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justinewt · 2 years

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Knife-Edge - THE 100 REWRITE Chapter Seventeen

[THE 100 MASTERLIST]

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Summary: Now that Finn was gone, the negotiations between the people from the ark and the commander could begin. Hopefully, a steady alliance would be born from this but some people were apparently not ready to let that happen and things would certainly not go as smoothly as they thought.

Words: 6.2k

Warnings: The 100 season 2 spoilers (episode 9 “Remember Me”), long chapter, angst, grief/nostalgia, envy of Clarke and her mother, blood, mutilation (getting stabbed and shit, if you’ve watched you know), knife wounds

Abby and Michelle walked across the Grounders’ camp. Finn was dead; killed by Clarke and the latter was at first nowhere to be found until the two women were told where she had gone. They walked into a tent and there she was, sobbing feverishly, trying to wipe his blood off her hands, her face twisted with grief and anguish. Michelle was hurting to see her like this, and it made her eyes get teary, but she stayed near the entrance, letting Abby walk to her daughter and she looked behind her when she felt movement. Kane had joined them inside. Abby crouched down in front of Clarke, softly putting her hands onto her daughter’s and she looked at her mother, her lips were shaking.

“They would have tortured him.” She gasped. “I had to. I—”

“It’s okay.” Abby told her, drawing her into a comforting hug. Michelle couldn’t help but be reminded of her own mother. She wished that everytime she had cried as hard she would have had her mother to comfort her, but she appreciated the fact that she always had her sister by her side, and she really wanted to try and make things right with her, now that Finn was gone for good. Kane was touched too by the sight of Clarke in this state. He looked away, glancing at Michelle who felt his gaze on her and peeked at him. When a tall Grounder entered the tent, Michelle automatically stepped out of the way and stood next to Kane who put a protective hand on her shoulder, and she simply glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. Their relationship was going to take some time to build, and she was still unsure as to what she really expected from it. She didn’t know what she wanted from it and was going to have to figure that out.

“The commander is ready to talk.” The man declared. Michelle observed him for an instant; he had a long beard descending to his chest. Clarke’s cries had calmed down and she nodded, briefly licking her lips and wiping her tears. Her mother helped her up and she looked down when a woman with facial war paint entered and walked past her, followed by another quite intimidating Grounder. The commander went to her seat in the back of the tent, on a sort of platform and sat down, the two other Grounders standing by her sides.

“Blood has answered blood.” She spoke. “Some on my side say that’s not enough. They wanted the murderer to suffer as our tradition demands. But they do not know that your suffering will be worse. What you did tonight will haunt you until the end of your days. Still, there will be restitution. The body will be given to the people of Tondc. Murderer and murdered joined by fire. Only then can we have peace.”

“No. No, we’ve done enough.” The commander’s eyes fell on Kane. “The boy should be buried by his own people.”

“Enough?” The woman on her side cut him off, infuriation and annoyance clearly piercing through her voice. “We were owed the pain of 18 deaths. We were owed our righteous kill. My village deserves justice.”

“You don’t want justice.” Abby retorted, her facial features tensed, staring at the Grounder. “You want vengeance.”

“You have not seen my vengeance.” She hissed back.

“We’ll do it.” Clarke then declared, taking a step forward, face up. “But when it’s over, we talk about how to get our people out of Mount Weather. All of our people.

"We want the same things, Clarke.” The commander assured in a low voice.

“Good. When do we leave?”

“Now.” She stood up. “Choose your attendants.” The discussion was rather formal and cold, and Clarke probably didn’t expect her to say this. Michelle swallowed harshly; with all that went on with Finn and the others and everything that bothered her mind, she didn’t really have much time to think about their peers still stuck in Mount Weather and she felt somewhat bad about it. Clarke turned to her mother as the Commander left the tent.

“Clarke, you don’t have to do this.” She tried to talk her out of it, shaking her head.

“Yes, I do.” She replied with a straight face, seeming drained from all the pressure of tonight’s event. “If this truce doesn’t hold… I killed Finn for nothing.”

Michelle stood there in the corner, a little taken aback and sighed silently while Kane and Abby talked. She didn’t even listen to their conversation, she just stared into space, her face turned in the direction taken by Clarke when she left. She didn’t know what to do at the moment, or where to go as if she wasn't supposed to be with Clarke or here in the tent, like she never should have been there in the first place. If they had been sent to earth even a month later, she would have been 18 and executed before any of this happened and none of it would be up to her, exempting her from going through all this mayhem and troubled thinking. That would have been too simple though. Michelle eventually stepped outside of the tent, looking around, trying to find Clarke and she stopped in her tracks when she saw her standing near the pole to which Finn had been tied but now, his corpse lied in the grass and Raven was on her knees beside him, her face looking down in sorrow.

“I said, go away.” Raven then shouted, jumping on her feet, her jaw clenched and teetch gritted. Michelle slowly approached, remaining far behind Clarke, in silence. If she did or said anything, she would just be told to shut up by Raven or that she must be happy that he was finally dead, and it would just be a pointless exchange of upset comments. But whatever Raven must believe Michelle thought of the situation and Finn’s death, the latter was definitely somewhat glad he was gone now. He went too far in her opinion.

“I know how hard it must be for you… but I’m leaving with the Grounders, and I need you to keep working on the radio.” Raven was just staring at Clare in bafflement at the bluntness of her request in a time like this and when she felt people behind her, she turned around.

“What are you doing?”

“They need to take him.” Clarke grabbed her arm.

“Get off.” She spat, releasing her arm from her grasp and she asked the two Grounders for a minute. They put Finn down and stepped away. Raven’s face showed how much of a betrayal this felt like for her. “You agreed to this.”

“We’re taking him back to where the massacre took place. There’s a death ritual. It’s the only way to get our people out of Mount Weather.”

“Then I’m coming too.” She retorted, bitter. “And don’t worry. I’ll bring your damn radio.”

Raven then walked away, almost nudging her with her shoulder as she passed, and Clarke nodded at the Grounders who came back to pick up Finn’s body and carry him away. Michelle frowned slightly upon seeing her friend stop moving and just staring at the body. She walked up to her, softly putting her hand on her shoulder and Clarke almost snapped out of a trance and jumped at the touch, glancing at Michelle. The two just looked at each other, one deeply troubled and the other worried for her dear friend.

Led by the Grounders, the procession of people from the Ark marched through the forest in heavy silence. Clarke and Michelle right after the Grounders, Bellamy, Abby and Kane right after them, along with Octavia and Lincoln, followed by even more Grounders mounted on horses. It was a long walk, and they all had been walking for a while now. Michelle glanced at her best friend every now and then and often found her staring in the distance, her gaze getting lost between the trees. It was the same look she had when they carried Finn’s body away from her. They all had their demons; she was haunted by the sight of someone she loved, and Michelle couldn’t stop thinking of her mother and her newly found father. Thinking about it, she glanced at Kane over her shoulder. Still confused and torn between hating him and wanting to give him a chance to be her father, she looked away and met Bellamy's eyes, which made her head turn around faster and she held onto her gun, looking forward until she heard footsteps coming closer and Bellamy's voice rose at the two girls' attention.

“Hey. Doing all right?”

“Yeah.” Clarke assured, trying to convince him as much as herself while Michelle stayed quiet for a moment.

“You did the right thing.” He added.

“Now I get to live with it.” She stared ahead of her. “You still think this truce is a bad idea.”

“I think we’re wasting time with politics while our friends are in trouble.”

“Well, we can’t really help them if we’re busy fighting against the Grounders.” Michelle spoke, shrugging.

“Michelle’s right.” Clarke agreed. “And we need their army to get to Mount Weather and you know it.”

“Their army has been getting their ass kicked by Mount Weather forever.” He retorted. “What we need is an inside man. Someone to be our eyes and ears.”

“Forget it. It’s too dangerous.” She shook her head, dismissing the idea.

“Clarke, if you can make it out, I can make it.”

“I said no.” He shot up his eyebrows at her blunt response.

“Since I don’t take orders from you… I’m gonna need a better reason.”

“I can’t lose you too. Okay?” She then said and Michelle glanced at her. What Bellamy had proposed was extremely risky, but it was also quite the good idea and if that attempt at making alliances with the Grounders failed, it would still be a nice plan B. All these things happening constantly were getting tiring and Michelle had a hard time keeping up with everything but now, she told herself to focus on supporting Clarke while they tried to get that alliance going and then save their friends from Mount Weather. She couldn’t even believe that she had been so preoccupied lately that she kind of forgot about them for a time. She briefly shut her eyes, sighing silently and watched the trees as they walked. Trying to think of nothing was practically impossible for her now and thinking 24/7 was pretty bothering, especially when it was the same thoughts repeating themselves in a loop in her head. It was becoming overly unbearable as it was all she could think about so she was going to have to get herself to speak with Kane, whether she liked it or not, she had to get these things off her chest, for her own good or keeping it all to herself and bottling up her emotions would drive her nuts.

It was already night when they arrived near Tondc. Fires were lit and they set camp for the night, Grounders on one side and their people setting their tents on the opposite side while Clarke laid a blanket in the middle, near a fire. Bellamy walked to her, trying to get her to come to their side as it was safer, but she wanted to show them she trusted them. If they were to be allies, there wouldn’t really be sides any more. Michelle was walking back and forth, pressing the sole of her shoes on the leaves to make them crack, arms folded, head tilted forward, a rather bored expression on her face. She straightened up when Abby, seated in front of her tent, addressed her softly, concern in her voice.

“Hey, Michelle. Are you okay? I’m sorry, with all that was going on… I didn’t take the time to check on you.” Ever since she was a child, Abby had always acted as a second mother to Michelle along with Callie and now, the latter had lost hers completely and she was the only maternal figure she had left but she wasn’t really her mom.

“I’m fine. I just…” She tried dismissing her concerns but sighed and shook her head, glancing at Bellamy who decided to lay down near the Grounders with Clarke. She bit her lips. Kane wasn't anywhere near them, and she knew she could tell Abby anything and it would maybe be even easier this way because she would surely tell Kane afterwards and he would come to Michelle himself, but she was still thinking it all over. “You told me who was my dad, but it just still feels so unreal… It’s the only thought that’s been on my mind ever since you told me. I can’t shake it off.”

“It’s all right, Michelle.” She got on her feet and came up to her, tenderly grabbing her shoulders. “Don’t let that bother you. Give it time. You two will discuss it after we establish this alliance, don’t worry, okay?

“Yeah…” She sighed, nodding and as Kane walked up to them, she turned around and settled down next to Clarke, staring at the starry night sky, thinking of her mother. She closed her eyes, a tear rolling down the side of her face and she tried to go to sleep, hoping her night wouldn’t be as troubled as her day. When the sun rays poked through the treetops, they all set off again in the direction of Tondc and arrived there quickly. They heard a Grounder shout something from inside the camp but couldn’t quite discern the words and their meanings as it was their language, which the people from the Ark hadn’t yet learned. As the gate was slided open, the commander and the Grounder riding beside her got off their horses and they walked up to Clarke, Michelle, Bellamy, Octavia, Kane, Raven and Abby who had marched behind them.

“Your weapons.” He requested.

“We need to disarm before we enter.” Lincoln said to the small group as he came forward, giving the Grounder his knife. Clarke and Michelle put their guns inside a sort of bucket a Grounder handed to them and the rest of them reluctantly gave up theirs in a heavy silence. Raven was the only to not move and the Grounder walked up to her, taking her weapons one by one and she let him do so, staring at him with contempt and he then turn to the Commander, addressing her in their language. She nodded at what he said, and they marched into the village. The Grounders inside immidietaly riled up at the sight of the people from the Ark, grabbing their weapons and shouting at them. They stopped in their tracks when a single man blocked the path and spoke to the Commander. Clarke, Michelle and the others were rather confused as to what was being said until the Commander nodded to the Grounder by her side, the one who had to disarm Raven himself and he stepped forward, throwing a punch at the man’s face. He grunted, falling backward violently and was then pinned down and beaten up. Michelle widened her eyes slightly.

“Commander, stop him. Please.” Clarke begged. “They’ll blame us for this too.” The Commander said something, and the Grounder instantly stopped, standing up, letting go of the villager.

“The Sky People march with us now.” The Commander went on to declare in english. “Anyone who tries to stop that… will pay with their life.”

“Warm welcome.” Bellamy spoke as they resumed their walk through the village and Michelle couldn't have agreed more, simply shooting up her eyebrows, glancing at the inhabitants of Tondc standing by. A moment later, they found themselves in front of a funeral pyre with Finn’s wrapped corpse on top and the dozen people he took the lives of had their bodies all around the pyre. The Commander delivered a speech in their foreign language. They would have been lost, unable to understanding a word that came out of her mouth if it weren’t for Lincoln quietly translating as he stood with them.

“People of Tondc… in fire… we cleanse the pain of the past.” The war chief passed her flaming torch to the Commander and after a second, she eventually looked at Clarke, handing it out to her. Given the looks that were exchanged around the Commander, the Grounders didn’t really appreciate it but they weren’t allowed to say it so they remained silent while Clarke eventually accepted to take the torch, stepping beside her and after a moment of contemplation in a heavy silence, she set the pyre on fire and spoke a few words in the Grounders’ language. It was something Michelle had often heard too, but she didn’t understand it. Nonetheless, the Commander and the everyone that heard her seemed surprised to hear her speak their tongue, out of respect. The fire slowly grew, eating at the woods and the bodies. Raven had tears rolling down her cheeks and she shut her eyes closed while the lot of them watched, uneasy as the warm breath of the fire reached their faces. Michelle looked at the smoke slowly appearing to their eyes, and she lifted her head, her brown eyes staring at the blue sky above their heads. It was the first time she actually wondered what happened after death and if these people would ever be at peace, wherever they went; if her mother was at peace wherever she was, and proud of her.

After the funeral, a banquet in the honor of the alliance that was being forged between their two people was prepared and Clarke leading the way as she, Bellamy, Michelle, Abby, Kane, and Raven joined Octavia and Lincoln already there. Michelle went to her seat, in between Kane and Bellamy. They all stood by the table, facing each other, Grounders on one side and the people from the Ark on the other; the Sky People as they called them, and rightfully so given they did indeed come from the sky, or space, really. The very formal and serious setting of the banquet with light from outside penetrating this dark room through the two thin rectangular windows at the top of the wall on their left and by the dim orange light from the many candles placed on the table and the chandelier on the ceiling, weren’t necessarily of Michelle’s liking but they would all walk just out of there once it would be done, with the alliance secured and hopefully, not any bloodshed. If just showing up, being there and supporting Clarke was enough, she was totally capable of it.

“Please accept this gift, Commander. We drink this at special occasions. I believe this qualifies.” Kane spoke, unwrapping the bottle he held in his hands and held it out to her, a friendly smile on his face while she nodded at the Grounder by her side, and he took it and handed it to her himself.

“Thank you, Marcus of the Sky People.”

“Thank you, Lexa…” He added a few words that sounded somewhat blurry to Michelle’s ear, but she assumed it was referencing to Lexa’s people, just as she called him of the sky people. Nonetheless, she raised her head, seemingly appreciating the effort despite keeping a straight face. “Just, uh, don’t drink too much of it.”

“Clarke, let us drink together.” She then declared, turning her head to the blonde.

“It woud be my pleasure.” They looked at each other whie someone brought two goblets and Lexa then poured the liquor into them, giving one to Clarke and keeping one.

“Heda, allow me.” The man beside her took the cup and slowly brought it to his lips, staring at the Sky People as he took a sip of the drink in order to test it for poison before his Commander would drink it. After he drank and everything seemed fine, he gave the cup back to Lexa.

“Tonight, we celebrate our newfound peace. Tomorrow, we plan our war. To those we’ve lost. And to those we shall soon find.” She rose her cup and the second they were about to take a sip, the Grounder that had drunk from it fell heavily onto the table, knocking plates and cutlery off of it. The people in the room started getting agitated while Michelle and her peers looked around in confusion. He was coughing and gagging as he hit the ground and Michelle didn’t even need him to say it, she understood something was wrong with the drink and Michelle outpaced Bellamy, who took a step forward, about to knock the cup of alcohol out of her hand when she did. The war chief immediately drew her swords at them, accusing them for what had happened. Michelle really thought that for once things could go well but it had gone downhill again, and pretty fast in the end. Grounders started yelling and shouting, pushing the table to the side in a scary manner. Bellamy walked in front of Clarke as she held her sword up to her. Michelle stepped back as a reflex but also felt Kane’s hand grab her arm.

“This wasn’t us. You have to know it wasn’t us.” Clarke rose her voice, trying to tell Lexa they weren’t involved in this faied attempt at poisoning her and it was true. Even Raven wouldn’t have done something so foolish that could get them all killed on the spot. Michelle didn’t like her but she didn’t believe her to be this stupid, on the contrary, she was rather smart. The Grounders and the Commander spoke in their language for a second, giving what sounded like orders before taking the poisoned grounder out of the room and others started searching them. Lexa turned to Clarke, gritting her teeth in anger, staring at her.

“Gustus warned me about you but I didn’t listen.”

“Lexa, please.”

“When you plunged the knife into the heart of the boy you loved… did you not wish that it was mine?” She wondered, cutting her off in her pleading.

“Heda.” The Grounder who took their weapons upon entering the village addressed Lexa after finding a small vial on Raven, ignoring her while she refuted it being hers. He didn’t care and showed it to the Commander.

“I’m telling you. That’s not mine. He put it there when he searched me.” There was a silence as she looked at the vial and then at them.

“No Sky People leave this room.” She ordered fiercely, her face tensing up and walked out. Michelle was as baffled as her peers, just standing there, watching them leave.

“Do something.” Octavia asked Lincoln and he approached the war chief.

“Indra.” She ignored him at first, so he rose the tone of her voice and spoke in their language as she finally stopped in her tracks and turned around. It didn’t work really well though and she simply said a few words before shutting the door, locking them up in there. The situation had gone a quite unexpected way. There hadn’t been any bloodshed, but the peace had been disturbed again.

Having no idea how long they woud be stuch in here, Michelle sat in a corner, casually leaning against the wall, her hands resting on top of her knees, fidgeting her fingers as she looked around the room. Kane and Abby were talking here, Lincoln and Octavia sitting at the table and Clarke trying to approach Raven there. Michelle looked up, watching Bellamy climb a few stairs and try to see out the windows but they were way higher above her head. When Raven suddenly punched Clarke in the face and the blonde let out a grunt, Michelle instinctively turned her head to them, standing up. Abby walked to her daughter.

“You’re the only murderer here.” Raven hissed. Octavia went to Clarke as well and Clarke started whispering, staring at the door where no one was standing. Her mother got in front of her, but Clarke just walked away and settled on a chair in a corner of the room, her back to them. Michelle didn’t like seeing her best friend obviously distressed, still troubled by Finn’s death and understandably so as she directly ended his life to avoid him any further suffering, but she didn’t know what she should do beside letting her be. Michelle sighed heavily but silently and sat back down, pulling on her jacket’s sleeves, not knowing what to do with her hands, letting her head rest against the wall, staring into space. Kane had sat down somewhere on her left and she could feel him sometimes looking at her, but she let herself get lost in her thoughts until she eventually thought about him, remembering the brief talk she had with Abby just the night before this disastrous banquet. She needed to talk to Kane about their situation but didn’t want to take the first step as she still felt some resentment towards Kane. She was angry and upset and blamed him for most of what happened, from the day he put both her and Clarke in solitary confinement, cutting them from their mothers for a whole before sending them to the Ground without warning, well, every single other juvenile prisoner had had lessons on hos to survive apparently but not them. Now that some time had passed since she reunited with Abby, Michelle was able to say to herself that Kane had nothing to do with her mother’s death but whoever had been behind the explosion, they weren’t here today while Kane was, and he let her unleash her anger onto him, taking it without a word when it wasn’t actually fair.

“May I sit?” She looked up at Kane, just realizing he had walked up to her, and she shrugged, looking at her hands as he sat down beside her. On the opposite side of the room, Abby went to talk to Clarke now that she had calmed down and here, she was, having a talk with her dad. Before they even started talking, she began to ask herself whether or not she wanted to be the bigger person and say sorry for blaming him for her mother’s death, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to speak first. He looked a bit worry as he started the conversation. She could tell he wasn’t sure if she would even speak to him to begin with or just give him the silent treatment but, even though this whole thing would take time, they woud both have to put in the effort. She could be angry at him, but it wasn’t exactly fair to expect to do all the work. “Abby told me you two talked last night.”

“I knew she would.” She spoke, letting a silence hang over them and sighed. “So, she never told you either.”

“I had my doubts… but she never said anything, and I didn’t feel like it was my place to question it. We weren’t exactly on good terms after we ended things.” He explained, and she actively listened, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes every now and then. She remained silent, quietly telling him to continue. “She raised you on her own, and never seemed to need any help so I stayed in my place.”

“I never thought it could be you. She always seemed annoyed when I asked. I never understood why cause if my dad was dead like she said, she could have just told me. Clarke had her dad… Wells had his and I was there, not even knowing his name.”

“I don’t think she wanted me to be to be involved in your life.”

“Well, I don’t know, you were always kind of a jerk. I’m not sorry for spitting on you, by the way, or fighting the guards.”

“You were quite fierce. I remember.” He nodded, remembering the scene, sketching a smile. “You’re a lot like your mother, Michelle.”

“I often wonder what she would think of me…”

“She would be proud of the woman you’re becoming.” He put a comforting hand on her shoulder, softly squeezing it and as he stood up, he spoke again, making her looke up at him. “I am.”

She wasn’t expecting him to say this, and she watched him slowly step away, letting her be alone after their talk and went to sit in the middle of the room. Her lips were parted in surprise, and she stared at him. He had kept on trying to be there for her lately, being protective of her and while she kept a distance between them, not hiding her resentment for him, he still tried to show her love. It made sense but she hadn’t let herself see and realize that he did love her, and, in a way, he told her. She honestly didn’t think he was proud of her so despite it only being two words, it was more than she ever expected from their conversation. It would probably take her a long time before calling him dad out loud, but this was a start, and it definitely shook how she perceived their budding father-daughter relationship. It couldn’t be so bad in the end. She was suddenly snapped out of her thoughts when she heard Clarke raise her voice at her mother. Everyone turned their head.

“I was protecting everyone. I didn’t have a choice, you did.” Just with these few words, Michelle understood she was referring to what happened with her dad and what happened with Finn. Abby shook her head. “You turned him in.”

“No, I trusted Thelonious to talk to your father and convince him not to go public.”

“You knew Dad would never stop. You knew what would happen to him.” There was no need to see her face to know how hurt Clarke was by this.

“I was protecting everyone too.” Abby then said, lowering her voice. “I was protecting you.” Clarke stood up, turning her back to her mom. She stood up, calling out to her and what came out of Clarke’s mouth afterwards didn’t reach Michelle’s ears and their conversation came to a stop anyway with Clarke sitting further away from her mother. After a moment, Michelle saw Kane stand up and walk to Clarke, to try and talk to her. She looked at them from afar, not hearing what he was saying to her but they spoke for a couple minutes until Lincoln’s voice rose.

“Too many to count.” Kane must have said something about who would want Lexa dead, given Lincoln’s comment. “Forming an alliance with you was a risk. Especially after what Finn did to this village.”

“So it had to be someone trying to break the alliance.” Octavia assumed and when she finished her sentence, they heard steps coming from the door. Every single one of them stood up and stepped away, wondering what was going to happen to them now. Indra entered the room.

“How’s Gustus?” Lincoln asked.

“Gustus will live.” The Grounder with the long beard spoke.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Kane inquired as Indra ordered something and Grounders threateningly walked to Raven to take her. Bellamy stepped in.

“She didn’t poison anyone.”

“I argued for all of you to die. But the Commander is merciful.” Indra spoke. “She wants only one.”

“She’s innocent.”

“I don’t care.” She cut Lincoln off, pressing each word, gritting her teeth. “They move, they bleed.” When the Grounder pushed Bellamy away effortlessly, it was Octavia’s turn to try and say something, but they grabbed Raven’s arms, and dragged her out of the room. “The rest of you are free. When she’s dead, so is the alliance. You should run.”

“I take no joy in this, Raven.” Lexa stepped towards the young woman. A crowd had formed around the around the bloodied post Raven had been tied to. She was shaking, looking around fearfully, breathing heavily. A little further away, her peers were still there, staring at the scene. They found themselves in quite the situation, not knowing how to help their friend het out of this. The only way would be to find the person that was actually behind the attempted poisoning, but they had no clue who it could be. “But this time, justice will be done.”

“We have to do something.” Bellamy said, nervously moving around when he was stopped by Kane. Lexa brought her knife to Raven’s bare arm and the latter let out a high-pitched cry as she cut across it, wincing in pain, blood flowing down her T-shirt.

“Lincoln do something.” Octavia asked him but he probably didn’t know what else to do. They watched Lexa step back and Indra approached, lifting Raven’s shirt and cutting her on the stomach. Raven kept screaming. “You can talk to them. These are your people.”

“Not anymore.” He took a few steps and was met by the Grounder with the long beard.

“You’re no longer safe here, friend.” He told him as he glanced at Raven being mutilated behind him. “I’ll do my best to make sure you get away. Then you’ll be on your own.”

While the two Grounders shared a hug, Abby called her daughter from outside as the latter had remained downstairs, trying to get her to come out so they could go before it was too late for them but as she remained silent, Michelle decided to go to her, nodding at Abby as she quickly descended the stairs, wondering what her friend could be doing.

“It wasn’t in the bottle.” As she arrived behind her, she heard Clarke whisper to herself and stepped beside her, looking at the goblet still lying on the ground.

“What?” Clarke noticed her presence and looked at her. Within seconds of exchanging silent glances, Michelle understood what she had just realized. The poison had never been in the drink they had brought, it was the cup. The two of them then almost ran up the stairs and suddenly walked out the door that Abby was keeping opened ajar.

“Stop. What are you doing? You’ll get yourself killed.” Bellamy picked up the pace and followed Clarke and Michelle as they walked straight toward the Grounders. Knowing that it wasn’t their liquor that was poisoned helped proving Raven’s innocence, but they would still request justice to be done and someone to blame for it. They would probably not let go Raven if there wasn’t any other possible suspect.

“I need that bottle now.” Two Grounders armed with spears blocked their way and Clarke yelled for them to stop what they were doing. Everyone looked at them and Lexa turned around, allowing Clarke to come closer and Michelle, Bellamy and Abby followed her. “One of your people tried to kill you, Lexa, not one of mine.”

“You should have run.” Indra said in a low voice.

“I can prove it.” Clarke looked around and Lincoln’s friend handed her the bottle. This one seemed friendly enough, compared to Indra at least. The blonde then directly drank from the bottle, taking full sips of the liquor and Lexa let her surprise show on her face. There was a heavy silent for a second where Lexa and Clarke just stared at each other, the commander expecting something to happen.

“Explain.”

“The poison wasn’t in the bottle. It was in the cup.” Lexa looked over her shoulder as Gustus spoke to her in their language. Michelle took a look at him. He had an impressive beard like Lincoln’s friend, but his hair was cut short on the sides, almost shaved. He gave off a way less friendly vibe than the other for sure.

“It was you.” Bellamy voice his thoughts, having come to the conclusion that it was Gustus that was behind the attempted murder, trying to frame the Sky People for it. Michelle thought that I was certainly possible as he knew he would be the one tasting his commander’s drink, if he knew the poison, he knew he would survive and make it look like the drink was poisoned. “He tested the cup, he searched Raven.”

“Gustus would never harm me.” Lexa retorted, staring at Bellamy.

“You weren’t the target. The alliance was.”

“We didn’t do this, and you know it.” Clarke spoke. Lexa then raised her head and turned to Gustus, addressing him in their language.

“The alliance would cost you your life, heda.” He said after a moment of silence. “I could not let that happen.”

“This treachery will cost you yours.” He nodded and she then gave an order. He was grabbed by two masked Grounders and while Michelle remained beside Clarke, the others rushed to Raven to get her down. She must have been in an awful lot of pain with al these cuts over her body and looked exhausted. Abby woud tend to her wounds as soon as possible so she was saved now. Michelle hadn’t showed much worry and empathy for Raven, but she never wished for her to die, especially because of something she didn’t even do. It wasn’t fair. The way she had treated Murphy when all the situation with Finn was going on wasn’t fair either, but she didn’t deserve this.

[To be continued…]

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Published (10/21/2022) by Andrea

Taglist: @cathrin2405 @kika64

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miraculouscontent · 2 years

Text

Pardon us if the idea of an episode almost definitely taking place in the supposed “rich-sad-cat-boy-getting-the-short-end-of-the-stick arc” of Season 4 doesn’t interest us in the slightest when this season’s timeline literally began with Chat actively hoping for akuma to happen to the point of prodding people about their emotions and showing outright excitement when Chloe was yelling at Sabrina.

Oh, and when he was doing stuff like this in Season 3.

And this.

And that time where his prank nearly made Ladybug’s Lucky Charm fail and he accused her of having no sense of humor when she called him out for it.

And apparently he Cataclysm’d Bunnyx’s miraculous in the future too because of his recklessness.

So excuse us if we give a serious side eye at any indication that Chat “deserves more” than he’s already getting.

#((Chat: *calls Ladybug ''Bugaboo' when she's told him that she doesn't like it then laughs when she yells at him for it*))#((also Chat: *slacks off in akuma battles to flirt and throws tantrums mid-battle when he doesn't get his way*))#((Ladybug: *tells him to shut up and stop wasting her time*))#((Chat: *surprised Pikachu face*))#category: salt #episode: Kuro Neko #salt: chat noir #other: ml spoilers #((As if I ALREADY couldn't have given a singular damn about this sort of plotline))#((they made it worse the instant we had the first two episodes of this season))#((where Marinette just wanted to be able to finish a SINGLE DATE with her boyfriend))#((during her last chance to see a particular movie that they both had personal investment towards))#((and an akuma absolutely RUINED IT; conveniently the one who Chat had talked to the civilian form of.))#((Like YO our only reaction to the bootleg sunshine boy giving up the cat miraculous is))#((''well damn it's about three seasons too late but better late than never''))

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just-come-baek · 3 years

Text

out to lunch

Pairing: cooking show chef!xiaojun x personal assistant!reader

Themes: smut

Word count: 2.5k

Summary: You come over to the kitchen set of Xiaojun’s cooking show to tell him you managed to get him what he had always dreamed of. However, once you reveal the big news, you discover his priorities have changed, and right now, the only thing he wants to do is you.

A/N support WayV lol | writing this for neosmutcollective mini wayv event

Xiaojun was utterly immersed in his world. Though it was already late at night, he was still behind the kitchen counter, chopping ingredients with his favorite knife. Right now, Xiaojun was in his element, oozing precision and determination to perfect his new recipe, and it somewhat felt like a sin to interrupt him.

You had big news to deliver, though. Having heard you out, Xiaojun would surely forgive you for your disruption. He had to. After all, you just managed to get him that cooking book contract he had always dreamed of.

Ever since you two had started working together, it was your goal to make Xiaojun a published author. Though he already owned three restaurants and starred in his own cooking show, Xiaojun was insatiable. The more fame and recognition he got, it was never enough.

You cleared your throat to obtain his attention, but it didn’t quite pull him out of his trance, so you decided to give him an extra minute.

Xiaojun looked incredibly attractive in his own habitat. In his white uniform and ridiculously big chef hat, Xiaojun looked like a whole damn Michelin three-star dish. No wonder he kept beating his viewing records with each new episode. People all across the country swooned over his culinary talent, incredible charisma, and breathtaking looks.

Having approached the kitchen counter, you knocked on the marble surface in hopes of obtaining his attention.

“Earth to Xiaojun,” you softly spoke, looking at his face. Apparently, the timing couldn’t have been worse as Xiaojun dropped his knife on the cutting board and swung it onto the floor, making a huge mess.

“What do you want!? Don’t you see I’m busy!?” Xiaojun barked before he turned around to get a clean set of kitchen utensils. “Get lost. I don’t want to talk to you,” he added, waving his hand at you, trying to chase you out of the kitchen space.

“Ugh, for the love of God, Xiaojun! How many times have we had this conversation? That diva tone doesn’t work on me,” you answered firmly, staring into his eyes, challenging him. His gaze was intense, his jaw was tensed, but you just smiled at him, ignoring his shenanigans altogether. It wasn’t the first time he lashed out at you, and you knew how to handle him.

“Okay, fine. What is it?” Xiaojun huffed, giving in. With his arms folded across his chest, he tapped his foot against the floor, impatiently waiting for the news.

“I got you that book offer. You’re gonna be a published author,” you exclaimed, ready to jump up and down in joy. However, Xiaojun didn’t seem to be particularly excited. “What’s the matter? Isn’t it what you’ve always wanted? I don’t get it,” you spoke, creasing your eyebrow in confusion, trying to read his bizarre expression.

Xiaojun seemed indifferent at best.

“Cancel it. Undo it. I won’t write it,” Xiaojun replied before he proceeded back to his previous task. It wasn’t wise to disturb him now, so you waited until all vegetables were neatly cubed and thrown into a bowl.

“Can you tell me what’s going on? I don’t understand. I thought you’ve always wanted it,” you inquired, trying a much calmer approach. Xiaojun didn’t use his knife now, but he was still holding it, and it wouldn’t be the first time someone earned a cut during a heated argument in the kitchen.

“I have,” Xiaojun replied with a deep sigh as he poured the chicken broth over the vegetables. “But it gets tiring, you know…” he added, as he took off his chef hat and threw it on the countertop, running his hand through his hair. “Everything is happening too fast. I thought I wanted it, but now, when I actually live that life, I realized I am not cut out for this.”

It was heart-breaking to listen to it. You two had been working very hard to get Xiaojun where he is right now, only to come to a conclusion it’s all wrong. Fame was a heavy cross to bear, and Xiaojun was slowly stumbling under its weight.

“Don’t tell me you want to quit,” you whispered, anxious to know the answer. Xiaojun’s eyes were trained on you, and you could see how tired he was. “How about you take it easy from now on instead of quitting it all together? It would be a shame to quit right at the finishing line,” you reasoned, hoping Xiaojun would consider it.

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s talk about it, okay?” you interjected before Xiaojun would impulsively ruin his career. “We’ve got only three more episodes to shoot. I could put you on hiatus until you decide you want to continue with another season. In the meantime, you could work on the cooking book at your own pace. Probably, I will make you record some cooking content on social media to keep you circulating on the web, so people won’t forget you. Except for that, your schedule would be clear to focus on whatever you need to focus on.”

Silence.

Xiaojun was staring at his chef hat, pondering your damn good points. When you put it like that, it was hard to say no. Besides, he had a feeling you would talk back instantly if he found faults in your argumentation.

Seconds passed without Xiaojun’s response. You were his voice of reason; he had to listen to you. Besides, not only was his career on the line. If he actually quitted, your superior would murder you. Xiaojun was the cash cow of the company; they couldn’t afford to lose him. He was at their rising star.

“Why do you always know what to say?” Xiaojun rhetorically asked, and you beamed, ready to grace him with an answer.

“I’m really good at my job,” you pointed out proudly. Thanks to your impeccable management and problem-solving capabilities, you managed to help Xiaojun rise to the top. “And also, I care about you. Sometimes, you’re a pain in the ass, but after all, you’re a good person. You are my friend, and I want you to be happy.”

“Fine, let’s do it your way. But we’re not shooting another season until I say so,” Xiaojun caved, smiling brightly at you. “You know what I really want to do, though?” He challenged as he rested his elbow on the counter, straightening his back, trying to appear taller and overall more confident.

His voice was quiet, and it suspiciously sounded as if he told “you.”

Shaking your head, you asked, “what?”

Xiaojun felt a sudden wave of confidence rush through him before he repeated himself clearly. No, there was no shred of doubt. You heard him loud and clear. Confidently, Xiaojun admitted that he really want to do was you.

“You seriously think I haven’t noticed the way you look at me?” Xiaojun spoke in a somewhat accusing tone, eyeing you from head to toe before he took a cautious step toward you. Intimidated, you took a step backward, and that timid action made Xiaojun smirk.

He knew exactly what type of effect he had on you. All memories of lingering glances you had stolen of him when you had believed he hadn’t been looking came back rushing to you. You weren’t as sly and discreet as you thought you were.

“It really flatters me,” Xiaojun teased with a smug smile. “Don’t deny it, and come here,” he urged, spreading his arms, waiting for you to run into him.

At first, you were sure Xiaojun was just messing with your head. You believed he was teasing you. You imagined him flick your forehead if you walked into his personal space. It was obvious he was mocking you. There was no way in hell that he wanted you the way you wanted him. You must’ve been seeing things.

“Jesus, woman! Hurry the fuck up,” Xiaojun warned you, losing his patience. “If you’re not coming here, I am coming there,” he added, giving you one last chance for a change of heart. “Screw it,” he cursed, surging forward, trapping you in his tight embrace.

His actions spoke louder than words. All your previous thoughts were gone; Xiaojun wouldn’t have bothered this much to pull a prank on you. He was genuine. Xiaojun held you still in his arms, waiting for you to make a move. He would never try anything without your permission, regardless of how delicious your lips looked.

“Kiss me,” he ordered, and you rushed, smashing your lips against his in a passionate kiss. It was everything you imagined it to be, but tenfold better. You had fantasized about his moment plenty of times, and weirdly enough, Xiaojun’s mouth somehow felt both soft and rough at the same time. “Now, we’re talking.”

You two completely lost it. Hands were running on your bodies as you engaged in a heated moment, relieving your much maddening frustration. It felt amazing, and you wished you could carry on until you both lose all your energy.

“Let’s go to my place,” you mumbled once you pulled away. Xiaojun still held you pressed against him as he waited for you to elaborate, being painfully clueless to your ulterior motive. “It’s much closer from here than yours,” you added, and Xiaojun only smiled dumbly, waiting for you to word your request in an even more ridiculous way.

“Why bother going anywhere when I can have you here?” Xiaojun playfully announced, giggling as his gaze shifted from your gorgeous eyes to the countertop. Almost instantly you realized what his crazy proposition was. Did you really want your first time with him to be on the kitchen island inside the cooking show set? It would be a blatant lie if you said you had never considered this.

“Fuck me then,” you urged, giving Xiaojun permission to ruin you right there.

Xiaojun didn’t waste any time. In an instant, he wrapped his arms around your thighs as he picked you up and gently sat down on the countertop. Except for your pencil skirt, your legs were bare, so you let out a slight hiss once you felt the cold marble against your skin.

Biting your lips, you spread your legs, letting Xiaojun stand right between them.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about fucking you here,” Xiaojun confessed before he leaned forward, stealing another desperate kiss. “You remember that time when we fought over the Oreo cake? I was so hard back then. I wanted to bend you over the counter so bad. I almost didn’t hold myself back.”

“You should’ve gone for it,” you whispered as you remembered that quarrel. That night Xiaojun had been the star of your fantasies when you used your vibrating friend to get yourself off. “I was so horny then. Almost as horny as right now,” you added, pulling him by his funny black tie, melting into yet another kiss.

Xiaojun was getting impatient. It was nice, but it wasn’t enough for him. Having untangled the knot of his apron, he yanked it off his hips, throwing it over his shoulder.

“I want to feel you so bad,” he murmured as he slid his fingers under your skirt, pulling your panties down your legs. “Let me prep you up,” Xiaojun uttered when his digits gently fondled your folds, gliding his knuckle inside of you. The moment you felt him, you let out a quiet moan, enjoying his little ministrations.

Xiaojun knew how to please a woman. He curled his fingers inside of you, stretching you out for his length. With your eyes shut closed, you focused on your pleasure, letting Xiaojun spoil you rotten. Though it was just mere petting, it felt nice as hell. He was getting you ready for his cock, and you basked in simple delight.

“Enough of that; I want you to fuck me now,” you kindly spoke, wrapping your palm around his wrist. “Please,” you added when you noticed how hesitant Xiaojun was of letting go. He planned on making you come first before properly fucking you with his cock, but since you asked him nicely, he decided to give you exactly what you wanted. Though he’d love to tease you some more, your pleading tone seemed to do the thing.

Swiftly, he yanked down his pants, revealing his member. It was standing proud, and you looked down at it, admiring it. Without any doubt, Xiaojun was to make your day.

As much as you wanted to return the favor, Xiaojun didn’t let you. Impatiently, he gave himself a few strokes before he aligned his cock with your entrance, rubbing its tip against your folds. Slowly, he pushed his hard length inside of you, making you groan.

Your grip on the edge of the countertop tightened as Xiaojun filled you up with his erection. At first, Xiaojun maintained a slow and steady rhythm. However, as you kept moaning his name and encouraging him to go faster, his thrusts became more rapid. Quickly, Xiaojun snapped his hips, finding your sweet spot in record time.

“Holy shit,” you exclaimed, feeling the knot inside of you tighten. You were moments away from your peak. Xiaojun’s cock stroked all the right places, pushing you off the edge. “Fuck, I am coming,” you shouted, kicking your head backward, welcoming the bliss that ripped through you.

When you were slowly descending back on Earth, Xiaojun kept chasing his release.

You could feel him throb inside of you. Then, an idea crossed your mind. Until now, it was Xiaojun who did all the work, so the least you could do was to encourage him to fill you up, to talk him through his orgasm.

“You fill me up so well. I came on your cock, and you’re still rock-hard. Do you want me to come again?” You complimented him, spilling filth. Though you weren’t sure if Xiaojun would be into dirty talk, you were certain he was eating it all up. Xiaojun was moaning your name as he snapped his hips, falling out of his even rhythm.

Xiaojun was near. His grip on your thighs tightened as he pounded inside of you, being only a few strokes away from his sweet bliss.

“Come inside of me,” you urged him. It was all it took to make him reach his peak. With a choked grunt, Xiaojun came, buckling his hips as he painted your walls with his release.

You remained silent as Xiaojun breathed heavily, trying to come back to his senses.

“If we’re ever doing it, here, again, I want you to spank me with this,” you commented as you reached for the spatula that sat on the other side of the counter. Xiaojun smirked upon seeing the kitchen utensil, tempted to try it out soon.

However, on second thought, tonight was just good as any other day.

“How about we take it with us over to your place,” Xiaojun proposed, and you cocked your eyebrow, excited to hear his suggestion. “Let’s get you cleaned up first,” he added as he bent down to pick up his apron. His release was dripping down your thighs, so he wiped it off with the fabric, looking rather pleased by the fact that you let him come inside of you.

“That sounds like a plan.”

#xiaojun smut #wayv smut #neosmutcollective #nsckickback #nct smut #xiaojun drabble #wayv drabble #nct drabble

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panharmonium · 4 years

Photo

you know what?

no. absolutely not.

i already did part 1 of this post here. i’m back again with part 2, because unfortunately the awfulness factor doesn’t stop with arthur, and as much as i adore hunith generally, this entire sequence is a MESS.

and yes, i am aware that pretty much nobody else thinks so. every time i see this scene referenced in fandom, it is always framed as a fun, cutesy, sing-songy moment of “oooo, hunith ships merthur!” literally every time.

which, you know, like i always say about everything fandom-related - that’s fine. everybody is going to enjoy things differently; you do you, and keep on having fun! but here on my own blog, in my own space, i am gonna do me, and in this case ‘me’ involves yelling about how much i can’t stand that particular read, and how angry the end of 1.10 makes me.

disclaimer, to help folks curate their own fandom experiences: i am going to be Very Cranky for the rest of this post. if you love this particular scene in the way i just mentioned, you will probably want to scroll on by, because this piece of meta most likely won’t be your jam. as always, these are my personal thoughts and nobody is obligated to share them, so please do not hesitate to simply skip this post if we are on different wavelengths - instead, keep enjoying fandom in whatever way is most fun for you!

fair warning now given, off i go on a long, frustrated tirade.

i already wrote about the first half of this scene, where arthur decides that the appropriate thing to do at this particular moment is to give merlin a scolding about the evils of sorcery, despite the fact that the only reason arthur is even alive to deliver this lecture in the first place is because merlin’s ‘sorcerer’ best friend just DIED saving arthur’s life. but sure, you know what, let’s use said best friend’s funeral to chastise merlin about how “dangerous” sorcerers are. let’s just make that completely dickheaded decision.

and, moving on to the second half of this scene - here’s the thing. hunith overhears this entire conversation. she overhears arthur telling merlin off about sorcery, in front of the burning corpse of merlin’s best friend, who is, as far as arthur knows, the ‘sorcerer’ who died saving arthur’s life.

and yet, for some inexplicable reason, hunith still cannot get off the arthur pendragon train for two damn seconds.

she has known arthur for less than a week. by contrast, she has known will for his entire life. but the instant arthur walks away, hunith sidles up next to merlin and says, “you’d better be going” - like. okay, my god, can you try to hustle him away from his best friend’s in-progress funeral any faster????? how about we maybe give him a second? the pyre hasn’t even burnt down yet, and merlin hasn’t had a single second to himself since this sequence started. he’s had to stand there and listen to arthur insult the dude who everyone is supposed to be memorializing, and then hunith - who overheard the entire thing - zips right over and tries to chivvy merlin on his way. you’d better be going.

HELLO?! the pyre is still roaring. how about, instead of hassling merlin and hustling him offstage, everybody just sits down and waits for a minute. how about they all just leave merlin alone for three everloving seconds.

honestly, just - every time i think about this scene i get angrier.

i love hunith, and i know she’s well-intentioned. but everything she gives merlin in this scene is the exact opposite of what he needs. he doesn’t need to be hurried off the village green like there’s some reason he can’t stay there for the entirety of his friend’s funeral. he doesn’t need to be pushed into going back to camelot when he is clearly struggling with the idea of leaving ealdor again. and he absolutely does not need to be told how much someone else “needs” him right now, when he himself is the one who is having a fucking crisis and who needs someone to take care of him.

i cannot emphasize that last point enough. it is just - beyond upsetting to me that hunith literally watches arthur shitting on merlin’s dead best friend (and, by proxy, merlin himself, since merlin is the actual sorcerer) and she still somehow thinks the right thing to do is walk over and start telling merlin how great arthur is and how arthur “needs” him and how merlin “belongs at arthur’s side.”

i can’t stand that. it makes me so angry. it’s not right. it’s not fair. it’s damaging. it’s the same shitty messaging that destroys merlin’s life in later seasons, this idea that he exists for someone else’s sake, the complete disregard for what he himself might want at any given moment, for what he himself might need, for the reservations he might have about this plan that other people have formulated for his life.

he is UNCOMFORTABLE when she says these things to him! he doesn’t look at her; he shifts his gaze to arthur and the camelot squad with this grim, unconvinced expression on his face, and then he averts his eyes from her.

everything hunith tells merlin in this scene is the exact opposite of what he needs to hear. he does not need someone to tell him how badly his services are “needed” by a man who hates the person merlin truly is, not when the only friend who ever accepted merlin’s true self has just been killed. he does not need to be told that arthur, who is alive solely because will is dead and who only seconds ago expressed exactly zero gratitude for that sacrifice, is the person to whom merlin owes his undying loyalty. he does not need to be shuffled off to camelot as quickly as possible, as if it would be better for him to just rush forward and forget what happened here, as if what happened here didn’t matter.

because what happened here did matter, whether hunith and arthur find it convenient to acknowledge or not. i have to lay this out again, because what happened to merlin in ealdor is so much more important than anybody ever seems to realize - and i do understand that, i really do (because yes, it was just one episode for us) - but we have to look at it from merlin’s perspective, not the audience’s.

will wasn’t ‘one episode’ for merlin.

i can’t say this enough times. i cannot say this loudly enough.

merlin, at the beginning of this show, has only ever had ONE FRIEND.

most of us can’t even imagine something like that.

but try. TRY.

merlin has only ever had one friend. he’s only ever had one friend to love him. he only had one friend for the first two decades of his life. he’s only been in camelot for a couple of months; he’s only known these camelot people for a couple of months, and they don’t know his real self anyhow. and now his ONLY FRIEND, the person he’s known all his life, the only friend he ever had who knew him for who he truly was, was just violently cut down before his very eyes, whilst saving a guy who can legally have merlin murdered for just existing. and even though merlin and will spend the entirety of 1.10 having a painful, complicated argument, will still uses his last moments on earth to tell the biggest fucking whopper of his life, in order to shield merlin from harm, taking all of the danger and infamy and condemnation upon himself. he dies with a lie on his lips. he dies with merlin’s hand in his hair.

and all the while, merlin knows that this would not have happened if he had just been willing to use his magic in the first place, instead of letting his fear of discovery prompt him into allowing his neighbors to offer themselves up for the slaughter in his place.

the avalanching double-whammy of grief and guilt that merlin is suddenly slammed with at the end of this episode is almost incomprehensible in scale.

i’ve talked about this before, but again, i think it’s something we don’t generally remember: losing will is the first time merlin has ever experienced personal bereavement. and he doesn’t get to start out with a warm-up; he goes straight to the big leagues. this is not some trifling thing. this is a total implosion of merlin’s world as he knows it.

when we think about the mark this episode leaves on merlin’s life, i don’t think most of us consider the magnitude of this event deeply enough. losing will in this way is not some one-off thing that merlin just...gets over. this is the most earth-shattering thing that has ever happened to him, at this point in time. it is still one of the worst things that has ever happened to him, period, even years later. the guilt never goes away.

and the thing that’s unique about this particular trauma is that merlin has to manage it alone. there are other tragedies in his life where we witness him receiving support/comfort from others - freya, lancelot, balinor (though of course there are aspects to these miseries that merlin has to keep secret from other people, as well) - but with will, merlin has to do everything on his own. he can’t get one single moment of peace at will’s funeral. his own mother, the only person who knows what really happened, can’t help him without making everything about arthur. and merlin can’t tell anyone else what happened, not the truth of it, because doing so would squander the gift he’s been given - will’s lie is still protecting him, years later, from arthur and morgana both.

merlin, at the end of 1.10, is forced to navigate this grief completely alone, in the silent secrecy of his own heart. arthur is actively making it worse. hunith is out here singing arthur’s praises. and will is just like - he’s suddenly not part of the conversation anymore. he doesn’t even register on anyone’s radar.

it truly is...incredible, for me, to watch hunith overhear arthur being legitimately terrible to both merlin and the guy who just died saving merlin AND arthur’s lives, and then to see her come over and start talking about how merlin belongs at arthur’s side, how much merlin needs to be there for him, how they’re two sides of the same coin. meanwhile, the guy who literally just lied his life away to protect merlin’s secret and who NEVER made merlin feel like he had to hide who he was and who never had any problem with magic in the first place and never made merlin feel unsafe and never treated merlin like he was less of a human being just for existing -

- he’s just burning to ash there, and hunith doesn’t even acknowledge that, despite the fact that merlin is so visibly, intently, single-mindedly focused on that funeral pyre, and so clearly in distress and in pain and NEEDING somebody. all she can talk about is merlin’s responsibility to arthur.

the dissonance here is baffling. hunith has known will forever. she met arthur less than a week ago. she barely knows him, and what she does know is that he thinks magic-users are dangerous/evil. she saw him being a dick to her kid. she knows her son is having the worst day of his life. and she still doesn’t offer a single comforting word in reference to the person who just died protecting merlin’s secret, instead choosing to wax poetic about a man whose bigotry is what merlin needed protecting from in the first place.

that...is a hot mess. the merlin-hunith-will dynamic is one of the few things in this show that reflects less-than-stellarly on hunith’s character, however much i love her. and even though it all stems from an overwhelming desire to keep her son safe, it doesn’t make her choices any less damaging. she sends merlin away specifically because she finds out that will knows about his secret. she spends 1.10 analyzing and encouraging and dissecting merlin’s relationship with arthur, when merlin’s relationship with will is the one that desperately needs attention. she’s proven wrong about will’s trustworthiness in the most stunning, powerful way possible, and then she never even acknowledges him, instead choosing to laud the dude who literally forces merlin to live in fear of execution.

she’s merlin’s mother. she’s the only person in his life who knows anything about what will actually meant to him. she is his only possible resource as he tries to weather a kind of devastation that defies description.

and she, like arthur, just barrels right on ahead and makes everything about someone else.

the cinematography choices in this scene matter. whenever arthur or hunith tries to talk to merlin, the camera is placed on the opposite side of the fire from them, meaning the flames are always in the foreground of the frame. they are something we are required to see and look past before we can get to anything else in the scene. and in terms of directorial/acting decisions - merlin doesn’t take his eyes off the pyre until the end of his conversation with hunith. not once while talking to arthur does he look away from it.

the funeral pyre is always in the foreground of the shot, because it’s in the forefront of merlin’s mind. that is where his focus is right now. that is what is taking up all of his attention. that is what is edging into the frame, eating up our entire field of view. that is what he needs help with.

but he doesn’t get any such support. the entire sequence ends up revolving around arthur. will’s entire funeral is about arthur fucking pendragon. arthur inserts himself so he can talk to merlin about how evil magic is, and then hunith inserts herself so she can talk to merlin about how great arthur is. nobody ever stops to think that maybe merlin doesn’t want to talk to anybody right this second. merlin’s entire ‘farewell’ to the only true friend he ever had in his life is completely swallowed up by the prince of camelot, and if that isn’t a metaphor for the rest of merlin’s life, then i don’t know what is.

i know nobody needs to hear this, because very few people are invested in this kid at the same level of embarrassing detail as me, but here it is, anyway.

yes, will is prickly. he’s hard to get on with. he’s angry. he’s bitter and snappy and uncharitable, sometimes.

but you know what? he has every reason to be like that.

this kid has nobody. his own best friend’s mother - who has known him all his life - doesn’t trust him and doesn’t respect him. she is too afraid for her own son’s safety to give will any credit. she sends merlin away to camelot, the most violently anti-magic place in the world, because apparently, will knowing about merlin’s secret would be even more dangerous than uther pendragon’s genocidal reign.

think about how that would feel. to hear something like that about yourself. to be somebody who is already so goddamn alone in the world, and to have your only friend vanish without so much as a ‘see you later,’ and then to be made to feel, however indirectly, like this is somehow your fault, like you’re the liability, like you’re the untrustworthy element here. as if you, somehow, are more dangerous than a king who literally pays to have sorcerers trafficked to him in cages.

will has every right to be upset, all the time. he has every reason to be angry, and bitter, and hurt, all the time. to be thought so poorly of - to be held in such low esteem - when he hasn’t done anything wrong, when he hasn’t ever done anything to earn that kind of mistrust - and to have that same misplaced suspicion used to justify separating him from the only person in the world who gives a damn about him - if it were me, i would be constantly on the verge of screaming, all the time.

will has always been on merlin’s side, and he has never done anything to endanger him, and in the end he gives up everything to make sure merlin can stay safe and hidden and unhunted. he shouldn’t have needed to prove his goodness, his constancy, his worth; not when he’s already kept merlin’s secret for who knows how many years, but even after he does do so, it doesn’t even matter. arthur acknowledges him only to disparage sorcery. hunith passes him over completely in favor of praising arthur, with no acknowledgment of the misjudgment she made.

i have said before that merlin tends to befriend people who have nobody, people who’ve been left behind by the rest of the world, people who’ve been made to feel that they aren’t worthy of love. and will, merlin’s oldest friend, was the first of those many characters, and it is so heartbreaking to me that in this instance, the same kind of disinterested and careless attitude towards his worth that dogged him all his life is perpetuated and affirmed after his death. ‘people are used to ignoring him,’ merlin tells arthur, and merlin is right - even when will is dead and burning, arthur only sees sorcery. hunith, who we would expect to be more sympathetic, only sees arthur.

merlin is the only one who knows better. merlin has always known better, and he loves will so much, but he is the only one, apparently, and honestly, after will dies? nobody else even tries to understand.

to sum up:

hunith and arthur, for all that i love them, are both way out of line at the end of this episode.

the legacy of this experience, for merlin, is that he spends the rest of his life processing this particular trauma alone. and that is why i always, always have to keep will and ealdor in the back of my mind when i write for merlin in any capacity - because this event isn’t some simple stumbling block for him; it changes him forever. it teaches him what he can and can’t expect from the people around him, and it solidifies how irrelevant his own needs are when viewed in comparison with arthur’s, even to people who barely even KNOW arthur; people who are supposed to put merlin first over everything. it teaches merlin to bury his sorrow, and to wrestle with personal suffering in secret, because if things aren’t ultimately about arthur, then they aren’t important enough to be granted any significant amount of time for merlin to deal with. merlin’s own grief, even at his best friend’s funeral, takes too long to resolve. arthur walks away from the pyre, and it’s time for merlin to leave, too. you’d better be going.

bottom line: i don’t care if other people think this whole ‘ooo, everybody wants merlin to be with arthur’ thing is wonderful or beautiful or dreamily romantic. it isn’t. it’s ugly, and it’s cruel, and it stripped merlin of his present identity and his future potential, one stolen moment at a time.

#and that's what i have to say about that #so.#in case you all weren't already aware #will is a goddamn hero #and merlin misses him every day #the once and future slowburn #meta #no kings no masters

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firstagent · 3 years

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Recap! Digimon Adventure: (2020): Ending

In this episode, we wrap up a reboot with so much style and so little substance, then talk about the future because, unlike the Adventure: children, we are mortal beings. As doing so during a currently running series defeated the intention of allowing us a breather, we’ve been slacking off on the catch-up posts that used to happen around every ending change. There wasn’t much to say anyway. By the time the second ending theme ran its course, we’d sniffed out the fatal flaws of the Adventure reboot. A lack of quality wasn’t the issue. Digimon has had plenty of subpar material over the course of twenty-plus years. You can even argue there’s plenty of quality in Adventure:, just invested in places we’re not used to in Digimon, ones that don’t add much besides another shiny, empty thing to gaze at for a few seconds. But as we gaze one more time, we realize the real killer was the lack of anything compelling to think about. Which is a real problem since that’s primarily what we do here. Back in episode four, even as we were enjoying the hell out of Action Girl Sora’s rebirth, her instant rapport with Piyomon stood in such stark contrast with original Sora’s early reticence that we wondered where the angst was going to come from. It was the first clue that the mother issues that defined her character twenty years ago would be scrubbed and abandoned, leaving… well, Action Girl Sora and nothing else of consequence. Other signs, like the way too early debut of Omegamon and the minimal development involved with the first couple rounds of evolution foretold a show that was going to be light on the one thing Digimon Adventure excelled at: endearing characters working through genuine problems making them seem like real people. The longer the series went, the more that concept felt abandoned, and the harder it was to root for these cardboard cutouts of the Adventure kids. The result is a series chock full of exciting action sequences, a serviceable enough plot, and not a lot of thought behind it. It spends most of the first half as an intense, relentless, exhausting escalation of battles… then takes its foot off the gas in the second half to meander its way through two arcs where nothing of consequence happens outside the climactic fights. You’re likely to get smoother pacing watching every episode on shuffle. Worse, within these two extremes is a shocking dearth of meaningful message to discuss. Digimon isn’t worth all this blog space because it stands above other shows like it, but rather because its depths give us so much to talk about regarding childhood, technology, relationships, evil, loss… nothing of the sort gets any thought here. A few interesting concepts sneak in through Patamon, Tailmon, and even Negamon towards the end, but nothing explored to its full potential. We’re left with precious little to sift through except pondering how empty the series feels compared to everything else Digimon has offered us. The next series, Digimon Ghost Game, already shows signs of promise. In just their introductory bios, the three leads offer up more character, family background, and flaws than the entire Adventure: octet gave us in sixty-seven episodes. Given the ratings the reboot pulled, it was easy to fear that the future of Digimon would be the same hollow action fests. So far Ghost Game appears to be resisting the temptation, and deserves discussion. Unfortunately, for several reasons, it won’t be here. The window between Saturday night episodes and Monday morning posts is becoming too much of a burden, especially with a five year old that actually likes to do things on weekends. I’ll still post my thoughts on Twitter and maybe even quick reactions on Tumblr the way I did for Appmon’s initial run. Like Appmon, I may even come back for full retrospective Ghost Game posts. The blog was always meant to be retrospective after all. So for now, we close up shop after a hell of a ten years. Our mission of writing something for the six seasons of Digimon kept getting extended as the franchise reinvigorated itself and kept on going, a testament to the endearing nature of the show that made us write about it in the first place. Thanks to everyone who helped out through Patreon, Ko-Fi, or Amazon, or even for leaving a comment, especially in the early days when Digimon was still on the verge of regaining its momentum. You can still catch me on Twitter and Tumblr, along with the With the Will podcast (I’ll also be discussing the final episode on Podigious in a few days!). And Nexusworld is all finished now so you have two novel-length adventures of multi-season madness! Twitter will be the best place to catch news of any future endeavors, whether Digimon or not. Until then, enjoy Ghost Game! Digimon Adventure: Ending 5: Dreamers Figure I slack off on talking about the ending themes in the season with the best ones (that third one is so cute!). This one’s a little generic, but it’s boppy and fits Digimon so well. The endings are nice in that they’re a little less Taichi-centric than the opening or the show itself, and only the first one tries to elevate a character the series doesn’t justify elevating. Dreamers is one those songs that makes me realize I should listen to K-Pop more.

See reviews of every Digimon episode at Digimon: System Restore!

#digimon #digimon adventure:#digimon adventure (2020)

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Ducktales Lena Retrospective: The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck! or Why Does Lena’s Darkest Hour Have a WACKKKYY Bigfoot Subplot?

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Shadow Into Light, my look back the LIfe and Times of Lena Sabrewing. And we’re almost at the end of season 1. Woo-Ooo!. While i’ll have more season 1 episodes to cover for it’s sister arc, this is the last episode in this arc before the finale.. and i’m happy to repeat that next week will be DUCK WEEK as a result, finsihing up this arc and the Della arcs, as well as dipping into season 2 a bit for Lena’s return to celebrate the finale of this wonderful show. Full disclosure: I didn’t PLAN for it this way, I assumed the show would be ending in April, but sometimes serendipity just works out for you. So pitter pat er, let’s get at er.

When we last left off Webby went on a wild duck chase for her grandma in England and 87!Webby befriended that version of Magica’s niece and told off a grown woman masquerading as a child because her husband likes being called “Daddy”. When we last left the plot proper though, we learned Lena just wanted to be free, and was willing to do whatever it took, and Magica was getting more abusive and more impatient. And if you thought the end to Jaw$! was pretty sad and dark.... strap in and steel yourself as we take a look at one of the darkest episodes in the series.

The opening sets the stage perfectly as we’re in Scrooge’s Room in the middle of the night, when Lena comes in.. with a knife.

Naturally she dosen’t have baked goods, but instead is trying to cut the knife from around his neck while Magica won’t shut up while she works and keeps distracting her and BLAMING her for getting distracted. As for the knife it’s glowing and mystic because naturally, Scrooge doesn’t trust just ANY string but a magically woven one to hold his dime. Unlucky for her her girlfriend walks in at the exact moment she’s standing over her idol holding a mystical knife. I don’t think hallmark makes a card for “Sorry I was lying to you for months for my abusive aunt to earn my freedom and then looked like I was about to slit your uncle’s throat. I love you though. “ Yet.

Scrooge starts to stir so Webby pulls Lena out of there and back to her room... and flashes a lamp on her to interrogate her. Lena is able to bounce back, asking “what were you doing there”. Which NORMALLY wouldn’t last more than two minutes.. but since Webby was there to get Drool samples, maybe she wants to clone him I mean she does know a guy I think the why is something we’d rather not know about, Webby herself was a bit suspcious and Lena uses her starkerish ways to say she’d also gotten into being a Scrooge fangirl. This also allows her to ask about the dime.. but since Scrooge never takes it off, that means they have no access and both Lena and Magica are stuck watching Webby’s long presentation on Scrooge’s life story. I mean personally i’d love to see this in it’s full probably 8 hour glory but I’m not trying to earn my freedom or stuck as a shadow monster.

It was then when watching the episode this morning.. I was reminded it had a subplot. And the instant I saw Dewey folding Louie’s shirts... I started to piece together it was the bigfoot one.

As you can tell i’m not a fan of this subplot. It has a good core idea, riffing on “kid takes home sasquatch films” like Cry Wilderness, Big and Harry and of course the one that started it all, Harry and the Hendersons.

It’s just bogged down by one really obnoxious trait that trips it up and is in the wrong episode entirely. We’ll get to that first scene and the plot as a whole in a moment we just need the setup in the a-story first: Scrooge privately conferring with Beakly, which Magica snoops on. While Lena didn’t get far at all in cutting the rope of his dime, she still left a knick and the fact someone got into his house, let alone his bedroom and got THAT far, means SOMETHING bad is afoot. So while he looks for it he’s putting the dime in the Other Bin for safekeeping. We’ll find out what that is in moment. For now

Let’s Get This Stupid Sasquatch Plot Over With

We open with Louie having conned Dewey into folding his stuff for the “world laundry folding record”. I mean.. it’s greasy but I gotta respect game here. And it’s not actively harming anyone. Though we do find out from an irate Huey he’s done far worse, if in a hilarious way with Louie’s Kids, his obviously fake charity he uses to get money out of Donald. And so far into it, as Huey hid something he had in the closet and offered to Fix Louie’s stretched out hoodie, the reason he was mad at Dewey, I didn’t get why I hated it before. I wondered why I was so annoyed. Same when Huey while carrying Louie’s hoodies hears his uncle looking for something in the mansion.

Turns out he’s got a bigfoot hiding in their closet, that he found injured int he woods and brought back and all that good kid finding a mythical creature stuff. Dewey of course loves him on first sight and both want to keep him. But unlike most of these sorts of things where the creature’s damage to the room and what not is played off or the sibling doesn’t know, Louie does see it and isn’t happy about it and only agrees to hide the furry bastard because his brothers blackmail him with his schemes, and refuse to feel sorry for him as the creatures antics continue, including drinking Louie’s special pep and eating his snacks.

And this is where one of the plots two major issues crops up: The way Dewey and Huey act. Both just ignore any damage wooly foot does, any discomfort to Louie and any obvious downsides of this. Now Dewey being clinginly attached to a majestic creature he found and wanting to keep it? Fits perfectly, and him being mean to louie fits because louie tricked him. Huey however.. is horribly out of character, as while I could see him being charmed at first and not wanting his uncle to hunt his new friend.. he’s not an impractical boy. He’d of tried to get his new friend to the woods first thing because it’s where he’s safest from scrooge and his foot has healed. He’s also a Woodchuck and I can’t imagine the JWG says it’s okay to keep a wild animal person as a pet basically. None of it fits him and makes him into a moron for an episode solely for the plot to work. This still could’ve worked but just have Huey and Louie BOTH get suspicious, Huey later, and find out Tenderfoot is actually Gavin, whose sapient, has a phone and simply is taking advantage of them. it would’ve gone the same way: if they told Dewey , Gavin would kill them, as he threatened to do if louie told his brothers. The Gavin part though is brilliant and a really nice twist I didn’t see coming when I first saw this.

And it would’ve made the already great climax more interesting as Huey would’ve been forced to use the methods of Louie’s he’d derided to beat a far worse scammer. Instead it’s just Louie but he doesn’t take Gavin’s threats lying down.. and comes up with a clever way to use his scam against him. He shaves Gavin, hides the razor then claims to his brother that not being in the woods means he’s dying or some such thing. So our two idiots and our hero drag them out and while they run into scrooge, Louie still saves the idiots life by manipulating him with a schmaltzy speech and they let him go despite his best attempts to stay, with Louie getting a nice “I win in there”. Overall a bit of a mess with some good ideas, but Huey suddenly taking dum dum juice really drags it down.

So in any other episode this would’ve been fine whatever just mildly obnoxious. What makes it really, unintentionally obnoxious.. is it’s in the middle of a tense, dark, horror story that dives into the depths of Lena’s soul and ends on a really horrifying note. Case in point Louie shaves a bigfoot and gets his victory over his nemesis.. after an utterly spellbindingly horrific nightmare by Lena, easily the most terrifying moment in the entire show. Followed up with a shaved bigfoot.

Now I could buy Disney simply forced them to do this to keep things light... except Frank’s been pretty upfront about the production process, how Disney has treated him, what they’ve said no on. So if it had been something they were forced to do, he would’ve said it. No this is just not reading the room and not thinking things through and an otherwise stellar episode suffers for it.They could’ve waited till season 2 for it, they didn’t, and this was the result. It dosen’t ruin the rest of the episode it’s too good for it, but damn if it dosen’t create mood whiplash so severe I need a neckbrace.

The Good Part

So back at the plot anyone actually cares about, we found out what the “other bin” is when Lena asks Webby: While the Money bin is for well, money and precious keepsakes, the other bin is the stuff too dangerous to keep out in the world. And this is the guy who kept a mystical gold eating dragon, a pirate ghost, and a medusa gauntlet in his garage, and we’ll learn after this ep also keeps a giant golden aztec golem in there. NONE of that was deemed dangerous enough to put in the other bin. So Webby is understandably hesitant.. and it gets a bit unsettling when Lena manipulates her into it. While she has in the past.. she usually just nudged Webby into something she’d do anyway at worst, or showed her an r-rated movie or something harmless. While she did use her as an in she clearly cares.. so it shows how horrifically desperate she’s got she’s willing to pressure her into going into Scrooge’s most dangerous and secure location, pointing out this may be her only chance to see the Dime.

So she reluctantly agrees, and the two head into the garage. Turns out Scrooge keeps all his junk here for more reason than just shoving it wherever it’d go, as the entrance to the other bin is hidden here. The statue that gave Manny his head is actually a clue towards the painting hiding the second bin, which itself requires one of those things used to hold up ropes and such like you’d see at a movie theater... god I miss movie theaters.. I mean watching stuff in the comfort of home is very nice, but it was nice getting out, making a day of it. I mean their around, but I really don’t want to go till one till more vaccinations have happened and it’s a lot safer to go. Wait what were we talking about? Oh right gay ducks going into a horrifying nightmare vault. But yeah the theater thingy is the key, it unlocks the entrance and our heroines head inside.

In contrast to the modern, buisnessy welcoming bin, the other bin is basically one giant vault/prison, with everything in it securely locked inside identical doored rooms. It’s genius as it is simple: Only 6 people have likely ever had access to this place: Scrooge, Beakly, Gyro, Duckworth and MAYBE the twins. Even Della and Donald being allowed down here is an unknown. The non-scrooge people are only because someone besides him needs to maintain it, keep any creatures fed, that sort of thing and he’d only trust his butler and his housekeeper, who are also both extraordinarily badass, to do so. Gyro is because someone needed to design the cells. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Quackfaster was a 7th since season 3 casts her as Scrooge’s magic expert and he’d likely need specific runes for specific cells. He’d want as few people down here as possible, and even fewer knowing. I’m sure Bradford knew, and i’m also certain it’s the one thing he never quibbled about the expense as while he hates what Scrooge stands for and tried to curb his “chaos” as much as possible.. this is doing exactly what Bradford likes: locking it away where it can’t hurt anybody. Plus quibbling about it might make Scrooge want to show it off to him and that’s.. that's’ a whole lotta nope in a 2 pound bag.

So for once Webby is very hesitant and very cautious, though naturally Magica points out a door.. and Lena stupidly follows her advice as she knows her “aunt” is impulsive and has no regards for her safety. What did she think was going to happen? They instead find a unicorn.. or rather it’s angry murderous cousin the Sword Horse, which naturally tries goring them. I’d go with Spear Horse, but semantics. Point is Webby is soon tackled by the thing and Magica just wants to let her die. As seen before the tension between Magica and Lena has hit a breaking point: Magica is fed up with Lena’s clear feelings for webby and caring more about her than the mission.. while Lena is fed up with Magica not listening to her, respecting her as sentient being and dismissing her out of hand instead of listening to her often very valid criticism. So Lena naturally ignores her and throws her the knife, which Webby uses to get the Sword Horse back in it’s pen. And then wonders why her girlfriend has glowing painstakingly crafted magic knife. Whoops. Webby also wants to leave but Lena convinces her to keep going. but it’s also very clear that Webby’s getting more and more reluctant and i’ts very hard to watch. You can’t blame Lena for wanting to be free of Magica: she dosen’t see her as a person, and dosen’t value her life. But it’s still hard to watc her have to manipulate the only person that loves her and do so so.. effectively. It’s easy to imagine Lena’s done this dozens of times to other people.. but not to someone she actually CARES about.

Webby DOES figure out how the rooms work though: each one is labeled by the year Scrooge caught it. So she assumes one room she fine is the dime.. and Lena of course runs in and slams the door shut... they’ve found it. So we then get to the most terrifying moment of the series. With victory in her grasp magica roars for Lena to claim the dime, filling the room and Lena with shadow with Lena seemingly disolving.. until Magica is restored or at least partially, still a shadow. Magica has just one thing for her.. and Lena’s reactoin is terrified.. and says oh so much in just one expression it’s VERY clear Lena fears she’s about to die... if she’s lucky. Magica’s been so verbally abusive, tearing her down constantly, manipulating her constantly.. why WOULD Lena expect anything good? Why would she expect anything other than pain or death? So a hug is a surprise.. as is Webby who assumes she’s being attacked... and is clearly heartbroken that’s not the case and runs for Scrooge when Magica admits the truth... only for Magica to seemingly kill her, turning her into a doll resembling the original Webby

Yeah at this point it’s obvious something’s up.. but before we can get to the natural reveal at the end of this horror show, Lena demands Magica change her back... only for a fight to naturally ensue with Magica rubbing the way Lena’s treated Webby in her face: How she manipualted her, lied to her and used her. Even if it was for more noble reasons.. she never told her any of this or tried to and is now directly responsible for her death. She’s a monster.. and then Lena’s amulet activates.. and seemingly finishes the job.

Then Lena wakes up. This was simply one of SCrooge’s artifact, one Webby mentioned earlier off hand and Webby rescues her. It was all a nightmare.. easy to see given Webby was seemingly killed or turned into a doll at points.. but besides making Lena realize how while not as bad as her aunt, she ahsn’t been great.. it also gives us a painful look into her head and how she sees both Magica and Webby. With Magica.. it’s again VERY clear Magica verbally abuses her, depersons her and is in general a horrifiingly relastic depection of a domestic abuser. But it’s also telling Magica hugs her... while Lena didn’t expect it, this is all her subconcious mixed with a magical cursed artifact, it’s clear that deep down one of the things she wants most.. is for Magica to LOVE HER.

That is just... it hurts so much. She just wants a Mom.. and even then her subconcious can’t give her THAT because it knows the truth. Granted the nightmare thing might of had something to do with it, but still, the fact is deep down she knows Magica dosen’t care about her but she WANTS her to. As with Webby, she fears Magica is right, that all her gaslighting has had an effect and Webby would run away the second she found out. When as we’ll learn.. that’s not true at all. She’s deeply hurt... but she still belivies in her. But Lena can’t even see that. She’s been beaten down so much by someone constnatly telling her no one will ever love her she belivies it herself and all her mind and the dreamcatcher can do is pummel her over and over again with what she feels about herself, what she’s KNOWN about how she treats webby even if she had no way out otherwise, how wrong it’s felt. Just holy shit it’s a lot to take in.

But all this trauma has made Lena realize she truly does love Webby and this isn’t worth it.. she’ll find some other way out or figure out something, for now their leaving. She’s not dying for this.. not for her. They happen to run into Scrooge who, due to the WACKY BIGFOOT SUBPLOT THAT HAPPENED RIGHT AFTER THE ABOVE SCENE, no I will not let that go even going back to Frank’s twitter asks he outright said it was their darkest plot paired with one of their most insane, he knew what he was doing. Turns out cleverly he kept the Dime in vault one. As he puts it “They never think to check the first one”. Smart. He also keeps his worry room down here. Just a note I wanted to mention.

He does chide them, and Lena takes the full fall.. but suprisingly he dosen’t ban her from his home or anything, he just asks they be honest and would’ve gladly showed the dime off to them both if they’d just asked. Once Scrooge and Webby walk off far enough Magica berates her again..but Lena is done. She’s realized from her own horrifying nightmares that NO amount of freedom is worth what Magica will get out of this, that her own soul isn’t worth the death of the one person she cares about: Webby will fight her and she might not make it. She loves her more than she fears Magica. And even if it means loosing Webby.. she knows who can stop him. Unfortunately.. this is not a happy ending as Magica simply takes full control. And now has Scrooge’s full trust.

Final Thoughts: This episode is one half a masterpiece. The parts with Lena are to this day, as we approach the very last episode, some of the show’s finest writing and Lena’s nightmare is easily the darkest scene in the series, and only not the most gutwrenching.. because we’re getting to that next week. It finishes the first leg of her character arc, with her selfishness all gone, and the only thing she wants is Webby’s hapiness. Granted that leads to a whole nother character arc over her season 2 episodes, but we’ll get there. Point is she’s realized her manipulations are wrong and not worth the cost, and that she’ll never get anything good out of Magica. Freedom.. will take just a bit longer. It’s eerie to watch, uncomfortable as Lena sinks to her lowest point before climbing out of it, and with a very tense atmosphere the whole time, the bin having a smothering uncomfortableness as we know there’s tons of horrible things here.. but we don’t know what.

So on it’s own it’d be one of the series best episodes, and the plot itself is still one fo the series best.. but it’s weighed down by one of the series worst plots. Still tame compared to a lto of other series worst moments but being paired with something so dark and excellent really shows how fucking stupid this plot was and made it that much more grating. It just clashes badly. Thankfully the crew did learn from this fiasco to the point we got one of the series best episodes “Escape from the Impossibin!”. That one seemingly has two light enough plots, Scrooge, Louie and Della escaping from the bin and Webby stalking the boys, but in a comedic ic still messed up fashion.. but both take a sharp left at just the right time as to not clash: the full implications of what Webby’s doing and her physical fight with Bentina happen around the same time Scrooge breaks down and confesses he’s scared he can’t win this time. The episode gets really dark in the second half but it eases into it and slowly makes it’s way to it, building to it with some laughts to disarm it. But stuff like robo scrooge or the timeloop room, or the timeloop room, or the timeloop room, or the oh thank god i’ts broken. That stuff isn’t SO wacky or out of place that it detracts from the other plot. They compliment each other. Here it’s just two plots that don’t work together at all joined together for some reason. So yeah overall a very mixed bag of an episode and if you do want to watch or rewatch it.. just skip the bigfoot subplot> it’s not worth it.

Next Time on Shadow Into Light: It’s all come down to this. Magica finally ges what she wants. The Shadow War is Night.. but before I can tell you that story we have a bit of ground to cover so..

Next on this Blog: The family minus Beakly ends up in Greece. Dewey is forced to deal with his fears about his mom, Scrooge is forced to deal with his old rival Zeus, and Donald is forced to deal with an unwanted admirerer. Spanikopita!

If you liked this review, follow for more, feel free to contribute to my patreon, and feel free to commission a review of your own. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure.

#ducktales #lena sabrewing #webby vanderquack #weblena #magica de spell #scrooge mcduck #bentina beakly #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #tenderfeet #the other bin of scrooge mcduck #disney xd #disney channel

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katsidhe · 3 years

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Ranking Every SPN Season Finale

15) 11.23 Alpha and Omega. Dead last because not only is Chuck and Amara’s conflict defanged with a frankly silly anticlimax, but a lot of runtime is eaten up with establishing Lady Toni getting on a plane. The great weakness of an otherwise very strong season is that none of the awful compromises Sam and Dean and Cas made (especially Sam wrt Lucifer) ended up having relevance at all.

14) 9.23 Do You Believe In Miracles. Cheesy dying dialogue, Metatron hamming it up for way too long, that facepalming “the radio was on the whole! time!” twist, uncertainty as to the motivation of the whole confrontation that ends in Dean’s death. Also, this is the beginning of the end of walking back the beautiful work the rest of s9 established, with Sam saying things like “I lied.” I don’t like Dean’s death here at all, in staging, or conceptually, or thematically.

13) 12.23 All Along The Watchtower. I am basically obliged to put this in C tier because it is quite silly, but frankly, I like it more than its ranking deserves. It has the late season finale sin of cramming in an introduction to next season’s conflict in the middle of wrapping up this season’s—but it’s absolutely hilarious that they brought in multiverse portals. And for Sam and Dean, thank god the portal appeared, because otherwise they had absolutely no plan whatsoever to deal with Lucifer, and they probably would have died gruesomely. High points: Sam discovering Rowena’s death on the phone with Lucifer; the spooky introduction of Jack, the raised stakes with Mary trapped with Lucifer. Lowest point: the utter silly pointlessness of Cas’s death.

12) 10.23 Brother’s Keeper. This is the finale that I have the strongest mixed feelings about. There is a queasy lack of self-awareness in the treacly sentiment when Sam presents family photos as evidence of Dean’s goodness. The excuse of MOC!Dean as not the “real” Dean allows for the reasons behind this confrontation to be elided, even as its themes are echoed again and again. The chilling horror of Sam on his knees in front of Dean the executioner is potent and darkly enjoyable, but the instant redirection into attacking Death prevents any kind of real culmination. I can’t decide if I like this episode or loathe it, but I do think I appreciate it more now, after 14.20 and 15.17, than I did when it aired.

11) 7.23 Survival of the Fittest. We’re on to B-tier! There’s nothing significantly wrong with 7.23. Meg crashes the Impala through a glass sign, so that’s fun. Kevin’s there. There’s action, there’s some cool stakes for next season established, Sam is left alone, which I love. The main sin here is just that most of it is fairly forgettable, because the strongest part of s7 was always the psychological drama of the Winchesters’ disintegration and isolation, not the physical conflict with Leviathans.

10) 14.20 Moriah. Lots of my points about 10.23 apply here, but Moriah is a much better episode, both because there is actual conflict of opinion, and because there is a lot more built-in uncertainty about Jack’s fate than Sam’s. Jack and Dean are onboard with Jack’s murder, just as Sam and Dean were agreed on Sam’s death in 10.23, but this time Cas is staunchly against it, and Sam is on the fence, torn as to how to intervene. So it’s much better drama. But then the crux of the issue gets defanged by Chuck’s reveal. Great s15 setup, but kicks the 14.17-14.19 build down the road. Extra points for Sam shooting God.

9) 13.23 Let the Good Times Roll. I fucking love the 13.21-13.23 arc. The only thing preventing 13.23 from being A-tier are some wholly avoidable mistakes. The staging is silly; a face-palming amount of time was wasted on Maggie; the wires were a deeply regrettable choice. But even with all that, what we got was great, actually! The Sam-Jack-Lucifer church custody battle is still my favorite goddamn thing. Dean saying yes to Michael was both his only smart move and a devastating sacrifice. The character dynamics here are so JUICY. 13.21-14.01 is, IMO, one of the most fertile grounds for fic and speculation in the entire show.

8) 2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose, Part Two. Now we’re into finales that are fantastic without reservation. Off the devastation of Sam’s death comes Dean’s iconic deal. The actual confrontation in the graveyard is good too, though it’s second to the way we’re all reeling from part one. Azazel dies, Sam and Dean are bloodied and facing down new stakes. The only thing I dislike about this episode is John’s cameo.

7) 1.22 Devil’s Trap. This is the episode that ups the ante! Azazel in John, and Dean, and Sam, and the delicious family dynamic here; the stakes are so personal, and it’s a great examination what each of them is willing to pay for their quest: an electrifying taste of what’s to come. And the music, and the sheer fucking balls of just, crashing a goddamn truck into your main characters at the end of the first season. Nice.

6) 3.16 No Rest for the Wicked. Lilith is delightfully evil. We’re on tenterhooks for Sam to save Dean, we’re narratively primed to expect him to pull off something amazing, a last-minute miracle. But—nope! Sorry! Dean gets graphically ripped apart onscreen and now he’s being tortured in Hell! Shocking and bold, and a crucial turning point in the series.

5) 4.22 Lucifer Rising. Fresh off 4.21 comes an excellent culmination of season 4′s devastation. The reveals from both Ruby and the angels, Sam draining the possessed nurse, Cas at last choosing to betray Heaven, and the final arrival of Lucifer: it all just works, really well.

4) 15.20 Carry On. Part of the reason I’m ranking this so highly might be spite. But goddammit, bad wig and worse Carry On cover aside, this is a good episode, and a really, really good series finale! The deliberate anticlimax of Dean’s death, the quiet strength in Sam’s grief, the untroubled, unrushed pacing of Sam’s recovery and aging, and Dean’s drive. Supernatural said Sam Rights, and I wept like a tiny little baby.

3) 6.22 The Man Who Knew Too Much. Adventures in Sam’s mind! Cas and Crowley and Raphael and the double cross! The taste of cosmic horror! The end of season 6 and beginning of season 7, as Sam and Dean cope simultaneously with Sam’s psychological fallout and the consequences of their most powerful ally going off the rails, is fantastic. I love the literalism and the symbolism of Sam’s reintegration: this is an unapologetically Sam episode (as are the other top four, come to think of it).

2) 8.23 Sacrifice. Sam’s heartbreaking deterioration in the church and Crowley’s disintegration are an electrifying climax to the trials. Dean and Sam’s final exchange is a breathtaking combination of raw emotion and delirium and a fascinating guilt trip. It’s a visually and conceptually stunning episode: the angels fall burning against a night sky; Sam surrenders the trials and collapses, dying.

1) 5.22 Swan Song. You knew this would be number one, I knew this would be number one, we all knew this would be number one. It’s iconic for a reason. Sam and Lucifer talking through a mirror; the loss of all hope and the sky-high stakes. Stull Cemetery is the defining moment of so, so much of the rest of the series. Dean’s loyalty gives Sam the strength he needs to bury himself alive forever with his worst nightmare, and it saves the world, and it’s the highest cost either of them has ever paid.

#1.22 #2.22 #3.16 #4.22 #5.22 #6.22 #7.23 #8.23 #9.23 #10.23 #11.23 #12.23 #13.23 #14.20 #15.20 #ranking

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abloomntime · 3 years

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A Bloom In Time Ch22 Cooking Cat Returns With Mustache Girl

(I headcannon Mustache Girl's actual name to be Muriel. )

You know. It feels a lot better sleeping on a bed than it was sleeping on a hard cold wooden floor. Also much better to wake up with having sore muscles for a second time. Slowly waking up, blue eyes peered out awake to the world, blinking away the blurry vision that came with it. Where was she again? The first thing she saw was the blue canopy of Hattie bed......And slowly she started to remember what happened last night. Groaning, the grown woman slowly sat up on the bed and reached a hand up to push the long messy hair out of her face. Vision slowly focusing and seeing the large pillow pile and diving board attached to the top of it, and the bookshelf with all those children books on it. Yawning, Poppy stretched out her back the Starella story book tumbling off her lap and onto the bed beside her, not that she noticed. She was a little busy smacking her lips and rubbing her face before standing up and sluggishly walking her way towards the tiny door. She was hungry and you know what, some apples in the morning didn't sound too bad anyways. As her ma would say, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Right? Well not quite. As she tired crawled(dragged) herself into the control room, the sweet smell of fried eggs and cheese filled the air and when she sniffed, Poppy found herself turning in the direction of the kitchen. Her stomach rumbled at the smell of the food and she stood to her feet again. Mind blank as she tiredly trudged her way towards the ramp up to the kitchen area. Passing Rumbi who was happy to be back in the control room and not carried around room to room anymore cleaning. Up the ramp and past the big vault door, she could smell the food getting closer and closer until she pushed open the doors without a second thought.

"....Well, good morning to ya," a cheering slightly southern accent called out, "I was wondering when I would see you again."

The voice seemed to finally wake up Poppy as she blinked and turned her head in the direction of Cookie who smiled and was standing on a chair to reach the hot stove. Something was sizzling on the stove in front of her and that's what was making the delicious smell. The girls were there too, all dressed in the same outfits as yesterday but these ones were different colors. Same design and style, different color. Hattie was wearing a dark blue and white out fit and hat( dark blue being her shirt and pants, and white being anything else from her cape to hat), and Bow was wearing a similar dark blue and white attire(with her dress being dark blue and everything from her Bow to shoes were a white). The girls happily waved at her in between eating what looked like friend eggs into their mouths. A third short person was standing off in the corner of the room behind Cookie looking bored.

"Oh. Uh.....*YYYYAAAAWWNN* H-Hello again, Cookie." She proceeded to rub her face again. "W-What are you doing here?"

Cookie smiled turning back to the stove to flip the yellow almost cresent shaped egg. "Well, since the last episode of my cooking show for this season was finished, it means I get a few months to take a load off and prepare for the next season after the Annual Bird Movie Award Ceremony is over."

"Bird ....movie awards?"

Cookie nodded. "It happens once a year, but unfortunately since one of the three judges not awefully sick from bad bird seed they had to push it back a few months this year. Now the deadline is the week before Cupid's Day, that's why the theme for this year's contest was romance. Poor Mr. Grooves is having an awful time trying to find suitable actors for this fairytale romance theme he has going on. I would've volunteered myself, but I was really looking forward to some rest." She smiled shyly and pointed to herself. "And I wasn't exactly what he was looking for in the fair maiden role."

"I think you're beautiful Cookie!," Bow piped up, "The prettiest cat in the world!"

"And the best cook, too!," Hattie added.

Both making Cookie giggled and waving her paw, "Oh stop! Ya'll are making me blush worse than a kitten with a puppycrush."

"What are you cooking?," Poppy asked shuffling closer to them.

"Cheese omlets," Cookie replied happily. Reaching over and grabbing a plate laid next to her, she expertly flipped the omlet up and onto the plate in her paws with ease before turning to Poppy smiling and offering it out to her. "I hope ya'll don't mind me stoppin' by. I had nothing else today to really do, and I thought that I'd drop by and spend some more time visiting like I promised. And I wanted to see for myself if you were settling in today."

Poppy gladly took the plate from her stomach rumbling and mouth watering at the sight of it. "Uh. N-No. It's perfectly fine. In fact it's very kind of you to do so." Smiling she took the fork handed along with her and dug in......OH MY PECK!! Whatever a cheese omlet was it was SO delicious! Once again her cooking amazed her again. " SO GOOD!!"

Cookie ended up chuckling again turning off the stove. "I'm glad you think so, honestly it was only a few eggs and slicing a few pieces off that cheese wheel, the fridge is practically empty. Why didn't you go restock yet?"

Poppy stopped mid bite and looked at her for a moment staring. "Restocking?"

"Y'know. Shoppin'? All ladies like to shop, don't you?"

"Uh...Actually I don't think I could. I haven't exactly been paid by anyone yet so I don't really have much to buy any fancy things." She continued eating and eventually a movement to her right caught her attention, blue eyes looked down to meet gold ones as the two made eye contact and her brain quickly registered it to be another little girl in a red hood with her hair in two ponytails. Swallowing down some food, Poppy smiled at her. "Well hello there. I don't think I've met you yet. What's your name?"

"Mustache Girl!," the tiny girl proclaimed pointing a hand up, "Defeater of bad guys and savior of the world!"

"More like almost destroying it," Hattie shot back shooting her a dirty look witch this ...uh...'Mustache Girl' shot back with equal annoyance.

"Says the one who messed up by making it rain dangerous hourglasses everywhere!," the blonde yelled back pointing a finger, Hattie just stuck her tongue out at her.

The little girl continued to look slightly annoyed and Cookie reached behind her to pat the child's head. "This is Muriel. But we call her Mu for short." She gave a scary mom smile down to the children. "And we're not going to fight today are we?"

"No, Cookie!," all three girls agreed under the cat's gaze.

Poppy wasn't gonna lie, she was slightly scared and kinda impressed and this cat woman's skills to mother these three with ease within just a few seconds. And Mu huh? She giggled. It was pronounced the same way as 'Mew', like what a cat would say. And honestly it was kinda cute of her. Mu noticed the way Poppy was giggling and looking at her and frowned. Before shooting an accusing hand and face at her.

"And what are you laughing at?," she asked and Poppy noticed she also had some kind of accent. "Are you a bad guy too?!"

"MU!," Cookie scolded giving her a stern look and Mu instantly froze, eyes shooting sideways to the cat, "What did we talk about with minding your manners? Now you apologise to Ms. Bloomington this instant!" Her gaze turned apologetic to Poppy. "I am so sorry. It's hard for her to break old habits from Mafia Town, but I promise you she's a good girl."

"There's no need to apologize." Poppy smiled wider before kneeling down slowly to Mu's height. The little girl pulled her hand back to her and watched as Poppy stopped eye level smiling at her like Cookie would. "It sounds to me like you're a very brave little girl."

Mu paused for a moment. Looking Poppy up and down suspiciously as if trying to decide if she was serious or not about it, but took it as a compliment. Smiling proudly and puffing out her chest, pointing at herself. "Absolutely not wrong! I'm the bravest crime fighter in the world!"

Poppy chuckled again and sweetly nodded. "Well, I wouldn't be surprised if ya was. Such pretty eyes too. They look just like gold and honey."

"YEAH! That's exactly what I am!" She puffed up prouder at the strokes to her ego. "Gold and honey! The best gold and honey in the universe! Finally someone who gets it." Behind her Hattie rolled her eyes stuffing the last of her breakfast in her mouth, and Cookie seemed to be happy with the way the two stopped arguing finally.

Poppy chuckled again. "Well, it's really nice to meet you, Mu."

"Likewise, Bloom-in-Tons!"

"Call me,Poppy!" She smiled as she stood up to finish eating her food as she smiled. "Why don't you all go play?"

"Yes," Cookie agreed nudging Mu forward a little bit, "Why don't you all go and play with that pretty gold castle they showed us and be nice while the adults talk for a little bit?" The children were a little apprehensive at first but agreed to do so with Bow quickly stuffing the rest of her breakfast into her mouth and both her and Hattie tossing the dishes into the sink as one after another they ran to the doors with a few shouts of- 'I call being the Gold hero!' 'No you don't! I'm the best crime fighter!' "No you're not! I beat you remember!' 'Yes way!' 'No way!' 'Yes, Way!' and Bow following after the first two as they left. Cookie sighed shaking her head and grabbed the frying pan and spatula she had been cooking with hopping off the chair before looking up at Poppy. "I'm sorry for that. Those three may fight sometimes, but Hattie was quick to forgive everyone including her. They are friends I swear, but they argue worse than Conductor and Mr. Grooves at times....Mind being a dear and dragging over that chair there?"

"Hm. Oh! Sure." Plate in one hand, Poppy used the other to drag the chair across the room right behind Cookie to the sink following. "And it's quite alright. Kids will be kids after all, I don't blame them at all. Hmhm." She scooted the chair over where Cookie silently pointed and watched as the plump cat impressively jump onto it and faced the sink with the already dirty dishes in it. Going back to eat the other half of her breakfast as she watched Cookie roll up her sleeves more and turning on the sink. "Thank you for the..omlet by the way. I really appreciate it. "

She nodded not looking at her and instead turning on the hot water to the said sink. "Well it wasn't trouble at all. I was a little surprised you hadn't gotten up yet. Aren't you supposed to be the little dumplins' new babysitter or somethin'?"

Poppy sighed through her nose swallowing again. "Uh, well. Yeah that's my new job I guess. Being a maid and nanny to 'em. But to be honest with ya, I don't know the first thing about where ta go or even start with whole thing."

Cookie paused for a moment in her movements to look over at her...Yellow eyes roaming up and down eyeing the tacky dress on her and the messy bed head she had. "Well, by the way you look now ya'll are having some trouble settling in."

Poppy groaned allowing the cat to take away her now empty plate. "Tell me about it. With all the darn crazy things that's happened in the past few days I'm about ready to burst. And even if I knew where ta shop, I couldn't exactly pay for anything being broke."

Cookie looked at her confused. "Broke? But I thought all those gold do-dads were supposed to be your payment? The children seemed awefully proud to have them and Hattie said something about buying a whole bunch of things with some of it."

........OH!! THE GOLD!! OF COURSE!! She had completely forgotten about all of that in favor of being hungry and getting herself some food, but now that she remembered that didn't sound like a half bad idea to use it for food and some clothes that weren't so tacky.

"That doesn't sound like a half bad idea ya got there!...But. I'm not really sure where to use it. Haven't visited many places around here."

"Hm...I got an idea!" Cookie's smile widened at her. "Mu and I were just going around to do some errends after visitin'. Why don't ya'll come along and we'll make a girls trip outta it? It'll be fun to show someone around my favorite places! And I know just the place in Express City where you can trade gold for pons."

Poppy blinked. "W-Wha- N-No! I-It's fine. You're too kind really. We'll be just fine just how we are right now-"

"Nonsense," Cookie cut her off giving her a look. "Staying here all the time isn't going to magically put food in your fridge or nice clothes on your back. I insist. Besides, some time stretching your legs will be good for you."

Well. That didn't sound too bad to be honest. She could definately get a change of scenery besides haunted woods or an alien space ship, plus some actual soil under her feet sounded nice instead of floating in outer space. But Cookie wasn't exactly about to let her just waltz out with a bed head like hers. Luckily there was three little girls who gladly got very excited when they were asked by the cat to play 'make over' with Poppy, and by that she meant tidy up her hair. To say it hurt quite a bit with all the tangled built up ever since she crash landed in the swamp was an understatement. IT PECKING HURT!! Didn't help her hair was very long so it would take quite a while, in the meantime Cookie was nice enough to gather some of the gold objects they definately could put to better use. Of course both Bow and Hattie were very reluctant to let any of the buried treasure they found go, and once seeing all the gold Mu certainly was not willing to let 'any potential evil doers get their hands on it'. But they all came to a understanding with the stern gaze of the cat thrown at them. They would the girls each keep one, leave one or two pieces of gold for back up just in case of any emergency where they needed money, and the rest was coming along with them. They agreed reluctantly. No surprise Hattie chose the golden Roach King. Bow chose the castle as she enjoyed having it while playing her games. And Mu chose the cookie. Why?....She pouted and said because it reminded her of someone before shoving it into her cape's pocket with a huff. It was decided the golden skull would be the thing to be left behind and was hidden under Hattie's bed for safe keeping. Which left the golden gear, trophy, potion, pencil, Mafia Man, Cheese pieces, and candle would be all the things to go. But they all wouldn't be easy to carry as solid gold was a sure heavy thing. Luckily Poppy was just what they needed, who else to carry them but the strongest gal here? So into the pockets of her trusty leather apron they went. The weight was a bit much but she'd manage, like the light pain in her head right after the girls got done with her hair finally, leaving it in that signiture long braid and pretty blue bow tied at the end by Bow. She was ready! But the trip all the way down to the planet was another thing in of itself.

She was NOT about to risk free falling from space again, and these two weren't exactly known for their iron grip the last time. Cookie, being the genius cat she was suggested she just come along with them to Moon City to catch the next chip taxi down to the planet with them. Poppy hesitated at first, but she agreed afraid of falling from the sky again. Bow and Hattie coming out with umbrella's in their hands presumably going on their own to follow them all. Making sure they were all comfortable the cat lifted her sleeve again to reveal the same watch like device she had used the last time she was there and instructed Poppy to hold onto her paw now, as it would be a really quick trip there. She wasn't sure what to expect when she nervously grabbed Cookie's paw, but she did slam her eyelids shut when Cookie pressed the button on there. Before quickly grabbing Mu's hand with her other paw.

.....

........

"Uh..Ya'll can open your eyes now," came Cookie's voice.

Were they there already? Poppy's hand was released by Cookie and the human slowly opened her eyes. ....And what she saw both surprised and calmed her. Looking up the starry sky of outer space shown down at her live the time she free falled, but without the falling to the ground this time. The pretty stars shown brightly before those blue eyes blinked around at everything else. It was a CITY alright. A BIG ONE!....Well, she guessed any city would be big to her, as she's never really been IN a city before, the only one she's known to be in the city was her distant cousin who had a Fruit Stand somewhere in the Subonette City Marketplace. He'd sometimes tell them all the tall buildings that were so close together and the giant skyscrapers the rich fatcats lived in and their fancy carriages being pulled by giant beautiful black stallions. He always said the place was always too big and crowded for his liking but he didn't leave because the market always brought the best customers to his food. But she'd didn't think any city would be this.....Flashy. The tall buildings were decorated in massive lights and music blasted from everywhere and all kinds too. Rock, jazz, blues, techno remixes. You name it. It was almost enough to hurt her ears and her eyes. And all around them were...There was....PENGUINS!! Moon Penguins. They all didn't seem to mind or care that they just showed up in the middle of the town square and didn't care. Beeping was heard as a car zipped by them all and Poppy jumped staring at the weird mechanical beast that just went by. Gigantic signs were everywhere decorated with lights. One said 'Hats', another had a picture of a fedora and said 'Nuthin' Cooler', one Said 'Hats and Buy'. She giggled at one that read 'Penguin Suits Clothes Store'. There was even a giant glowing sign of piano keys with the words "Feelin' Lucky? Casino Hall'. It was...AMAZING!! Even if her senses were being attacked right now. But then she stopped to stare at the fountain they were standing right next to. It was in a giant shape of a music note and like most everything else, was bedazzled in lights as water poured from it.

"Are you alright?" Mu was giving her a strange look as the grown woman gawked at everything. "You look like you've never seen a fountain before."

"I've never been in any city before! Let alone on the moon!" Poppy smiled excitedly at the two of them. "This is amazing!"

Cookie chuckled and grabbed Mu by the hand gesturing for them to cross the street to the right.....Then proceeded to grab Poppy's hand to drag her along behind them as she still stood and gawked at everything but jumped at the tiny cat pulling her along across the street to the sidewalk. Another red car driving by them. As they walked Poppy noticed there was tiny bush plants in pots everywhere also covered in lights as they passed. These pengiuns really loved lights huh? Speaking of them she saw a lot of them. Moon penguins wearing suits, fedoras, and black sunglasses, they were all listening to music or talking to one another, or driving those big machines they were riding in. At one point she saw a lady penguin dressed in a pink outfit similar to the others, waddling around with a baby stroller with an egg carefully placed inside of it. She giggled at the sight of a tiny fedora on the egg as they passed, how peculiar- BAM!! Bright yellow light! Suddenly hitting her straight in the face. Poppy had to slam her eyes shut again at the sudden bright yellow flashing on them, only being guided by Cookie still holding her hand but Poppy did blink her eyes open and look up to where the light was radiating from when she felt cookie tug her in a different direction before stopping. While she got her hand back, Poppy held it up above her as her eyes adjusted and she was finally able to make out the blinding light up above. There was three gigantic blinding signs on top of the biggest building she's ever seen. Two were saxophones and one in between them were bright yellow letters saying GROOVES.

"That's Mr. Grooves moon studio," Cookie explained noticing her staring up at the signs. "He built it right by the entrance to the metro so he can just waltz on in and start workin' if he decides to shoot on the moon for what ever reason." Her yellow eyes also squinted up at the sky above and pointed up to two little stars floating down from the sky. "And here come the little darlins' now. I told them to meet us as soon as possible at the metro here before we go down to Express Town."

"Express ....Town?"

"It's the first town before you get to Express Owl City. Millions of birds ...mostly owls, live there. But Express town is big enough to have everything we need, and to be honest I'm not a fan of cities. I've gotten used to a small town life as it was."

Poppy continued to gawk at the bright lights, slightly impressed by it all...but then slowly shifted over to two little things floating down from the sky towards them, it was hard at first to see them thanks to the blinding yellow light from the sign but eventually she was able to see the forms of Hattie and Bow floating down towards them. Hattie was holding onto her hat with one hand and smiled down at the three girls below when she noticed they were staring at the three of them.

"I'M MARY PENGUINS YA'LL!!," she called down from the floating umbrella waving her hat.

Mu huffed crossing her arms. "Show offs."

Poppy chuckled at it all and watched with a smile as the two girls gently floated down closer and closer, until they were right in front of them. Standing on the ground smiling and putting away those magic umbrellas into...Well magic thin air she guessed and smiled up at them all.

"Are we late?"

Cookie shook her head, and gestured to the stairs leading down into the ground, turning as she did and starting to walk down said stairs. "Not at all, Sugarplum. Come along now everyone. The evening train's 'bout ta leave any minute now. And we don't want to miss that now do we?"

Shaking her head no, Hattie followed right behind her with Bow and After rolling her eyes, so did Mu. Poppy slowly followed after them down the stairs, but surprisingly she wasn't greeted in darkness. Instead she was met with a secret underground tunnel of concrete under the city and ....HOLY COW!! A train! There was a train smack dab right in the middle of the room, a few penguins climbing onto it or off it as the many doors on the long thing was open. Thank goodness it wasn't as flashy as the city outside as she looked around in wonder. The place was still pretty big even for small penguins, about five or six houses wide and height if you asked her. There was one penguin who wore the same thing as the other penguins only had on a conductor's hat and a small mic in his flipper, Poppy watched from the bottom of the stairs as this penguin looked at a watch on his other flipper before bringing the mic back up to his mou- ...Uh...Beak.

"Attention passengers." His voice boomed through a speaker above them all. "The Evening Train to the planet below will leave in exactly thirty two seconds. Those boarding please have your luggage in hand and board immediately. Last call for the evening train. That is all."

"Oh, that's our ride. C'mon ya'll. Don't want to be late now."

Cookie hurried the three little girls in front of her towards the nearest open doors on the trains, Poppy trailing behind. Passing penguins going in or out of the tram Poppy gazed up at it as she stepped in. She had to lean other a bit to not hit her head on the ceiling. The weight of the gold in her heavy duty leather apron making her lean more from the weight of it. It had white painted walls with poles and handles on the ceiling to hang onto along with benches the perfect size for Poppy and the girls to sit in. Poppy being obviously taller ended up taking up a seat and a half next to them, but there wasn't many penguins on board so she had plenty of room to herself without having to worry about taking up space for anyone else.

"Last chance of boarding. I repeat last chance,'' the Conductor Penguin's voice sounded out. Poppy glanced over at the doors as they all closed with a loud click ceiling them as the girls and Cookie all sat on either side of her. But gave a small yelp when the train lurched wobbling everyone in it and slowly started to pull forward, Poppy glancing out the window behind them and seeing the station move as the train started taking off. "We are now leaving Moon City Metro. Please remain your seats and enjoy the ride. Thank you for choosing PenCo Express Services for your space travels."

As they picked up speed, Poppy kept staring out the window and her eyes widen seeing the out side of outer space and suddenly the sight of the moon after a few seconds, it was silver and round like a moon would look like but a good CHUNK (like half of it) was alive with lights bright enough to be seen from her spot on the running train. The lights making the buildings look shadowy, it was kinda pretty in a monochrome way. As she turned her head in the opposite direction to look forward, the planet from what she could see from it was getting closer and closer. Well.....Here she goes.

#ABloomInTime #a bloom in time #A Hat In Time #a hat in time snatcher #a hat in time florist #flowercrown #florist x snatcher #The Florist #A hat in time the florist #snatcher x florist #Snatcher x the florist #the florist x snatcher #A hat in time snatcher x florist #A hat in time florist x snatcher #A hat in time the florist x snatcher #a hat in time snatcher x the florist

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kitkatt0430 · 3 years

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the flash and the problem of the pointless sacrifice

It starts at the end of season one. Eddie Thawne picks up his gun and shoots himself, dying to protect Iris, Barry, and the rest from his dangerous descendent Eobard Thawne.

Season two ends with its reversal, Barry creating the Flashpoint Timeline that, though its eventually set back to 'normal-ish', leaves a time remnant of Eobard Thawne alive and well (if running scared from the Black Flash/Hunter Zolomon as a speed zombie) to wreak havoc once more.

And I get it. The Reverse Flash is one of the Flash's most iconic villains - killing him off in season one couldn't be permanent. But apparently Eddie's suicide could be and the message that sends is... unfortunate.

Eddie is an extremely kindhearted person and we see that about him again and again throughout season one. He always has a smile for the people he cares about and he's an absolutely terrible liar. But we also know that he was bullied as a child/teen and since he never brings up the subject of his own family, it's likely he doesn't have a support structure outside of Central City. And the support structure he does gain in Central City was Barry's support structure first. There's not a single person we see Eddie spend time with in season one that didn't know Barry first.

And that's a big part of what wears him down over the course of the season. When both Barry and Eddie need support, Barry gets it first. Barry's secrets are treated as something Eddie has to prioritize over his relationship with Iris. Barry's loved Iris longer than Eddie's known her and while Iris loves Eddie, she also loves Barry and she's infatuated with the Flash - not realizing he's Barry's alter ego. Over the course of the season, Eddie constantly tries to connect with Barry and Barry constantly holds back. Their relationship is never equal. And that's what leaves Eddie open to Eobard's manipulations with the future news article.

And Eddie tries to make his own future with Iris anyway. But even with Iris accepting his proposal, Joe makes it clear he'll never truly accept their relationship and Eddie's sense of self worth is at an all time low. And that's the state of mind he's in during the fight in the pipeline. When Barry chooses not to let Eobard go after all, it puts them all in a position of potentially having to deal with this fight between the two speedsters just... never ending. It puts Iris in danger because Barry cares about her and because while Eddie is Eobard's ancestor... Iris isn't. From Eobard's point of view, Eddie's the only one who isn't expendable and from Eddie's point of view... he's the only one who is expendable.

His answer is suicide. And his death immediately erases Eobard from the timeline, but its also implied to have contributed to the re-emergence of the singularity. But at least Eobard was dead.

At least, until Barry created Flashpoint at the end of season 2. Presumably Eddie was alive in Flashpoint, but we never see him. Maybe he stays in Keystone instead of transferring to Central City. Never meets Iris. Never gets worn down to feel like he's not good enough. Never kills himself.

When Flashpoint is reset, Eddie's dead again but now his sacrifice has been rendered moot because Eobard's still alive as a time remnant.

It sets a rather nasty precedent for the show.

Season two also ends with a suicide. This time it's Barry's.

Much like Eddie the year before, Barry's been worn down. He had his place in his family's come into question, with Henry leaving at the start of the season and Wally's arrival midway through the season. His back is literally broken by the stress of fighting Zoom and despite everything he's suffered for the city, his honor is called into question the instant a different speedster takes to thievery. He has to give up his speed to protect Wally only for that to immediately put Caitlin in danger. His colleagues are brutally murdered by Zoom to teach him a lesson. His father finally comes back for good, only to be murdered in the same place as Barry's mother.

Honestly, there is no question (to my mind anyway) that Barry's suicidal at the end of the season. And because Barry his time remnants are fundamentally the same person at the moment of their split, the time remnant Barry creates is suicidal as well.

That time remnant tears himself apart to stop Zoom's plan to destroy the multi-verse. His very existence also lures in the Time Wraiths that take Zoom away, transforming him into the mindless Black Flash. All at the cost of a version of Barry killing himself, going unlamented and forgotten. But at least the multi-verse was safe.

Until the Red Skies Crisis when the multi-verse is actually destroyed and rebooted.

Another sacrifice rendered pointless.

HR does not kill himself in season three. But he deliberately places himself in a position to be killed in Iris' place. He arrives on the heels of a scandal on his Earth where he's been revealed to have been taking credit for someone else's work - with that person's blessing, but its still ruined his reputation. He comes wanting to reinvent himself, but from the start he's not the person the team really wants. They want Harry. Cisco wants Harry. He gets it hammered in that his strengths aren't appreciated by the team because he's not a scientist. His efforts to help STAR Labs are dismissed entirely. The only reason any attempts to help his museum venture succeed are because changing the future might save Iris.

It's not that HR is disliked, but he's left acutely aware that he's considered 'a bit much' and that he's always going to come second to the people he puts first. In fact, Tracy's probably the only one who truly and completely appreciates HR as he is.

So HR swaps places with Iris, knowing that he's going to die when he does. And while HR doesn't kill himself, there's an argument to be made that what he did was still suicide by proxy.

And this is a sacrifice that sticks, because Iris West is the love interest. She's never going to be killed off for real.

Three seasons ending with a suicidal sacrifice. And only one of them doesn't have that sacrifice reversed or nullified. Unfortunately, that's not the end of it either.

Harry leaves his Earth at the start of season four. His relationship with his daughter, which was shown to still be strong in season three, has somehow deteriorated to the point where she's thrown him off her support team and he comes to Earth-1 to reconnect with the found family he forged during season two. He's in the midst of a crisis and his understanding of himself as a parent is unraveling. And then DeVoe calls the other pillar of Harry's self identity into question, because Harry's genius isn't enough on its own anymore. He's not smart enough to out think DeVoe and his Earth-1 family is suffering. So Harry creates his own downfall, burns out his own brain trying to be the smartest. And he sacrifices his last moments of lucidity to find the answer to stopping DeVoe. In doing so, Harry puts Barry in the position to save Ralph's life.

But DeVoe still gets the last laugh when he causes the STAR Labs satellite to come falling down, nearly destroying the city and creating Cicada in the process.

But unlike previous seasons, Harry doesn't die. He gets some of his intelligence back and immediately gets exiled by the writers back to Earth-2 due to the massive problems with ableism this show has. But that's a different conversation.

Season five is probably the only season not to include a suicidal character who's kills themselves. Nora dies when she erases herself from the timeline by accident, but we know now she'll be back in the back half of season seven, along with her new brother. But one out five seasons not taking a suicide (or similar action in Harry's case) and painting it as a noble - but ultimately useless - gesture is rather... bad as far as track records go.

Season six has the alternate Barry Allen - implied to be the Barry from the 90s show - who dies in place of this show's Barry. To save the multi-verse and let this other Barry go home to his wife, something he'll never have with Tina again. And the multi-verse is destroyed anyway.

Season seven opened with Nash Wells, whose usual method of investigating mysteries and hoaxes led to the Anti Monitor's freedom and the multi-verse's destruction. His home Earth destroyed so he can never go home. He's confronted with an alternate version of his dead daughter, who can barely stand his presence. He begins to hallucinate alternate versions of himself and is possessed by the Reverse Flash and all his research on how to create a new Speed Force - to try to make up for some of the damage he's caused - points to a single conclusion. The only way to make things better is for him to die.

Instead, Nash's death immediately makes things worse. The artificial speed force is flawed and Barry destroys it in the very next episode. And while one could argue that Nash's death allowed Barry to save Iris and ultimately restored the original Speed Force, it doesn't negate the fact that Nash's suicidal state of mind wasn't addressed by the people who called him friend. And his legacy was immediately deemed a failure and destroyed.

While I wouldn't say the show is glorifying suicide, there's a subtle and incredibly troubling repetition in the story telling on the show that frames suicide as the right decision in certain circumstances. Even though what's being sacrificed for often comes to naught. And it's incredibly uncomfortable, seeing it all laid out like this.

I'm still really not sure what to make of it all, but I've got no doubt it ties into the show's ableism with regards to mental health issues. Because every time its someone whose mental health has been brought down to a low point who commits these acts of 'sacrifice' and while the team grieves these losses... they don't seem to learn from them either. Because it just keeps happening.

(Think I missed something? Please, by all means, add on.)

#the flash #the flash meta #tw suicude #some of the story telling trends on this show can be a little disturbing when you take a closer look at them #discussing several characters on the Flash who commit suicide (or make self-destructive decisions) across the seven seasons #ableism on the Flash

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phoebehalliwell · 3 years

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Prue gets together with Mitch (reincarnated Micah) and lives. How does their relationship evolve over the rest of the series?

okay so fr because like i've been thinking about this I've Been Thinking About This. WHY give us that connection if we're not gonna do anything with it??? WHY make it worse my literally giving us the guy THE EXACT SAME GUY and then never mention him again What is the motive?????? okay okay okay so here's what i'd do: 2.6 undercut lmao

because prue has really only had two boyfriends in the series so far: andy & jack (bane doesn't count as he was more of a tryst and also he's in jail :'( could have been fun tho! he could have sacrificed himself for somebody else and become a whitelighter he already knows the ins and outs of the underworld like. could have been something there. but as they were only together twice, once when prue was posing as a hitwoman and then again when he kidnapped her, he, tragically, does not him boyfriend status.) so here me out andy is a cop he represents protection and familial ties / ties to the past (prue's childhood best friend, already friends with the sisters, he's also a third generation cop so like there's that too). he represents prue's early stage, where she feels like she has to be the protector of the whole family, of which she is basically the matriarch. she doesn't get to have fun, she has to protect her sisters and now the whole world, and her past is having some very real effects on her life right now. that's her andy era.

jack era is at buckland's, it's her breadwinning era. we even saw in morality bites (which, i am once again bringing up, is fake) that she goes on to be superbillionaire whatever. so jack kind represents professional ambitions, amplified by the fact that the fonet also served as a blatant metaphor for their relationship (prue, the world is made up of almost perfect. it's nothing but near misses and necessary compromises. in this case, i think we got a little bit of both. that's okay, i know how you feel. i'm just asking you not to look so close. nothing bears up under that kind of scrutiny. are you talking about the monet? yeah, that too.) and that their relationship ends when she decided to leave bucklands to pursue a career in photography.

so now we enter season three, which is prue's artist era, her passionate like zeal for life era she finally seems to have a weight lifted off her shoulder for the first time in a long time like you can tell she like. trusts her sisters more than she ever has before she sees them in a new light and knows that they are strong and smart and independent and she doesn't need to protect them every waking hour. this era's for prue. so i'm pitching that micah mirrors this by being an artist, too. i wouldn't say the same medium (photography) as prue because like. prue's definitely someone who would compare herself to him just like subconsciously constantly that's the type of woman she is, but maybe like a painter. not a writer because they're all insufferable. lmao 🤙🤙. but someone who lives in a hella nice studio type loft filled with art and just like life. passion. something prue hasn't really allowed herself in like. a hot minute. and i would make micah (mitch??) a witch. haha it rhymes. scratch that i'd make him a warlock. or a darklighter i'm cashing in my half-darklighter character. it's mitch now. idk how this would fit into phole narrative foils maybe or we scrap phole but they're really coming from two different perspectives where cole is entering the joint like i am evil and here to murder and then he catches feelings whereas mitch would be like yes i have some dark past but i'm not letting it define me bonus points is prue is able to piece together the clues of his origin just by looking at his paintings. this also adds to the rift between prue and phoebe on prue's cole stance like oh your evil boyfriend is fine but mine, for some reason, is still evil? yes. oh you know what we keep the source's heir in this au let me continue.

instead of introducing mitch in p3 because like WHAT WAS THAT, we instead, parallel their first meeting. mitch's origin story is

his mom was a future whitelighter knocked up by a darklighter this was not intentional on anyone's part mom wasn't trying to become mom dad wasn't trying to become dad Nor did dad know mom was a future whitelighter. because well he's not great at being a darklighter in spite of maybe being like the. head darklighter's son he's like the fucked up son who doesn't wanna run things. he doesn't know he has a kid!! until something something an oracle or something tells him he has a son But he can't find mom because she's cloaked by her whitelighter. mom dies doing something heroic idk (maybe mom was a firefighter??) and then cloaking on mitch is lifted when he's in his late teens his dad finds him his dad is now like proper leader of the darklighter clan and is trying to bring mitch into the fold which initially he is game for because mitch has all these powers black orbing touch of death that he doesn't understand and finally a community to explain that to him! he gets a crossbow (which is lit) but um. quickly catches on to how blatantly evil the whole thing is. he's secretly teamed up with some whitelighters (not his mom tho. friends of his mom, but he's not allowed to see her :'/ ) to help get other halflings like him out and cloaked.

leo's been taken hostage by the darklighter something something something a plot a plot a plot we do some solid pleo angst we maybe have cole drop some thinly veiled advice about the underworld without coming out as a demon, something that will help the sisters later. but what's really important here is they're sneaking through the underworld maybe they've been split up and they need to find leo so either they're looking for him Or they're looking for a darklighter to interrogate. and prue hears shifting behind a rock and goes over to look and it's mitch and some kid and the kid immediately summons his crossbow but mitch knocks it away just like prue did with piper in the past and piper's like prue u see anything and she's like no nothing here and then mitch and the kid blackorb away which just leaves prue with this sinking feeling like what the fuck?? because. what the fuck??? a) that was the same guy from puritan times and b) she still feels the same she felt back then and c) it's clear he does do but d) --and this is the crucial one-- D) he's fucking evil????? so blah blah blah we save leo but now prue is left with one crucial question what the fuck is going on?

so what she's gonna do is research the town the colony whatever that melinda warren was born in she astral projects to salem or whatever and steals. maybe the mask mitch wore at the party she recognizes it from all hallows eve. and she brings that home and scrys with it. and she finds him!! and um bonus points looking at his place she sees he's an alum of the college she went to because backstory!! when prue was in college back when she was still pursuing photography before grams got sick, they had met before! once before, at a party, and it was this instant spark, this instant connection, but then something pulled them apart be it one of them was already in a relationship or their ride was leaving something but like. again! this connection has always been there. so like blah blah blah prue has broken into mitch's place she sees their college connection she sees his art and starts to pull together a life story he sees maybe some paperwork that just says like in bold letters like saving kids: good person activities something real obvious you know and that's Right Next To his crossbow. ~juxtaposition~ so like. what the fuck is this. but whatever that'll be dealt with later she has to get to work! but!! at the magazine her boss is like hey prue some guy came by here earlier asking for you you know [description of mitch], [description of mitch], [description of mitch], you know him? and prue's like ummmmmmmm. no. ?. and her boss is like ?? i don't really care. photography! but now she knows that while she's been digging up on him, he's been doing the same with her. so that night at p3 prue's like okay i've got to come clean with u guys remember micah and phoebe's like oh yeah that hottie from the past who was like . spiritually in love with you? and prue's like yeah i found him. and piper and phoebe are like 🤗🥳😃 and prue's like. and he's a darklighter. and piper and phoebe are like 😳😶👎 and prue's like yeah remember when like we were trying to save leo and you asked me if i saw something? well i did. it was him and and this kid and i think he was trying to save him and phoebe's like wait you think? and prue's like well i mean yeah phoebe like. it was like the same thing when he saved us in the 1700s. and phoebe's like well no because we're good witches and he saved us you saved a darklighter? and prue's like he's more than that phoebe and phoebe's like but how can you know (flash forward to her sparing cole in about three episodes and being like hmm 😐 those words are gonna bite me in the ass).

the point is they're hashing it out phoebe's devil on the left and piper's trying to be angel on the right But he is in the clan that kidnapped her husband so like..... but prue is explaining the good person papers she found on his desk, the fact that she went to college with him, she's like. she thinks he's only half darklighter and he's helping others like him and piper phoebe are like ....................do you just want him to be half darklighter and helping others like him but prue's not even listening but look who's coming down the stairs!! so she beelines over and phoebe's about to follow but piper holds her back bc wait let this play out they'll watch from afar and piper will freeze the room if she has to.

and something something something blah blah blah they tal and there's this tense like. what now. because like. What Now? you're evil and i'm a charmed one but this invisible string pulling me here whether i want it too or not. and i think prue kinda shifts back into her earlier seasons self where. it's family above all else. like i need you to steer clear because if i see you again i will vanquish you. and mitch knows she's bluffing. because he know that if he tried, even if he really wanted to, he couldn't harm a hair on her head. and it's clear she's like. suffering from the same ailment so to speak.

something something something maybe they have a couple quick brushes but not actual meetings And Then we get another time travel/past life episode where!! as it turns out. prue and mitch r soulmates cursed by a spurned lover to always be on opposite sides. meanwhile we just got cole demon reveal/cole's still alive reveal so prue's like hi mitch you're. evil. evil-adjacent. what do you know about belthazor/cole turner. and mitch does his due diligence and like. the stuff on belthazor is appalling. genuinely terrifying. but then there's some stuff on cole turner that's like kinda okay. this is were mitch does is big tragic backstory reveal, kids born of dark magic falling in with the wrong crowd blah blah blah and this kind of. supports our theory moving forward it's not really a theory. our endgame moving forward of healthy!cole. also prue and mitch still have not gotten together through all of this in spite of the cosmic pull and the past evidence of like. soulmatism. because they're both a bit too pragmatic they both think it's kind of a lost cause. blah blah blah pining we give prue a mini love interest here someone to keep her mind off mitch and we do make him good. kind, attentive, caring, smart, hot, but like. it's so painfully obvious she's not all in. so he calls it off. heart to heart with piper because piper's like hi you're in love. and prue's like yeah with a doomed relationship i think i'd rather not and piper's like hello you're talking to the queen of doomed relationships you wanna know the secret? and prue's like yes :( and piper's like just go for it. the time you have together is. it's better than anything else you'll ever have. there's gonna be heartbreak, but hell there's always gonna be heartbreak in the halliwell family. wouldn't you rather spend your time with someone you love?

something something something leo/mitch/cole buddy episode b plot. leo/mitch/cole/DARRYL buddy episode b plot. :D. prue and micah get their big first kiss in a very tv show build up way my heart is saying new years and all the fireworks go off around them.

we're bringing in paige because i love her she's first introduced by some seer oracle whatever as your other sister and the girls are like respectfully, bullshit. but micah's like hey......... she's half whitelighter. because he can sense those kind of things, being a darklighter. and piper and leo are like patty's affair....................... and all the pieces are falling together and in this one. paige either gets a witch love interest a cupid love interest or we keep henry because fwiw i do really like mortal love interests. if we do do the witch love interest it won't be richard i love him to piece i do but he sucks <3. source!cole time.

oh we introduce paige thru mitch trying to help one of his kids and that lands him at social services.

source!cole. idk what happens here but like. using our nifty-difty tool box the squad has been assembling over the years helping all of these wayward souls born from evil, things mostly work out fine. source's heir is born, a girl, but since prue isn't dead her name is either colette or victoria. depends if cole died or not.

prue moved out at some point and lives in a hella nice studio apartment with mitch they r both artists (who the fuck is paying for that?) phoebe moves back in the manor post-source fiasco paige moves in the manor but spends a lot of time with her sister prue and soon to be brother in law (??) mitch. (paige is like fr dude when are you gonna pop the question and mitch is like woahhhh pump the break because paige is new here and when she saw them she's like oh. married couple. but then they're not married. engaged? nope. no just loosely dating? okay. lame. bad idea. but as it turns out one of them always dies so they're just trying to avoid that for as long as possible) but paige spends a lot of time at pritch's place because not only is it The Art Zone it's also the rehabilitating kids zone, of which paige is a grand help. prue jokes about how much paige reminds her of phoebe as a kid, and since we're already muddying the timeline, we're having paige enter and solid advice columnist, married phoebe and paige is like haha what the fuck??

source's heir born twice blessed born magic school located under the charmed & co squad becomes integrated with children born of all magic and like our season 8 wrap up saccharine finale is like how magic has reached a new era of peace n understanding. <3

#its stream of consciousness plot pitch time again!! idk if i love it if i'm sold on it #i might come back with an entirely separate mitch pitch #because there's really nothing there the world is my oyster at this point #but i think this could be a fun one #charmed #prue x micah #💌#margaretsminiessays

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golden-redhead · 4 years

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My experience with spop was this - I knew nothing beforehand. saw how the Internet exploded over their kiss and thought "cute LGBTQ couple endgame? I'm in." started binging and I just kept waiting for them to grow closer but all I got was more abusive behavior? Then I finished s5 and just couldn't believe that that was it? That's how they ended up together? That's what got the Internet celebrating? I think knowing the endgame and how people raved over it made the experience worse for me tbh.

Oof, I honestly can’t imagine watching the show knowing how it ends, excited about getting some wlw rep we crave so much and then... that. I think some of the shows issues must get glaringly obvious if you actually watch it all as opposed to those of us who had to wait months before a new batch of episodes and had time to hype themselves out and just enjoyed the contents of s5 in this slight disconnect from the previous seasons. I am not entirely opposed against catradora (although I do not like it and do not ship it, I just dislike this kind of dynamic, it’s very clearly not my thing even if you completely erase the element of abuse and ignore the fact that they don’t hold the same beliefs or values like, at all), but the dedication with which the show did everything to avoid addressing all the shit that they should have addressed in order for the ending and Catra’s redemption to work is just... astounding, really.

Like, imagine going SO OUT OF YOUR WAY and still not getting it right.

For one, Catra never apologizes, not really, because I can hardly count her saying “I’m sorry for everything” as an apology. One of the rules of sincere apologies is that you actually acknowledge what you did wrong, apologizing for unspecified ‘everything’ is lazy and disrespectful and makes it look like some way to just take it off the list and be done with that part of Catra’s redemption.

Two, talking with other fans really made me wonder how the supposed target audience, so kids aged 7 and older, perceive that ending, because I have an impression that they might have a hard time wrapping their head around it. I’ve heard that some kids are actually scared of Catra? And, honestly, I can see that, yeah. Not to mention just the message that all your abuser needs is for you to prioritize them and stay... Yeah. Um, nope.

Three, my biggest issue as someone who genuinely loved the shows and the characters, my biggest complain is how everything had to be tossed aside in order to make catradora happen. Everything. Quite literally.

Scorpia getting over Catra, getting friends and appreciation she deserved? Accepting her role of a princess? Forming meaningful and healthy friendships and finding her place in the world? Fuck it, let’s chip her for like, half the season and ignore her conflict with Catra entirely. THE FUCKING DISRESPECT OF THAT.

Adora and Glimmer’s argument? You know, the driving force and main conflict of the entire 4th season? Yeah, yeah, let’s have Adora dismiss Glimmer’s apologies and never address that ever again, shall we?

Angella? Pff, who? Never heard of her!

Micah interacting with Glimmer for like, all of 2 minutes. 95% of that time fighting her while chipped by the bad guy. Um... okay. So much for the reunion with a daughter you didn’t see since she was, um, 5 at most?

Glimmer’s powers? The ones she’s been mastering and being insecure about episode one? Which were a huge part of why she even trusted Shadow Weaver in the first place? Yeah, they’re useless 3/4 of the season and then given to Melog. You know, that new character who is ridiculously overpowered and is basically Catra’s glorified moral support cat, despite being a sentient, intelligent being, the sole survivor of its planet. Of-fucking-course.

Oh, speaking of Shadow Weaver! The fucking HYPOCRISY of having a full season of Glimmer and Adora arguing over Glimmer choosing to work with her only to... Have Adora work with her. The entire season. And never mentioning it again. SURE. BECAUSE THAT MAKES SENSE.

(btw, I love how the show framed their conflict as something where Adora is basically 100% in the right... but when you think about it, Glimmer actually made much more solid points that actually turned to be true. the more you know!)

Mermista lost her entire kingdom because of Catra? Yeah, better let’s get her chipped too, before she has a chance to question why they’re working with the kitty lady who was about to murder them only 2 minutes ago.

Adora spent 4 seasons trying to learn more about her past? Let’s drop it. Just because. Don’t question it, folks. Seriously, don’t.

Adora was about to die? Well, now she doesn’t! Why? Uh, um, what do you mean why, don’t you know that magical gay kisses fix everything? Smh.

I just... This is bad writing, okay?

And it feels like such an insult, because up until the last season I think the writing was really solid, the themes of abuse were handled very well, with respect and realistically, Adora’s conflicted feelings about She-ra, her destiny and her choice in all of this were interesting and believable, Glimmer was a great female character allowed to be (and do) things that female characters aren’t usually allowed to be, the supporting cast was strong and loveable and Prime... God, the way Horde Prime was set up as this intimidating, scary, bigger than the universe villain was genius. Hell, even at the beginning of s5 I had chills every time he was on screen. I was so excited about him, but every episode he was getting worse and worse until he became so meh I felt like crying.

And don’t even get me started on Catra saying that she saved Glimmer for Adora. This? This is when I knew there’s no saving this season. This was a slap to the face and the clearest sign that it was never about properly redeeming Catra at all, just getting her what she wanted.

And it’s a shame, too, because in a lot of ways Catra is a very interesting and compelling character who, despite what it looks like, in a lot of ways got the short end of the stick, because instead of telling a realistic, mature story about personal growth, they chose what was basically a instant forgiveness route and never showed Catra actually dealing with both what she’s gone through and what she’s done. Which is a shame and a huge disservice to Catra’s character.

So... yeah. Sorry about that rant, you are so valid, Anon, and I’m sorry.

#spop critical #catradora critical #complaining

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imagineaworlds · 3 years

Text

I Love You (Part Thirty-Four) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual

Request: None.

Warnings: Cursing. Death. Mentions of torture. Panic attack-- everything Criminal Minds.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 12919

Timeline: Season 5 Episode 09. A few days after part thirty-three.

Hotch put his hand on my knee to stop me from bouncing it at an annoying and distracting pace. I stopped and tried to relax, even though the rest of my body still felt like a goddamn Mexican Jumping Bean. Every inch of me was shaking as nerves ran through my veins. While bouncing my leg, I had been so lost in thought about what was about to happen that I didn’t even notice that it had upset Hotch. And despite the fact that I felt the urge to start the habit up again once his hand retreated from my thigh, I used every bit of self-restraint I had to refrain from doing so. Hotch was already upset, I didn’t need to add to that. I needed to be there for him, I needed to help him however he needed. He didn’t need me to be annoying or distracting. That was valid. So, I stopped.

The door to our left opened suddenly. Hotch and I both jumped to our feet, his hand finding mine and squeezing so tight I felt my knuckles touching. I winced, but still tried to squeeze back in order to comfort him and tell him: “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.” For the past few days, he needed to hear me say it every chance we could get. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.” And then he could breathe for a bit until he needed to hear it again. I knew that no matter what, I'd say it as many times as he needed to hear it, no matter how repetitive it got. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

Emily stepped into the hallway, her eyes glued to the floor until she saw our shoes, and she slowly glanced up. Her face was soft and sad, like she had been holding back tears for the past hour that she had been inside that conference room. If Emily looked that bad, if Emily could crack, then I was fucked. Emily was perhaps the strongest out of all of us, even if no one wanted to admit it. She, like Hotch, had been through too much in her life already to break when it came to losing someone or something. But after what I saw, after what we lost, I knew that there was no way the next hour was going to be easy for me. If Emily could crack even the slightest bit, I was going to break into a million different pieces.

Emily held the door open behind her in order to usher me in, but I took a moment to just stay frozen in place while losing all feeling in my hand because of how tight Hotch’s grip was. I felt sick already and I hadn’t even sat down inside yet— hell, I hadn’t even seen the damn room yet. How was I supposed to go in there on my own for an hour when Hotch and I hadn’t been apart for more than two minutes since it happened? How was I supposed to survive the next hour without him there to comfort me and tell me that it was going to be alright. I knew that I was supposed to be the strong one right now. I knew that he needed me to step up and be the brave one because he couldn’t do it for once— and no one blamed him. Not a single person who knew him the way we all did blamed him for what happened or how he reacted. But when was I supposed to finally break? When was it alright for me to fall apart in his arms and have him tell me that it would be alright?

“You should go,” Hotch croaked.

I shook my head. “I can’t move.”

Hotch let go of my hand and I sucked in a breath. Honestly, I would have rathered he continued to break my hand if it meant he just continued to touch me. Not feeling him anymore made me feel like I was drowning in my nerves. In the next instant, though, he turned and put his hands on my shoulders so that I would face him and look at him. I stared into his brown eyes for a minute, finding peace in how they seemed so dark and endless. Even with a black eye, a broken nose, and scratches everywhere, he was still handsome. His eyes, the way they stared right into mine, and his hands, the way they squeezed my shoulders just right, it all brought me back to Earth and grounded me.

“I’ll be right here when you’re done. It’ll be okay.”

My heart ached in my chest. Nothing felt okay. It didn’t feel like it would ever be okay again. But I trusted Hotch, and I knew that I could believe him about this, too. If he thought that things were going to be okay, even when his whole world was falling apart, then there had to be some truth to it. So, I nodded shortly, bowing my head so that I could collect my thoughts and whatever bravery was hiding deep inside of me so that I could make the first step towards the door that Emily was still politely holding open for me.

Hotch leaned in and kissed my forehead gently before releasing me. I made my move towards the door, and Emily tried shooting me a small, reassuring smile. Even though she was trying to help, it somehow only made me feel worse. I was just too worried to appreciate how she was trying to be supportive. She was a good friend, and she had been by my side when it happened, but even her kindness couldn’t distract me from the misery that was waiting behind that door.

When I stepped into the conference room, I saw Strauss sitting at the table, her back towards me. Her head was down as she wrote some notes down in a file she had in front of her. When she heard me coming in, she glanced over her shoulder to take notice that it was me, but she didn’t smile invitingly. She gestured to the seat across from her as she sat forward again. I sucked in a deep, quiet breath as I walked around the table and took the seat that had seemingly been assigned for me.

“Well, this all feels awfully familiar,” she said to herself while adjusting her glasses on her nose. I asked myself how on Earth she could make a joke about the time she wrongfully suspended me when what just happened was absolutely horrendous. “I’ll be recording this interview for the council, if you don’t mind. It was the only way I could convince them to allow me to do this in-house with everyone on your team except for Agent Hotchner.” I shrugged. Strauss took that as a sufficient answer, so she reached out for the tape recorder between us and started it. As she settled in her seat once more, she began the interview with, “Please state your name and rank for the record.”

I shifted around uncomfortably, my sweaty hands fidgeting with the hem of my pencil skirt under the table. “Y/N Greenaway, Special Agent for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia.”

How I managed to get through all of that without stuttering or throwing up everywhere, I wasn’t sure. I just wished that there were a way for Hotch to be there with me. I didn’t want to relive what happened that day, but I especially didn’t want to do it without someone— anyone— by my side. Hell, I would have even taken up the idea of being there with Rossi, if that was what it would take.

“And, how long have you been a member of the BAU?” she inquired.

“Just under two years, ma’am.”

“And you have worked under Agent Hotchner this entire time?”

Well, that was one way to phrase it, Thank you, Chief Strauss. But I shook my head regardless of the pun that was spinning through my mind. “No, ma’am, I currently report to Agent Morgan.”

“Because Agent Hotchner’s ability to lead this unit had been compromised?”

“No, ma’am. Agent Hotchner has always been able to lead our unit, and he’s very good at it. He stepped down from the position temporarily because of the injuries he suffered at the hands of George Foyet a few months ago. He is planning on returning to his position as the unit chief once he’s feeling better.”

Strauss bit the inside of her cheek. That wasn’t the answer she was hoping to hear since she was looking for every reason to finally bury Hotch’s career now, but there was no way in hell that I was going to play her little game. Just like when she tried to get rid of both of us with our original suspensions awhile ago, I wasn’t going to play nice now. Not when Hotch couldn’t afford to lose his job now, too.

“How long have you been involved with Agent Hotchner?”

“What does it matter?”

“Just answer the question, Agent Greenaway.”

My gaze hardened as I stared at her, a challenge that said: “This is stupid.” But she didn’t relent. Her question still stood, and she was waiting for an answer. If I didn’t respond, and the committee heard that I was dodging a question about my relationship with my boss, that would raise more questions than we needed. So, I gave in.

“Just under two years, ma��am. Agent Hotchner and I got involved with one another a month into my promotion into the BAU.”

“So, you were not involved beforehand?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Your promotion into the unit had nothing to do with any kind of favoritism?”

I stared at her blankly. What kind of fucking question was that? No, I didn’t fucking get promoted because Hotch liked me. Yeah, we both secretly admired one another for years, but I didn’t know that until after I joined the BAU. Hotch told me that him and Gideon decided to hire me because of my skills. It had nothing to do with anything personal. For her to insinuate otherwise was distasteful.

I bit my tongue and answered through gritted teeth, “No, ma’am. Like I said, we got involved after my promotion.” I released my tongue. “Pardon me, ma’am, but what does this have to do with what happened?”

“Agent Greenaway, the faster you stick to just answering my questions, the sooner you can go home. The more pushback you give me, the longer this will take. So, just… answer to the best of your ability.”

I bit my tongue again, this time to hold back every curse word imaginable. If I could have, I would have leapt across the table and strangled her then and there. But with a, “Yes, ma’am,” I obeyed reluctantly.

“Good.” She looked back down at her sheet of questions. “How would you describe Agent Hotchner’s behavior in and out of work?”

“With all due respect, ma’am, this isn’t about what happens behind closed doors. This isn’t about what happens after work. This isn’t about mine and Agent Hotchner’s private life. Therefore, I will not be disclosing any information about his behavior outside of work. As for at work, he is very driven— especially since George Foyet first attacked him in our home.”

“How long has Agent Hotchner been investigating George Foyet?”

“To my knowledge, Agent Hotchner was originally introduced to The Reaper case when George Foyet first started killing in the 90’s. Agent Hotchner was promoted to lead profiler for the case, but the trail went cold, and he didn’t revisit the case until George Foyet started killing again about three months ago.” My hands pulled at the bottom of my skirt as I thought about what I was going to say next. Like I said before, I didn’t want to have to relive all of this, but there we were… I had no say in the matter. “We restarted the investigation again after Karl Arnold revealed to us that George Foyet was his secret admirer.”

“Why did you stop the investigation three months ago?”

“Because we had placed George Foyet in custody after finally catching him. By the time we learned of his escape from prison, he was long gone, and we were already home. We had other cases, and there were no new leads. We couldn’t do anything until we heard from him again or decided to kill again. So, when he reached out to us through Arnold, we restarted the investigation.”

Strauss put down her pen, took off her glasses, and looked away from her questions so that she could look me right in the eye. “I’d like to hear your side of the story. What happened that day as you remember it? Keep in mind, everyone is telling us their story, so if you lie in order to protect Agent Hotchner, it could possibly result in your immediate job termination.”

This was the dreaded moment. There were no more questions, unless Strauss needed me to clarify something. All there was left to do was give every single detail, no matter how painful. The worst part about it, though, was that I couldn’t break. No matter how bad it got, I couldn’t let Strauss, of all people, see me crumble. She had been working since we first met towards getting rid of me, and if she thought that I was “too emotionally vulnerable for the position”, she would have me gone in a heartbeat.

I reached forward slightly and grabbed an empty glass and the jug of water beside it. With a shaky hand, I nervously poured myself a full cup. “Aaron and I—” I stopped myself. Just keep it together. Please. Don’t fuck this up so soon. “Agent Hotchner and I had been staying in a safe house because we were afraid that Foyet was stalking us. We didn’t think that it was safe to go home anymore, so we left and didn’t tell anyone where we were going— even the unit had no clue we moved. We still came to work, though, in case Foyet was still watching. We wanted to give the impression that everything was alright while we started looking for him again. On Thursday,” I shivered as I thought about how that day started so innocent but ended with a trip down to Hell. “On Thursday, Agent Jareau came into work to tell us that she realized something about Foyet’s medication. We had been trying to track him through all of the medications he needed to take as a result of stabbing himself back in the 90’s in order to escape police detection. Agent Hotchner had been prescribed all of the same medicines after his stabbing, so we knew what we were supposed to be looking for, the only trouble was, no one seemed to be buying what was needed, which meant that Foyet was a ghost in the wind. Agent Jareau realized that he was taking certain over the counter medications that replicated the effects of what he needed to actually help him. So, we started looking for purchases around the area that matched, and for the medications that he couldn’t replace.”

Hotch and JJ stormed into the boardroom as Morgan, Emily, Reid, and I kept searching through every red flagged receipt in the state. Reid was going faster than the rest of us, of course, but we really didn’t know what we were even looking for. We knew that Foyet needed to bulk up on all of these seemingly random over the counter medications, but so did half of Virginia, apparently. Despite the fact that Hotch, JJ, and Garcia managed to narrow down our search to a list of different pills, it didn’t help that most of them listed were popular brands, like Claritin, Motrin, TUMS, etc. Anyone with a sick kid or grandparent was stocking up on these pills, too. We needed to narrow it down again somehow if we were going to find Foyet soon.

When they came storming in, though, they seemed to have good news. Finally. They had the name of the medications that couldn’t be replicated or substituted. Tapazole, which helped treat hyperthyroidism— a disease which caused extreme weight loss as a leading symptom. It was the only one out of all of Foyet’s medication that he couldn’t get anywhere else. That was how we were going to find him. We narrowed it down further, just like we wanted, but we still needed to get more specific. There were thousands of people in the state of Virginia who took Tapazole, and Foyet was likely using an alias. If we were going to find him fast before he could move on, we needed to fine down our geographic profile.

Foyet was last seen in Fairfax County, where Hotch and I lived. That was the day he stabbed Hotch and drove him to the hospital. The last time we heard from Foyet, however, came down to the letters he sent to Karl Arnold in prison. Each letter was sent from a different city: Westminster and Fredericksburg. So, we had three locations, which meant that we could triangulate, but that meant fuck all when Foyet’s profile stated that he liked to move around a lot when he knew he was being hunted. Even if we could possibly search the epicenter of the three cities, he was probably long gone. We needed something more.

“The center,” Morgan pointed to the map on the wall, “it’s D.C., not Virginia. Why?”

“Because he’s staying close to Hotch,” Emily assumed. “He liked watching Shaunessy deteriorate because of his guilt. Now he wants to see Hotch fall apart without his fam—” Emily stopped herself when she realized what she was saying. She had just been doing her job, profiling the Unsub, looking at the M.O., narrowing down the victimology; but she crossed a line accidentally, and she immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry,” she told Hotch quietly.

He shook his head and shrugged. “I know he’s been watching us. That’s why Y/N and I moved to a safe house and I stepped down as unit chief. I wanted him to think that he was winning.”

Morgan and I glanced at each other. Neither of us knew that. Hotch told me it was for his health and because I was worried sick about him. I didn’t think for a moment that there was a larger game at play. It still didn’t matter, though. Even if Foyet really was still watching us, and Hotch wanted that, he could be long gone already.

“Eureka!” Garcia cheered as she came running in with her computer, just on time. “The goddess and her boy toy do it again!” She set her computer down on the red table and took a seat. “I narrowed the list down to 153 names.”

“That’s still a lot of people,” I said, crossing my arms. I knew that she was doing her best, and she had just broken through a huge wall for us, but we were racing against time now. 153 names was too many. There had to be a way to find Foyet on that list.

“Garcia,” Hotch said, turning to face her, “look to see if he used the name of one of his victims as his alias.”

Garcia typed away at her computer. “Nothing.”

“What about one of the cops who worked at the precinct during his arrest?”

“Nothing.”

“What about an anagram?” Spencer offered, pushing himself to his feet, using his cane to do all the work. He limped his way over to the glass board and started writing out George Foyet’s name. We all watched as he mumbled to himself, underlining certain letters, crossing out others, rearranging a few here and there. “That’s not right,” he groaned as he erased all of his work. He then started over, using The Reaper as his base. “This goes here, that goes there, this crosses out, that goes away—” And then he got it. By some miracle, that brilliant mind of his found it. “Peter Rhea.”

“You, Dr. Reid, deserve more credit,” Garcia complimented as she typed away again. “There’s a Peter Rhea in Arlington.”

We immediately set out to head to Peter Rhea’s apartment. Morgan hurried to his office to call in a SWAT, and the second he was off the phone, our team was racing to get into the cars. Hotch drove me, Morgan, and Emily, while Rossi drove JJ and Spencer in the other car. We sped through the cities with the lights and sirens on until we reached the block over from the apartment. We split up and parked on opposite ends of the road, staying hidden around a corner and under a tree.

Morgan ordered us to stay in the cars while the SWAT team set up a surveillance system to see if Foyet was inside. He wanted to play this safe and smart since he was still getting a lot of heat from Strauss and the Director while being the new unit chief. We couldn’t go storming into some random guy’s apartment without probable cause, we all knew that, but if the call were up to Hotch, we would have already been knocking at the door. Morgan, on the other hand, wanted to wait and see if Foyet would do anything while the SWAT team got in place.

“Is he ready?” Morgan asked into his comm.

The plan was that they were going to send in an agent undercover as a plumber to see if they could get someone to open up the door. If Foyet opened the door, we could go in and continue with making the arrest. If Foyet didn’t open up, the agent was going to use a micro-wire camera to peek under the door to see if there was anything suspicious enough to give us the reasonable cause we were looking for.

I looked out the window to see the agent walking across the street with his toolbox in hand. He walked casually into the building, which was when we lost sight of him. All there was to do now was wait to hear if we could move in or see if he would connect the camera’s live feed to our tablet in the car. So, we watched as he made his way up to the apartment we suspected that Foyet was in. Still, without cause, we had to wait. But we were all getting anxious, understandably.

He first knocked on the door, waiting to see if there was a response. If Foyet opened the door, we were going to make our move. If someone besides Foyet opened the door, we would have to wait to see if there was anything incriminating of if we just got the wrong place. If no one would open up, then we’d have to use the camera. A minute passed. No one answered, even when he tried knocking again, so Morgan gave the go ahead to use the camera.

The camera snuck under the door, and we watched on the tablet in Morgan’s lap. My heart was racing in my chest. My hope was that the son of a bitch was cowering inside, making it easy for us to capture him. This time, we weren’t going to give him a chance to escape. This time, he wasn’t going to hurt Hotch.

“Morgan, look,” I pressed the tip of my index finger against the screen. “There’s unfinished food next to that laptop. The food, the unopened mail, the clean apartment. This has to be his place, and he left in a hurry.”

“He’s not fucking there?” Hotch inquired angrily.

“Move in!” Morgan demanded into his comm. The team jumped out of the cars we arrived in, all of us unholstering our weapons as we closed the doors. The SWAT team was already moving across the street in formation.

We stormed the building, racing up the staircase together in a single file line since running was faster than waiting for the elevator. When we arrived on Foyet’s floor, Morgan led the way down the hallway, and slowed to a stop in front of the apartment. Morgan kicked the door down before running in first. Emily, Rossi, and Hotch were all right behind him, with me and JJ keeping watch in the hallway. The SWAT team was still clearing the rest of the building, and it would take a while to meet us all the way at the top floor, so we needed to search the place as fast as possible.

Morgan and I moved into the bedroom on the left while the team looked around the main room. There was a half-packed suitcase on the bed, clothes everywhere, and a safe hidden in the open closet with a stash of guns inside. He hadn’t even bothered to lock up the guns when he left, which meant that he knew he wasn’t coming back. Foyet knew we were coming, and he ran. Shit.

I lowered my weapon as I let out an angry sigh. We wasted so much time just sitting in the car. I loved and respected Morgan, and I knew that I trusted him with my life out in the field, but he made the wrong call by telling us to wait in the car. If we had gotten into the place sooner, we would have already seen this and been tracking Foyet to his next location. Now we were too far behind.

“What’s going on out here?” Morgan asked, stepping back into the main room.

The team was huddled around the computer that Foyet left, watching nervously as something beeped on the screen. I followed Morgan and leaned on my tiptoes to see the computer over everyone’s shoulders. Foyet brought what he needed to D.C., and he only took what he needed when he left this apartment in a hurry. Everything else was evidence for us, he knew that. Since he knew we were coming, he had a safety system in place to make sure we wouldn’t get our hands on anything valuable, which included the contents of his laptop. The team looked nervous because whatever was on there, it was being deleted by a program he created.

JJ was already calling Garcia to see if she could stop it and save everything that was already gone. Like the goddess she was, Garcia already hacked into the computer by the time Morgan and I were aware that this was happening. She managed to stop the program that was deleting everything just as I leaned back on my feet and stepped towards Hotch’s side to get a better look at the screen.

Hotch had his hands clasped together in front of him, his fingers picking at his cuticles nervously. He was upset that Foyet wasn’t there, that he had escaped us again, and that we still didn’t have our family back yet. We had hoped that this lead would end with Foyet in handcuffs again, and Hotch would immediately get to call Sam to tell him that Haley and Jack could come home. Both of us had hoped that this lead would have ended with us holding Jack in our arms by diner time, but the world wasn’t kind to us like that. Foyet had escaped us countless times before, and this was just another one of those cases.

“Garcia, wait—” Morgan insisted. I looked back over at the computer to see that Garcia had paused her new program which was retrieving everything Foyet already deleted. She had been running through hundreds of different pictures, just trying to collect them all, but something caught Morgan’s eye. “Hotch, isn’t that—”

Hotch grabbed his phone from his pocket and flipped it open. “Yeah, that’s the U.S. Marshal assigned to my family.”

My heart sank in my chest as Garcia continued running the program. Foyet had hundreds— if not thousands of photos of Sam. This whole time, Hotch and I had been worried that Foyet was following us in the hopes of getting to Haley and Jack, but he was really trying to get to them through Sam, the only one who knew where they were. Sam had probably visited them on multiple occasions to make sure they were doing okay, since that was the unofficial deal he made with Hotch. Every time Sam went to visit them, Foyet was there. He knew where they were. He knew how to get to them— via Sam.

“He’s not picking up,” Hotch informed us before trying Sam’s number again, this time to leave a message. “Sam, it’s Aaron. We found Foyet’s apartment, but he has surveillance of you. He might know where they are. I need you to call me for a meet location, or we’re on our way to you.”

Morgan pulled his phone out, too. “We need another SWAT team at Sam’s place.”

“That’ll take at least thirty minutes,” I said.

“It’s the best chance we got.”

“Aaron!” I called after him while he stormed out of the apartment. I looked to Morgan for his next orders. “We need to go to Sam’s house. Now.”

Morgan nodded, “Go. Reid will stay here with SWAT, the rest of us will catch up.”

I didn’t spend another second in that apartment. In an instant, I was on my toes, chasing after Hotch, jumping down the steps of the apartment building, trying to meet him at the car before he could drive off. As I pushed through the front doors in the lobby, I saw Hotch getting into the driver’s seat of the closest car we brought. Hotch spotted me running across the road as he started up the car. He waited until I was in the car to go, the door barely even closed yet, my seatbelt not on.

Hotch was driving like a mad man. He was taking the turns too fast, he was weaving around cars, he was racing through intersections without looking to see if it was safe. I genuinely feared that we were going to die before we could even get to Sam’s house. What help would we be then? Hotch could afford to at least slow down a bit, right?

I grabbed the handle on the ceiling as we took another sharp turn a little too fast. Hotch tried to regain control of the car as he straightened out the steering wheel before the car would overturn. I sighed with relief quietly when we didn’t die, then kept driving towards Sam’s neighborhood.

When we arrived at Sam’s house, Hotch drove straight up onto the curb and jumped out once the car was in park, but didn’t wait to turn off the car. I followed suit, both of us grabbing our guns as we ran up the sidewalk in the middle of the front yard. My eyes grew wide as I silently took notice of the unlocked front door that was half open. Hotch noticed, too, but nothing needed to be said about it. The plan was to do what we always did. Go in together, clear the house, find Sam. Most importantly, just pray that Sam was okay.

Hotch looked over at me. “You got me?” he whispered.

I nodded.

He faced the door and took in a deep breath before pushing it open and running in. I followed closely. Both of our weapons were raised, our fingers on the triggers. We hurried inside to search the place for any sign of Sam. Hotch checked the left side of the living room, while I went to the right. The backdoor was open, just as the front door had been.

I immediately holstered my weapon as I walked around the couch in the middle of the room to find Sam laying on the floor, bleeding out. I called Hotch’s name and he came rushing over. We both fell to our knees beside him and I started to put pressure on his wounds. Sam had been shot in the chest twice, each leg once, and in the foot a single time. I started by pressing down on his chest, and Hotch helped by holding the thigh wounds.

“Medic!” Hotch yelled to the approaching ambulance outside. “Medic, please!”

Sam groaned and opened his swollen eyes as far as he could. Foyet had beaten up his face and cut off three fingers. “I’m sorry, Hotch…” he croaked before coughing up some blood.

Hotch leaned over him to make sure they could make eye contact. “It’s alright, Sam. It’s alright. You need to tell me if he knows where Jack and Haley are.” He was being so calm. Oddly calm.

“I didn’t… I couldn’t… I’m sorry…”

“Sam, look at me,” Hotch begged. “Does he know where Haley and Jack are? What’s her phone number or address?”

“It won’t matter…”

“What does that mean?” I questioned.

“It won’t matter…” he repeated, his eyes falling shut.

I looked up at Hotch. “It’s the shock.”

I recognized his inability to speak because of how similar it was to how Hotch was after the car bombing in New York. Hotch couldn’t form complete sentences, and he always kept repeating the same thing over and over, even when I would try to ask him questions. Sam was the same way, and I couldn’t blame him. Foyet had really done a number on him. He was bleeding out fast, and I prayed that the medics would arrive soon.

“Sam, please, just tell me if he knows where our family is,” Hotch said, still calm and collected as I had ever seen him.

Sam’s eyes fluttered open for a moment, but fell shut again. He was losing consciousness. There was no way he would be able to tell us anything about where Foyet went or how to find Haley and Jack. Even if he got to the hospital before bleeding out, there was no telling when he would wake up in order to tell us where Haley and Jack were. We needed answers now, but the only person who could give them to us was unable to say anything at all.

A pair of hands grabbed my shoulders. Morgan pulled me onto my feet and out of the way as the EMTs hurried into the house with a medical bag and a stretcher. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to cover the worry and shock that was certainly plastered to my face. Morgan noticed my bloody hands, so he grabbed a wipe or handkerchief of some kind from his pocket. He took my hands in his while I still stared down at Sam and the medics doing everything they could to help him. I felt Morgan wipe the blood off my hands, and I could vaguely hear him talking to me, but I didn’t say anything or even more. Sam was our last chance. He was our last link. He knew where they were, and now Foyet knew.

Hotch looked as solid as a rock, not reacting a single bit. He just calmly stood and moved to the side while we all watched the EMTs get to work. They started by covering up the bullet wounds, then rolling him onto a stretcher, and as they wheeled him out, they stuck an IV in his arm. Hotch was right next to the stretcher as they rolled Sam out of the house, onto the sidewalk, and up to the ambulance waiting in the road. Morgan and I were a few steps behind, watching as the EMTs lifted Sam into the back of the vehicle. I noticed that Hotch wasn’t waiting back with us, though. No, he was all the way up there with them—

“Aaron!” I yelled, running towards the ambulance.

He was climbing in with the EMTs and was already working on closing the door when he heard me. He stopped for a fleeting moment. “Stay here! I love you!” Then he closed the door.

The ambulance immediately sped off the second the door was shut. Sirens shook the neighborhood, and the lights nearly blinded me as my eyes fogged over. I felt sick and confused again, just like I had at the hospital in New York. I tried to close my eyes, swallow hard to keep myself from vomiting, and focus on finding Jack alive. Hotch left to talk with Sam in the ambulance. That was a good move. It was the right move. But not knowing what was going on and not being able to do anything made the panic that had been building in my chest since New York come flooding back into my mind, heart, and lungs.

My ears started ringing just as my heart rate sped up and my lungs started to give out. I cursed under my breath as I hid my face in my hands and sat down before I could pass out and likely hit my head on the concrete. I tried to focus on Jack and our favorite dinosaur that was sitting at home, waiting for him to come back and play with it. I tried to not think about the bile rising in my closing throat or the way my whole body was shaking like I was standing in the middle of a world ending type of earthquake.

I gasped for breath and laid on my back, the sun’s light casting through my eyelids. It was so nice and warm out. It didn’t feel like the kind of day that was meant for this. But, then again, when was it ever the right kind of day for something like this?

“Morgan...” I croaked. “Morgan, it’s happening again.”

I could feel him crouching down beside me, putting one hand on my hair and one on my shoulder. As he tried to talk to me, it just sounded like he was screaming at me from underwater. Everything was so muffled, and nothing made sense. The ringing in my ears returned two-fold this time and I winced. Trying to balance everything— my breathing, my heart rate, my ears, my sick stomach, the shaking, the blurry sight, and the racing thoughts— all at once was too overwhelming for me. This didn’t feel like New York. It felt ten times worse than that.

“Call Hotch!” I heard Morgan yell. That was the only clear thing to me. “Call him now!”

In a few moments following that, I felt a phone press against my ear. “Y/N?” It was Hotch. He was still in the ambulance. “Y/N? Are you there?”

“I’m here…” I whispered, opening my eyes. The feeling of needing to vomit was slowly subsiding. “Has Sam said anything?”

“That doesn’t matter right now. Just talk to me.”

I sucked in a deep breath, held it, and slowly let it out— just like the doctor in New York taught me. Slow and easy breaths. “Did he tell you where to find Jack and Haley?”

“No.” He was holding something back, I could tell.

“Foyet?”

“Took Sam’s phone, called Haley, and impersonated a U.S. Marshal.”

I pushed myself upright and took the phone from Morgan. Deep breath in, hold it, then let it out. The ringing in my ears was gone and I could hear everything around me again. “Did she tell him where they are?”

“No. She’s meeting him somewhere.”

“Do you know where?”

“Y/N, stop it. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, standing up. Morgan held his arms out like he was ready to catch me at any second. “Tell me everything Sam said. Please.”

Hotch sighed on the other end of the call, likely debating if he should tell me or hold his tongue. Someone must have told him what happened, which was why he wasn’t telling me anything, and he was avoiding talking about Foyet in order to get me talking. I promised him ever since New York that this wouldn’t happen again, and just when it finally does, he was too far away to help me.

“He told her that she was compromised and that we’re dead,” he answered. “He told her to throw away her phone and buy a disposable.”

“That son of a bitch…” I mumbled under my breath.

I gave Morgan a worried look and he called the team over. I took the phone away from my ear and put the call on speaker. My shaking was nearly gone. I felt like a million bucks again. Funny how those things work sometimes, right? Or maybe it was just that I had suppressed it all again and I was another ticking time bomb. Honestly, if that were the case, I was just hoping that I’d wait to blow up again until after we found Jack and Haley safe and alive.

“Foyet posed as a Marshal and called Haley from Sam’s phone,” I caught the team up to speed.

Emily was cocking a brow at me like she didn’t understand how I could go from laying on the sidewalk while hyperventilating to standing upright and talking about the case without any hesitancy. I tried to avoid eye contact with her so as to not be alarmed by her worry for me.

“He still has the phone,” Hotch continued explaining for me. “He scared Haley into thinking that she’s alone and in danger. She trusts him now because the call came from a number she knew and he gave her the promise of safety. We have to find him.”

JJ pulled out her phone, “Garcia, we need you to locate Sam Kassmeyer’s phone ASAP.” She stayed on the line as Garcia worked. “Fairfax County,” she repeated for us.

“Send the approximate coordinates to my phone,” Hotch demanded before hanging up.

“Wait—” Emily tried to catch him, but he was already gone. “Garcia, is that phone still on?”

JJ, with the phone still pressed to her ear, nodded to Emily.

“It’s a trap,” Emily said.

“Emily, call the U.S. Marshals. See if they can reach Haley,” Morgan ordered as we all headed back to the cars. “It’ll be a tight fit.”

Emily, Rossi, and JJ made it work, though, as the three of them squished hip to hip in the back seat. Emily was already on the phone with the U.S. Marshal Service while JJ was still listening to Garcia as she tried to get more information about Foyer and Hotch. Emily sighed, hanging up the call she was on after having a back to back conversation while Morgan started speeding out of the neighborhood.

“Haley’s gone. They don’t know where she is,” Emily informed us.

“Guys,” JJ said, putting her call with Garcia on speaker. “Hotch is calling Sam’s phone.”

“Foyet has it, though—” I said before realizing what that meant. “Garcia, can you connect us to it?”

“Already done,” Garcia said.

“Agent Hotchner,” Foyet welcomed with a bright voice. “How are you?”

“If you touch them, I swear to—”

“What? Do you want me to be gentle, like I was with you?”

My blood ran cold. Morgan glanced over at me to read my face before turning back to watch the road. Hotch and told me what Foyet did to him, but there were obviously some details he refused to tell me, like how he was tortured. As far as I was aware, Foyet had broken into our house, stabbed Hotch a series of times after they had a fight, and then he dropped Hotch off at the hospital. He didn’t tell me anything about Foyet taking his time to torture him, though, I guessed I should have known that the Reaper wasn’t just going to let Aaron Hotchner get off that easily.

“What took you so long?” Foyet chuckled. “I was beginning to think this piece of shit phone was dead or something.” There was silence on the call for a moment. “Why are you so quiet, Aaron? You usually lash out when you’re frustrated. Remember what happened when I mentioned dear old Y/N that night? You threw a goddamn glass bottle at my head. Where’s the fight, Aaron?”

“I’m not frustrated. You’re just predictable.”

“Is that so?”

“You didn’t know where Haley was, so you tricked her into coming to you. That’s not like you either, George. Where’s the creativity?” He was pushing back against Foyet to prove that he wasn’t going to be rattled.

“You make me sound lazy, Aaron.”

“No. I just know you’re smarter than this. I mean, you did kill your parents when you were nine—”

“—They died in a car crash—”

“—That you caused and couldn’t take credit for. Is that your biggest regret? Hmm? Not being able to brag about your greatest accomplishment?”

“That’s not my greatest accomplishment,” Foyet snickered.

“No? Then what is? Getting away with all of the people you murdered in cold blood?”

“Have you stopped to ask yourself that perhaps my greatest accomplishment has yet to come? In fact, I’m staring at it right now. She’s gorgeous, Aaron. I get why you married her. But I think blonde suited her better than the brunette look. Oh— and here comes the little man! Look at how big he is now! Wow. You know, Aaron, I actually admire one thing about you. Do you care to know what it is?” Hotch didn’t say anything still, so Foyet continued. “Most couples, when they get a divorce and there’s a kid involved, they fight for custody, but not you and Haley. You two managed to work it out in a way that made you both happy. She got him nearly all the time, and you got to see him when you and your whore weren’t away.” He tsked his tongue, “Aw. Look at his little superhero t-shirt. Adorable.”

I wiped the sweat from my forehead and gestured for Morgan to go faster.

“Hey, you know what, that reminds me…” Foyet groaned like he was stretching. “When I called Haley earlier and told her that you and Y/N were dead, she said that Jack wanted me to grab a toy dinosaur from your place— mentioned something about how it’s Jack’s favorite toy and he can’t bear to move away again without it. I hope you don’t mind, but I went by your guys’ place and grabbed it for him.”

A whimper left my throat as I failed to choke back a sob. Our favorite dinosaur… The one Jack gave me before leaving. The one I had been thinking about earlier to help calm me down. Foyet went back to our house just to grab it. It was going to be the last thing Jack would see.

Rossi reached between mine and Morgan’s front seats and grabbed my shoulder to comfort me. I put my hand over his after wiping away a tear from my cheek.

Another phone on Foyet’s end of the call started ringing. “Oh, that’ll be Haley. Hold, please, while I turn you off speaker and answer her call,” Foyet said. We heard the beep of him picking up the other call and putting it on speaker for us to listen. “Mrs. Hotchner, are you safe?”

“Yes. I’m here,” Haley said.

I squeezed Rossi’s hand.

“Good. Just open the gate and I’ll drive in,” Foyet said to her.

“Okay. Thanks.” She hung up the phone as fast as she could.

“Aaron, you still there?” Foyet asked. “Listen, I gotta go. I’ll say goodbye to the little man for ya.”

“You motherfuc—” Hotch began, but the call ended.

“Garcia?” JJ asked into her phone.

“I couldn’t get an address,” she whispered in defeat. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Wait…” I said, letting go of Rossi’s hand. “Wait, wait, wait. Garcia, Sam’s phone is government issued, which means that they can falsify the call’s location. Is it possible that he’s not even in the middle of Fairfax?”

“It’s possible, I suppose, but the signal was bouncing from three towers around that county. He could be anywhere inside it or just outside of it.”

Hotch and I lived just outside of Fairfax County. He hadn’t moved out after Haley left him, and we certainly didn’t move when I moved in with him. We wanted Jack to have some normalcy in his life, so staying in his childhood home was the best choice. There was a gate in order to get into the neighborhood. Foyet mentioned that Haley needed to open a gate.

We were speeding down the highway towards the North side of Fairfax County, but Hotch and I lived East of the county, just barely outside of the county line. Hotch was already close by to the house after leaving the hospital, but we were at least fifteen minutes away. We wouldn’t get there in time, but Hotch could.

I scrambled for my phone and dialed Hotch’s number again and he answered. “Hotch, he’s at the house! He told Haley to meet him at our house!”

Foyet had tried to throw us off by mentioning the dinosaur, making us believe that he broke into our house in order to give Jack the toy at a separate location; when, in reality, Jack was already at the house and probably already found the dinosaur sitting prominently on the table by the front door.

“I know, Y/N. I know.”

Morgan made an abrupt U-turn, and we started speeding back towards South-East to meet Hotch at the house.

“Y/N?” he asked quietly on the other end. I hummed a tune that asked: “What?” and he followed with, “I love you.”

“Hotch, why are you—”

“If something happens… I love you.”

“Aaron, stop it,” I begged, shaking my head.

It sounded like he was saying goodbye, and it was scaring me. Why did he think that something was going to happen? Nothing was going to happen. Nothing. He was going to be fine. He was going to get there before Foyet could lay a finger on Haley or Jack. Everything was going to be alright.

“Please say it back. Please.”

“Aaron—”

“Please.”

I took in a deep breath and blinked away the tears that were welling in my eyes. “I love you, Aaron.”

“Guys, Foyet’s calling Hotch again,” Garcia informed us.

“I love you,” we both repeated to each other one last time before he hung up and answered Foyet’s call.

Garcia connected us again so that we could listen.

“Aaron?” Haley asked into their new call. “You’re okay?”

There was a beat of silence.

“I’m fine,” he responded.

“But… He said that…” Haley gasped quietly. “Oh…”

“He can hear us, can’t he?”

“Yes. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Haley, don’t show him any weakness, alright? He feeds off of it.”

“Oh, come on, Aaron,” Foyet groaned out of annoyance. “Chop, chop, tell your wife what this is really all about. Come on. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Aaron?” Haley questioned, pressing him for answers.

“Don’t listen to him,” Hotch begged, “he’s just trying to scare you.”

“Well, she should be scared, Aaron! She gonna D-I-E because you refused to listen to me!”

I looked at Morgan for any kind of consolation. He looked back at me with pressed in eyebrows and sad eyes. “We’re at least twelve minutes away,” he told me quietly.

“Ignore him, Haley!” Hotch yelled.

“Since he won’t tell you,” Foyet sighed, “I guess I will. All he had to do to save you and your son was stop looking for me.”

Haley sniffled, “Aaron, what is he talking about?”

Hotch was quiet for a long moment.

I wondered what he was going to say. Was he going to tell Haley the truth? That George Foyet had told Hotch that he would stop killing if we just stopped chasing after him— if we just put the case away until he would eventually die, then this whole mess wouldn’t be happening. Foyet proposed the deal that night in the hotel room, and Hotch practically told him to go fuck himself. It made sense why Foyet wasn’t exactly happy, and was thus trying to take it out on our family. The psychology of it made sense, but I just wanted this nightmare to end. We couldn’t go back in time and tell Foyet that we would agree to his terms, and Foyet knew it. He knew that this was Hotch’s fault, and he wanted everyone to know it. He wanted Hotch to know it most of all.

“Tell Jack I need him to work the case,” Hotch cried into the phone.

My face fell into my hands as I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. Hotch had tried so hard all day to stay strong for himself, for me, for the team, and for Jack and Haley. He hadn’t broken once, even when I was a wreck. But Foyet had Haley and Jack. He had our son and there was nothing we could do. We were all helpless. But there was one thing Hotch could tell Jack to do that could save his life. One simple request that seemed so innocent to Foyet and everyone else— but Jack, Hotch, and I knew the truth. Telling Jack to go work the case was the last thing we could possibly do to save him. If that didn’t work, it was over. Foyet would kill both of them and we would lose.

“Hi, Daddy,” Jack said into the phone.

I let out a sob. Morgan and Rossi both put a comforting hand on me, but it didn’t matter. Nothing was going to help me. Jack sounded so happy, so oblivious to what was going on. And as I hid my face in my hands, I couldn’t help but see images of him lying dead on our carpet. We were going to find him like that… Our baby Jack.

“Hi, buddy,” Hotch sniffled.

“Is Y/N with you?”

“No… They’re coming, though. We’re both trying to get home to you as fast as we can.”

“Is George a bad guy?”

“Yes… Yes, he is, Jack. Listen, buddy, I need you on this case with me. Do you understand? I need you to go work on your superhero homework because Y/N and I need your help with this case. Does that sound good, kiddo?”

“Okay, Daddy.”

“Now give your mom a Superman hug, Jack.”

There was silence on both ends of the call for a minute, then I could hear Haley whispering to Jack that she loved him more than anything in the world and he complained that she was hugging him too tight. She apologized to him through a half sob.

“Why are you sad, mommy?” Jack questioned.

“Oh… I just love you so much,” Haley answered as bravely as she could. “Now go work the case for your dad, alright?” Jack hummed an agreement, then I could hear his little feet running off.

“I’ll be right up, Jackie boy!” Foyet called after him.

“Is he gone?” Hotch asked.

“Yes,” Haley cried.

“You’re so strong, Haley. You’re stronger than I ever was. You’re going to be alright. I’m so close. I promise.”

“Aaron…” she whispered into the phone. I could finally hear up close just how scared she was. Her voice sputtered, she was whimpering quietly, and her breath kept hitching as she tried to not sob.

“I know you didn’t sign on for this. I’m so sorry for everything, Haley. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Aaron,” she repeated like she was trying to tell him something important. He stayed quiet to listen. “Promise me that you’ll tell Jack how we met and how you used to make me laugh… He deserves to know that we were happy at one point. Promise me that. Please…”

“I promise…” he whispered in defeat. “I promise, Haley. I love you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Haley… I promise…”

And then there were three gunshots.

I shook and cried, Rossi’s grip tightened around my shoulder, and Morgan picked up my hand to hold it.

Three shots. Three. They rang in my ears. I counted each one. One after the other. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. My ears were ringing again. I didn’t even realize that the call had ended.

I heard Emily ask how far we were, and Morgan quietly said that we were still ten minutes out, if we were lucky. Ten minutes for Foyet to find Jack. Ten minutes for him to wait for Hotch to get home. Ten minutes for him to kill my family. Ten minutes to take everything from me. Ten minutes. If we were lucky. If. If we were lucky, we’d get there and maybe only Haley and Jack would be dead. Lucky. That was considered lucky. If we weren’t, I’d walk into our home to find all three of them dead and Foyet gone.

There was nothing we could do. Nothing but to wait the ten agonizingly long minutes. Every second felt like an hour. Every breath I needed to take felt impossible to reach, like a thousand pounds were resting on my chest. And yet, the world around us didn’t seem to notice. Cars on the road moved to the side to let us through, but then they continued on behind us. The trees were still, and the birds were flying high in the sky, kids were riding their bikes on the sidewalks, people were waiting for the public transport buses; and not one of them knew what was really going on. No one knew. No one cared. Just ten minutes of me staring out the window, watching all of those people living their normal, happy lives. And I wished that I were in their shoes.

As we pulled into the neighborhood, I sat up straight, wiped my eyes, and adjusted my vest. I let go of Morgan’s hand and shrugged off Rossi’s touch on my shoulder. I pulled out my gun and checked the magazine and the chamber while telling Morgan that I’d lead us inside quietly. No one argued. They just seemed as shell shocked as I should have still been, but I couldn’t afford to let my guard down when my family was in danger in our house.

Hotch’s car was parked on the grass in front of the house like he sped up as close to the door as he could get before jumping out and running in. The front door was wide open, but all of the blinds inside were closed. Someone had set the house up, and that someone was probably Foyet. He was toying with us. He had been planning this for so long while stalking us, and now that the day had finally come, he was probably sitting inside, smiling and waiting.

As the team got out, the EMTs and SWAT team also arrived. Morgan went over to talk with them about the plan for proceeding inside, while the rest of the team had my back going into the house. We quietly ran up the front lawn, and Rossi pushed the front door open carefully to make sure it wouldn’t break or hit the wall. Our favorite dinosaur wasn’t on the front table as I had left it, which meant that Jack had it with him in his spot, or Foyet took it. I didn’t want to assume anything past that while I needed to focus on finding them all alive.

The house was dark with no lights on and the curtains drawn, so we all pulled out our flashlights. I crossed my wrists over each other, one hand holding my gun up, the other pointing my flashlight forward to help me navigate my way around my own home. I gestured to Rossi and JJ to check upstairs while Emily followed me as we proceeded quietly throughout the first floor.

There was nothing in the living room that was out of place. Not a single thing. Even all of Jack’s toys were put away, even though Hotch and I had left them out on purpose to make it feel like he was still around. Someone had cleaned up, maybe it was Foyet, or maybe it was Haley. Either way, the room was still empty, so we moved on.

The door to the kitchen was wide open. Inside, one of the drawers was pulled out all the way. I checked the inside of it and noticed that our spare flashlight was gone. Hotch had come through there, too. I checked the knife rack, taking note that all of the knives were still there. No sign of a struggle in the kitchen. So we moved on again.

We worked our way into the dining room, and that was where we found the first evidence of a struggle. The table was broken like someone had been thrown onto it and it collapsed under their weight. Then just beyond the wreckage of the table, we saw the first trace of blood on the carpet. I pointed at it for Emily, and she nodded to tell me that she saw it, too. The trail led to the stairs, which was where Rossi and JJ were already looking around— and truth be told, since we hadn’t found Haley, Hotch, or Jack downstairs, it meant that they were upstairs, and I didn’t want to be the one to find them. I was fine with waiting downstairs for Rossi or JJ to tell me the bad news.

“Pssst,” Emily drew my attention to the window that was facing the backyard.

There was something going on outside, but we weren’t sure what. It could have just been the neighbors making some noise, or maybe the SWAT team was surrounding the house to make sure Foyet wouldn’t get away. Whatever it was, we needed to know, so I walked over to the window and carefully pulled the drape to the side to take a look. I peeked into the backyard for just a moment before realizing what was going on. Without warning, I dropped the drape and dashed for the backdoor, which was open, too. Emily chased after me, not sure what I saw, but still decided to follow my lead.

I holstered my weapon as I ran out past the patio and onto the grass. “Hotch!” I yelled at him, sliding to my knees. He was straddling Foyet’s torso while continuously beating him. Foyet was unrecognizable behind the blood and bashed in face, yet Hotch kept fucking going. “Aaron, stop!” I grabbed his arm before he could land another punch and pulled him off of Foyet. He sobbed as he fell back into my chest, and I wrapped my arms around him to make sure he wouldn’t try to get back on Foyet to keep going. “Aaron, it’s me! He’s dead! He’s dead! Stop!” He slumped against my body, giving up, and sobbed even harder. “Baby…” I cried. “Where’s Jack?”

He stopped crying at the realization that he hadn’t gone to find Jack yet. He wiggled himself out of my hold and scrambled desperately to his feet, nearly tripping over himself as he did so. I pushed myself off the ground, too, and chased after him into the house. Emily didn’t follow us, though. She stayed on the porch, just staring at Foyet’s body and all the damage Hotch had done. Hotch was capable of so much, but no one ever truly saw the extent of what he could do when he was angry. While it didn’t exactly surprise me how Foyet ended up, I could understand why Emily was so shocked and speechless.

We ran through the dining room, jumped over the pool of blood on the carpet, and hurried up the stairs. I noticed that the corner wall on the staircase had a dent at the bottom, like someone had smashed their head into it during a struggle. There was blood all over the stairs, and the banister, and the walls. So much blood… But we kept running. I used the railing to pull myself up faster, skipping as many steps as I could at a time without accidentally running into Hotch.

When we reached the top of the steps, we turned to the left and ran into the office together. Hotch’s desk was under the window that looked over the driveway on the side of the house, and my desk was on the wall to the left of that. Between our desks was a large wooden chest with a leather padded seat on the top.

Hotch hesitated in front of it, not sure if he wanted to look inside. But I didn’t wait. I had to know. Did Foyet kill my little man? Did he kill the only innocent thing in our lives? Did he win?

I knelt down and slowly opened the lid. A sudden sigh of relief left me before I started to cry again. Jack was laying down in the chest, messing with the power switch of his Spider-Man themed flashlight in one hand, and playing with our favorite dinosaur with the other. As I opened the lid all the way and rested it against the wall, Jack sat up and I immediately hugged him tight. I let out a painful cry as he nuzzled his head against my shoulder and hugged me back with his Superman strength. I lifted him out of the chest and cradled him close.

“I worked the case with you, Dad,” Jack said to Hotch.

Hotch crouched down beside me and pushed back some of Jack’s blonde hair out of his face. “You did a great job, buddy.” Hotch kissed my temple for a long moment.

Jack unwrapped his arms from our hug, and so did I. “Are you okay, Dad?”

Hotch nodded, “I’m okay. I want you to go outside with Ms. Jareau, okay?”

I looked over to the door to see JJ and Rossi standing there. No Haley with them.

One. Two. Three.

The gunshots rang in my ears again as Jack pried himself away from me and ran into JJ’s arms. JJ caught him with a forced smile and immediately carried him downstairs, making sure that he couldn’t look down the hallway to our bedroom. Rossi stayed in the doorway to make sure that we were okay, though.

Hotch fell from his knees onto his hip and leaned into my side as he started sobbing again. I turned and sat with him on the floor so that I could hold him better. He hid his bloody face in my shoulder, screaming into my shirt. My hands went up to the back of his head and held him close. My fingers curled in his hair as I let out another sob with him.

Jack was safe, but at what cost? Haley… One. Two Three. Haley didn’t make it. That was Foyet’s final move, his greatest achievement. He died knowing that he had beat Aaron Hotchner. He died knowing that he took something that meant everything to Hotch. And that was a win for him. He didn’t have to kill Jack, he didn’t have to kill me, and he didn’t even have to kill Hotch. All Foyet needed to do was take out Haley and that was it.

Hotch’s hands curled into fists around the fabric of my sleeves. I knew that he was trying to stop. I knew that he didn’t want to keep crying. He had been brave all day. He had been so strong, despite everything. And now… Now… He just couldn’t hold it in anymore, and I couldn’t blame him. Haley was the first love of his life. They had been together since high school, and she gave him the greatest gift of their lives, which was Jack. They loved each other so much, even after the divorce, and even after meeting me. They had been through hell and back together, and he knew that he had to let her go when she had finally had enough, even though it was the hardest thing for him to have ever done. Hotch never stopped loving her, it just changed after their separation. He lost her and that was the breaking point.

Foyet had killed dozens of people over his lifetime, he had taunted us, he had stabbed Hotch, he had taken the ring that was supposed to be mine, he had stolen our family from us, and he had killed Sam. And yet… none of that broke Hotch until Haley. He could go through all of that without blinking an eye, and then there was Haley.

One. Two. Three.

Hotch leaned back and looked into my eyes. His nose was broken, his forehead, lips, and cheeks were all bleeding, and his tears were still streaming down his face; but he looked right at me and took my face in his bloody hands. “Are you alright?”

I shook my head. “Are you?”

He shook his head and screwed his eyes shut again. “She’s in the bedroom… On the floor… Her eyes are open… And she was staring at me…” I brushed some strands of his dark hair out of his face. “I’ve gotta close her eyes…” He let go of my face and slowly stood up.

“Aaron—” I tried to catch his sleeve before he could leave me, but he kept going.

I took a moment to just watch him through my fogged up eyes from where I was sitting on the floor. He stumbled around, catching himself on the walls, then pushed past Rossi, who was still standing there. As Hotch walked into the hallway, Rossi and I finally made eye contact. He nodded his head to the side, a gesture that I should go with Hotch because he shouldn’t be alone. I slowly stood and started peeling off my vest. Rossi took it from me as I passed him on my way into the hallway.

I felt my knees buckle slightly as I passed Jack’s room and saw Haley’s feet in our bedroom at the end of the hall. I could tell that was lying on the floor, just as Hotch warned me, yet I still wasn’t prepared for it. Only one shoe was still on her feet, the other one neglected on the side. Foyet had… He wasn’t known for messing with the bodies afterwards, but this was different. He wanted this to hurt as badly as it could. He took every precaution to ensure that he would win. Messing with Haley’s body after she was dead… That was just senseless and cruel. It didn’t bring him any direct pleasure. What did it for him was that it would hurt Hotch the most.

As I practically limped up to the bedroom, I saw that Hotch was already on the floor with Morgan, cradling Haley’s dead body in his arms and sobbing into her shoulder. Morgan had a hand on Hotch’s other shoulder to try and comfort him, but it wasn’t doing any good as Hotch continued to cry and cry. I had never seen him like that. I had never seen him so out of control, so broken. I had seen him cry before, of course, but this was different. This was watching his heart break over and over again as he realized that he wasn’t in a nightmare, that this was real life, that he had really lost her, for good this time.

Morgan stood and met me in the doorway, “Y/N—”

He was trying to stop me from going in and seeing more, but I had to know. I had to see. I had to be with him. So I pushed by. Morgan let me pass, but I didn’t make it very far into the room.

One. Two. Three. They rang again as I saw all the blood.

One. Two. Three. I saw the bullet holes in her chest and neck.

One. Two. Three. I saw an engagement ring on her finger.

I turned to Morgan and covered my mouth to stop to myself from throwing up everywhere. He caught me and held me in his arms as I started sobbing again.

Foyet always liked to take something from his victims and put them on the next. It was his signature. When he hurt Morgan, he took his credentials, then left them on Hotch when he was stabbed and taken to the hospital. Hotch told me that Foyet had specifically gone looking for the engagement ring he was planning on giving me, and we all knew that it was going to be placed on his next victim— but I didn’t find any ring on Sam, considering Foyet had cut his fingers off.

When I saw Haley, though, I suddenly knew why.

She wouldn’t have been wearing an engagement ring— she wouldn’t have even been wearing her old wedding ring. Foyet took the ring from Hotch because he knew he was going to kill Haley. He knew that he wanted this to be his grand finale, and he wanted to make sure it hurt like a bitch. He wanted to prove to Hotch that this was all somehow his own fault. If he didn’t divorce Haley, this wouldn’t have happened. If he didn’t turn down Foyet’s offer, this wouldn’t have happened. If he had been just a few minutes quicker getting to the house, this wouldn’t have happened. Hotch let Haley down and Foyet rubbed it in his face by not only taking Haley away from him, but the joy that came from buying that ring for me and the excitement of getting to propose to me one day with that very ring. Foyet knew that I wouldn’t want that ring anymore. He knew that Hotch wouldn’t want to even tear it off of Haley’s finger. He took Haley away, and he took away something that was important for us moving on.

He won in every way.

One. Two. Three.

Strauss stared at me silently. There were no words. There was nothing she could say to me that would matter, and she knew it. Even if she could give her condolences, I wouldn’t accept them from her. She didn’t care about me, or Hotch, or the team, or even Haley or Jack. Yet she still couldn’t even find the words to conclude our interview. All she could do was silently turn off the tape recorder between us and watch as I left the room.

As I stepped into the hallway, I let out the breath I had been holding in my chest for that entire interview. I put my hands on my knees and tried to focus on the marble floor in order to ground myself. Hotch approached me, his shoes sneaking into my field of view. I stood up straight and sighed.

“I never want to talk about it again. Ever,” I told him.

He nodded understandingly. The door opened again and Strauss told us that she was ready to speak with Hotch before the rest of the committee would show up to make the final decision about whether or not he would get to keep his job at the FBI. Hotch thanked her for letting him know and asked if we could have another moment alone. She smiled lightly and retreated back into the room.

We stared at each other again, just like we had before I went into the conference room to endure that Hell. Understandably, he was the nervous one now. He was probably going through the motions, too. He wanted me to go with him, he wanted me to hold him, he wanted me to be there as a constant reassurance that everything was going to be alright— that I was alright. He wanted to know that, no matter what, I wouldn’t leave him, that he hadn’t failed me, that I was safe and I was his. He lost one love, he couldn't afford to lose me, too.

“I love you,” I told him when we were alone again. “Whatever happens… I love you…”

Hotch cupped my cheek with one of his palms, and I pressed into his touch. “I love you, too.” He kissed my forehead, but when he pulled away, I leaned up to kiss his lips. We pressed into each other’s touch gently. I didn’t want to hurt him, and he didn’t want to hurt me, but we needed to feel the softness of each other’s lips, and we desperately needed the comfort of our kisses. “You’ll stay with Jack?” I nodded and felt tears welling up in my eyes again. “Don’t cry. Please,” he quietly begged.

“I’m trying,” I croaked. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.” He wiped away the tear on my cheek that managed to escape me. Before it could get worse, I turned away from Hotch’s touch and hid my face from him. “I’ll be with Jack when you’re done.”

Hotch stepped around me before he could break, too. I stood in the hallway as he entered the conference room, leaving me all alone. I let out an audible sob and started crying again. It was hard enough for me to go through that interview without shedding a tear… I couldn’t imagine the struggle Hotch was going to face over the next hour. And he was going to be all alone. All I could do was hear the way he cried that day replaying over and over again in my mind. I had never heard anyone sound that distraught in my life. It was probably even worse than hearing the gunshots. Whenever my ears weren’t ringing with the sound of Foyet’s weapon firing, it was echoing Hotch’s screams, and I could still feel it on my shoulder every time I thought about it.

“Hey, sunshine,” Morgan cooed from behind me, putting a hand on my shoulder.

I sucked in a shaky breath before wiping my eyes and turning around. When I saw him and the rest of the team standing there, Jack in JJ’s arms, I tried to act like I hadn’t just broken down by forcing a smile on my face so that Jack couldn’t worry about me.

“Hey, there, little man,” I said to Jack as JJ handed him over to me. He was getting so darn big; it was hard to hold him when I hardly had enough energy to stand up straight. Jack hid his face in the crook of my neck, just like he had when I pulled him out of the chest in our office. I felt the tears start to pour again, even though I was trying so hard to make it stop. “I love you…” I whispered to him, hardly making it to the end of what I really wanted to say. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” he whispered back, playing with my hair with his fingers as he said it.

I looked over at Emily and saw that she had finally broken. I held out the arm I could afford to let go of Jack with, offering the team the hug I desperately needed. Emily was the one who hugged me and Jack, Morgan hugging me and her, Garcia hugging him and Jack, and so on.

“I love you guys.”

--------

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