#(which of course means that they completely ignore their pilot's commands so they can go explore and-

[counterattacker]

Working on a custom-painted Lfrith Thorn! The V-fins turned out awesome!

[merirat]

They're never going to do anything like this in Hazbin Hotel because they've only got eight episodes per season, but I would be mightily impressed if they dove into the grey space of redemption.

I mean, the initial conceit of the show as set out by the pilot was Charlie's view of redemption (possible) vs Alastor's (impossible).

Season one proved that Charlie was right, even if the characters themselves don't know it yet, so what is the new conceit? That everyone can be redeemed vs only some can be redeemed? Is self-sacrifice required?

To flip that coin on its side: Is it possible to be redeemed by becoming completely irredeemable?

We're going to run with Alastor for this example, because of course we are.

Does he want to be redeemed? I think that's unlikely. He's amoral at best and can do pretty much anything he wants in Hell.

Still, it's possible. It's been stated that he's a bit of a mama's boy. If she was in Hell, he would have found her by now, so he might want to reach Heaven to see her again. Or fears her seeing what he is...

So Alastor doesn't want [or tells himself he doesn't want] to be redeemed and thinks it's impossible [or tells himself it's impossible]. Finding out about Sir Pentious means nothing. He was misclassified. Exceptions prove the rule.

And he's not wrong. Pentious seems like a "fallen into the wrong crowd" kinda guy. He repented the things he did. He atoned for them. He was absolved.

Alastor doesn't regret anything. He killed people when he was alive and probably killed them again in Hell for good measure. And then ate their liver. Because fuck those guys.

They are dead and double-dead. You can't atone for that.

But...

He isn't active. He's reactive.

He makes deals by responding to the chaos of Hell rather than creating it. He seems to acquire power just to keep others from having it and holding it over him.

He's an Overlord with no authority. He doesn't have a territory. He doesn't control a district. He has the radio waves, but they're inherent to his nature. It's not like commanding a slew of sinners.

He has power he doesn't wield. Which is to say, he doesn't throw his weight around to throw his weight around. He took down Overlords? Well... did they meet the criteria? He's a serial killer. He has a victim profile. He doesn't go after people on a whim, otherwise he would have eaten Susan by now.

Sir Pentious? Came at him. Vox? Same deal. Loan sharks? Attacked his place of residence. Exorcists? See both of the above... and his first act in that fight was to produce a shield, mitigating damage to the other hotel residents.

Ignoring his breakdown about almost dying for others for the moment, Alastor has been consistently described as terrible — and is definitely manipulative and deceitful — but has proven willing to pull all stops for the things that are important to him. Even if, to his horror, those things turn out to be other sinners.

So what does any of this have to do with the price of cabbage?

Alastor is, shall we say, living in Interesting Times™. There's an almost constant threat to his ecosystem: Heaven, Vox, whatever bullshit caused him to broker a deal. I don't think it's beyond the scope of his personality to do anything and everything to preserve what he feels he needs. Up to and including the vilest, most heinous, offensive to Creation itself strategy that comes down the pike.

Consume the core of the threat and be forever tainted? Sure.

Become a living cage for the essence of Evil itself? You bet.

Fuse himself to the very nature of Hell so that he can never leave? Wasn't planning to anyway.

Fight God and eat the heart of the Almighty if he wins? Fire up the barbeque.

In short, become so horribly corrupted that he's barely a shell of humanity, let alone redeemable, and in doing so save every soul in both Heaven and Hell?

What the hell do you do with a shining beacon of depravity?

[sopxhiea]

Palpable

Farrier X Reader

Summary: Farrier meets a young woman who works as a spy during the war and it so happens that this young woman’s next mission means she’ll be around for a while.

“Sorry… I wasn’t born with a filter.” 

The sky seems to be too clear for a day of war. The base is full, new soldiers come and go as they’re instructed to do while the ones that have been here for a while just watch. The air force base is a big metal box with high walls that house the destruction machines.

But that’s not how Farrier would describe them.

He sees them as his wings, maybe he was given a pair before he was born but they’d morphed into longer limbs. He knows he’s meant to be flying, whether it’s for his country or not. The war adds danger and thrill to the mix, two things that don’t necessarily go together.

He watches as the newbies walk into the space, they’re mostly young lads with their heads held up high. He knows they’ll come out of this as men, men who are emotionally drained and will never return to their old selves again. It’s a new week, he concludes and walks back to his wing on the base.

His stare drops on Collins first and the scotsman gives him a nod of his head. There’s a line of men waiting to be briefed about their next mission, even though there’s not much to be said. They need to keep the sky clear of any enemies and that’s mostly it. He stands next to Collins and they start making small talk.

That is, until the General walks in.

He’s wearing the dark green uniform, stars embedded across his wide shoulders as he takes a look at the line of men. They become less with every passing day. There’s a bunch of papers on his hand that are soon to be thrown out and a lieutenant follows his footsteps.

And there’s you.

It’s no wonder why you stand out, given you are in a base filled with men and men only. You’re wearing a black suit, similar to what Collins is wearing but it’s baggier and less formal. There’s no indication of a rank on your shoulders but a maroon beret and compartments filled with small guns for all he can see.

And you’re beautiful, too.

He thinks it’s not something that they pay attention to when choosing officers of any sort but the only women he’s seen around are nurses and they certainly do not look as gentle to the eye as you do. There’s a boyish hint to your walk as you eye each and every men on the line, they seem interested.

The briefing starts, it’s short and completely unnecessary. The air force is not the most liked part of the army but you know they do their job, more so than some other parts of the military as far as you’ve seen. You listen to the General as he talks about certain areas the pilots are required to stay away from and then he finishes his words. 

The wing commanders then separate into another room, it’s a different briefing about the movements of the Germans and Farrier follows the General as he walks into the small room. There are four commanders, the general and you in the room and everyone is waiting for the General to address the elephant in the room, that being you.

The general then proceeds to clear his throat and look at you before facing the commanders and speaks.

“This is Ms. Y/L/N from the Secret Intelligence Service. She’ll be here to carry out a couple missions for the crown.” he finishes his sentence and the commanders all nod except Farrier, he’s looking at your gentle orbs instead, the ones that are directed right at him.

Your gaze does not shy away from his or any other commander’s unlike all the nurses or the women they have met through the course of the war. You hold a weight within yourself, something he’d seen in soldiers who’d been bombed and almost died but he just goes along with the General’s orders.

You’re young, he thinks. Young enough that he feels uneasy but not enough to make him speak up.

He then walks back to where his precious Spitfire rests next to Collins. Collins starts making talk about how he’d seen a couple of new soldiers fuss about Farrier’s plane but Farrier is not as present as he sits on the familiar seat of the pilot and gets ready.

A long day waits for him.

--------

The sound of bullets through the air and a plane engine crashing into the water hits his ears as he walks around the base. It’s far past midnight but the base is even more alive. He sees a couple guys he recognizes, some of them from the morning briefing and some are just familiar lads.

He waits for the engine fuel while there’s a clear rush around. It’s not the kind of rush he’s seen a lot in the air force base but more of the kind he’d come across on the ground. He then sees a couple soldiers being carried into the base, wounded badly with nurses overcrowding around their heads.

His gaze falls on you.

You look like you’re walking out of hell with cuts and bruises all over your face and upper body. He sees the blood covered bandage on your left arm and no matter how injured you look, you walk towards the general with full ambition. You look furious.

Your mouth moves, hair falling on to your forehead as you talk to the general and he nods at your words, telling you to meet him upstairs in his room. It’s not much of a room, Farrier thinks but they make do.

The general walks past Farrier and tells him to do just the same, wait for him in his office. Your eyes briefly meet his blue orbs but before he has a chance to say something, a nurse comes to your rescue and drags you around the place only to sit you down and take care of some of the wounds around your face.

The truth is, there are many soldiers that need the nurse’s help. Farrier finds it obscure that this nurse is taking extra measures to make sure your face is more put together when there’s men losing limbs around the place. 

But then he puts it together.

He’s heard things about the secret intelligence spies. He’s heard of a few women but he know they do business with their faces first. He can tell you’re trained to kill but your face says something else, which is just what you need when you’re trying to get into places no soldier can possibly have access to.

He walks upstairs into the crumbling room where the General waits. There’s another lieutenant in the room and you come in with blood and cuts around your face not too long after. Farrier takes a good look at your face, he thinks you manage to look beautiful even with countless glass cuts all over your face but he stops when he finds you staring right back at him.

“Y/N.” the General speaks and you both straighten at his voice.

You nod and speak, it’s the first time Farrier’s heard your voice. “Yes, sir.” you say, a gulp follows the stern voice. He thinks you sound just like how you look, confident but young.

“This is Wing Commander Farrier..” the General speaks and you look at Farrier for a brief moment with the shake of your head, as a way of saying ‘hello’. “...His crew will be the ones assisting you on your next mission.” he finishes the sentence and you nod. You recall the place you need to go for the next mission assigned to you, you catch Farrier nod from the corner of your eye and the General leaves the room along with the lieutenant. 

When the room is fully empty, you turn to Farrier and offer your hand with a soft voice. “Y/N.” you speak, you know he knows your name but there’s always time for proper introduction.

His large hand envelops yours as he shakes it, your soft skin feels new as he speaks. “Farrier.”

Just as you’re about to speak up, Collins walks into the room.

“Hey-” he says but before he can continue, he looks at you from head to toe. Farrier sees no reason to waste any time and speaks up.

“This is agent Y/N.” he says, looking at you and you only while you offer your hand to the scotsman who’s currently inspecting your face. You don’t blame him. You’d had a perfectly clean face in the morning and now, you have blood all over your face.

“Pleasure to meet ya’.” Collins speaks and you nod, he’s dressed sharply compared to Farrier and you note the attitude change.

“It’s been nice meeting you gentlemen but I have a mission to get to.” you speak with a low smile, a childish hint to your voice that makes Farrier want to rescue from what you’re about to do but he watches you walk away and so does Collins.

Just as Collins is about to speak, your soft voice as a shout comes from the corridors of the space, making both of them look out of the door while your back is turned at them for a momentary second. 

“Good luck out there!”

-------

It’s a day later. There’s smoke in the base from the malfunctioning machines accompanied by the silent screams of the lucky soldiers who have been rescued from around the place. There are a couple nurses away from the tent they’re assigned to, running around with hopes to help some of the new comer soldiers covered in wounds.

And there you are, cleaning your fresh wound on your own. 

It’s on your right shoulder, you can see it when you lean down but not too clear. Your irises burn from the smoke around but you know there’s no escaping it. You ignore the oozing pain from your ankles and try to clean the wound to the best of your ability.

Then, he shows up. 

The exhaustion is clear on his face, the day was spent chasing enemy up on the sky but he can’t help but walk towards your figure. You sit on the floor with some bandages around you as you rub alcohol into the wound. You’re actually doing a good job but he figures a hand wouldn’t hurt.

Your eyes meet his when he sits on the ground next to you. You’re about to say something but he takes the cotton from your hand and does what you were doing just a little earlier, just gentler as you watch.

You gulp and speak, he can see the fancy dress you’re wearing but he doesn’t ask questions. Figures it isn’t his place. “Thank you.” you say, eyes far away while he looks at your face, it’s healing up.

You’d gone to a noblemen’s party today, you were assigned to gather information on one of the trusted funders of the war. He was French but the intelligence had enough dirt on him to assume that he was helping the other side, the side that was currently destroying the country from its heart.

Everything was all going well until a drunk rich lord had decided to load his gun and play a little game on his own. You’d stopped the gunfire but it had cost a bullet on your shoulder and cuts from the shattering glass around. It was silly, just how luxurious these lords and madams lived while the poor and unfortunate suffered.

“Your assigned mission is tomorrow?” he spoke, the mission he was meant to watch for was tomorrow and he wanted there to be as little damage as possible. You got up after he finished with patching you up and you both started walking towards the briefing area.

“Yes, although It will be shorter than what you’ve been told.” you spoke and started walking down the stairs and he followed with brows furrowed.

“How much shorter?” he spoke, accent filling each word as you licked your lips before answering him. You had report today’s work to your superior and he was just following you.

“About an hour. It’s an easy job, in and out. It won’t take me longer than that.” you spoke while his boots thudded against the surface of the floor.

He sped up his steps to catch up with you, he was trying to get your attention but you were completely ignorant to the idea. It was war time and you were focused, you had to be.

“What’s the job entail?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.” you said, finding it silly that he would even ask an agent to expose any information but he was just trying to get you to talk. And you did. “The general will inform you on your side of the job.” you spoke, eyes looking up at his and you ignored the fact that he had been staring for a while now. You kept on walking and he followed you.

“Now, Commander, If you’re done asking me about classified missions, I have to report back to the base.” you spoke, voice confident while offered Farrier a smile. He didn’t mind your professionalism, he knew this wasn’t a place of love.

He nodded and murmured a small ‘yes, ma’am’ before you disappeared. Your walls were made of steel, he wouldn’t be able to melt them no matter how hard you tried and you figured, he already had someone as most soldiers did. If they didn’t, they’d take it up on themselves to find a lover around their base.

He was just curious about the mission, you told yourself.

------

Twenty hours, five bullets, two airplanes and three explosions later, you were seated between Collins and Farrier.

The mission was complete, the Queen’s man had been protected and you had enough information about the new individuals to act on them. It also happened that you were covered in your own blood since there had been a surprise attack to the mansion you were in.

The look of surprise in both Collins’ and Farrier’s face was a picture when they saw you. You looked like a dead bride of some sort, every inch if your face and upper body were covered in blood, some your own and some of the other guests’.

You were currently waiting for the general to come out and give you the new details. The pilots were there, waiting to get fuel in their death machines next to you. You got a pack of cigars out, ones you’d gotten from a French aristocrat. You didn’t regularly smoke them, only when you’d been face to face with death.

“Those kill ye’, ya’ know.” Collins spoke, watching you light the cigar and you inhaled once before looking at him.

They weren’t covered in blood like you, they looked just fine but there was a hint of horror in both their eyes.

“I’ll die soon if it goes like this anyway.” you let the smoke go as Farrier watched you with intent eyes. There was no point in lying, the missions had been extra challenging and you’d been shot too many times to be able to function properly.

You realised what you’d just said to two soldiers who faced death everyday. They saw men die all the time, it wasn’t pleasant or wanted but seeing you, a young woman who’s supposedly in the prime stage of her life saying that she’ll die soon had felt like a bullet in their hearts.

“Sorry… I wasn’t born with a filter.”  you said, earning a chuckle from Farrier. You offered them the cigar, licking your lips and speaking as you’d not just said that you would be dead soon.

“You’ll think you’ll make it?” Collins spoke, looking directly at you as you sat next to him on the metal surface.

Farrier’s eyes locked with yours the moment Collins’ words left his mouth. He was not keen on living afterwards, he’d seen his fair share of the world but it was clear that you hadn’t.

“Probably not.” you said, taking another puff from the cigar as they waited you to speak further. “..most of the agents who work for the crown die in their first six months of the missions.”

“How long have you been working then?” Farrier spoke, you gulped before answering him. You weren’t the typical agent.

Most of them were men who were in their mid twenties. It became easer to identify them and targeting them became no hassle for the germans which was why they had secretly started hiring women, young women in particular, to work as spies since they seemed to be more versatile.

“About nine months.” you said, chuckling when Collins murmured a small ‘cheers’.

But what you were saying was different and Farrier was the only one caught up with it. You were a walking corpse. You’d done and knew too much to even survive if you went back home. You had too much information, your young age didn’t matter to the crown. Only your service did and you’d done your fair share of the spy work.

Collins then left, something to with the engine of his machine. You watched as he walked away, probably leaving the base soon to do his job. You were left with Farrier on your side then, the cigar was long gone.

“Are you always that close to death?” Farrier asked, genuinely curious after seeing you work today. You’d went in with a fancy party dress and came out with three bullet wounds and blood all over you. “Like today, I mean.” he kept speaking but you knew what he was saying. There was something calm about him that made you want to take it easy but this was war, not a calm tuesday afternoon in a the peaceful world.

“Mostly.” you gulped and kept on speaking. “They have a line of agents who do inside jobs like me. I deal with the risky side of the business.” you spoke, like it was just regular business and not dangerous criminal work.

“What about the others?” he spoke, curious as to how this all works. He’d heard things but this was the first time he even had the chance to speak with an agent of the crown face to face, let alone a young woman like you.

You eyed him first, he was being nosy. If it was anyone else, you would’ve just told them to mind their business, the information was confidential. But something about Farrier made you lower your guard for some reason. You looked around before speaking.

“They deal with the common people. Officers and workers. They gather information on things like...” you waved your fingers through the air and made a confused face before speaking. “..hideaways and all that.”

He looked at you then, you were far too young for this but he of all people knew that war knew no age. If it was a different time, he was sure he’d find you with rosy cheeks, under a blossoming tree but now, you were covered in blood in a dress the military had provided you.

“I assume you deal with the posh ones then.” he spoke, just trying to make conversation. He knew there was no way he could get personal so he kept the topic on work.

You nodded before speaking again, eyes not meeting his most of the time. “Noblemen, aristocrats, madams and sometimes even presidents.” you said, lifting your eyebrows at the last words as his expression changed from interested to shocked. You dealt with people who caused this war in the first place.

“You ever get scared? Cold feet?” he asked, earning a genuine grin from you. He was cracking up to be something.

“Always.” you spoke, it was the full truth. You didn’t go into a room full of aristocrats and their beloved butlers without sweat on your hands.

He looked at you then, scanning you from head to toe to see any kind of fear of doubt. You smiled at the soldier next to you, a genuine curve of your lips greeted his blue orbs but it felt like a bullet had gone through his head. Your earnest smile was the first thing that had managed to make him feel at ease since he’d gone into this mess.

What was he doing?

He nodded at your words, long after they stopped hanging around the cool air around you as you looked at him. Really looked at him for the first time. He seemed rough around the edges, not like his colleague Collins who was dressed sharply and knew every sign in the book. 

He then asked the biggest question he had, the one that appeared the moment he saw you.

“Aren’t you a little too young to be carrying out missions for the crown?” he said in one full breath. His voice wasn’t as confident.

“I am.” you gulped and spoke again. “That doesn’t really matter. They just want someone who can attract attention and do the job at the same time.” you said, liking the way his orbs change when you spoke.

“And that’s you.” he said, as a matter of fact.

“Surprised?” you asked, finding comfort in talking to this stranger you just met a couple days ago.

“Nah.” he shook his head at his own words. “If anything, I think you’re quite perfect for that sort of job.” he said, watching your curious eyes as he spoke. You laughed at first, it was genuine and he swore it was like birds singing or that time he’d heard a beautiful melody inside a church.

“Well, Commander, I need to leave but it’s been a pleasure.” you spoke, eyes formal and stern again. It was like you had a switch.

“Will I see you?” he said in a heartbeat. He didn’t think twice before saying the words, hence why he was cursing at himself while you gave him a sweet smirk.

“I’m sure you will.”

And you were off.

--------

Tagging: @clairecrive  @parkbearum @sourirez  @vetseras @mollybegger-blog @jelan-bike

a/n: Let me know what you thought of the chapter/if you want to be tagged!! <3 And so sorry this took so long but i hope you enjoyed it.

[one-boring-person]

Are you taking requests for Top Gun?? If so could I get a Maverickxreader where he and reader like each other, but reader thinks him and Carole, from the first one, are a thing. So she avoids him until he has enough and goes to her and angst argument about it all and then they end up together! ❤️❤️👉🏼👈🏼

I am indeed taking Top Gun requests, so keep 'em coming! I hope you like this!❤💛

Don't Lie To Me.

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell x reader

Warnings: angst

Masterlist

They're together again. As close as ever, shoulders nearly touching as they sit across from Wolfman and I, faces beaming with broad smiles as always, clearly happy as Larry, neither of them noticing my slight discomfort, my gaze swiftly averting from his handsome face. Maverick eyes me briefly, taking note of my suddenly quiet disposition, offering me a smaller smile than the one he was carrying before, Charlie following his gaze, smirking as she sees me, the gesture stirring up a mixture of jealousy and longing within me. As usual, Wolfman continues the conversation without me, already aware of my discomfort and situation, trying to make this as easy for me as possible by taking their attention away from each other, allowing me to fight the internal conflict raging inside me in silence, my mood becoming more and more sour as the minutes pass.

"I heard we have another mission later? Have any information for us, Charlie?" The man beside me inquires, setting down his fork and sitting forward in his chair.

"I don't, I'm not at liberty to say anything." She denies, smiling apologetically around at us.

"What, is it classified?" Maverick teases, his tone striking a chord inside me - he used to tease me in that voice, but lately he's stopped. Probably due to his newfound relationship with our civilian officer, the thought of which makes me tense up, inadvertently tightening my grip on my fork.

"Correct." Charlie grins back, eyes sparkling cheerfully as they stare at each other, completely ignoring Wolfman and me in particular.

Biting my lip, I shove my chair out from under the table and stand, muttering some barely audible excuse as I take my plate to the clearing station, aggressively emptying all the leftovers into the bin before replacing the cutlery and plate in the tray nearby. I leave the room very quickly afterwards, nearly bumping into Viper as he goes to enter the dining hall, a hurried apology leaving me as I salute him and carry on down the corridor, my feet director themselves to my room. On my way, I encounter a few other commanders and senior officers, saluting them all as they pass, trying not to let my emotions show, though they are doing their best to reveal themselves. Upon arriving at the door to my room, I unlock it and let myself in, going straight to the vanity table, where I lean my hands on it, peering into the mirror.

I'm not surprised to see that my face is contorted into some weird grimace, clearly showing the struggle to repress the raging emotions within me, sweat coating my forehead in a glossy sheen. Lifting a hand, I swipe some of it away, wiping the moisture onto the fabric of my trousers, my eyes falling on a Polaroid on the top of the desk, the familiar photograph portraying Maverick and I on our first day out of pilot school, back when our friendship was very much platonic. Slowly, I pick it up, running a thumb over the creased surface, smiling slightly at our excited expressions, remembering the day in perfect clarity.

A sharp knock on the door snaps me from my thoughts.

Spinning, I smooth out my hair and go to it, opening it to whoever is standing outside, my heart dropping when I see who it is, my expression probably falling, too.

"Can I help you?" I ask, keeping my voice level as I look up at Maverick, butterflies fluttering in my stomach as they always do when I lay eyes on him. I try to ignore them as best I can.

"Yeah, I want to talk to you. Can I come in?" The pilot informs me, normally confident demeanour faltering slightly.

"I guess." I respond flatly, allowing him in. Instead of sitting on the chair he usually takes, Maverick chooses to stand, keeping his eyes trained on me as I close the door and stand with my back to it, looking anywhere but at him. For a good few minutes, we're silent, as if searching for something to talk about, the tension thick enough that it's nearly suffocating.

"What did you want to talk about?" I finally ask, making eye contact for the first time.

"Why you're avoiding me." He simply says, lifting an eyebrow.

Clenching my jaw, I try not to feel embarrassed that he's noticed my attempts to stay away from him and his girlfriend, though I should've known he'd find out eventually.

"I'm not avoiding you." I counter, lying through my teeth.

"Don't lie to me, (Y/n). You're avoiding me, and have been for weeks now. I just wanna know why." The pilot responds, rolling his eyes a little at me, an action which draws some irrational anger into me.

"I don't know what you're talking about." I continue to deny, knowing I'm just digging myself a hole now, but carrying on doing so anyway.

"Why are you lying to me? You and I both know you've been ignoring me!" Maverick's voice rasies slightly, his body tensing up as he becomes angrier, grey eyes piercing through me.

"I'm not! I don't know what you mean, so if there's nothing else you want to talk about, then I think you should leave!" I curse myself internally for saying that, knowing I may well have ruined our friendship with that one sentence.

"Are you being serious right now?!" He exclaims, stepping closer, his jaw sharply defined as the muscles in his neck become rigid, "You're actually trying to tell me you don't know what I'm talking about? Don't be so stupid, (Y/n)! I know you better than anyone else, and I know when you're lying!"

His venom shocks me, but I suppose I deserve that, continuing on with my tirade in an effort to get him to leave, my heart already agonized at the thought of him returning to Charlie to complain about me.

"You think I'm lying? Then fine! Think that! But if I am ignoring you, it's none of your business why! So just drop it and go!" I snap back at him, pointing at the door as I take a step closer.

"I'm not going until you tell me why you're avoiding me, and why you felt the need to lie to me!" He argues back, expression betraying the hurt he is feeling, the sight of it tugging at my heartstrings painfully.

"Why do I need to tell you? It's none of your business!" My voice is nearly fully raised now, my cheeks flushed from humiliation and frustration. Why can't he just leave it alone?

"Because I'm your friend, and I care! If you just start randomly ignoring me, then I'd at least like to know why!" Unfortunately, he has a point, but his use of the word "friend" is like an arrow straight to the heart.

"Well, I don't want to tell you, so just go back to Charlie and leave me alone!" I blurt out, stopping in my tracks when I realise what I said, Maverick clearly realising this, too.

"That's what this is about? Me and Charlie?" He sounds exasperated, which only fuels my anger.

"Of course it's not! I don't care who you're in a relationship with, it's not like I like you like that anyway..." my voice trails off as I once again figure out exactly what I've said, only now realising how close we are, our faces mere inches apart.

My pulse races in my ears as he stays silent, a variety of emotions flashing over his face as he takes in what's been said, the tension between us growing as we breathe in unison, breaths heavy and loud in the quiet. My jaw clenches briefly, before I feel myself being pulled forwards, soft lips suddenly connecting with mine in a searing kiss. Surprised at firstñ ibstary to hesitate, only to reciprocate seconds later, my hands instantly coming up to grip at his hair, pulling him impossibly closer as his move from the back of my neck to cup my cheeks, his lips moving quickly with mine.

As we pull away, gasping for air, confusion wells up in me, as well as a dull sense of horror at the thought of kissing a taken man, even if he initiated it. His fingers lightly stroke my cheeks, eyes look in appreciatively over my face as I release his hair, my hands moving to his chest.

"What about you and Charlie?" I manage out in between breaths, still reeling from being kissed.

A low chuckle escapes him, the sound resonating in his chest under my hands, his crooked smile creeping onto his face.

"Charlie and I aren't together, we never were. I just needed some advice on something from her." He reassures me, stroking back my hair lovingly.

"Advice? On what?"

"How to finally tell you I like you." Maverick grins as he presses another, more gentle kiss to my lips, "I didn't realise that an argument was the way to go."

I giggle at his joke, slapping his chest, playfully.

"I never knew you felt the same way. If I had, I'd have initiated the argument much earlier." He continues, laughing at the crimson blush dusting my cheeks.

"Shut up." I grin, looking away.

Smirking, he leans down to press a kiss just below my ear, before whispering quietly to me.

"Make me."

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “World War V.”

I realize the title would be a lot more clever if V wasn’t also the roman numeral for 5, but whatever.

I know this one is a bit over the top but in the immortal words of one of my favorite authors “err on the side of awesome.” and I will not apologize.

But I am interested, at the end, comment what two songs you would use in this scenario. I am intrigued. I will tell you the songs I imagined at the end of the story :)

“So, your plan is to…. Intentionally wake the dead?”

“Wake the, very long hibernated, and then blast them with hard rock music while we mow them down with machine guns? And…. remind me YOU are the GA armada Admiral? And this is your tactical genius.”

Admiral Adam Vir adjusted the chestplate of his space suit, “Well say anything in that sort of voice and it will sound stupid, but hear me out. It is much easier to take something out all at once than it is to go hunting them down one by one and having to worry about missing something. We bring in the helicopters, and the vibration of the rotors will disturb the ground causing the infected vrul to rise. Now knowing the Vrul, and knowing that complicated beats affect their ability to navigate, move and completely wipe out their fine motor control. Furthermore, they seem attracted to vibrations in the air and through the ground which means we will be able to confuse them even more and keep them away from the city. Barring that, the Vrul have their force fields up, which are more than a match for light machine gun fire and will even keep out the strange pollen.. There is no better time to deal with this.”

He tucked his helmet under one arm, “I trust that makes sense to everyone?’ he turned around to the docking bay where over fifty men and women stood in neat rows of polished flight suits, helmets tucked under their arms. As he spoke, their heels snapped together with a loud crackle, and their hands rose into a salute.

Behind them double the amount of marines raised their hands into the air and chanted with loud voices that rose into the air with a roar.

Admiral Vir turned to the commander of the 113th graduating class of Earth’s UNSC Airborne Helicopter division, which he had brought in on special loan. These men and women were yet to fly any real tactical missions though they had all logged thousands of hours of flight already in their careers. Many of them had never left earth until this moment, and their first mission was going to be on the face on an alien planet.

He smiled, “if you knew as much as I did about aliens, Major, you might understand why we are doing something that seems so ludicrous, but sometimes when dealing with extraterrestrials, this is what we have to do.”

He turned to where a line of fifty pod shaped objects were being loaded one by one onto a rolling rail leading towards the airlock. Beside it half a dozen small fluffy shapes were busy overseeing the attachment of fifty identical Sonic cannons to the front bottom of each. There was a break in their work as one of the small creatures came waddling across the deck.

Admiral Vir Knelt down setting his hand on the floor and allowing Lord Avex to step onto his hand and then onto his shoulder as he stood back up.

The rest of the crowd watched in wide eyed awe, though they were, luckily, well trained enough not to do or say anything stupid despite their large eyes and quivering lips, which suggested they wanted nothing better than to cuddle the stuffed-animal esque alien that rested on his shoulder, “The cannons are in place, Admiral, and I have examined each of the pods, and the yare ready to be deployed.”

“Thank you Lord Avex, your work is much appreciated.”

It was just then that Sunny walked across the deck to join them. She was wearing her space suit as well and carried her helmet under one arm. The new recruits staired on in shock as she walked over to stand next to him, “The machine guns have been mounted and are ready to go Admiral, A few of our number have volunteered to go with the marines as extra support. Behind her at least a dozen other Drev raised their fists into the air and chanted their excitement not all that different from the line of marines on the far end of the hanger.

Admiral Vir nodded turning back towards the group of young pilots, not much younger than himself, and stepped up onto the nearest crate.

“On behave of the Galactic Assembly and the Vrul council, I thank all the men and women here for agreeing to accompany us on this mission today. You will be the first airborne unit in history to participate in an operation off Earth as their first assignment. You are thousands of lightyears away from home, orbiting an alien planet thousands of years older than our own, and today your mission is not one of destruction, but of liberation. For thousands of years the Vrul have been trapped inside their walls, until time and tradition made them forget about the dangers lurking outside.” he turned his eyes to look over every last man and women that stood before him, “What we are about to face is like nothing humanity has ever faced before, below the soil of this planet lies a plague dormant for thousands of years, a horde like locusts ready to rise up and infect the city. Now we have our protections, we have our suits, and the Vrul have their shielded city, but it is our job to start riding the planet of it’s plague.” He smiled, “Plus it always helps to have door mounted machine guns and a little rock ‘n roll.”

There was a sharp cheer from the men and women before him who raised their fists into the air. Behind them the marines joined in, and so did the Drev, who, he was pleased to say, had taken to rock like they had guitar solos for breakfast.

Still grinning, he reached up, pulled on his helmet, “Right, let’s get this done.”

He pointed to Sunny, Ramirez, Maverick and a few others, “With me in the elad chopper. The rest of you split off and gear up.”

His words were obeyed almost immediately as he stepped  over to what had once looked like a pod, but was now clearly a very specialized sort of chopper. 

As he slid into the pilot’s seat, and the others strapped in behind, he heard, “I thought you were a fighter pilot, not a helicopter pilot.” They pulled on their helmets.

Adam adjusted his harnesses, “I can fly anything from space ships to paper plans, you can bet your ass if it leaves the ground, I know how to fly it.”

Maverick buckled herself into the door gunner position, “Yeah, but if it has wheels, you better bet he’s probably gonna back it over your mailbox.”

“Put a sock in it Maverick, that is hardly my fault. I never really got the opportunity to practice.”

The door at the back shut and locked tight.

All around them other doors were being locked into place, and once all of the pilots had indicated they were ready to go, Admiral Vir gave the signal, and he felt the ship change course. He adjusted his comms set and called up to the bridge where Simon would be piloting them into position.

“How are we looking, Somon.”

“Almost in position Admiral.”

“Now remember to pull back into low orbit once you let us drop, or else the gravity well is going to pull you in, and it is going to be a bitch to get her back out.” “Yes sir, I know sir.”

“Good.”

He turned his eyes forward as a red light burst into life above their heads. Everyone evacuated the airlock as the fifty pods were brought by rail towards the doors. Behind him he could hear the others chanting something, though his heart was hammering so hard he could hardly hear what they were saying.

Funny thing is he bet he felt like every one of those new pilots getting ready for their first mission. He didn’t know if it was just him, but it felt like this every single time, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world. He ignored the tingling sensation in his bladder as the light blinked green before the airlock door, and the ramp slid open.

All went silent, and below him he watched as the light of the vrul homeworld washed over the deck before him pouring like golden honey.

The sight was breathtaking, steeling the air from his lungs as he looked down.

“Damn.” 

It would just never get old.would it.

“Prepare for drop, in three, two, one, drop.”

The latch on the back of the rail released, and suddenly they were falling away from the ship. Adam was pressed back in his seat as they accelerated downwards towards the open atmosphere.

Lights blinked on the console ahead of him and the tracking screen picked up his target.

They were approaching, and they were approaching fast.

They were entering the atmosphere now, and he felt it as their pod began to rock and rattled around him and fire began to lick up on the southside of his pod. It was almost deafening as they roared into the atmosphere. He turned on his comms watching as other pods roared into the atmosphere back and behind him. He could see them on his radar as they roared downward.

He had to wonder what it must be like for them.

Their first mission, and they were doing a high altitude drop onto an alien planet.

He almost envied them their excitement. Because he had done stuff like this before, and he was still grinning like an idiot.

Light rose up around them as the sky behind them turned blue. Clouds passed below them in great swaths, and he reached down to the controls ready to deploy.

He set of a general count for the rest of the pilots.

Three 

Two

One.

He pulled the release, and the engine roared to life. There was a sudden firing as the engine spurted downward, lifting them airborne for a second and slowing their descent. His innards dropped as G force allowed his stomach to crawl into his feet. Then the rotors deployed like a fan. There was a sharp chunk and then a whirr as they began to fall again, and then the rotors caught, and began to spin. The rear rotor did the same sliding into position. Both caught with a roar, and he whooped with adrenaline.

He toggled his radio.

“Alright, ready the door gun.”

Behind him the doors were slid open, causing a rush of air to blast into the open carriage as Maverick rolled the gun into position and locked it at the door with a loud snap. On the other side Maverick was doing the same. Beside him. Sunny took control of the extra rear mounted guns set in place especially for this mission.

Adam had the guns already built into the chopper, as well as missiles if he felt like it.

Beside him and below him, he watched as the fifty other choppers deployed like his. Some of them were a bit wobbly, but everything he saw seemed to go well.

“Alright everyone take it in low, and on my mark deploy the cannons.”

He angled them lower roaring towards his target.

Below them, the Vrul city was a glassy blue purple bubble against the orange, brown landscape.

He took point, and the other choppers fell into flight beside him, clustered in ten open groups of five helicopters each, and together they rolled in low over the landscape, not twenty feet above the ground in some cases, though those were only the pilots who were comfortable getting that close. From here he could see the thudding of their rotors causing the dirt to shake and the strange trees to quiver. 

The wildlife began to roll out in different directions, racing across the ground and away from the roaring choppers as if they knew what was coming, He scanned the ground, with Maverick and Ramriez leaning on the machine guns behind him.

“See anything yet?”

“Not yet.”

He opened his comms to everyone else, “Alright everyone, deploy sonic cannons in three, two, one go.” 

The first line of lyrics, and the first drumline rolled from the directional cannons, blasting the ground with a focused beam of sound like a laser for noise.

He whooped bobbing his head to the music, the sound so powerful he was able to hear it over the roaring of the rotors.

He sure hoped the Vrul had taken his advise and hidden in inside bunkers for this.

They roared over the landscape turning in a huge clockwise circle over the landscape.

“Report if you see anything.” he ordered.

At first, it didn’t seem like anything was going to happen, and he worried that his idea, which had seemed so cool and tactical to begin with , was nothing but a waste of resources. How embarrassing was that going to be to explain to the UNSC.

Yes, I borrowed the entire 113th graduating class to go on a joyride around the Vrul capital city, yes here is my rank and gun, I will now go live on the moon in exile never to show my face again.

“Sir! I have something.”

“Go.”

“Just south of the city, sir. I have movement coming from the trees in thermal.”

“Same here sir.” 

He was at the point of the circle, so he wasn’t likely to see it, made sense.

“Alright , let’s give it a pass. I want as many of those bugs out of the ground before we start shooting.”

They roared over the ground with the sound of the base rattling the stone below them. As he watched, one of the strange animals he had seen running, tipped over as the cannon passed over it and fell to the ground twitching. Apparently pattern tolerance was not something that many things on this planet had.

“Sorry guy, but things are going to be better when we are done.”

Rocks jumped and rattled as they took a wide turn around the city.

He could see the shield pulsing against the sonic waves that were bouncing off the ground and back into the air.

The blades of the helicopters cut through the air so fast it was like a light grey translucent wall against the sky.

They had almost made a full rotation.

“Holy shit.” for a second he wondered who had spoken until he realised that it was himself.

They were everywhere, swarming like ants over the landscape, turning the ground black in some places as they crawled over each other in confused circles. As the music got closer, their purposeful movement turned into awkward confusion.

“Stagger!.”

The formations staggered, falling behind each other so that everyone was always covering one segment.

“Ready to deploy the  sonic attack on my mark, in three, two, one, mark.”

It was a guitar solo this time, one that he had listened to thousands of times, and one that he couldn't have resisted using to kill zombie Vrul.

Th drumline cut in as the third obvious pattern in the song, and as it roared over the wave of Zombified Vrul, there was an immediate reaction as they all began staggering and falling to the ground, behind him he felt as the guns opened fire on either side with a sharp burrrr as the rotating barrels started spitting hot lead at 1,000 rounds per minute.

He laughed with something like maniacal glee as the powerful rounds poured into the infected creatures ripping them apart sometimes four at a time sending a wave of yellow pollen up into the air, to be kicked up by helicopter blades as they passed over. His circle kept him closest to the wall, so he was able to catch the majority of them before they could even attempt to make it to the city.

He toggled his own guns, and stitched a line of bullets over a completely black mass, which erupted into a burst of yellow. His circle took him around to where the Vrul had managed to make it to the wall of the city, and had begun climbing each other like they planned to create a ladder using bodies to the top of the wall. He gunned them down with great prejudice. As they moved along the wall, more and more of the creatures had piled themselves higher and higher, but that is not a trend that they allowed to last long. One of the piles managed to make itself three quarters of the way up the wall before their sonic attack hit them, causing the tower to collapse as both glorious drum lines and bullets roared into them.

He carved a circle through the sky coming over their first line of attack, where dark bodies were doing the best to crawl over their fallen brethren and pools of yellowed pollen having fallen to the ground. Ahead of him he could see a cloud of yellow where the following helicopter was stitching tis way over the landscape with great prejudice.

Behind him, he thought he heard Maverick cackle like a swamp witch as she loaded another belt of ammunition.

Yeah sure people back home were cool, but they would never be this cool, flying over an alien landscape, killing alien zombies while listening to a little ACDC, They could dream but nothing would ever be more awesome.

He couldn’t wait to tell his siblings.

His sister would be so jealous.

She had always been a fan of the zombie genre.

“Admiral, Admiral I think some of them are starting to fly.” Came the nervous comment over the com.

“Alright, remember the drill, just keep calm, and go higher if you can, then when you have enough clustered below you, drop one of the canisters.”

There was an acknowledgement over the comms.

With that announcement still running through his head, he got ready to drop one of his own canisters.

He was in view of the last helicopter as it rose into the air pursued by hundreds of little black dots that would erupt into yellow spores as they were hit by machine gun fire, and then something dropped from the bottom of the chopper, and then exploded just above the rising infected.

Thousands of tiny organic needles rained down on the vrul, cutting straight through their helium sacks, and sending them crashing downwards, into their companions, and finally to the ground where they erupted on impact, killing even more of their companions.

Up ahead, a wall of black rose before him, but he was faster.

They rose into the air and he roared over the wall, dropping one two and then three canisters in quick succession causing a wave of them to drop to the ground. The following helicopters followed his lead. He was having to rise higher and higher into the air, but still he was managing to keep ahead of them, they were slow and he was fast, but that didn’t stop a few of them from getting in front of him. 

There was a jolt as his rotors hit one of them, and he gritted his teeth, it was fine, one or two was fine as long as he didn’t allow them to gum it up.

He pulled back and up and continued to drop more and more of the caisters.

One or two of them floated high enough to make it close to his sonic cannon, but they were blown back and the pressure caused their helium sacks to rupture.

***

The Vrul council stood on the wall overlooking the outside of the city as a wall of the Vrul infected rose into the sky obscuring everything in a wave of dark bodies. Human helicopters roared in a wide circle around the city, and everywhere they went yellow spores erupted into the air. All of them wore safety masks as a precaution, but that didn’t stop the fear that rose up in them as they stepped back arms held out in shock. Dr. Krill stared on in fascination and awe. He wasn’t wearing hearing protection like the others, he could handle human music to a certain degree, and it was pretty muffled through the shielding.

He watched in shock and awe as one of the helicopters cut too low, and rolled right into a dense thicket of the floating bodies. There was a horrific eruption of yellow as the rotors caught hundreds of the creatures, and then the helicopter itself began to spin out of control crashing and rupturing Vrul as it roared towards the ground.

The emergency systems deployed firing one last time to slow the chopper’s crash. The sudden burst of flame ruptured a line of the Vrul infected before it finally plowed into the ground sending up a wave of yellow spores.

“Sweet Nebulon.” one of the council muttered.

Two more helicopters went down, and it looked as if there weren't going to be enough bullets.

What had they done!”

***

“Everyone, On me, increase sonic cannons! Now!” he had seen the three choppers go down, and he had seen all three of their safety measures deploy, but he couldn’t be sure if any of them had survived. “Avoid the crash sites. Everyone on me!”

The entire fleet of remaining choppers clustered together turning up the volume on their sonic cannons, and the combined force was so powerful that some of the bodies began to rupture even without gunfire though it still tore downwards.

They took two more passes before he saw his ammunition running low. That was fine. The Vrul bodies were no longer coming in waves and it would be harder to hit them from above, now that they weren’t just coming in a wave.

He aimed for one of the crash sites.

“I want a group of us to set down. Only choppers with Drev on them!”

There was agreement as ten choppers split off to the three crash sites.

Adam roared down from the sky, and set down on a smoking heap of yellow coated bodies.

He cut the engine , and reach back to pull his spear from where it was attached to the floor of the chopper. It wasn’t a Drev spear and it wasn’t a human spear but something in between, with the reverse spike on the end like they had done with the NeoSpartans.

He turned in his seat just in time to see the two marines push their machine guns out of position and one of the infected Vrul to come charing at Ramirez.

A spear appeared in his hand in that moment, and he ran it through the face.

Sunny was behind him a second later, and together they were out the door, three of them armed with spears, maverick armed with her assault rifle, and together they made their way towards the downed chopper.

Making it there just in time to see as a pile of clustered Vrul was ruptured from within, and a very angry Drev came roaring out.

He recognized from the height who it was.

“Kanan!” he heard Sunny yell.

They ran over to help, sweeping through the cluster of Vrul zombies before they began fanning out across the open plane.

He turned up the speakers on the outside of his suit and allowed it to blare music as he raced towards anything that still looked to be moving. A few of them were still floating into the sky, but the remaining helicopters were taking care of those, and Maverick from the ground on occasion.

He ran one through the face, turned and clubbed the other in the head like he was swinging  for a home run.

His blad sliced straight through the neck of one as he staggered over the uneven ground.

To the side of him, sunny was cutting through them with impunity like a god of war, touching them though they never touched her, the yellowed gore spattering her suit.

As more and more of the Vrul were cut out of the sky, more and more choppers landed, and men and women filed out, running in open lines, using whatever the could to dispatch the remaining bodies.

He saw one of the new pilots grab a Vrul by the neck, and twist it like he was breaking the neck of a chicken, surprised when the entire head came off. He kind of hoped the Vrul council did not see that.

By the end of the battle. Four of their choppers had been downed. Two humans were dead, both of them in the crashes, and at least four more critically injured.

He felt bad about it.

But he couldn’t have predicted that.

At least none of the pilots had died.

Two of his marines had though, tossed from the choppers as they were falling from the sky. It made him sick to think about their families, the ones that he would have to send letters to, but he tried not to think about that for now.

Thousand upon thousands of the vrul zombies were dead, and even as he thought this dozens more were being dispatched by hand by humans who were no more than walking radios at this point, having chosen their own theme songs to fight zombies.

Some of thor picks were quite surprising, though he couldn’t blame them for their humor or their irony.

They still had a long way to go, but at least he knew how it could be done.

Vrul past, hopefully, would never come back to haunt them. 

The two songs I imagine Adam picked for this was 

First: Raise Hell - Dorothy

Second: Thunderstruck - ACDC

[yoditorian]

lacuna- part 5

din/reader

i want to say a massive thank you for everybody who’s supported the content creator strike, it’s really important to draw attention to the issues we face and hopefully it’ll mean that engagement goes up and people will start respecting creators more 💛 as always, a massive thank you to @brothersdrxke for drifting with me on this

MASTERLIST

word count: 3.4k

warnings: probably some swears, poetic allusions to smut, din experiences emotion, 18+ no babies thanks

You don’t see Din for years, but he never fully leaves your mind.

Green Squadron gets pulled every which way across the galaxy, and you follow your orders. From the outer atmosphere above Scarif, to the Battle of Yavin, to some Outer Rim planet you barely spent a day on where the white ground turns red with every footstep. You see more stars than you ever thought possible. Mercifully, the endless missions and drills leave you little time to wonder what the Mandalorian might be up to in your absence. 

You’re not thinking about him under hails of blaster fire and explosives, nor while you duck and weave through smoke and flame to cover your teammates in the air. But he comes to you in the small hours, hours you spend trying to sleep, hours you spend wishing you were tucked up close against his side. You still claw through your memory for his smell, long since disappeared from the blanket you keep with you. Metallic and warm and home.

You’ve not used that word to describe anything for a long time, but it feels right.

Still, you live. Life in the Rebellion keeps you busy. Between meetings and missions and drills, you barely have enough time to eat, or sleep, or think some days. You’re grateful for that. The people around you are just as engrossed by war, but they don’t seem to let it get in the way. There’s love and light and laughter and you let it engulf you when you can. Nights spent in the rec rooms on your assigned cruiser, playing games of sabacc or keeping friends steady on barstools at the tiny cantina. People don’t stop living, so neither do you. Shara and Kes had married as soon as he was between missions, not long after she’d held your hand in a death grip at the prospect of her possible pregnancy. And you’re the first to hold their little boy when he comes, a week earlier than expected and furious, screaming into the galaxy. Life is good. But it’s missing something.

You try to live, at least. You freely give out smiles and stories and time, but you can never bring yourself to take it further. They always lean in close and you keep the distance. Break eye contact. You can’t do it. It’s not right. To do that to him. Even through the radio silence, even through the way you feel him just out of reach. You’re always kind about it, and nobody ever takes it badly, eyes soft as you apologise and tell them you’re spoken for. He hasn’t, but you are. That’s how it’ll always be.

He creeps into your dreams until he’s always there, his arms the only thing you can think of in the moments before you sleep.

Somewhere outside, you’re always outside with him. And there’s no armour or uniforms or obligations, just you and him and the sky as it turns a soft shade of pink. He’s not wearing his helmet, something you know as solidly as you know how to fly, but you can never quite stretch up to see his face. You don’t mind. You don’t mind because in this reality, he loves you. He tells you he loves you, over and over, and that’s enough. It doesn’t last long. The clouds roll in, dark and heavy, and Din’s warmth disappears from beneath you. Instead, you’re swallowed into the black as Captain Antilles tells you to suit up and move out. You don’t know where you’re going, but the weight sitting in the pit of your stomach makes you certain you’re not coming back.

You wake up in a cold sweat, breathing hard, and try to bring your heart rate down. Other pilots in the barracks are fast asleep around you, breathing in unison. Except one.

“You have a lot of those,” Shara whispers, the rest of the squadron still snoring, “Bad dreams, I mean.”

“Did you get a holo today?” You don’t want to talk about your dream. The fear still courses through you, it seemed so real. Missions are getting more and more dicey as each side gets more and more desperate, it’s not clear who’s winning anymore. If anybody. You can count on one hand the number of pilots who’ve come back completely unscathed in the last few months.

“He’s talking properly now, I swear every time I see him he’s bigger.” She’s trying not to cry, and you have the good grace not to mention it. Being away from her son for this long leeches at Shara’s spirit. Little Poe is safe and happy and being doted on by a relative of Kes’s, far away from the Empire’s reach. But sleep escapes her most nights, replaced by the pain of watching him grow from a distance, and the very real threat that she won’t get to see him grow up at all. You stretch your arm out across the narrow gap between your bunks and find her hand in the darkness. It’s all either of you have.

“We’re flying out to the Endor system in 36 hours. The second Death Star is mid-production, not operational, we’ll hit it before it’s done.” There’s none of the sarcastic warmth you’ve come to expect from your team commander over the years, this is it. The final stand. The noise of the cruiser’s hangar fades away as your brain switches to fight mode and you process your orders. The end of the Empire, or the Rebellion. Three possible outcomes: you win and live, you win and die, or you lose and die. The Empire will not leave survivors. Like any good pilot, you pretend that the odds don’t scare you.

You’re going to lose people. Friends, colleagues, strangers will fall, but that’s the risk you run in the Rebellion. Every single person would lay down their life at a moment’s notice if it meant the chance of success. You’re the best you’ve ever been, a veritable armoury of skills that would make your sixteen year old self faint. If it was down to just you, you’d make it out of any dogfight no doubt about it. You have no fear when you’re in the air. But it’s not just you, is it? It’s Shara, and Green Squadron, and the Rebellion at large. If any of them go down, there’s no question that you’ll follow.

You’re fumbling through your pack the moment you realise you’ve made it back to the barracks, alone, the solitude is far too rare and you’re not about to waste it worrying. You’ve pressed the talk button and brought the comm up to your mouth before you’ve even figured out what you want to say. Hopes that he’ll answer, or hear you at all, aren’t exactly high. But you’re desperate enough to give it a go.

“I’m going to the inn at Mos Espa. The one from before? I’ll click when I’m there, if you’re around.” You don’t tell him that it’s because you’re pretty sure you’re going to die. And you love him, even if he doesn’t know. And you’re selfish, ultimately. You just hope he can’t tell you’re trying not to cry.

“-if you’re around.”

Your voice echoes around the cockpit of the Razor Crest, and Din tries to ignore the way it ties his stomach in knots. He misses you, so much more than he thought he would. It’s like there’s a space inside him where only you fit, like his lungs threaten to collapse without you.

He should pretend that he didn’t get the message, like the way he pretends that he doesn’t keep the long-range comm pinned to the control board of the Crest, like the way he pretends he doesn’t think about getting in touch with you every second of every day. It’s the first time he’s heard from you in a while and there’s a new bounty puck burning a hole in his pocket and he really shouldn’t be thinking about going. Except there’s something in your voice that he can’t quite work out. He doesn’t want to go so far as to call it fear, but he can’t sit there wondering. He can’t sit there as if he hasn’t missed you.

So, Din powers up the Razor Crest, and locks in the coordinates for Mos Espa.

You hadn’t even needed to ask Shara to cover for you, she offered the second the word Mando slipped out. You’ve held her through nights where all she can do is miss Kes, she understands the pain you feel every time you spot the comm in your pack. You’d asked her once if she thought you were being silly, pining over a man whose face you’ve never seen. She’d only told you to shut up, that he’s clearly not just some guy you sleep with when the opportunity arises.

“You don’t lose sleep over dick, Lieutenant.”  

And she’s right, even if you’re afraid to put any other word to it.

The room hasn’t changed, although you’re not sure why some part of you had expected it to. The desk and chair are still in the same place, the bedding still a faded red, even the light in the ceiling has the same tattered lampshade. You stand by the small window, watching people’s shadows grow long as the day comes to an end. Still no word, no sign, nothing from Din.

The suns set, and he’s not here. He’s not coming. You hate how much you want to see him, just once, before you have to leave. You’re about to curl up on top of the bedcovers and sleep, until two knocks on the door echo loud and clear.

You look rough. Din doesn’t want that to be the first thing he thinks about you when he opens the door, but he can’t deny it. Your shoulders sag with exhaustion, stress, and there’s that fear he didn’t want to admit to hearing before. It’s not him you’re afraid of, but somehow he knows you won’t even acknowledge it.

“Been a while.” Years. It’s been years and that’s the first thing he can think of to say?

He’s here and now you can barely move. You spent so long preparing yourself for him not to show that you have no idea how to react now that he has. It feels like you’re walking through cobwebs.

“Yeah, it- it has been.” This is really not how you envisioned this would go. But he’s right, it has been a while. Maybe the more hopeful part of your heart wanted you to just pick up where you left off, but you’re not even exactly sure where that would be.

Din makes the decision for you. He strips his armour slowly, setting it on the desk in the same way he did the last time you stayed here, and never once takes his eyes off of you. You can feel it, like he thinks you’ll disappear if he looks away. Maybe you will.

Your jacket is already draped over the back of the chair, the night not yet cold enough to warrant more than your tattered t-shirt. It’s the one you wear under your flight suit. You’d left your old blanket on your bed back on the cruiser, you need his scent on this instead. You need to keep him with you when you take to the skies, just in case.

He steps closer to you, helmet still in place, until he’s all you can see. The cold metal presses down firm against your forehead, but it’s not uncomfortable. It feels right. In any other context, it might scare you.

“I need you.” You can’t keep the tremble out of your voice, only hoping it makes you sound desperately horny rather than terrified. Your hands knot themselves in the thick fabric of the flight suit over his chest and he just holds you there for a moment. Bare hands skim your back, reaching up underneath your shirt to find your skin. They freeze when he finds a symmetrical set of scars. The marks feel old, settled, but still carry a heat that feels more recent than the ones he’s used to feeling.

“Prod, I think the medic said it was. Don’t recommend that.” Your half-hearted laugh travels up his fingertips.

Din’s mind flashes back to years ago, to the crime syndicate he slaughtered, the ones who’d treated torture like it was dinner and a show. The rebel pilots he’d freed-

“We had the bantha-prod on the other one yesterday. Oh, the screaming.”

He decides it probably wasn’t you, the galaxy is a big place and there’s more wannabe crime lords than womp rats. The chances of you being the second pilot are slim, and if one group was using bantha-prods on prisoners there’s no doubt there would be more. They’re convenient, easy to get your hands on, and pack a decent punch. He lets his fingers rest on each of the pronged scars for a moment, and leaves it at that.

You keep your forehead pressed to the helmet and let Din strip the layers between you, breaking only when he leans back to lift the old t-shirt over your head and your eyes slip shut against the dim moonlight. You can’t see much with them open but you need to feel him, all of him, and you know he trusts you not to look. Your mind is reeling so much that you don’t even hear him slip the helmet off, you don't register that he’s bared himself to you as much as you’re bared to him until he’s pressing you down against the threadbare blankets.

It’s there that you let him consume you, take over every square inch of your skin until you belong to him completely. Just for this isolated moment, as if the war doesn’t exist. And you revel in it, you lose yourself and let him guide you through it all. Committing his every touch, every kiss, every breath to your memory. This is what you’ll think of when you go down tomorrow. You’ll think of him and the tight feeling in your heart when he kisses you and you’ll remember that he took care of you. Even when you can’t get your hands to stop shaking.

You’re in your head, he can tell. But Din knows you, far better than either of you are willing to admit, and he knows you won’t tell him. So he throws everything he is into it. Into this time with you, no idea when he’ll get to be with you again. If ever. And for once, the fear for his creed is silent. He pulls you into him until it’s impossible to tell that you’re not one single being. You need this, clearly, and his heart is so firmly in your hands that he’ll give it to you. He’ll put everything on hold for you, every time.

You’re the first one to rise from the bed, barely having caught your breath before you’re rummaging for your clothes on the floor with your eyes still clenched shut, and that’s when Din knows something’s definitely wrong. He can hear your hands shake as you pull your t-shirt back over your head.

“Hey,” He leans forward to catch your elbow, but you shrug his fingers away, “What’s wrong?”

“I have to get back to base.” Is the only explanation you offer. Din huffs and the sound makes you flinch, too sharp in the dark, as he pulls you back to the scratchy sheets. Your hands find his broad chest and you take a second to focus on his breathing, on the way his ribs expand, until you can find the right words.

“Cyar’ika.”

“I think I’m dying tomorrow.”

He says nothing. You don’t expect him to. What are you supposed to say when somebody tells you they’re going to die?

“Din, I-”

He surges up to kiss you, breathing you in and surrounding you until he is all you know. All you ever want to know.

“Tell me when you live.” He whispers, pulling his lips away just enough to speak, and hopes you’re tired enough to forget the way you promise as you tuck yourself back into his chest. He can’t let you say the words, he knows he’ll never leave if you do.

It doesn’t take much convincing to get you to stay. A few hours, he says. He’ll wake you up when you need to go, he says. You know he will, he’s never given you a reason not to trust his word. And you let yourself relax into him, curling into his side and wondering what would happen if he didn’t wake you up. What if you just stayed here, the two of you in this room, for the rest of forever? It’s a nice enough thought to clear your mind and let sleep take over.

You wake before he does, hours before the suns are meant to rise and you know it’s time to go. It hurts, to think about leaving Din here in this bed to wake up alone. Like the last time. You hope he’s not too upset with you as you fumble blindly for the rest of your abandoned clothes.

While he has seen far too much cruelty, and been far too kind to you to deserve this, you leave him sleeping. Better for him to wake at dawn and be angry with you than to wake now and convince you not to go. You know he would. You’ve never much believed in the Force, or love for that matter, but every path you’ve ever taken has led you straight back to him. That’s got to count for something.

But love isn’t something you get to have. You’re not foolish enough to convince yourself that it is. Although, if anything in the galaxy could come close, it would be Din. You leave your heart behind with him, tucked up close beside his in the tangled sheets. He’ll keep it safe, you can trust him, of that you’re certain.

“You ready?” Shara’s trying her best to sound upbeat, and you have to hand it to her. It’s difficult not to feel like this is the end, hers is the first smile you’ve seen all day.

“I think we both know the answer to that.” You reply as you tug her into a hug. You squeeze each other almost uncomfortably tightly, but part of you feels like it might be the last chance you get to hold your best friend. She’ll feel every ounce of love you have for her, even if you crack each other’s ribs. Your matching dark green flight suits feel far too new, too starched and solid, for the firefight you know is coming.

“You smell like boy.” She mumbles into your shoulder and you huff out a laugh.

“I’ll see you after.” You say when she pulls back. Neither of you are sure you’re right.

But you are. The comms fill with cheers as you watch the second Death Star crumble, the remnants of the fleet around you falling. And you can breathe. Your work, the Rebellion’s work, is far from over but this? This is everything you’ve been working towards for years. It’s hard not to feel relieved for just a moment. You catch Shara as she zips by, following her down to Endor’s surface.

You’ve barely unclipped the safety belts before she’s wrestling you out of the cockpit and down to the forest floor. You land in a heap of laughter, maybe a few tears, and wait for the adrenaline to settle.

“We did it!” Shara’s smile is wider than you’ve ever seen it as you clasp her cheeks in your hands and hold her there. You’re both swept up into somebody’s arms only a moment later, Kes Dameron’s booming laugh filling your ears, and you let the joy wash over you. You’ve gotten through the worst of it with this, your little found family of rebels, intact. If only it wasn’t so glaringly obvious that someone is missing.

Later into the night, you pull yourself away from the party, slipping down a ladder from the treehouses and making your way to the ships. It takes a moment to remember exactly where your A-Wing is, and another to dig around in your pack to find it, but you breathe a sigh of relief as your fingers close around the comm. You take a deep breath, steeling yourself for whatever will come.

“I made it.”

There’s a second, a click from the comm, and then another.

Din finally lets the tears fall, and he can breathe again.

As though the man on the other end thought better of what he was going to say. The party still rages above your head, and you try not to let it get to you.

-

TAGLIST (lmk if you want on or off):

@brothersdrxke @remmysbounty @aq-vetina @1800-fight-me @mandos-co @kesskirata @sarahjkl82-blog @firstofficerwiggles @keeper0fthestars @wille-zarr @rebloogggs @thevoiceinyourheadx​ @plants-are-better-than-humans @schreibsuchtis 

[refuge-au]

>Open the Captain's File

Xisuma: Break the News

The model in the center of the entrance hall spun slowly, the mechanical, to scale, planets orbiting the massive sun at a rate thousands of times faster than their real counterparts did. The fake sun glowed softly, it’s light dimming briefly as Jupiter crossed between it and the man viewing it. Jupiter’s moons and the metallic arms that held them above the ground created a spiderweb pattern of shadows on the ground that slowly swept across the body of the visitor as it moved.

Xisuma stood several feet away from the center of the solar system model, his eyes tracing the path of Earth as it came out from behind the sun in an almost melancholy way. His brown hair was tied back in a short ponytail, his beard freshly trimmed- although you couldn’t see it at all thanks to the respirator he was wearing. He had even gone to the trouble of putting on one of his more casual dress uniforms.

The effort hadn’t gone unnoticed by the museum staff, drawing a couple of confused looks and some whispers, but he did his best to ignore him. What he had to say wouldn’t go over well, so he might as well look nice. Get some compliments.

The door opened, and the employee greeted the group of people that walked in cheerfully. X turned around, taking a deep breath, and smiled. Show time.

An older woman, just a bit shorter than him, her hair almost completely white, was pushing the wheelchair of a man that someone might have mistaken for him, if his hair weren't as white as hers and his face covered in scars. The woman checked in at the front desk quickly, showing a pass, and then turned and saw him, her eyes crinkling in a smile.

She walked over to Xisuma, the man in the wheelchair saying something and rolling over to the other side of the model.

“Hey, mom.” He said, trying to ignore the way his bottom lip trembled when she pulled him into a hug, her respirator digging into his shoulder.

“You’re all dressed up.” She said, stepping back and putting a hand to his cheek in the way that she always had when they were little. “You look nice, honey.”

“Thank you.” He said, bringing his hand up to cover hers. “You look nice too.”

She chuckled, patting the side of his face and then putting her hand down. “Oh, stop. I didn’t realize that this was going to be a formal dress event, or I would’ve thrown on something besides my work clothes.”

“It’s not a formal dress event, I just felt like cleaning up a bit.” Xisuma shrugged, hoping that the tension in his shoulders didn’t betray the news that he was bringing. “Haven’t had the opportunity to wear this in a bit, got a discount on museum admission, you know.”

She smiled at him again, but her eyes seemed… sad. “…Xisuma, we’re very proud of you. You know that, right?”

“I know.” He replied. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, just looking at him, as if she was searching for an answer to an unspoken question in his eyes. Whatever she found there didn’t seem to change her emotions, her soft smile and that strange sadness remaining as she pulled her purse to the front of her, opening it.

“You should go talk to your brother, dear. I need to go change my filter before I forget.”

“You didn’t change it before you came here? Mom…”

She waved one hand in the air as she continued to move things around in her purse with the other. “The alert came just as we got inside. A few minutes on a bad filter isn’t going to kill me.”

“…Alright. We’ll wait for you.” Xisuma said, and his mother waved him off as he headed over to the other side of the model where his twin brother was sitting, staring up at the planets in silence.

He reached his side, and stopped. Neither of them spoke for what seemed like forever.

Finally his brother spoke. “Xisuma.”

“Xenelis.” He replied, looking down to find his twin’s steely grey eyes staring up at him.

“Where are they sending you this time?” Xenelis’ voice was quiet, raspy- although he didn’t know if it was from the medical grade respirator attached to his mouth and nose or from his vocal cords being underused.

Xisuma started. “What? What do you mean?”

“You didn’t visit us at home or at the hospital, you called us out. You’re dressed up, but you didn’t tell us that this was a formal event. You’re stiffer than usual, which is saying something, and you look like you’re homesick even though you’re a fifteen minute commute away from your apartment.” Xenelis said, his voice carefully void of all emotion. “Where are they sending you?”

Xisuma looked away, breaking eyes contact and staring up at the solar system spinning above him. “Off planet.”

“Out of galaxy?”

“Yes.”

“How far?”

Xisuma didn’t respond for a moment too long, and that was all the answer that his brother needed. His sigh, heavy and full of disappointment and bitterness, hit Xisuma like a bullet to the heart.

“Of course.” Xenelis said. “Well, congratulations. You did it. You left us behind, just like you always wanted too. Good job, bro.”

“Damnit, Xen, you know that’s not-“ Xisuma rounded on his brother, hands automatically going to his hips.

“It’s not? It’s not? It sure as hell looks like it is. You’ve been leaving our whole lives, Iz- it’s just nonstop leaving and leaving and leaving- and now you finally don’t have to come back!” Xenelis snapped. “Good for you! Living your dream!”

“This mission is for the sake of the entire planet! I can’t just refuse to go on a mission that might make or break the human race-“

“Of course you can! You’re not the only high ranking officer out there! They could’ve found someone else, anyone else!”

“They came to me, specifically, asked me to pick out a crew, told me that we would save the world- how am I supposed to turn that offer down? You would’ve taken it in an instant-“

“Not if you were in my position I fucking wouldn’t’ve-!”

“Boys?” Their mom called from the other side of the model.

“Coming, mom.” They chorused automatically, shooting each other a glare. Xisuma walked around one side of the model and Xenelis rolled around the other, meeting in the middle.

Their mother smiled at both of them, apparently unaware of the argument that had been rapidly escalating until she entered the conversation. “There you are. Shall we go look at the new exhibits? I heard they had one about the Titanic.”

“Sure, mom.” Xisuma said, falling into step behind her as she led the way into the museum.

The visit was… cordial. Their mother chatted with both of them about equally, talking about this and that, whatever came to her mind. She was probably trying to fill the heavy silence that fell between the twins, Xenelis refusing to speak to Xisuma, and vice versa.

When they reached the end of their museum tour, pausing in the aquarium section before they left, Xisuma bit the bullet.

“Mom,” he said, folding his hands behind his back. “I have something I need to tell you.”

“Go ahead, dear.” She said absently, watching as a massive manta ray swam overhead.

Bathed in the blue light from the massive aquarium tank, she and Xenelis looked almost peaceful. Gods only knew how made Xen really was, however, and Xisuma knew that it was only a trick of the light. Or maybe it was a trick of the mind, him trying to convince himself that him leaving wouldn’t hurt them as much as he knew it would.

“…I’m leaving.” He said, turning to watch as the manta continued on its way. “They’re sending me on a mission to deep space.”

Her eyes closed momentary, steeling herself as she turned to him. “Deep space?”

“Past Centauri.” He said quietly. “They’re building a team of scientists and researchers to start colonizing a new planet.”

“Why so far away?” She asked, her voice trembling slightly.

“Mars can’t sustain a population like Earth’s, and after the Venus colonies failed… the galaxy isn’t suitable for life anymore. You know it’s true, mom. You’ve watched it happen. Think of how different things are now from when you were a kid.” His tone was soft, but he knew that there was a hint of pleading in there somewhere. She must understand. She wouldn’t be mad at him too, right?

“I know, I know, but… but of all people, why you?” Her voice broke, tears beginning to roll down her cheeks.

Xisuma’s heart sank as he stepped forward, hugging her. “They couldn’t find anyone better to do it. Mom-“

“When will you come home?” She asked, her voice thick with tears.

“I don’t know.” Maybe never. “I… don’t know.”

She cried for a while, and her sons remained in silence, one other knowing what to say, and the other not wanting to say anything.

When she finally stopped, she only had positive things to say. She was proud of him, she was sure he was going to do great, they would be able to communicate, even if it wasn’t face to face… but that sorrow in her eyes that he had noticed before was much more prevalent.

Had she expected this?

Was he really as predictable as Xen said he was?

They said their goodbyes just outside the museum. His mother hugged him tightly, told him she would see him soon.

Xenelis’ eyes crinkled in what he knew was some form of a mocking smile or sneer. “I hope you have fun, Iz.”

“I’m not leaving right away. I’ll see you again.”

“That’s what you always say.” Xen retorted sharply, turning and rolling away towards the ramp down to the street, where their mother was already waiting.

Xisuma stood at the door to the museum and watched them get into a car and fade out of sight, his heart heavy in his chest.

Computer: New Command unlocked!

Computer: Input the command Profile: [Name] to open the file associated with that person. Please note: some files or portions of files may not be available due to clearance levels.

Computer: Input Command: Show Available Files:

> Open the Pilot’s File.

> Open the Doctor’s File.

> Continue.

[agntofhydra]

Sawbones // THREE

(gif credit)

summary: Red String of Fate Soulmate AU

Soul mates have a red thread tied to each others pinkies that only one of them can see.

You’re the Resistance’s head medic. You can see the red thread of fate that leads you to your soulmate. Poe doesn’t believe in the soulmate / thread theory. You don’t agree with his tactics, nor does he approve of yours. Leia and Holdo just really want a win.

pairing: poe dameron x reader

rating: mature for later chapters

read me on ao3!

part one. part two. 

read on till the end for notes!

SAWBONES

THREE // WRONG

Poe had worked his ass off for every title, credential, award, or accolade that he received. He earned Commander. He earned Black Leader. He was so good at what he did, at being a pilot. His skills, his fervor, his determination are why Leia got the heat off his back after the stint he pulled in recovering information from the Yissira Zyde.

His latest title differed only from the others in the fact that he gave it to himself.

Biggest jackass in the galaxy.  

If Poe had to admit he had a flaw, it would probably be that he was so fucking stubborn. He could get so focused that anything in the peripheral of his latest fixation was blurred. He wasn’t concerned with collateral damage, not if it got the job done. But in this case, when it was actually him in the wrong, when his inability to compromise not only hurt him but hurt you, he knew he had messed up.

Nobody told him this, of course. Poe had to come to terms with it on his own accord. Retiring to his quarters after his failed operation, dodging hands that were grabbing at his shoulders, his biceps, his wrists. He wasn’t interested in having a warm body next to him that night. He deserved to lay in his cot and deal with the chill his bones felt under the too-thin sheets. He deserved to lay in the darkness and finally come to terms with the thoughts that swam in his head, the ones he was getting really good at ignoring.

The way your forehead creased, face twisted and lips pursed as he said what he did to you were crystal clear. The way he referred to you as a ‘fucking medic’, completely undermining and disregarding your intelligence which you most definitely possessed in order to get to the position you currently held. But most of all, Poe couldn’t stop replaying how your face distorted when you’d gotten the last word, and the immediate sharp pain that radiated up his arm from his smallest digit that followed.

Poe’s reflexes were quick, though his mental acuity was not. It felt like someone had paused time on him while you were in fast forward.

He still wasn’t really sure what that whole ordeal was about. He had a small feeling tugging in his gut, and his gut was always right.

It wasn’t today, he told himself. Eventually, he knew he was going to be wrong. He’d ignored that fact for a while and was even starting to think he was the exception until a few hours ago.  But a few hours ago he was wrong, and you were right and you both were rubbing your hands at the same time and he didn’t want to think too hard on why that was.

But he was lying in his cot, almost shivering beneath the too-thin sheets and he had nothing but time to think about it. His Grandfather’s words echoed in his head about what he called the ‘Red Thread of Fate’. He couldn’t get his Grandfather to talk about it enough. Besides wanting to follow in his mother’s footsteps, the other reason for Poe wanting to become a pilot was to travel the galaxy in search of whomever was tied to the other end. He’d been to countless planets in hopes that he would come near enough to them to be found. He couldn’t see the damn thing, and he spent every day until he was sixteen lamenting on that fact.

When he was sixteen, he joined the Spice Runners of Kijimi. Once he was finally out, finally traipsing the galaxy, the soulmate tether was exploited and ruined for him. Countless people had tried to fool him into thinking they were his soulmate, and sometimes he believed them. But slowly, he became desensitized and forced himself to stop thinking about the situation all together.

So a few weeks ago, when that cute holographer he was warming his bed with tried to tell him that they were soulmates, he shut down. It had been so long since he had acknowledged it, but the wound still felt fresh and raw.

Anyways, to Poe, it was coincidence you both were rubbing your hands at the same time.

So convinced of this, in fact, that he was already leaving his quarters and trekking quietly to the place he knew he could find you. It was dark out, and as he crossed the runway to streamline his path right to the med bay, he had to stop to look up.

D’Qar wasn’t a small planet, but it always felt as though the stars were within reach at night. They felt so close, so visible in the atmosphere that Poe could hop in his x-wing and grab one. Maybe he’d give it to you. Maker knows you wouldn’t waste any time before taking it into a lab to analyze it. He quickly shook the thought of giving you a fucking star from his head and continued his path.

He had only made it a few steps before noticing a dark figure sat above one of the massive hills the Resistance had carved into for their base. If not for the direct illumination from the stars and D’Qar’s two moons, he might’ve missed your silhouette completely. He began his slow trek up the side of the mound, approaching you cautiously.

If you knew he was there, you didn’t react. You leaned back on your hands, legs crossed at the ankles as you gazed at the constellations above. It made Poe stutter in his stride.

“Leave if you’re gonna talk, Dameron,” you said as he opened his mouth.

For once in his life, Poe Dameron stayed quiet.

He sat next to you, carefully easing himself back on his elbows. As much as he wanted to turn his head and commit how the starlight reflected on your features to memory, his head tilted up like yours.

So there the two of you sat, watching all the stars and all the nebulas and all the supernovas blink back. The galaxy was swirling tonight, and it felt like you and Poe were at the epicenter of it all. Maybe the galaxy did this when someone found their soulmate, Poe didn’t know. He scolded himself in his head for using the s-word.

“You can apologize now,” you broke the silence.

Poe kept himself from chuckling. “I don’t think there’s any apology I could use that would have you forgive me.”

He didn’t see it, but you rolled your eyes. “Ever the dramatic. You were just an ass. I’m sure it isn’t the first, nor the last time this will happen.”

He closed his eyes, biting the insides of his cheeks. He finally turned his head towards you and instant regret flushed his features.

“I’m sorry,” he said as sincerely as someone like Poe could. “It will probably happen again.”

You suppressed a small smile, meeting his gaze. “Accepted. Until next time.”

He nodded. “Fair.”

Another moment of silence passed as you held gazes until you turned your head back towards the atmosphere. Poe wanted to talk, wanted you to help him through the meteor field that was inside his brain, to sift through every thought. But nothing he could say right now would be worth breaking the peace right now.

So, once again, Poe Dameron stayed quiet.

You could basically hear him thinking, his face pinched deep in thought as he stared up with unseeing eyes. Was he thinking about that moment on the runway? The one where the both of you had acted in unison, only for Poe to realize too late? Maybe he hadn’t caught it, just thought your retreat was due to his spiteful words. You both knew that wasn’t true.

Whether or not either of you would bring it up was the true question.

“Is there a lot of talk about me around the base?” Poe asked, tone exposing his curiosity. He knew that you already had an opinion on him, felt that you had already made up your mind on what kind of man Poe was. What kinds of things you had heard, from engineers, holographers or even his own pilots was a constant..worry? Not knowing kept him up at night. You didn’t know him, not really. And for some reason, that bothered him. He wanted to change that. 

At his words, your thoughts drifted back to that day in the medbay when Ziff had told you about Poe’s sentiments on soulmates. You swallowed thickly.

“Nothing that reaches the medbay,” you lied. Poe didn’t buy it for a second.

“Sure, doc. You definitely don’t have one ear attuned to whatever whispers filter in from the hallway.”

Though you’d never admit it, you did feel isolated in your corner of the base. It often felt as though people would sooner gossip with Leia before you. You did engross yourself in your work, only leaving the medbay to sleep or to grab a meal. You didn’t make much of an effort, and you couldn’t blame anyone for not making one either.

“What have you heard about me?” Poe interrupted your thoughts, pressing. 

“Just that you don’t tend to be alone most of the time.” You desperately wanted to change the subject.

“Does that make you think less of me, Doctor?” Poe’s voice was suddenly soft and your pinky throbbed. You knew better than to draw attention to it as Poe continued, “You mentioned my character, my reputation earlier. What do you think of me?”

Poe didn’t really want to confirm what he already knew in his head. He ignored the throbbing in his left and his finger.

“We’re..uh,” you stumbled, “part of the Resistance. Both people of rank. It doesn’t matter what I think of you outside of your role as Commander.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“We don’t have to be friends, Dameron. All that matters is that we do our jobs.”

That was cold.

Poe let the words dissolve into his skin, ride through his veins and drain right into his chest, constricting it. He cleared his throat as he stood, brushing off anything that may linger from what he thought was a night, or at the very least a conversation that would end in a truce.

“Sorry for imposing on your night, Doctor,” Poe said. “I’ll see you around.”

Poe had built a mountain out of the hope he had left his quarters with. As he trudged back to his quarters for the second time that night, he felt it all crashing on top of him as if he were planted at the base. He was sixteen again, sitting in the grass next to you as he brought up running spice - cracking open the door for you in hopes that you would enter.

Maybe the trip to Kessel had skewed his brain, the jump to and from hyperspace leaving him scrambled. Maybe it actually was a coincidence that the two of you had rubbed your hands at the same time. If he couldn’t see it, that meant that you could. And if you didn’t mention it, well.

Poe Dameron was wrong. Twice.

✗ ✗ ✗

Leia had taken Poe off world to rub elbows with a couple of diplomats in Coruscant. It was much needed, seeing as there was no new First Order intel or any reason for him to fly his x-wing into oblivion.

She’d noticed he had been...off as of recent. He was highly aware of his surroundings, mostly just aware of who he was around. Poe usually cracked his knuckles on a frequent basis, but she’d noticed he’d been providing more care to the smallest finger on his left hand.

Leia couldn’t see the red, but being force sensitive allowed her to see how a fraction of the air surrounding his hand seemed to almost blur. Not unlike how heat distorted the horizon on a particularly hot day in D’Qar. She knew what it meant though, saw the very same distortion around not only her right hand, but Han’s left.

She really wasn’t expecting to see it besiege the smallest finger on your right hand when she’d woken you in your office a few days prior.

She didn’t need much more than that and the inability for the two of you to have a civil conversation to connect the dots.

He stood at the wall to wall window that opened the ship to the galaxy outside, absentmindedly worrying that same finger Leia had been looking at. It was the newest addition of his little idiosyncrasies, not unlike how he rubbed his hand over his stubble, or extended his hand beside his hip to make sure BB-8 was within reach. Maybe it was him feeling a tendon in the right spot or his mind playing tricks on him, but sometimes he swore he could feel something cut through the skin.

Leia approached him until they stood side by side, looking out.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing this,” she began. “Reminds me what we’re fighting for.”

“If I could, I’d take off in my ship and never land,” Poe said quietly, finally dropping his hands to his side.

“Does your finger hurt?” Leia asked.

“Jammed it on the cargo ship when we went to Kessel. It’s fine.”

Leia nodded. “Unfortunate, nonetheless.”

Poe cleared his throat, eyes never straying from the scene before him.

“Can you see yours?”

Leia smiled softly. “No,” she answered. “Not in the way I’d like to.”

Poe was going through the five stages. He had been firmly set in denial following the time he spent with you on the hill. He’d psyched himself out, doubted his eyesight (which was hard, because..y’know. He was a pilot.) and reprimanded his brain for even coming up with such an unbelievable explanation.

Now?  His jaw was set in anger. Angry at himself, at you, at whatever joke the galaxy thought it was making. He was bitter at the universe for constantly building him up, creating another possibility for Poe just to end up decimated. Every single time. Ultimately, Poe let it happen. Every single time.

But why was he mad at you?

That old part of himself that Poe held on to -  the starry eyed, illusory kid he used to be - wanted it to be you. Wanted you to be the one to break the cycle. But it wasn’t you. You barely considered him a friend. He should’ve asked you if you could see yours before leaving the conversation so dejected. He could’ve saved himself from spending the rest of that night sulking in his quarters, throwing himself deeper into despair when he got under those fucking sheets.

He needed more blankets. Maybe he could steal some from the medbay.

But that was almost a guarantee he’d run into you, and his pride was still recovering. He’d probably end up doing it anyway, mourning from a distance the best almost-soulmate he’d run into.

“What’s got Poe Dameron so quiet?” Leia asked, she couldn’t take his lamenting any longer. She didn’t need to be a jedi to hear Poe’s thoughts.

“I want to find them, Leia,” he began. “Whoever they are. So bad. I think the galaxy knows that I want it more than anything, and it’s purposely keeping them away.”

She watched him and from her initial lack of response, Poe backpedaled.

“Not more than defeating the First Order, of course. Finding them comes after.”

Leia rolled her eyes, knocking her shoulder against the side of his arm fondly. “You remind me of my brother.”

Poe laughed. “Good or bad?”

“It changes,” she shrugged. “But overall? Good. What makes you think you haven’t met them yet?”

Poe puckered his lips in thought. “If I had, why wouldn’t they have come forward?”

“Han didn’t tell me until we were married.”

“You married someone you knew wasn’t your soulmate?” Poe tried to hide his shock.

“I knew,” she answered. “Everything told me it was him. But he was Han, and thought it was funny to wait. Overall, Poe. I think you know.”

Poe closed his eyes, muttering to himself that “if it was that holographer from a few weeks ago, I’m fucked.”

Leia turned around, leaving Poe by himself to stand by the window.

“Don’t overthink it,” she threw over her shoulder before disappearing into another part of the ship.

Poe was self-assured in every other aspect of his life except for this sliver, which at times seemed all encompassing. At Leia’s words, that small flicker of heat that he recognized as hope burned in his chest, and as much as he tried to extinguish it, it remained. Nestled itself in the lowest chamber of his heart where it would wait until he knew, just like Leia said.

- 

a lot of you were begging for poe's pov so i really hoped this lived up to your expectations! a little shorter of an update, but there will be more plot in the next chapter. this was just some nice fluffy angsty filler. as always, feedback and love is encouraged and appreciated! xoxox

TAGLIST (message me to be added!) 

@yayrainday​ @samhollandssweaters​ @softly-sad​

[maxwell-grant]

Your Top Five Pulp Heroes that you wish were better known? By Pulp Hero fans, I mean. Since pretty much all of them except Conan and Tarzan are fairly unknown.

It’s actually quite hard for me to narrow it down to just five, because I’m having to choose between characters that are my favorites that I wish were more well-known and appreciated (which is all of them), and characters that aren’t quite my favorites but I very much think should have achieved great popularity for a myriad of reasons. So instead I’m going to pick some of each. These are not necessarily ranked by their importance or my personal taste, just 5 characters I felt like highlighting in particular. 

Honorable mentions goes to characters I already talked about prior and don’t want to repeat myself on. These aren’t “lesser” picks, just ones that I already talked about: Imaro (who in particular definitely feels like he could, and should be, a pop culture superstar if he was only more well-known), Kapitan Mors (who’s got a lot in common with one of my favorite fictional characters, Captain Nemo, but also has a lot of interesting things going on for him as his own character). Sar Dubnotal (a character that appeals a lot to me and I think should be included much more often in pulp hero team-ups). The Golden Amazon (again, definitely a character that feels like it’s just begging to have a pop culture breakout, even comic books rarely if ever have female supervillains this ruthless and over-the-top), The Mexican Fantomas (who absolutely deserves a better name than what I’m calling him here, because he’s incredibly awesome and leagues ahead of just being a knock-off). And of course my homeboy, The Grey Claw, whom I would consider Number One of the list if it wasn’t for the fact that his obscurity has left him untouched by copyright and I got plans of my own for the character that wouldn’t be possible if he was more well-known, so I guess I’m ultimately glad he’s obscure (even if I’m still bothered by how little he’s known). 

Allright let’s go:

Number 5: Sheridan Doome

Sheridan Doome appeared in fifty-four stories and three novels from 1935 to 1943. As chief detective for U.S. Naval Intelligence, Lieutenant Commander Sheridan Doome’s job was a grim one. Whenever an extraordinary mystery or crime occurred in the fleet, on a naval base, or anywhere the navy worked to protect American interests, Doome was immediately dispatched to investigate it. Fear and dread would always precede Doome’s arrival in his special black airplane. For, in an explosion during WWI, he had been monstrously disfigured. 

He was six feet two inches tall; had a chalk-white face and head. It appeared as though it had once been seared or burned. For eyes, he had only black blotches; glittering optics, that looked like small chunks of coal. His nose was long, the end of it squared off rudely. He had no lips, just a slit that was his mouth. His neck was long, as white and as bony as his face…. Sheridan Doome looked more like a robot than a human being. He was tall and ghastly; his uniform fitted him in a loose manner. Long arms hung at his sides; his face was a perfect blank. He had no control of his facial muscles; consequently, his countenance was always without expression, chalky and bony.

But behind the ugliness was a brilliant mind. Sheridan Doome always got his man. Before Sheridan Doome became a staple in the pages of The Shadow magazine, two Doome hardcover mysteries were written in the mid-1930’s by acclaimed hard-boiled author Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming) and edited by his wife Edythe Seims (Dime Detective, G-8 and His Battle Aces). Age of Aces now brings you both books in one huge double novel, presented in a retro “flip book” style. This book is currently Out of Print.

I sadly don’t have any more information on the character other than this. The book is unavailable for me to acquire in any capacity, and the text above is taken from the Age of Aces website as well as Jess Nevins’s personal profile for the character. I’m not even sure if any of those 54 stories even exist anymore, since although he was published as a backup in Shadow Magazine, there doesn’t seem to be reprints of them anywhere, at least as far as I can find, and the original Shadow magazines have largely turned to dust by now. 

A character who combines aspects of The Phantom of the Opera and The Shadow, whose adventures are set in a backdrop that can easily lead to ocean adventures? That’s like, what, three of my favorite things in the world combined. I really, really wish I could at least read the stories this character stars in, but as is, this description is all I can provide. Again, time really has been cruel to the pulp heroes. 

Number 4: Harlan Dyce

This is another character I’ve only been able to learn about through Jess Nevins’s archives and have not been able to attain any further information on, which is sadly the case with a lot of pulp heroes that nowadays only seem to exist as footnotes in his Encyclopedia or records in libraries. I don’t post more about these characters because I really would just be copying the stuff he wrote without much to justify me quoting him verbatim, and I hate the idea of doing that.

I especially hate that in Harlan Dyce’s case though. Here’s his description

“Dyce had brains, taste, money, ambition, and a total lack of physical or spiritual fear. But—

“Dyce was thirty-three inches tall and weighed sixty pounds.

“That was all the world could ever hold against him. That was what had made the world, most of it, in all the countries of the world, stare at Harlan Dyce, billed in the big show as “General Midge.””

Harlan Dyce is a misanthropic and venomous private detective. He has an “amazingly handsome face,” and the aforementioned brains. But all anyone sees is his stature, and he hates that and turns his cold eyes and acid tongue on them. 

The only person Dyce likes and gets along with (besides his dwarf wife, a former client) is his assistant, Nick Melchem, a six-foot tall former p.i.’s assistant with bleak eyes and a strong body. Melchem ignores Dyce’s stature and treats Dyce normally, which Dyce responds warmly to.

Dwarfs may be the single most maligned group of people depicted in pulp magazines, even more so than the Japanese in the war years or the Chinese during the peak of the Yellow Peril’s popularity. Evil dwarfs, murderous dwarfs, sexually depraved dwarfs, they are all loathsome, ugly cliches that are, sadly, the only instances you see of dwarf characters being represented at all, with the only ones who are awarded any measure of sympathy are doomed henchmen or tragic villains.  Even outside of the pulps, the only other examples of heroic, protagonist dwarfs I can think off the top of my head are Puck from Marvel Comics and Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones.

I’m not gonna say Harlan Dyce is great representation because I’m not a little person and can never make that kind of claim for a group I’m not a part of, but Harlan Dyce may be the first time I’ve ever seen a dwarf character in pulp fiction who was not a villain or a murderous goon or a victim, but an actual person and a heroic protagonist, and that definitely counts for something. I’m not sure how popular this character was or could be if someone picked up the concept and ran with it (and I’m pretty sure he’s public domain), but I definitely think this is a character that should exist and should be popular. 

Hell, this character has Peter Dinklage written all over it, give it to him. Maybe then he will get to play a smart, fearless, cynical, misanthropic but good-natured and heroic character in something where he actually gets to keep these traits until the show ends.

Number 3: Audaz, O Demolidor

Audaz is a Brazilian character who was created and published by Gazetinha, the same publishers of Grey Claw as well as properties exported from elsewhere like Superman and Popeye, and much like The Grey Claw, he is also completely unknown even here. I’ll get to Audaz more in-depth sometime but here I’m going to provide a quick summary: 

Audaz, The Demolisher is a gigantic crime-fighting robot controlled and piloted by the brilliant scientist Dr. Blum, his close friend Gregor and the child prodigy Jacques Ennes, who pilot the giant robot from a massive laboratory inside it's head rather than a cockpit. He takes on a variety of ordinary human criminals, mad scientists, supervillains and invading armies, towering over skyscrapers and grappling with jets.

Audaz was created in 1939 by illustrator Messias de Melo, a year before Quality Comics's Bozo the Iron Man and 5 years before Ryuichi Yokoyama's Kagaku Senshi, and decades before the debut of Mazinger Z. Although he is not the first giant robot of science fiction, he is the first heroic giant robot piloted by human pilots, and thus the first true example of "mecha" fiction.

Number 2: Emilia the Ragdoll

This is another Brazilian character, although nowhere near as obscure as Audaz as even a cursory Google search can show. Although Brazil did not have a “pulp era” in the same way the US had, we’ve long gotten past the point of sticking to it as a definitive rule, and I’m including Emilia as a pulp hero because she’s a 1920s fantasy literature character who was created under a publishing company that released pulp stories, because she doesn’t quite belong in the mold of fantasy literature characters she takes after, and because I like her and if I was putting a bunch of pulp heroes together in the same story, I would definitely include Emilia in it. It’s not like she really has anywhere else to go, now that she’s public domain and she’s outlasted her franchise.

As you can tell by the above image, Emilia’s had a lot of variations over the years and that’s because the work she was created for, Sítio do Picapau Amarelo (Yellow Woodpecker Ranch/Farm), has become a major bedrock of Brazilian fantasy literature, one of the only works created here that you can find substantial information about in English if you go looking for it. Here’s some descriptions of Emilia’s character:

Emília is a rag doll described as "clumsy" or "ugly", resembling a "witch" that was handmade by Aunt Nastácia, the ranch's cook, for the little girl Lúcia, out of an old skirt. After Lucia takes her on an adventure and the doll is given a dose of magic pills, Emília suddenly started talking, and would never stop henceforth.

Emilia has a rough, antagonistic personality, and an independent, free-spirited and anarchist behaviour. She is rogue, rebellious, stubborn, rough and intensely determined at anything she sets her mind on, eager to take off on just about any adventure. She is often immature and behaves like a curious and arrogant child, always wanting to be the center of attention.

She is extremely opinionated even when she constantly and confidently mispronounces words and expressions. Her attitude often gets her into trouble, and she very often has to fight against the villains who attack her home on the Yellow Woodpecker Farm and mistreat her friends.

In the stories, Emilia often takes the role of a heroine who travels through different realms and dimensions, as the books include not only figures from Brazilian and worldwide folklore, but also several characters both real and fictional, such as Hercules, King Arthur, Don Quixote, Thumbelina, Da Vinci, Shirley Temple, Captain Hook, Santos Dumont and Baron von Munchausen.

She's fought scorpions and martians and nymph hordes, her arch-enemy is an alligator witch, she rescued an angel from the Milky Way and tried to teach it how to become a human, and once shrunk the entire population of Earth to try and talk the president of the United States into ending war forever.

To little surprise, she has become the most popular character and the series’s mascot.

It’s a little strange to consider Emilia underrated considering she is one of the most famous original characters of Brazilian literature, but hardly anyone outside of Brazil even knows who she is, and regardless of the quality of the original stories (and Monteiro Lobato’s views on race that tar much of his reputation), Emilia definitely feels to me like a character that should be a lot more popular globally. 

She is the only character from Yellow Woodpecker Ranch that has transcended the original stories, since she was always the most popular character and there’s been a couple of stories written about her that usually separate her from the ranch and just set her out on the world by herself. The latest story about this character has been a series called The Return of Emilia, that’s about her stepping out of the books in 2050 and discovering a Brazil that’s been ruined by social and ecological devastation, and traveling back in time via a flying scooter in order to try and prevent this calamity. 

Now that she’s public domain, I definitely think there’s some great stories that can be told with the character that just about anyone could get to, and I definitely think she’s a character that deserves more appreciation. Anything goes in stories starring her and it’s that kind of free-for-all freedom that I think can benefit future takes on pulp heroes. I would be very happy to place Emilia among them.

Oh yeah, and there was one time she kicked Popeye's ass by tricking him with a can of mouldy cabbage instead of spinach, making him sick and then beating him, which possibly puts her as one of the all-time badasses of fiction, except she would be pissed at not being number one and likely embark on a quest to beat everyone else just to prove she could, because that’s how Emilia rolls.

Number 1: Luna Bartendale, from The Undying Monster (1922)

Not necessarily my favorite of the bunch, but one who sort of epitomizes what you asked, a character who is both incredibly obscure and incredibly underrated in every sense. Despite the book being somewhat known, mainly thanks to the movie, the character is so obscure that I don’t even have an illustration of her to display here, not even fan art, just one of the book’s covers that I think best conveys it. Luckily, the book is also available freely online, so you can all go check it out here. The movie adaptation does not feature the character of Luna Bartendale which makes it pointless to talk about.

To not spoil it too much, The Undying Monster is a very fascinating book, ahead of it’s time in quite a few ways. You expect it to just be a detective story centered around a werewolf cursed, except the subtitle of the book is “The Fifth Dimension” and then it goes to talk about dimensions of thought and post-WWI trauma and love and hypnotic regression that travels through time and ancient runes and Norse mythology. It’s not exactly an easy book to get through in one setting, but I’d recommend it much the same if only because it’s got supersensitive psychic sleuth Luna Bartendale, literature’s first female occult detective, and she’s an incredible character who absolutely feels like she should have become a literary icon. 

She lives in London but is world-renowned for her many good deeds. She is a small, pretty woman, with curly blonde hair, dark eyebrows and a high-bridged nose, and a slight build. She has a voice described as a light soprano that "does not make much noise but carries a long way". 

Petite, bedimpled and golden curled, Luna is completely in charge of events, dominating every scene that she appears in with her welcoming disposition and cleverness. 

Bartendale has various psychic powers, including mind reading. She is well-versed in psychic and occult lore, is a “supersensitive” psychic, and has a “Sixth Sense” which allows her to trace things and people through both the Fourth and the Fifth Dimension. (The Fifth Dimension is “the Dimension that surrounds and pervades the Fourth–known as the Supernatural”).

Her extensive knowledge of occult rites and practices puts John Silence, Carnacki and Miles Pennoyer to shame, and she beats them all with her "super-sensitive" gift of being able to psychically connect with troubled souls and hypnotize them.

She uses a divining rod for various tasks, including psychic detection and tracking, and distinguishing between benevolent and malevolent forces. She has various (undefined) powerful psychic defenses, can carry on seances, and can even cure a person of “wehrwolfism.” And she can always rely on her massive, intelligent dog Roska for help.

Luna sadly doesn’t show up in the book as often as I’d hoped, but everything about this character is so delightful. In a lot od ways she hardly feels like a pulp hero, at least the ones I usually talk about. She feels like a lost protagonist from an incredibly successful kid’s adventure series where a kind and eccentric detective witch and her giant dog go around solving occult mysteries and encountering all sorts of weird supernatural beings while counseling and helping people, like Ms Frizzle meets Hilda. Like this character is just waiting for Cartoon Saloon to make a film about her.

Its not so much “this character should/could be popular but it’s clear why that didn’t pan out”, it’s more me being confused as “why the hell isn’t she super popular? This character should have had a franchise ages ago, holy shit put her in everything””

[fresh-prince-of-denmark]

Analysis of the Devil Ending: Who Died and Left Aristotle In Charge of Ethics? (Pt 5)

Hello and welcome back to me over-analyzing everything in Cyberpunk. If you haven’t read my other posts, please read those first! (V’s Mikoshi Poem, Johnny’s Mikoshi Poem, The Sun, New Dawn Fades).

This part took me a lot longer to complete. Not because it was particularly long…it was just painful. Jesus Christ. I hated every second of this ending. That shit hurted.

There were a few shards located at Arasaka’s estate that I chose to skip, as I did not find ant that were unique to the location. The three the game seemed to want to draw your attention to were actually not scattered as shards, they were spoken-word. The only shard I was able to find was a portion of The Odyssey. The other two pieces of literature are In Kyoto, which is quoted to V by the guard to takes her to the hospital room, and (what I believe to be) a reference to Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave. This section is going to be super theoretical. Like, more theoretical than the rest. So bare with me please.

Let’s start easy. This is the poem that the guard quotes at V as he leads her out of the operating room:

In Kyoto,

hearing the cuckoo,

I long for Kyoto

(By: Basho, translated by Jane Hirshfield)

Ten words. What could ten words amount to? The saddest goddamn words you’ll ever hear, dammit.  This poem is a feeling more than a concept. Ever feel homesick when you haven’t gone anywhere? Lonely when you’re around other people? That’s V. This was supposed to be a victory, supposed to be what they wanted. But now Johnny’s gone, scorned and betrayed, and no one they calls seems to even be able to give V the time of day. This was supposed to be a victory, their way of going back to the way things were, getting their life back, going home. But we can never go back, can’t ever erase our experiences, what we learn, how we grow. As Misty says, we should not fear change in of itself, but who we might change into. This just goes to show what happens when we betray ourselves by rejecting our own growth: all that’s left is bitterness and sorrow.

The next day when V wakes, you can pick up a shard containing a section from Chapter 8 of The Odyssey. Now, I’m not too familiar with the Odyssey. In fact, I hate the Odyssey. So if anyone wants to jump in here and add something more intelligent, I’m all for it. The Odyssey is the tale of Odysseus, who has been trying for ten long years to return to his wife and son after the Trojan war. Odysseus is basically listening to a bard remind him of all his Trojan War trauma, and begins to weep, at which time time people start questioning what’s up with this guy:

Say what thy birth, and what the name you bore,

Imposed by parents in the natal hour?

(For from the natal hour distinctive names,

One common right, the great and lowly claims:)

Say from what city, from what regions toss'd,

And what inhabitants those regions boast?

So shalt thou instant reach the realm assign'd.

In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind;

No helm secures their course, no pilot guides;

Like man intelligent, they plough the tides,

Conscious of every coast and every bay,

That lies beneath the sun's all-seeing ray;

Though clouds and darkness veil the encumber'd sky,

Fearless through darkness and through clouds they fly;

Though tempests rage, though rolls the swelling main,

The seas may roll, the tempests may rage in vain,

E'en the stern god that o'er the waves presides,

Safe as they pass, and safe repass the tides,

With fury burns; while careless they convey

Promiscuous every guest to every bay,

These ears have heard my royal sire disclouse

A dreadful story, big with future woes;

How Neptune raged, and how, by his command,

Firm rooted in a surge a ship would stand

A monument of wrath; how mound on mound

Should bury these proud towers beneath the ground.

But this the gods may frustrate or fulfill,

As suits the purpose of the Eternal Will.

But say through what waste regions hast thou stray'd

What customs noted, and what coasts survey'd;

Possess'd by wild barbarians fierce in arms,

Or men whose bosom tender pity warms?

Say why the fate o Troy awaked thy cares,

Why heaved thy bosom, and why flowed thy tears?

Reading this made me feel just how tired V must be. All this fighting, all this war, and for what? Much like Odysseus, V has been through hell and back (literally, depending on how you see it). And it never seems to end. V has been fighting for so long, yet there’s always something more; the tests the doctor gives her are endless, and they’re always being asked to do more, over and over again, with no results or end in sight. Odysseus is teetering on despair; nothing he does seems to do will ever be enough, just like V. The world will just take and take and take. It’s exactly what V’s poem asserts in Mikoshi; the world cannot be fixed, and resistance is futile. You can’t change how corporations rule the world, and as a protestor states on the TV in the hospital room, the rich have no boundaries or morals, and we are powerless to stop them from taking whatever they want. They can take not only our souls, but our bodies, devour them in order to prolong their own lives. Johnny would, of course, disagree. Even a slap in the face to The Man is better than submitting to a corpo-leash, even if that is the easier path. And in fact, he may be right, since it seems taking Hanako’s offer is the conformist path, and the only one that leads to Saburo coming back.

But Johnny isn’t there anymore to walk the rebel path at their side. No more guardian angel to whisper when they it most to never stop fighting.

There’s a lot more we could go into here with the Odyssey; comparing Arasaka to the story of Polyphemus and the cave, talking about themes of passion vs. commitment, yadayadayada. I hate the Odyssey so that can be someone else’s problem tbh.

The final piece is what the doctor asks V to read as one of their tests. Now, on surface-level, this is foreshadowing if V will choose to stay in their body, or be turned into an engram. It’s laughing at them, really, both pitying and mocking the fact that they believe they have a choice, since either way they’re once again at the mercy of the rich and powerful:

“And it was a sight to behold, he said, how a soul would choose its life; sometimes pitiable, sometimes laughable at times wonderful and strange. For in most cases, the souls made their choice according to the habits of a former life.”

I couldn’t find where this was from, or if it was a quote from anything. But googling it does bring up Plato’s Allegory of The Cave, which I thinks tracks pretty well. I found a quote from this chapter of Plato’s The Republic, which is strikingly similar in meaning. For the sake of my sanity, lets assume that this quote is referencing this one from Plato:

“And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the cave.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the allegory of the cave, it’s a philosophical discussion from Plato’s The Republic. It’s about how human perception is limited, and so true knowledge comes from the self via philosophical reasoning. Much like humans imprisoned in a cave with only shadows as their entire world, we cannot imagine the true world outside the cave until we leave to see it for ourselves.  Those who are freed from this limited reasoning have a duty to go back and free others, subjecting them to the full experience of awakening; both the pain and the triumph it entails. V starts out with a limited perception of things; a surface-level world, never stopping to see the bigger picture, until Johnny comes along and encourages them to question the status quo. In all other endings, V accepts this enlightenment. They challenge Arasaka, and try to follow Johnny’s legacy and Stick It To the Man. Yet if they accept Hanako’s offer in an attempt to return to “the habits of a former life,” they are rejecting this new understanding, refusing to leave the cave and live in ignorant bliss. This, I believe, is where Johnny’s true feeling of betrayal comes from: not because he’s being shredded, and not because he thinks V doesn’t know any better. V learned and changed just as much as he did, and this growth was something they were able to gift to one another. Johnny is proud of his change, proud to be someone trusted by V, proud at a second chance not to fuck things up. When V gives him control to go with Rogue to Arasaka, he’s ecstatic to prove himself worthy of that trust, to prove that he’s changed. Yet V, the person who aided in that change, is now actively ignoring and rejecting their own growth, and thus is betraying themselves. By not using their enlightenment to actively oppose the status quo and rebel, they are choosing the side of the oppressor by default.

Some of her last words if you choose not to sign the contract are to Goro, “You have no idea how good it feels to be free.” But the truth is, V is not free, and now they will never be free. By walking the path they have, they are choosing willful ignorance, stubbornly clinging to the darkness of the cave because it is easier to convince oneself that they are not a prisoner at all than it is to leave the comfort of one’s chains. Either way, they are caged, even if the bars the rich and powerful build around her are clear instead of solid. Her so-called freedom (and knowledge) is pure illusion — shadows depicted on a cave wall.

[parvuls]

fic: in the space between (1/2)

the astronauts/scifi au literally no one asked for.   a 3k ficlet of eric bittle thriving in places the world thinks he can’t -- in every single universe.

(part 1 | part 2 | read on ao3)

-

    FABER 15 AIR-TO-GROUND TRANSCRIPTIONS

  00 00 00 34 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Just letting you know your trajectory is headed straight into Driucs, Zimmermann. Over.

00 00 00 41 COMMANDER J. ZIMMERMANN

Roger. We copy that, Houston. Changing courses now. 

00 00 00 48 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Get on that. Things aren’t looking good ahead. Over.

00 00 00 55 SECOND PILOT B. KNIGHT

Can’t believe you don’t fucking trust this guy. He’s already tense as shit, Lards, you got nothin’ to worry about. 

00 00 00 57 SECOND PILOT B. KNIGHT

Over.

00 00 01 06 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Keep it clean on the coms, Faber 15. Administration is already on your case. Over.

00 00 01 12 COMMANDER J. ZIMMERMANN

Roger. You’re welcome to come shut him up. Over.

00 00 01 19 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Wish I could, Zimmermann. Change courses, now. Or I’m stealing a ship and coming to beat your ass. 

00 00 01 22 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Off record, Houston. Delete from written transcriptions. 

00 00 01 24 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Just get out of dodge, Faber 15. Over. 

00 00 01 30 COMMANDER J. ZIMMERMANN

Roger. Trajectory adjusted, should be going around Driucs. Over.

00 00 01 36 CAPCOM L. DUAN

(Music: “It’s About Time”)

.

  Driucs is a ball of hot pink mottled with orange from the sandstorms raging on its surface. Shitty thinks that it’s pretty, wants to screencap the ship’s monitors so he can ask Lardo for a painting of it later. Jack thinks that it’s an unnecessary hazard ringed with a dense asteroid belt, and that all he wants to do is bypass it as quickly as possible without colliding with a mass of solid carbon.

“Chillax,” Shitty says to this, kicking his feet up to the control panel. His toes are edging the radar display, and Jack grinds his teeth, shoves them off without bothering to argue about it once again. He’s so tense that he doesn’t even comment on Shitty’s choice of socks; galaxy printed with tiny marijuana leaves, crisse. “Everything will be A-OK. Always fucking is, Jacko.”

Jack wipes his brow with the back of his hand, shifts his hold on the control wheel and tries to focus on getting them through safely. “You know I hate it when you’re being cavalier.”

The door to the flight deck slides open, and someone exclaims, “Oh, what a view!”. Jack doesn’t need to turn his head; Bittle walks up between the two piloting seats, leans right on the center panel to gaze up at Driucs through the big windows. “It’s absolutely gorgeous, ain’t it? We should make a stop there.”

It’s what he always says. Jack specifically asked Holster to keep Bittle in the sleeping quarters until they’re out of the Merudan System because he’s got no patience for this right now. “It runs a hundred and two degrees, Bittle. We can’t make a stop there.”

Bittle talks about everything like they’re driving Route 66 down to Arizona and landing on a foreign planet is just a stop at Wendy’s for a Vanilla Frosty mid-roadtrip. Some days Jack can’t believe NASA ever let him out of the Solar System; other days, he thinks that maybe they did this so he’d never come back.

Bittle either doesn’t notice Jack’s impatient tone or, most likely, chooses to ignore it completely. “A hundred and two degrees is just another hot day in Georgia,” he huffs, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Goodness, it must stop being winter in Canada sometimes, does it not?”

Shitty snorts. His feet are back on the panel again, scratching against each other absently. “I think he means a hundred and two degrees Celsius, brah.”

Bittle pauses, hovers over Jack’s shoulder for a moment. And then says, “Oh. Well, that is rather warm, indeed.”

.

  They picked Bittle up from a tiny space station right by Cleto, where they'd stopped for supplies. The order came from high up in Houston, and was very specific: Bittle was to join them on all ground missions until further notice, and was to lead all communication with nonhum species. They were provided with no background information or justification for expanding Jack’s crew, and Flight Director Hall hung up on Jack when he tried asking.

Bittle, the moment he stepped into the ship through airlock, pulled off his helmet to reveal a head of blonde hair and a radiant smile. His suit had pins of rainbows and bunnies on it next to the American flag, blatantly disobeying uniform regulations. He offered his hand for an enthusiastic handshake despite the bulky EV glove covering it -- without decontaminating first -- and Jack’s first thought was that all of it must be a joke. 

But it wasn’t. It’s been three months since orders came and no further notice was given. Instead, every day since has been filled with ceaseless chatter and pop music playing in the communal area and Bittle’s petulant morning complaints about intergalactic coffee being just not the same.

“You’re not even trying,” Shitty tells Jack nearly every night. He’s made a habit of crawling into Jack’s bunk since their first year on the same crew, gives bullshit excuses about how Jack keeps him warm in the cold, cold outer space. It’d be less troublesome if he at least bothered to put some clothes on to save Jack the uncomfortable conversations with Mission Control Center about workplace relations. “Do not motherfuckin’ lie to my face, Zimmermann -- you are not trying, you didn’t try once, Bittle is a tiny Southern bundle of delight and you’d like the shit out of him if you could get over your sorry ass and try.”

But Jack doesn’t want to try. Jack wants to get to his annual performance review and pass with spotless marks, which may as well not happen if Bittle insists on striking conversation with every nonhum race they encounter during the simplest of missions. Jack didn’t leave Earth to make friends, neither with crewmates nor alien species, and he certainly isn’t looking for friends who put his job at risk.

Shitty won’t stop pestering him about it, though, so Jack takes to pushing him out of the bed and shoving a pillow over his ears. It doesn’t make Shitty stop talking, but Jack is good at pretending to fall back asleep.

.

  Evor is five days’ flight past Dricus. Jack assembles a mission brief in the communal area the night before landing, gathers the boys around the large screens covering the rounded center of the ship. The screens are currently displaying all known information about the people of Evor, who are notoriously unfriendly and are especially inhospitable towards humans. There are reasons, Jack figures, but he never looked too deeply into it; he has no intention of contacting them at all.

“Mission goal is to extract soil samples from the mines on the mountainous side of the planet,” Jack says. The images on the screen behind him switch on voice command, are now a rotating photo of said mines. “It’s mostly unpopulated, so there shouldn’t be any run-ins with the locals. Mission estimated time is three hours on Earth clock.”

Ransom shoves his hand into the bag of chips balanced between Holster and him with a contemplating expression. “Sounds like child’s play. We all going in?”

“Yes,” Jack crosses his arms. He’s no doubt that any of the boys would like to stay behind and get a few extra hours of rest, but he doesn’t like taking unneeded risks. There’s strength in numbers, and he feels safer knowing that they have several eyes watching several backs out there. “Solid landing, no risk to the ship, no reason for anyone to stay here. Get your gear ready tonight.”

“Wait, Jack --” it’s Bittle. Of course it’s Bittle. Jack takes a deep breath and turns to him. He’s sitting in a single seat, legs crossed and hands clasped in his lap. “Listen, I’m not sure it’s such a great idea.” Jack’s scowl must be deeper than usual, because Bittle cringes and hurries to explain, “I mean, no offence to your -- mission planning, or. You’re usually great at that. I just mean, the Evor people don’t like strangers, and they sure as heck won’t like us, and they’re a people of warriors, you know, like, they make their money off lending their fighting skills to other armies --”

“Is there a point to this?” Jack cuts him off. It’s not that he doesn’t think Bittle means well, because he’s not blind: Bittle is made of nothing but good intentions and sunshine demeanor. His tendency to babble on and on simply isn’t welcome during mission briefs. Too time-consuming. 

“Yes,” Bittle insists. He looks unhappy, a tiny furrow wrinkling at his forehead. “Going in with more than two or three men can be seen as a threat, and I just don’t think --”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack interrupts, “because if all of you will follow orders there’s no reason for us to come across them or stay on the ground for long enough to be perceived as anything but transients. Leaving crewmates behind is a risk that we won’t be taking.”

“But --”

“End of story, Bittle,” Jack says, and it’s louder, meaner than it usually would be. He can see Shitty frowning at him from the corner of his eye, can see Holster glaring into his handful of chips. He gets that they feel overprotective of Bittle, being the smallest and the newest, but if Bittle wants to be part of the crew he’s got to either get with the program or quit. Jack can’t lower his professionalism standards just because Bittle might be offended. “Any more questions?”

There’s silence, so Jack adjourns the brief and turns away. He can hear, muttered from somewhere behind him, “Yeah, what crawled up your ass?”. He chooses to ignore it and focus on turning off the screens, instead of giving it enough thought to start doubting himself.

.

  The worst thing is: Jack can’t figure out how the hell Bittle got there.

“I think he has a degree in like, sociology or something, man,” Holster told him a few weeks after Bittle had come aboard, while they were waiting outside the showers and listening to Bittle’s off-key rendition of a song that’d been in the radio maybe a decade before. “A master’s, I think, definitely no doctorate.”

Holster actually really liked Bittle, right off the bat; they all did, bar Jack, which just made the whole situation even more irritating. But they hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep that night and Bittle’s singing was truly awful, so Holster was probably feeling less kind than usual.

“Shitty’s got four PhDs,” Jack said, banging his head back against the wall, abstractedly thinking that a concussion might make the singing stop. “Ransom’s getting his second one now. While in space. You don’t think it’s fucked that some undereducated humanities kid from nowhere, Georgia is going through the cosmos like he’s on a third grade school trip?”

Because Bittle was terrible at physics, and he paled visibly whenever someone started talking about biomechanics, and Jack had once caught him snoozing while Ransom had been fervently explaining the primary composition of Krer’s atmosphere. The most insulting part of it all, probably, was that NASA used to demand a STEM degree to even qualify for a program, and Bittle barely had a dubious understanding of astronomy, while traveling space.

Of course, the moment the words were out of Jack’s mouth the singing stopped and the bathroom door slid open, Bittle standing behind it. He was wrapped in a towel, beads of water still lingering on his temple, dripping down his cheekbones. His face was red, blotchy, but the hard expression on his face made Jack think that the color wasn’t necessarily from the water temperature. 

“Excuse me,” he said, voice uncharacteristically cold. His shoulder knocked into Jack’s when he passed them, leaving behind a wet patch on Jack’s shirt. Bittle was small, and the door was adequately sized, and there were a good two meters between Holster and Jack, which left the obvious conclusion that it was most definitely on purpose. 

Holster followed his departure with bleary eyes, shifting the bundle of clothes in his hands guiltily. “I think he heard you, bro.”

Jack rubbed at the wet patch with his right hand. “No kidding,” he grunted, and couldn’t really find it in himself to care.

.

  Bittle seems wary from the moment they step foot on the jagged surface of Evor. Holster and Ransom force their way into the space by his sides, bracketing him like two towering bodyguards. They do their best at trying to get him to lighten up while climbing up to the mines; the crew figured out that they all played hockey at some point of high school, so Holster is animatedly explaining the rules of zero-G hockey, all of which he’s made up himself. 

“And sometimes we do full out matches when we meet other ships,” Ransom says, struggling with the unfamiliar gravity force to hoist himself up a big rock. “But a few months ago we were on Islikaru and there was this Russian crew, and this dude, Alexei, oh my god --”

A few small stones tumbling downhill bump into Jack’s boot, drawing his attention away from Ransom’s voice, and he mutes the coms to listen closely for any noises. There’s a rumbling coming from the other side of the mountain. It sounds like -- oncoming thunders, maybe, or a little like --

“Prepare for attack,” Jack turns the coms back on immediately, dives in front of Shitty to block the crew’s path up to the mines. Shitty stumbles, catches himself with one knee and both palms flat on the ground. “Abandon mission, now! Back to the ship!”

A dozen of Evor warriors descend from beyond the peak of the mountain, closing in on them faster than they can run. Jack’s crew doesn’t carry weapons. The Evor warriors are big, look like an odd mix of a gorilla and an elephant that’d be classified as some sort of reptile. Ostie de tabarnak, Jack knows next to nothing about them, and definitely nothing about how to beat them in a fight three-on-one. 

“We’d never make it back on time!” Shitty yells, clambering to his feet and shoving the rest of the boys back down the mountain anyway. He’s right, but Jack has no backup plans and less than no time to come up with any. This was not supposed to happen, there was no reason for this to happen. They’ve been on Evor ten minutes, not even that.

Bittle jumps from between Holster and Ransom, scrambling up to reach Jack. He grabs Jack’s arm, face white and rapid breaths fogging up the visor. His expression is just as terrified as the rest of them, but Jack has never seen him this determined. It makes his feature look sharper, less angelic. “Let me go talk to them! Jack, let me --”

“What?” Jack rips his arm away, tries to shove Bittle back towards the ship as fast as he can. “Bittle, are you insane, they’re coming to attack us --!”

“Because we seem like a threat!” Bittle yells. The volume of his voice catches Jack by surprise, gets him to stop racing down for a moment just long enough to remember that Bittle said the same thing at the previous night’s mission brief. That Bittle must be holding himself back from screaming, I told you so, and now look where we are. “Let me go talk to them, I can explain the situation --”

“No! They’ll attack you before you get a word out --”

“They won’t! I understand their culture, the way they work -- Jack, you just -- you gotta let me try!”

“You’ll die --”

“Oh, Lord, we’re gonna die either way, so what’ve you got to lose, Zimmermann? You gotta trust me to have your back! ”

Jack stops. His breathing is loud in his ears, heart pounding. Shitty, Holster and Ransom are ten meters down the mountain, staring at Bittle and he wide-eyed, waiting for a decision. The Evor people are fast, and they look furious; they’re ninety or maybe a hundred meters away, and closing the gap with every second. Jack swallows, tramps down the panic rising in his throat. 

“Go,” he says finally, voice gravelly. “Go, Bittle.”

Bittle gives him one last wild look, and runs towards imminent death. 

.

  FABER 15 CREW GROUND-TO-GROUND TRANSCRIPTIONS

  00 00 02 04 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Faber 15, Faber 15, this is Houston. Over.

00 00 02 06 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Faber 15, this is Houston. What is going on. Over.

00 00 02 09 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Faber 15, this is Houston. Answer me. Over.

00 00 02 11 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Goddamnit boys, what happened!

00 00 02 14 COMMANDER J. ZIMMERMANN

Houston, this is Faber 15 returning to ship. Over.

00 00 02 17 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Jesus Christ, Jack. Tell me what happened.

00 00 02 21 SECOND PILOT B. KNIGHT

Jesus’ got nothing to do with this, Lardo. This was all Eric R. Bittle.

00 00 02 25 COMMANDER J. ZIMMERMANN

Mission didn’t go as planned. Sending you a full report as soon as we’re back on board. Over.

00 00 02 29 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Roger. Tell me everyone’s okay, Zimmermann. Over.

00 00 02 34 SECOND PILOT B. KNIGHT

Alive and kickin’. Can’t get rid of us that easy. But seriously, tell whoever sent us Bittle that I’m getting them a fruit basket whenever I’m back on Earth. 

00 00 02 38 CAPCOM L. DUAN

Roger. I’ll tell them to expect that. Get that report done ASAP, Zimmermann. And never do this to me again. Over.

00 00 02 42 COMMANDER J. ZIMMERMANN

Roger, Houston. Out.  

.

  The boys all separate into their quarters as soon as they’re back in the ship, their postures slumping and their hair damp with cold sweat. Jack stays behind, twists the airlock chamber shut. It feels like his entire body is heavier than usual, and it isn’t because of the ship’s gravity. 

When he looks up, he finds that Bittle’s still there; there’s an uncomfortable pause when they both hesitate by the passageway. Bittle’s back is turned to Jack, muscles tense beneath the dark fabric of his undershirt, but his head is tilted over his shoulder, searching for Jack’s eyes. His face is closed off, looks as blank as it can get. Jack’s hands clench into fists by his side and it makes the rubber of the gloves creak. He works his jaw as he tries to find the right words to say.

“That was --” he begins, and then swallows with difficulty. Bittle doesn’t turn to fully face him, only lifts his gaze until their eyes lock together. There’s spots of furious red high on his cheeks, his mouth pressed thin. Jack has no idea how to translate this information into any sort of social clue. “You. Euh. That was good, Bittle. Good work.”

Bittle’s mouth parts, his eyebrows knitting together, but his chin drops down so his expression is hidden from Jack’s view before he can try to read into it further. His right hand, leaning on the passage frame and keeping him in the mid-motion of leaving, tightens almost imperceptibly.

“Thanks, Commander,” Bittle says finally. His voice is steady, neutral. He’s still facing away. “Just doing my job.” 

He carries on walking away, then, like his pause in the passageway never occurred at all. The insulating door slides closed behind him, and Jack is left standing in his gear, staring at the white expanses of the walls. He has this sinking feeling that he made a critical misstep has no idea how to undo.

[calligraphist-artemisia]

Scattered Blue (Part 1)

Written for the Kidge Spring Event!

Prompt 3: Forget-me-nots | True Love, Memories, Remembrance 

Summary: Alternate Universe. From the moment the first blue petal passed her lips, Pidge knew what was happening to her.

Also posted on AO3 under the username Kishirokitsune

❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀

Part One: Pidge

The small blue petal haunted her from the time she woke up to the time she laid her head down to go back to sleep. There was a part of her that desperately wanted to ignore it and what it meant, hoping it would go away if she just wished hard enough for it.

But as with all things in life, wishing did nothing without her also taking action.

Pidge covered her mouth as she coughed hard, feeling something slide up through her throat until it splattered out into her hand. She caught a glimpse of blue as she shoved that hand into her pocket to hide the evidence.

“Is everything okay?” Hunk asked in concern. He and Lance sat across from her at the cafe table they'd snagged for their weekly lunch.

“Everything's great!” she lied with a smile. “How was your flight, Lance? You transported some heavy cargo to the east coast base, right?”

Lance shrugged. “It was just a normal, boring flight. No issues.”

“Which is a good thing,” Hunk said, his tone long-suffering.

Lance agreed with a grumble that spoke strongly of his true feelings. He'd always dreamed of being more than a “simple” cargo pilot, no matter how often Pidge and Hunk tried to remind him that he was the backbone of the Garrison and served a pivotal role in keeping everything running smoothly.

“What about you?” Hunk asked Pidge. “You and Keith have been testing the new jets. That must be fun.”

Pidge's heart fluttered at the mention of Keith's name and she swallowed to try and stop the cough that threatened to overtake her. “Um, y-yeah. Yeah, it's been a ton of fun.”

Hunk and Lance exchanged alarmed looks at her unusually lackluster response and Pidge wanted to swear, but instead, she reached for her water and took several swallows until her throat was clear.

“Keith giving you problems? I could kick his butt for you,” Lance volunteered.

“We're fine, so please don't get yourself suspended trying to fight him,” Pidge said with a roll of her eyes. She set down her drink. “Our test flight went great! We're just waiting for the technical report to come back before we can go up again and there were a few minor tweaks the ground crew wanted to make to improve how responsive the controls are. Shiro's been coaching us through new drills while we wait.”

“Ugh, you're so lucky. You get Shiro as a mentor and you get to test fly the new jets. Can we trade lives for one day?” Lance asked.

“That means you'd have to work with Keith,” Pidge reminded him.

“Good point. I'd much rather trade with Keith and have you as my partner,” Lance said, sitting back in his chair as the waitress arrived with their meals.

Pidge rolled her eyes as he went about his usual routine of flirting with their waitress. She briefly considered apologizing on his behalf but figured it would only encourage him to keep going. At least he wasn't making a complete fool of himself and thus, by extension, of her and Hunk as well.

They didn't do much talking as they enjoyed their food and it was only as they got down to the last few bites and were contemplating dessert that Pidge asked Hunk how he was doing in the engineering department. His eyes lit up as he began describing their experiments with a new lightspeed engine that they hoped would be capable of drastically reducing the amount of time it took to get to the farthest planets in their solar system.

“Pretty soon you and Keith will be preparing to fly one of these! Well, uh, if everything goes the way we hope,” Hunk said, rapidly backpedaling in an attempt to curb his own enthusiasm.

“That sounds incredible, Hunk! You'll have to keep me updated,” Pidge said.

Hunk grinned back at her. “I will.”

In the end, they decided against ordering dessert at the cafe and instead walked a few blocks down to Lance's favorite gelato place where they each got a scoop in a little paper cup so they could walk and eat at the same time.

Every now and then, Pidge had to turn away and cough, though thankfully she didn't end up with any fresh petals. For the rest of the night, she didn't find a single speck of blue when she pulled her hand away and she went to bed with a smile on her face and no worry lingering in her mind.

She danced around her room with a spring in her step when morning came, taking a little extra time on her hair and putting a little bit of color on her eyelids, which she normally saved for special occasions. By some miracle, she didn't drip any of her breakfast onto her uniform and was able to leave the house soon after by catching a ride with her brother, who was also on his way to the Galaxy Garrison.

They split up after he parked in the Garrison's garage, with Matt heading over to the labs where they were analyzing new plugs taken from Saturn's moon, Enceladus, while Pidge went to the gym to meet up with her flight partner and get started on their training for the day.

Keith was already there warming up when she arrived. His black hair was tied back out of his face and he had swapped out of the heavy uniform in favor of a pair of gray shorts and a black tank top.

Pidge caught his attention with a wave before gesturing towards the locker room, silently indicating that she was going to get changed and would be out soon. Once she was dressed in her own gray shorts and Garrison-provided orange shirt she jogged out to Keith, dodging around the others who were taking advantage of the open gym.

“Hey, did you get the itinerary Shiro sent?” Keith asked the moment she was close enough to be heard.

Pidge had to take a moment to think about it. She's woken up to two messages from Shiro that morning – one was a note regarding a slight change in their schedule and the other was a list of what they'd be covering that week. She assumed he was talking about the week-long one. “I glanced it over. It looks like it's mostly what we do every week.”

“Yeah, except for Friday. Do you think I can convince Shiro to give me a pass to skip out on the annual health screening after what they pulled last year?” Keith asked.

“Doubt it, though I bet he'd go with you if you're really worried about it,” Pidge said as dread began to creep in her chest.

At their last screening, the nurse helping Keith found something “odd” in his blood and ordered him into quarantine for two weeks while they tried to puzzle it out. The Garrison medical team ran test after test, asking Keith all kinds of invasive questions, until Shiro, with the help of Commander Iverson, put an end to it all. Keith was let go, but he then had to suffer through several months of resurgent rumors about his parentage and whether or not his abilities were because he wasn't fully human.

Keith was anti-social and a little awkward, which when coupled with his innate sense of how to pilot and the fact that he out-flew even seasoned pilots on the simulator on his first try, led to a number of rumors that one of his parents weren't human or even that Keith himself was born somewhere far beyond their solar system. It was all nonsense, of course.

Pidge had her own reasons for being worried about the screening. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they would find out about her affliction.

Hanahaki.

Just putting a name to it made it feel all the more real and terrifying.

“Hey,” Keith said, nudging her gently. “It'll be alright. I'm really not worried about anything happening again this year. They wouldn't dare.”

Pidge did her best to smile and try to reassure him that she'd also be there to stop them if they tried anything, but the weight of what was happening to her dragged her down, threatening to drown her if she didn't wrestle back control of her emotions. Her breath stuttered in her chest, a cough building even as she cleared her throat to try and chase it off. Her eyes watered.

“Pidge?” Keith's tone turned concerned and he placed one hand on her back to keep her steady.

She couldn't hold it back any longer.

Once her coughing started, it was nearly impossible to stop as something thick and slightly scratched traveled up through her throat, threatening to block her breathing, until it finally began to slide out. Pidge gagged and coughed even harder, forcing a long stem and the accompanying blooms out of her mouth and into her hands.

All she could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat. Dark spots danced across her vision and she swayed, nominally aware of Keith holding her up. Pidge closed her eyes.

❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀

She woke in the medical wing.

Or at least, she thought that was where she was at first glance, but closer inspection of the wall next to her and the lack of orange décor told her that she was most likely at the Plaht City Memorial Hospital. Pidge stared at the wall for a moment and then slowly, stiffly turned her head to look around the room, which was when she realized Keith was sitting at her bedside and staring at her with a worried expression on his face.

“Wh... what happened?” Pidge groggily asked.

“You passed out,” Keith told her. “Pidge, why didn't you say anything sooner?”

She looked away from him. “Didn't want to. S'fine, Keith. I can handle it.”

“You can handle it? Pidge, this isn't going to go away on its own!” Keith's voice raised to a near shout. He blanched and ran a hand through his hair, clearly struggling to calm down. “You... Will you at least tell me who it is? I could go get them and... and then everything would be fine, right? Unless... you've already told them?”

Pidge swallowed thickly and glanced to the bedside table, hoping to see a glass of water there, but there was nothing. “It doesn't matter.”

“Of course it matters!”

“They don't feel the same way,” Pidge said, refusing to meet his eyes. “I don't need to ask them in order to know that.”

Keith growled in frustration and stood up. “I don't buy that for a second! Who wouldn't like you?”

“Keith...”

“Just tell me who it is and I'll go talk to them,” he said fiercely. “Or I'll bring them here, whichever works best for you. Please, Pidge, I just want to help. You're my best friend.”

Her chest clenched painfully at those words and Pidge wondered for a moment if she were about to be launched into another coughing fit, but after a moment or two, the pain subsided to mere discomfort, which allowed her to speak again.

Not that she really wanted to speak, since that meant revealing the truth: she was in love with him.

That was the cause of the Hanahaki Disease. Flowers would take root in the lungs, growing until there was no place left for them to go. The body naturally tried to rid itself of the invasion by coughing them up but there was only so long that could keep the disease at bay before it became too much for the body to handle. Sometimes, the person afflicted could “cure” themselves by falling out of love before the disease progressed too far. Otherwise, there were three ways it could end: in the death of the infected, by surgical removal, or by having their love reciprocated.

The last of those was the best-case scenario – the one that was often used in the plots of movies or cheesy romance novels. Having one's love returned would effectively shrink the flowers until they were gone completely.

Surgery was a more recent option, though one that some still chose to reject even if it meant their death. Choosing to surgically remove the flowers meant also removing any feelings they had for that person and often resulted in the complete loss of memory of them as well. No one could pinpoint why it was like that and all attempts to improve on the surgery fell flat.

Those were the options sitting before Pidge.

She didn't want to die. That much was for certain. There was still so much she wanted to see and do in the world, and though it broke her heart to think of needing to do it all without Keith, her partner, steadfast by her side, she wasn't going to give it all up. Besides, there was still the chance that she wouldn't forget about him. She was too stubborn for that. And if she could remember, maybe they could rebuild their friendship as well.

But what if she didn't remember?

Pidge slowly met his eyes.

He was her best friend too; the first person her own age that she'd ever truly gotten along with and felt comfortable around. Life without him wouldn't be nearly as vibrant. She couldn't lose him.

“Don't leave me,” she begged, her chest constricting as she forced the words out. She tried to sit up, her arms trembling from the effort, but gave up as Keith moved to help her. She shook her head and blinked back tears as she caught a whiff of his cologne, which usually inspired warm and fuzzy feelings, but instead dredged up an intense need to cough.

She swallowed, trying to force it away. She needed to talk first.

“Of course I'm not going to leave,” Keith tried to reassure her.

Pidge shook her head. “If... If I forget you, please don't leave me.”

Keith made a confused sound. “Why would you forget...?”

She could hear the exact moment he put the pieces together. The way his voice cracked was a dead giveaway just before his expression crumbled in distress. She reached out and grasped his hand. “It's okay, Keith. I know.”

He sucked in a shuddering breath. “It's not okay! Pidge, I-”

“You're not allowed to blame yourself,” she cut in. “This isn't your fault. You can't help who you like. Or who you don't like.”

While it wasn't something they'd exclusively talked about, she'd gotten the gist from past conversations that he wasn't someone interested in any kind of romance. He preferred focusing on his career and studies, which was something they'd always had in common right up until she went and fell for him.

She had to look away from him for a moment. “It's just... you're my best friend too and I don't want to forget that, but if I do then I need you to be there and make sure we stick together. I know that's a lot to ask.”

“No, it isn't,” Keith heatedly denied. “Of course I'll stay with you.”

Though Pidge mostly felt relieved by his agreeing to stay with her, there was still that sliver of worry that things could go wrong for them. But what choice did they really have?

She was saved from needing to talk about it more by the arrival of Shiro and her family, who crowded around her bed to ask if she was alright and if there was anything they could do to help. Matt seemed particularly stricken that he hadn't noticed anything wrong when he spent the most time with her, though her mom was a close second.

Once he was sure Pidge would be okay, her dad took charge of the situation and arranged for her surgery to take place that evening by calling on a few favors and using his influence as a Commander at the Galaxy Garrison. It took a little more convincing on Pidge's part, as well as some hefty backup from Shiro, to make an allowance for Keith to stay with her outside of surgery. It all happened so fast that she didn't have time to think about everything else she wanted to say to Keith, just in case she wouldn't get the chance later.

Her family stayed until the last few minutes until Shiro was able to direct them out into the waiting room so she and Keith could have one last moment alone.

And it was in those last few minutes that genuine fear struck Pidge.

She didn't want to forget him.

She didn't want to lose his friendship.

Heavy tears flooded her eyes, dripping down her cheeks without her fully realizing it. She choked back a sob as she looked at Keith. “I-I-...”

She couldn't get the words out.

Keith didn't need her to say anything. He got up so he could sit on the edge of her bed instead, cradling her against him and offering physical comfort. He refused to budge as the anesthesiologist entered and began prepping her arm for the IV which would administer the anesthetic directly into her bloodstream.

“Count backward from one-hundred, dear.”

Pidge tried, but she was still too choked up to speak and had to settle for mouthing it instead. Rather quickly, Keith's soft reassurances faded and she dropped off to sleep.

❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀

There was an annoying beeping sound that cut through her dreams, dragging Pidge back into the realm of consciousness. It was a strange, rhythmic sound – wholly different from the obnoxious screeching of her alarm clock. She groaned as she opened her eyes and had to squint against the sudden, harsh light that reflected off of crisp white sheets and plain white walls. The only spot of color near her was a single stem of purplish flowers that was placed in a water glass on the bedside table.

“Pidge?” an unfamiliar voice called her name, relief present in their tone.

Her head felt heavy as she turned it to face whoever was speaking to her. She figured it was a nurse or something – she had to be in a hospital of some kind – but instead, she found a young man with dark hair sitting in a chair at her bedside.

“You're awake!” he said, a smile blossoming across his face. “How do you feel?”

“M'okay,” she said thickly. She stared at him for a moment and watched as his smile faded. “Sorry, but who are you?”

He reeled back as though he'd been slapped, his expression dropping into something close to pure anguish. “I...” He paused and took a deep breath. “I'm Keith.”

[ladyinbooks]

So, in the spirit of ‘ficlet Fridays’, this little scenario wouldn’t leave me alone. I’m not really sure if it’s IB canon or not (in the sense I may eventually write it a little differently), but here, have some Hird/Venn fluff:

Title: The Queen of Fuck-Ups Marries the King of Mistakes Pairing: Hird/Venndred Warnings: Bad language, fluff

It's a strange feeling, being a free agent.

Archon Ssafyr has signed off on Hird's service; the Banshee is now officially registered under her name, and her crew have resigned en masse from the Air Force.

It's also a strange feeling, knowing she's the only one who can fuck it up now.

And she has no fucking clue what to do first.

“Elysium,” Steve says firmly, when Hird asks him. “Let's touch ground for a while, Kate. We can decide what to do from there.”

“And you're choosing Elysium – because?”

“Because if we dock in Idalion the fees are cheaper, and we can all crash in Kathikas.”

Hird rubs a hand across her jaw, considering. “You mean we can terrorise Lane and Samiel, until they let us stay in their property for free.”

Steve shrugs. “That too.”

“Those two idiots are going to be in their honeymoon phase,” Hird says dubiously. “I don't think they want to be descended on by twenty homeless troopers with nowhere else to go.”

“Then we'll find somewhere else,” Steve says firmly. “But the port fees are still cheaper, so we're going to Idalion.”

“And this is why I love you,” Hird says, leaning back in her chair and kicking her feet up onto a console as she watches him. “You always know how to cut costs.”

He rolls his eyes, but he also pats her ankle, which is Steve-speak for I love you too. “I'll just punch in the coordinates, shall I?”

“Please do.”

“And tell Subtle there's been a change of plans?”

“Steve, as soon as you punch in the coordinates he's going to know anyway.”

Steve shrugs. “But if I tell him, it gives him a chance to complain about it.”

“He'll do that anyway,” Hird says cheerfully. “But he won't complain too much, because at least you're doing the piloting and not Con.”

Steve mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, That's because Con couldn't pilot his way out of a paper bag. Hird graciously chooses to ignore him.

“Elysium,” she says instead. “Then we'll work out what the fuck to do.”

*******************************************************************************************

From what Hird can see out of the window, Idalion is bustling, dirty, and pretty much like any other port she's docked in during her extensive career.

“It's off the main track,” Steve points out, his hands flying over the consoles as he finalises the docking procedures. “Slightly less illustrious than some of the ones we've visited.”

“Still better than others.” Hird swings her feet down off the console and leans forward, squinting. “Oh look, they have casinos.”

“In the port?”

“As opposed to where?”

Steve considers this for a moment. “Fair point.”

Hird grins. “What do you think?” she asks, flexing her fingers at him. “Think we could get lucky and win our fortunes?”

“It depends on how fast you want to lose the Banshee.” At her look, Steve grins. “You've got a terrible poker-face, boss. We'd be ship-less inside an hour.”

“Fuck you!” Hird gasps in mock outrage. “I'm a fucking genius at cards.”

“And literally nothing else.”

There's a dull thud as the last of the docking clamps slots into place, and Steve slumps back in his chair with a heavy sigh. He flicks on the comms and announces, “Docking completed.”

There's a ragged cheer from the control room. Hird would lay good odds on it being Martell, Con or Subtle – or an unholy combination of all three. She grins at Steve and stands, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Good job.”

“Well, we're here in one piece.” He flicks another switch, and the soft hiss of decompression punctuates his movements. “You can go stretch your legs if you like. I'll be around for another couple of hours, before we have to work out what to do next.”

“Steve, you're a saint. What would I do without you?”

“Get lost on a regular basis,” he says dryly. “And end up in prison.”

He's not wrong. But, “I could bribe my way out of charges.”

“Not now you couldn't, boss.” He nudges her hip with his shoulder. “Go on, get out of my cockpit. I've lowered the ramp; go and sample some local cuisine. And don't,” he adds, as she turns to leave, “go near the casinos.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Hird waves a dismissive hand over her shoulder. “No gambling away our only means of living. Got it.”

There's no one else in the main command area as she wanders through. That means the rest of her team are either busy with their own duties, or they've already disembarked and are causing havoc around Idalion.

Hird sends up a quick prayer that Subtle, at least, will be able to reign Con in long enough for them to stay without getting a hit put on them. But she's not holding out much hope.

She punches in her access code. When the airlock slides open, she takes her first deep breath of Idalion.

It's fuel-filled, slightly smoggy, and she fucking loves it. There are spices on the air – the scent of Alloi food wafting from the nearest food stand – and it's enough to make her stomach rumble.

The crowds in the port are chaotic – people running for the nearest transport links, others just making their way home – and the noise is half deafening.

It's a place to get lost in; to wander. It could swallow her whole and she'd never be found.

She knows all about Elysium; about the darker side of its society, and the shadows that haunt it. But here, there is life. Here, there is sound and chaos, and everyone just rubbing elbows because they have to. It makes her grin.

The chaos is everywhere, and it eases the nagging worry under her ribs about how she's going to feed her fucking crew. Where there are so many people, someone will need something.

She takes her first steps down the docking ramp, then stops.

There's incessant movement, except in one small corner by the edge of the Banshee's ramp.

He's in a little pool of quiet on his own, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He's rocking back on his heels, his hair falling in his eyes as he grins at her. He's wearing human clothing – she has no fucking clue why – and looks like he should be buried in some mouldy old library, just going by the shirt he has on.

She takes five huge strides down the ramp, and he slides his hands out of his pockets in time to catch her.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Hird asks, and Venndred laughs.

He wraps his arms around her waist, crushing her so hard she can barely fucking breathe. His fingers dig into her sides, and he drops a kiss against her cheekbone, the curve of her ear, the line of her jaw.

“Evi,” he says, breathless. “Evi, it's been four months – ”

“I know, you fucking idiot,” she says, heart slamming against her ribs. “You think I don't know that?” She's holding him just as hard. “I mean why here? How the fuck did you – ”

It sinks in, then.

“Steve, the meddling fucking bastard.”

“It's my fault,” Venndred murmurs. “I asked him to bring you. I wanted to see you, and I promised Freya I'd – ”

“Sprout?” Hird rears back, craning to get a look over his shoulder. “Sprout's here? Where is she?”

“No, Evi, she's at home. I just promised I'd – ” He breaks off as she looks at him. The tips of his ears are turning pink.

“You promised what?” she asks, then pulls back further as the blush reaches his cheeks and throat. “What's going on?”

Venndred clears his throat. “This is coming out wrong.”

“It isn't coming out at all,” Hird points out.

“I know,” he says. “I know.” He lets go of her completely and takes a step back. He scrubs a hand over his mouth, looking slightly panicked.

A slow, sinking feeling of unease starts to unfold in Hird's stomach. “What is it? Has something happened?”

“No, I mean – yes, but –”

“Are you alright?” Hird grips his forearm. “Is Freya alright? Has anyone been hurt? What's –”

“Everyone's fine!” Venndred says. “I promise, it's nothing like – ” He breaks off, chewing on his lower lip. “I had a plan,” he says glumly, “and it really wasn't meant to go like this.”

“Venndred,” Hird says slowly, and her patience is beginning to fracture. “Start explaining yourself. Now.”

“Right.” He takes a deep breath, then another. “Explaining myself. Now. Right.”

Hird's heart is still thundering in her chest, but there are the first stirrings of annoyance underneath. He's come all this way, and he's not making any sense. She loves him, she does, but sometimes he can be such an –

He moves, ungraceful and awkward, and he's dropping to his knees in front of her.

“What the fuck –”

“I'm an idiot,” he says, because of course he can read her fucking mind. “I'm nothing special, but I'm just too stubborn to know when to give up. I don't deserve you, and I never will – ”

“That's not fucking true.”

He ignores her. “But I'll never be able to live without you.” He looks up at her, and his expression is achingly sincere. “You're my victory, Evi. My only one. I've never needed another, when I've been able to say that I have you.”

And oh, she's out of her depth here, swinging wildly between confusion, annoyance and a strange stirring of hope. This doesn't make sense. Shouldn't. But –

“Are you,” she says, then has to stop and clear her throat. “Are you actually fucking asking me to – ”

“I love you,” Venndred says simply. “I'm always going to. You nearly killed me, and you took every piece of my soul when you did.” He's got something in his hands – too large to be a ring; too small to be a necklace. It gleams, gold, between his fingers.

“Fucking hell,” Hird says blankly.

“Marry me?” Venndred asks.

For a moment, Hird gapes. She can't help it; shock and a kind of unholy terror at the sight of him, on his knees for her, asking this. Asking –

He wants to marry her.

He wants to fucking marry her.

Her. The Queen of fucking up every single thing in her life. The woman who fucking shot him, and he's forgiven her for it, and loves her anyway.

And now he wants to spend the rest of his life with her.

And even though she's known for a long time that he's it for her – that there's never going to be another like him – he could do so much better than a retired Wing Commander, with a bad attitude and a whole fucking heap of baggage.

“Evi,” Venndred says, and she flinches. “Please.”

It's the tone that does it: soft, terrified hope, and it cuts into her the way only he can.

She crashes to her knees in front of him, ignoring the way he startles as she cradles his stupid, wonderful face in her hands.

“For fuck's sake,” she says. “Yes, of course, yes.”

“Oh,” he breathes out. “Good, because I already booked the slot at the court, and I don't really know what I would have done if – ”

She cuts him off with a kiss, swift and hard. Then, when she draws back and he opens his mouth to keep talking, she kisses him again.

There are so many things to sort out; so much she is going to have to plan, and consider. She hadn't anticipated this. He's still the Psyke; still vital to Lenia, in ways she doesn't fully understand. He has his duty to his planet and his people, and once upon a time she would have said that was what he had dedicated himself to.

Except she knows better now, she does. Because in all the ways that matter, he belongs to her.

'Wing Commander' is a title. 'Psyke' is a title.

But 'husband' and 'wife' are going to be so much fucking better.

[dgcatanisiri]

I’ll stand by this and die on this hill.

Whatever merits The Last Jedi has - and before you start debating me, I’m not saying it doesn’t have them, just that this outweighs them - it fails as a part of the ongoing narrative. It may be a fine standalone film, but as movie two of the Sequel Trilogy, movie eight of the Skywalker Saga, it fails to connect itself to the rest of the story, existing more in isolation than in concert. Rian Johnson’s Star Wars is VERY different from JJ Abrams’ Star Wars, a clash that makes it all too clear that Rise of Skywalker - and the Sequel Trilogy in general - was doomed to fail from the moment it was decided NOT to maintain the same writer across it.

It shifts gears, taking moments that were played for drama in the previous film (or films) and playing them for laughs. 

It drops plot paths, with Rian Johnson explicitly saying that he didn’t use the Knights of Ren because they “didn’t fit” the story he was telling. Or the fact that, if the movie is taking place shortly after TFA, then where is ANY mention of Starkiller, the massive superweapon and installation that the Resistance just blew up?

It demotes Finn, the character who was the lead male of the last film, to a “comedic” c-plot that ends up going in a cul-de-sac, one that even the film’s defenders have said could have been cut and nothing be lost. And, in particular, this is noticeable because the plot of TFA moved BECAUSE of Finn - without Finn, Poe doesn’t escape, Rey doesn’t get off Jakku, the Resistance doesn’t go to Starkiller and destroy it. TFA hinged on Finn. TLJ treats him like a vestigial limb it can’t sever.

(No, really, based on what TFA establishes, FINN is the counterbalance to Kylo Ren - Kylo is a scion of a powerful line of Force users, Finn didn’t even have a NAME until TFA began, Kylo is the face of the First Order, Finn was a faceless stormtrooper, which is why the moment he first takes off his helmet means so much, Kylo was raised by heroes of the Republic and turned to the First Order, Finn was raised by the First Order and turns his back on it... The thematic parallels between them are ALL FUCKING OVER TFA! But TLJ wants him to go away, and there’s no chance for him to rebuild that plot momentum in Rise of Skywalker.)

Also on the level of connection to the previous film... Why the HELL is a coma patient stuffed in a storage closet, rather than the medbay with doctors monitoring him? And he’s then repeatedly tazed by Rose, which is again played for laughs. Finn’s injuries are played as a joke.

With Finn’s demotion, it elevates Kylo Ren, the villain, an explicit parallel to neo-natsees (because the Empire ALWAYS had its roots in natsee imagery, and the First Order is explicitly drawing on those, just like neo-natsees), into the lead male position. 

Rey ends up reduced to his prize - over the course of TFA, her interactions with him were, in order, him rendering her unconscious and kidnapping her, torturing her, killing her mentor (his own father), and grievously wounding Finn, the first person in her life who came back for her, which was part of her driving characterization in the previous film. Her motivations are reduced to proving to Luke that she won’t be like Kylo Ren, and then trying to get someone she has no motivation to genuinely care about to redeem himself.

That “redemption,” I say again, is being offered by her after, again, she was kidnapped and tortured by him, she watched him kill Han Solo, who she saw as a paternal figure herself, and he put Finn, someone she’d already come to care for and who was the first person in her life to come back for her, in a coma. What motivation is there for her to TRY to redeem him? And if you want to say “Force Bond,” then that means that something is forged between her and Kylo, without her consent, that makes her care for him, actively manipulating her mind, and this just... happens.

The whole “Rey’s parents” thing is also a problem because it is ignoring HER reaction - it’s all about subverting the audience’s expectations, without caring about how she as a character responds. She never needed her parents to be a Kenobi, a Jinn, a Skywalker, whoever. They didn’t need to be somebody to the audience, they just were people she needed. Even the idea that they were drunks... They were the drunks who gave birth to her, who left her behind, and she wanted just to know why. 

And why should anyone even believe that Kylo Ren would know that they’re just nobodies when it’s been like three days since they even met - none of his informants could have chased down any leads to the point of determining this in that time, if he even WAS looking for them. So by the same measure of “how does he know this?” is the question of “why should she believe him?”

It does not explain Luke’s change of character in near enough detail - this is a character who refused to kill DARTH VADER, his father, a man he barely knew, only really knowing him as the great boogeyman of the Empire, and yet I’m supposed to believe that he would actively attempt a premeditated murder of his own nephew, who he would have known all of said nephew’s life, for what he MIGHT do? There NEEDED more of points B and C to connect points A and D here.

Also on the subject of Luke, in the last movie, it was explicit - Luke had vanished and left a map behind. Why would you leave a map to a place you intend to run away to and be forgotten and die? 

This movie, indeed, SHRANK the galaxy far, far away to ludicrous levels - the Resistance is in the fringes of the New Republic, yet Canto Bight, a major casino resort hub of war profiteering, is a casual jump away? Also, if the Resistance fleet couldn’t jump there, how can a small ship like Finn and Rose’s do that? Doesn’t the fleet need every vehicle and every drop of fuel? Rey’s gone after Luke, to a planet forgotten by the rest of the galaxy, her training pretty clearly taking place over days, at least, if not more. And yet simultaneously, the ticking clock of the Resistance’s fuel running out happens, and she still manages to arrive in the midst of their escape? This timeline is a goddam mess.

Rian Johnson explicitly said that he wanted Holdo to be flirtatious with Poe. And told the costume designer NOT to dress her in the uniform befitting an admiral. Right there, you lose me on Holdo being in the right during the mutiny - we have an existential threat to the Resistance, and she’s dressed like she’s going for drinks with Senators and apparently supposed to be flirting with Poe. 

And I’m giving this its own bullet point - they actively changed the language of the film to try and frame her as more in the right. She was redubbed after the fact to have different dialogue and tone with Poe, while leaving his side of the conversation alone, seemingly to portray him more as a hotheaded maverick when what we’re seeing is him responding to the existential threat they are facing. I HAVE to address this, because they changed what the characters are reacting to after the fact to push a narrative of Poe being wrong, when he WAS acting in the Resistance’s best interests throughout.

Because his demotion is crap - the Original Trilogy showed the X-Wings and similar snubfighters having independent hyperdrive, there was no reason to keep the fleet there for the sake of recovering them based on the text of the film and the established technology of the setting. Leia could have jumped the fleet and let them rendezvous later. Keeping the fleet there? That was her blunder, not Poe’s. 

Meanwhile the dreadnaught? That was a MAJOR target - It had over 200,000 First Order troops. For a group on the fringe, LIKE THE FIRST ORDER WAS IN TFA, that’s a major loss of personnel and material. And that slow-moving target of the dreadnaught was the kind of target those bombers should have been designed for. And if they were really so valuable that they were all lost against the dreadnaught and it was a major blow to the Resistance, those bombers should have been scrapped for parts long before. So, based on what the First Order was originally established as in TFA, Poe did the right thing. His problem is that TLJ CHANGED what the First Order was.

And, again, with the existential threat of the First Order on their tails, Poe, one of the Resistance’s best pilots AND the guy who blew up Starkiller, should have been on the list of people who deserved to be in the know of the plan - if you’re worried about traitors (which Holdo never actually SAYS), he’s pretty clearly not working for them. So she’s holding over the fact that he lost people on a mission against him, which... I’m sorry, but what the fuck with that, EVERY fighter pilot mission we have seen in the films has led to losses.

And when he does find out the plan - the plan that he asks her, three times, in private, in public, and at gunpoint, to even just tell him EXISTS, not even the details of - he’s completely accepting of it. So the whole conflict exists because she doesn’t talk to anyone about it.

Because, before anyone brings up “she has no responsibility to tell an underling her ideas,” she may not, but there was a chance, right before the mutiny went through, for her to defuse the situation entirely, since, as we see, once he knows the plan, he’s willing to go along with it. And it’s not like Poe was acting alone - there were others in the mutiny, including Connix, who we’d seen in charge of the evacuation, which gives the impression she has at least some position of authority. And she wasn’t filled in on Holdo’s plan either. 

Holdo’s flaw is assuming that, because she is the named authority - explicitly the last link in the chain of command - that all the people under her command should just fall in line. But the Resistance was, like the First Order, reverted into the Rebellion for this movie - in TFA, it was not a military service but a volunteer militia of people who were acting in service specifically of one person, Leia Organa. Not Holdo. So when the whole damn organization formed to follow one person, and that one person is taken out of commission, it NEEDS someone willing to extend trust to take charge. Poe was doing that by wanting to hear her out. Holdo was failing to do that by not even bothering.

Yoda’s appearance is undeserved - this is the same Jedi who, if he’d had his way, would have refused Luke’s training in Empire Strikes Back because he was “too old,” even though that was always the plan, to train the Skywalker child, and, as shown by the prequels, was the embodiment of the Jedi Order’s hubris back in the days of the Old Republic. If anyone deserved to have that moment with Luke, it was Anakin, because Anakin was the embodiment of where the Jedi teachings and values had failed - when your prophesized “Chosen One” ends up being at odds with almost all your expectations of the “model” Jedi, the Force is probably trying to tell you something. But no, Yoda’s the fan favorite, so Yoda appears and undermines his own message of “failure, the greatest teacher is.” Yoda’s failures had as much to do with the fall of the Jedi as anyone else’s, and when he had the chance to learn from it, he was going to pass it up.

By the end of the film, both the Resistance and the First Order are devastated. Kylo Ren is Supreme Leader of a handful of vessels with no real power base, while the Resistance fits semi-comfortably in Han Solo’s old beat up weed van. Meanwhile the New Republic is still in shambles. No one WON. All they got from victory was survival. By this point, they’re BOTH defeated, so... Where even was the story going to GO from here?

Also... That focus on the child slaves on Canto Bight at the end? Yeah, fine enough moment on its own, but... We already HAD child slaves established in this trilogy. Because Finn was taken as a child and conscripted, along with all the other stormtroopers of the First Order. So why didn’t THAT get any attention? Indeed, his infiltration of the First Order is no more than show, existing for like five minutes, rather than... y’know, trying to set up a stormtrooper rebellion, something that, by virtue of his character, should have been a running theme through the trilogy. Yet, see again, “Finn is a vestigial limb the movie can’t cut off” - we know from the DVD, he had A LOT of scenes cut and rewritten, at his character’s expense, after, again, being the leading man of the previous movie.

If this film had been a standalone film, like Rogue One or Solo, one of the Star Wars Stories films, rather than a main series film, I’d say it was a good Star Wars movie. But... As part two of a trilogy, part eight of a saga, it fails to connect to the rest of the story, and that, more than anything, is why Rise of Skywalker was what it was. If you didn’t care for Rise of Skywalker, look at what TLJ left for it in terms of connective narrative tissue, and where the story could go from there.

It might be a good film, but it was NOT a good Star Wars film. And I’m judging it as one.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Starhunter.”

Hope you guys have a great friday. 

The camera Hadn’t been in a good position, it was far too low on the jet and the creature was too big. Multiple cameras from the four jets allowed them to see just enough to send up a murmuring through the bridge crew and the officers.

Commander VIr sat in the captain’s chair calm and collected where earlier he had been in a near state of panic.

“I think it’s related to the starborn.”

The entire room turned to look at him, where he sat rubbing his chin and staring at the limited video feed.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because the sucker is telepathic.”

More muttering gone up around the room, “It talked to you?”

He nodded his head.

“What did it say.”

“Deus.”

The room went still, they recognized that word. The infected starborn had talked like that once upon a time when they were being used and tortured by the mad Gibb scientist.’

“Deus….. Isn’t that latin?”

“Like Deus ex machina?”

“Remind me what that means again?”

“God of the machine, right?”

Behind him the group continued to debate about the meaning for the word while he saw in his chair tapping his fingers against the seat.

“Well why would it look at the Commander and call him a god. I can understand the big lizard looking in a mirror and calling itself that, but this has happened to him like five or six times, and.’ the man turned to look at him, “No offence sir, but you aren't any kind of god.” 

“Clearly he sees something in me that you don’t.” 

That raised a bit of a laugh from the rest of the room as he stood, “Someone get Conn in here.”

Just as he said that, the door at the far end of the room opened, and the starborn came floating in his ribbons undulating and churning in the sudden pressure change from out in the hallway.

The group went silent.

“Kill it.”

Commander Vir frowned.

“I said kill it.”

“Do you know what this thing is?” He asked pointing towards the video feed.

“Yes.”

“So you knew about space dragons the entire time, and you failed to mention this to us?”

Conn’s ribbons flicked as he glowered icily towerds the commander, “It was not relevant at the time. It eats starborn, specifically starborn queens , but it is not a starborn. That thing hanging around its neck would have been it’s mate, who does eat regular starborn.”

Another murmuring around the room.

“And you’re sure you have no idea what deus means?”

He shook his head, “it is a human word, not a word of the starborn, so I have no idea why the creature would use it. Probably saw it in your head is all and wanted to freak you out before eating you.”

“It didn’t try to eat us.”

The starborn shrugged, “Doesn’t matter, kill it.”

“Conn, You know I’m not authorized to go around the galaxy slaying dragons.” He turned to everyone else on dec. I’m setting a course back to where I saw it, who knows, maybe it is still there, either way we are going to be safe and keep our distance. Everyone back to your stations.”

The crew turned and did as ordered, as the commander went back to the ship controls. Conn floated behind him looking a little more than Td off, but commander Vir ignored him. Conn was safe on the ship,so the creature would not be feasting on starborn today.

Slowly, he engaged the engines and turned them in a slow arc to drift back towards the overly thick dust cloud.

Looking at it, the cloud was still billowing a bit, sort of spreading outward, but he assumed that was leftover residual movement from the stardragon earlier.

Stardragon? Voidhunter? Lord of the cosmos.

He would have to think up something cool to call it later.

He had seen it first after all and that gave him the right to name it something awesome .

He locked their drift and then stood from his seat eyeing the viewing window. There appeared to be nothing there, and no evidence of the glowing white light that had cut through the mist before.

“Any radar readout?”

There was a pause followed by a shake of the head, “Sorry, Commander,  nothing, but that cloud is thick and it looks like there's some sort of debris inside as well, which is probably not helping. It might be there and it might not.

He leaned back against his seat with a sigh.

Get me a feed through to the UNSC and the GA.

He didn’t have to wait long before the two feeds were up.

One of them was of the Rundi chairwoman and a small council of other alien species, while the second was the UNSC control room. An admiral he didn’t recognize was heading the operation, but he kept it professional.

“Commander, how are opperatons going on at the black hole. We received some of your images. Truly remarkable; the scientific community is thrilled.”

“Yes commander, you are the first to dare venture this close to a singularity. I worry but it is remarkable.” The Chairwoman agreed.

He held up a hand, “I…. well yes, of course, but I am afraid our focus has been momentarily diverted for the moment.”

“What could be so interesting as to temporarily divert you from a black hole.”

He turned his head towards the admiral, “Space dragons, sir.”

There was a pause 

“What is a dragon?” The chairwoman ased.

The Admiral opened and closed his mouth like a suffocating fish.

The commander rested his hands in his lap, “Approximately two hours ago, while piloting one of our jets, I noticed an inconsistency with the way the dust was being settled in this particular system. There was movement where there should have been none. I called in for backup, and we went to investigate. When we got there the dust parted momentarily enough for us to see a creature. This thing could easily have wrapped itself around a GA imperial Cruiser. It has a very long, thin body, no legs or arms. It’s head is the head of a predator, a snout, lots of teeth and some horns.

On its back there are two ridges that, when opened look like flowing white tarps. Somehow the creature can harden these tarps to create solar sales which it uses to move, sort of like a starborn.

“Is this some kind of joke, Commander.”

“No sir, I wouldn’t be so dumb as to joke about something so unbelievable. I am sending you the video feed now so you can see for yourself. The quality is not good but we have moved further into the system with the main ship to see if we can get a better look as I assume sentient life trump's phenomena we have known about for more than two thousand years.

The admiral sighed, “yes, I suppose it does.” 

The GA chairwoman only nodded her head, “Do what you must commander, and be careful. Try not to make the creature angry.”

“Yes, Chairwoman.” He cut the feed and leaned back in his seat.

“No duch.” He stood from his seat, “Like I was planning on pissing off the massive ass space dragon.” His sarcasm went mostly unheard and he finally turned to look towards his second lieutenant, “Lt. Take command, and call me down if you see anything.”

The Lt Stood and commander Vir stepped aside for her to take his seat as he turned and walked for the room.

The halls were mostly empty as the ship was technically past working hours. 

He rubbed his temples again dragging his hands down his face.

Today had been an eventful day, more than he had wanted it to be, and he hadn’t forgotten the reason he had been driven into  space to see the creature in the first place. He was going to have to confront that at some point and decide what it meant.

He walked onto the observation deck leaning his back against one of the tables as he stared out at the vast dust cloud backlit by some unseen stars.

He had to think about what to do, though at this moment he was completely blanking on the subject. He had been running from situations like this for as long as he could remember. 

The first time he had ever had any sort of feelings for someone, though granted they were the underdeveloped misunderstood feelings of a teenage boy. He had been burned. He knew it was stupid to hold onto those old issues, but that was a part of him that had just never grown up, it was still a cowering child hiding in the back corner afraid of rejection again.

He leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling.

Just when he thought he was starting to grow as a person, as a man something came back to remind him just how much of a lost child he was.

This time was even different than the last time. That other person initiated the contact, and it was more than clear that she was interested in him, she had admitted that much, so what was wrong with him?

What was the problem?

Well, perhaps a part of him was afraid to prove everyone right. He had been teased for so long about having a weird thing for aliens, and he knew that wasn’t a view that a lot of people were likely to hold on to, but still proving right the people you didn’t like always hurt.

Maybe that was his problem? Maybe he cared too much about how other people saw him?

Another reason why he was still just a child playing at a man’s work.

Was this just him having problems, or did all of humanity feel this way. He felt like that wasn’t the case, every admiral he had ever met seemed like the kind of person who had been born old.

Footsteps behind him on the deck.

He turned his head slightly recognizing the pattern of footsteps as they walked quietly across the observation deck to stand next to him.

Distant white light filtered in through the opening  bathing both of them in a soft halo glow.

Sunny’s blue carapace glittered delicately in the dark as she leaned back against the table to stare out at the darkness with him.

“You ok?” she finally asked 

She shrugged, “Am I ever/”

“Most of the time, actually, yes.” 

He went quiet, reaching down to rub nervously at his prosthetic leg, “Look, I…. Uh…. I’m sorry I bailed on you. That was stupid.”

She shrugged, “I expected as much.”

“Ouch…. Not sure if I should be offended or not.”

She huffed, “if I was trying to offend you I would probably say something about your face. I have a lot more ammunition to work with.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth,”very funny, especially coming from someone who looks like you”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Of what, you two toed four finger monstrocity.”

“Cute, are we picking pet names now. I can call you fleshy, or cyclops or peg leg.”

“That’s Captain Peg leg to you. Captain Peg leg the blond beard space pirate.”

“Captain Jackass the one eyed lunatic.” She said elbowing him in the ribs.  He grunted and elbowed her back, an action which quickly devolved into a slap fight, that Sunny inevitably won because she had more hands.

The play fighting died down leaving him staring out into space and eyeing the dust cloud. She watched hi with some curiosity, “What is a dragon?”

“A legendary monster in human lore. It goes back thousands of years and has origins in hundreds of human cultures. A dragon sort of takes the shape of a lizard, but with wings, and a hundred to a thousand times larger. Sometimes they have massive wings, and generally they can breathe fire.”

“Like a flamethrower.”

He smiled, “Exactly, they are usually connected to power and wisdom.”

“Did these dragons ever exist?” she wondered.

“Not as far as anyone knew.” he motioned to the window, “but I guess we were kind of right.”

A pulse of light lit up the interior of the cloud.

Sunny and Adam stepped forward staring intently at the window.

The light happened again growing brighter and brighter. Dust puffed outward from the cloud.

Sunny pressed her hands against the viewing window in awe as the cosmic creature looped from within the clouds, its long body rotating in great spirals loops and acrs as it twisted through space.

Light rolled up and down it’s blue scaled body seeping through the cracks in it’s scales. The smaller silver dragon curled and uncurled about it’s neck as it rolled through space, like a ribbon at the end of a ribbon dancer’s wand.

It’s beauty, and the silence cast them into  a dull glow.

As silhouettes in the darkness. 

[imperial-martian]

Bruised & Broken ][ Armitage Hux x Reader ][ Part One

Warning: Please keep in mind that throughout this story many themes are going to be mentioned that will be uncomfortable for some readers. Of course I’ll list what those topics will be before each part so that you are warned before reading.

Trigger Warnings: blood, lacerations, mentions of physical harm done by another person, severe injuries, guns (if I’m missing any please let me know)

PART ONE, PART TWO, PART THREE, PART FOUR

Tags: @edmunds-torch, @christmasallyearsthings

The sheets rustled as you stirred from your sleep in your cramped quarters. You could hear shouting outside, the sounds of shoes crushing leaves under their and blasters being shifted in hands were enough to cause you to get up. You quickly threw on your jacket, buttoning it up so that nobody could see your plain green pajama shirt, and throwing on some boots without even bothering to replace your sweats with better pants.

The shouts began to get louder as the footsteps got closer to your quarters. With furrowed brows, you reached out for your blaster and shoved it into your belt that was sewed into the material of your jacket.

Without wasting another second you marched towards your door, throwing it open and stepping out into the warm air that surrounded you. Before you stood a few pilots that had seemed to just land on the base. Alongside them were Finn, Poe, and General Organa, as well as an unknown figure.

Their back was turned to you, clothes were torn and ginger hair completely out of place. Blood was scattered across their neck and any other visible skin on their body. Their greatcoat, which was practically torn to pieces, was falling off of their shoulders, allowing the clear uniform of the military regiment of the First Order to showcase itself.

Two pilots were holding their arms, another holding a blaster to their back as they followed General Organa to, what you assumed was the prisoner's cells. Poe and Finn trailed behind them all, keeping an eye out while watching to see if the prisoner made any move to escape.

You remainder standing by your door, assessing everything you saw and processing it. You could tell that whoever it was is a serious threat if they had to awaken General Organa from her sleep- which you had deducted due to the fact she was already in her nightwear as well as the time being 200 o'clock.

A voice had called out to you causing you to blink twice before shifting your gaze to the owner of said voice. Realizing it was Poe looking over towards you, waving a hand for you to join them, you carefully jogged forward before you stood by his side.

"Did we wake you Y/N?" Poe asked, his voice soft but firm as to not wake others. He had turned to look back at the prisoner, a scowl showing on his face and his jaw set tightly.

You tilted your head, observing the look upon Poe's face for a moment before you replied. "Yes, but that's no issue, I can fall asleep later," you waved off. "Who's the new prisoner? They must be important if you had to wake General Organa to escort them."

You heard the prisoner chuckle for a moment, and without even needing to see their face you knew that a smug grin was plastered on his face. You're eyes narrowed, huffing quietly.

The pilot behind them shoved his blaster against their back, scoffing. "I wouldn't be too proud of that," the pilot said, indicating the seriousness of his words by pressing the barrel farther into their back, causing them to wince. "That only means your treatment here is so much worse."

Poe let out a deep sigh, and you noticed that Finn had his jaw set. You were starting to get even more curious as to who this person was, but by the time Poe was about to reveal it you had reached the cell and General Organa was asking for Poe.

He gave you a side glance before walking to your General and following as she stepped off towards the side. Your attention then returned to what was taking place in front of you as the sound of keys and locks were being opened and twisted before the door of the cell opened.

The prisoner was pushed into the room, stumbling for a moment before they caught their balance and groaned, pain clearly shooting through their body. They turned around, revealing themselves as a man- although you predicted such, and even with his eyes currently closed, you could tell that they were cold and sharp.

When he opened them to reveal a blue-green color that would have sent you swooning had you not known that this person was clearly dangerous. Instead, you ignored the color of his eyes, and rather took in the icy gaze that was settled upon you. You wouldn't allow your e/c eyes to show it but a shiver of fear shot down your spine as you looked into his eyes.

You tore away from his gaze as General Organa called you over, asking to speak with you for a moment. You nodded, walking towards her and standing firm and tall.

She let out a gentle sigh, "I apologize for this sudden request Y/N, however, with the rest of our medical and guard staff sleeping I have to ask that you, Poe and Finn watch over him," she nodded towards the prisoner, "for the night."

You nodded. With no other prisoners in any cells at the base, all the guards were able to sleep for the night and you didn't want them to be awoken. God knows when was the last time they got a good night's sleep.

"Of course General Organa," you replied, voice form and a kind smile on your face. She returned it, placing a hand on your shoulder.

"Thank you Y/N," she whispered, patting you on the shoulder once before walking past you and returning to Poe and Finn, sharing a few more words with them. The pilots that had brought the prisoner had left, probably off to retire for the night since everything was now situated and the prisoner was locked in a cell.

While General Organa spoke to the other two you took the time to grab a nearby medkit and make your way over to the prisoner. You knew in the state that he was in there was no possible way of him escaping, or even attacking you. With that knowledge, you undid the extensive amount of locks before entering the cell.

You looked behind you once, catching Finn's gaze for a second- to which he took the time to nod at you in reassurance -before you turned back around to face the prisoner. Taking a step closer to him you felt yourself grown increasingly anxious, scared of what power he might really have.

You'd yet to know his rank or even his name, and the fact that you didn't recognize him was not help at all. Stopping in front of him you swallowed thickly before crouching down in front of him so you were level to his slumped body against the wall. Taking one last deep breath you placed the kit beside you, opening it and assessing its contents.

"Would you be so generous as to make this easy on the both of us, comply, and remove your greatcoat so that I can take care of any major wounds?" you asked, although never really looking for an answer.

It came silently when he began to remove his greatcoat, soft grunts and groans of pain leaving his lips as he shifted so that he could successfully remove clothing from his body. You sighed, gaining only a bit more of the skin on his neck and wrists.

"I'll heal the wounds I can see before I have to ask that you remove that uniform as well, and any other shirts that you have underneath," you informed, grabbing some bacta gel and placing it on a few of the noticeable cuts that were too deep to be cleaned with a smaller disinfecting wipe.

The man winced and made to shift away, only stopping when you looked up at him with a sharp glare. He let out a huff before settling back down and allowing you to apply the healing gel to his skin.

"Thank you," you whispered softly to him, finishing off with the last deep cut before you grabbed some removed the gloves you had put on.

The man had furrowed his brows as you whispered, looking at you curiously. "For what?" he asked. His voice was deeper than you had expected, rougher and a little quieter than you thought, but you assumed that was from the exhaustion.

You rolled your eyes. "For complying," you answered, "you're making it easier for me to get my job done."

The man nodded before closing his eyes as the stinging finally subsided. You took the time to prepare some bandages, knowing that it'll be needed for whatever else you were about to witness.

"If you could?" you asked, nodding to his uniform. He got the point and began removing it, slowly as to not agitate any of his wounds and cause them to begin to bleed again. It was when he successfully removed the uniform to the side and tossed it that you noticed the rank on its sleeve.

You couldn't help the quiet gasp that left your lips, knowing that it was the First Order's General insignia. The silver piping and black stripes seemed to shine as if the stars were reflecting off it, but it was only like that in your head because to everyone else it was just a dull marking on a uniform.

Eyes wide, you looked back at the man you had been taking care of. You couldn't help but grit your teeth, wanting to stop helping him altogether and let him suffer now that you realized that he was General Hux of the first order.

You'd heard about him before. What he's done was nothing short of horrific. He's urged for the murder of millions, he commanded the Star Killer ship and was now a commander on the Finalizer. Your jaw seemed to clench as you looked back at him, your e/c eyes no longer having any hint of softness in it. Instead, it was a stone-cold glare now.

Hux scoffed, knowing the look all too well. His black undershirt had been removed as well, showing his battered torso and chest. Bruises were littered along his skin, cuts were engraved into it, and old scars seemed to be present among others. Lacerations and puncture wounds, abrasions were also noticeable on his skin, but the most noticeable sign of damage was a burn that was blistering on his shoulder.

It looked older than some of his other scars, but still fresh enough to only be a day old. It was nothing like you had ever seen before, and it looked as though it was untreated, or at least not treated carefully. You knew it would leave a horrible scar.

"Would you be so kind as to stop staring and continue with the needed treatment?" Hux asked in a condescending tone, his eyes slightly narrowed and his expression bored.

You huffed, shaking your head at his tone and grabbing the needed materials to continue with your bandaging. "I'm surprised you haven't gone to the infirmary yet," you said, tending to a laceration on his stomach. Your fingers were soft as they brushed against his pale torso.

You took the time to silently notice his frame. He wasn't too muscular, nothing like a six-pack or such, but you could tell he was rather strong. Although not muscular he did have a lean but firm build. He most certainly didn't look weak, seeing as he was able to take the pain that was inflicted on him, and the stinging you were causing, without screaming.

Without helping it you also took the time to look at his face, taking in the hair that fell on his forehead, and the dried blood that was around his lip, nose, and eyebrow. You sighed, having no clue how somebody could take so many hits and bruises without so much as whimpering. The only sounds that left his lips were winces, groans, and grunts, and even they weren't nearly as loud as you thought they should be.

Shaking your head once more you looked into his eyes. "Turn around," you ordered which made him grin slightly- although barely recognizable. You scoffed, rolling your eyes. "Just do it so I can see your back."

After cleaning the majority of his wounds and wrapping them up in bandages you had one left. With a sigh, you asked him to turn back around and frowned as you examined it once more. A soft yawn left your lips, the tiredness you were feeling groaning more with every passing second.

You rubbed your eyes after making sure nothing that would sting resided on your hands. Focusing back on the burn at his shoulder, you tilted your head to the side. You had absolutely no idea as to what could cause a wound like this to appear.

Unsure what to even use on it you decided that some bacta gel and a bandage would have to suffice until a medic examined it in the morning. You went to apply the bacta to the wound when a hand reached up and quickly grasped your wrist. You looked at Hux, your brows furrowed for a second. You would have felt fear had you not recognized the absolute horror on his face.

"Don't," he pleaded. "I don't think I'd be able to hold back the screams if you applied it to this one," he whispered, his blue-green eyes wavering in fear.

"I have to," you replied. "If I don't this will become infected and the pain will be so much worse," you explained, looking around for a moment before you grabbed his discarded uniform. You handed it to him, urging for him to grab it. "Bite into this to silence your screams. I'll be as gentle as I can," you assured.

He nodded hesitantly, swallowing and biting into the material of his uniform. You looked at him before returning to his shoulder and carefully applying the bacta gel. You had yet to spread it but already you could feel Hux tense.

Carefully you began to spread it over the wound, his hand reaching out instinctively and latching onto the front of your jacket, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles turned white. His screams were muffled by the uniform, but not well enough. They sounded just as loud as it would if he were yelling straight into your ear.

You winced, finally finishing with applying the gel before you backed away. Looking at Hux you could see the clear tears that shined in his eyes. He didn't let them fall, but the fact that they were there was enough to show his clear discomfort.

You frowned, looking back at the burn before grabbing the bandages and wrapping it across his chest and over his shoulder. Now he only winced a little, but still, they were sharp enough to get his pain across.

"What caused this?" you asked yourself in a soft whisper. It was loud enough for Hux to hear, but it wasn't really a question meant for him.

He had answered it anyways, his teeth clenched all the whole, "a lightsaber," he whispered, panting.

"A lightsaber?" you questioned, your brows furrowing as you finally secured the bandage. You finally finished but made no move to get up, confused as to who's lightsaber did this. Rey hadn't gone on any mission lately. She was busy training.

As though he read your mind, Hux answered, "Kylo Ren," and sighed, slumping against the wall once more.

"Kylo Ren?" you asked again. "But why, you're his General?" you questioned, confused.

Hux huffed, "we've never once got along. Most of these scars are from him and my-" he cut himself off, clearing his throat. He didn't finish his sentence.

You didn't push further, nodding your head and closing the kit. "I'll see to it that these get checked in the morning, or sometime in the afternoon," you reply, turning to walk out of the cell.

"Thank you," Hux called out. It wasn't like him to thank somebody, and it shocked himself as to why he had. He had to blame it on the exhaustion and the fact that for once he had felt cared for when you cleaned his wounds.

Without turning around you replied, "don't thank me. I was just following orders." Hux's face hardened, his eyes growing cold and dark once more as you walked out of the cell and locked it carefully.

You didn't spare him a glance again, walking past Poe and Finn- who had remained by the cell as you took care of Hux. You placed the kit back where you had found it before slumping against a nearby tree and closing your eyes, yawning once more.

Poe and Finn shared a glance between one another, sharing a silent message to leave you alone. They both turned back to look at Hux whose gaze was directly on you, a hand clenched in a fist by his side as his nose twitched in anger. The two turned back to look at you once more.

You were still sat against the tree, and to anybody else, it would seem as though you had fallen asleep, however, in reality, that was far from the truth. You were in deep thought and conflict. On one hand, you had just healed one of the most dangerous human being in the galaxies, but on another, you couldn't help but concentrate on his words.

"Most of these scars are from him and my-" and his what? It was driving you mad. Had he misspoken? You knew that wasn't the case, and yet you shouldn't be caring as much as you did. It didn't matter what or how he got those scars because after what he did to all those innocent people, giving the order to murder thousands, it shouldn't be affecting you so much. You shouldn't be caring. Yet you did, and it would knaw at you for the rest of the night.

You were thankful that you didn't look at his face when you had told him that you were only following an order. You didn't think you could handle seeing the hurt that he had masked under a cold glare. Guilt and pity would have chewed you from the inside out till you apologized to him, and Hux was the last person that deserved forgiveness.