#(i tried to fight for sick people not coming over. it was overruled. don’t you know it’s 2024 and people don’t get really sick anymore? 😩)

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

our health is important! and precarious! let’s keep masking in public and not going out to spread germs when we’re sick! please!!!!!

[talas-starlight]

Scarred Spirits - Zuko x fem! reader (pt.5)

SUMMARY: y/n wakes up in an unfamiliar place and tries to find her way back to her mission (i suck at summaries LOL)

WORD COUNT: 2.3k

WARNINGS: swearing, fighting? kinda?

OTHER PARTS:  pt1   /   pt2 /   pt3 /   pt4 /   pt6

MASTERLIST: Here!

A/N: anddddd we’re back!!! hehe thank you to everyone who has been so so patient with me i am so greatful && hopefully youre just as excited as i am for this series heheh

Bricks. You felt as though you were just hit with a tonne of bricks. The idea of even opening your eyes to the harsh sunlight, which you could feel through your eyelids felt like the worst idea in the world. Your dry throat didn’t help at all either. Maybe if I just lay wherever the fuck I am, I’ll magically gain the energy to move again. Or better yet, maybe the ground will swallow me whole, and I can forget about this mission altogether.

Abruptly interrupting your painful stillness on the ground, there was a small kick into your left side. The sudden shock immediately sent your brain swirling into all the ways you could eliminate whoever disturbed your peace.

“Hey… I think she’s dead.”

Ah, the wonderful sound of an annoying, teenage boy. They’ll be easy to take out.

A second female voice emerged. “She's not dead Sokka! She's literally breathing!" Sokka? As in Hakodas son? Oh Spirits, you never fail to amaze me with how you choose to dictate my life. Hmmm, then that means the girl is Katara. Yay.

"Yeah?! Then why the hell hasn't she even moved a single inch since we found her!"

"Well, maybe she's protesting against your annoying poking!" Spirits they're annoying and loud.

A third voice attempted to intervene, "Guys…. Stop, she's fine. Trust me." Hmm, that's considerably younger. 10 years old perhaps? Or a bit older? 12 maybe? Male?

"Oh yeah? How can you be so sure Aang."

"Well Katara is right, she is breathing for one. But…. There's something else about her, I can feel it."

"What? Like an avatar thingy?"

"Yeah."

Wait the Avatar? Wasn't he on that dragon from when I was-

"Hmmm right, well what are we going to do with her?" At that statement, the annoying boy who seemed to be so confident that you were dead, kicked you again. Sick of his irritable presence, with as much strength you could muster, you took your right hand quickly snatching his ankle, and yanking it towards you, causing him to lose balance and ultimately backwards. Letting out a high-pitched yelp as he thudded onto the hard ground, you quickly rose to your knees. Taking the hand gripped around his ankle to tug him closer to you, you moved between his legs until you were able to straddle his waist, placing all of your weight on top of him. Finally, you grabbed both his arms, holding them above his head, completely hindering him from moving.

"If you kick me one more time, or even trying anything like that again, I WILL chop your legs off. Got it?"

Staring at you with pure horror in his eyes, he visibly gulped, nodding. "Yes! Yes! Hear it loud and clear. Totally got it! Just call me Sokka, the guy with perfect understanding."

Moving your right hand from his wrists, you firmly gripped his jaw, forcing him to keep eye contact with you. Taking in his scared features, you smirked even though he couldn't see it. "You sure about that, water boy?"

"YES! YES!", frantically nodding, you could tell that if you kept pressing on, he'd probably burst into tears soon. Bringing his voice down to a pathetic whimper, he let out, "please don't hurt me."

Finally lifting yourself off him, you let out a dry laugh, satisfied with his compliance. "Uh-huh. Right."

Turning your head to the people that belonged to the other two voices, you took in their stunned and weakly defensive stances. Chest heaving at your sudden physical movements, you nodded, acknowledging them. "Hey, Avatar. Katara. So, where am I?"

After a few moments of silence, the Avatar spoke up first. “You’re just outside of Omashu.”

Katara elbowed Aang, instantly alarmed at his calm nature towards you. “Aang! You can’t just say that. We don’t know who this person is or how she even knows my name! She could be with the Fire Nation for all we know!”

“Katara it’s alright! Calm down.”

“Calm down?! She just attacked Sokka! I mean, rightfully so- but it’s a little suspicious. We don’t know who she is or her intentions.”

Sighing, you looked around, taking in your surroundings. It seemed that rocky mountains surrounded you with a small group of tents in the distance. Interesting… why are they all Earth Kingdom people, when Omashu is so close by?

Shifting your attention back towards the three, you decided against telling them who you were. “It doesn’t matter how I know any of your names. What matters is that I need to get back to my original mission.”

Sokka scoffed, moving to stand beside his sister. “Your mission? Let me guess; you’re here to kill Aang too.”

Raising an eyebrow, his eyes immediately widened in fear. “Trust me, water boy, if I wanted him dead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I’m here on… other confidential business.” Met with silence from all three of them you moved on, “so let me guess, you found Omashu invaded by the Fire Nation, and you three were the ones that helped that tiny camp of people over there escape from their rule. Interesting choice considering there are bigger things you should be worrying about. Yet, why are all of you still here? Surely the Avatar and his friends don’t need to train them in how to look after themselves.”

“We’re going back into Omashu. To make a trade for King Bumi and to give the governor his son back.” Why does he keep willingly give me information? Now that’s interesting. I can barely feel any fire within him either, it’s almost as if it's not there at all…

“Okay. I’ll accompany you all into Omashu, and once we arrive within the city, we’ll go our separate ways.”

“Sure!”

“NO!”

“NO!”

Bursting out into a fit of laughter, you shook your head at the water tribe siblings. “Naw, it’s sweet how you think you all have a choice in this. Don’t worry, nothing will happen to any of you, I’m just hitching a ride and you’ll never have to see me again. Regardless, Aang said yes, and considering he’s the Avatar and all, I think his choice overrules yours.”

Katara didn’t seem to like your suggestion that her and Sokka’s opinion didn’t matter. “No, it doesn’t work like that! We’re a family, and we make these decisions together! You can’t just wake up after who knows how long you were laying there for, and expect us to trust you immediately! For one, you attacked Sokka a little too easily without any bending, and you literally said that you were on a mission! If I’m honest, you sound like trouble, especially since we don’t even know your name! Or what you even look like!”

“Just as I said before, it doesn’t matter. It’s sweet you all care enough about each other’s safety, but I’m not here to cause any of you ‘trouble’. Get me inside Omashu, and we’ll never have to speak or interact ever again. If it means so much to you, I’ll let water boy tie me up, and watch me the entire journey there as reparations for my small attack against him. How does that sound?”

Aang more than satisfied with your offer let out a quick, “Yes!”.

Grumbling under her breath Katara shook her head, clearly understanding that this was as good as it was going it get. “Fine. But he ties you up now. If I see you even move an inch out of line, don’t think I’ll go easy on you. I am a waterbender after all.”

As if you being a waterbender would have stopped me. Holding your arms out and casting your attention towards the ground, you were ready for Sokka to bind your wrists together with some cloth, he tore off his clothing. Unknown to you, he seemed to notice that despite how tough you were, you were weak. All of the sudden movements and the argument with his sister clearly drained you physically.

“Hey… I don’t really like you since you threatened to kill me, but are you sure you’re ready to be travelling so soon? You’re breathing really heavily. You need some water and food.” Gently wrapping your wrists together, he tried and failed to make eye contact with you.

At the mention of water, you throat physically constricted in pain. “Nah, I’ll be alright. Just need to get to Omashu.”

“Doubt it. Let’s get you on Appa and I’ll nag Katara for something.”

Silently following him to the Sky Bison, you were grateful that your mask covered the wide smile that broke out onto your face. It’s beautiful.

Finally, parting ways with them, you let out a breath of relief. That was the most silent journey I have ever been on and I travel by myself… Spirits, I hope I never have to run into them again. I think I’m going to lose my mind if I ever do. What was Hakoda thinking?! I’d be an awful big sister to them, they already hate me! It didn’t help how much they kept bickering either. Argh, what a mess. Aang kept looking at me funny the entire time too! What was up with that? Do his Avatar powers allow him to see into my soul or something? Spirits, he’d probably wants to unleash his Avatar state on me for all of the lives I’ve taken. Yikes.

Before setting off to find Azula, you needed to take precautions to blend into the small kingdom. Stealing some clothes, you found you chose to duplicate you last disguise with the only main difference being that it was in green cloth instead of pink.

After securing your final blade underneath your robes, you knew there was no more time to waste and you needed to find Azula quick. You weren’t sure how much she has progressed in her mission to find Iroh and Zuko and the guilt of not helping them when they ran off the Fire Nation ship was already nagging you like an itch you couldn’t scratch.

This city is too big to wander around aimlessly.

Closing your eyes and letting out a deep breath, you chose to look for her the quickest way you knew how. By sensing her fire.

Come on y/n; you can do it. Unsure of how far your abilities would work, you grew worried that she may be too far away for you to even feel her.

After a few minutes, you started to feel irritated. Of course, you could sense fire, you felt so much of it. The city was crawling with Fire Nation after all, but it wasn’t hers. You emitted a few more deep breaths, trying to clear your head.

Suddenly a deep, familiar voice entered your mind. Inner peace. You need to find your inner peace y/n. That’s why you keep losing control; you need to find it.

Is this that dragon again? As if you didn’t have a random voice inside your head, you were met with silence.

Look you can’t just randomly enter my mind you know, and who in Spirits name transports me to some random mountainside?! I don’t know who you are, but I’ve been doing fine all of these years on my own. So kindly, get out of my head.

Letting out a small scream into your hands as the voice never came back, you closed your eyes again.

Stupid voice.

Stupid inner peace.

Breathing in and out, you wracked your brain for something that made you feel at peace. Come on, you can do it. Then after a few moments, it hit you. Not your inner peace, no. You’d have to find that another day. What did hit you was Azula’s fire, you felt it.

Immediately following the tugging feeling, you ran as fast as you could until you came to a tall piece of scaffolding. Even though you were so far below, you could still hear the fight that was occurring many levels up. Can’t she keep herself out of a battle for at least a day?! I bet it’s not even Zuko up there. Scowling, knowing that you can’t ignore her completely, you climbed up until you reached the fight but still remaining hidden.

By the time you reached the platform, you felt that Azula had already moved from this part of the fight. That didn’t mean that there weren’t pressing matters right in front of you, though.

“How are you going to fight without your bending?” A Fire Nation girl before you brought out her blades ready to attack Katara. Holding back a verbal groan, you knew you were going to have to help her.  

Quickly jumping in, you deflect Mai’s knife with your arm while simultaneously catching a boomerang that you spotted in the corner of your eye. As the flying bison approached your quickly dodged its tail as it sent the two fire nation girls flying back. Seeing a distraction between all parties, you threw the boomerang back to Sokka while running for the scaffolding, making your way into the shadows. So much for never having to see them again.

When you ran away from the scene, you knew your disguise was too recognisable considering the two girls saw you when you intervened. This left you to painstakingly have to find a new set of clothes, just to make babysitting Azula and her friends so much easier. Despite finally being back on track with your mission, it didn’t make it any less tedious as you followed from a distance in the shadows. “So, we’re tracking down your brother and uncle, huh?”

“It’ll be interesting seeing Zuko again, won’t it Mai?” Huh? Is that coal brains girlfriend or something?

Azula spoke up at that comment, “It’s not just Zuko and Iroh anymore. We have a third target now.” You have got to be fucking joking. I guess I better start finding my inner peace after all, you know, so I don’t blow her FUCKING BRAINS OUT!

a/n: hehe thank you so much for reading!!! what did you think?? hehe i know its been a while so im kinda rusty so pls let me know your thoughts or any feedback!! hehe i know this wasnt that juicy and kinda short but ive got a lot planned so dw hehe we’ll get there ;)

taglist: @slythergirlimagines​​ @mangoberry43​​ @eridanuswave​​ @whiskeywinter89​​​ @kaylove12​​ @simplyfandomish​​ @khaleesi-of-assassins​ @callums-keith​ @ilovespideyyy​ @calciumcow​ @blackhood5sos​ @nnon-it-up​ @lozzybowe​ @scarletemeterio​ @reclusive-chicken-nugget​ @simpinforsukka​ @chewymoustachio​ @tiffy119​ @spearbatty​ @sokkassuki​

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Definitely do *not* write a drabble about Chris being triggered into thinking Jake is sending him back, with Jake having to comfort him. Do not do it, Ash. I demand it.

While I couldn't quite bring myself to hit the request exactly, I did think of something that might actually give Chris a very similar reaction... sorry I sat on this so long, I couldn’t make the words do for a while, but here they FINALLY are

CW: Referenced beating/injuries, emeto mentions, bruising, pressing on a bruised rib, trauma response, some discussion of PTSD/conditioned responses, discussion of noncon touching, noncon in memories + discussion (warning: Jake speaks very plainly about what it was, so cw for use of the word r*pe, I know that can be difficult), referenced violent reaction to stimming

TIMELINE: Immediately post-Safehouse Raid/Interrogation series

Tagging: @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @stxckfxck, @slaintetowhump, @astrobly, @newandfiguringitout, @doveotions, @pretty-face-breaker, @boxboysandotherwhump

Dr. Masood’s touch is gentle, and light, and Jake can see why the rescues like him so much. The safehouse’s doctor - a man who could lose his license to practice if anyone finds out that he provides healthcare to illegal runaway pets on nights and weekends - hums to himself, cheerfully, as his thumbs and fingers graze along the edge of Jake’s black eye, take in the bruising on his face, the swollen lower lip. 

His touch is so deft around the dark purple-black bruise on Jake’s head that he barely winces at the pressure, quick, barely-there and then gone, as Dr. Masood checks the spot where that asshole Everly bashed Jake’s head into the table again and again.

“My apologies,” Dr. Masood says gently, his accent warming his voice, making every word slightly musical. “You have quite a few bruises, some surface lacerations, but I’m not seeing anything that won’t heal with a little rest and regular at-home care. How are you sleeping?”

Jake swallows, feeling himself tense a little. He hasn’t slept, not really, in the three days since he’d come back from the police station. That first day after his return he had passed out, had laid on the bed with Chris beside him, safe in his arms, and slept like a log for nearly twelve hours, woken to eat, and then gone right back to sleep until the next day all over again. 

Ever since then... he can’t. He can doze, off and on, as long as Chris is inside the house where he can see him or by him. But he can’t-... he can’t stay asleep, he wakes at every noise, heart pounding, ready to hide Chris again, get Antoni and Leila back down to the basement. Has to be ready to open the front door himself this time, not let Nat take hits herself just to buy them time.

The deep bruising on Nat’s face, the cut across her cheekbone, the way that she moves with care and grits her teeth every time she has to stand up, the way she keeps describing herself as doing fine and powering through and making it through the day, her dry Midwestern drawl when she says she’s livin’ the dream, Jake, that’s all... it’s new wounds, layered under his skin instead of over it. It should have been him to answer the door, put up the fight, make himself the more important target.

Next time, Jake has to be the one to open the door to weapons in his face and spitting hate for his decision to protect the people who need protecting, he has to... he has to be ready.

He can’t be ready if he’s sleeping.

“I’m not,” He answers, finally. “Not much.”

Dr. Masood’s lips thin, just slightly, but he nods, looking over Jake’s torso now. Speckled with bruising, and Jake hisses in a harsh breath when Dr. Masood presses on his bruised rib, only to pull back quickly with a low apology. “I could give you something to help you sleep, Jake.”

“I wouldn’t... I wouldn’t take it,” Jake says. He could lie, but what’s the point?

“I see.” The doctor pauses. “Jake-”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jake says gruffly. “Every time I sleep, I-”

see myself begging for it to stop saying I’ll do anything give up anyone they want just let me sleep just give me something to eat just one small thing anything I’ll do anything

Jesus, how little it took to get him saying please and thank you - who knew how much it would have taken for him to give away even more?

I wanted to contract you, but I was overruled.

He shudders, then winces as the motion sends pain out in a nauseating wave from his ribcage, lifting a hand to put a bit of pressure there. 

How long was Chris held, before he gave them whatever they wanted, gave them whoever he used to be, just to get a little sleep?

“You are having nightmares,” Dr. Masood finishes for him. They’re sitting in the den, a small room behind the living room, where they have their one-on-ones with the therapist, where they have an occasional group meeting. Jake nods, leaning over despite the new throb of pain, and closes his eyes, rubbing his hand over his mouth, over the stubble he hasn’t shaved. Nearly a week of growth, between interrogation and the first few days back home.

“Bet your ass I am,” Jake muttered. The scratch of the hair on his jaw against his thumb and fingers was another reminder of how fucked up the past week of his life had been. 

“About being arrested?” Dr. Masood handed Jake his shirt - a button-up, Jake was struggling to pull shirts on over his head when it meant lifting his arms and pulling on bruised muscles and aching bones. 

“Not really. That’s I’m not the one who gets hauled off this time.”

“You are seeing Chris in your place.” It’s not a question.

Jake blinks up at the doctor and then just laughs, shaking his head, ignoring the pulse of ache at the motion. It’s not like he doesn’t just hurt all of the time no matter what he does, what’s the point of pretending otherwise? “Yeah. Or... back there in that place.”

Now he’s seen Chris - or who he was before he was Chris or even the rescue wrapped in his blanket in the rain. Now he’s seen the hunched-over shoulders, the attempts to rock and tap and do the things he did to keep himself calm met with implacable, awful violence. 

He understands the way Chris never moved at first, would just stay in one spot for hours in perfect silence, so much better now.

He dreams of Chris there again, the dull terror in wide green eyes. 

Worse, he dreams he’s the one who put him there. Sees himself in the shitty fucking uniforms those assholes wear, shoving Chris ahead of him down the hallway while he begs and pleads for Jake to remember himself, to save him, but Jake can’t save him from them because Jake is them...

Sees himself making the same sick jokes Everly made to him, touching Chris’s face, treating him like an object, like a fucking toy to be used, to be-

Jake’s stomach heaves and he leans over as saliva floods his mouth, breathing carefully, waiting for the nausea, the need to throw up the bit of tea and toast he had for breakfast, to pass. 

Dr. Masood watches him with care in those dark eyes, his hands folded in front of him. “You have undergone a trauma, Jake. It’s common to have nightmares afterward as your mind attempts to process that trauma-”

“I haven’t gone through shit,” Jake spits with sudden anger. “I got roughed up, that’s all. That’s not-... that isn’t shit compared to-”

“How old are you, trainee?” The handler asks the question heavy with loaded double-meanings, obvious enough Jake can read them. Give the right answer or get hurt.

“Eighteen,” Chris whispers, with wide scared eyes. Everyone in the room seems satisfied with the blatant, obvious lie.

“Good. And is that the legal consenting age?”

“… yes.”

“Good boy.” The handler pets heavily through Chris’s hair, and the boy shudders in disgust - Jake has never seen him react to touch like that, not from anyone. Just one more sign of a person that’s been totally erased.

“Pl-please, please don’t, please don’t-don’t, don’t touch me-”

“That’s not an option available to you any longer.”

“-compared to what they’ve all lived through,” Jake finishes, trying to close his eyes against the thoughts but he can see it in his mind, now, the way the person who wasn’t yet Chris had shuddered and tried to turn away from touch only to have it forced on him again and again and again.

He feels the nausea again, and this time it takes everything in him not to throw up all over the floor. They hurt Chris, in that place. The touch he seeks out from Jake comes from being forced to accept touch until he wanted it, until he doesn’t know any other way to be. Doesn’t it?

Doesn’t that make needing to hold Chris in the night to know he’s safe, carrying him around, the hugs he’s offered so freely... doesn’t that make all of that no different than assault?

Jake has always thought he was helping, by giving open and easy affection. But... what if he’s only reinforcing what Chris shouldn’t want? Maybe doesn’t, deep down? Chris is an open book but even open books can have things hidden in the margins.

It’s not like Chris could ever tell him if he didn’t want to be touched, is it? They can’t say no, can’t even begin to process the word without fear of punishment. Jake knows that as well as anyone, it’s why he’s so careful with the rescues, but they need touch so badly. All of them, even Antoni, lean heavily into physical reassurance and affection, seem to recover faster and more easily if they can seek it out when they need it, but... 

Jesus, what if Chris is shuddering and shaking and disgusted and only pretending that it feels nice to be hugged? What if-

What if Jake really isn’t any better than Grant Everly, anyway?

Pull yourself together. This doesn’t make sense. But his brain won’t stop spitting the certainty back at him. The image of that asshole - whoever it was, Chris’s fucking actual handler, that stupid fucking word they use instead of abuser, instead of abductor, instead of son of a bitch who deserves to die-

“Jake, trauma doesn’t work that way,” Dr. Masood says quietly. “There is no trauma Olympics. There is no competition to see whose is worse and caused by what. You were subjected to sleep deprivation, purposeful withholding of food and water, physical assault... Natalie tells me you were forced to watch some of the trauma young Chris was put through as well, and understand, what you are feeling is normal and nothing to be ashamed of-”

“It’s not shit, it’s nothing, I’m supposed to be able to take it, it’s not like I haven’t had the shit kicked out of me before and I was a lot younger then,” Jake snaps, pushing himself to his feet. The woozy burst of pain behind his eyes and in his ribs nearly stops him, but not quite. “This isn’t anything. Fucking black eye and a bruised rib and I turn into a little kid scared of the fucking dark.”

“That’s not what this is,” Dr. Masood says quietly. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is common even in situations in which outright danger to your physical self is not present. You kept Chris hidden.” He puts his hand on Jake’s shoulder, squeezes lightly, in support. “There is something to have pride in, there. You put your body between Chris and danger, Jake. You are a stalwart certainty in his life, when he very much needs one. I’ve known you since you first came here to work for Natalie, and I am-” Dr. Masood pauses, clears his throat. “I am always amazed by your dedication to doing what is best for them all. And I think Chris would still be... quieter... if it weren’t for you specifically.”

Jake can hear the words but they don’t settle, they don’t mean anything. Just buzzing bees trying to distract him from the realization that he can’t protect Chris, because doing that means protecting Chris from himself.

“I can’t-... I can’t do this.”

“Jake?” Dr. Masood’s voice is quiet. “We can end the appointment now, if you wish, but I hope you will at least take the medication I brought with me to help manage your pain-”

“I can’t do this,” Jake groans, hot angry tears building behind closed eyes. “I can’t be this, I can’t do this, I can’t live like this. I can’t keep being around him if this is what it means, you know? I can’t keep spending time with Chris, or keeping him near me, or-... I can’t touch him. I don’t want to touch him if this is... if this is the result. I don’t want to be anywhere near him, if...”

He trails off, trying to imagine how to say if being near him means i’m only hurting him, slowing his recovery, making him dependent on me where he used to be dependent on that motherfucking pervert son of a bitch who raped him, who paid for him to be trained to be raped and pretend it was something else, if this isn’t helping him I’d rather die than make someone like him hurt any worse...

He can’t figure out how to phrase it, how to even begin. It feels good just to say it, just to let it out, and maybe... maybe it isn’t what he thinks it is, really. Maybe he’s not so bad, though, because the rescues do need solid, positive touch, they do, they just-

But how can you fucking tell? How can he tell if what he provides Chris is helping or hurting him?

“Jake, you need to speak with Dr. Berger. These thoughts suggest to me that your trauma is internalizing because you lack an external outlet. You are not-”

“I don’t want to fucking be around him if this is what happens!”

Jake means if I only hurt him worse, but the sound of sudden footsteps, nearly silent, breaks in before he can clarify, before he even realizes he should have.

Jake’s heart drops to his knees. He knows those footsteps, he knows them deep within himself with perfect muscle-memory born of every night Chris has moved nearly-silent to his bedside and whispered, Jake, Jake, can I-I, can, can I sleep with you?

All at once, Jake knows that what he said out loud and what he thought were two different things, and Chris only heard the one.

“Oh, fuck,” He says out loud.

No, no, no no no-

It hurts but Jake puts the pain aside - he’s done it before, after all, washing dishes after dinner with bruises all over his chest and back where they hide easily under his school clothes and his father’s glare burning holes in his back while his mother puts ice on her own bruises upstairs - and moves, with uncommon speed for a man of his size and his injuries.

It doesn’t matter.

Chris is already gone, the back door in the kitchen smacking shut even as Jake moves through the living room. Antoni, in the middle of chopping vegetables for dinner, has frozen and looked up, his eyes meeting Jake’s. Antoni doesn’t ask - only drops the knife and moves for the door, the two of them calling Chris’s name nearly simultaneously. 

He’s not in the backyard, not in the shed or the little planter-garden, not shimmying up a tree, not sitting on the back fence, not here.

There’s no redhead anywhere to be seen. Even when they move to the front yard and look back and forth, he’s nowhere to be seen.

“What happened?” Antoni asks, softly, as the two of them stare at the space where Chris should be, and isn’t.

“I fucked up,” Jake says, heavily.

What else is fucking new?

“... what do we do?” Antoni rakes a hand back through thick dark hair. “Where did he go?”

Jake closes his eyes, tries to think over the pounding guilt and fury, aimed now entirely at himself.

“I don’t know.”

[amandaoftherosemire]

A Sexy Stranger

Fandom: Marvel/MCU AU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader

Characters: Bucky Barnes

Author: @amandarosemire

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 8,539

Format: One-Shot

Warnings: Smut, 18+ only, language, mild angst, stalking, fluff.

Summary: Alone in a club after losing your friends and needing a place to hide from a creepy stalker, you enlist the help of a sexy stranger.

A/N: Hey! Remember when we could go to clubs? I always think I want to go to a club until I’m there and then I want to be home in my pajamas. However, I think that feeling would take at least fifteen minutes to set in right now. I am an agoraphobic introverted misanthrope but even I miss people so much by this point. In that spirit, enjoy this fantasy of being in a room with a bunch of other people without worrying about the fact that you’re all breathing the same air.

A Sexy Stranger

Heading towards panicked, you scanned the crowd in the lower level of the club, looking for your friends. You had been trying with all your might to have fun, but you hadn't even wanted to come out to a club tonight. You'd been overruled because your best friend had wanted to dance, and her work friends were going clubbing. She'd refused to take no for an answer when you'd tried to stay home alone; she wanted to introduce you to some guy from work, so here you were.

And yet, when you'd gotten separated on the dance floor, it seemed like she'd disappeared on you. Then you'd caught a glimpse of what looked like Bill, the last person you wanted to see, and you'd bolted, desperate to find her and her friends. Standing near the stairs as the bass pounded through the floor overhead, you frantically scanned the scattered couches and chairs of the lower floor, looking for someone you recognized.

When you spotted the very person you were trying to escape on the other side of the crowd, you let out a squeak that shamed you and covered your face as you started desperately looking for a way out of this nightmare. It hadn't merely looked like your stalker, it was your stalker, and based on the way he was also searching the crowd, he knew you were here. If only you could find a place to hide.

Then you saw him: tall, dark, and dangerous. Gorgeous in blue denim, black cotton, and leather, he had a drink in his hand and boredom on his face. More importantly, he was standing directly in front of an alcove that you would fit in, hidden behind him.

Normally you'd never have the nerve to walk up to a man who looked like this one did, but you saw no other option if you were going to avoid Bill. The sexy stranger had a face, a body that looked sculpted by the devil to provoke lust and inspire sin, tall and broad and muscled, with dark hair short on the sides but thick and long on top. To top it off, he had the kind of bone structure a master sculptor would immortalize in marble. Still, you'd do almost anything to avoid Bill and Mr. Smolderingly Sexy was where you needed to be.

With a bright smile, you locked eyes with the man as you bobbed and weaved your way over to him. A raised eyebrow and the beginning of a half-smile made him look even more dangerous, and yet more approachable. Once you were close enough, you grabbed his arm with a sultry laugh.

"Yes!" Bright and cheerful, you pulled him around as you slid into the alcove, his height and width perfectly concealing you from the rest of the room. He didn't put up a fight, but the raised eyebrow had become a frown of confusion as you grinned cheerfully, trying to charm. "You, sir, are perfect."

A smirk lifted the corner of a mouth so pretty pink and plump you could get fixated on it and sent a shudder of lust through you. His voice was low and warm and seemed to shiver into your ear as he leaned forward and spoke into it to be heard over the crowd and the music pounding from the floor above. "So I've been told."

A little shocked by your instant attraction, you huffed out a laugh. "Ha, I bet,” you retorted playfully, to his obvious enjoyment. You put on every ounce of charm you possessed and aimed to tempt. "Look, I need to hide and you're the perfect height. If you keep me hidden from my gross stalker, I will buy your drinks all night." You held out your hand, fingers and thumb curled together, pinky up. "Pinky swear."

Bucky looked you over, sexy in club wear, adorable with your pinky in the air and mischief in your eyes. He was astonished, but utterly delighted to find that his night had all of a sudden taken such a hard-left turn into interesting. He couldn't put his finger on it, didn't figure it mattered anyway, but something about the curve of your smile, the brightness in your eyes, the temptation in your voice had him not just interested, but riveted. He'd been trying and failing to come up with an excuse that Sam would accept for why he should leave before meeting whomever Maria was trying to throw at him, but then you'd come out of nowhere to dazzle him.

"Like I need to be bribed to help a pretty girl." He reached out, wrapped his pinky around yours, charmed both by your smile and the innocent gesture. He smiled back and moved to flirt. "But I'll take you up on it to keep you close all night."

When your eyes lit up, Bucky felt a hard tug of lust, thinking you not just pretty, but stunning when you genuinely smiled. "Thank you!" You'd be more flustered by the flirting, but the relief that the guy you'd hidden behind was going to help was too huge. Bill was really starting to creep you out. "Both for the save and the compliment. I'm Y/N, by the way." You winked as you squeezed your pinky around his and shook his hand once before letting go.

“Bucky. Nice to meet ya.” The smile he gave you was slow, wicked, and sent a palpable shudder of excitement through you. He lifted his head to give the room what appeared to be a casual scan, but his eyes were narrowed and focused in a way that made you think he might be as dangerous as he looked. “Who should I be on the lookout for, gorgeous?”

His bright blue eyes came back to your face, warm in the low golden light of the bar's basement, and the sheer beauty of the man seemed to blow through you, stealing your breath. He looked not only ready and willing to ride to the rescue, but eager to help. You couldn't quite put your finger on it, but something about this stranger made you feel reckless. You could see he was dangerous, but your gut was saying you were safe with him.

"Guy about your height but nowhere near your width." Your grin flashed appreciatively and you wiggled your eyebrows as you eyed his shoulders and made him laugh. "Dirty blond, weak chin."

Bucky was having a blast, thoroughly enjoying your sassy way of flirting. He was starting to understand how someone could get fixated on you. Hell, he could see himself making a fool of himself over you; he'd always been attracted to the bold and bright.

He lifted his head briefly and took another scan, determined to keep you to himself as long as you'd let him, when he caught sight of a man exactly as you described searching the room as he moved through it. "Is that him to your right?"

You glanced over and blanched. "Fuckfuckfuck."

At the sight of your genuine anxiety, Bucky went into protector mode. It had all been fun and games until he saw that you weren't just worried you'd be found, but scared. He hated to see your eyes go dim, decided on the spot to do whatever it took to chase the fear away and bring back the light that had so quickly captivated him.

Drawing on his skills as an operative, he eased to his left, putting his forearm on the wall over your head to use his body to shield you from view. As he moved, he spoke to reassure. "I’m gonna crowd you a bit on this side, get you a little better hidden."

That did it; you were a goner. He was moving so carefully, speaking so gently, it was clear that he was worried about scaring you. That he would go to so much trouble when you'd dragged him into your drama astonished you. And considering that you were hiding from someone with no respect for boundaries, Bucky's obvious concern that he not breach yours had you ready to climb him like a tree.

On a laugh rich with that attraction, you took a hold of the edge of his leather jacket and tugged softly, wanting to make your intent clear. "Come on over, sexy stranger. Way better than gross stalker." He crowded close with a wide grin and hot eyes but remained just far enough away to not be touching you, though you could feel the heat of his body seeping into yours. It made you dizzy.

"I'm gonna have to hear the whole story over those drinks you're buying me." This close, Bucky could catch the edge of your scent and to his surprise, it was driving him a little crazy. You smelled of citrus and sweet and something indescribable, like warmth and sugar and sighs. He wondered if it was your perfume or if it was just you.

This close, you couldn't help but get caught in warm, bright blue. "That's the stupid thing!" You looked at Bucky earnestly as you leaned against the wall. "There's not really a story. I don't get it." You didn't know it, but your voice and demeanor had taken on a kind of sick bafflement that made Bucky's heart throb in sympathy. Your eyes had fixed themselves on a spot in the middle of his chest, a little lost and a lot confused. "He's just a friend of a friend of a friend who got weirdly focused on me."

"Hey." Bucky hated it when people blamed themselves for what others did. "That's the way it is sometimes." He gave you a warm smile as he lifted his free hand to your face to brush the pad of his thumb lightly over the line of your jaw. "You didn't do anything, I promise you. He probably needs help, and that's not your fault." The softness of your skin fascinated him, but he didn't want to come on too strong. He dropped his hand even as your lips parted in what looked like pleasure.

You took a shaky breath in, rocked to the core by the heat that spread through you from that delicate brush of his skin against yours. "You really are perfect, aren't you?" you laughed softly, thinking it odd that the exasperating situation with Bill the Stalker had led to this. The scent of Bucky, leather and pine, wound into your head and tempted. "I didn't even want to come out tonight."

Bucky gave you a conspiratorial wink. "Me neither. I really don't belong in this club." He said it laughing, but you could tell he meant it.

"Right!?" You nearly cried it, delighted to find him in agreement. "My best friend dragged me out with her work friends. I wanted to stay in with pizza and The Witcher." You shot him a warm look from under sultry lashes. "I didn't know you'd be here."

His answering smile was slow and hot and the way it turned his face dark and dangerous in the best possible way caused another spasm of lust to rocket through you. If he didn't stop being so damn perfect, you weren't certain you could resist that smile much longer.

Bucky couldn't believe how much he already liked you, wanted to find out more. He was starting to get irritated by the atmosphere that kept him on edge when he wanted to relax and get to know you. "You're singing my song." he said. "My friend says that I'm surly and antisocial and need to mingle with people."

"You, too?" Your arms were at your side, your hands against the cool brick. You pressed your palms against the rough surface, taking a deep breath to calm your racing heart. Lost in bright blue, basking in the warmth of Bucky's body, you'd nearly forgotten that you were hiding. “But why does it have to be a club? I would kill to be in a pub with a beer, listening to somebody argue about the Yankees.”

Bucky's eyes lit up, making your skin run hot. Then his eyes narrowed. "Opinion on the Yankees?" he demanded.

A laugh tickling the back of your throat, you answered cheekily. "Evil."

"Will you marry me?"

You laughed out loud, the question so earnest you couldn't help yourself. His face spread from serious to a wide, happy smile at the sight of your laughter, and he was so pretty it took your breath again. You opened your mouth to flirt back, lifting your hand to his chest to toy with one of the snaps on his jacket when you saw Bill the Stalker out of the left corner of your eye.

Your hand closed, frightened, around the edge of Bucky’s jacket instead, your face matching the panicked movement. "Shit. He's right there."

Bucky was furious to see your eyes go dim in fear again, was opening his mouth to offer to deal with this asshole for you, but you were using your grip on his jacket to pull him even closer. The words died on his lips at the feel of your body against his. "Kiss me," you said, urgently, and he was only too happy to comply. His eyes glittered, hot and narrow, as he moved forward.

Bucky's arm slipped between you and the wall to slide around your waist and drag you against his body. His palm was warm between your shoulder blades as he pressed you to his chest and his lips to yours. Your mind was wiped clean at the feel of his arms around you, his mouth moving over yours slowly, as though he could take a thousand years savoring you. Your arms lifted to twine around his neck as your lips parted, the desire to taste him overwhelming. When he deepened the kiss with a low groan in his throat, sweeping his tongue between your lips to curl around yours, everything else faded away. You forgot where you were, who was around, and even why you'd asked him to kiss you in the first place.

Why hardly mattered. You were still kissing him because he was the sexiest man you'd ever met and kissing him had you hot and needy faster than you'd ever experienced. You didn't do one-night stands as a rule, but for Bucky, you'd make an exception.

Bucky was happily lost in the wonder of your mouth, only his years of training maintaining an awareness of his surroundings. That awareness of the crowd around the two of you was all that was keeping him from devouring you. The feel of your arms around him, your hand on the back of his neck as you pressed against him and kissed him eagerly had him lightheaded and rock hard.

The memory of why you'd asked him to kiss you tickled at the back of his mind, however. He wanted to take you somewhere else, somewhere your stalker wasn't. The next time you asked him to kiss you, he wanted it to be because you wanted him, not to hide from someone else.

Reluctantly, he lifted his head and loosened his arm, though he stayed where he was. His eyes searing, his voice a growl, he spoke to seduce. "There a pub three blocks from here that has Guinness on tap. Ditch your friends and I'll ditch mine." You'd swear the devil himself had a smile like the one that curved his perfect pink lips. "I want to know everything about you, and I can't think around this kind of music."

You'd dropped your hands to his shoulders when he'd broken the kiss, but to brace yourself, not push him away. Feeling reckless, you decided to trust your gut and go with him. You had a good feeling about a man who'd kiss you brainless, then offer to take you somewhere to talk. "I'm already there in spirit. I'll text my bitch on our way."

Bucky laughed and let you go to step back. "And I'll text mine." He held his hand out for yours with that wicked grin. "Shall we?"

You put your hand in his, that devil-may-care smile of his too tempting to resist. "Lead the way, sexy stranger. I'm with you."

A few hours later found you in Bucky's apartment, on his couch, in his lap. His hands were clamped around your thighs and yours were in his hair as you straddled his hips to suck on that plump lower lip the way you'd been thinking about since you set eyes on him. The hours between had been filled with easy conversation and warm laughter. Bucky had taken you to his pub, and over a couple of pints you’d talked about any and everything even as you breathlessly watched each other with eyes that burned and teased one another with casual brushes of skin.

When he asked you back to his place, you didn't hesitate. By that time, you were ready to spontaneously combust. You'd been on his couch for less than five minutes before you were climbing into his lap to take him up on everything his eyes had been promising all night.

Bucky pulled his mouth from yours with an effort, but the column of your throat had been tempting him for hours and he wanted the taste of your skin on his mouth more than his next breath. He also needed to hear that you wanted what he wanted, needed to be certain you were as lost as he.

"Goddamn, y/n," he purred against your throat as he savored the salt of your skin. His hands were skimming over the bare skin of your thighs to grip tight and the feeling had you rocking gently against him. Bucky continued on a moan, "You are so fucking sexy.”

You laughed and arched to give him better access to your neck, loving the feeling of his mouth on your skin, especially when he was saying such pretty things. "Me? You’re the one that looks like hand-crafted sin.”

Bucky chuckled at that even as his mouth grew more feverish over your neck and shoulders. “If you want to sin, babygirl, all you have to do is say the word.”

“The word.” You half-laughed, half-moaned your way through the cheeky retort as Bucky took the opportunity to scrape his teeth softly down the cords of your neck, making you shudder in reaction.

Bucky lifted his head, his mind muddled by the feel, the taste of you. At the mistily confused look on his face, you melted, utterly charmed. Your smile held mysteries he was desperate to unravel as you rubbed your breasts shamelessly against that broad chest and murmured, “I really don’t know how to throw myself at you any harder, Bucky.”

The fact that most of the blood that belonged in his brain had traveled south to his dick may have made him slower on the uptake than usual, but he'd gotten there. His face melted into a smug half-smile as his grip tightened around your thighs and he leaned forward to take your mouth in a ferocious kiss. Muscles bunching beneath you and making your heart race in arousal, Bucky stood with you in his arms, carrying you like you weighed nothing to his bedroom.

You didn't know how he did it, but somehow he got you into his bed without taking his mouth from yours. You barely remembered the trip, so viciously erotic was that meeting of mouths. With lips and tongue and teeth, he worshipped your mouth with his own, tumbling you into his bed in a tangle of limbs.

Now that Bucky was certain that you wanted what he wanted, to lose yourself in the press of your body against his, he let himself touch you the way he'd been craving since he met eyes with yours across a crowded room. Hands gentle but voracious, he pulled at your clothes until your dress was on the floor and his palms were moving over freshly bared skin.

You tugged as eagerly at his clothing, sliding your hands up under soft cotton to get to the soft skin and firm muscle beneath it. On your back in the middle of his bed, you shuddered and quaked in pleasure as his hands explored your belly, your hips, your thighs. Meanwhile, his mouth was moving over the curves of your breasts and murmuring words of praise in between sucking kisses to taste the salt of your skin.

You couldn't be self-conscious if you tried, Bucky was so clearly loving everything about your body. His hands only grew more eager, his mouth more avid as he impatiently stripped your bra away to cup your breasts in his hands.

Warm breath caressed your skin, sending shudders running through you as he brushed his lips over the mounds of flesh his kneading hands had made. “You have the prettiest tits,” he whispered hotly as his mouth closed around your nipple.

You moaned out a laugh as you arched into his hands, your core clenching in response to the maddeningly pleasurable sensation coupled with the hot appreciation in his voice. "Thank you?" you replied, unsure how to respond, not that he seemed to be listening, too absorbed in his current occupation of driving you insane with his mouth.

You opted to focus on getting him naked, desperate to feel him. Once you’d torn his shirt off over his head, he impatiently went back to adoring your breasts with his mouth as his hands wandered down to your ass. Meanwhile, your hands traveled over his shoulders and down his arms, reveling in the feeling of smooth skin and firm muscle, marveling at the glide of your palm over cool metal. You weren't exploring, however, but had a set destination in mind as you moved immediately to work on the buttons of his jeans, wanting as much of that velvet skin against yours as possible.

Bucky chuckled darkly as he lifted his head to nip at your lips. The sensation of your fingers at his fly pulling impatiently at buttons was teasing an erection already painfully hard. "You’re killin’ me, doll.” His voice was a growl, the accent of his youth growing more pronounced as his body heated with desire.

“Get these off and I’ll save you,” you retorted with cheeky grin as your hands slipped under the waistband of both the jeans you’d unfastened and his underwear. You were getting impatient and moved immediately to shove them down over his deliciously tight ass. His eyebrow quirked up, but he loved how insistent you were about getting him naked.

Bucky laughed when you quirked an eyebrow back at him and kept pushing at his clothing. Delighted with you, he rolled to the side to kick the last of his clothes to the floor. As soon as he was nude, he was rolling back to slide the length of his body against yours, braced over you on his metal arm, his pretty face inches from yours as his other hand went back to memorizing the texture of your skin.

The sight of him, sculpted as a marble statue, scarred as a warrior, took your breath. All that luscious skin pressing and skimming over yours as Bucky began to nibble at the edge of your jaw gave it back in the form of a moan. You slid one arm around his neck to bury a fist in his thick hair while the other wandered over his chest and around his back, reveling in the play of muscle as it went. "How are you real?" you asked in a whisper as the arm he wasn't braced on moved to your hip to push your underwear down over your ass, kneading the cheek as he went.

"I was just thinking the same thing about you." Bucky's voice was so low it registered as a growl. Pure lust resonated in his tone and took any sting you may have felt from his next words. "I’m seventy percent sure you’re an assassin; you’re too perfect."

The warmth and laughter were tempered by a half-serious note. Both made you giggle, flattered that he'd think you both perfect and deadly when you knew you were neither. "Don’t worry," you purred in his ear as his hands squeezed your ass, pulling you tight against his body to rub you against him, to pet you with his skin. His face was buried in the curve of your neck as with teeth and sucking kisses he sent shivers racing through you. "If I was, I’d wait until after I’ve fucked you." Bucky barked out a laugh as he lifted his head to grin into your eyes. He pulled away just enough to slide his hand between your thighs, his softly petting fingers making you shudder in reaction. "I couldn’t stop now if the room was on fire," you finished on a moan.

The sight of you, deliciously naked in the center of his bed, skin glowing in the low light of his darkened bedroom had him hotter than he'd ever been. Your muscles quivered with every soft slide of his fingers over and through your folds and sent shudders of reaction over his skin. Though the lust was riding him hard, he couldn’t resist the siren song of your pleasure, and kept his movements slow and deliberate as he learned your body and what you liked.

“Sweet,” he breathed in awe as you whimpered and clung, his hand working what felt like magic between your thighs, “and hot,” one long, gentle finger slipped down to tease at your entrance, “and so wet.” He finished his drawn-out sentence on a groan as your hips bucked upward and his forefinger slid softly inside as you gasped.

A slow, careful twist of his wrist and he was pressing deeper as you arched and whimpered, the feeling a gorgeous kind of friction that you couldn't get enough of. When he gently caressed your forward wall with the pad of his finger as it dragged out of you, your gasp of pleasure and soft "Oooh" of reaction sent a wracking shudder through Bucky as he barely held himself in check. He wanted to be inside of you more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, at least as far as he could tell in this moment.

He dropped his forehead to yours from where he'd been looking back and forth between your face and his hand working busily between your thighs. He was panting with the effort to keep himself from rolling on top of you and driving home immediately, but he also couldn't stop watching you take your pleasure from him. He plunged his fingers in and out of you in a rough but gentle rhythm that had you panting in turn.

"So wet," he repeated, making you cry out in shocked rapture as he softly rasped his palm over your clit as he pulled his fingers from you. "I fucking love it." He sounded like he was on the edge of his control and the deep grumble of his desire sent shockwaves through you even as his fingers began to rub rhythmic circles into your clit.

The hand you'd buried in his hair had released its death grip and gone traveling. You'd moved down over his metal shoulder, explored his chest and abdomen, enjoying the texture of his skin. At the same moment your hand closed around his cock, he found the perfect speed and rhythm.

With a gasp and a shuddering moan, your other hand shot down to close around his wrist. "Right there," you panted, your breath speeding as he kept moving exactly as you needed. "Like that."

Bucky's eyes had rolled back in his head at the touch of your hand sliding along his erection, but they soon narrowed on your face. He was lost in the undulations of your body, the thoughtless but no less pleasurable squeeze of your hand around his cock, the sweet sounds he was driving from your throat while you gave yourself into his hands. He wanted to see your face when you crested, needed to drive you to peak.

"Are you gonna come for me, pretty girl?" His voice was harsh with his panting breath on the question, the rumble of it settling into your skin where his chest was pressed to your side. "I wanna see it," your eyes went wide on his as he bent to nip at your lips, his breath hot as it mingled with yours, "wanna see how pretty you look coming on my hand."

"Oh my god," you moaned, shocked to feel yourself coming apart so quickly at his relentless, glorious hands, at his wonderfully dirty mouth. Your eyes closed as your head rolled back and your back arched as luscious waves of pleasure spread out from your core and through your body in wracking shudders. That busy hand worked you through every last one.

When he gently removed his hand and slid his metal arm from under you, where he'd slipped it under your arching back to hold you closer as you came and came, your eyes fluttered open to find his bright and searing. "Bucky," you breathed, sounding both seductive and impressed.

Dazzled by the warm, soft look of pleasure that marked both your face and form, he paused in his roll to the nightstand and leaned down to kiss you with a tender kind of greed. "Beautiful."

When he pulled away to sit on the edge of the bed to roll on a condom, you lay stunned and still shaking, but sinfully smug. Your heart was still racing from the delicious way he'd touched you, the attention he'd paid, the care he'd taken. You firmly told yourself that you did not believe in love at first sight and even if you did, you were not so naïve as to mistake good sex for anything more.

Then he was standing up and turning around to climb onto the bed and come toward you on his hands and knees, all sculpted muscle and aroused male. You licked your lips and propped yourself up on your elbows, watching him with a hungry appreciation that made him laugh.

Bucky was so aroused it actually hurt and he couldn't wait to be inside you. He'd make love to you slowly later. For now, he was shaking with need even as he skimmed his hands up and over your thighs to close his hands around your hips. With a cocky smirk, he pulled you close, your legs instinctively wrapping around his waist.

"I’ll bet you’re even prettier coming on my cock.”

“Only one way to find out.” Your mouth quirked up seductively even as the timbre of his voice, pure rough lust, sent a shudder through you. That shiver of heat over your skin had you tightening your thighs a little on the invitation. You were almost dizzy with the heat of his body and looking at him towering over you, all sexy smirks and hungry eyes, made you nearly desperate to have him inside you.

Bucky’s face had taken on an almost feral look of anticipation as he positioned the head of his cock at your entrance. He was gorgeous in nothing but his skin and desire, his muscles bunching and flexing as he held you in place. On your sassy response, however, his face melted into a laugh and then a sweet smile that looked so close to adoration it made your heart kick in a different kind of excitement.

He leaned over you, braced on one arm as his metal arm slipped under your hips to hold you. As he began to sink slowly into you, he took your mouth with a savage greed that made you buck your hips in answer.

Your arms came up to wrap around him as you whimpered into his mouth, the stretch to accommodate him almost uncomfortable if it wasn’t such rapture. You kissed him back with a fervor you couldn’t remember experiencing before and couldn’t hold back.

With a panting groan, he tore his mouth from yours to rest his forehead on your shoulder as he pushed slowly and gently, despite that tempting movement of your hips. He had the nearly overwhelming urge to begin thrusting wildly, the sensation of being wrapped in you was so exquisite.

“Damn,” he purred in your ear as he pushed steadily deeper, “I knew you were damn near perfect but goddamn.” On the last growling word, he thrust to the hilt and paused to readjust his slippery grip on control. You were making gasping, panting noises of need and the sound was making him crazy. Only the fear of hurting you kept him from snapping and slamming into you, the feeling of you stretching and clenching around his cock pushing him to his limits.

You kept still except for those gasping breaths of excitement, feeling almost too stretched. As Bucky held still to let you adjust to having him inside you, you could feel yourself begin to soften and relax around him, your muscles shifting to hold him closer. He obviously felt it too, and gave a tiny testing thrust that had an answering moan lifting out of you.

His head lifted from your shoulder to look into your face, his eyes searing as he took in the sight of you reveling in the pleasure he brought you. “You ready, pretty girl?” He gave another testing thrust and smiled when you shuddered and clung to him, arms and legs wrapping tight around him.

“Ready for what?” You smiled on the mock confused question as your hands slid up his broad back into his hair and you rocked your hips a little, slightly moving yourself along his length.

His eyes were searing as he bent his neck to nip at your lips, but you could taste the laughter on his mouth. Achingly slow, he withdrew, and Bucky felt that tether on his control slip a little when you whined at the loss. When he thrust a little forcefully back into you and you cried out in ecstatic relief, a single, elongated, hissing "Yes," falling from your lips, he gave in and let go.

His face took on a dangerously beautiful cast that only added to the delicious feeling of him giving you exactly what you wanted, everything he'd been holding back. You gloried in the feeling of his metal arm holding you up for his rough thrusts, his cool hand squeezing your ass. His other arm was up under your back and over your shoulder, his long fingers pressing into your skin as he surrounded you, enfolded you, destroyed you.

Bucky gloried in your cries of pleasure as his thrusts sped and sped until he was pounding into you. Even as he lost control, some part of his brain kept track of your responses to make sure he wasn't hurting you, but you egged him on through both word and deed, your breathless voice in his ear pleading, urging, demanding, your hips relentlessly rocking to meet his.

Your arms and legs were wrapped around Bucky, holding him as close as possible. You adored what he was doing, his thrusts perfectly balanced on the edge between pleasure and pain. You felt utterly ravished, and with Bucky, it was glorious.

One of your hands was in his hair while the other skimmed and scratched at his back, shoulders, ass, any part of him you could reach. Every press and slide of your hand made him crazier, pushed him higher. His hips moved just a little faster with every shudder of pleasure he felt at the touch of your hands on his body, in his hair.

Your hips only rocked faster in return, taking all he had to give you and returning it. He'd never felt so in sync with someone so quickly and he couldn't resist it. He couldn't resist you.

With a snarl of lust, he lifted up onto his knees, wanting to see his cock sliding in and out of you. He slid his forearms under your thighs to close his hands around your hips, not breaking the rhythm of his thrusts into you. The change of angle was exactly what you needed to push you over that shuddering edge into ecstasy.

Bucky’s jaw clenched with the effort of holding back. He could feel you squeezing and rippling around him as your climax took you and the sensation coupled with the sight of you nearly dragged him over that edge with you.

His thrusts slowed as he got lost watching the picture you made, your arms at your sides, hands fisted in his sheets, your back arched as you moaned, rapture touched with surprise as you came. “Beautiful,” he breathed as you began to relax back into his bed, falling back to Earth.

Your eyes fluttered open to find his narrowed and glittering, a muscle jumping in his cheek. Your breath caught when his mouth curved in a dangerous smirk and he readjusted his grip around your hips.

“Again,” he growled as he picked up the speed of his thrusts once again, driving you back to peak, before the last ripples around his cock had ceased. He was delighted to find that same angle and speed and sent you flying again, to your shuddering astonishment.

He was only human, however, and he couldn’t resist bending down to kiss you the next time he gave you a brief respite from those relentless hips. Once he was close, braced on his arms over you, you twined around him like a vine. All soft limbs and softer sighs, you pulled him onto you and rubbed against him, wanting his velvet skin against yours, his warmth seeping into you again.

Bucky was rocking into you with more and more force before he realized it, losing himself in the sweetness of your voice in his ear as you kissed his neck, your breath on his skin, your hands brushing pleasure into his flesh, tangling in his hair. You were soft and sweet and the feel of you under his hands, his body only pushed him further into the ecstasy of your hands and body drawing him down and under, into you.

What was ultimately his undoing, however, was the sound of your voice, an ache in your breath against his skin, a simple sentence. “Bucky,” you whimpered and his name in that tone had his grip on control slipping, “it’s so good.” You sank your teeth into his shoulder, but it was already too late; he was coming with stuttering hips and a groan of joy-soaked pleasure.

He’d expected you to delight him. He hadn’t expected you to destroy him.

You’d already been riding waves of feeling, highly sensitized and shimmering through shockwaves in response to his every smooth movement. The sudden increase in speed sent you flying once again, but this time, you were able to take him with you.

As the waves of swamping pleasure eased, Bucky dropped his forehead to yours, breathless and smiling sweetly and you felt your heart kick in a way that had you smiling helplessly back.

Thinking that you were possibly the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, Bucky pressed his lips to yours in a kiss too soft and tender for a simple hookup. “Beautiful,” he whispered before rolling away to sit on the side of the bed. You heard something land in the wastebasket, you assumed the condom, before he flopped back down with a sigh of contentment.

“Damn, doll,” he murmured, still a little breathless, “you know how to wreck a man.”

You lay in Bucky’s bed, still vibrating from what he’d done to your body, and stared at the ceiling in astonishment. You'd never been in this situation, wanting more from a hookup, so you didn't know quite what to do. You wanted to respond with something sassy, some witty flirtation, but all that came out was a wondering, “Oh, wow.”

Bucky snorted as he rolled to his side, smug to hear the well-pleasured rasp to your voice. Propping his head up on his hand, he looked down at you as his arm snaked out to curve around your waist and drag you close. Snugging you in next to him, he grinned happily, his pretty face making your heart kick again. "High praise," he teased, charmed by the shy smile you were giving him in return. "I hope you don't intend to dip out now that you've had your wicked way with me."

He knew he’d said the right thing when the tension in your muscles eased and your body melted against his, your smile turning sultry. He couldn’t resist the seductive curve to your mouth and leaned down to brush his lips against yours. “I still want more, if you’re up for it,” he whispered against your mouth, his hand squeezing your hip gently.

Your heart was kicking and dancing no matter how you chided the silly thing, but that didn't stop the smile from lighting up your face and dazzling Bucky all over again. "I wouldn't want to overstay my welcome," you flirted back in a low murmur, "but if you aren't satisfied…" As you trailed off, you lifted a hand to his shoulder to pull him back down, arching up to take his mouth with your own.

The next time Bucky lifted his head, he was breathing fast and his body was signaling that it was ready to go again, though he would wager yours wasn't. He dragged himself back from the temptation you posed, breaking the kiss reluctantly. "I'm not sure I can get enough." He smoothed his hand in a sweeping motion down over your thigh and back up again, sending agreeable shivers over the surface of your skin. His voice was a rumble of seduction, coaxing you to relax and let him adore you. "Can I convince you to stay if I promise to make you breakfast?" he asked even as his arms were pulling you closer.

"I don't know." Your voice was warm and inviting on the response. Bucky couldn't have made it clearer that he was as caught in this as you were. You hadn't yet regretted following this sexy stranger into the night. You'd follow him into tomorrow. "Can you cook an egg over medium?"

Bucky's eyelids lowered, as did his voice, and the look of him was so sexy, your nails dug into his skin in sheer lust. "You have no idea what I can do with this hand."

You blinked, a little shocked, a lot interested. "That almost sounded like a threat."

The corner of his mouth lifted in that infuriatingly sexy smirk. "A dare." When you smirked back, and drew him back down, he murmured against your mouth, "How did I know you'd take a dare?"

The next morning saw you sitting in his kitchen, wearing one of his Henleys and nothing else. A perfectly cooked egg sat on your plate, along with hash browns smothered in cheese and gorgeous golden-brown pancakes. The man was a genius, his arm precise to an insane degree and his control over it awe-inspiring. You didn't know what lucky star you'd fallen under to have found him, but you were thanking it with all your might.

The hallelujah chorus singing in your head only grew louder when you lifted a bite of pancake to your mouth and found it to be perfectly fluffy, with the right give to your teeth. You almost came for the umpteenth time and you made a sound to match. At your purr of pleasure, Bucky's eyes fired, and you knew that only your earlier confession that you were getting sore was stopping him from having you again.

The previous night had left you with no doubt that Bucky wanted you.

The fire in his eyes took on a decidedly green hue, however, when halfway through a laughing, flirty breakfast your phone buzzed on the table between you with a text from Bill the Stalker, as you'd named him both in your head and in your phone. Bucky's jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed even as he sat back in his chair and casually slung his arm over the back.

“You should tell him that you're seeing someone."

You could hear the vague irritation and hoped it wasn't jealousy. You didn't think you could stand it if a man this amazing in every other way was going to drop a red flag like possessiveness straight out of the gate. "Should I?" You spoke the words mildly as you forked up another bite of pancake, but the challenge was clear in both your tone and the raised eyebrow you quirked in his direction. "Am I seeing someone?"

Bucky's grin flashed, pure appreciation. He had a soft spot for sassy women with spines of steel. He only grew more and more infatuated with every minute in your company, every new expression that crossed your face. "I sure as hell hope so." He abandoned his casual posture, leaning forward to take your free hand in his. Playing gently with your fingers, he smiled, his pretty face bashful pink. "I want to see where this goes. Don't you?"

"Yeah." You breathed the word without thinking, but couldn't, wouldn't take it back. He was a dream come true in a dozen different ways and though you knew he had to have his flaws, you found yourself excited to find out what they were. "Yes, I do. Every risk I've taken with you has worked out really well for me so far."

Bucky laughed, delighted with you and the world in general. He didn't know how he lucked out to have collided with you, but he was painfully grateful. He lifted a hand cup your throat, his thumb brushing your face as he pulled you close. He kissed you quickly to begin, flashing you that happy grin, but then he kissed you long and slow, with a warm promise that made your heart race.

As you pulled back, your breath caught at the look of narrow-eyed lust on Bucky's pretty face. "Am I gonna make it out of this apartment today?" Your voice was a wry invitation. You didn't want him to think you were necessarily against the idea.

“Only if you want to.”

Bucky gave up trying to keep his hands off of you, reaching out to drag you into his lap. His palm immediately began skimming up your thigh and under the shirt he'd loaned you. "Fuck it," you laughed as you wrapped your arms around his shoulders. "I was done with breakfast anyway."

Bucky responded by burying his face in your neck as he pushed the plates away to the other side of the table, his other arm tightening around you.

You smiled softly as you remembered how you'd found him.

You looked over your outfit for the night, considering. You wanted it to be perfect, the kind of outfit that would make him crazy to get underneath it. You brushed your hand over soft fabric, the kind that begged to be touched, to be caressed. Underneath you'd be wearing more soft fabric, but the kind that begged to be removed, torn away in rapture.

You were in the bathroom putting a touch of gloss on your lips, just enough to make them look wet, when you heard your front door close and Bucky's shout of greeting. With a quick grin at yourself in the mirror, you whirled to start your standing Friday night date.

Bucky looked up from the takeout he was setting on your coffee table. His bright blue eyes warmed at the sight of you, his face lighting up as it always did. You'd yet to regret a risk you'd taken with him, up to and including moving in together. You woke to those blue eyes every day now, as long as he was home.

You put up with the times he had to be away, because he made it worth it, was always a hundred percent present whenever he was with you. He made it clear that in every way he was yours, that there was nowhere he'd rather be than with you. Maybe it was that you had a stalker when you met, but he'd also always been respectful of your space, never made you feel crowded or afraid. He'd always used that deadly strength and grace to adore you, to protect you.

He hadn't had to intimidate Bill, however, to his chagrin. Maria beat him to it, which salved her irritation that the two of you had found each other without her help.

Bucky's eyebrow quirked up when you stood in the doorway to your living room and looked him over, a secretive smile on your face. "Get your ass over here, pretty girl," he demanded, disbelief that you weren't already in his arms ripe in his tone. His grin flashed like lightning when you almost ran to him, grateful for the jackpot you'd won in each other. You knew it was a simple thing, but a rare one nonetheless, to be so easy together, to be so in tune.

For instance, "Mmm." He buried his face in your neck as he hummed and his hands immediately started wandering over the soft cashmere that covered you, palms skimming over the fabric, fingers kneading at the flesh beneath. You'd known he wouldn't be able, nor would he bother to try, to resist the temptation you'd deliberately presented. "What're you hiding under here, huh?"

His voice was warm and full of fun as his hands went to the tie of the robe he'd given you for your birthday. As was yours when you playfully batted his hands away. "You'll find out." You grabbed his hands in yours and held them as you brushed your lips against his. "Get the movie ready while I grab drinks."

Awhile later, dinner was gone, the credits were rolling, and you were straddling Bucky's hips as he found the silk and lace you were wearing beneath the cashmere when your phones went off, one after the other.

"You look. I'm busy."

His hands were skimming up from your hips to your breasts and back down again as he devoured the sight of you in midnight blue lingerie. His voice was a low, warm growl of desire and you knew it would have to be an emergency to distract him now.

As you leaned back to grab your phone from the coffee table, you sent him a sultry look and let your robe slip over your shoulders and down your arms. Bucky's hands tightened around your hips as his eyes narrowed, glittering, and his mouth curved in that cocky smirk that had gotten you into all of this in the first place. Thank heaven for it.

"Sam and Maria. The club."

You tilted a look of smirking disbelief Bucky's way, rolling your eyes as you tossed the phone back on the coffee table. Your eyes warm and sultry, you let your robe fall all the way off, making him laugh happily and yank you close.

“Fuck the club.”

The End.

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[imgoingtohellsofuckit]

When They Had To Say Goodbye

Jasper Hale x Human!Reader

Warning - mentions of death, angst

Summary - the choice is yours live the last of your days with your family or be turned and spend your eternity with him 

Having a human lover was something Jasper never expected. However when he met them he knew they were the only one for him. Pink lips and soft skin. Hair that shaped their perfect face. Absolutely amazing in his opinion. They met in college in a art class. He had been forced into the class by Alice who wouldn't explain why. When he saw them he finally understood. His soulmate. The soft way they spoke and the passion in their eyes. Jasper couldn't help but indulge his once human emotions. His heart racing for the individual in front of him. He knew this would be his downfall.

When they finally introduced themselves to him Jasper couldn't help but notice their bright eyes. His eyes were drawn to the breathtaking color. And when they smiled he felt Cupid's arrow sink into his very soul.

"I'm Y/n," They say offering their hand to him. He smiles at the beauty in front of him. Stunning. Their soft voice was enough to make Jasper melt right there. "You are?"

"Jasper Hale," He says smiling at them.

"Well Jasper Hale I don't suppose a handsome fellow like yourself would want to join me for lunch?" They offer. They are so bold. Jasper was taken back. Someone so perfect for him.

"I would love to," he says offering his hand. They take it smiling at him. That damn smile. Jasper couldn't get it out of his mind.

One date turned into another and then another. Until it finally started getting serious. Unlike Edward and Bella, Jasper was in no rush to bring them into the mess with the Cullens. Instead he used their time together as an escape from the bloodsucking nightmare. Carlisle made him tell his partner after 6 months. Jasper, reluctant to bright someone so perfect into this disaster, prepared for everything to end. How could someone so perfect want to be with him? A life with no future?

"I don't want you to laugh," Jasper starts, "just listen to me please. Okay?"

"Okay?" They reply tensely.

"I'm a vampire."

They chuckle lightly. But upon seeing Jasper's stern expression they realize there wasn't a single joke in the statement.

"Suddenly you never eating makes sense," They reply, "you're the first boyfriend I've had that hasn't cleared my fridge."

"You aren't mad?" Jasper asks.

"I'm surprised but I love you Jasper," They tell him, "a couple pointy teeth and lack of a pulse won't stop that. You're my soulmate." Jasper smiles releasing a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Those are the best words. He didn't expect those. He surely thought they would want to end this. "You okay?"

"So much more now," Jasper says as he moves to their said tackling them in soft kisses. Showing his appreciation in each one. He loves them so much. More than he'd ever be able to show.

They met the other Cullens. Bonding with them. Alice was their favourite by a long shot but they found comfort in Bella's attempts to help them adjust. They loved the family and blended well. After they first met Rose had instructed Jasper to propose before he let the only good one go.

"I mean it Jasper of all the people you've chased they are the only one that is worth it!" Rose exclaims, "if you let them go I'll kill you."

"Trust me i have no such intentions," Jasper says as he shows his family the ring. Alice squeals excitedly as the rest show their varying excitement.

"The oldest one finally settling down?" Emmet says clapping his hand against Jaspers back. "I'm proud of you dude."

"Took you long enough," Bella teases lightly.

"Not everyone fast tracks their entire relationship the way you guys did," Rose says giving Bella a slight glare.

"Can I be a braidsmaid!" Renseime asks him. Jasper chuckles.

"Well I have to ask first," Jasper says, "I've got it all planned out. But I'm gonna need you all to keep it a secret."

And they did. So when Jasper and his partner flew out to his loves hometown Y/n didn't suspect a thing.

It wasn't until Jasper move to kneel before them that they even realized what was happening.

"Jasper," They exclaim as they move their hand to cover their mouth. "Oh my god."

"We've only known each other for a short amount of time but I know that you are my soulmate," Jasper says as he grips their hand, "you are an amazing person. Breath taking, ridiculously sweet. Everything about you is just so perfect. You complete me Y/n. In all my years and I've had a lot. I've never met someone who makes me feel the way you make me feel. All the love and the joy you bring me. I want to spend the rest of my eternity with you. So will you marry me?"

"Yes god of course I'll marry you!"

They where amazing. Jasper knew that.

The wedding was sweet and simple. A forest wedding with all the cullens and their friends blending with Y/n's family. A blend of vampires, werewolves, and a humans. Supernatural would be jealous at this gathering. Jasper and Y/n shared loving vows. Their families couldn't be more happy for them.

The honey moon was over too fast and when they rejoined normal life everyone had one question. When was Jasper going to turn them?

Jasper and his spouse had never actually talked about it. They didn't want to. Jasper didn't really want to change them he knew the horrors they would have to go through and if he could avoid it he wanted to. But he also didn't want to live without them. Y/n on the other hand simply wasn't worried about it just yet. They had things they wanted to do first. They wanted a family and to go tan on faraway beaches. They wanted to taste food around the world first. When Jasper finally reached out to ask when or if  they would want to be turned Y/n have a list to Jasper. A list of everything she wanted to do first. Some where small things like eat the entire menu of their favorite restaurant, others were things like sky dive.

"You made a bucket list to go into your eternal life?" He asks them. Y/n nods their head.

"Yeah," They reply, "I mean technically I'm dying. And everything I want to do I won't be able to once you turn me. Unlike the rest of you I get to pick when I'm turned. So after this list is done I'll turn."

"It'll take years," Jasper replies, "It's perfect." They give him a smile.

To kick off the list Y/n quit their job. They hated the job. Like really hated their job. So they left in dramatic fashion. Crossing off item number one. Next they went to their favorite restaurant. Bella and Edward tagged along. Y/n sat and ate the entire menu. Or at least tried it all. They didn't regret a thing even after throwing it all up moments after getting in the car.

Next they went to Italy and tried hundreds of dishes. They tanned on the beach with their human best friend while Jasper stayed at the hotel room. They competed in sports and spent way too much time and money on changing their hair and getting piercing and tattoos.

The list was almost done the night everything changed.

Jasper had noticed his partner losing weight. He didn't understand why but his family assured him it was only natural. And his partner was still smiling. His worry died as fast as it started. But then more started happening. Soon it wasn't just the losing weight but they were getting sick more often. But this newest thing had raised every red flag.

"Jasper," They call from the couch. As he moves he sees them sitting in pure agony blood gushing from their nose. Jasper starts to move towards them but the sweep of hunger over him causes him to stay back. "Jas?"

"I'm sorry," He says softly, "I'll call Carlisle." They nod as they whip away the blood. Too weak to move from the floor where they fell in the first place. Jasper kept his distance while they waited for the older vampire. Trying to comfort his spouse from the kitchen. He could tell they were upset. They were suffering and it was killing Jasper not to be able to help. But the blood. The damn blood.

"We need to get them to the hospital," Carlisle says as he looks over the shrunken figure. "Now." Carlisle hands a rag to them and they wipe away the blood. The nature to protect his soul mate overrules the bloodlust. Jasper rushes towards his mate taking them and helping them into the car. At the hospital they automatically get her a room. Jaspers left in the waiting room with Esme and Alice who had come to help him. Both watching him carefully.

"I just- I can't believe I did that," Jasper says softly, "I left them there to sit alone because I was hungry."

"It's for the beat," Alice says softly, "if you bite them-"

"I'd never do that," Jasper says in soft terror, "Not like that. Not to hurt them."

"Shhhh we know that," Esme says softly, "we know that."

"Mr. Hale?" The doctor calls. Beside them Carlisle stands looking slightly guilty. Jasper stands moving towards him.

"How are they?" Jasper asks at once, "are they okay?"

The doctor looks to Carlisle.

"I won't lie," The doctor says softly, "their condition is a lot worse than we first thought."

"Can I see them?" Jasper asks at once. The doctors exchange a look then nod. Carlisle leads Jasper back to the room. The first thing the blonde sees is Y/n connected to machines. "Y/n oh my god-" Tears well in his eyes. He moves to their side.

"Leukemia," Carlisle says softly, "it's bad and has spread throughout her body- Jasper I need you to listen to me carefully. The doctor that has been taking care of her is a friend of mine. He's like us- he offered to turn her. I'm leaving it up to you. But with how bad her condition is if she isn't turned she'll die." Jaspers golden eyes widen in the shock. The couple have been avoiding this day and as if a cruel joke by fate what they expected to face years in the future is here now.

"This is their decision," Jasper says softly. His body fighting the venom filled tears. "I can't make it for them."

"Jasper they'll die-"

"It's not my decision," Jasper says more sternly this time, "we have to wait for them to make it."

"Are you prepared for if they say no?" Carlisle asks. His voice his quiet. Jasper doesn't reply. His body tenses in reaction. Truly he isn't prepared for either decision.

"I have to be," Jasper says finally, "if they would rather have their remaining time then I'll be there for them."

"It's gonna be hard Jas," Carlisle says softly.

"Well that's what I signed up for," Jasper says with a sigh, "when will they wake up?"

"Soon," Carlisle says looking to Y/n. "I'll send Alice in. She's better at the support then me." Jasper isn't listening. Instead he's letting the pain and fear from his partners body seep into his. How did he not notice this before? Was he so distracted by the soft smiles that he wasn't paying attention? God how could he let his partner suffer like this.

"Jas?" A tired voice croaks out. He snaps from his thoughts to the worn figure. Y/n. He moves to their side at once.

"Y/n," He says softly, "darlin."

"God that accent is hot," They say giving him an exhausted smirk. Jasper chuckles sadly. "It's bad huh?"

"Leukemia advance stages," Jasper replies softly, "Carlisle says they give you a couple weeks. They caught it way too late."

"Man nature really wants to punish us for the whole vampire human shit," They say softly, "so I'm gonna die Huh?"

"There are options," Jasper starts, "treatment might work but it's a small chance and it will make you feel worse, and well-" Jasper doesn't even want to say it.

"I could be turned?" They ask softly. Their voice barely a whisper.

"Carlisle or the doctor could do it," Jasper admits, "Carlisle is a good friend of the doctor. That's why he brought you here. You won't be able to finish your list but you'll live." Jasper can't bring himself to look at his partner. "But It'll be unpleasant. It hurts like a bitch. You'll have to go without saying goodbye to your friends and family." Tears well in Y/n's eyes. They always thought that they have a better chance to say goodbye to her family. But she can't leave Jasper. It's selfish but damn they went through a shitty life and finally found one thing that made them happy yet the universe wouldn't leave them alone. How's that fair? "It's up to you."

"Why can't you turn me?" The moment the question leaves their mouth they want to take it back. It's a stupid question.

"I can't stop myself," Jasper says softly, "I'd end up killing you." They bite their lip.

"Will you stay with me when they do it?" They asks softly, "please Jas I'm scared."

That destroyed Jasper. Those words made him feel like losing it right there.

"I'll be right here," Jasper says giving them a soft smile.

"Then I want to be turned," they say softly, "just- let me call my mom first." He nods. They dial the number. Explaining a story about a car accident how they didn't have much time left. Sobs left their body. Jasper felt so much guilt in house body. If only he noticed it faster. He'd be able to give them more time with their family. With their friends. Jasper stepped out and told Carlisle.

"I'll do it," Carlisle says softly, "if she's afraid then it'll make her more comfortable to see someone she trusts."

"Fine," Jasper says softly, "she wants me there."

"Are you going to be able to handle that?" Carlisle asks.

"I have to," Jasper says softly, "I'm having her turn herself into a vampire against all her better judgement. She has to leave everything behind the least I can do is be there for her."

"I understand."

As Jasper returns to her room she has her knees buried in her chest. Sobs escaping her body. She's terrified and devastated. Her emotions practically suffocating him. How could one person feel so much? How could they handle this?

"You don't have to If you don't want to," Jasper says as he takes their hand, "you don't have to be turned."

"I want to spend eternity with you," they reply as they wipe their eyes, "I just didn't think it would be this hard to let go." He moves pulling them into a soft kiss. Tears streaming along his lovers face now smearing along his cheeks.

God how did Edward do this? Or think he could rather. Every single part of this makes Jasper want to rip his head off his shoulders. It hurts so bad. Their emotions, Jaspers own. God he just wants to scream enough for both of them. As he pulls away Y/n smiles at him. It's weak. Conflicted. But purely them.

"I'm ready," They say softly.

"Okay," Jasper says softly. He grips their hand tightly. Carlisle enters the room giving the pair a soft smile.

"Are you sure about this?" Carlisle asks the human. They nod. Jasper looks away as Carlisle moves to bite his spouse. Loud painful scream leaves their body. He feels the pure agony seep into his soul. He wants to puke. Not that anything would even come up. Carlisle pulls away and wipes his mouth. Then quickly addresses their wound. wrapping tight bandages. Jasper feels their grip loosen until it completely disappears. He starts to panic but Carlisle holds him back.

"Give them some time. The venom takes a minute," Carlisle assures him, "in the mean time you need to get some things for them to eat. You better prepare to deal with a newborn."

"I know how to handle them better than anyone else," Jasper says looking to the other man. "Trust me."

Jasper wasn't prepared for it to take three days. Three days for his partner to heal. To fully change.

Carlisle brought them home. And when Jaspers eyes set one them. A smile spread across his face. His mate. His other half. Alive and well - or well neither of those. They aren't gone. But they still are dead. He forgets about that part. Guilt hits him. They move placing a hand on Jaspers cheek. Suddenly his negative emotions are washed away. He's happy?

"You Can influence emotions?" He asks. They nod. He smirks at them. Slightly proud of the power. "I love you. I'm sorry this all happened so fast."

"Life is hard and unpredictable," They reply, "we knew we'd have to face this one day. And at the end I'm glad I still get to be with you." He smiles then moves connecting his lips to theirs.

He wouldn't let them go. He'd hold onto them for forever.

[feotakahari]

The Void and the Shadow: The Prophecy

Setting up the plot.

It didn’t take long to gather up the rest of the Church. We were isolated, but we did have Internet. Many of us had already seen the accounts of towns and districts cut off from the world, visible but somehow unreachable, while half-rotting figures killed everyone inside. We were all desperate for an explanation.

The Void is our mother, Tuwotahl began. She is nothing. She birthed almost everything. She loves all that is not her.

The Shadow is strange. The Void didn’t birth it. It appeared. It hates complexity. It prefers identical people to people who are different. It prefers no life at all to identical people. In the end it wants no worlds. No stars. No Void. Nothing at all but Shadow.

We fought it with this. She held up the shard. We trapped it. The Seventh Legion had a prophecy that said it would escape. A Savior would come and destroy it forever.

“What if I’m not your Savior?” Allie interrupted.

Then your world will die.

Images flashed through my mind, brief glimpses of blue-haired women fighting blue-haired zombies.

The Seventh Legion had several candidates. They were ready to fight the Shadow. They died. We looked for Saviors on other worlds. Those Saviors died. Our world died with them.

They said I was too young to fight or search. I stayed until the Shadow tore down our shelter. I followed its army through a portal here. I may be the last one who knows the prophecy.

Maybe the Savior won’t know the prophecy. Maybe she’s on a world I’ve never seen. But I’m alive. I’ll fight the shadow. Whether I win or die is up to fate. What’s your fate?

���Fuck, I’ll do it,” Allie said. “I don’t care about your prophecy, but those things were hurting people. When I stopped them, it felt good, like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing my whole life. Just give me a real weapon and tell me who to hit with it.”

Tuwotahl opened up a portal with the shard. Follow.

“Not alone,” I said before I could stop myself.

Tuwotahl made a wordless exclamation of confusion, and the portal vanished.

“Not alone,” I repeated, forging ahead as if I knew what I was doing. “You’re fighting the literal Devil and his army of zombies, and you’re doing it with two people? Why not three? Or four, or five, or all of us? I’m not your Savior, but I’m here to help. Who’s with me?”

The first to step up was Nina, another girl from the Church. We didn’t have much in common, but I knew her casually just from proximity. “I--I’ll go,” she said. “I want to do this.”

The next was Mr. Pritchard, one of the history teachers from the school. “You need some adults on this.”

“I don’t think I can fight,” Father Hayes said, gesturing with his cane. “But if there’s anything else you need me for, I’ll do my best. If nothing else, I can offer you food and a spare room whenever you come back.”

More and more people volunteered, and Tuwotahl just smiled at us. I understand. Perhaps this is your fate too.

If I’d thought harder then, I might have realized what the Savior really was.

The Armory

On the other side of Tuwotahl’s portal, there was a windowless concrete room filled wall-to-wall with weapons. The floor was dusty, but the weapons themselves looked recently polished.

“Huh,” Allie commented. “Not a lot of guns.”

The Shadow won’t run from a gunshot, Tuwotahl explained. The noise draws more and more. Save your shots for an emergency. Then run for your life.

“Fair enough,” Allie said. She wandered off to the side, investigating a staff with blades at either end.

I took more of an interest in what wasn’t there. Over here, an empty space among a set of absurdly large swords. Over there, a missing warhammer, one of the smaller ones. (Tuwotahl’s? It did look small compared to these massive hunks of metal.) Which of these spaces were empty by design, and which had been claimed by failed Saviors? 

The Savior candidates’ weapons are on display in the shelter, Tuwotahl told me. A memorial for the fallen. It’s very far from here. The Shadow already found it.

“Did you just read my mind?” I asked.

She chuckled. Have no fear. I can’t receive unless you send. I followed where your eyes looked. She hefted her warhammer one-handed, like it was just a tiny stick rather than a massive metal implement. I took this from the display when the Shadow attacked. I knew the woman who used it. She was kind. She deserved better. All of them did.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t think of what else to say.

It was fate, she said simply. I try not to get angry about it. Sometimes I fail.

In the background, I could hear Allie and Nina arguing over who would get the bladed staff. It sounded like Nina was winning. To avoid both the noise and the uncomfortable discussion, I wandered over to the projectile weapons, and Tuwotahl followed. Past the guns and the longbows, just before some kind of throwing blades, I found the other love of my life: an incredibly tiny crossbow.

“How would you even kill a zombie with this?” I asked out loud.

Poison, Tuwotahl said. Fast-acting. One shot makes them unable to move. Two or three may stop a heart.

“You can poison a zombie?” I asked.

They’re alive in a sense. Their hearts still beat. But it’s simpler to crush their skulls.

Mr. Pritchard was nearby, carefully examining a long-barreled rifle. Tuwotahl turned to say something to him, but I interrupted. “What kind of poison is it? Is it a painkiller, or something more like curare, where you’re immobile but you still feel pain? And how do you make it?”

I’ve seen the plant it’s made from, Tuwotahl told me. I could show it to you. But why would you want this tiny toy?

“It’s quiet, it’s ranged, it’s lightweight, and you said one shot can stop a zombie,” I told her. “The bolts look simple enough to make, too. I just need a ready supply of poison to make it practical. And maybe a dosage guide. Though if the goal is to kill zombies, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a high dosage . . .”

Tuwotahl was staring at me. So were Allie and Mr. Pritchard. The Church members weren’t bothered, though. They were used to me by now.

You have to understand the way I worshiped. The way to understand Rembrandt is to look at Rembrandt’s paintings. The way to understand God is to look at the world. But the world’s awfully big, and you’d have to be God yourself to understand everything in it. So I focused in on the biological and chemical actions that make living things function. And in biochemistry, I particularly loved to learn about medicine, and what substances could make you sick or repair your injuries.

This was why I wasn’t homeschooled like everyone else in the church. Father Hayes decided early on that I needed better instruction than they could provide.

You keep surprising me, Tuwotahl finally said. I’ll bring you a book of herbology. I’ll need to translate it for you.

“Thank you, Miss Tuwotahl,” I told her. I held up the crossbow. “In the meantime, is there anywhere I can practice firing this thing?”

The First Mission

We couldn’t delay long to learn how to use our weapons. Many of the school survivors had family or friends in one of the areas under attack by the zombies. One called his family, but couldn’t get an answer. Another refused to call--“What if the zombies hear it ring?” Tuwotahl was worried for our safety, of course, but Allie was determined to help, and in the early days, Tuwotahl rarely overruled her.

We chose one girl at random. I didn’t know her well, and I’ve forgotten her name. Tuwotahl let her use the shard to make a portal to her home.

Stay nearby, Tuwotahl reminded us. I can portal us out. Then she led us through the portal, and we followed.

We exited into a suburban dining room, split almost down the middle. The side we were on was torn and ransacked. There was a chair split on the floor, stained with thick black blood across the back. But the far side of the room was untouched. Whoever had fought here, there was a line they’d avoided crossing.

Allie tried to walk across the line. I didn’t understand what happened, but somehow she was turned around, walking back towards us. She turned and tried to cross again, and was turned back again. She paused for a few seconds, then slowly, slowly backstepped towards the line, and suddenly she was backstepping away from it.

No one can leave without a portal, Tuwotahl told her. Not until we kill the Shadowtouched.

Allie started to say something, but she was interrupted by a sound I’d never heard before, a sort of panting screech, like someone was trying to scream at the same time they were sobbing.

I followed it into the living room. It came from the girl who lived in the house. She was staring at the blood on the floor. Some black, most red, all dried. There was an awful lot of it. How much blood had been lost here? I didn’t think a single person could bleed this much and still live. But if there were two people, maybe both . . . no, maybe one . . . No, I was lying to myself. The girl already knew what had happened here. That’s why she was making that sound.

Most of the time, I’m good at not caring. I can remember the blood and the pain like it wasn’t real or didn’t matter. But on the bad nights, sometimes I hear that sound.

Someone else heard it, too, because through the living room window, I heard a voice begin to sing. It was low and rich, and I couldn’t understand the words. It seemed to harmonize with the girl’s sobbing.

Then it turned into a shriek of undiluted rage, and my knees buckled.

Portal! Now! Tuwotahl called.

The voice from outside was still shrieking, and the girl was shrieking with it. She’d fallen just like me, but unlike me, she wasn’t getting up. Somehow, I knew she wasn’t going to. The voice had found a pain as great as its own. It was never going to let her go.

I stumbled to the window and forced it open. There were innumerable figures standing on the grass and in the street. Most of them were rotting, bloody, or both. But my blurring vision and pounding ears could still tell there was one they were centered around, leading this demented composition.

I aimed the pocket crossbow, and I took the shot.

I meant to hit it in the chest, but I aimed too high. The bolt pierced through its throat and silenced it forever.

Tuwotahl had to carry me back to the portal. Allie carried the other girl. I wasn’t unconscious. I couldn’t process what I’d just seen and done.

The other girl stayed at the church from then on. She never went out to hunt zombies again. As for me, I was out hunting again two days later. The creatures--the people--that had done this had to be fought. Not fear nor sorrow nor the Sixth Commandment would stand in my way.

[cmncisspnandmore]

Boy Wonder and Family, Spencer Reid X Reader

Request: Hi possible for a spencer x reader with teenagers?.. that’d be so awesome ! 🙈😁

I hope this is what you were looking for! Enjoy. I might make another part depending on how this goes. This is the longest fic i’ve written and i really enjoyed it! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hello?” Spencer put his cell phone to his ear, turning away from JJ, who sat across from him.

“Dad, mom is being totally unreasonable. She won't let me and Lucas go to this really cool party. I told her we would be home by midnight!” His 15 year old daughter whined into the phone.

“I'm on a case, you need to talk to her about it. Besides you know that most of those things have alcohol involved and if she says no it's because she wants to make sure you’re safe.” He replied and ran his fingers through his hair. It was hard on all of you when he was away on a case. Not that the team fully understood what was going on.

“But Dad!” Your daughter whines again.

“I’m sorry, i know you want to but it's up to her.” He sighed, closing his eyes.

“I HATE YOU BOTH!” Your daughter screamed into the phone, and she promptly burst into tears.  You watched her sit on the couch talking into your phone trying to convince her father to overrule your verdict. She stood up from the couch, and glared at you.

“I never get to do anything. It's all your fault. You guys make me miserable. I wish you weren't my parents.” She sniffled and threw the phone at you. You caught it against your chest, and tried to keep a straight face as your daughter stormed off into her room.

On the plane Spencer flinched as he heard your daughter yell at you, and say the mean things she didn't mean to you. He held the phone slightly away from his ear, as the door slammed on the other end.

You put the phone to your ear, “Hello?” you softly ask. You weren't sure if Spencer had heard what was going on at home. You took a shaky breath, and swiped your fingers under your eyes, wiping the tears that managed to slide down your cheeks.

“Hey,” Spencer whispered, he had a gut feeling that you were upset about what your daughter Atlas had said.

“I told her not to call you, i know how you feel about being called on a case. She didn't listen, we had a huge argument earlier about this stupid party. She feels like i'm taking her teenage years away from her. “ You tuck your knees up on the couch and pull a pillow into your lap.

“She doesn't mean what she said. She's just mad that we put our foot down. She's got to learn that we are only doing this to keep her safe. She's going to rebel against us. Its typical behavior for them.” Spencer closed the book he had on his lap, and JJ looked over at him. She was trying to figure out who he was talking to. As far as she knew the only people Spencer ever talked to was his mother and her doctors.

“Yeah… I guess..” You mumble and pick at a loose thread.

“I have to go, I will call you when we land okay? I love you” Spencer subconsciously rubs at his left ring finger. His wedding band was safely tucked away in his desk drawer. You understood why he didn't wear it at work. He dealt with a bunch of weirdos and dangerous people. You didn't feel comfortable bringing your family into that. He kept you and your two kids from everyone at work, even his team.

“Kay.. I love you too Spence.” You reply before pulling your phone away from your ear and walking towards your bedroom. As you pass by Atlas’s room you peek in, she's laying on her bed, her headphones in and a book open in her lap. She glances up at you as you peek in, and she glares at you. Pulling one headphone from her ear she gives you a look.

“What mother?” She snaps, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I'm going to bed, I just wanted to say goodnight. I love you Lissy.” You smiles sadly at the angry teenager.

“Yeah whatever.” She puts her headphone back in her ear and goes back to her book. You close her bedroom door and walk to your son Lucas’s door. You knock softly and open it, peering around the door you see Lucas is sitting at his desk, pouring over his school books. He was so much like Spencer, there was no denying he was going to do great things when he was out of school.

“Lucas? Hey buddy.” You smile and your son spins his chair around. He looks at your for a moment before standing up and walking to you.

“Hey mom, i heard you and Atlas earlier.” He glances down at you, he runs a hand through his hair.

“I'm sorry you had to hear that.” You mumble and tuck a strand of your H/C hair behind your ear.

“Its okay, i understand why you won't let us go. I know dad wouldn't let us go either.” He shrugs and puts his hand on your shoulder before leaning in to kiss your cheek.

“I just wanted to say goodnight. I love you sweetheart.” You run your thumb across his cheek and he smiles at you, before going back to his desk.

“I love you too mom. Goodnight”

You close the door and make your way to your room where you quickly shower and put on a pair of silk pajamas before laying your head down on your pillow and falling asleep.

~~~

Your alarm blares, and you quickly turn it off, you sit up in bed and rub your hands over your (E/C) eyes. Giving one last stretch you quickly get dressed in a pair of jeans and a black shirt, you grab one of Spencers cardigans and pull it on, the house chilly in the wee hours of the morning.

You make your way to the kitchen passing by both your children's closed the doors. Your automatic coffee pot filling the hallway with the enticing scent of a much needed cup of coffee. You make yourself a cup of coffee and sit at the breakfast bar, pulling out your laptop you go over a few emails for work. After an hour of replying to emails you stand up. You felt bad about your fight with Atlas the night before, maybe a breakfast of her choice will make up for not letting them go to the party.

You go to her bedroom door and knock. No answer, which was weird because she was always a light sleeper, even as an infant. You knock again. Still nothing. You twist the handle and push the door open, and your heart drops. Her bed is empty and made perfectly, like no one had slept in it last night.

“ATLAS?” You call and look around her room, but her stuff is gone, her phone and her wallet. She was nowhere to be found in her room. You try to swallow the panic that is bubbling up in your throat and go to Lucas’s door and the same sight greets you in his room. Your children are nowhere to be found in the house, you search it top and bottom. There was no note or indication either of them had been here last night after you went to bed.

You grab your phone and call their cellphones, but they both go straight to voicemail. You're trying to keep your cool, you call their friends parents and they all report that they haven't seen them, or heard from them. You heart hammers in your chest and you dial Spencer crying.

He answers on the third ring, “Hello?”

“The-They’re gone.. I can't find them. Oh god S-Spencer i don't know where they are.” You cry into the phone.

“Y/n? What? What's going on? Who’s gone?” Spencer asks, stopping in his tracks as the team continues to walk into the police station they were working out of.

“The twins… Oh god Spencer i went to bed and they must've gone to that party after i fell asleep.” You sit down on the couch, your chest heaving. You felt sick, the two most important people in your life were missing.

“Its okay… We… We’ll find them.” Spencers heart feels like it has dropped onto the concrete beneath his feet.

“We have to find them.” You cry into the receiver.

“Just stay at the house. I will be on the first flight back.” He tells you before hanging up and runs into the station. He stops in front of Hotch, his eyes wild.

“Hotch i have to go home. Now. Like right now.” Spencer rushes out, and grabs his curly hair with shaky hands. Hotch stands up straight, and places a hand on the young profilers arm.

“Reid, take a deep breath, what's going on?” Hotch asks, it was very rare that he saw Reid this bent out of shape.

“My.. my kids. They’re missing.” Spencers eyes fill with tears and the senior profiler shakes his head not believing what he just heard.

“Kids? Spencer you don't have any kids.” This gets the rest of the teams attention and JJ comes over, followed by Morgan.

“What about kids?” JJ asks, looking between Hotch and Reid.

“Yes, i do. I have twins, they’re 15 and their names are Atlas and Lucas. I got a girl pregnant when i was 18, her name is Y/N. She's beautiful we’ve been married for 16 years.” Spencer rambles out.

“Why didn't you tell us? You never wear a ring.” Morgan crosses his arms over his chest, confused by the genius’s confession.

“I-I didn't tell you guys because i didn't want anyone to go after them. You see what we deal with, the people we catch. I couldn't risk them being dragged into this. Please, i have to go find them.” He cries, and JJ wraps her arms around him.

“We’ll help you find them.” She reassures him. After a moment Hotch calls over the police chief and explains that he will have another team be out to help them catch the Unsub. The team quickly packs up and is back on the jet in record time. The team is all sitting around the table, when organ pulls out his phone and dials Garcia.

“What do you have for me sugar?” She quips into the phone.

“Hey baby girl i need you pull up all the information you can on a Lucas Reid and an Atlas Reid.” Morgan replies, and Garcia pauses for a moment.

“Oh my god.” She whispers, “Boy Wonder! I didn't know you had two gorgeous kids.” She gushes.

“I’ll explain later Garcia, but right now i need to know where their cellphones were last.” Reid wrings his hands in his lap and Rossi who hasn't said anything on the situation claps a hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll find them kid.” He smiles at Spencer and Garcia taps away on her keyboard.

~~~

Back at home you can't wait for Spencer to call you back any longer and you dial his number. He picks up as you are putting on your coat.

“Y/N? Have they come home?” Spencer rushes out.

“No, I'm gonna go look for them.” You mumble and grab your keys your hands shaking so violently you almost drop them on the tile floor.

“No, don't go to the BAU. We land in 10 minutes, i’ll meet you there. I don't want you going out there by yourself.” Spencer instructs and you take a shaky breath. Your babies were out there somewhere, and you knew you wouldn't be any help if you went off by yourself.

“O-okay.” you hang up and get in your car and drive to the BAU, keeping your eyes open looking for either of your children. You pull up to the BAU 15 minutes later and you see Spencer standing outside the door, with him are the people who you assume are his team. You pull your car into a parking spot and jump out. You dash across the parking lot calling his name. He turns just as you get to him and you launch yourself into his arms. You turn into a sobbing, shaking mess in his arms.

“Shhh. I've got you. We’ll find them. The team will find them.” He mumbles into your hair. You pull back and nod, looking up into his brown eyes.

“Hi Y/N, Im agent Rossi. Why don't you come inside with me and we can get a cup of coffee and tell me about when you last saw them.” Rossi reaches for your shoulder and guides you into the building. Spencer grabs your hand and gives it a squeeze as you make your way up to the offices.

“GUYS! I FOUND THEM!” A blonde in purple heels runs towards you as you make your way down the hall to the conference room.

~~~

“FBI!” The team knocks the front door to the old house in. Rossi, Hotch JJ and Morgan push into the house. Old beer cans litter the floor and it reeks of mold and stale air. They round the corner and they’re huddled under the table in the abandoned kitchen are your kids.

“Under here!” They call and JJ and Morgan kneel down and offer a hand to them.

“Are you Lucas and Atlas?” Morgan asks and Atlas nods, her eyes wide. Her clothes ripped and hair a mess.

“C’mon your parents are outside. I’m Agent Morgan i work with your dad.” He smiles and helps your daughter to her feet. They guide them out of the old house and towards the SUV that you and Spencer are waiting in. You see them as they walk out of the house and you jump out of the black suv and run up to them.

“Oh my god.” You cry, and your kids run to you, they launch themselves into your arms and you all sink to the ground and cry. Spencer runs up to your crumpled forms and your kids grab onto him as well.

“Daddy i was so scared.” You daughter cries.

“I'm so sorry, we won't sneak out again.” Your son cries into your shirt.

“Please don't be mad at us. We’ll listen to you from now on. Im so sorry mom and dad.” Atlas cries and grips the front of your husbands shirt.

“What happened to you guys?” Reid asks, looking over his children as the rest of the team watches from the hood of the car.

“We snuck out to that party, and then there was this creepy guy who showed up and said he knew who we were. I don't know who he was. We left right after that and then he was following us so we hid in here, but i dropped my phone in the woods and Lucas’s was dead.” You daughter explains through her tears.

“We didn't know what to do so we just hid. We thought if we left he would get us.” Lucas explains, and you help both of your kids into the waiting cars.

“You’re safe now. We’ll find that guy okay? Let's go home.” Spencer guides you to the car and you climb into the second row as your kids sit in the third row.

JJ and Morgan climb into the front seats and the team makes its way to your house after Spencer gives them the address. You lean your head on Spencer's shoulder and he wraps his arm around your waist and pulls you close. He presses a kiss into your hair and exhaustion from the events of the past day sets in and you drift off to sleep against his side. Spencer turns around and glances at your children who have fallen asleep against each other, worn out from their night in the old house. He turns back to look out the windshield, and Morgan meets his gaze in the rearview.

“We’ll find who was after your kids.”  And with that Spencer nods and pulls you a little closer as the drive continues.

~~~~

[violethowler]

The Winding Detour: An analysis of Shiro’s Character Arc in Seasons 1-7

A common accusation I’ve been hearing ever since Season 6 came out is that the EPs didn’t know what they were doing with Shiro. That they never wanted to bring him back in the first place and just kept shuffling him around to give him something to do.

Not only is this contradicted by several interviews with the EPs, but when you actually look at Shiro’s story over the course of the series, particularly with the added context of his backstory that we get in S7E1 A Little Adventure, there was a clear arc in Shiro’s character from Point A to Point B. It’s not immediately obvious because there were a few unplanned zigzags in the middle.

In a Den of Geek interview in August 2017, LM and JDS say “We weren’t allowed to from the executives. That’s it. He had to come back. That’s pretty much it. We wanted him to be gone for a much longer period of time and we weren’t allowed to.” He was going to be gone longer. Not that hey never wanted to bring him back. JDS also later in the interview adds “Concessions have to be made and we’re still happy with where the story has gone, it just wasn’t our original idea.”

Leaving aside the fact that they’ve said they’re happy with where the story has gone even if it wasn’t their original idea, the biggest indicator that they knew what they were doing with Shiro was the fact that when you look back at Seasons 3 – 7 and connect all the dots not just in the show itself but in the similarities and references to the original 80s cartoon, there is a clear trajectory in Shiro’s arc that led to him serving as the captain of the Atlas.

Debates on the ethics of the clone merger aside, the end result of the Clone Shiro storyline, when combined with the revelations about Shiro’s illness in Season 7, presents his story from Seasons 3 – 6 as meta commentary on how DOTU adapted two similar-looking GoLion characters into a single person via the character of Sven Holgorsen. (Credit to radioactivesupersonic for that analysis, I did not come up with that): The GoLion version, Takashi Shirogane, died and was replaced by his previously-unknown to the audience identical brother Ryou Shirogane. The DOTU version, Sven, survives and returns to the team after a long absence. Voltron: Legendary Defender manages to combine both versions of the story into a single character with all the relevant memories.  

And I want to expand on the DOTU/GoLion connections some more. In Beast King GoLion, Takashi Shirogane serves as the mentor for Akira Kogane, Keith’s original GoLion counterpart, and pilots the blue lion before his untimely death. Following his introduction later in the series, Ryou Shirogane serves as a key leader in the resistance against the Galra. In DOTU, both Shirogane siblings are adapted into the character of Sven Holgersson, who instead of dying as Takashi did, was sent to a hospital planet to recover, before being recaptured by the Drule (Galra). He escapes with the help of Romelle, and together they lead a significant rebel cell in the fight against the Drule Empire.

And in Voltron: Legendary Defender, Shiro starts off piloting a Voltron lion, before outside circumstances force him to step down from the role. Clone Shiro cannot initially pilot the Black Lion, and so becomes a leader of the Coalition, helping to coordinate between multiple rebel factions. Then Keith leaves the team, Clone Shiro pilots the Black Lion for a while, and then everything in Season 6 happens, and Shiro and his clone are fused into a single consciousness. After returning to Earth, Shiro quickly rises to become one of the highest-ranking people (if not the highest) at the Galaxy Garrison and serves as one of the leaders of the Coalition following the liberation of Earth in Season 7.

Whether other possible storylines for Shiro would have been better, or how well this storyline was pulled off, is a matter of individual opinion. But it is inaccurate to say that the writers had no plan for Shiro when his arc so closely mirrors that of his DOTU counterpart. 

Popular interpretations of the line “I don’t see what’s more fulfilling than being a Paladin” assumed that this meant either Shiro was supposed to be the Black Paladin permanently, or that Clone Shiro would find something that would help him form his own identity. But there are multiple different ways that line can be interpreted, and a lot of fans have interpreted it based on what they wanted to happen, rather than what did happen.

In the context of the finished show – not in hypothetical early season 7 drafts with Black Paladin Shiro that the showrunners alluded to in a post-S7 interview, but the show we have on screen – this line is a type of foreshadowing known as Tempting Fate: where a character makes a hypothetical or rhetorical comment or question and is soon proven wrong.

Lines that typically tempt fate include:

“__ is just a myth” and variations thereof. The myth soon turns out to be completely real.  

“Nothing could stop us now”. Something comes along to stop them.

“That sounds easy”. It turns out to be a lot harder.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Do I even need to say it? 

“What could be worse then __?” Something turns out to be worse than __.

“Can this day get any worse?” Yes, it can. 

To break down a specific example, let’s take a look at The Incredibles:

On their wedding night, Elastigirl tells her husband that if their marriage is going to work, they need to be ready to support each other through thick and thin, the good times and the bad. To which Mr. Incredible responds:

“We’re superheroes. What could happen?”

We then immediately cut to a newsreel announcement detailing how the lawsuits levied against Mr. Incredible for injuries inflicted in the process of saving people’s lives resulted in the government legislating all superheroes into retirement and forcing Mr. Incredible and his wife to give up crime fighting. 

While the line is typically used for negative consequences, there are examples where the character being proven wrong is a good thing. A common example would be someone saying, “it can’t get any better than this” and then quickly find out that it actually can get even better.

So, when Shiro says “I don’t see what’s more fulfilling than being a Paladin,” narrative convention dictates that by the time the series is over, he will have found something that is more fulfilling to him than being a Paladin.

And in Season 7, he does.

S7E1 A Little Adventure reveals that despite his fame as the youngest pilot to fly a solo mission to space, the Garrison staff had repeatedly doubted him because of his illness. He was seen as a liability, as not being capable of flying the Kerberos mission despite the records he’s broken and the things he’s achieved. Sam Holt had to argue with Sanda on his behalf just for him to be allowed to fly the mission, and even his then boyfriend was telling him, “you can’t do this. You’re too weak. You’re not capable enough for this.” Though Adam didn’t put it in as many words as Sanda did, the message Shiro received was the same.

But S7E11 Trial by Fire is where things come full circle. He’s back on Earth, his illness healed, and he’s literally come back from the dead. With Sanda’s betrayal and Sendak going on the offensive, everyone around him is scrambling and panicked, but when Shiro starts giving orders everyone immediately follows them. No one makes any comment about his rank or his age or his health or his fitness for the job. The man who left home sick and doubted is now the person they all look to for leadership.

At New York Comic Con 2017 a few weeks before the release of Season 4, the showrunners spoke of Shiro’s role in the coming season, saying that with Keith now flying the Black Lion, Shiro needed to adjust to a support role where he isn’t always fighting on the front lines in the thick of the action himself.

Unfortunately, Keith’s VA had schedule conflicts that forced the writers to pause Keith’s leadership development and write him off the team until Season 6 to accommodate the limited time Steven Yeun could make it to the recording studio. As a consequence of Keith’s arc being put on hold, so was Shiro’s, as Keith’s absence forced the writers to put Shiro back in the Black Lion until Keith came back in Season 6.

But what we see of his tenure as the captain of the Atlas in Seasons 7 and 8 lines up as an organic culmination of that arc. And in addition to that particular arc, a recurring theme we’ve seen throughout Shiro’s character development is learning that like Sam Holt told Admiral Sanda in The Last Stand: Part 1, you can’t control every situation. There is repeated pattern across the first seven seasons that because of his illness and his trauma, Shiro has difficulty accepting help from other people and allowing himself to be vulnerable:

S7E1 A Little Adventure: In a flashback to before the Kerberos mission, he tells Adam, “You don’t need to protect me. This is something I need to do for myself.”

S1E9 Crystal Venom: Shiro only starts to grow agitated and directly question Sendak during the memory transfer once Coran and the other Paladins have left. One of the taunts he hears from Sendak is “The others don’t know what you know. They haven’t seen what you’ve seen.”

S2E1 Across the Universe: Compared to his optimism when leading the rest of the team and the way he constantly encourages everyone, Shiro is more flippant and vulnerable with Keith in this episode, particularly in how casually he treats having a glowing wound from Haggar in his side.

S2E3 Shiro’s Escape: When the team questions his decision to look for the mysterious Galra who helped him escape, he overrules their objections and insists that his memory of the event is real despite the Paladins’ valid concerns.

S2E7 Space Mall: Tries to work with the Black Lion to strengthen their bond and drive Zarkon out. When the Lion apparently takes off on its own, he panics at the lack of control and starts demanding the lion turn around. When Zarkon attacks him on the astral plane, Shiro wins by realizing that he needs to trust the Black Lion as a partner instead of using it as a tool.

S3E6 Tailing a Comet: After the trauma of escaping from a Galra laboratory a second time, Shiro is more closed off with Keith compared to their solo interactions in S2E1. He asks Keith “How many times will you have to save me before this is over?” His tone sounds exhausted and resigned, as if he feels he shouldn’t need someone to save him. 

S4E1 Code of Honor: Despite saying S1E4 that “People have to want to be part of a team. They can’t be forced,” Shiro continues trying to force Keith to continue as the Black Paladin despite Keith’s clear reluctance.

S5E3 Postmortem: Shiro argues with the team and leverages his authority as the Black Paladin when they question him about the risks of taking Lotor to the Kral Zera.

S5E4 Kral Zera: When the rest of the team won’t support his decision, Shiro flies Lotor to Fayiv by himself.  

S5E6 White Lion: Shiro attempts to open up to Lance and admits that he hasn’t been feeling like himself lately. 

S6E1 Omega Shield: When the mental link between him and Haggar causes him headaches during the missing, Shiro brushes aside the team’s concern, repeatedly telling them “I’m fine”. Later, he pretty much has a panic attack when Honerva forces her way into Oriande and the backlash reverberates through the link, distracting the paladins at a crucial moment when lives were on the line and their plan required Shiro’s prosthetic hand in order to succeed.

S6E3 Monsters and Mana: Shiro admits at the beginning that he’s “trying to take a mental break”, and says at the end that after playing the game with the team his head “feels so much better.” 

S7E6 The Journey Within: When Lance comments on Shiro just now bringing up a way to recharge the lions, Shiro sarcastically comments that “I guess having my consciousness transplanted from the infinity of Voltron’s inner Quintessence into the dead body of an evil clone of myself has left me a little out of sorts these last few weeks.” This is the most open he’s been about anything bothering him since the end of Season 5, and he’s saying it to the entire team at once and not just Keith or Lance. 

There is a noticeable pattern here: Shiro started the series suffering from PTSD, but kept it hidden from the team, only attempting to deal with his trauma when he was alone. Because of his disease, he had already developed a mentality of “I have to be strong. I need to do this by myself,”by just bottling up his problems so that others don’t see his pain. And once he’s the Black Paladin, expected to be “in control at all times”, he simply continues with that pattern of behavior. The only person he ever allows to see past the level-headed mask he presents to the rest of the team is Keith.

But the events of S3E5 bring further trauma, tearing him from a place of safety and security back into the hands of the people who violated him. After his escape not even Keith is allowed to see past the walls he puts up. From there, his behavior in Seasons 3 – 5 is driven by his need to re-establish that feeling of safety and security that he had back in Seasons 1 – 2.

It’s fitting that the ship Shiro now commands is called the Atlas. In Greek Mythology, Atlas was the titan who held up the sky on his shoulder. Nowadays, it’s used to refer to anyone who carries a heavy burden of any kind. Shiro has been carrying the weight of his trauma since the first episode, channeling his need for control into his work as the Black Paladin. But as S6E1 demonstrated, bottling up his pain and dealing with it alone only created more problems. In order for Shiro to truly heal, he needed to learn to share the burden instead of stoically going it alone.

It reminds me of the stigma that still surrounds mental illness today, but in particular, it reminds me of the damaging idea that someone who has mental health problems is somehow weak for seeking help and not dealing with it on their own. And that is the underlying principle of Shiro’s character arc: that you don’t have to deal with your personal demons alone. That it is not weak to seek help and rely on support from the people around you. I believe a verbal acknowledgement of this was cut from Season 8 amidst all the other edits, but the arc is still there even though it unfortunately wasn’t addressed out loud.

So, despite a clear – albeit tangled in the middle due to circumstances beyond the writers’ control – line for Shiro’s arc leading to where he is in Season 7, why do fans continue to insist that LM and JDS didn’t know what they were doing with him after they brought him back early?

Part of it comes down to the fact that, as I mentioned once in a brief post, the main flaw of the show’s writing is that is sometimes relies on the “show don’t tell” maxim a little too much: all of the details are there, but you don’t always notice them because the narrative doesn’t call attention to them.

The other part is that this fandom has an unfortunate habit of making quick judgements about characters and storylines based on first impressions, building theories and head canons around those impressions, and then dismissing anything that contradicted those theories and headcanons as bad writing or a character being OOC. (Remember all the Lance-obsessed antis who acted like he was so fragile and underappreciated he’d drop dead if he wasn’t constantly being praised? Because I do). And the gaps between season drops didn’t help matters.

Due to the way Seasons 3 – 6 were structured and released, we had almost a full year to get attached to our own headcanons and theories as to what was happening with Shiro and Operation Kuron. Fans who believed that S3-6 Shiro was a clone wrote theory after theory where the current Shiro’s status as a clone was discovered and the clone was deprogrammed and allowed to live his own life and develop into his own person separate from Shiro. While fans who didn’t believe the clone theory dug in their heels and continued to argue against Shiro being a clone.

In the end, both sides were wrong, but everyone came together to cry foul because they thought their respective interpretations were better than what the writers ended up going with. While I guarantee that with this fandom’s history there would almost certainly have been backlash no matter what (and I’ll grant you that the ethics of the clone merger are a little iffy), I think that if Seasons 3 – 6 were released as two full 13 episode seasons in 7 months instead of 4 half-seasons over the course of 10 months, it would have been a lot less severe because both sides of the Clone or Not Clone argument wouldn’t have had as much time to become entrenched.

TL;DR: Contrary to popular belief, the writers and EPs knew what they were doing with Shiro. They managed to combine three different characters across two different versions of the IP into a single character with an arc that mirrored the story of the DOTU character that he was based on. His character development in relation to his PTSD was meant to reject the stigma that people with mental illnesses are somehow weak for needing help and support from the people around them. I don’t speak for all Shiro fans, and we can debate about how well the arc was handled and the quality of it until the end of time. But it’s inaccurate to say that the showrunners were just making stuff up as they went along where Shiro was concerned when there is a clear, if tangled, trajectory from Point A to Point B for his character arc. 

[sailorshadzter]

Can you write about Dany tell Jon she plans to burn Sansa for not respecting her (or something of the sort)? Jon would have been pretending to love Dany to save the North from the White Walkers. When she threatens Sansa, Jon then would realize he had to kill Dany.

thanks for the request!

send me prompts

When Jon came to her rooms, he knew something was amiss.

He could feel it in his bones, a cold sense of dread that left him feeling sick. It was as if he already knew that within Daenerys’ rooms, a choice had already been made that would change everything. Raising his hand, he knocks twice, and waits silently until he hears the footsteps on the other side of the door. It’s Missandei that opens it for him, giving a respectful but solemn nod before she steps aside, allowing him entrance to the queen’s rooms.

She stands before the table at the center of the room, a great map of Westeros spread across it. Daenerys looks grim, her violet eyes a shade darker when they fall upon him. Tyrion stands to her other side and the look upon his face is unreadable- but the one within his eyes is chilling. “You sent for me, your grace,” Jon speaks with a voice that does not betray his inner turmoil. His heart hammers, his stomach sinking as the dragon queen gestures for him to approach her. Grey Worm eyes him coldly from behind Daenerys, his hand ever present upon the hilt of his sword.

“Yes, Jon… We must speak.” Daenerys says as she sweeps around the table to stand before him. “It’s about your sister,” she says, hands clasped before her, her dragon ring glinting in the firelight. She calls Sansa his sister, reminding him that Daenerys has told no one the truth of his birth, not even these people she called her must trusted council. Her friends. “It would seem that despite the friendship I have offered to her and the North, she still defies me.” Jon feels his heart skip a beat, his breath catching in his throat. No, no, no, he thinks, though his face remains passive. “Letters have been discovered, letters she intended to send to my enemies.” Daenerys’ nostrils flare, a telltale sign of the anger rushing through her. “Letters that name you the true heir to the Iron Throne, letters asking to support the North in an effort to overthrow my reign before it has even begun.” Jon doesn’t ask how such letters have been found; queen or not, she had no right searching Winterfell’s own Lady’s personal letters as they were being sent out.

“Sansa wouldn’t,” Jon begins, hoping he sounds shocked, truthfully he is, though his worry quite outweighs the shock. “Your grace, she is upset, please let me speak to her… Let me-”

“No!” Daenerys snaps, interrupting him before he can finish his plea. “You know the penalty for treason, Jon.” Her violet eyes narrow as they fall upon him, as if she is threatening him to disagree, as if she dares him to defend Sansa from the crimes she’s committed. “Not only has she been disrespectful to me, her queen, she has forged a lie that you are Targaryen born and thus the true heir. She means to take from me what is mine and give it to you. Your sister is a traitor and must be punished.” Jon cannot breathe. But he knows if he tries to fight the decision, he will be overruled and burned too. If he is dead, then he cannot stop what is to come. “Do you understand what that means?”

And so he hangs his head and hopes he looks like a dejected older brother. He hopes he looks shamed, knowing his sister was a traitor to the one true queen. “Aye, your grace, I do.” He says softly, keeping his gaze upon the ground until he hears Daenerys’ soft footsteps as she approaches him. When he looks up, she’s staring at him, no trace of sympathy on her features. Not even for him, the man she supposedly loves, can she feel pity for when she intends on murdering his own family member.

“At dawn then. You may say your goodbyes, if you wish.” Daernerys turns away from him then, dismissing him with a single wave of her hand. She trusts him, he realizes, not to betray her to Sansa. To not try and smuggle her away from Winterfell in the dead of night. She still yet believes in what was between them, whatever it was she thought it to be. And that… That will be what saves Sansa’s life.

[ x x x ]

When he returns to her rooms that night, he’s certain no one has seen him. This time when he knocks, she opens it a moment later, a smile blooming at the sight of him in her doorway. “Jon,” she breathes, allowing him to come in, shutting the door behind her. “I thought you would be angry with me… For what I must do.” She shifts from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable for the first time, her violet eyes flickering in the light from the fire behind her. “You do understand, don’t you? I do not want to execute her, Jon, but she has given me no choice. I am her queen.”

Jon steps closer to her, reaching out a hand to tenderly stroke her cheek. “You are my queen,” he says softly, his words bringing another smile to her face. She leans in to his touch, her own hand sliding into place over his. “I love Sansa as any brother would, but you are my queen and it’s you I’ve devoted my life to.” The words feel empty on his tongue, but they do the trick for her smile is radiant as she falls into his embrace.

“We will make this world a better place, you and I,” she says softly, her voice muffled from where her face is buried into his chest. He raises a hand to touch her silvery hair and it forces her to tilt her head back to look up at him, violet eyes shimmering with happy tears. “I knew I could always trust you.” She says softly, before she rises up to her tiptoes, pressing her lips against his without another word.

Jon kisses her back, one arm snaking around to press against the small of her back. The other moves quickly to his waist, to where he’s secured a dagger. It’s over so quickly, Daenerys has no time to react aside from a quiet cry that leaves her once smiling lips. She looks down at the blade plunged into her chest and then back up at Jon, shock replacing the happiness as she sags towards the ground. Jon doesn’t move as she falls, but rather stands over her, unaware of the breath he’s holding until he lets it go when her chest goes still.

A moment later, he cleans his blade and puts it back at his hip, tossing the bloodied linen into the dying embers of the fire. And then he steps around Daenerys’ now lifeless body, heads out into the hall, and back to his rooms.  Never seen, never heard, no one will ever know who claimed the dragon’s queen life.

[ x x x ]

The next morning, all of Winterfell is woken by Missandei’s screams and Grey Worm’s shouts. It is Missandei that discovers her queen’s body that morning when she goes to help her dress and braid her hair as she did every morning, albeit earlier than usual to prepare for what was supposed to occur that day. Her cries alert Grey Worm who was coming down the hall and the soldier rushes from the room, shouting for Jon Snow and the Lady of Winterfell.

Both are lodged in Sansa’s rooms, Jon having gone to her room as he often did in the morning, nothing out of his ordinary routine. Sansa is sliding the last pin into her hair when the door flies open, nearly off its hinges, and Grey Worm storms in. “Murderer!” He screams as his eyes fall upon Jon, unsheathing his sword and pointing it at his chest. “Murderer!” His bellows can be heard throughout the castle and already, Brienne is rushing through the room, placing herself between Sansa who now stands and Grey Worm who’s frenzied stare swivels from one face to the other.

“What is the meaning of this?” Sansa demands, fear paling her face, though her blue eyes narrow as she stares Grey Worm down.

“Jon Snow has murdered my queen!” Grey Worm shouts, near hysterics now, his sword still yet aimed for Jon. “Your treachery against the queen was discovered and just last night, she sentenced you to die! Now we wake to find her slain in her own room?” Grey Worm is beside himself, his sword shaking in his hand. Sansa blinks, swallowing down whatever retort she had prepared. “This very morning we were to come for you but now she is dead? Jon Snow, you will pay! And so will you!” Grey Worm surges forward, but Jon parries the attack the moment he’s unsheathed Longclaw and Sansa cries for them to cease sword play, though Brienne forces her back from the scuffle. “I will avenge my queen!” Grey Worm screams as his blade connects with Jon’s yet again, sparks flying.

It takes but several more swings for Jon to knock the blade from the now weeping man’s hands and it’s then that Northern soldiers have descended upon the room. “Take him in chains!” Sansa cries as she comes around Brienne’s protective form. “Brienne, go to the queen’s rooms.” Though she looks somewhat reluctant to leave her side, Brienne nods and exits the room, following after the soldiers that drag Grey Worm between them. “Secure Winterfell,” she commands of the other soldiers, all of whom nod, sprinting from the room to do as she bid.

The moment they have all gone, Sansa drops into the chair she’d once discarded, her heartbeat wild within her chest. Jon at once turns to her, Longclaw back at his side where it belonged. “What is happening?” She asks, turning her blue eyes upon him, the breath leaving her shaking as badly as her hands in her lap. “Is what he said true?”

Jon regards her for a long moment before he comes closer, dropping down to the floor beside her chair. Without a word, he reaches for her hands, squeezing them gently. She’s staring at him but her expression tells him everything that her words don’t. It’s as if she understands him completely. “I told you I’d always protect you,” he says finally, releasing a shaky breath of his own. Her lips twitch with a smile but she thinks better on it and she merely nods, giving his hands a squeeze back. His vow held true, no matter who he had to protect her from. Queens, kings, monsters, or men… He would protect her from them all for as long as he lived.

That was his promise.

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 3x03-- The One Where Diane Joins the Resistance

Thoughts on this episode under the cut. I believe this is my shortest recap of the season even though it’s the longest episode ever of The Good Fight. 

I don’t like this episode title. It should be called “The One That’s An Hour Long” because that’s what I’m going to remember it as. This episode doesn’t feel padded-- there’s too much going on for it to feel padded-- but it does feel unnecessarily long.

A previously introduces Blum, again. I watched his antics three times last week; I can assure you I don’t need a reminder of what he’s like.

This is my second time through this episode, btw. The other episodes I’ve watched three times (morning of release, with my roommate, while writing these posts) but I told my roommate to go ahead and watch this one without me. Tbh, I’m not looking forward to sitting through it again. Y’all may be in for some nitpicking and ranting.

Lots of music this season: this ep starts off with a song about how 45 is hurting us with misinformation. This is the brilliant plan concocted by the resistance group Diane found while throwing axes. Diane thinks this video is terrible (she’s not wrong) but the rest of the crowd eats it right up.

Parts of this scene-- which satirizes liberals-- are funny. Other parts I’m not sure about. I can’t tell if the ASL interpreter is there because a gathering like this would, realistically, be inclusive or if I’m supposed to roll my eyes at how inclusive liberals are trying to be. I really, sincerely hope it’s the former.

Diane tries to ask a question and she’s overruled, but then some dude in the audience gets to ask a question. If I’m reading this right, they certainly got the sexism of liberal bros right.

The most accurate part of this satire happens next: an audience member points out that the video didn’t mention single-payer healthcare. The filmmaker, reasonably, says they couldn’t touch on every issue, but the audience member insists that single-payer healthcare is THE issue. Another audience member argues that THE issue is global warming. Then the entire crowd starts arguing. That is about how I’d expect this sort of meeting to go.

A middle-aged blonde woman taps Diane on the shoulder and asks her to follow. Diane does, as the entire crowd starts chanting “re-edit” at the filmmaker (which I don’t think would happen but whatever).

Outside, the blonde asks Diane if she wants “a mission.” “You have two options. You could go back in there and they’ll make you the co-chair of the subcommittee on bake sales [...] or you could do something. I’m looking for people who are sick of just bitching and moaning. People who are sick of screaming at the news,” the woman explains. She hands Diane a card with an address and walks away. (There’s no time on the card, but time doesn’t matter on this show.)

Roland Blum is back, and he’s fallen asleep on the RBL elevator. Lucca’s listening to a kid’s song (with no headphones!) when she notices Blum. Maia’s waiting in reception and tells Lucca that Liz wants to see her. Lucca worries she had a meeting scheduled and Maia goes to deal with Blum.

What if I just didn’t recap him? God, I’m tired of him existing.

Blum makes fun of Maia’s small, unassigned desk, which… can’t she just book a conference room for them? “Oh my fucking God, how can anyone take you seriously?” Blum asks. This is… one of the less offensive things he’s said, because it’s kind of true.

Blum notices that someone else has an office and asks Maia who it is. Instead of answering that she’s a co-worker, or with her name, Maia says “she’s a third-year too” which can only make the problem worse. Now it doesn’t just look like Maia works for a firm that’s pressed for space; it looks like Maia is one of the weaker employees at a firm that’s pressed for space.

Good lord. BOOK A DAMN CONFERENCE ROOM.

Lucca’s apologetic when she comes in for the meeting with Liz, but Liz says they didn’t have a meeting scheduled. Liz asks how matrimonial law is going; Lucca says it’s going well. Then Liz says she has a divorce referral for Lucca: herself.

“It’s a long time coming. We’ve had our tensions and, uh, barely even, uh,” Liz explains. That’s most of the explanation we get for why she wants to divorce. I wish we got a little more insight into what her marriage is like, but I don’t mind that much. Plus, we did see her husband being kind of awful with the client list in 2x10.

Also, Liz hasn’t yet told her husband she’s asking for a divorce.

Maia has found a conference room to use, finally. ASA Zschau walks in. He’s taking over the case for Matan and now I miss BrainDead. Also, Spencer Zschau has been an AUSA every time we’ve seen him and now he’s an ASA.

(Yes, I think it’s more important to note the change in Zschau’s job and that Maia found a conference room than it is to note anything plot-related in that scene.)

Liz asks her husband for a divorce the second he arrives home. Maybe not the best strategy. He does not take it well. Okay, I lied, I do want to know more about their marriage. Then again, I think that Ian’s sudden switch to BURN IT ALL DOWN mode (despite Liz’s plea to keep everything civil for their son) says a lot.

Diane goes to a creepy underground meeting spot and finds the Resistance. It’s full of white ladies, mostly around Diane’s age. It’s run by a Valerie Payser, who claims she worked in the Obama White House. All the white ladies eat her story right up.

This is another plot I don’t care much about, especially the second time through. My main comment on this scene is simply that it got New Rules stuck in my head.

Diane eats it right up. The Kings have mentioned that they considered bringing Alicia back for an episode where she and Diane meet at “the resistance” and if it was supposed to be this episode, I’m SO glad they didn’t. I don’t want Alicia back on the show. I don’t want Alicia on the show in a Diane plot (if she comes back it’s gotta be a Lucca plot). And Alicia would NEVER fall for this resistance bullshit. Diane I believe; she’s always been a little impulsive when she’s angry. Alicia? No.

LOL, I see we’re still doing the fake-but-could-plausibly-be-real-even-though-they-feel-like-a-hallucination news stories this season. (This one’s about cynaide in school lunches.)

Liz is no longer working with the DNC (Diane asks) because she was too radical. I thought that was exactly the reason they hired her?

To be fair to Diane, she does seem to want to check her sources on this underground resistance group; she says she wants to make sure it’s real. This is… not what she proceeds to do.

Maia has called a meeting of the name partners + Julius. “You told me last year that if I wanted anything at this firm, I have to ask for it. I want an office,” she declares. Go Maia! (Yes, I said that.)

“Uh, well, Maia, the issue here is space, and we wish we had more. We’re growing, and we hope that all associates, even second-years, will have an office,” Liz responds. Heh, Liz thinks Maia is a second-year and I see why she has that impression. Plus, does Maia’s first year really count since she didn’t do ANY work during it?

Maia corrects her. “I try not to make a fuss, but, Jenna Diamond. She was given an office, even though she joined the firm six months after me,” Maia argues. Well, is Jenna Diamond a more valuable asset for the firm? I’ve seen people at my company be promoted over others who have been there longer, and I don’t think that’s inherently unfair. Given how terrible Maia is at her job, I’m guessing that Jenna is just… better.

Or, as Julius explains, Jenna was on a big case and needed the space. This seems like a bad way to decide who gets offices. Why not hot desk the offices or give them for the duration of a case? Either base it off of performance/rank or don’t assign it permanently.

“And I’m working with Roland Blum,” Maia informs the partners. She informs the partners of this well after she deliberately causes a mistrial. So like, Maia’s now asking for an office because she didn’t ask for help or keep the partners posted on any development of a case they should’ve been looped in on AND she’ll now need to rework. The firm can’t be making much money off of this. If they were, Maia wouldn’t be handling it on her own.

I still don’t understand why Maia is handling ANYTHING on her own in the first place.

Maia says it’s embarrassing to work at her hot desk. Fair.

“She’s using Roland Blum to get an office,” Julius says after Maia leaves. “She still has a point,” Diane responds. “If we give her an office, we’ll have 20 other associates pounding on our door,” Julius continues. And that didn’t happen when they gave Jenna Diamond an office? This seems like a problem that would continue to happen if third-years are working cases without a second chair (or without being the second chair) but don’t have their own offices. Why not just have a few open offices you can hot desk in when you’re meeting with clients?

Liz steps out because Lucca’s got info from Ian’s lawyer. Ian wants to void the prenup, retain ownership of the house (which I think Liz got in her divorce from Adrian lol), and full custody. He also thinks Liz is hiding money at the firm. That escalated quickly.

He’s also going after Liz for adultery (it voids the prenup if she cheated). Lucca looks so uncomfortable talking to her boss about this!

Liz wants to know who Ian is accusing her of sleeping with. Lucca glances at Adrian’s office, but since Diane is still there, Liz initially thinks that Lucca is implying that Ian thinks Liz and DIANE had a thing. But no, he’s accusing Liz of sleeping with Adrian.

Credits! Is it me or did the opening of the theme music change this week?

Michael Sheen is credited with “special appearance by.” This gives me hope he won’t be in every episode.

Jenna’s office is now Maia’s, and I hope the partners understood what they were doing when they kicked someone out of their office for MAIA RINDELL. I don’t think they did, because Jenna’s left a note pad with the top sheet reading FUCK YOU on Maia’s chair. At the same time that I applaud Maia asking for things if she wants them, could she have worked out a deal with Jenna to use her office when Blum comes in?

Maia pastes the FUCK YOU note on the window-wall and smirks at Jenna. Yes, because what you really want to do when you’ve fucked over a coworker for funsies/because you’re entitled is to piss her off even more. I think we’ve established that Maia and I follow different logic.

Marissa-- who is not lacking in sass-- also disapproves of the FUCK YOU sign, but Maia doesn’t care. And then Marissa gets distracted by some resumes in Julius’s office and leaves.

Marissa walks into Julius’s office and says he’s running for a federal judgeship. She doesn’t ask, she says. She recognizes the campaign manager from one of her dad’s campaigns (I would LOVE an Eli cameo this season) and advises Julius not to keep campaign manager resumes out in the open. Good advice, but not immediately clear to me why Marissa is interested in advising Julius on how to successfully become a judge when she knows that he’s conservative.

Lucca, Liz, and Adrian discuss whether or not Liz and Adrian have recently had sex. Lucca is very uncomfortable and suggests that Liz hire another lawyer because of how personal this is becoming; Liz resists. Liz and Adrian insist it won’t get personal, then immediately begin whispering about the times they hooked up after their divorce (but before Liz’s second marriage). They’re not whispering quietly enough, which means that Lucca hears enough to look grossed out and I can hear enough to realize their dialogue ~what happened in the bathroom~ is very similar to Alicia and Will’s dialogue in 5x04.

Court stuff happens. Blum lies outrageously.

Maia praises Blum for lying outrageously in court.

Ian’s divorce attorney is the guy they didn’t hire at RBL last week. Wow, Ian isn’t playing around.

Marissa’s campaign advice is, as you would expect, great advice. And Julius wants more of it. Is Marissa doing this for free? Is she doing it because she wants to feel like she could do her dad’s job?

Ian had his detectives spy on Liz and Adrian so, yeah, I can see why that marriage failed. Liz and Adrian spent 3 hours together after Adrian was shot. Yes, so suspicious. The only thing they could possibly have done in three hours is fucking.

Adrian insists it was caretaking, not sex, and Jay is all, “for three hours?” Is it really so unreasonable that two people could spend three hours together and not fuck?!?!?!?

Maia realizes her client (and Blum’s client) are guilty. She’s stumped. Blum teaches her, yet again, how to make the facts fit the story. We get it. WE. GET. IT.

Also Blum’s story is so over the top no one would believe it. At least, I hope not…

Diane’s #Resistance decides to go after troll farms. Excuse me. They decide to go after a specific troll farm. But they only make that decision after an explainer song about troll farms. The troll farm song, actually, understand what this subplot does not: “we won’t ever beat ‘em ‘til we learn how not to feed ‘em.” Outing an office full of trolls is not going to shut down any of the other offices of trolls. It’s not even going to shut down this office of trolls. (Also, are troll farms literal offices? This seems unnecessary.) Teaching people to fact check and pressuring tech companies to prevent abuses of their platforms will do far more than whatever it is this #Resistance does.

(Of course, I get why Valerie thinks this is a good “mission”-- because she doesn’t give a fuck about missions-- but I don’t get why savvy computer woman, who would almost certainly know better, thinks it is.)

Blum is chilling in Diane’s office and they have a very long conversation about justice and politics and the necessity of lying and blah blah blah, these are not new themes.

The psilocybin is still in Diane’s desk even though we saw her throw it out.

Blum knew Jonas Stern. Oof. I buy that. I don’t necessarily think Stern (who I assume was liberal) and Blum were close, but I can see them being of the same era and even hanging out despite political differences.

Is Blum meant to be older than he looks? The people he mentions as his contemporaries are all way older than he is.

Diane calls Valerie and shares a brilliant idea we’ve only seen this show already do three to five times: CREATE THEIR OWN FAKE NEWS. WOWOWOWOW GROUND BREAKING.

Oh and the NSA nerds are back. This time they’re listening to Diane. Joy. Can’t we be done with this? Also, why did Valerie Payser, who isn’t real, get a cell phone registered to that name? She could just get a burner.

The White Lady Resistance (I think @Nikkaphon called it this first and that’s what it is) is having a great time making up fake news.

“Melissa Long” sounds so much like “Marissa Gold” that for a second I thought Marissa was volunteering to manage Julius’s campaign long before he asked.

Why does Jay think Liz and Adrian fucked?! He is like, very intent on proving this. I think he’s playing bad cop but it doesn’t sound like it.    

I’m not recapping every line of this-- mostly because I don’t have the patience to-- but the Liz/Adrian/Lucca plot was far and away my favorite plot of the week. It felt grounded, character-driven, and revealing… and it provided an excuse for Audra McDonald to sing!

(It’s a little strange having a character-driven plot in this VERY theme-driven episode of this mostly theme-driven show. It’s a reminder that I do tend to prefer character-driven shows to theme-driven shows. I prefer both to plot-driven shows, but I don’t think TGW or TGF will ever be plot-driven.)

I repeat: Audra McDonald is singing! I like that they have her sing in flashback so it’s not 100% clear if Liz has an amazing voice or if Adrian perceives Liz’s voice as amazing.

Isn’t this the same song that played over Cartoon Villain Rindell’s suicide attempt? Interesting choice. I am fully in support of reclaiming that song.

It’s fall in this episode but I think it’s meant to be spring. As I’ve said, this show does not care about time.

Blum misses court and Maia seizes a kind of shady opportunity to cut a deal that’s good for her client and bad for Blum’s client. Maia’s method involves tricking someone over the phone, which is the one thing Maia’s actually proven she’s good at.

Liz and Adrian’s innocent story works up until the point where a detective reveals he saw Liz buy the morning-after pill at Rite-Aid.

There are too many clowns in this season.

There was a riot at the troll farm and Diane jumps for joy. I’m kind of embarrassed for her.

Liz is in Diane’s contacts as “Elizabeth Reddick-Lawrence”

Diane calls Valerie to share word of the victory, but Valerie’s gone! The NSA is suspicious of Valerie’s disappearance.

It’s still storming. Melissa Long, Julius’s potential campaign manager, wants to charge him for an interview; Julus thinks that’s ridiculous. He then asks Marissa to run his campaign, and Marissa agrees. Next week-- or whenever we pick this plot up again-- can we please delve into her motivations for agreeing? I think right now it’s just that it inflates her ego.

Why did Liz buy the morning after pill? She didn’t want to have another child… with Ian.

Geoffrey Payton’s next attack is on RBL’s financials, specifically on the payments to “Reddick” in March. These are the payoffs for the women (four of them, which means there are actually at least five since Wendy wouldn’t accept payment) Carl assaulted, but Liz and Adrian don’t want to divulge that. It would ruin Carl’s reputation and, now, make the firm look bad (cover-up, not the crime), so Liz refuses to let this line of questioning go any further.

Lucca takes a minute-- and I really appreciate this-- to be disappointed in her hero. “I came to this firm because of him,” she says.

Liz demands full custody-- the one thing she’s unwilling to compromise on-- but gives in to Ian’s other demand to void the prenup. Poor Liz.

“I hate that he wins ‘cause of this,” Lucca says. “So do I,” Liz agrees.

The judge asks Adrian out. Curious where this will go.

Destroying the troll farm knocked two points off of 45’s approval rating. I don’t believe it. Valerie is missing and no one can find her. Diane says she’ll have her investigator look into it.

Diane sends Jay a text that says “no more texts” and contains sensitive information. This lands Jay on the NSA’s list. What is the point of a text saying no more texts? Just say you have something for him to work on, can you meet?

The NSA stuff isn’t bad, but haven’t we done this enough?

Blum is PISSED at Maia. He’s also being a hypocrite, but that’s the least of his character flaws. He growls and breaks Maia’s office’s window-wall with a laptop. Maia isn’t intimidated. She tells him off, and she actually had my support right up until she picked up the laptop (that is the property of the firm that employs her) and broke a second window-wall (of the firm that employs her and just gave her an office because she asked for one). I already thought her entitled ass was lucky to have a job, and now she’s going to go breaking her own firm’s property just to show her badassery? Just go back to the sunglasses, Maia.

Marissa gives her a look that encapsulates everything I just said, to which Maia responds, “The fuck are you looking at?” Okay Maia. Just because you’re a badass now doesn’t mean you have to be rude to your friends.

(As I’ve mentioned in past weeks, I’m just criticizing how terribly petulant Maia’s behavior is… somehow, I do think this is good character development for her. Maia turning into an entitled lying ball of resentment with a grudge against everyone who didn’t give her the world simply for existing is, in many ways, the natural place for her character to go. It doesn’t require her to suddenly become strategic, it doesn’t require her to become a brilliant legal mind, and it doesn’t require any rewriting of the fundamental traits of her character. I may not like or agree with new Maia, but likability is bullshit. If they can make this arc interesting, and justify its existence,  maybe I’ll even like it.)

Jay finds out that Valerie Payser doesn’t exist; she’s really a criminal who preys on rich liberal white ladies with lots of money. What a shock that a secret underground resistance of white ladies might be a scam.

Diane hallucinates/daydreams Blum singing “I’ll be there” in front of terrible green screen backgrounds and my only thought is NOPE.

Inspired by Blum and the strategy of LYING WORKS, Diane decides to fake an email (she is reading off a blank screen but she totally would’ve drafted this) from Valerie and let the White Lady Resistance continue.

Blum has Maia arrested for having hospice drugs. I assume he planted them recently, because if Maia had kept them around after Blum threatened to do exactly this last week, she’s even less bright than I thought.

Well, that’s over.

[queen-scribbles]

Since You Came Around

@pillarspromptsweekly #14; Sick Day. This is set not too long after Third Time’s the Charm, but before The Right Call. Title from ‘Better Place’ by Rachel Platten

It was a recipe for disaster and she really should have seen it coming. Most normal (sane) people would have taken one look at the bridge, clearly fallen into disrepair, and thought to themselves, Maybe I should try to cross the fast-moving and icy river somewhere else.

Not Tavi. (But then, when had she ever claimed to be normal?) Tavi who was in a hurry, Tavi who just wanted to (try to) sleep, barely noticed the bridge’s ramshackle state before her boots hit the wood. Today had been shitty, her mood was shitty as a result, and she was only half-listening to her companions’ chatter.  So of course, she missed Aloth and Sagani’s muttered concerns about the bridge’s structural integrity. Of course she didn’t hear the wood groan like a dying man under Kana’s feet. Of course she was was oblivious until mildewed and rotting boards snapped and Aloth dropped from behind her before she even had time to react.

Oh, fuck, no, flashed through her mind as Tavi shrugged off her pack and went after him. She’d be damned if she let anyone--especially him--be the one to pay for her stupendous lack of foresight. (And wasn’t it funny how damn quickly Aloth had moved into a category all his own after their talk?)

But she was hitting the water’s surface and Effigysfuckineyes it was cold. It was all Tavi could do not to gasp in a mouthful of water and keep her focus on saving Aloth rather than the cold. Thanks to the near-exhale, she was forced to surface quickly. At least while she was raking hair out of her eyes she caught sight of him. Just out of arm’s reach, of course. Even when she hollered his name and both strained toward contact, their fingers remained inches from touching. Tavi kicked harder, willing herself forward against the drag of her armor (heavy leather rather than chain, but still added weight). She was not going to lose him, not like this, not to what amounted to her own stupidity.

Even as she struggled to catch up, Aloth grabbed something--a branch, discarded fisher’s nets, she could tell--that tore free in his grasp but did slow him a crucial second that allowed their hands to meet. Each gripped the other’s wrist with a strength born of desperation and adrenaline. Now that she’d caught him, Tavi’s attention turned to scanning for a way back to shore, trusting Aloth to watch for hazards in the water.

“Tavi!!” Kana’s shout barely reached her over the roar of the current, but she could see him on the bank, running toward a downstream rocky outcropping. The intent was clear enough without words. Tavi tugged Aloth arm so he’d look at her and then pointed toward Kana. Gods, her feet felt like lead. What she could feel, at least. Aloth nodded understanding, then frowned in concern. That was weird, Tavi thought as they angled toward Kana. He was the one who fell in, the one whose lips were fucking blue with cold.

The swiftness of the current ensured both elves got dunked under at least twice more before Kana--with Pallegina’s help--fished them out. Sagani and Hiravias were waiting with blankets Even if the weather today wasn’t particularly cold, the water had been. Tavi was shaking violently as Hiravias pulled the blanket around her, deliberately tugging it up over her head as well.

“Can’t save the world if you’re buried under six feet of it,” he informed her frankly, and Tavi tried to chuckle.

It came out more like a cough. “Thanks.” She coughed again. (When did she swallow all that water?) “You alright, city slicker?”

“For the most part,” Aloth replied. He looked--and sounded--as cold as she felt.

“And f-for the rest of it?” she prodded, working a hand out from under the blanket. Her fingernails were almost the same blue as his lips.

“Cold. Wet. Nothing that can’t be remedied,” he assured her.

“On that note, I’m gonna start a fire,” Sagani piped up. “Faster we get you two dried out, less risk of you gettin’ sick.”

“I never get sick,” Tavi retorted, drying her face on the blanket as they all trooped away from the river.

x*X*x

She got sick. It started as just a tickle in her throat and mild sniffles. She managed to hide it from almost everyone. And Aloth promised not to rat her out unless it got worse.

Turned out, he didn’t need to. When it got worse (of course it got worse), she sneezed (thrice, and loudly) in the middle of what was supposed to be a stealthy job. They had to fight several bodyguards and one very pissed off--not to mention devious--druid. Hiravias almost lost his other ear, Pallegina did lose a few feathers, and it was only thanks to some very good timing on Kana’s part that they walked away alive and mostly unscathed. Close as they were to Caed Nua, the rest of the party overruled Tavi’s protests that she was fine and they went home.

Secretly, she was more than a little relieved. She was tired, her fingers and toes hadn’t felt warm enough since the river, and her head ached like someone had dropped a building on it. She made sure to voice a few token protests, but between her croaky voice and the lack of vehemence she was pretty sure Sagani and Aloth at the very least weren’t buying it. Still, Sagani followed her to her room, helped Tavi out of her armor, and waited until she was sure the grumbling elf was actually in bed to leave. If she wasn’t so damn tired, Tavi would have complained about Sagani treating her like a child and not fucking trusting her, but she was. So fucking tired. So, instead, she instead, she closed her eyes, pulled the covers up to her chin, and went to sleep.

x*X*x

It was all well and fine until the dreams hit with a vengeance; events of several different lives blending and blurring together like a kaleidoscope. She rocketed from visions of the robed man she’d seen at Cilant Lîs to a runaway slave hiding from the master’s dogs, to someone waiting with murder in their heart, her consciousness never staying long before it flitted to the next in a decidedly disorienting manner. Until it landed behind the eyes of an aumaua clinging to a cliff by her (her? her) fingernails, grip slowly sliding off the muddy rocks. 

No, no, no, not heights. Tavi honestly couldn’t tell if the thought belonged to her or the aumaua, which somehow made it worse. She clung to the rock face, feet desperately searching for purchase as pain lanced through her fingers, to no avail. A scream tore its way out of her throat as she lost her grip and plummeted toward the sea below.

x*X*x

“Tavi! Tavi, it’s alright!” Something closed around her wrist, gentle but firm. Still half-asleep, she tried to jerk away. “Tavi, you’re safe!”

That did it, woke her up the rest of the way. She was a feverish, disheveled mess, but she was awake. “Shit...” she muttered under her breath.

“Are you alright?” It was Aloth, of course. Aloth’s voice, Aloth’s hand on her arm that pulled her back to reality, Aloth looking at her with concerned blue eyes.

“..Yeah.” She waited a beat for her breathing to slow and nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She looked at him and winced. “Shit, city slicker, did I do that?”

Aloth shook his head as Tavi reached out to brush her fingers over the red welt along his cheekbone. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Normally she would’ve pressed further, but the adrenaline of waking from what was essentially a nightmare was fading, rapidly replaced with the lethargy of illness. So she worried about something else instead. “How long did I sleep?”

“Almost a full day, so far,” Aloth said, returning to his nearby chair. (It was the one from her desk, dragged over to be within arm’s reach of the bed) “If I may, you look like you could use more.”

“I probably could,” she muttered, snuggling back into her nest of blankets and pillows. But that’s not happening anytime soon... “Where’s... everyone?”

He smiled slightly. “Sagani took your list of tasks and less urgent things we were doing for people and divided them up. So we can still get some things accomplished and you don’t feel so bad about being out of commission.”

Tavi snorted, which made her cough. “She knows me so well. And why are you here rather than helping with that?”

Aloth fidgeted with one of his rings and looked out the window. “She asked me if I would be able to focus, and.... I wasn’t able to honestly say yes. So she had Keya go with her and Kana instead.Told me to stay here and not worry too much.”

“From the look of your nails, you haven’t been doin’ well with that last part,” she croaked teasingly, and Aloth reflexively ran his thumb over the chewed-down edges.

“It’s not that easy to change part of someone’s nature,” he said softly.

“Don’t I fucking know it,” Tavi mumbled, rubbing her eyes. “It is kinda nice to have you worryin’ about me, though,” she admitted. “‘Zat why you’re hovering?”

Aloth gave a soft half-laugh as he followed her gaze to the large book and empty teacup sitting on the desk. “You caught me.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Aloth, you know this is just a cold, right?”

“I believe the herbalist said it was more of a fever...”

“Same difference,” she waved off his correction as she pushed herself upright to better meet his gaze. “My point is; you’ve seen me survive a fuckin’ broadaxe to the chest, so I’m just a little confused why you’re camp-by-my-fuckin’-bedside worried about a silly little cold-”

“Fever.”

“Whatever.” Tavi raked sweaty hair back from her face. “I know you know I’m gonna be fine, so, much as I appreciate your company--and not havin’ to yell for a servant if I need somethin’--I just... why?” That was the limit of her articulateness with her head aching like it was.

“It’s not... worry.” Aloth didn’t elaborate for a long moment, gaze on his hands as he spun the silver band that encircled his left index finger. Tavi waited him out (what else did she have to do?) until finally, softly, “It was my fault.”

“Bullshit,” she snorted with as much vehemence as she could muster. “How in the copperfucking Hel is it your fault?!”

His shoulders hunched and hands stilled. “You came in after me.”

“Yeah, and you fell in in the fuckin’ first place because I was a shithead idiot who couldn’t take five fuckin’ seconds to check that the bridge was sturdy enough to hold our weight before I started across it. And I’m the one who chose to dive in after you rather than do more like Kana and the others so I didn’t get soaking wet. My being sick is in no way your fault.”

“But-”

“Look, Aloth.” She shifted in the bed until she was close enough to take his hands in hers. “I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life. I’ve come to terms with the worst of it, gotten really good at being stubborn-” she caught the brief twist of his lips into a smirk- “and learned to deal with it as it comes. But now, even with the Awakened soul and the Watcher shit and everything...” she hesitated, bit her lip. “My life’s been better since you came into it. And I.. I don’t want to lose you.” The vulnerability of the words felt strangely good. 

Aloth nodded understanding, lightly squeezing her hands. “Keep in mind,” he began quietly, “I could say much the same.”

Tavi tilted her head and giggled. “Did you just Ditto me again, Corfiser?”

“I did, yes,” Aloth confirmed, smile of his own tugging at his lips. “For a woman who claims to be shit with words, you are rather eloquent at times.”

“Blame the cold,” she grinned.

“Fever,” he corrected again.

“Whatever.” She released his hands and lay back down. “It gave me a sudden burst of inspiration or something.”

Aloth helped her pull the blankets back up and get comfortable. “Ah, I see. Illness makes you eloquent.”

She laughed at the gentle teasing. “Somethin’ like that.” She yawned and rolled on her side so she was facing him, sleepily mumbling, “Stay with me?”

He smiled and scooted his chair closer to the bed. “Always.”

[littlemissonewhoisall]

Justice League Elite: Rebirth: Chapter Two

Second Chances Part Two

Gotham City. The name was something Cassandra was still trying to understand. She’d gotten used to the idea of names, but this was different. A name told a person who they were. It helped give meaning to things. But a city… a city was something strange. It was a place, but more than a place. It was people, it was buildings, it was a set of laws. But most importantly, she’d learned, a city was a story, and Gotham was a sad story.

Alfred had told her the story one lonely night, as they’d shared a drink of hot chocolate. She hadn’t understood everything, but she’d realized that it was a story Batman wouldn’t tell. Gotham had been around for a long time, though less time than she’d expected, and in that time, people had died, again and again. And, she saw, they were the lucky ones. Gotham, Alfred had explained, had a tendency to drive men mad.

Madness, that confused her further. It wasn’t anger, even though sometimes it was. It was a sickness of the mind, something that ate away at a person until they broke on the inside. Cassandra had asked Alfred if she was mad, and that had made him very upset. He’d told her no, and there was anger in that response. Not anger at her, but at someone else, someone who wasn’t there. She wasn’t sure why it made him angry, but she didn't ask any more questions. She hated seeing people upset.

Cassandra thought about that night as she watched the city from her perch, far above the city streets. The city didn’t seem frightening from up here. The city didn’t seem like anything, really. That was the funny thing about it all. When you were within the city, surrounded by it, then it stopped being a thing. It became people, and places, and lights, and cars, and buildings. It was only a single thing from far away. Up close, she could see the cars driving down the dimly-lit streets, the buildings rising up above them, so high she wondered how they didn’t scrape the sky. She wondered if a person was like a city. If deep down, someone wasn’t a single thing, but a million smaller things. She decided that she would ask Batman about that.

Her thoughts were interrupted by movement a few blocks away, on a rooftop lower than the one she was standing on. She was almost certain that running on rooftops was not normal, even though everyone she knew did it. She took off running, leaping from building to building with instinctive precision and grace.

By the time she reached the rooftop, whoever had been there had vanished. There was no heat signature, no footprints, not even a patch of disturbed cobwebs. The roof contained nothing but shadows.

“Cassandra,” Batman’s voice said through her earpiece, “I need you in the Belfry.”

“Yes,” she responded. She took another look around the rooftop, but saw nothing. Had she imagined it? I must not have slept enough, she decided, and began to make her way towards the Belfry.

-----

Claude Masters hated Gotham. The entire place smelled like rot and dust, and the damn sky was always overcast. It was just his luck that Waller’s pick for the new team would live in a dump like that. The damn woman loved to make people miserable, that was something he was sure about. But she was the chief of A.R.G.U.S., so unless Secretary Callendar decided to overrule her, he was stuck following her orders.

He wasn’t sure why Waller was obsessed with putting criminals to work, but apparently she couldn’t keep that tendency in Task Force X anymore. He looked at his briefing again and sighed. Where did they keep finding these assholes?

The parole officer met him outside of the hotel. She was a pretty blonde, but one look told him she was tougher than she looked. The glare she gave him could make a charging elephant stop in its tracks. “Agent Masters,” she said with venom in her voice, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” he noted.

She rolled her eyes, and escorted him to the elevator. “Do you idiots have any idea what you’re doing?” She said, once it was moving. “Arkham and the GCPD have been working for months on him, and then you waltz in here and undo everything!”

“Sorry? I don’t-”

“Of course you don’t,” she spat, “you A.R.G.U.S. types never think before you act! Do you even read your fancy little folders? Mr. Turner suffers from delusions of being a secret agent! How do you think A.R.G.U.S. coming in here to recruit him for some special team would affect him? We’d almost gotten through to him, and now we’re right back where we started, maybe even worse!”

“Look,” Masters began, “Officer, uh,” he glanced at her badge, “Fox, the mental health of the recruits has been taken into account. We’re bringing in a specialist from the FBI to oversee the team. Agent Zolomon is one of the top psychologists in the nation-”

“Oh, I know,” she said, “trust me, I’m very aware of that!” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s not your fault. Just… take care of him, will you? Don’t let him do something reckless that gets him killed.”

“Mr. Turner is in the best possible hands, Officer.” The elevator stopped and they walked out, down a rickety old hallway that had no business being fourteen stories up.

She sighed. “I wasn’t talking about him. I was talking about Agent Zolomon.”

“What?”

“Hunter Zolomon is my fiancé.”

Oh. He winced. “Ah. A.R.G.U.S. screwed you twice in one day, huh?”

“That pretty much sums it up.” She knocked on the door. “Mr. Turner,” she shouted, “you have a visitor!”

The door opened, to reveal a big black man with striped tattoos over his face. He had a short black beard and intense amber eyes that lit up when they saw Masters. “Sir,” he said, “you’re here with my next assignment?”

Masters faked a smile. “That I am, Mr. Turner. It’s time for the Bronze Tiger to get back in the fight.”

-----

The Belfry was empty when Cassandra arrived, save for Batman himself, and to her surprise, he wasn’t wearing his suit. He turned to her as she approached, and she saw that he had been crying.

“Batman,” she said, reaching out to him, “hurt?”

“No,” he said, and she saw that he was telling the truth. But there was feeling in his voice, in his face, in the way he stood. “Not hurt. I’m just… This is a big step.”

She looked around, curious as to what he was talking about. “I don’t…” she waved her hand in frustration as she tried to find the right word, “...understand.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while. Ever since… Shiva, I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and I think it’s the right course of action to take. Honestly, I should've done it sooner, but after…” He didn’t finish his sentence, buthe didn’t need to. It was in the sadness in his voice, the way the muscles in his face tightened, and the pattern of his breath. Tim. “Anyway, I want to ask you… To ask…” He took a deep breath, and the pain started to fade. “I want, if you’ll accept it, to adopt you as my daughter.”

She felt her heart stop for a brief moment, as it sank in. Batman, her father? She remembered Tim telling her about how he’d done the same for him, and for Nightwing and Red Hood. She felt her eyes start to fill with tears, and she tried to speak, but the words weren’t there. Instead she simply embraced him, and he returned it, the gesture full of warmth and support. The only family she’d ever known was Cain, and she’d never truly considered the idea that she could have another. But here he was, giving her another chance. After a long time, a minute, maybe two, she released him, and wiped the tears from her face. She grimaced, trying to find the words. “Y-yes. Thank… you.”

He smiled, a warm expression she rarely saw from him. “There’s something else. I’ve never liked the name ‘Orphan’. You have a family, and I don’t want you to forget that. I’d been trying to come up with a replacement for a while, but my last mission with the Justice League gave me an idea. We have six Green Lanterns. There are two Flashes, maybe even a third. So I talked to Barbara, and she and I agreed.” He reached over and pushed a button. A panel on the wall, which she hadn’t noticed until that moment, slid open to reveal a costume, much like Batman’s own. “There’s no reason there can’t be two Batgirls.”

[hookedonapirate]

For tangled up in blue, I would like a deleted scene for sexy times with killian and Emma, like now that Emma lives with killian maybe unexpected situation hahaha just saying

Tangled Up In Blue ‘Deleted Scenes’

Interrupted Sexy Time

Summary: This is where I will be posting a collection of missing scenes that are based on prompts or deemed unnecessary for my actual story Tangled Up In Blue.

A/N: I have so many ideas for this universe but I often get carried away when I write them out, so I decided to keep them separate. And as I mentioned on Tumblr awhile ago, I will be taking suggestions or prompts, so please feel free to leave a comment or pm me to request anything you would like to be added. It can be smutty or angsty or just plain cute, I will be more than happy to include it. I’ve rated this Mature due to the content of first scene, but ratings and tags may vary with each chapter. Also, note that these scenes will be added in no particular order so if there’s something you wanted to see that would’ve taken place towards the beginning of the story please ask away! Thanks so much for following along with my story!

I’m not sure if this is exactly what the Anon wanted, but I had originally planned on writing this for the actual story, and alas, I got carried away with the sexy times and it would have taken up more than half of chapter 20. So I decided to post this as a deleted scene while I write the next chapter. I have more time this coming week so I will be able to update soon.

For this chapter I decided to incorporate some of the dialogue from the pancake scene, so this is my contribution to that scene, even though it’s an alternate universe. I apologize ahead of time, I just could not resist doing so (not actually sorry) ; )

Rated: M

Also Available on: AO3 FF.N

Deleted Scenes: 1 2

Read from the beginning: Tangled Up in Blue

Emma was having really bad hunger pangs when she woke up. Which really was a shame seeing as she was snuggled comfortably in her lover’s arms and didn’t ever want to leave. He was still sleeping, an adorably content look settled in his handsome features as she peered up at him.

In the end, her intense craving for something sweet overruled her other desires. She very slowly and carefully removed Killian’s arm from around her belly and placed it beside his face. The next challenge was his legs that were entangled with hers. She gently pushed his body from hers and somehow managed to slip her legs free and force herself to sit up, dangling her feet over the bed. As she craned her neck and glanced over at her peacefully sleeping boyfriend, Emma immediately regretted her decision, but if she didn’t satisfy her craving, she wasn’t going to be able to relax.

She stood up and walked over to the closet, grabbing her robe. As she slipped it on, tying the belt above her belly, she felt like she was on a cloud, her body still buzzing and feeling alight from the lovemaking she and Killian had engaged in the night before. She couldn’t contain the smile that spread across her lips as she went downstairs and headed to the kitchen. She couldn’t believe how happy and content she was after all the years she felt imprisoned when she was with Neal. Even knowing that he was still a threat to Emma and her baby, she was still optimistic. She felt safe and secure with Killian, and no abusive husband of hers was going to change that.

Emma opened the refrigerator, finding the leftover apple pie she had made. She licked her lips thinking about having a slice of it. She grabbed the pie container it was in and shut the door behind her before making her way to the counter. She took out a slice and transferred it to a plate, putting it in the microwave.

When the pie was warmed up to her liking, she took out a carton of vanilla ice cream, scooping some up and plopping it on top of the slice before replacing the container in the freezer. She decided that she would feel selfish eating apple pie by herself without sharing some with Killian so she grabbed two forks from the silverware drawer.

Just as she was about to pick up the plate, she felt a pair of strong hands curl around her hips and a warm pair of lips brushing across her ear. Her heart fluttered as he swiped her disheveled hair to one side of her shoulder, murmuring against her skin.

“Mmm, something smells delicious.”

Emma immediately smiled and turned her head slightly, enjoying the feel of his lips on her skin as he kissed her lobe and gently bit down, his hands moving towards her belly, gently caressing her through the robe. She shuddered as the hot breath in her ear sent a tingle of pleasure directly to her core. “It’s just microwaved leftovers from the fridge,” she managed breathlessly, even though he had barely even touched her.

She felt him grin against her skin as he nosed her earlobe. “I’m not talking about the pie.” Emma blushed, smiling even wider and biting her bottom lip. She knew that she still reeked of sex and even now, he could probably smell the scent of her arousal building between her thighs. “You smell just as sexy as you look in this little robe of yours. I think you came down here to get a slice of my favorite pie to intentionally torture me,” he groaned in her ear. He was wearing only his boxers and she could feel his arousal hard against her butt as he rocked his hips, giving her little thrusts as his hands protected her belly from hitting the edge of the counter.

Her mind could barely concentrate on her task as she tried to speak. “I can’t help it if I have a sweet tooth. I thought you of all people would understand, considering you eat apple pie for breakfast on a daily basis,” she reminded him with a strangled laugh. She desperately tried to ignore the things he was doing to her as she lifted one of the forks and scooped up some apple pie. “In fact I was going to share some before you came down here.” Emma brought the bite of pie and ice cream to her mouth, tasting the warm verses cold sweetness on her tongue as she licked her lips. She let a moan slip as he continued to slowly rock his erection against her ass. “Have you learned by now not to mess with a pregnant woman when she’s trying to eat?” she teased him after swallowing.

“And what pray tell are you going to do about it, love?” he asked playfully, leaving soft kisses along her neck. Emma shivered, feeling his wonderful lips on her skin, his attempt of making her squirm, relentless, and she almost dropped the fork.

She had to compose herself before scooping up another bite, this time picking up the plate and turning in his arms so she could feed it to him. “I’m going to give you a taste to show you what you’re missing.” She brought the fork to his mouth and he opened without hesitation, letting her slip the bite of pie and ice cream between his lips. He licked his mouth swallowing it down his throat as she took another bite herself.

“Mmmm, it’s good but I’d still rather have you,” he spoke in a husky voice as he took the plate and fork from her, setting them on the counter. “Besides, that’s a lot of sugar for you darling.”

Emma arched a brow, eyeing him in confusion. “I thought you weren’t going to tell me how to eat?”

“Aye love, apologies. I just don’t want your blood sugar to spike, making you sick.”

A devious smile spread across her lips as she leaned in to kiss him, slipping her hand in between them and inside his boxers, her fingers wrapping around his thick length, her thumb swiping the precum from his slit. “I guess I’ll just need some protein to offset the carbs,” she said in a seductive voice, licking the taste of him from her lips.

He opened his mouth to protest before catching onto what she was actually trying to tell him, his cheeks filling with blush as he flashed her a grin. “Hmmm…” He thrusted into her hand as she stroked his cock. “I’ll gladly fill your mouth some protein… bloody siren.”

She moaned, his words galvanizing her and she smashed her lips into his. He groaned in her mouth as she immediately flicked her tongue over his, tasting the ice cream and apple on his cold tongue and they wrapped their arms around one another, pulling each other closer. Even if her belly wasn’t in the way he just couldn’t be close enough. Emma held his jaw in her grasp, caressing his stubble underneath her fingertips as she made out with her boyfriend, massaging his tongue with hers.

Emma’s skin was set ablaze as his hands roamed her body, finding her ass and cupping her cheeks in his palms, giving them a firm squeeze. She whimpered, moving her own hands to his chest and roughly biting his bottom lip between her teeth. “To hell with the apple pie.” She pushed him backwards until his back hit the island counter, eliciting a low growl as their mouths devoured one another, their tongues fighting for dominance. The pie and ice cream soon fell to the back of Emma’s mind; her body craved him more than anything, even after their hot night of passion.

She released his lips, leaving them both breathless as she started pressing wet kisses down his chest, flicking her tongue over his nipple before making her way down his amazing body. She knelt on the floor as she reached his boxers and eagerly pulled out his throbbing cock, feeling the thick weight in her hand and moaning.

“Love, you really don’t have to-” his words were cut off when she took him in her mouth and slowly devoured his length, bobbing her head up and down. Guttural groans tore from his throat as his hands went to her hair, entangling his fingers in her locks. Emma twirled her tongue around the head, licking and tasting him as she cupped his balls in her hand, giving them a gentle squeeze.

“Oh fuck…” he groaned, fucking her mouth as he cupped the back of her head in his hands. “Bloody fucking hell…”

They both lost themselves, getting caught up in their haze of passion, she almost didn’t hear the kitchen door being opened.

“Oh good you’re up.”

Emma’s eyes blew wide and she immediately released Killian’s cock from her mouth as he offered a hand to help her stand up. He quickly tucked himself in his boxers as Emma wiped her mouth, both of them turning their attention to the door being closed. A head of soft brown curls turned around, barely missing the display as he walked over to the island counter.

“Your brother has a key… good to know,” she breathed, clutching onto Killian’s shoulders for balance. Her knees were weak from her activity.

“Oh good, you’re awake too, Emma. Just the person I need to talk to-”Liam stopped as his eyes darted between the two of them, studying their faces and flashing them an inquiring look. “Am I interrupting something?”

Simultaneous responses fell from both mouths. “No,” Emma shook her head as Killian replied an irritated “yes,” and he turned around, leaning his hands on the counter, keeping his lower half covered behind it.

“We were just having apple pie à la Mode. Want some?” She asked as she turned to fetch the slice of pie with melted ice cream on top, picking it up and offering it to Liam.

He eyed it suspiciously. “That’s okay, I already ate. And I don’t eat sweets for breakfast. I’m trying to watch my figure,” he said placing his hands on his stomach. “I want to be fit for when the baby comes and I have to chase the little lad or lassie around.”

“So, what’s so urgent that you couldn’t call ahead of time before casually stopping by?” Killian asked, still a bit irritated. Emma playfully whacked his shoulder. “What was that for?” he asked her, confused as he rubbed his shoulder.

“Is that any way to talk to your brother?” Emma asked Killian as she started making her way around the counter.

“Thank you, Emma. Killian needed someone to put him in his place.” Liam chuckled as she approached him and gave him a hug.

“I never got a chance to congratulate you and Cordelia on the baby. I’m happy for both of you.”

“Ah, thank you, lass,” Liam murmured, reciprocating the hug, snugly wrapping his arms around her. It was much like hugging a big teddy bear. When they pulled away, Liam had a guilty look on his face as he scratched behind his ear. “Emma, I’m not sure what Killian’s told you but I want to apologize for my inappropriate remarks against you. I really didn’t mean them, I was only looking out for my brother and his career… he’s worked very hard to get where’s at… plus I’m just not used to him being so taken by someone like he is with you… since he lost Milah.”

“It’s okay. He didn’t tell me specifically but I don’t need to know,” she assured him as she came back to Killian and rubbed his back. “I don’t want him to get in trouble either and I’m glad he has a brother like you who looks out for him.” Killian gave her a small smile as he took her hand in his and brought it his lips, pressing a soft kiss there.

“I have no regrets, Emma. I love you,” Killian assured her adamantly.

Emma’s pulse sped up and she couldn’t help the smile that threatened her lips. “I love you too.”

Killian turned toward her and wrapped her up in his arms, kissing her on the lips. She couldn’t see Liam but she could sense that he felt awkwardly uncomfortable witnessing their displays of affection.

He cleared his threat, causing Emma and Killian to revert their attention back to him. She turned around in his arms and he rested her hands on her belly as she leaned back into his front, covering his hands with hers.

“Well, I’m not staying long I just came by because Cordelia wasn’t sure what to get you for the baby shower. She loves to knit but she was afraid of being cheap. Besides, you’ll probably be getting a lot of baby clothes so you probably want something different, right?”

“That’s really sweet of her, and actually I’m fine with her knitting something rather than spending a lot of money. I’m sure my baby couldn’t have enough blankets or clothes.”

“Okay, lass, I’ll let her know. And if I were you, I wouldn’t let him buy you anything,” Liam teased as he pointed at Killian.

“Why do you say that?” she asked curiously as Killian shot him a look of confusion..

“Because he’ll probably get you a breast pump or something like that,” Liam chuckled.

“Oi! I’ll have you know, I got Emma a perfectly nice gift.”

Emma turned her head to Killian. “You didn’t have to get me anything. You already bought me a car and a baby seat.”

“You bought that for Emma?” Liam asked, surprised.

“Aye. I wanted her to have a decent car to drive the little lad around in.”

“Emma, what’s your secret? I’m in need of a new car too for me and Cord. What do I have to do to get Killy here to buy me one?” he asked playfully.

“Sorry Liam, but I’m afraid you don’t fit the criteria. One, you called me Killy and you know how much I hate that. And two, you’re not as pretty as Emma and you’re not my girlfriend.”

“Yeah I’m only your older and more wiser brother. I guess that doesn’t count for anything these days,” Liam shot back as he started for the door, lifting his hand to the knob.

Killian rolled his eyes. “You’re just jealous that I spend more time with a gorgeous blonde than you.”

Liam laughed and shook his head as he opened the door. “Emma you can have him.”

Emma smiled at their playful banter. “I’ll gladly take him off your hands.”

“Alright, I’ll see you both at the shower.”

“Okay, bye Liam.”

Liam barely shut the door behind him when Killian took Emma’s hips in his hands, making her gasp as he pressed himself against her butt.

“Now where were we?” he asked in a deep, mischievous voice. Emma smirked as she instantly surrendered to him, rubbing her ass against his crotch, feeling how hard he was.

“Still have your appetite?” she asked him, surprised.

“For you? Always,” he responded in a low growl as he lifted his left hand and slipped it under the opening of her robe, his thumb brushing over her nipple, instantly making it hard.

Feeling his full erection pressed against her body and his hand massaging her breast, heat spread through her entire body and she moaned incoherent responses, needing him badly. Killian turned her around, lifted her and brought her to the table, settling between her legs.

He pulled at the ends of her belt, loosening it and letting each side of her robe open, her swollen breasts spilling out. Killian’s eyes darkened, drinking them in as he growled. He moved his hands to her gems, teasing the nipples and she tilted her head back, closing her eyes as her fingers scrubbed through his hair. “Bloody gorgeous,” he groaned, his voice completely shattered as he let her breasts fill his palms, his fingers massaging them gently. Her folds were completely soaked, she didn’t know how much longer she could take of not being touched where she needed him most.

“Killian…”

Eager to fulfill her request, his right hand slipped to her aching sex, his fingers disappearing into her folds. “Fuck you’re wet,” he uttered a broken whisper as he leaned in, his mouth drawing in the skin just above her left breast. “So fucking wet for me…”

Moans tumbled from her lips as he pushed two fingers in and out of her aching heat, his thumb feathering her clit. His left hand went to the small of her back to hold her up as he continued sucking on her chest. She felt herself slowly fall to pieces when he captured his nipples and breasts in his mouth, teasing and nipping as he fondled her nub. She cursed out obscenities as he added another finger, plunging into her depths more rapidly.

“Ohhhh… God…” she cried out her pleasure as he gave her nipple one last suck before releasing her breast and crashing his hot mouth on hers, kissing her deeply.

She wasn’t used to all of the attention he gave her. All of her life, she had dealt with men who took their pleasure from her, mistreated it, mistreated her and misused her. Neal was always out for himself, even in the beginning of their relationship. Emma was starting to wonder if the bastard had ever loved her at all.

Even with Emma being pregnant, Killian didn’t hold back and he loved pleasuring her. He loved going down on her and he loved driving her mad with pleasure. And still, he didn’t handle her like glass. He was so perfect for her in every way, it was a bit scary.

Emma yelped out as Killian drew out her climax, three fingers still pounding into her core. With every thrust, he teased her tongue with his, letting the tip of it brush over hers as he hit that spot inside of her with his fingers, swallowing her moans. Her nectar spilled freely over his digits, her body vibrating as she came in his hand. He tenderly kissed her lips as she came down from her high, panting harshly, droplets of sweat forming at her forehead.

Once she caught her breath, she ran her fingers along his jaw, kissing him eagerly. She still needed him inside of her. She needed him with every fiber of her being.

“Killian… I need you… please.”

“You’re not too tired?”

She shook her head. “No. Not until I have you.” She pulled off the robe from her shoulders letting it pool over the table.

Killian didn’t need to be asked twice as he urged her back until she was laying across the table, her legs spread apart invitingly.

“Fuck me, Killian,” she begged, her voice completely wrecked. He growled at her request as he yanked off his boxers and stepped out of them before settling between her thighs. He grabbed her hips and lined himself up with her entrance, slowly thrusting into her. She moaned, letting her body relax as she felt him rocking against her, his cock stretching her walls and filling her so deliciously.

He placed his hands on either side of her belly, his sparkling blue eyes locked with hers in a heated gaze as shattered groans fell from his mouth. “Gods, your feel so incredible…”

Killian’s hands slid underneath her thighs and he lifted her legs up, allowing him to fuck her deeper, the table rocking back and forth, hitting the wall with every thrust. Bracing her hands on the edge of the table, she let him take her to his heart’s content, enjoying every smack of skin as he pounded into her.

The rhythm and speed soon became too much for her and she arched her back, feeling her arousal take over her body. Her walls collapsed, squeezing his pulsing cock, causing his hips to stutter. They both climaxed in unison, groans tossed in the air as his seed spurted deep within her center. They tried to catch their breaths as he slowly slipped out of her.

“As much as I love having sex while you’re pregnant, I have to admit, I can’t wait until you have your little lad, love,” he breathed as he offered his hand, helping her sit up. She was still dizzy with pleasure as she rested her head against his chest, wrapping her arms around his hips for balance. “You’re much too far away.”

“Agreed,” she said breathlessly, smirking against him as she conjured all the ways and all the surfaces they could have each other on when she was no longer sporting a baby in her belly.

[rebelheartsmustbefree]

When the truth is found...to be lies. And all the joy.. within you...dies..

*There was something unmistakable about the feel of electricity coursing through your body. The way each new wave brought a new lick of terror right up my spine. I don’t remember clearly but I was sure that I hadn’t received this treatment before. But with each fresh volt a little flash of memory came back to me. I had been here, enduring this same punishment before. The feel of the electrodes pressing against my temples. How was it that I only begun to recall this now? Had my mind gone too far beyond what it could withstand? Exactly how far were they going to take this rubberband brain before it will most assuredly snap? Fuck. Here comes more of that white heat racing through my bloodstream. I bit down on the rubber ball that was so thoughtfully wedged between my teeth. I guess my tormentors didn’t want to hear the spoils of their work. This time I bit down so hard that I could of sworn I was about to bust my jaw, hurting so bad that it brought tears to my eyes. After the last round of lighting, I tried to think about how long I had been here, every muscle twitching helplessly. Either out of shock or in anticipation for the next hit. My eyesight was blurry, but with a quick exploration of my surroundings I realized where I was. Home sweet home. Heaven. Which meant my captors must be the lovely bunch of winged fuc-   There it was, another current claiming my entire body. I was now triggered into a seizure, flashes of horrid memories come crashing to the front of my mind. There was so much blood. Some of it my own, most of it being Zachariah's. This explains the ride on the lighting train. Things started to get fuzzy and it seemed almost too much to handle just to keep my eyes open. And right on cue, another violent volt envelops me, my jaw snapping down tight again on the gag, tasting blood on my tongue. The memories come flooding in rapidly now, my eyes close and I give in to the undertow, the darkness seducing my consciousness that I admit I was too weak to put up any sort of fight.

Just sit back and go with the flow.

One second I was peacefully sleeping, the next I was rudely being taken from my blissful dreams by the bastard Angel Zachariah. I wasn’t pleased at all to see the very angel that had on multiple occasions tried to kill me. That was probably an understatement. I hated him with the fire of a thousand suns. And that was no exaggeration. I sat up in bed and was subsequently regaled with some seriously heavy truths. One blow after another. The hits kept coming. Each one pushing that proverbial dagger deeper into my back. And just as my old buddy Zac was telling me all the dirty details on how he was very much involved with killing my last lover, the key offender come walking in with a tray of food for us. More lies he was prepared to feed me I’m sure. Well I was done choking down this bullshit he was shoving down my gullet every single fucking day since the day we met. I felt this bile rise in my throat. I was sick, I was betrayed and I was furious. I felt nothing but fury, could see nothing but red flashing before my eyes. I felt unimaginable pain and all I wanted in that moment was to share it all around.

It was time to get even with my demons.

Vinny’s lips parted to say something and it triggered something inside me that hated the thought of ever hearing his voice again. My hand rose and I forced his air to cut off by will, choking him as if my own fingers were right there around his neck. I could tell the pressure was just enough, still gathering some air that he most rightfully had to work for but still kept him from opening his mouth and letting more lies spill out. Truth be told I was done with both of these fuckers. Zachariah was quick to reach over and try to break the hold I had on Vinny, only causing me to switch my focus right to him. With a flick of my wrist I sent the Saint launching into the corner and caught the Angel with my hand, my palm firm against his throat. I wasn’t sure if these guys thought I was some fool they could form to fit in there little world but they really read me wrong. This ain’t my circus. I was no one’s monkey.

Or was it Puppet, as Vinny liked to call me?

The eyes of my fellow angel began to bulge as I tightened my grip, kinda looked like one of those goofy looking stress contraptions that folks use instead of doing things like this to people. I prefer this method to work out some of those frustrations, ones that these two assholes caused, but I digress. Something in my head nagged at me, a voice in the back of my mind that told me that I wasn’t getting the whole story and if I killed them both right here and now, I would never get it. But the wrath that I desired at the present time seemed to overrule any and all common sense. I stood and brought Zachariah with me, dragging his pathetic body across the room and through the doorway to guide him down the stairs. He did his best in trying to claw and grapple at me, anything to try and break the hold I had on him. Everything was for nothing, my power would always be far more than he could handle. I wasn’t sure what all I was capable of, but this was something I could feel with every fiber of my being. It was more than just facts here, I was dealing with a state of mind. As we descended down the stairs, I caught a glimpse of my eyes, those icy blues staring back at me through the glass of a picture frame that hung along the wall. This time, unlike at the plane crash, I wasn’t afraid of the image reflecting back at me. I fucking embraced it.  

I didn’t know when I started using my fists but I was fully engaged in this fight. All systems were up and running. With each hit to the elder angel’s face I could feel his bones give way, cracking all the way from the cheekbones to his jaw then around to the front of his skull. It was no surprise that it was the most stubborn of areas being the hardheaded bastard Zachariah was, bruising and busting open my own knuckles with each unforgiving blow. His face was beginning to look like it had an unfortunate run in with a meat grinder when he finally gained the upper hand, flipping us and taking his turn with his own fists. And at some point we made it outside and my back was pinned against the cool, tender blades of grass. Other than this asshole punching me in the face, it would have been a lovely place to take a nap or just lay out and look at the stars. Which I caught a few sights of between his punches. Ass beating with a view. Who would have thought?

Alright, I have had enough of this.

His next punch was met with my palm, fingers closing, clutching and crushing every single bone in his hand without a second thought. You should have seen the look on his face, the pain in his cry only made me want to hear more. I shot up without warning, crashing my forehead into the other Angel’s, a sickening crack could be heard across the neighborhood. Blood trickled down from my brow where either I had just busted it open or from his assault, or both assaerbated the injury to the point where I had a steady warm stream coming down the side of my face and coating my lips. My tongue swiped out over it to taste of my own life force, the blood that made me who I was and I earned a gasp from Zachariah.*

“I should have killed that wretched human woman as soon as I found out that your father knocked her up. Instead you became a curse to us all, never amounting to any good except to fuck everything up. Now look at you, an abomination to our Heavenly father, laying with men, enjoying all the sins that ruin this creation that God wanted so badly. You have the ability to do so much good but you’re a waste to this world and a waste of raw abilities. Your mother should have swallowed you like the whore she was.”

*If I thought I was seeing red before, now there was burning hellfire standing between him and I. and then there was rage. It claimed me, burned from the inside out until I was clutching his neck again and lifting him off of his feet that kicked and eagerly searched for footing. But he would never find it again in this life. My other hand punched forward and plunged right into his chest, clutching and ripping out his still beating heart. I let it drop from my blood soaked fingers, splatting messily onto the ground at my feet. With a very self-satisfied grin, I glared up at him and laid my palm against his forehead, smiting him right there on the spot where my mother was buried. I tossed his lifeless body over to the side before picking up and shoving his heart right into that fat fucking mouth of his. I smeared my hand across my chest, wearing the blood of my victory proud across my flesh.

One down, one to go.

I made my way back into the house, finding Vinny mid-way down the stairs, sitting there with his hands cradling his face. I could tell he had been crying, the smell of tears was something I got use to in this house with my mother. And now my boyfriend, the liar and the rat was trying to pull out all the resources to gain some pity from me. Well, it wasn’t going to work. His fate was already written in stone once he decided to team up with the now dead elder angel and work against me. I cleared my throat to catch his attention as I stood, arms crossed over my chest at the bottom of the stairs. It gave him quite the start, head snapping up and eyes meeting mine. He got to his feet and immediately began sputtering out excuse after sorry excuse. Endless apologies and more lies that made my stomach turn.*

“I didn’t expect to fall for you. Isaac you have to believe me. This, what’s between us is real. I was about to tell you everything but..I was too late. I love you and I am begging you for mercy, please forgive me.”

*Mercy? Forgiveness? Love? No. This was all a ploy to get me back under his thumb, working another angle now that the first plan went and hit the fan. His words continued, each syllable seemed to add to the fire that roared inside me. The pain of betrayal, feelings for someone that had stabbed me in the back from that first night. Each word. Stab. Cut. Bleed. Until I felt nothing but contempt for this man standing in front of me now. Both hands wrapped around his neck, there wasn’t a fight left in him. He was a man who had confessed everything but it came to us a little too late. As I watched the life drain from his eyes, the light dimming in this once bright star, the saint who will now die a sinner, I felt his tears drip onto my wrist. I squeezed harder, he was gasping my name, saying those three words again. The ones that I would never say out loud back to him. Instead I showed him my mercy by placing a kiss to his lips before hearing that distinctive crack. I had applied enough pressure to snap his neck and he was suffering no more.

Now the suffering was all mine. As I finished my trip down memory lane, the events that lead me here, the only thing I felt now was the numbness setting in. As another round of electricity claims my battle weary body, I closed my eyes and tried not to remember how it felt to kill someone I loved yet again. I think that will stick with me for all of my days. That is if I make it out of this place with any brain cells left. With any luck, they will take this way too far and I won’t recall anything. One could only hope. Right?*

#TBC

[outshinethestars]

I just watched the clone wars movie and wrote over a thousand words of notes.  Because I’m committed like that.  They’re under the cut.

Anakin doesn’t want to drag a padawan into a warzone.

Ahsoka has a good idea, and it’s tech related

Rex Laughs

I think he likes Ahsoka’s lack of respect.  Also, babysitting Ahsoka is probably punishment for the laugh.

Ahsoka’s first suggestion is to better protect the men.  Also, does Rex sort of agree with her?  But Anakin overruled him? That’s… disturbingly Krellish.

There’s the famous line!

Rex forsees a life of headaches for himself and Obi-Wan.  Though  Obi-Wan isn’t quite as stuck with them as he is.

…so we know that Yoda has a history of using padawans as therapy animals, and I think it’s pretty clear that he’s sent Ahsoka to Anakin in order to teach him responsibility/have someone who compliments his personality.  But do you think Ahsoka maybe…knows? Sort of?  I mean the way she’s handling him, with all the “Nope, you gotta come up with the ideas, I will wait and learn from you.  You better be a good role model now.” I’m… probably reading too much into this.  I love angst far too much.

They are hiding in a box!  I love when I discover the sources of memes.

Ahsoka really, really wants to fight.

You know it’s bad when Anakin’s the patient one.

Rex has come so far.  What with the laugh and the questioning of General Kenobi’s orders. (this is in regards to my own headcanon/AU)  They seem to know each other pretty well.  Also he totally knows that Obi-Wan will do something incredibly stupid in two seconds.  I bet Cody made him promise to stay by his side and watch his back (because at least Anakin has a sort of functional sense of self preservation, but Obi-Wan does not).  I bet Rex feels bad now, and is terrified that Cody will kill him if something happens.  But orders are orders.

Ahsoka is REALLY good at fighting.  Like, she is SO powerful in the force tossing things around like it’s nothing.

Anakin was kind of harsh there, I mean, she did mess up, sure, but this is her FIRST BATTLE.  She’s doing pretty good for a shiny. (Of course, it’s because he’s terrified for her.  Because somehow the only one who is cognizant of the fact that a fourteen year old in a war zone is stupid is the slave boy who once competed in a deadly pod race at the age of nine.

Rex is definitely panicking on the inside.  We can’t tell, of course, but he is. (Cody will KILL him.)

Ahsoka has amazing spacial awareness.  And again with the force strength.

Anakin is really not appreciating. It’s understandable. But Ahsoka isn’t having quite as good a day as she would like, probably.

Clone Wars is the best at war.  All the death.  Though none near Ahsoka as of yet.

Why isn’t Obi-Wan afraid the tea is poisoned? Why isn’t it poisoned?  Is it?

Ahsoka sits by herself forlornly

Anakin joins her

That’s sweet but… not the tiniest bit true.  Like, I saw this in caption form before and…Does Anakin really not know Obi-Wan at all? (he doesn’t.  I really want to kill Palpatine.)

Rex praise!  (Also, he says great job to Anakin like… he’s proud of him. Like, in the way a dad or someone “above” would say to someone “below”.  Interesting.)

Why Yoda? Why? This isn’t quite as bad as Kadavo will be, but it’s pretty kriffin’ stupid.  The level of disbelief in Anakin’s voice is perfect.

Having Obi-Wan handle this sort of thing does sort of make sense in a way.

Ahsoka already talks about Rex with such familiarity.

Obi-Wan’s disgusted with making deals with hutts too.

Ahsoka bonds with clones.  Rex thinks that she and the General are hilarious, I think.

Anakin…isn’t the best example for humility, really.

Ahsoka’s first encounter with actual war. She’s a bit overwhelmed at first

Okay.  I’m probably am reading too much into this and too desperately want Ahsoka to care about clones, but.  The rock climber thing gets hit and a clone inside yells, and the next thing we know, Ahsoka’s up on front fending of blaster bolts.

Poor long-suffering Rex

Anakin, there are ALREADY people looking after the wounded.  You don’t have to tell them that.  (It shows you cares, though, which is important.)

…Servant girl… togruta racism confirmed?  Also, non-human protocol droid.  Cool.

Ahsoka likes killing things way too much.

Poor conflicted Anakin.  The baby hutt really is cute.

…so that was unfortunate.

Ahsoka’s afraid she’s too young. This could fit with some Plo Koon ideas

When did Ahsoka get to know R2?

REX IS AWESOME AND I LOVE HIM! He’s one of those people who will shoot at powerful force users.  And also be creative about force suggestion.

Okay, no.  THIS is Rex being awesome.  He hit a droid hard enough to make its head spin and proceeded to destroy them even surrounded.  Also He is so confident.  He knows he can do this.

He does not ask for help.

Ahsoka is really worried about Stinky.  Not so much about Rex?  … interesting…  I guess it makes sense to worry about the tiny, very sick child, and she figures Rex can take care of himself

Good job talking like you only care about Rex’s safety because you need him for something, Anakin.

“I hope I don’t have to learn that.”  I like the idea that Ahsoka trained super hard and is freakishly prepared for this.  She doesn’t like the idea of it being not enough, that she’s still out of her element (see 38) but she’s determined to learn more and become better.

Obi-Wan and Oddball bit is so good.  Clone panicking and apologizing for it.  Obi-Wan being understanding and reassuring and saving him.

droids really are stupid.  Rex takes advantage of this.

Obi-Wan and Ventress are dancing.  Because of course they are.

… “I tried to stay calm,focussed and everything seemed so easy” 8 maybe?

How many clones just died?  I hate this show. (except that I don’t)

They could really use a medic

Anakin is really sweet

Ooh holo med droid

I love how much confidence Anakin and Obi-Wan had in each other

Ahsoka is so unimpressed, even though Anakin’s flying really is impressive.

R2 is a war droid

Ahsoka already knows Anakin’s looks

Obi-Wan: Did you get shot down again?  Ahsoka: yes

Padme is really, really obvious. Everybody has to know she and Anakin are married

Palpatine trying to undermine Padme

Ahsoka’s really nosy.  Kinda naive?  Also she tries to be positive/cheer Anakin up.  (8?)

Leia is Padme’s daughter.

Anakin asks Ahsoka to trust him

Reverse psychology is very effective on droids even… are these assassin droids? who are presumably a little smarter than battle droids.

Anakin fights Dooku with sand

Anakin already has a lot of faith in Ahsoka

“Stinky, you watch my back” Ahsoka is adorable.

The Coruscant troopers get to be awesome.

have I mentioned that Ahsoka is awesome in this?  Because she is awesome

[courtneytincher]

Polish ruling party whips up LGBTQ hatred ahead of elections amid 'gay-free' zones and Pride march attacks

It recalls an era now almost forgotten in Western Europe, but when Jakub Gawron decided to join last month’s gay Pride march in the northeastern Polish city of Bialystok, it took physical courage to take his place in the line.  As the crowd of LGBTQ activists started to march, they were pelted with both rocks and rotten eggs; as they progressed some counter-demonstrators knelt at the pavement praying loudly while others hurled abuse: “F*** you, faggots!”. Police made more than 30 arrests. “I was happy to be marching but also afraid,” 38-year-old Mr Gawron tells the Telegraph, a day after ‘coming out’ to his local edition of the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. “They were physically threatening us, throwing stones. I admit, I was scared.” Being openly LGBTQ in Poland in 2019, particularly in rural areas and smaller towns, is now taking increasing physical and mental fortitude as both the Catholic Church and the Polish state actively work to create a hostile environment for the gay community.  The ugly scenes in Bialystok were not an isolated incident. Several Polish regional parliaments have declared their districts to be “LGBT-free zones” in recent months after the liberal mayor of Warsaw signed a declaration in February supporting LGBTQ rights. His pledge to integrate LGBTQ issues into sex education taught in schools, in accordance with World Health Organization guidelines, enraged and galvanised the powerful forces of conservatism in Polish politics and media.  Police fired tear gas to disperse groups, including of ultra-nationalists, trying to block the Bialystok march Credit: Jerzy Baliski/AFP That included Mr Gawron’s home town of Rzeszow in southeast Poland, where district authorities declared the region an “LGBT-free zone” and tried to ban their own small LGBTQ pride march in June, citing ‘health and safety concerns’.  The attempt to ban the march was overruled by the courts, but Jacek Kotula, a member of the regional parliament and pro-life activist who led the campaign for the LGBT-free zone declaration, is unapologetic - and says the move had symbolic rather than legal force.  “For us the whole LGBTQ thing is something abnormal, we feel it is a sick minority trying to impose itself on the healthy mainstream of society. We tolerate them but we do not accept them,” he tells the Telegraph. “When people heard what happened in Warsaw they came together to demand action. The declaration is intended to say ‘don’t be scared, what happened in Warsaw won’t happen here’. Listen, we don’t want to let a fox in the chicken coup and LGBT is a fox.” Mr Kotula is a fervent Catholic who believes he is fighting in a noble cause, saving his region - where he says 75 per cent of people are regular church-goers - from a rising tide of Western moral corruption and secularisation. He says he is acting “for the sake of my grandchildren”.  When Rzeszow Pride took place, Mr Kotula led teams of counter-protesters who lined the streets saying decades of the rosary,  praying that God would have mercy on the city’s LGBTQ sinners. Jacek Kotula, a conservative politician and anti-LGBTQ campaigner, insists he is fighting for his grandchildren's future Credit: Peter Foster/The Telegraph He is clear during our conversation that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman. He asserts as a matter of “scientific” fact that LGBTQ people are more likely to be paedophiles and that “homosexuals” can be cured of their “deviancy” if they want it badly enough. For Mr Gawron and his fellow activist, 23-year-old Nikita Szafranski, a young IT professional who describes himself as ‘queer’, the result of so much righteous indignation is a life lived half in the shadows, even though both are ‘out’. They and their fellow members of the LGBTQ community communicate ‘underground’ on invitation-only Facebook groups and Grindr where, Mr Gawron points out, fewer members are willing to post photographs than among similar LGBTQ groups in Iran. Nikita says they were lucky to have accepting parents, and while the attitudes in small-town Rzeszow are much more open-minded than in the village, it still lags far behind bigger cities like Warsaw or Gdansk. Everyone has to be carefully vetted before they can join the group.  The result can be deep isolation for those unable to link to that world. “We have to be careful,” Nikita says softly, “If you have no LGBTQ friends from here, then it can be hard to get in to the group; hard to find other people with whom you feel comfortable.” Nationally, both agree that the LGBTQ picture in Poland is deteriorating, thanks to some calculated stoking of anti-LGBTQ sentiment by Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party and the political and media establishment that supports it.  In 2015 it was migrants that were singled out as the enemy of a strong, Christian family-centred Polish state with Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Law and Justice, infamously calling them “parasites and protozoa”. With elections looming in October, this time it seems that it is the LGBTQ community that is the new enemy within, with Mr Kaczynski saying the Warsaw mayor’s statement was “an attack on the family and children”, and describing the entire LGBTQ movement as an “imported” ideology. Gay activists such as Jakub Gawron say that despite being 'out', they are forced to live a life half in the shadows Credit: Peter Foster/The Telegraph Officially the government decries the violence seen in Bialystok, but at the same time hints that LGTBQ groups are out to provoke. The education minister Dariusz Piontowski has questioned whether such marches should be allowed since they “awaken resistance” in the wider public. The government stance is also backed by a powerful conservative media that has loaded Poland’s newstands with brazenly anti-LGBTQ magazine covers. One publication, Sieci, warned of a “Massive attack on Poland coming”, while another, Do Rzeczy, showed a mocked up prime ministerial podium flanked with rainbow flags. A third, the Gazeta Polska, went even further, printing a cover warning that the LGBTQ movement wanted to “destroy their civilisation” and giving readers a "LGBT-free zone" sticker showing a black cross over a rainbow flag. The stickers were banned by the courts, but for Mr Gawron and Nikita they speak to a deepening climate of hostility that Polish Pride marchers - there were 16 Pride marches in the country’s 20 regions this year - need to overcome.  Still, the two activists say they will not give up - with the reaction against the Bialystok violence itself providing a platform to continue the battle against deeply ingrained prejudices and conservative Catholic traditions. “When I saw the stickers and what happened in Bialystok I really broke down, I just felt we were going backwards,” says Nikita. “But after some time I calmed down, and I see it as a moment when people can start to speak out about what happened and then maybe we can move forward.” Conservative magazines have run covers warning of an "attack" on Poland coming from the LGBT community Credit: Peter Foster/The Telegraph Mr Gawron also believes that the current political campaign will not be as successful against the LGBTQ community as it was in whipping up fear of migrants. “In 2015 refugees became less socially accepted because of what PiS [the ruling Law and Justice party] said about them, but most people never knew a refugee in Poland. But they do know someone who is LGBTQ, or many do, so I hope it will not have the same impact,” he says. The visceral reaction of the establishment itself belies the fear among the Catholic church of increasing secularisation, declining church attendances and the drip-drip of the kind of paedophile scandals that has so sapped the church's credibility in Ireland. Asked whether he fears that Poland might follow Ireland - which now has a gay Taoiseach and has legalised both abortion and gay marriage - the conservative regional legislator, Mr Kotula, is adamant it will not. “We don’t believe in historical determinism,” he says. “We pray together and we have faith in God and that he will have mercy on us.”  Still, surveys show attitudes are changing, even if towns like Rzeszow are slower to reflect the inexorable liberalisation of opinion.  Although 24 per cent of Poles told the state pollster CBOS in 2017 that being gay should “not be tolerated”, that is a significant drop from the 41 per cent who expressed that view in 2001.  55 per cent of Poles now say homosexuality should be tolerated. Nikita is determined that that number should keep growing. “Pride isn’t about sex, or a manifestation of sex. If it was only about sex, then LGBT and Pride marches would not be necessary but this is not about the act, it is about who we are – and acceptance of that.”

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It recalls an era now almost forgotten in Western Europe, but when Jakub Gawron decided to join last month’s gay Pride march in the northeastern Polish city of Bialystok, it took physical courage to take his place in the line.  As the crowd of LGBTQ activists started to march, they were pelted with both rocks and rotten eggs; as they progressed some counter-demonstrators knelt at the pavement praying loudly while others hurled abuse: “F*** you, faggots!”. Police made more than 30 arrests. “I was happy to be marching but also afraid,” 38-year-old Mr Gawron tells the Telegraph, a day after ‘coming out’ to his local edition of the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. “They were physically threatening us, throwing stones. I admit, I was scared.” Being openly LGBTQ in Poland in 2019, particularly in rural areas and smaller towns, is now taking increasing physical and mental fortitude as both the Catholic Church and the Polish state actively work to create a hostile environment for the gay community.  The ugly scenes in Bialystok were not an isolated incident. Several Polish regional parliaments have declared their districts to be “LGBT-free zones” in recent months after the liberal mayor of Warsaw signed a declaration in February supporting LGBTQ rights. His pledge to integrate LGBTQ issues into sex education taught in schools, in accordance with World Health Organization guidelines, enraged and galvanised the powerful forces of conservatism in Polish politics and media.  Police fired tear gas to disperse groups, including of ultra-nationalists, trying to block the Bialystok march Credit: Jerzy Baliski/AFP That included Mr Gawron’s home town of Rzeszow in southeast Poland, where district authorities declared the region an “LGBT-free zone” and tried to ban their own small LGBTQ pride march in June, citing ‘health and safety concerns’.  The attempt to ban the march was overruled by the courts, but Jacek Kotula, a member of the regional parliament and pro-life activist who led the campaign for the LGBT-free zone declaration, is unapologetic - and says the move had symbolic rather than legal force.  “For us the whole LGBTQ thing is something abnormal, we feel it is a sick minority trying to impose itself on the healthy mainstream of society. We tolerate them but we do not accept them,” he tells the Telegraph. “When people heard what happened in Warsaw they came together to demand action. The declaration is intended to say ‘don’t be scared, what happened in Warsaw won’t happen here’. Listen, we don’t want to let a fox in the chicken coup and LGBT is a fox.” Mr Kotula is a fervent Catholic who believes he is fighting in a noble cause, saving his region - where he says 75 per cent of people are regular church-goers - from a rising tide of Western moral corruption and secularisation. He says he is acting “for the sake of my grandchildren”.  When Rzeszow Pride took place, Mr Kotula led teams of counter-protesters who lined the streets saying decades of the rosary,  praying that God would have mercy on the city’s LGBTQ sinners. Jacek Kotula, a conservative politician and anti-LGBTQ campaigner, insists he is fighting for his grandchildren's future Credit: Peter Foster/The Telegraph He is clear during our conversation that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman. He asserts as a matter of “scientific” fact that LGBTQ people are more likely to be paedophiles and that “homosexuals” can be cured of their “deviancy” if they want it badly enough. For Mr Gawron and his fellow activist, 23-year-old Nikita Szafranski, a young IT professional who describes himself as ‘queer’, the result of so much righteous indignation is a life lived half in the shadows, even though both are ‘out’. They and their fellow members of the LGBTQ community communicate ‘underground’ on invitation-only Facebook groups and Grindr where, Mr Gawron points out, fewer members are willing to post photographs than among similar LGBTQ groups in Iran. Nikita says they were lucky to have accepting parents, and while the attitudes in small-town Rzeszow are much more open-minded than in the village, it still lags far behind bigger cities like Warsaw or Gdansk. Everyone has to be carefully vetted before they can join the group.  The result can be deep isolation for those unable to link to that world. “We have to be careful,” Nikita says softly, “If you have no LGBTQ friends from here, then it can be hard to get in to the group; hard to find other people with whom you feel comfortable.” Nationally, both agree that the LGBTQ picture in Poland is deteriorating, thanks to some calculated stoking of anti-LGBTQ sentiment by Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party and the political and media establishment that supports it.  In 2015 it was migrants that were singled out as the enemy of a strong, Christian family-centred Polish state with Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Law and Justice, infamously calling them “parasites and protozoa”. With elections looming in October, this time it seems that it is the LGBTQ community that is the new enemy within, with Mr Kaczynski saying the Warsaw mayor’s statement was “an attack on the family and children”, and describing the entire LGBTQ movement as an “imported” ideology. Gay activists such as Jakub Gawron say that despite being 'out', they are forced to live a life half in the shadows Credit: Peter Foster/The Telegraph Officially the government decries the violence seen in Bialystok, but at the same time hints that LGTBQ groups are out to provoke. The education minister Dariusz Piontowski has questioned whether such marches should be allowed since they “awaken resistance” in the wider public. The government stance is also backed by a powerful conservative media that has loaded Poland’s newstands with brazenly anti-LGBTQ magazine covers. One publication, Sieci, warned of a “Massive attack on Poland coming”, while another, Do Rzeczy, showed a mocked up prime ministerial podium flanked with rainbow flags. A third, the Gazeta Polska, went even further, printing a cover warning that the LGBTQ movement wanted to “destroy their civilisation” and giving readers a "LGBT-free zone" sticker showing a black cross over a rainbow flag. The stickers were banned by the courts, but for Mr Gawron and Nikita they speak to a deepening climate of hostility that Polish Pride marchers - there were 16 Pride marches in the country’s 20 regions this year - need to overcome.  Still, the two activists say they will not give up - with the reaction against the Bialystok violence itself providing a platform to continue the battle against deeply ingrained prejudices and conservative Catholic traditions. “When I saw the stickers and what happened in Bialystok I really broke down, I just felt we were going backwards,” says Nikita. “But after some time I calmed down, and I see it as a moment when people can start to speak out about what happened and then maybe we can move forward.” Conservative magazines have run covers warning of an "attack" on Poland coming from the LGBT community Credit: Peter Foster/The Telegraph Mr Gawron also believes that the current political campaign will not be as successful against the LGBTQ community as it was in whipping up fear of migrants. “In 2015 refugees became less socially accepted because of what PiS [the ruling Law and Justice party] said about them, but most people never knew a refugee in Poland. But they do know someone who is LGBTQ, or many do, so I hope it will not have the same impact,” he says. The visceral reaction of the establishment itself belies the fear among the Catholic church of increasing secularisation, declining church attendances and the drip-drip of the kind of paedophile scandals that has so sapped the church's credibility in Ireland. Asked whether he fears that Poland might follow Ireland - which now has a gay Taoiseach and has legalised both abortion and gay marriage - the conservative regional legislator, Mr Kotula, is adamant it will not. “We don’t believe in historical determinism,” he says. “We pray together and we have faith in God and that he will have mercy on us.”  Still, surveys show attitudes are changing, even if towns like Rzeszow are slower to reflect the inexorable liberalisation of opinion.  Although 24 per cent of Poles told the state pollster CBOS in 2017 that being gay should “not be tolerated”, that is a significant drop from the 41 per cent who expressed that view in 2001.  55 per cent of Poles now say homosexuality should be tolerated. Nikita is determined that that number should keep growing. “Pride isn’t about sex, or a manifestation of sex. If it was only about sex, then LGBT and Pride marches would not be necessary but this is not about the act, it is about who we are – and acceptance of that.”

August 09, 2019 at 04:14PM via IFTTT