing when they wake up.” Vendetta agrees.

July narrows his eyes at her, “That is an awfully naive observation to make.”

“Really now? It is a known fact that people half-asleep always tell the truth.”

Another hour of this and you feel drained and sore and with a mild headache. As much as their company has helped you, they can be a bit too eager to prove one another wrong. On most occasions you’d enjoy the chatter. Today, however, you feel too distracted to focus on anything. Q makes some good points, July argues, Vendetta and her biting comments pick at your skin. Always the blazing look in her eyes, always a certain gleam of anger hiding within her mellow, sweet tone. You excuse yourself when you finish your meal and they do not keep you from leaving. Perhaps they noticed you being out of it. Perhaps they were too caught up in their new topic – Lo and Chester’s sudden break up.

It does not take you long to come to the Medical Wing. The door shuts with a silent sweep and your heart drops – the bed is empty. Before you can do much else strong arms wrap around you from behind. With a yelp you feel a hand squeeze your throat and your breath leaves you with a helpless whine, sparks flying in your vision. Your reflexes kick in before you can control them. In a panic, you elbow your attacker in the chest and the grip loosens a bit, enough to allow you to escape and put some distance. Inhaling mouthfuls of air, you turn to the man that had been sleeping since you found him in the wilderness.

You never quite realized how tall he is, or how angry he could be. He’s confused and you see fire in his eyes, a sneer on his face, and he stands unmoving, waiting for you to try something, anything, so that he could grab you and try to kill you again.

You raise your hands, palms up —a fragile, harmless motion to indicate you mean no harm. His guard is still up. He’s heaving and his shoulders are tense, his gaze not once leaving your form, “…Hi,” You wheeze, almost voiceless, “I’m not here to hurt you.” You indicate softly. Cold, again, as if thrown into a bottomless ocean; body heavy, like a stone. You gulp. “Are you alright?” You question gently, afraid to provoke him again. “You must be tired. You’ve been out for a while.”

“Where am I?” His voice is deep and scratchy and it seems to set him off. He trembles from anger, you can almost feel the steady build up of rage in his chest, ”Who are you?”

“I’m Seven.” You introduce, “I found you outside our base. Do you know how you got here?”

He takes a threatening step forward and your arms shoot higher, “I’m not your enemy.” You insist, “You are not a prisoner here. You were dying and I wanted to help you.”

He regards you for a silent moment as if unsure whether to believe you or not. However, you sense that he will not try to hurt you, for now at least. You give him a shaky smile, trying to ease him — you cannot imagine how frightening it is to awake in some room among strangers and not knowing where you are or what had happened. “Do you…know your name?” You continue your questions, your arms slowly falling by your sides. After another pause, he nods curtly, “Good. That’s good.” you step away from his bed, “Please, lie down. You’re still recovering. No shady business, I promise.”

You are a bit surprised that he listens, but you don’t show it. He’s cautious, regarding you as if you were some dangerous animal cornering him, and his walk is sluggish. You can tell it’s hard for him to move, but don’t say anything. You doubt it would do any good. He finally sits down and just stares at you. You try to smile again, “Do you know how you got here? It’s okay if you don’t.”

“How long have I been here for?” He asks instead.

“Two full days in the base.” You say calmly, “But out there?” You vaguely motion with your head to the outside world, “I don’t know.”

Your answer unnerves him. For the first time his frown falls and he stares at you with big eyes and a trembling lip, as if a lost child not knowing what to do. That expression warps suddenly and he looks away, his hands gripping the side of the bed so tightly his knuckles turn white.

“Well, if there is…anything you need…” You start mildly, “You can call upon me. Or Vendetta. She’s the doctor here, so if you feel any pain or sickness, you should tell her. She’s sweet.” You smile, “And she will help. But right now, just try to rest…I’ll…leave you to it.”

You bolt past him to the door but– “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

You turn back to him, shaking your head lightly, “No. But it doesn’t matter. A lot of adventures come through here, lost and injured. You aren’t the first one. Now rest, please.”

He’s volatile, is what you learn upon the first days of his resurrection. His mood can change in a flip of a coin and he goes from placid to enraged in a blink of an eye. Tantrums, yelling — all signatures of a spoiled child not knowing what he has but simply wanting to break it. He’s nobility, or so your peers gossip. You hear snippets of all sorts of things, each more outrageous than the one before. The one that he is a prince kicked out of home for adultery seems to be the most popular one.

And he’s egotistical. He had not been, besides the attempted murder, that hostile and untamed towards you — the choking you told no one about as you concluded he simply felt threatened and scared. Though his other tantrums you are not so quick to chalk up as self-defense. Vendetta, exasperated, one evening told you that she somehow offended him — ”All I said is stop pouting because you need my help!” — and he, with a bruised ego, so high and mighty promptly jumped out of bed. Whatever he was trying to do backfired — perhaps he was trying to leave, or trying to grab something and to hit her with — but he slipped and fell and hit his head into the sharp corner of table. “And I said to him, oh I said: look what you’ve done now! Off to bed, quickly!” Vendetta finished bitterly, stabbing her fork idly into her food, possibly imagining his face there. His nose, much to V’s displeasure, was not broken, but an ugly gash and a dark bruise split his skin in half and he laid in bed sulking for at least a day.

As the week passed, he seemed to favor your company the most. It is not that he smiled and joked and laughed in your presence, and you were not exchanging secrets or hugging or even calling each other friends. He simply seemed to be more mellow around you, possibly because you oddly knew what to say and what to keep silent. It is as if you sensed the subtle shift of his moods; could read his expressions in a way no one could, perhaps no one tried. And you would come and visit him as often as you could when relieved of your duties — you felt responsible for him in a way, and you wondered if you would still feel this weight on your shoulders when he eventually left this place. After all it was you that had found him lying in the grass; it was you that had insisted to help him; and now, it is you that brings him food and tries to provide some comfort in a form of conversation. You don’t pry into his past, don’t even ask for his name, because you know he does not want to give it, and you won’t risk questioning in fear of another explosion of his temper. You talk about inconsequential things: what’s happening around the base, what sort of plants grow around here, what bugs could kill him before he took two steps. He especially enjoys hearing the rumors about him, even if he is too prideful to admit that they amuse him greatly.

“And what if I am?” He questions one evening, something akin to a small smile pulling at the corners of his lips. His eyes, a kind hazel color that could be beautiful if not for the persistent angry spark within them that is now, seemingly, vacant, watch you closely.

You frown softly, “Are what?” You question, “A prince?” He nods. You snort, “Well then, your majesty, I shall make sure to inform the others. What will be your first decree?”

He pretends to think, “No more slacking around.” He says sternly, “This is supposed to be a military base, isn’t it?” He ends on a cheeky note. You gulp. Ah, yes, you might have let it slip that he’s in one of the Resistance’s safe houses, though you did not disclose the coordinates.

“On a mission to make fun illegal, are you?” You ask with a raised brow.

He frowns, “Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Are too!”

Childish, really, though you suppose it is better than arguing with July.

You feel it before you hear it— rain and thunder. The merciless patter on the roof and on your window. In night the sound is almost deafening — a loud roar of an engine, followed by cracks of lightning and flashes in the dark sky. You would have slept through it if not for the pins and needles washing your skin behind the warm sheets thrown on your body. You stir. Thunder roars and a flash of bright white light illuminates your room and seeps through the cracks of your lashes. Cold, again, as if standing in the middle of a storm.

You finally sit up, rubbing your face and then looking around to see if your friends are playing some sort of joke on you. You were almost certain they had dragged you outside and left you to get drenched. But you are alone in your room and you frown and shiver from the biting cold. Groggily you throw the sheets away and leave your bed, not entirely certain where you are going but there is a pull in your gut and half-asleep you follow it. You think you might still be dreaming —the rain on your dry skin feels real, though all dreams feel real until you awake. You leave the dormitories and take the elevator to the first floor. The base is silent, save for the shrill of machinery. Finally, still in your pajamas and almost fully awake, you step past the main entrance and stop.

It’s pouring, a curtain of rain obscuring the confusing contours of trees and leaves and bushes. The darkness does not help. A bleak light pulses to life once you pass the sensor and your surroundings illuminate. Thunder, lighting, more rain. You stand safe and dry under the roof, and he stands at the very edge of it, half soaking, his face kissed and washed by the rain.

You are not sure what to think. He seems lonely standing there surrounded by darkness and water. It’s whispers, or something akin to that, that urge and beseech that he does not want to be alone. You hear them somewhere in the back of your mind. If he noticed you, and he should have with the light suddenly on, he does not show it. You approach him slowly, your footsteps concealed over the heavy drum of rain.

“Not used to it, are you?” You ask, your voice followed by a bolt of thunder. He stirs, head tilting in your direction. Your heart skips a beat when your eyes meet — there is no hostility in them, no anger, just a distant sadness. You give him a soft smile, “I can tell you don’t see it often. I didn’t, either, at first. I grew up surrounded by deserts and I had not seen a drop of rain for at least eighteen years. But, here… Well, there’s no shortage of it. We have storms at least once a week. You’ll grow sick of it before you leave, trust me.”

He says nothing, still looking at you. The light sniffs out. Both of you stand unmoving.

“Why are you here?” He asks, a note of genuine confusion slipping past his calm tone.

“I… don’t know.” You admit. A frown pulls on your brows and you bite your lower lip, staring into the heavy curtain of rain, “I…I really don’t know.” You turn to him, “Why are you here?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment, savoring the silence. Then, “I got bored laying in bed.” Somehow you feel that anxiety has more to do with his sudden nightly venture, rather than actual boredom. Though, you suppose it is quite tedious doing nothing all day. You imagine he is active, judging by his built. He has a strong character and he knows what he wants (most of the time), or rather has a distinct sense of what he doesn’t want. You imagine he’d be a good commander, or leader, with his deep voice and unrelenting stare, if only he wasn’t so sensitive. He’s too unpredictable. Too uncontrollable. His emotions get the better of him too quickly for him to be unbiased. For that reason alone you deem him unfit to be a spy, or a soldier, or a figure of military power. He’d burn all he would build if that were the case. No, him being of noble birth and being stranded here as some sort of twisted punishment sounds believable enough.

“What are you thinking?” He questions, drawing you out of your thoughts. You hum, ponder whether you should be honest with him or not. “Don’t lie to me.” He says suddenly and you jolt, heart drumming painfully in your chest. For a frightening moment you figured he could read your mind. Then again, you have been spending a lot of time together. He must have noticed how gentle you are with him, how carefully you pick your words. His signature frown is back, you see it for a second when lightning strikes.

“I was thinking about your life.” You admit, “Your work. Whether you really are a royal as most of my crew mates seem to think.”

Flash. You see half a smile blooming on his lips.

“But I know you won’t tell me. Don’t worry, I get it. Ladies love a mystery.”

“What?”

It’s your turn to grin, “Oh, please, it’s almost all I hear about. Seven brought a brooding stranger with a secret past into the base. Lo…Michel… Two of your rapid admirers. I already told you that your arrival has sparked many speculations.”

“I…I haven’t…” He sounds uncertain, flustered almost, as if embarrassed, but there is no way he is, you refuse to believe it. He stumbles upon his words and lastly says nothing. You snicker silently. Another flash of lightning and you see the same confused, puppy-like look on his face you have had the pleasure of seeing once or twice. He does not shield it this time, this moment of vulnerability. He probably doesn’t see the point because darkness obscures everything again.

You extend your hand to him as a silent offering. How many things have you offered him now? Life, health, your company. He regards it, ponders a bit, lastly gently clasps his hand over yours. You jerk. Electricity courses through you and your eyes go wide, tingles rushing all over your body. Lightning strikes. You see wonder on his face, a mimic of your own surprised expression.

“Come on,” You stutter, tugging him, “you’ll catch a cold.” He follows after you. The light blinks on. You don’t know what is happening. Couldn’t have been the thunder, the feeling is not as intense. It felt more like a build up of energy; like you accidentally touched a circuit and it zapped you.

Impossible, you hear something alike his voice but not quite — it’s quiet, distant, muddy.

“Hm?”

“What?”

Once inside, the door sweeps shut behind you, “What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.” He sounds a bit ticked now, and you decide to drop it.

“Oh,” You mutter, “must’ve imagined it, then.”

His hand is cold in yours and you squeeze it just a bit, hoping he won’t notice and hoping that you will warm it. When you reach the Medical Wing, you tilt your head and say, “Wait here. I’ll get you dry clothes from the storage.”

But as you turn to leave he doesn’t let go, though doesn’t say anything either. He’s choked up — either he doesn’t know how to say it or doesn’t want to say it at all. He doesn’t want to be alone. Those whispers come again, ringing in your ears so quietly you aren’t sure they’re even there. You give him a soft smile, catching his gaze, “Okay, we can go together. You’ll probably stay here for at least another week, so, it’s best you know where the storage is anyway.” There’s no rush in your words, no annoyance, just simple acceptance. It eases him, relieves him of saying and admitting things he’s not willing to bring to light.

The walk is quiet and you still hold hands. His is much bigger than yours, rough, though not unpleasant. They are hands of a man that uses them often — for better, or for worse — and a twinge in your heart, a sudden thud of uncertainty, informs you that your previous speculations might have not been correct at all. His hand doesn’t feel like that of a prince (not that you would know what that would feel like), no, it feels like a hand of a soldier. But that inching of something amiss is swept away by warmth, silent happiness, a certain deliriousness that starts blooming within you and spreading all around. You feel him, somehow; feel a connection. You can’t put it into words exactly, you doubt you could ever explain it to anyone. It’s fragile. And beautiful. And maddening that such a devout emotion is sprung by something as innocent as holding hands

You wonder if he feels it. You somehow know he does.

The storage room is not big. Your hand slips from his as he chooses to stand by the doorway and you rummage to get his things. You feel braver. Perhaps it’s the tiredness that leaves you so open and bold, but searching you can’t help but ask, “So tell me…” You start, handing him some towels, “What were you actually doing? Besides being melodramatic.” You add, your lips quirking upwards.

He regards you with lively eyes and you see a grin lift his cheeks. He’s smiling, actually smiling, and you know this action is precious and rare and you can’t help but beam at him in return, “You think I was being melodramatic?” He questions.

You laugh a little, a breathless bell-like “Yes” falling from your lips as you fetch him dry clothes from the upper shelf, “All you needed was a cape to swing around.”

His expression abruptly falls and the temperature drops with it.

“Right, no cape.” You mumble, a tad disappointed, handing him his clothes.

As you make your way back, you can’t help but saying, “I just thought it would suit you, is all.”

“What else do you think would suit me?”

You raise a brow, trying to keep up with his drastic shift in moods: again, hes smiling, then he’s pensive, now he seems lighthearted, genuinely curious. “You like to ask a lot of questions.” You conclude.

He shrugs, “I’m just trying to figure out what you think of me.”

“And why are you curious?”

“Now you are the one asking a lot of questions.” He points out. You snort.

“You started it.”

“Did not.”

“Did too!”

This again, followed by quiet chuckles. You don’t turn to the Medical Wing now, instead stopping by the elevator and pressing the red button. The doors slide open. You glance at him.

“So…” You mumble, “This is not how I imagined my night going, but…” You aren’t quite sure how to finish, how to vocalize the strange swirl of emotions in your chest, “Well, goodnight.”

You step into the elevator, going to push the button—“Ben.” He says suddenly, making you flinch and turn to him. He’s not looking at you, instead staring at the floor, “My name. It’s Ben.”

Again, that same energy, that same shock you felt when you first touched his hand ignites your body with something closely akin to happiness. Trust. Bond. He trusts you. The connection you felt was not an exaggeration. He would not have given you his name otherwise.

“Goodnight, Ben.” You say softly, fighting a smile that’s trying to rise on your face, “Sweet dreams.”

“…Goodnight, Seven.”

As the elevator doors shut, you think you hear him say “Thank you”, but that might have just been your imagination.

hope you liked it! xxx

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obsidianfr3sk · 4 years

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Rise of the Renegades (Chapter 3)

Summary: Heroes come from the most unexpected places. Heroes sometimes feel a little too different, a little too scared, a little too alone. But heroes also know when enough is enough, and that before saving the world, they need to save themselves. And they cannot do it alone.

They were going to be the hope of the world. They were going to call themselves the Renegades. Even if they didn’t know it yet.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26246812/chapters/64645693

Enough of the gays, let’s see what the girls had been up to (? ah, and Evander lol. Uh... this is the first time I don’t have anything to say. Likes and reblogs are appreciated as always, I love y’all, and idk i send you, person reading this, good mexican vibes (?

Tag list: @nodrianbcyes @healing-winston-pratt @lethughandsimonkiss @cerenoya @cindersnightmare @itsalittlebitchilly @ohmyskies

A golden medallion, a golden cage

Please picture me in the weeds before I learned civility.

I used to scream ferociously any time I wanted.

Sweet tea in the summer,

cross my heart, won’t tell no other.

Tamaya

When she first arrived at that abandoned store, she thought it would take years for it to feel like home. There were many empty boxes, rats, dust, and rusty pipes. Also, Tamaya had never cleaned in her life. The prospect of having to deal with this mess on her own was not the least bit appealing to her.

However, the idea of going home was even less so.

The first night was uncomfortable. She couldn't sleep at all. Luckily, she had brought a flashlight with her and started to cover all the windows with loose wood and old cardboard. Then, with some chains and furniture, she blocked the entrances. She looked up at the ceiling and realized there was a light catcher.

Tamaya smiled. She wasn’t gonna block it.

She had overestimated how long it would take to clean the whole place. It turns out that when there was nothing else to do, one can work remarkably fast, even without help. Rats were the least of her problems. She wasn't disgusted when she grabbed them, stuffed them into a box, and released them a few blocks further at night. Georgia was so shocked by it that the first thing she did the next day was giving her an antibacterial gel. A luxury item in those times.

Tamaya preferred when Georgia brought her food. She didn’t like that much the fact she was living off the garbage from the place next door.

On the eighth night, she looked at her reflection in the dirty mirror at the back of the room. The candlelight was the only thing that illuminated her. Molly was sitting on her lap. She noticed that her once flawless green dress had tiny spots of an unknown substance.

But Tamaya looked even worse. Clothes had never mattered much to her and her wings were fine. What worried her the most was her hair. It had always been long. She had tried to convince her parents for years to let her cut it off, but they never let her. Why? Her hair was the prettiest thing she had.

It was at that moment, that Tamaya realized that she no longer needed to look pretty to anyone. Beauty was overrated.

She took a pair of scissors and cut her hair.

Her head and soul felt lighter.

The sun hadn't quite risen yet when Georgia entered through the light trap. For a few seconds, Tamaya could see the firmament was as pink as only sunrises could be. Under her arm, Georgia carried a cloth bag.

Tamaya rubbed her eyes wearily. She had been waiting for her sitting on an old chair for a long time.

“Honey, I’m home!” Georgia exclaimed gracefully coming down.

She always made the same joke. And Tamaya always had to pretend she didn’t find it funny.

“Oh, but I haven’t prepared breakfast yet,” she muttered.

Georgia looked at Molly and tossed the cloth bag at her. “Molly, catch it!”

Obviously, Molly didn't catch it. Georgia pretended to smash a cup of glass against the wall and raised herself a few feet off the ground to appear taller than Tamaya. “Tamaya, I want more children. Molly is too lazy and ugly.”

Tamaya put her hand to her mouth and faked a sob. “How can you say that in front of your daughter, Georgia?—” She waved at Molly. “—In front of your daughter!”

Then her friend grunted and lunged at Tamaya, knocking them down onto the mattress. “No! She is not a worthy heir to my wealth!” she exclaimed, sitting on her lap. “Her head is made of plastic! And she’s white! Tamaya, I'm not white! Who is the father?!”

“Of course she's your daughter!” Tamaya replied “You know how I know she’s yours? Because she’s a little piece of shit too!”

Georgia's jaw dropped. She closed her eyes, sighed, and with a dreamy smile, whispered, “A little piece of shit… That's my daughter,” and kissed her on the cheek.

Tamaya had never received kisses in her life. If her parents ever did, she had been too young to remember. But she liked it when Georgia did it because it was like...

Well, as if a sister did it. Or a mom. Or a real friend.

“That was the magic kiss that makes babies, by the—” Suddenly, Georgia dropped to the ground holding her belly. “Oh no, the baby is coming! The baby is coming! “ and, amid false screams worthy of a woman in labor, she took out of her jacket pocket a blue cardboard box with pink details. “Oh… Oh, Tamaya, dear,” she muttered, standing up. “She's beautiful,” and she put it in her arms.

Tamaya looked at it. They were tampons.

She didn't know where she was getting the strength not to laugh.

“Tampons Rae,” she whispered, stroking what would be the cheek of the box.

“Molly will be so jealous…”

“Molly will love her new sister. I'm sure.”

Georgia finally laughed and lay down next to Tamaya. It amazed her that lying on such a small, old mattress didn't bother her. She had never been to her room, but in her head, Tamaya had the image of her friend lying on a bed that could easily fit six people, wearing pajamas worthy of a princess and with the room smelling like vanilla and strawberries. Nothing to do with where they were now.

She looked at the box of tampons more closely. It felt a little lighter than expected, so she assumed Georgia had kept a few for her personal use, which honestly didn’t bother her. Then, she took out what was inside the bag. A bar of soap, a bottle of apple soda, and two bags of walnuts about to expire.

There were fewer supplies than last time.

She arranged them in a loose drawer next to the mattress. There was still an energy bar left that Georgia had brought her a couple of days ago. She took it and handed it to her.

“No, you eat, Tamaya,” Georgia said with a smile. “I have plenty at my house.”

“Okey,” she replied with a shrug. Tamaya took a small bite. It tasted weird. “Has your mom got a job yet?”

“No,” she muttered. “But she is already an older woman. Maybe that's why nobody wants to hire her. And it's not like many people have money to pay one more employee anyways. Also, she may have been an excellent lawyer at the time, but I'm not so sure if she's a good housekeeper or waitress.”

Tamaya nodded. She shouldn't have asked.

“I'm thinking about looking for a job too—”

“She won't let you.”

“So what?” Georgia said challengingly. “That thing about staying at home, reading and embroidering, doesn't suit me.” She crossed her arms. “I'm nineteen years old, I think it's time for me to start making my own decisions.”

Decisions. What a strange word.

Because that implied that she had options.

And Tamaya had already gotten used to not having them.

The good thing is that she was fully aware of it.

Georgia bit her lower lip and stood up. “I guess I should go. You know… to keep looking for a job.”

“Yes,” Tamaya said. "I guess you should.”

Her friend took the cloth bag. Tamaya walked with her until they were just below the light catcher. She should go out in the sun for a bit before people started to go outside.

“I'll come back tomorrow,” Georgia assured her, taking her hand. “I promise.”

She had promised that before and she had not always kept her word. However, Tamaya had already learned that promises were very easy to break and she didn't take it personally.

“I’ll wait for you.”

And she left.

And Tamaya was left alone. Again.

She waited a couple of minutes before sticking her head out of the light trap. She looked up at the morning sky, cold and clear, with the smell of garbage and pollution that characterized it at all hours. There was still no one on the streets, but the lady from the Chinese food place next door was taking out the trash from the day before, like every morning.

Breakfast.

Unlike Tamaya, she never looked up at the sky.

Nobody did. If they did, they would be aware of her presence. But people were too into their own thing that they didn't even bother to see something beyond their noses. Just thinking of themselves and their wishes. Of course, now that there was no longer someone to punish those who disrespected the thin line there was between good and evil, they had taken the opportunity to bring out the most primitive and selfish part of their beings.

Tamaya had spent a lot of her time thinking about it, and she still didn't understand the reason behind it.

Maybe it was that Tamaya would never understand the world of normal people.

Yes. That was probably it.

She waited for the woman to return inside to completely leave her lair. Tamaya was ready to go down to look for her food when a small and slim figure came out from behind some wooden boxes and ran towards the garbage bags.

She was going to take her breakfast.

Tamaya wasn't going to make it so easy for her.

That was what happened when people did not look up to the sky.

Kasumi

She wasn't looking in the trash for food, no. Kasumi was collecting the ingredients for the royal breakfast, which would take place in the most beautiful Chinese garden in the kingdom. It would be held that morning. They would be sitting by the river's edge, on a soft white blanket. She and Evander were going to eat like the monarchs that they were. There would be hard-boiled eggs, fresh plums, strawberries and cream, pancakes, waffles covered with jam, and cookie milkshakes. They would be able to eat whatever they wanted without getting sick to their stomachs. And if they did, they would only have to sing a song to the waters of the river and it would become the sweetest and most effective stomach ache remedy of all.

It was going to be the best feast there could have been.

But first, she had to find the ingredients.

She held her breath as she rummaged through the remains of rotten vegetables and sticky noodles. Think, think, think.

Kasumi was holding her breath because... the ingredients came from a magical bush. They had flowers that gave off a foul odor to scare off intruders. However, when they realized that Kasumi was pure of heart, they would reveal their true scent of grapes and rays of the sun.

Then, among all that mess, she found a box of white foam. She carefully removed a few pieces of grated carrot and tore it open with trembling hands.

Fried rice. A delicious plate of fried rice. And it actually looked edible.

She hugged the box with a lump in her throat. Oh, Evander was going to love this—

“That's mine.”

Kasumi froze.

It was the coldest and most terrifying voice she had ever heard. Hoarse and stern, it rumbled in her head like thunder in a storm.

A tear rolled down her cheek. God, Evander was so hungry. She was so hungry...

“Give it to me. Now.”

Kasumi rubbed her eyes and turned around. She put the foam box on the floor. and was about to look up, when the voice commanded, “Don't look at me.”

She obeyed. The mysterious voice took the box.

“I didn't mean to steal your food,” she muttered. “Sorry.”

A feather fell in front of her. Kasumi was slightly startled. Her head completely forgot what the voice had commanded, and she shone her flashlight.

It was a woman. She had shoulder-length hair and an aquiline nose. That, along with her amber eyes and huge black wings, Kasumi was sure she was seeing a bird. A lady.

A Ladybird.

Ladybird, are you the one who protects the magic bushes?

Ladybird did not like the light on her face. She hissed and slapped the flashlight from Kasumi’s hand. “I told you not to look at me!” she yelled.

At that moment, a flash caught Kasumi's attention. A flash of gold that came from a broken medallion hanging from Ladybird's neck.

She reached into the back pocket of her pants and felt between her fingers the half of that same locket that belonged to her.

Kasumi was wrong. Ladybird did not protect the magic bushes. Ladybird was a thief. Not only had she taken her and Evander's food, but she had also taken Mr. Holbrook's locket.

How delusional of her to believe that there were still people who protected something other than themselves.

Ladybird spread her wings, ready to take off when Kasumi lunged at her and tried to yank the locket from her. She pulled and pulled but the old chain wouldn't give up and Ladybird wouldn't stop yelling, “What the hell?! Let go of me!”

She took her by her long braid and threw her to the ground. However, the adrenaline rush allowed her to jump up and grab onto Ladybird's ankle. “That is not yours!” cried Kasumi. “Thief!”

“IT'S MY FOOD, BITCH!”

“IT'S NOT YOUR MEDALLION!”

The door to the store opened. Kasumi became so flustered that she accidentally let go of Ladybird's ankle and fell backward against the concrete. The lady started yelling rude words at her in an accent Kasumi could barely understand. She got to her feet, dodged the lady's broom, and ran as fast as her legs would allow her.

Regardless, Kasumi wished that Ladybird had escaped in time before the lady saw her. Something told her that she was not going to be nicer to her than she was to Kasumi.

She carefully pushed the rusty trash can. That, and the piece of wood that they put over that hole in the wall, made it impossible for someone unfamiliar with the area to know there was a secret entrance. Kasumi wondered how they would enter when they grew up. She herself sometimes had a little difficulty entering. But surely it was just her imagination. Besides, it wasn't like that wall was especially difficult to pull down.

From the looks of it, that place used to be an apartment complex. All the main entrances had been blocked with rubble and there was not a single window that was not broken. Kasumi and Evander had settled on the third floor. It was a dangerous thing to walk those increasingly unstable stairs, but it would be more dangerous for someone to remove the rubble, enter and see them. On the third floor, they would at least have a little time to escape.

Luckily, it hadn't been necessary yet.

She entered her small apartment and found Evander coloring the wall with pieces of chalk they had found in the park. When he saw her, his dirty freckled face lit up as much as the fireworks that came from his hands. “Kasumi!” he screeched. “Did you bring breakfast? Tell me you brought breakfast!”

Heartbroken, Kasumi swallowed the lump in her throat and clasped her hands behind her back. “Today I brought our favorite food, Vandy…”

Evander smiled even more. Kasumi opened an imaginary box and whispered, “Stardust cookies.”

Her friend's smile twisted a little in an almost imperceptible way. “Stardust cookies!" he exclaimed, taking one. Kasumi moistened her hands with her powers and wiped his face. Now, Evander didn’t look that dirty anymore. “Let me guess, these were cooked by—” he scratched his chin thoughtfully “—Your Mr. Dad!”

“No, it was your Mr. Dad,” Kasumi replied. They sat right in front of the window to eat their stardust cookies. There was still a star left in the sky. Perfect . “Hello Mr. Wade, thanks for the cookies. Evander, don't be rude. Thank to your Mr. Dad.”

Evander put his pieces of chalk in his pockets. He kept a pink one and gave Kasumi the blue one. “Thanks, Dad!” and proceeded to color a flower in the window frame.

Kasumi took a stardust cookie and chewed it. She always imagined stardust cookies as if they were vanilla cookies with pieces of almonds and white chocolates, so soft they left puffs all over the place.

Hopefully one day she could taste some real stardust cookies.

She decided to draw fishes.

“Don’t you think that today's cookies were a bit burnt?” Evander whispered.

“No, they were delicious,” she replied. “Your Mr. Dad showed off. Who do you think cooks better, your Mr. Dad or my Dad?”

“Mom Bertha.”

Kasumi giggled underneath. “You’re right, Vandy.”

They kept coloring.

They had always drawn on the walls. Their drawings, pretty cans, curious rocks, and bunches of sticks that hung from the corded rafters were the only decorations they had. However, lately, they had chosen to draw on the window frame during the early hours of the day.

Maybe it was because there was something romantic about drawing in the light of dawn. Or maybe it was because she liked to think that their parents could see what they were drawing from the stars.

Or both.

“I don't know if I can bear the same breakfast tomorrow,” Evander murmured. “We've been eating stardust cookies for almost two days.”

Don't cry, Kasumi, don't cry.

“And what do you want to eat then?” she asked. “What a pretty flower, by the way.”

Evander shook his head. “No, tell me what you want. And I'll get it myself today.”

Kasumi pursed her lips and scratched her head, pretending to seriously consider her answer. “I would like…” she muttered. “Oh, I know, a giant chocolate cake.”

“No, Kasumi, something easy!” Evander squealed, nudging her slightly. “A giant chocolate cake will crush me!” He threw himself to the ground and pretended to be crushed by a huge chocolate cake. “I'll be like this, dead…”

“How awful!” she exclaimed. “So… maybe a small chocolate cake?”

“Now that sounds a lot more reasonable,” he replied, sitting down again. “At least that one isn't going to crush me.”

“I don't feel comfortable speaking ill about your Mr. Dad’s food in front of him,” Kasumi said. “He's going to say I'm a bad influence and he won't let me hang out with you.”

“Dad, Kasumi is not a bad influence!” Evander yelled to the sky, “I swear!”

Mr. Wade looked at her from above, annoyed.

Kasumi didn't feel bad. She deserved it.

“Look at my flower,” Evander said, pulling her out of her thoughts. He pointed to a pink flower with triangular petals and huge circular leaves. “I just created it, it is a new species. Do you know how I'm going to name it?”

She ran her fingers over the drawing. If she concentrated enough, she could imagine that she was touching those velvety petals and not the hard concrete. “How?”

“Kasumi. Like you.”

Kasumi sighed.

Mrs. Moon, how do I explain that I am not worthy of having such a beautiful flower named in my honor?

Probably Mrs. Moon was upset with her too because she flatly refused to answer her question. She was also hungry. She was also mad at Kasumi for not trying a little more.

“Are you telling me that because you want me to give you the last stardust cookie?” she asked.

“Will you?”

Kasumi rolled her eyes in fake annoyance and handed him the last cookie. Evander almost snatched it from her hands. He went back to his drawing as he chewed it happily, moving to the beat of a song inside his head.

Imaginary music. Imaginary food.

Was he imaginary?

Am I imaginary?

She toyed with his red locks and realized she left traces of blue chalk in his hair. “Oh, sorry,” she mumbled.

Evander turned to see her, confused. “Why?”

Kasumi wanted to answer that she was sorry she had messed his hair.

But actually, she was sorry for everything.

#renegades #archenemies #supernova #renegades trilogy #fic #ao3 #OG renegades #tamaya rae #georgia rawles #kasumi hasegawa #evander wade #rise of the renegades #yes tamaya called a thirteen year old a bitch #she has no regrets #and honestly #neither do i

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purplezebraproductions · 3 years

Text

Warning: LONG DUMB RAMBLE ABOUT MY MLP AU/FANFIC THING IDK WHAT TO CALL IT!

“But I thought Alicorn wings had to be earned by accomplishing some great Princess worthy deed?”

So, if y’all have been following me for a bit you’ll know of my very small, barely developed MLP Au/Fanfic thing. (I don’t really see it as a fanfic as it’s just a small story centered around my two MLP fan characters. Sure it does have some royalty in the mix, and I have some ideas to add some other fan characters, but for now it’s just a fun little thing I do on occasion.)

If y’all remember, this is Ichor. She was my first FC in this universe and just started out as a bit of a tragic character, being a Princess without a kingdom. However, it wasn’t until I created Anastasia that I started to ask the question, why didn’t she have a kingdom? (We’ll get to Anastasia in a sec.)

I mentioned in Ichor’s backstory that “During the time she needed to discover her powers and learn how to fly, the Royals were attempting to rush her through her duties in order to crown her quickly.” This was something that I’m not sure exactly why I wrote it into the initial story, but the idea that Ichor was a newbie who was pushed into royalty very quickly was something that enticed me, and something I could see that would stress anyone out to the point of abandoning their post.

However, like I said previously, I didn’t fully start developing this idea until I created Anastasia.

Within her backstory I mention that “The Royals of the other kingdoms had become frantic after finding her (Ichor) missing, but not because they desperately wanted to find her, but because they needed someone to fill her spot...In an effort to keep the peace within Ichor's former kingdom, they crowned Anastasia hastily.” It became a big point of contention within the plot that the two princesses were crowned not only very closely to each other, but to the point that they were given incredible power and responsibility all at once.

So what does this have to do with the quote I put at the beginning? Well. let’s go back to it for a second.

“But I thought Alicorn wings had to be earned by accomplishing some great Princess worthy deed?”

This quote was said by Rarity right after they all met Flurry Heart for the first time. A pony who was born as an Alicorn despite that basically seeming impossible by Equestria’s history. So what do I want to take away from this quote?

Well, first off, probably the most important thing is that Rarity said Alicorn wings. Not powers, not prestige, she specifically mentioned that wings must be earned for someone to become an Alicorn and therefore become royalty. This heavily implies if not downright states that all pony Royalty within Equestrian borders have always been born as Unicorns, and through their magical abilities, they were able to gain the prestige of becoming Alicorns. So how does this apply to Ichor and Anastasia? Well, what were they before they became Alicorns?

As you can see, Anastasia was a Unicorn, but Ichor was an Earth pony. Which means that be granting Ichor Alicorn powers and prestige, the royals of Equestria were not only making history, but they made a huge gamble that they were unsure would pay off in the end.

Y’see that royals of Equestria crowned Ichor in a haste as an attempt to placate her kingdom and Earth ponies and Pegasi across their nation. During the time of my AU/fanfic thing (I need a better word for this) there has been massive unrest within the three pillars of the pony community. Isn’t it odd how the Unicorns are the ones always given prestige over everyone else and are allowed to live side by side with the princesses Celestia and Luna while everyone else is delegated to manual labor?

Because of this perceived inequality the Earth ponies and the Pegasi have become quite uncivil with each other, the Unicorns, and the Monarchy. While it’s not an outright civil war or revolution, it’s becoming difficult to keep everything in Equestria running smoothly when all factions of ponies are focused solely on themselves or their people. In a last ditch effort to quell the growing storm, one of the royals (hint hint wink wink) proposes that they give the other ponies what they want. Not necessarily more of a standing in society or the way they are viewed, but rather to elevate on of their own into royal status.

That’s where Ichor comes in. She was already a brave and confident leader among her people. Not only when it came to farming, but also when it came to protecting her people from forces the royals couldn’t be bothered to deal with (like Timber Wolves, Manticores, and Ursas). Given everything she has done for her people, she would be a strong choice for a leader. But the way they went about it is kinda suspicious don’t ya think?

Taking her from her village, announcing to everyone what was going to happen, rushing her transformation and attempting to place a crown on her head the very same day?

Well, enough of that it’s really not important.

But not only does this explain why the royals rushed Ichors coronation, but it also explains why Ichor had such problems with her powers. As Twilight showed after her transformation, just because she gained wings doesn’t mean she can immediately fly. And just like her, just because Ichor gained a horn doesn’t mean she understand how to use her powers. She should have been trained for years before taking the throne. But much like a filly her magic came out untamed and raw, combined with a few other factors, this is what cause her deadly golden magic.

Well, that explains why Ichor was rushed on through, but where does that leave Anastasia? As we can see Anastasia was already a Unicorn, so wouldn’t that completely negate the attempt the royals made when they tried to crown Ichor? So, what’s the deal.

Well, I’m going to keep that answer close to my chest for right now, but just know that there’s far more than meets the eye when it comes to the Monarchy of Equestria.

...

That’s really all I’ve got for right now. And also for the record I don’t “believe” everything I’m writing. In the canon of the show I don’t believe Unicorns are put above all, or that Pegasi and Earth ponies are seen as common laborers, and I certainly don’t see the Princesses as evil. Obviously the show has proven that everyone is better and stronger together. I just think it would be a fun twist on the hierarchy to have people rising up from the dirt so to speak. Also, as far as I know, atm Twilight and her friends are not a part of this AU/fanfic thing. I really don’t know where they’d fit into the large scheme of everything. I’m not against the idea of including them, just right now they don’t have a place in it.

#mlp #mlp fim #my little pony #my little pony friendship is magic #mlp au #au #mlp fanfiction #writers on tumblr #artists on tumblr #fan characters #mlp fan character

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awkwardpenguinproductions · 3 years

Text

Conflict of Interest

Part 2 of the Dragon of the Yuyan

Read on AO3 | Series Masterpost

Toshiaki sits on his bunk, waxing his bowstrings and watching Kai teach Zuko their sign-language. It's been over two weeks since the boy snuck into the Stronghold, and he's still underweight and standoffish, but he trails after the Troop with dogged determination, and he's picking up their language with dizzying speed.

He already has his own name in their language, gifted by Kai, who seems determined to befriend the kid. In turn, Kai seems to be the only one of the Troop that Zuko willingly lets within arms' reach, although he still shies away from casual touch.

Zuko successfully speeds through his latest vocabulary lists, and hesitantly draws Kai into a conversation about food, which seems to be both boys' favorite topic.

My favorite dish is mutton-pork fried rice, he signs slowly. I also like apples, and mangos.

Kai replies, Mutton-pork fried rice is delicious! I like spicy noodles with shrimp, and plums.

Zuko's single eyebrow furrows as he puzzles out what Kai is saying, and the tiny smile that forms when he figures it out and replies, I like plums too! is unfairly adorable.

Easy there, Commander, he thinks to himself, coiling the bowstrings up and returning them to their pouch, he's an asset, not a pygmy puma kitten.

Mika strides up to the boys, a small pouch in her hand. Zuko, would you like some fire-flakes?

Zuko eyes her suspiciously, but replies, Yes, please.

Mika hands him the pouch, and Zuko peeks inside before signing Thank you.

You’re welcome. Mika reaches out to him like she’s going to ruffle his shaggy black hair, but pulls back at Zuko’s flinch. She gives him a soft smile, and heads over to her own bunk.

Kai waves a hand to get Zuko’s attention. Can I have some fire-flakes too?

Zuko nods and holds the pouch open for Kai to help himself. Kai takes a few, and scoots back with an easy smile when Zuko’s expression turns anxious. The fact that he was able to share the fire-flakes at all feels like a momentous step, since the kid protects his food like a hungry boarcupine.

The door to the dormitory opens, and the Stronghold CMO, Commander Atsuko, steps inside. Zuko immediately notices her entrance, and keeps a wary eye on her as she strides directly over to Toshiaki.

“May I have a private word, Commander Toshiaki?” She asks quietly. Her face and voice give nothing away, but Toshiaki is absolutely certain that this discussion is going to be about their newest recruit.

Absolutely, Commander Atsuko, Toshiaki replies, rising. Shall we go to my office?

“That would be best, I believe,” Atsuko says, and they walk to the administrative wing of the Keep.

Toshiaki sits down at his desk. What's on your mind, Atsuko?

"I think you need to see this," Atsuko replies, retrieving a scroll from the folds of her medic's robes. She spreads it out on the surface of his desk. "Your newest recruit might actually have Royal blood."

It's a professionally done ink drawing on fine paper, about a year old, and depicts the Fire Lord and his Heirs. Fire Lord Ozai stands tall and regal and powerful in the center, his bearing rigid and imperious even as the brush strokes that form his image flow gracefully. At the Fire Lord's right, the place of favor and prominence, stands the Fire Princess Azula. Even at the tender age of eleven, the cold eyes and calculating smirk on the Princess's face is unsettling, a nearly exact copy of those on the face of her father. In contrast, the Fire Prince on his father's left has eyes like warm embers, banked but still radiating kindness like heat, and his little quirked smile is slightly pained but earnest. Toshiaki can easily imagine that smile on a face a little thinner with hunger and half obscured with a horrific burn.

You're certain of this? He asks.

"I am," she replies. "My uncle is a Royal Scribe, and so has access to the Palace. He's also a… fan… of the Royal Family, and likes to keep abreast of events pertaining to them. Seven months ago, he wrote me a letter."

Toshiaki listens with mounting horror as Atsuko describes how the Fire Prince, only thirteen years old, had been shocked to find his father, his Fire Lord, across the dueling arena. How he had immediately dropped to his knees and begged his father for forgiveness. How the Fire Lord had burned his own child's face.

"My uncle says that the Fire Prince disappeared from the Palace after that," Atsuko says. "The Fire Lord, long may he reign, has made no decrees in regards to the whereabouts of the boy, but has quietly ordered all records and images of him destroyed. Uncle Katsuo hid the items in his personal collection pertaining to the Fire Prince instead of destroying them. I wrote to him two weeks ago asking if he had any recent images of the Royal Family, and he sent me that portrait."

Toshiaki is still trying to wrap his mind around the situation. But first things first…

Did you tell anyone else about this? He demands.

"No, and Uncle Katsuo knows to be discreet," Atsuko answers. "He wouldn't last very long as a Royal Scribe if he wasn't."

Good, let's keep it that way for now, Toshiaki signs, slumping tiredly. Great Agni above…

"Do you want my recommendation?"

He blinks up at her, surprised. Atsuko is normally the picture of a loyal Fire Nation medical officer--detached and clinical in all things. Her tone now, though…

Please.

Atsuko takes a breath. "The patient presented with advanced undernourishment, suggesting that he has been subsisting on whatever he could catch or forage. His clothes were Caldera silks, inappropriate for the terrain, and he had no possessions other than a pearl dagger, too fine a make for him to have simply found or stolen it. He has thin burns consistent with the fire lash technique all over his back, all at least a year or more old. The burn on his face saw immediate treatment, thank Agni, but the bandaging was taken off too soon, and it hasn't seen any kind of aftercare to minimize the scarring."

The doctor's fists are balled at her sides, she's snapping each word off as though it had personally offended her.

"Fire Prince Zuko was left for dead, Commander. He was not meant to survive this long, and if Agni hadn't made him the single most tenacious man I've ever seen, he would be dead months ago. It is my recommendation that we ensure that no one else figures out who he is. For his own safety."

Toshiaki can feel the headache brewing like a Yanshima thunderstorm. You have given me a lot to think about, Commander, he signs. May I keep the portrait?

"I was planning on destroying it anyway," she says, shrugging. "Don't want people putting pieces together that ought not to be." She forms the Flame with her hands, he does the same, and they bow to each other. Then she sweeps out of his office without another word.

Toshiaki groans aloud in the privacy of his own office. Great Agni and all the stars, what is he supposed to do? He is a loyal soldier of the Fire Nation, and has been for fifteen years. He has made oaths before Agni to serve and obey his Fire Lord and to serve and protect his Nation.

The will of the Fire Lord is as his own.

The will of the Fire Lord is the death of this boy.

It is obvious that Zuko was never meant to survive. The Fire Lord wanted him gone, but didn't care enough to order his death. If Toshiaki reported the situation to Colonel Shinu, word would eventually get back to the Fire Lord, who would then order the boy's immediate execution. And as a loyal soldier of the Fire Nation, Toshiaki would be bound by oath to carry out that order.

Toshiaki has been a soldier for fifteen years. He is the leader of a specialized unit that infiltrates enemy territory and captures or eliminates targets that the regular Army is not trained or equipped to handle. He and his Troop are a precision tool to be utilized for the progression of the March of Civilization. They pave the way for the Fire Nation to spread its greatness to the rest of the world.

By all accounts Toshiaki shouldn’t even have to think about it—but he can’t stop looking at the portrait in front of him, seeing the tiny, shy smile on Zuko’s face as he signs haltingly with Kai, and thinking, why?

Why would the Fire Lord turn on his own son? Why would the Fire Lord burn and abandon his own child? Toshiaki doesn’t have any children of his own, but he remembers his own father with great fondness, and cannot think of a single thing he could have done at age thirteen that would have caused Shui of Yanshima to treat him as cruelly as Ozai had treated Zuko.

And if the Fire Lord could treat his own family in such a manner, then what was to stop him from doing the same to his loyal troops?

He already has, Toshiaki realizes, remembering a dispatch from the front that had come through a few months ago. It had extolled the honorable sacrifice of the 41st Division against powerful Earth Kingdom forces south of Ba Sing Se. Assistance had been too late to stop the wholesale slaughter of the 41st, but the Fire Nation forces that had attacked the enemy’s rear had avenged them.

Captain Daichi of Jun Company had lost a cousin when the 41st had died. After the dispatch about the battle had been read, he’d confided in Toshiaki that the entire division had been composed of raw recruits. The average age had been 18.

Maneuvers on that scale were planned by the Fire Lord’s Council of War. The Fire Lord himself had to approve them before they were even written down.

The Fire Lord had sent an entire division of teenagers to their deaths.

But he’d done it to his son first.

Toshiaki feels sick. The headache that had been brewing earlier is now roaring in his head like a tigerdillo, sending arrows of pain zinging through his brain. He drops his head in his hands, fingers massaging his temples where it feels like his skull is falling apart.

Falling apart the way his faith is.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years of service to a nation that sends its children to be slaughtered. Fifteen years of service to a line of despots that savages its own people.

It can’t go on.

But what can he do?

The portrait catches his eye again, and he stares at the tiny smile on the prince’s face, rendered in ink. Thinks of the same tiny smile as the prince shares his fire-flakes with his friend.

There is none of his father’s cruelty in Zuko. Toshiaki has not known the boy long, but he knows that. For all of his wariness, he still accompanies the Troop through their drills and practice, smiling timidly in congratulations when the younger members succeed in their tasks, and providing escort to the infirmary when they get hurt (despite how nervous Atsuko obviously makes him). Toshiaki has seen him petting the vermin-catching pygmy pumas that live half-feral in the Stronghold, and the Hawkmaster has admitted to allowing the boy to feed the messenger hawks treats. Fire Prince Zuko may be royalty, but he is also startlingly kind.

Crown Prince Zuko. No decrees have been issued removing the Prince from the line of succession. Princess Azula was titled Crown Princess on the Summer Solstice, implying her position as heir apparent, but the Fire Lord has not yet stated his intentions outright. It is likely that he will wait to do so until Azula is eighteen, legally an adult. At that point, it is only a matter of time until Azula gets tired of waiting for her turn on the throne.

Heirs to the Caldera Throne can be legally challenged. Zuko would be able to challenge his sister for the Throne that is rightfully his.

Assuming he lives that long.

Toshiaki looks at the portrait once more, then rolls it up and feeds it into the small brazier that warms his office.

Well, Toshiaki will just have to make sure he does.

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#atla #atla fanfic #awkpenproductions presents #dragon of the yuyan #part 2 conflict of interest #full text post

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