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makeste · 4 years ago

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BnHA Chapter 304: The Council of OFA

Previously on BnHA: Hawks and Best Jeanist were all, “what up Todofam, we are here to apply for the positions of ‘son #4’ and ‘weird uncle’, respectively,” and then proceeded to insert themselves into the family drama without waiting for an answer. Hawks briefed Endeavor on the nation’s current status of “totally fucked”, promised to help him sort that out, and then asked him about OFA. Endeavor was all, “oh do you mean One For All, the mysterious thing that my intern Deku was apparently being targeted for?” and then we cut away, presumably before Endeavor could clarify that it never occurred to him to follow up on that, and Hawks was all “no of course not, why would it occur to anyone other than me to follow up on any of this super weird and ominously important shit.” Anyway so meanwhile Bakugou was all “LET ME SCREAM AT DEKU UNTIL HE WAKES UP” and the other kids were all “NO”, and then the chapter ended with All Might being all “I wonder what the vestige!me is currently chatting with Deku about.”

Today on BnHA: Deku drops in on the Vestiges, who are all “sup Deku, how do you like our fancy chairs.” OFA II and III are all “if you need us we’ll just be standing here silently in the corner pretending to be invisible and sparking endless discourse with our mere existence.” OFA IV is all “and now I will explain to you in a very convoluted way that you being quirkless was actually a good thing, since it means that you are probably not going to suddenly drop dead at the age of twenty. But also you’re probably going to be the last user of OFA for that very same reason.” Deku is all “that is wild. I’m just gonna stand here and stare at my hand.” Nana is all “so now that that’s settled could you please do me a small favor and kill my grandson for me”, because having just one topic to discourse about this week WASN’T ENOUGH, apparently. Thanks so much Horikoshi.

(ETA: okay so just a note before I start, this week’s RHA translation was a huge mess, so I followed up this chapter by reading a couple of other translations. the main one I’m using for reference is the one by @hanashimas, whose weekly posts I highly recommend. anyway so you’ll see a couple of ETAs in this post in places where the initial translation was off.)

how many layers of bandages did they wrap this poor kid’s fucking hand in omg

jesus Deku. are you holding onto a bouquet of flowers under that thing?? or a tennis racket??

omg yes, finally

is he reading these names off a teleprompter lol. and if so, what has Jeanist ever done to slight you, Deku? “god bless Kacchan and Aizawa-sensei and Todoroki-kun and everyone else in the whole wide world... except for Best Jeanist. fuck that guy.” actually this joke would be funnier if half of tumblr didn’t legit feel that way lol but anyway

OH MY GOD

I NEED TO HAVE A TALK TOO. ABOUT, OH, EVERYTHING

I got immediate KHR vibes from ALL OF THIS. this is seriously such a Vongola aesthetic. “let’s use the luxuriously cushioned chairs with the seat backs that are ten feet high, and arrange all of the handsome ghost people in a big circle” like come on

that said there are also some slight LoTR vibes as well. “bring forth the ring, Deku”

I like how Six is sitting there with his feet drawn up all casual, but with his arms inexplicably sticking STRAIGHT OUT IN FRONT OF HIM and dangling over his knees like he’s doing some sort of zombie walk

apparently the Fourth wasn’t a big fan of shoes huh

interesting that All Might is the only one who’s still faint/indistinct, and and that Two and Three are fully visible

(ETA: the rest of my speculation about Two and Three has been moved into a separate post, the better to focus on the shit that’s actually happening in this chapter lol.)

and lastly, interesting that all of them are talking now, except for All Might (and I guess the Second and Third as well). to the best of my knowledge Deku hasn’t unlocked the Sixth’s quirk yet, so I guess the quirks don’t really have anything to do with it

oh and it looks like Deku’s mouth is still covered. I guess that’s convenient for the vestiges since we all know it’s hard to stop Deku once he gets going. but on the other hand it’s very inconvenient for people like me who wanted to see some interaction. alas

so First says that OFA’s power has grown a lot in the last four months (i.e. since Deku unlocked Blackwhip), and now the vestiges can communicate with each other as well as Deku

so even when Deku’s not around they can all just chill with each other. this is such a weird thing to me lol. like it’s cool, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also strange as hell to know that you’ve got eight other people hanging out in your head spying on everything you do and having conversations with each other about it. it would be like if Dark Shadow had someone to hang out with other than Tokoyami. good thing you weren’t triplets, Tokoyami

First says that it’s become easier for the vestiges to interact with Deku ever since TomurAFO barged into the OFA Domain back at Jakku. huh

(ETA: apparently this is because AFO forcibly pulled out OFA’s power when he was trying to steal the quirk, so I guess that makes sense.)

okay thank you Banjou for addressing this concern which I initially brought up as a joke, but which was apparently real enough for you to reassure Deku about

“don’t worry, even though we’re awake and hanging out inside of you at all times, we’re definitely not secretly watching and making fun of every single thing you do” hmmmmm

(ETA: “not that you could do anything about it even if we were, since you’re probably going to be the last OFA holder ever!” I don’t trust anything this asshole says lmao.)

OH SHIT??

YESSS DEKU now you can hold them accountable for all of their bullshit! because I do not doubt that there will be bullshit lol but let’s see how that goes

oh damn

well okay then. you didn’t have to stand up and walk over to him and loom all threateningly like that but okay sir

this guy has kind of a Kimimaro vibe to him. remember? that bone-growing guy from Naruto? except I’m pretty sure he had eyebrows. and wasn’t twenty feet tall. speaking of which, that explains the chairs

why are you wearing only 3/5ths of a shirt

lol what

someone’s gonna have to explain this to me. is he just redundant or something lol, or is he strangely poetical or what

(ETA: apparently HE’S MAKING A PUN omg. I immediately gained +10 love for him lol. also it flows a lot better in Japanese. this is one of the things Caleb is usually good at, so we’ll see what he does with the wordplay.)

omg the hermit theory is true!!

“I’M NOT WEIRD, IT’S SOCIETY WHICH IS WEIRD.” lol whatever you say buddy. also love how Banjou tried to give him a big hearty slap on the back but Hermit Boy was not having it lmao

IS HE TRYING TO CAPTURE HIM WITH BLACKWHIP

AND ACTUALLY, NO, SIR, AS A MATTER OF FACT, WE ARE NOT AWARE. SO SPILL!!

?!!?

okay my first response was LOL ARE YOU SERIOUS, THAT’S THE BIG SECRET!? -- and then it hit me what the significance of “died from old age... AT AGE FORTY” meant. at which point it was like “!!!!!” and then “OH, SHIT”

(ETA: there’s also an Iida joke here somewhere but I’m just too tired to make it.)

oh my god oh my god

did he somehow get a copy of the coroner’s report or something? like how does he even know that he died from “old age” as opposed to any number of other natural causes? ??

but anyway. so this is the quirk singularity coming into play then I guess. but then how come All Might is still alive and ticking?

(ETA: so this is one example of where this week’s translation is a mess lol. apparently the Fourth explains here that he didn’t know what the fuck he died from until All Might researched it. and it turns out there actually was an autopsy lol so there you go.)

so Fourth says he held OFA for eighteen years, and since he knew he would never be strong enough to defeat AFO on his own he basically just spent all his time punching rocks in the woods and training to power the quirk up

oh shit

is he implying that his body literally fell apart?? like that’s how he got the scars on his face? -- IS THAT WHAT KEEPS HAPPENING TO TOMURA, THEN. oh shit

DUDE

so you’re telling me that this quirk actively shortens the lifespan of anyone who uses it?? and my little boy here has had it now for a year already?? fuck me, I have immediately have a TON of thoughts about all this but let me save it until he’s done with his explanation

THANK YOU, DEKU

right?? how come All Might didn’t die then. even after he got injured. please don’t tell me he actually is dying still and is just being slow about it because I SWEAR TO GOD

what does this mean??

so what you’re trying to say is you all have NO FUCKING IDEA how long Deku’s gonna be able to hold this quirk before he SUDDENLY DROPS DEAD?! five generations ago this dude was able to hold it for eighteen years, and then four generations later All Might was able to hold it for thirty-odd years or so, and now Deku has it and you all have no clue which way it’s gonna go? actually this makes it sound like it really wasn’t OFA that killed the Fourth at all and you guys are just really bad at forming hypotheses. but since you’re making a big plot point out of it I guess it must be true

and don’t think I didn’t notice the part where you said you didn’t have OFA very long and then “died while fighting”, Firsto. I want to hear more about that. specifically who you passed the quirk onto before your death

and yes, if we are agreeing that OFA was the cause of the Fourth’s death, then the conclusion on this next page is the natural one to draw

so that’s a bit of a relief then, because Deku is quirkless too. so it means he won’t be able to hold OFA forever (and will probably have to find another quirkless person to pass it on to), but at least he won’t be randomly dying out of the blue next Tuesday or something

oh my god now he’s talking about OFA and AFO and user consciousnesses and all sorts of good theory stuff but it’s so much exposition. you’re really gonna make me read all this lol

wait what. why would All Might being quirkless have anything to do with the presence of his vestige in OFA Outer Space Party Land

but Deku is also quirkless and he’s clearly visible and chatting with you guys. so what gives. like how much of this is verified fact and how much of it is you guys just shrugging and making stuff up lol

SERIOUSLY, GUYS

BUT DEKU IS ALSO -- you know what, never mind sob. none of this shit makes any sense but whatever

(ETA: seriously, this all seems like an awful lot of speculation on their part. for Deku’s sake I sure hope they’re right.)

FSSKDJFLSKLKJLKJL ALL MIGHT IS FIFTY-FIVE?!

lol that’s a full ten years past my closest estimate, wow. but this pretty much confirms his age now at last! or at least confirms it within a couple of years, because we know All Might and Nana met when he was in middle school, and he presumably had the quirk by the time he took the U.A. entrance exam. so yeah. gonna go with fifty-five

so they think that because All Might was quirkless, OFA was better able to adapt to his body and became his true quirk, as opposed to being an extra quirk that stacked on top of the one he already had and overwhelmed him. ties in back to the whole “AFO used to bend people to his will by forcing quirks on them” thing, as well as the “Noumus are all mindless because of the strain of having multiple quirks”

Two and Three are really ruining the serious vibe of this scene here lol

they look like they’re doing the counting for hide and seek

and is this Deku talking now? I was about to get mad at First for implying that quirkless people are somehow freaks, as opposed to “normal” people jdslk

so in other words, don’t go giving it to your best friend all casually for shits and giggles, Deku. even if it would make a really cool climax for a movie. well shit. maybe that’s why they were so quick to nope back into Deku’s body afterward

so First says that because quirkless people are becoming rarer and rarer, the fact that All Might just happened to stumble upon Deku is “nothing short of a miracle.” which, yeah, that was definitely a stroke of luck there. being quirkless saved his life. but being quirkless is also part of why he was chosen in the first place, and we’ve always known that much

“in other words, kiddo...”

looks like there was some hurried clone stamp usage going on here lol. but props to RHA as always for putting this scan out so fast, especially given how exposition-heavy this week’s chapter has been

“anyways, that was the main topic” ARE YOU SERIOUS. there are like ten other topics imma need you all to get to here, people

(ETA: seems like this is a mistranslation; the line should actually read something more along the lines of “and now for the main topic.”)

FFFFFFFFF

“ENJOY YOUR CLIFFHANGER THIS WEEK.” dskfalkjlkjwlgkjl you really went and dumped this discourse on us yet again. fucking...

(ETA: forgot to mention, but as several people mentioned, this seems to be another mistranslation -- rather than asking Deku to kill Tomura as though it’s doing her a personal favor, Nana is asking “will you be able to do it.” in other words more of an “are you capable of doing it” type of thing. which is a very reasonable question to ask given that Deku is, well, Deku.)

anyways, and the answer is obviously going to be “no” of course. this isn’t going to end any differently than when the previous Avatars all told Aang to kill Ozai. but I guess it means we’re in for a fun conversation next week

so Nana looks pretty grim here though (nothing at all like the person who once taught All Might the importance of saving people with a smile), and I’m wondering if this means she believes that her grandson is already beyond saving. as in killing him would be a mercy, as opposed to him continuing to live with AFO bending his mind and body to his will. except if that is the case, I think she’s underestimating Tomura’s own will. and definitely underestimating Deku’s will to save

and also, just... I’m so fucking sick of AFO screwing the Shimura family over, honestly. this is exactly what he wanted. well fuck you, guy. you don’t get to have what you want. go out there and save Tomura, Deku. for his sake and for Nana’s. give them some hope. do your thing, boy. can’t wait for your big speech all about it next chapter lol

#bnha 304 #midoriya izuku #all might #ofa prime #ofa iv #idk what his name is I forgot it already lol #the actual forty-year-old man #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #ofa the first

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caneannabelle · 3 years ago

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ok hi guys. it’s been a while. i wrote this analysis back when Mag 187 aka Checking Out aka The One Where Helen Dies first came out and literally ever since i’ve posted it i’ve wanted to redo it because it feels. lacking. listen if there’s one thing i hate it’s incomplete media analysis and i must right my wrongs lest i be forced to look upon myself and crumble from within. that being said, i’ve been putting off this rewrite for a long long time bc Life Gets Weird. tldr this was written over the course of several months so i apologize for inconsistent quality. anyways let’s get into it!

part one: recap!

it’s been a while! let’s just go over what happened. the scene i wanna focus on in particular is this one:

VICTIM

You’ve got to help me!

ARCHIVIST

[Angrily] Don’t touch me!

[THE ARCHIVIST PULLS AWAY, AS THE VICTIM FALLS AND IS CRYING]

HELEN

Oopsie. Not so easy, is it? Keeping up your humanity?

(187).

that being said i’m gonna be kind of all over the place but! i do think that’s a good jumping off point.

part two (part one): disparaging everyone’s problematic fav

in my original post my point was that in reflexively reacting to a victim with disgust and anger jon inadvertently reveals the nature of his dedication to helping victims as ego driven, especially because this line is directly preceded by him asserting his moral high ground over helen as being a “protector” as opposed to her indulgence in destruction. what i’m saying is homeboy has a savior complex. honestly there’s a lot of evidence to support that claim but i think the most obvious example would be jordan kennedy. like.

JORDAN

…Yeah. But wrong. Sick.

What did you do to me?

ARCHIVIST

I helped you.

JORDAN

Helped me? I don’t feel right, I, I just – Ah! No I don’t – argh! I don’t want this!

(184). to be clear it’s an action with a good intent! he just wants to help someone who once helped him! BUT it also demonstrates a lack of conscious empathy. i feel like i don’t have to argue this since jordan Literally vocally said he didn’t want this several times throughout the scene but the point remains that while jon’s intent is good the actual application of his saviourism removes the autonomy of those he affects. i’m not gonna touch on the “is it objectively immoral to become an oppressor for the sake of self preservation while existing within an extreme system in which all are oppressed regardless of your individual status” query mostly because i do not have the brainpower available rn to come to my own conclusion about systems of power and the way they’re represented in tma (which is a whole other rant tbh) but jon DOES rob jordan of the ability to come to his own conclusion in this debate and make his own choice, thereby removing his autonomy. you know. autonomy. free will. the thing that is central to jon’s internal conflicts. huh.

anyways i NEED to stress that i’m not saying that he’s the same as jonah or the web or even annabelle (although annabelle is a victim. no i don’t take constructive criticism). i just want to point out that his actions reflect a lack of understanding. while he’s able to empathize with the pain others experience and is eternally hyper- aware of it he is unable to view that pain through any lense besides his own and uses it in his cycle of self pity and blame, minimizing it at any point possible in the quickest way and Not prioritizing the wishes of the victim but instead the efficiency in decreasing his own guilt. anyways back to 187- both the victim and jordan are treated as props by jon (and helen) and once they serve their purpose in reaffirming the two’s sense of self are cast aside and ignored. ok from here i’m gonna get conceptual and self indulgent bc it’s my analysis and i get to bring up vague convoluted philosophy.

part two (part two): part two

let’s talk about the distortion for a sec. i refuse to believe helen and michael were both completely gone and it was just the distortion piloting their visage, mostly because… like that’s not what the text would indicate

HELEN

Michael isn’t me. Not now.

ARCHIVIST

What happened?

HELEN

He got… distracted. Let feelings that shouldn’t have been his overwhelm me.

Lost my way.

(101). it’s heavily implied that there was SOME remainder of michael in there, even if the being wasn’t him. maybe i’m way off base here but the way i interpreted the implosion of michael was that it was driven by his inability to maintain the repressed resentment and anger he had for gertrude. like it’s pretty clear that some warped version of michael’s feelings were trapped inside of the distortion and i’d go as far as to say that they were integral to his formation as it. i’m gonna operate on the assumption that michael and helen are two separate beings here for a sec even though we know they’re not. As opposed to michael’s resentment for the archivist, helen actively sought refuge in the institute and from the small amount we saw of her Pre-Distortion it seems like her paranoia is internally directed. i think you could even say that while michael was caught in an eternal battle with the concept of connection, helen is caught in a battle with the concept of self. the point is that she thinks of jon in a less “The Archivist” sense and more as just That Guy who she had an intense connection with that one time.

ARCHIVIST

So… S-so what do you want?

HELEN

I don’t know. Helen liked you, so… there’s a lot to consider. But I will help you leave.

(101). i would also like to point out that helen’s emergence as the distortion coincides with jon coming to terms with his identity as the archivist. parallels, baby! SO helen is a newly formed being that is grappling with the concept of her own existence and jon is reevaluating his understanding of identity as he comes to terms with the fact that he is turning into the thing he’s fighting against and this is all happening at the same time. live laugh love. stay with me here, i promise i’ll get back to 187. Throughout seasons 4 and 5 helen attempts to validate her own moral decisions via jon who she once saw herself in. conversely, jon sees both an image of what he could become AND arguably a representation of his past failure in her.

ARCHIVIST

It did. I think… I mean, you remember how I was back then, how paranoid. The Not!Sasha was there, and I could sense something wasn’t right, but I just couldn’t place it. It left me a suspicious wreck. Then when Helen Richardson came in, it seemed like… she was in the same place I was, but worse, further along. I thought, maybe if I could help her, that would mean… maybe I wasn’t beyond help?

(188). helen and jon lie at opposite ends of the same spectrum. both of them derive pleasure from the suffering of others

HELEN

Oh, John! This existence can be wonderful, if you just let it.

ARCHIVIST

[Sadly] I know.

(187). needless to say that a LOT of jon's arc and the themes surrounding him focus on the concept of autonomy and addiction and i think it'd be fair to say that this component is an aspect of that. repressing these qualities is both a way of reaffirming his control and also just.. him trying to be what he perceives as Good, and season 5 is the point at which this comes to the forefront of his character- particularly the line between what is intrinsic and what he truly has control over. a battle of the concept of the self, if you will. while the two share similar traits, jon is intensely moralistic while helen indulges in a twisted sense of hedonism and both are fueled by an inability to expand their viewpoint. helen fully immerses herself within these qualities and intentionally blinds herself to any concepts of morality (indulgence), and jon actively pushes back on this as hard as he can and follows black and white moral framework (repression). this means that in order for their relationship to function he must either accept her, choosing to let go in his personal battle with autonomy OR she must break out of her worldview and conform to standards of human morality which goes against her own nature.

part three: questions i do not have the answer to

so. what does it all mean. WELL. 187 is the boiling point of all this tension. we know that helen relies on jon to validate her sense of self and we know that jon sees himself in helen, both past and present

HELEN

But that doesn’t make any sense. You barely met her. You had half an hour together, and she spent most of that ranting about mazes! She was positively delirious with paranoia!

ARCHIVIST

True. But as you’ll recall, I was pretty paranoid myself at that point.

HELEN

So what? You saw yourself in her? A sad reflection? A possible future?

(187). I’d argue that 187 is demonstrative of jon’s inability to either fall into complete indulgence in intrinsic values that lack moral validity vs. maintain and image of self that does not conflict with the values he attempts to uphold in order to find internal satisfaction and yes both of those concepts are inherently egocentric as he bases his moral judgement on what he can justify to himself instead of what can be calculated via empathy. however. paired with the alternative (helen). is that BAD. is it inherently selfish to do what you perceive as good in order to feed your own savior complex? and if so, is it inherently selfish to indulge in destructive qualities as to not delude yourself? is honesty vs deception a black and white question? if not, where does helen even fall? in not deluding herself does she achieve a moral high ground? IS she deluding herself by denying the potential to be facetiously benevolent at the detriment of both her personal enjoyment and her honesty? does helen even posses the capability to repress her violent qualities? if she doesn't, does she have any autonomy? if she and jon are both inherently selfish and intentionally resistant to introspection, what makes them different? i do not have answers but i do think the text is meant to invoke these questions. i mean,

MICHAEL (STATEMENT)

There was a great evil, she said, and Michael was going to help her fight it. Am I evil, Archivist? Is a thing evil when it simply obeys its own nature? When it embodies its nature? When that nature is created by those which revile it? Perhaps Gertrude believed so. Michael certainly did. He believed everything she told him.

(101).

part 5: conclusion

so once again. what does it all mean. well! even post helen’s death jon continues to fight for autonomy and preserve his moral worldview so. i think that probably indicates something good.

MARTIN

Huh. She couldn’t help what she was, I guess.

ARCHIVIST

She didn’t even try.

(188). i honestly don’t have a thesis i just find it incredibly interesting how the themes surrounding these two intersect and play off of each other. anyways looping back to 187 i do think in a broad sense jon killing helen is representative of him choosing to stick by his convictions and keep fighting. i don’t have any good way to end this but thanks for sticking around during my self indulgent rambling!

#also apropos of nothing but #this scene reminds me of a clive barker story #truly that has nothing to do w this analysis i just wanted to throw this in the tags #anyways! hope this makes sense #i had a friend who’s never listened to tma read over this to make sure that it’s coherent #and she said it was fine so.. alice ty #this was fun! i have lots of Thoughts on tma and i should write them more often #the magnus archives #mag 187 #jonathan sims #the archivist #helen richardson #helen distortion #michael shelley #tma meta #the distortion #the spiral #tma

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brawltogethernow · 4 years ago

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I suppose the next step then is "BBC Merlin but it's SpideyTorch"

Oh my god. TEACHER, TEACHER, SHE’S TARGETING ME okay okay uh.

Peter, secret warlock, goes to Camelot with his mother figure, May, who does not know about the warlock thing because it kicked in when he was a teenager and they both strategically decline to tell each other things. Gaius is Reed, who was the court sorcerer and is now the court scientist. (He’s not an old man except spiritually where he has been a senile professor since he was 19.) He literally didn’t change anything he was doing, considering science and magic as different points on one spectrum anyway-- No. That’s Doom’s schtick. DOOM was the court sorcerer, and was fired. He is upset about it. Reed is just a science guy but worked extensively with Victor, so he’s kind of useful, but not as useful as Peter was hoping.

I know very little about Sue and Johnny’s dad except that he’s a supervillain who...faked his death, revealed himself, and then died for real like 12 hours later? Did he also fake his wife’s death at some point? Would he do a mad king magic ban thing? Idk but for plot purposes we’ll say yes. They conveniently already share Arthur’s dead mom syndrome. Maybe their aunt whose name is different depending on what issue you’re reading is also here just to convolute the court drama. Wait no didn’t Arthur have a shady uncle show up after like five seasons. She.

Peter is very talented at finicky, specific magical formulas. (Reed: :) )But in practice he really prefers to just slam out a big wave of power, and if that doesn’t solve the problem, repeat until it does. (Reed: :( ) He gives this a go at the beginning of sorting out any problem, like restarting your glitching computer, and if it doesn’t work the problem is complicated enough to be an episode plot.

So obviously I’m still gonna do secret identity shit? Peter saves the young prince and heir’s life and is rewarded with a second job; he only came here for job reasons and you’re all lucky he doesn’t turn down paying jobs otherwise he’d be having some words with the king. Peter also accidentally becomes a masked vigilante out in the town. His very existence is illegal because he’s obviously doing magic! They keep sending his boss out to hunt him down, and their eyes are always locking dramatically and shit in brief silent stare-offs from opposite ends of the street in thunder storms at sunset until Johnny’s horse rears and breaks the eye contact causing Peter to snap out of it and flee. You know how it is.

Sue is older than Johnny and thus older than the magic ban, so she responded to it by going “:) That’s nice, Dad” and socking away a bunch of books before they could go on the fire, and now she’s just a sorceress on the dl. This is approx. a first season finale reveal, because her real superpower is being able to keep her mouth the hell shut. I literally cannot with how nobody in Merlin ever exchanges information, so shortly after Peter and Reed learn this they exchange secrets, like sane people, which opens up their resources a bit.

That said Sue is an extra legitimate royal, not the Morgana equivalent. Maybe Gwen should be Gwen, especially since I have thought Gwen/Johnny/Peter has potential since reading Spider-Man/Fantastic Four (which if you read an earlier ask, I recommend if you want to see new art of Gwen being mean in hair clips). But Peter/Gwen and Merlin/Freya are like...same energy except the latter wasn’t as well done. And Merlin’s Guinevere honestly more reminds me of Betty. Morgana--

(wheeze)

(cough)

Okay I thought this trying to reconcile as much of the cast as possible and I now can’t unthink it so. The king’s ward is Dorrie Evans. Yes she goes nebulously sapphic evil witch queen. Sure she was an unpleasant teenager and readers hate her, but you know what, I’ll simp, whatever. Let Dorrie poison some people. In a cape. This feels natural to me. Also Betty Brant and Dorrie Evans???? Betty/Dorrie vibes???? I guess!!!!

So like. The thing where Arthur gets mystically whammied by love potions once a month, except also Johnny’s normal relationship-anticipating giddiness happening organically mixed in, the part before he actually starts dating someone and becomes immediately depressed. Peter is in the bg sarcastically dismissing magical incidents saying he can’t even tell the difference, and Reed is like 😬 Please Check Anyway. Peter’s not, haha, Peter’s not jealous, Johnny is just an idiot, and, okay maybe Peter is a little jealous! But it doesn’t matter because the prince is going to marry some noble and--

Reed: Prince Johnathan is a bit like a little brother to me, so Please Stop Telling Me About Your Problems.

Reed/Sue is reciprocated but on permanent hold for class reasons. Spideytorch is in the same boat except they’re also stupid and working it out by dating their way through the whole country, except Peter is actually into that and Johnny is not.

The dragon is...Ezekiel?????? That’s the right level of wise wry mentor who’s very shady and will kill you, so he’s a dragon now. And when he tells Peter he’s the (other) chosen one, Peter full stop doesn’t believe him. This disbelief goes on extensively. Peter is not a fate-oriented person. Johnny would love to hear about the fate thing, but no one will tell him.

Literally I’m just going to add more chronologically unmoored medievalish shit to Merlin now to cram more of the cast in. There’s some kind of town crier/herald outfit, and Jonah is their boss. He’s just out in the road yelling sometimes even though he can delegate that. The buglers otherwise known as Bugle staff named Peter’s vigilante persona the Spider, which was supposed to sound menacing but is in practice also cool. This is out-of-universe fairly equivalent to Merlin’s real name as a neat two-syllable animal word and possible title. In-universe maybe I’d elbow out Emrys and just use this. Merlin is already very servants-don’t-work-like-that, so Betty just also has two jobs for no reason so she can knock elbows with them.

MJ is the court jester and knows absolutely everything, which is a dramatic mid-game reveal that isn’t exactly foreshadowed so much as always possible while carefully obscured from the viewer (the reader). Before this she’s already a Wise Fool, Shakespeare-ways archetype character, it’s just not clear how much. She is the most important character in Homestuck Merlin Spider.

Every ship is real for at least 30 seconds. Most of the extended FF cast are either magical antagonists or weird nobles.

Ben????? (Grimm, I mean. Ben Parker is dead. Ben Reilly is a recurring episodic plot.) This show was painfully formulaic and would simply not keep someone with any version of his deal in the main cast, but he’s a full quarter of the FF so. A magical accident approximated his rock body deal. Maybe specifically tying him to ~the magic of the land~. And then, uh. Wandering the country is too satellite-like. Hiding out in a forbidden castle wing is interesting but doesn’t do him justice. So I guess it’s a come and go semivoluntary transformation thing that’s kept secret? Rock werewolf. Were-rock. Good opportunity to fake out like you’re going to do a monster of the week plot, and then he contributes to the tension to abolish the magic ban.

Knights?? Wyatt is there from the beginning, being tall and reassuring (holding a sword edition). Not sure how him or his immediate ancestors got to Europe and then ended up this involved with the local nobility, but it was probably exciting. And Flash, or he’s an early addition. Either way he’s from the same village as Peter and is approximately White’s Kay, except directed at the wizard instead of the future king, and otherwise you can completely superimpose their comic dynamic including the fanboying over the secret identity angle, which is entertainingly seditious. ...Others. I don’t know enough FF characters for this. I’ve accidentally implied the eventual addition of Bennet Brant, but his evil sorcerer of the week energy is very strong, so maybe not. Randy eventually because I already implied the Robertsons and can see it.

This is so long, covers nothing, and explains none of the namechecks. Using both these characters’ franchises in one fusion is too much stuff. I keep not talking about the core relationship because it’s just. Like That. I don’t feel like I need to elaborate on the Merthur dynamic, even transposed on a different ship. It’s Just Like That.

#merlin #spiderman #fantastic four #spideytorch #bbc merlin #spidey #ff #marvel #phoenixyfriend #asks answered

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thelightofthingshopedfor · 3 years ago

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so I wrote most of this...four days ago, and then somehow didn’t get around to finishing it until just now, which feels super weird because after writing this I started getting worried about future episodes again for a variety of reasons, and of course now we’re at T minus 10 minutes? (honestly if I’m somehow late for my own funeral I’m pretty sure no one will be surprised.) but I still wanted to post this to go over some of what I liked so much about episode 4, even if...I am no longer anywhere near as confident as I was a few days ago about where the show might be going. whatever.

***

I’ve done almost nothing for the past day or so except chew over episode 4 some more, partly trying to figure out why I liked it so much when it was broadly very divisive, and I realized that a lot of what I’ve been feeling from this episode is relief.

the thing is I’ve been paranoid since at least Infinity War about Marvel doing setup that looks like it’ll lead to a big payoff and then nothing (Loki’s death, but also Gamora’s and maybe Vision’s, and the general fact that the “fix” to IW was convoluted, took place much later, and caused as many problems as it solved, and just, Endgame in general), so I don’t really trust Marvel that way anymore. plus Marvel has pretty badly fumbled a lot of different things in the past, especially on various social issues, by introducing unfortunate implications that apparently didn’t occur to them even though they’re obvious to literally everyone else...stuff like Thanos’s “sacrifice” of Gamora, or how the Flag-Smashers were portrayed and Karli was a villain for no real reason, or how it would’ve been so easy to add a couple lines in WandaVision that would fix the whole thing where the Maximoffs weren’t just whitewashed but they also voluntarily worked with Nazis and they whiffed that too.

so, while I’ve been enjoying the show, a lot of that enjoyment has been based on meta I’ve seen and me sort of going “this interpretation is really cool and it makes a lot of sense, but at this point I can’t know if it’s something the showrunners are doing on purpose or if they sorta accidentally implied depth where there wasn’t any and it’s not actually leading anywhere” with things like the TVA being very clearly authoritarian but also supposedly the good guys, Loki being constantly described as an awful person, Loki sometimes being manic or incompetent, etc. etc. etc., along with the similar interpretation of “sure, we fans know all this stuff about how Loki is not an awful person actually, thanks, and the people who arrested him aren’t automatically Good Guys just because they’re in opposition to him but casual viewers--including not-casual-but-not-fannish viewers who should really know better--have not figured any of this out and so the show needs to go out of its way to demonstrate things that are obvious to us” but I wasn’t sure. the second half of episode 1 made me feel pretty good about where the show was headed as far as Loki’s characterization and emotions were concerned, but the more lighthearted aspects of 2 and 3 had me wondering again.

so then what happens in this episode?

the TVA goes fully mask off. the Time-Keepers are in fact fake, the Sacred Timeline by extension is also basically fake, the people who work there are all variants, the ones we know (C-20, B-15, Mobius) show grief and anger over the lives that were stolen from them, Sylvie is arrested as a child who did absolutely nothing wrong (and then put through the same process Loki was in episode 1, which is cool because a lot of it was kinda played for laughs then but showing the same things happening to an innocent child also serves to reframe what happened to Loki as, hmm, not that funny after all maybe!), Renslayer is willing to prune innocent people--friends and coworkers, even--just because they learned too much, all the sinister propaganda WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SINISTER

Loki gets very serious very fast in this episode. he displays a lot of genuine emotion and trauma but he mostly does it in a calculated way that shows just how fast his brain works and how he’s always, always thinking about what other people want/expect from him. (like--even the complaint about too few guards seems to fall into that category, given that he only says it after Mobius insists he must be wanting to make some kind of quip!) his self-image is garbage but through Sylvie he’s starting to maybe work on that. he goes up against multiple armed enemies while completely unarmed and holds his own until he gets a weapon. he pushes back when it matters and doesn’t just accept everything Mobius throws at him. he lies, pretty competently (the fact that Mobius doesn’t believe him is...really not his fault, considering Mobius wouldn’t believe him at first about the truth either, so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t planning to believe anything Loki outright told him), when it actually matters, primarily in what sure seems like an attempt to protect someone he cares about.

and Mobius. says that Loki WAS RIGHT. ABOUT THE TVA. FROM THE BEGINNING!!! I would still love to hear him say explicitly, look, I said a lot of shitty things to you and tossed in some actual physical torture at the end there oops but the vast majority of it was stuff I didn’t really mean and was only saying to get a reaction and/or information and of course it turns out I was wrong about all the TVA stuff, so I want to say for the record that I was wrong about you personally in many different ways and I’m sorry. (which, honestly, would probably be very awkward for both of them because I doubt Loki has much experience receiving genuine apologies.) but I’m mostly okay with it if he doesn’t, because I feel like you were right from the beginning, and by the way you can be whatever you want does a decent job of implying most of that. (...enough for casual viewers to pick up on it? well, I’m not hoping for miracles but sure, probably some of them.)

in other words? all that stuff the casual viewers were missing (not helped by misleading statements from the showrunners), about the TVA so clearly being bad guys, and Loki being a pretty decent person who presents different versions of himself in different situations and also has some shitty coping mechanisms, and the other Loki variant also not being evil just because they were trying to take down the TVA? we were right. that is, in fact, how the showrunners intended all those things to be taken. they didn’t want to come right out with that stuff at first because they wanted to tell a story and have some twists, and the fact that these things were twists for casual viewers is exactly why it was frustrating to a lot of fans, because it felt like obvious things were being misrepresented or overlooked. I still think that’s reasonable, because see above on why Marvel doesn’t necessarily deserve that trust, but at this point I’m a lot more comfortable believing that this specific show more or less knows what it’s doing.

I mean, yeah, there were some cool fan theories that went nowhere, like the whole thing with the broken TemPad, and I agree that was dumb and it’s very annoying that it really was just sloppy writing, but I guess specific things like that just...don’t bother me as much as more systemic, overarching elements like the characterization of Loki and the TVA. and yes, of course I’ll always be annoyed that we’re apparently never going to get explicit confirmation that Loki’s alliance with Thanos was coerced at best. but, you know, what we got isn’t nothing.

#loki #loki show #loki spoilers #mobius m. mobius #sylvie #marvel cinematic universe #meta #loki meta #my meta #I should add links but uh...maybe later

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adultswim2021 · 3 years ago

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Aqua Teen Hunger Force #54: “Hypno-Germ” | October 17, 2004 - 12:00 AM | S04E12

Shake contracts Hyno-Germs from a toilet seat, they are little guys who control your brain to make you hallucinate and be crazy. Shake is rendered in a catatonic state after entering a severe stage of the infection, spurring Frylock into action. It’s said that the germs can be defeated by dispatching Mexican jumping beans into the afflicted person’s brain, where they’ll sabotage one of the many plays that the Hypno-Germs like to put on. Sound convoluted? It is! Sound funny? Well...

So, this one sorta sucks. It starts fairly strong, and has some jokes I like, but when we cut to Hyno-Germ land the show kinda screeches to a halt and stops being quite as funny. But this episode is notable for a few reasons. Three reasons, to be precise, which is in my mind the smallest amount “few” can possibly be:

Legitimately famous guest stars Bob Odenkirk, Janeanne Garofalo, and Fred Armisen

The Adult Swim debut of Tim & Eric, who voice some characters here

This is actually a technical backdoor pilot for Squidbillies, hence the ATHF reappearance of Todd Hanson, who would voice Dan Halen in said series.

How is it a technical back door pilot? Well, the animation technique used for the Hyno-Germ scenes is different than normal Aqua Teen episodes. This was basically a test to see if the animation they were planning for Squidbillies was feasible. That’s what I mean: It was a pilot for the TECHNICAL aspects of Squidbillies. This was likely the focus of the episode which is why it turned out the way it did: not that funny. In fact, there’s a straight-up stolen joke from Ren & Stimpy in this one, which is pretty shameful (it’s the gag where the germ princess has grown her hair à la Rapunzel, but it’s her nose hair).

I’m gonna go positive for the last paragraph, because yeah, this one’s pretty low on my list. The opening is okay, and shows promise. There’s a very abbreviated Spacecataz segment, which is good. And the bit where they make Shake watch shaky camcorder footage of him begging to be let into a public bathroom is very funny, and realistically sloppy as Meatwad is holding the camera. There’s a documentary realism to it that I like a lot, and then when they cut back to the scene at hand we see a small explosion cut off by the bottom of the frame, implying that Shake threw the TV remote or something and it exploded, like all things Shake throws to the ground. The absolutely weird choice of having the television “camera” fail to capture the impact, as though this animated series is a mulit-cam sitcom and they failed to switch to the right camera when it happened is wonderful. I love shit like that.

MAIL BAG

Have you ever had a one on one with Dave Willis. He seems like the most normal Willams Street guy but he's seriously kind of an oddball. Like if John Swartzwelder wasn't a recluse. I guess that's Atlanta for you. Matt's a teddy bear though.

I probably said this once, but I have this clearly false memory of Dave Willis being interviewed by Primetime Glick. So maybe I actually interviewed him? I do have all of Primetime Glick’s exact ticks and speech patterns. The few times I’ve gotten facetime with a celeb I usually wind up eating several glazed donuts. So, who can say?

You are like a karen gone wild

1. no i’m not, fuck you

2. last night I found out that Carol Burnett is still alive because I was watching the Carol Burnett pluto.tv channel and there was a bumper that was just audio of Carol making a joke I don’t remember about being a Karen and she didn’t sound THAT OLD, she sounded about as old as we remember her voice sounding in like, the 90s or whatever, and I thought it was one of those Roger Ebert voice programs and I was sickened by it because I thought she died recently but not recently enough for her to be alive to make Karen jokes. Anyway, long story short: I looked it up she’s still alive

I think you missed an obvious joke in one of your mailbags. But I guess if you thought Lowtax/Something Awful was the paragon of cleverness we shouldn't be surprised. Stick to cartoons, chunky.

Okay fuck you too (this is clearly a different guy from the Karen one because I assume I have thousands of fans so it makes sense). I honestly never went too deep on Something Awful. I remember enjoying a few features on there but I never went to the message boards and I remember using a picture from Cliff Yablonski Hates You as an avi and people on other message boards would ACCUSE ME of being a “typical Something Awful fanboy” and I really didn’t even understand what that even meant because I barely ever read it! I just liked the funny looking cat picture I found on there

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force

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wangxiangiftexchange · 4 years ago

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Lunar New Year Gift for alightbuthappypen!

For @alightbuthappypen, I wish you a happy lunar new year, last year was a tough one for everyone around the world. We had to carry too many burdens besides the ones already on our shoulders, so I hope this cheers you up a litte. And if you are totally fine, then just enjoy it. I hope you like it, Im a bit shy to aproach and start conversation, but I tried to stick to the letter in your resquest.

*****

let me adjust my grip, don’t slip

When Lan Sizhui fell unexpectedly ill, it took less than a day for the Yilling Patriarch to arrive at the doors of Cloud Recess.

Lan Wangji suspected it had something to do with their mutual undead acquittance, but when Uncle asked with a suspicious tone, implying things that made his soul tremble with anger. He just fisted his hands behind his back and said “They have a bond; he has a place besides his bedside...”

He wanted, he really wanted to run to the infirmary to be with them. But his duties couldn’t be dismissed easily, in fact, he had several weeks of pending work with the sects that he already asked to be delegated. Yet, he still needed to hand over a list of priorities and names of the people assigned to them, and it was taking him too long already.

He tried to let that the methodical task of sealing scrolls with wax and metal distracted him from his convoluted feelings with the unexpected situation.

The night before while having dinner, the Junior had collapsed to the surprise of all. They took him to the infirmary right away, and not caring about appearances he followed. He spends a long night seated by the little table in the private suit where Lan Sizhui was being attended and probed and examined.

He knew that he had not the correct training to know, do or solve whatever it was happening to him, it fell into the proper and experienced hands of the doctors and healers of the sect. Nevertheless, he jumped lightly whenever they turned the boy in the bed, whenever the men made observations and humming noises, it was the need to run at his side, put his hand over his forehead.

Still, it became obvious very early in night that this was beyond of what he could do to help. By morning they still didn’t know what it was happening, but at least the junior hadn't worsened, and very painedly he had to separate and do his responsibilities.

By the time it was meal time, he was informed of the arrival of Wei Ying. But as he couldn't meet with them, he wondered if they knew something by now. If Wei Ying had come storming by the doors frantically asking to see the boy, walking in circles on his room, hand on his chin asking questions and answering himself while he unraveled the malady with the genius he only could possess.

Something about the idea made his chest ache with longlines.

It's been almost three months since his last visit. He knows, he counts the days with ease born out of experience.

One day since he last saw Wei Ying.

Two days since he lasts seen Wei Ying....

Three.....

One week....

One month....

One Year...

sixteen years...

Counting days was not healthy he knew. But he never could help himself. Some part of him is afraid that the count grows again. Days and days that ache with guilt, with lose...with love...

Three months it's not a very long time if compared with the long wait. But some days, the heavy loaded ones, the stressful ones, it does. It does hurt like it. He wished he could end those days walking to his private room and seem him, see his beautiful welcoming smile. To know he is there and would never go again.

Still, it's not something that can be solved. What right does he have to ask Wei Ying to stay here? Hes as free as he wants, as free as he always wanted.

He understands, he did travel the land too, he was not free exactly, he was running away, hiding his morose mourning and his inability to let go of the past from his family and peers. But he knows there is solace in the open skies of empty roads and peaceful farmed fields, fulfilling the promise they made, he failed him in many ways, but at least he gave himself to the task of fighting evil.

Mourning...Wei Yings needs it as much as he did.

He thought he could follow him, it was his plan as soon as he found him again at Dafan mountain, as he was sweep up his feet by his bright personality, his laughter, his brilliant mind once again. Being with him at all times. But....

But what right does he have to be free of responsibility?

After all, Lan Huan was tasked with their sect since he was born. But that didn’t mean he had to carry the load by himself. And yet, while he was roaming around, raising a kid. His brother never asked him do to his responsibilities if he was not up to them. His brother was sympathetic and caring, and worked and worked without help for years.

Now Lan Huan was suffering his own grief, his own mourning and his own count. But he knew that his was meant to last forever.

Staying here, being the acting sect leader, and being the chief cultivator really was the only retribution to his filial brother. He might harbor a great dislike to all of the sects and clans across the land for the wrongdoings committed to Wei Ying, to them both.

But he couldn’t just walk away while his brother was heartbroken and alone. Or can I?.... his mind thinks but he erases the thought and the doubts as fast as he can.

He can't ask Wei Ying to stay, and he can't follow him either. So, it was just another wait, probably not as endless as the first had felt, but something in him just wants it so desperately to end.

However, there still was something to confess, something kept deep on his chest for as long as he can remember. It probably is because during those years, this feeling just grew and grew until he could no longer remember a time when he didn’t feel like this.

It was like roots had taken over until they filled his chest and touched his soul. Tangling deep into his whole being.

He carried Wei Ying in his heart as one carries a lamp in the darkness. Sometimes warm, and sometimes ardently, but always the light he followed like a moth since he was young.

Where he to confess those feelings to him, would he feel compelled to return them even if Wei Ying does not feel the same? would he stay here with him the way he wants him?

Hes the type of person that sacricifies what he feels and what he wants for the people he cares about. No matter how undeserving of such sacrifice those people could be. Or more exactly how underserving Jiang Waying is. But he does not care to follow that line of thinking because it is against the rules to think so poorly of another sect Leader.

He should feel ashamed to think himself so important in Wei Ying’s life, but it wouldn’t be enough for him to feel obligated to accept something as deviant as being an open cut sleeve just because he cares about Wangji, and it wouldn’t be right. He wants him to sincerely return his feelings, but who would accept such disgrace.

If he feels he owns him something for helping him solve Meng Yaos plot, he’ll never ask for anything. Wei Ying should stop feeling guilty, especially about this because firstly, it was the right thing to do, and second because everything he did was because he wanted.

He wanted to absolve Wei Ying’s reputations, because he wanted him to stop feeling guilty for things that happened so many years ago and weren't even his fault to begin with.

Even before knowing the whole truth, he suspected for years that something or someone had played a hidden evil hand. He spends years questioning his own memories, questioning what everyone accepted as facts and truths, because his heart told him, it always told him that Wei Ying was not the evil person they invented in their twisted minds.

It was then that he noticed that this was the last scroll he needed to prepare to send, so he put out the heating lamp and put aside his official seal, he didn’t stop to clean it as it was his routine and just put it on his sleeve pocket on his haste to reunite with his family.

He didn’t run, but he speed walked on the empty corridors until he arrived. Once he opened the door, he was greeted with a sight that made his heart ache.

Many years ago, when Sizhui was still a child, a fragile little thing that clung to his robes. He would catch colds in the winter. He was from warmer lands, and even if he never was raised on them, something in him always made him unprepared for long chilly winters. It was true even after he stopped being underfeed and was getting round rosy cheeks.

He would lay in bed, while Wangji spend the night rubbing his back with medicinal herbs and would sing him lullabies. It would be just the two of them by the candle lights, with warm coils burning on the stove. It would get warmer and warmer, but he still felt a cold inside his chest and ribcage, creeping up and down his scarred back, an empty heartbeat, the pang of lost.

Something would whisper on his ear Wei Ying’s name, and how needed he was. How he missed him. He wanted to say to him. What I am doing? Why I am doing this without you? What I am doing with your child?

He would imagine a life where Wei Ying was with them, so close to the image that greet him now, that he felt like that dream was finally true.

Wei Ying was on the floor, lightly petting Sizhui hair and whispering sweet things.

He noticed him then, and the spell broke, and the mirage that mixed reality and hopes fell apart. Wei Ying smiled tiredly and raised from his place to invite him to sit with him by the table.

“How is he doing?”

“It's not getting worse....”

“Do they know something now?”

“They do...” he sighed. “It's a curse. I already questioned Lan Jingyi about it. But he just told me he had no idea, he said nothing was amiss, nothing had gone wrong on their last night hunt. He noticed nothing weird.”

“He wouldn’t...” he sighed.

“Hes not very observant, I agree, that why I drilled him with questions, even force him to tell me an hourly account of their trip, and there was something”

He nodded expectingly.

“Some strange looking lady tried to sell them flowers by the road. When they didn’t, she became erratic and tried to.... offer them a different...kind of flower....”

He frowned.

Wei Ying laughed. “Yeah, she offered to sleep with them for a piece of silver. When they said no, she tried to hug them, Jingyi pushed her off of course, but Sizhui being as kind as he is, tried to help her go to the next town, but she pushed him, screamed and ran to the woods. They thought she was just a very poor crazy woman and brush it off....”

“Thats not unusual”

“It is not unusual although very sad, but it’s the only thing that came to my attention...everything else was as they said, just a normal night hunt.”

“What kind of curse”

“The slow one at least, it's obvious he was pinched with a needle on the neck, its going down...” he said looking at the table. “We have a lead now, it's better than nothing”

“umm” he agreed.

“We should depart at the earliest”

“Why not tonight?”

Wei Ying smiled sadly. “He was....he was asking for his dad....”

Wangji’s hands clenched and all the air in his lungs was pushed out and let him breathless

“You really are his father....” he said.

“He called me that when he was little until Uncle stopped him. I let him do it when were alone....”

“I was a little hurt Hanguan-Jun. You stole my child....” He sounded truly sad.

“He’s....he’s yours too”

“But he was asking for you...his father”

“Because.....you are his mother”

That made Wei Ying laughs and wipe the sadness out of his eyes.

“So shameless!” he keeps laughing. “waiting all these years to deliver such a punch line Hanguan Jun. Your sense of humor is twisted and no one would think it of his excellency”

He could feel his lips pushing to fight the smile carried by his laughter

“I suppose I dig my own grave with that one Lan Zhan” he keeps with a light teasing smile. “But I did say I was...And I want to spend the night here if you don’t mind”

“I don’t, Theres blankets on the trunk”

He stood up to retrieve them and put them on the floor by the bed. He put another set besides the one already on the floor.

“What?, is his excellency spending the night on the floor”

“umm” he nodded.

“But Lan Zhan, the floor is uncomfortable, you should go to your bed”

“I'm not” he simply said to avoid the argument.

Wei Yings shoulders dropped in defeat and only prepare himself to sleep by striping of his outer layer. He gave him privacy by turning his back and doing the same before laying side by side on the floor.

“He looks peaceful, they gave him tea to sooth him and ease the symptoms.”

He looked at the youth and Wei Ying smiled sadly.

“He still looks so young even if he is becoming a man in everyone's eyes. But early today he looked as when he was little and was so tired, he got crackly before his nap. I could tell he wanted to stick his fingers on his mouth”

He smiled gently. “It was hard to break him out of that habit”

“I can imagine. Were you harsh on him?”

Wangji frowned and said “no”

“Well, I was a little bit, I was not in the best place, and sometimes I was so tired, and so angry with the world. And he was just a child, he didn’t know better, he was lonely and wanted to play. I regret snaping at him”

“He missed you too”

“I Thought he didn’t remember much”

“He doesn't now. But the first days he would ask for you in his feverish state, Lan Huan sleep with him but he cried until he was allowed to stay with me”

“Such a little manipulator he was”

“It was because he didn’t recognize this place, or those people”

“Yeah, I bet he was sad”

“Um” he nodded. “Didn't ask only for you, he wanted all his family back”

“I'm really sorry he had to experience that, I could have done more, or the right thing...I keep thinking what could I have done different”

“Pointless, can't change the past”

“I know, but I can't forget, is a burden I must carry if nothing else. It was a mistake; I shall live with the regret”

“Stop blaming yourself, what does that accomplish?”

“Aiyooo” he said. “I know you are right, but I can't help myself, I can't just forget you know, and when you remember something, you always get to wonder what if....”

“Then find solace in the fact, that he survived, and he was cared for, looked after”

“I do that too. I'm so grateful you took him in, he couldn’t have ended in better hands, he was seriously lucky, you didn’t just give him a chance, you gave him a whole new better life, he wouldn't have ended such a fine gentleman with me and with his family even if they had survived”

“Would have offered him an education in Gusu Lan anyway”

Wei Ying smiled softly. “I'm sure you would have, the way you looked at him that day in Yilling. I know the look of a mother hen when I see one. You wanted to gift him the world, feed him until he got fat, and teach him manners, am glad you still got to do it in the end”

“And yet...I couldn't even save Wei Ying, the person he needed the most”

“Lan Zhaaaan, stop, stop!. Alright, we already said Theres no point in regret, I won't do it, if you don’t either. In fact, we already made a pact about it, no more regrets. That was then, but this is now. We have to solve this, I'm here now, I can't lose him, this is entirely different..., he’s...he’s ours”

“Ours...” he said in affirmation.

“It's almost nine, we should sleep, we have a long way tomorrow. We have to find this mysterious crazy hugger in the woods.”

“Um” he nodded and closed his eyes.

It took just a few moments for his routine and his command to take over his body, but while he waited. He relished in the fact, that the room was warm, that he could hear two sets of breathings in rhythm. The room was lived in. No more emptiness. No more cold.

+2+

Lan Wangji woke up before first call. Lately, he found himself awake before he was due. It might be the stress of the job; he did have too many responsibilities that took his days away and didn’t allow his mind to rest at night. Much less the pleasure of meditation.

It might also be an age thing. He heard from uncle that it happened to him too around this age. It was a strange notion that the mind, still felt the passage of time even if his cultivation didn’t allow his body to age in a normal rate.

He looked young; his strength still was that of a young man. And yet, time did come to pass. Sizhui was the more affected by it. There where once lay a baby, now was an adolescent. But when he looked at Wei Ying peaceful sleeping, he still saw the young man he was when he died...

At first it was shock to see him as if not a single day had passed. But it had, Wangji himself didn’t look more than twenty-nine. Even if he was already thirty-five. But Wei Ying looked so young still.

But he couldn't be considered naïve, he saw too much, suffered too much to be a child. He was just barely older than Sizhui, but he lived a whole life time over. As they sleep like this, they looked like two young brothers, so precious and innocent wrapped by their dreams.

He felt old, tired and alone inside way before he meet Wei Ying at seventeen. But as soon as he stormed into his life, Wei Ying provoked the child on his soul. How much he wanted to be free, playful. He wanted to chase him, to joke and laugh. Run as fast as he wanted, rules be dammed.

He didn’t get to do that at the end of those days. But he did run behind his memories, after his retreating back on his own dreams, chasing him and never being able to hear him or touch him. Oh how much he missed him. How much he wished he had the courage to do all he wanted before it was too late.

And now that he was back, he still couldn’t be with him, because he couldn't chase him anymore. How unfair it was. To have waited so long and still don't have what he wanted. Even it was the facsimile of just being in his company.

He should have been a child when he could, because now he was a true man and responsibilities couldn’t be thrown away, he can't justify in younthness his actions or his wants. If he had chance with him, I would have been years away, he could have a stolen a kiss and pass it off as ignorant imprudence and improperty, he might have been forgiven. Be excused with it, and say he didn’t know better.

Wei Ying might have even returned it then.

But now he does. He does know better and how inappropriate it is.

But he wants....he wants so much.

As he sees Wei Ying sleeping. His whole soul plays a different tune. Lust tights his fist around him, and he burns ardently with desire.

Every time, every single time Wei Yings calls him “Lan-er-gege". He’s no listening the innocent way a young man calls an elder. Oh no. All he hears is the tilt a shameless woman uses to seduce a man.

The way it sounds as a beckoning call to her bedchamber. And he knows Wei Ying is only teasing, only playing with him.

He never stopped trying to make him play with him. But how can he answer in jester, when these things provoke the man in him? He should be ashamed, and he is.

But he can't help himself. He drinks the image of rosy lips, soft skin and messy black hair. His long beautiful eyelashes. Even if he is a proper man, he still looks delicate, soft in young masculinity.

He wants to destroy the person lucky enough to have him, even if it is a woman or man. Even if is only just an idea. Because he knows there's no such person lurking on his life. Or maybe he just doesn't want to think there is. Wei Ying hasn’t spoken of anyone new on his letters.

Wei Yings writes him about people yes, but as always is in a disinterest rude manner, sometimes he can't even remember the name of the people he just meet. No one has cached his attention.

He really doesn't want to see it happen. Same as the day Lan Sizhui began noticing women and he felt pride and fear in equal measures. Pride, because he was so gentle, and one day he would be happy knowing love. And afraid because he was already mourning his child. The innocent chubby baby he wrapped on blankets and allowed to sleep on his shoulder.

However, he can't decide what is the appropriated feeling regarding Wei Ying and the concept that one day, he might be with someone he wants. It hurts to think about it. To imagine him so happy and in love.

And it makes him angry to feel this way, what claim does he have? -- none, and truly Wei Ying deserves all the happiness he can get on his second chance. He suffered and sacrificed enough; he deserves everything.

Wangji let his chance go, and he has to suffer those consequences.

Wei Ying is far away and so close. Hes right here just a foot apart. If he extends his hand, he can touch, and he is tempted. His fingers ache with the desire to feel his warm presence. Instead, he coils his fist tightly.

+3+

When he comes back with a light breakfast, Wei Ying is already on his feet, already scribbling away in parchment an assortment of talismans.

“I may need them” he says as an explanation while he finishes with the ink and hastily moves the paper away to make room. “Lan Zhan....” he says and Wangji looks up from the plates. But he is pointing to the bed, where Sizhui is awake with half lidden eyes.

He goes to him and puts a hand over his forehead. He’s warm with a light fever.

“How are you feeling?” he still asks.

Sizhui moans.

“That good uh?” jokingly answers Wei Ying while he sits on the bed.

“A- diē” he moans. But his eyes aren't fixed on one of them, they go from one to the other, making unclear to whom he calls.

“We are here A-Yuan" says Wei Ying. “Here, Lan Zhan got you sweet soup, you still like it right?”

He can feel the tiny smile taking over his lips.

“Bába.... a- diē....” says Sizhui raising his hand shakily, Wangji takes it.

“yes...” says Wangji. “Bába wants to give you soup, be a good child”

A-Yuan nods feverish, Wei Yings eyes are shinning like the ponds in Yummeng, but he gathers the strength to feed A-Yuan the soup and the tea before the boy falls sleep again.

“I hope he doesn't get upset if he doesn't find us the next time he wakes”

“I’ll made sure his cousin is here to keep his company”

“We better hurry with this task then, it pains me to depart”

They rushed with their breakfast even if it is against the rules, but it's just the two of them and really, that is one unrealistic rule. Life can get so fast at times, that chewing trughly can wait for more placid times.

By noon they have covered several li of distance, he can see Wei Ying has regained much needed strength in the last months. But by meal time, they decide to make a quick stop at an Inn to eat.

“Oh no, I'm just power walking” says Wei Ying when he tells him what he thinks. “I gained a little weight, but I'm not near as strong as before. I don’t think I’ll ever will, especially since I'm relaying in talismans rathe that demonic cultivation. But the pshyquical weakness is here to stay, I'm just a normal guy, takes me ages to reach my destinations”

“It will do no good if Wei Ying tires excessively then” he says. “I should acquire horses”

“Well, it will be even faster, and as ashamed as it makes me feel, it would be helpful"

“Theres no shame in admitting weakness”

“But I don’t want to become a burden for anyone”

“Wei Ying is no burden”

“So, you say, but you have to admit it makes things awkward with the sects, having me around and bothering such a stemmed cultivator like yourself”

“They are the ones who should be ashamed of being burdens, because they are...all the time”

Wei Ying laughs deep. “Such a burden Lan Zhan, I can't even...; some of those men can even wipe their asses without assistance”

“It's been very troublesome, but I can't just....”

“I know” cuts Wei Ying with a tired smile. “They do need you....”

“I rather be traveling.... like this...with you” he says lowering his eyes because he can't stop the furious beating of his heart.

Wei Ying laughs awkwardly. “It doesn’t think you’ll like it, I'm sure you would be bored by me pretty soon”

“I really can't imagine that....”

“Of course, no, with men like clan leader Yao and Ouyang lowering the intelligence of a room”

“So, you do know it happens the opposite when you are in it?” He sneaks a glance and Wei Ying is fumbling with his cup and blushing.

“I suppose, if you put it like that, then yes, yes of course I am better company”

“Then your presence can't be called a burden”

“Lan Zhan, politics make you very....” he fishes for a word, but keeps opening and closing his mouth. “Flirty...”

As soon as he says it, Lan Zhan feels the warmth creeping up and up, until he also knows he has blushed. But also, the victory of it. Feeling like he did something right, like he won, he feels satisfaction. He feels accomplishment. But like an addict, his body craves the attention with powerful intention, like a possession of the mind. He wants more of it.

“You are being very talkative now”

He huffs a quiet laugh. ��Couldn't stop them from arguing unless I found witty responses to shup them up”

“But you had always being witty with your remarks. It something else, you aren't minding your words.”

He thinks about it, and its true on some level. Being acting sect Leader, and Chief cultivator, has forced him to talk more than he is comfortable, it's not on his nature, but things weren't get done, and frosty commands and final decisions made the sect leaders feel like he was becoming an evil overlord, they hadn't felt threatened by Meng Yao at all. Not even once even if he was a true devil mal.

Nie Huaisang had given him an unsolicited advice, but that it turned out it really was helpful.

He would never be like his brother, who had a sweet and kind disposition. But it turned out that if he explained things more and engaged in conversation more, the sect leaders had a very different disposition.

But he was by no means, a flirty leader. It was just Wei Ying.

It was like a broken dam, and words and feelings were leaking tru the cracks. He needed to...express this warm thing on his chest, it wanted to get out.

“Just with you” he clarified once again, not controlling himself or his feelings.

“Whatever it is. I can't say I'm displeased.” He smiles. “You are witty and intelligent and funny! I would love to see you in session”

“You should come”

“I don't think the leaders would appreciate it like you do, would make them angry. And It would make me angry if they say something stupid”

“You still should come. Things are getting settled, and they could see you are in no way a treat, and you know I would never...turn my back on you”

“I know you wouldn't, you haven't done it since I returned, I'm not even sure if you ever did, even in the past. Maybe I was too stupid to see it, but you have always been on my side, and it makes me happier than I can describe. For that reason, I can't cause trouble to you...”

“Theres no trou...”

“Let's get going Lan Zhan, we have yet a long road ahead”

It feels like punch to the gut, disappointment grips him hard. He lowers his eyes and nods.

They do acquire horses. And as soon as they hit the road outside of town, Wei Ying speeds the horse freely. He can see his satisfied smile when he shouts.

“This is an upgrade of that stupid lovely donkey!!”

Wei Ying knows how to ride with elegance and with power, he is good at it, like he is good in a lot of other gentlemanly arts. And it is a beautiful visage, seeing him riding into the sunset.

But as beautiful as he is, it still feels like Wangji is running behind his back, like he’s always dragging his feet in a race. Following at close heals, but never enough. Fingers brushing mere seconds before his hands slips and he falls, until he is lost forever.

Slow down Wei Ying.

Please slow down...he wants to say.

Let me catch up, let me adjust my grip, don’t slip.

+4+

They arrive to their destination by night fall, in the morning they’ll have to ride a few li more before reaching the forest, but it doesn't make sense to keep going, whatever the woman in the woods is hiding. They wouldn’t find her at night. The forest has too many foliage, and there's lots of places a soul can hide during the night.

But the Inn in town is overcrowded and they only have a room for both of them. It's no trouble really, they have camped and sleep in shared rooms before.

Only it is a problem now, because Wangji has been feeling.....

He’s been feeling like his heart wants to come out of his chest. Like it wants to jump out of his ribcage. Like he can't breath a second longer, the feeling beats wildly out of his cage of control.

And it hurts, it hurts so much, because he wants, he wants so much.

So close and so far, away, and his shoulders feel heavy loaded with despair. He just wants to hug him, feel him alive, touch his warmth with the tips of his fingers. But he knows it won't be just that.

It stopped being enough seeing him from afar. But It would never be enough, if he touches him, he would crave it, he would desire. He wouldn’t be able to control it.

He thought he could control those feelings, because it became obvious why he couldn’t be with him. Why he couldn’t force this feeling on him.

He promised himself that as long as Wei Ying was alive and happy or content. As long as he was in no danger. He was happy and content too.

But it is a lie.

And the pain, the sorrow, the despair feels as big as mourning his death once felt, maybe even worse, because he’s right there with a brilliant smile.

He feels like he is falling, but the wrong way, the desperation, the frustration. Those kinds of feelings are the kind that make a good man turn bad.

He’s shaking with it, and he is ready to renounce everything, just for the chance to have him. Ready to let the sects destroy themselves. Sick and tired of their petty disputes. He feels compelled to even renounce his family, abandon his brother in time of need, just for a chance to be with Wei Ying.

But he is better than this. Wei Ying wouldn't even want him is he ever did such a traitorous thing. They promised to be good, to do justice and good deeds to the world.

And yet....he is angry.

Why does destiny take this from him?

This only thing he wants and needs, and it's not even the flesh sexual act what he wants. He has no desire to force him, it's not his desire to be with him skin against skin.

Although it is too.

But he wants so much more than just that. He’s burning with the desire to be with him when he goes to bed, when he wakes up in the morning, he wants to be there when he laughs, when he gets melancholic about the past. He wants to be the guardian of his dreams, and the protector during his nightmare's.

He just wants to be there for all of it for the rest of his life.

And then so more in the next and the next, and the next. Because it pains him to imagine another lifetime so far away from his very soulmate.

Red string and knot around his core, soul, and heart.

It's unfair.

+++5+++

By dinner time, his fingers felt cold, his chest hollow, empty, throbbing with each breath.

“Hanguan-Juan, why are you so upset, Sizhui will be fine”

“um” he nods and drinks from his cup of tea.

“Ayooo!” he says “Who killed your rabbits?”

“No one, they are safe back....home” he struggles with the last word.

Can it still be called a home? Empty rooms and empty bed? It was not one when a little child cried at night. He can't decide if the ghostly echoes of the cries are his or A-Yuan's. But Gusu Lan sometimes feels like the broken abandoned nest a family of birds left behind.

“I think you are being over worked” he says casually. “Or something big is on your mind”

“There is...” he says. “I might just say it now....”. Because really, some part of the pain is not knowing if there is chance.

“Alright, whatever it is, I'll help you, because you should know I got your back too”

“We should be cultivation partners”

Wei Ying looks surprised for a moment, he wasn't expecting that, but then he begin laughing

“See!, you are funny!”

“I'm not joking”

“Of course, you are, are I expected to believe that you, his revered Chief Cultivator wants to...to...cultivate with the likes of me?”

“Yes”

Wei Ying scoffs “If it is a joke, I must ask you to stop, you damn well know I can't cultivate”

“It is not, Wei Ying....I....I....”

His eyes go soft. “I see... I didn't want to say anything about that, but I recon this can't go on any longer. I'm not as clueless as everyone thinks me to be”

“I know you aren't. I know you sometimes walk faster”

Wei Ying bites his lips and he goes serious. Hes talking with the Yilling Patriarch and that scares him. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut. He might have ruined this friendship.

“You do know that being with me is an act of selfishness I can't allow? The cultivation worlds need you. And I can tell it would be very disappointed if you did something like this. I know you want to help me recover by cultivating, but It won't even work, why bother?”

“If I can't be allowed to be with my soul mate even if the cultivating doesn’t work, then what is the point of cultivating? What is the point of this whole lifetime? What is the point of leading the cultivating sects? “

Wei Ying snorts. “Such a romantic you are”

Wangji didn’t know if he should be offended.

“It's too much trouble even if your intentions are good. Gusu Lan won't just open his arms to me, your brother and uncle...”

“I'm acting sect leader. Xichen is not coming out of seclusion, and I expect it will take him a long time, as for my uncle. He might be disappointed, but not entirely surprised. He asks about your whereabouts often”

“Yeah, because he wants to know when the devil it's in theirs mist”

“Because he knows I care. He may never trust you, but he knows I do. And sometimes, you have to make do with the situation”

“And what about the other sect leaders”

Wangji frowned. “Smaller sects will cave to the bigger ones and their opinions can and are influenced easily. The bigger ones. One is your nephew, whom I know you spend considerable time with, and the other is your brother, you are avoiding him, but I can tell he just acting angrier because he wants you to contact him”

“Thats Jiang Cheng for you, but how have you gained this understanding of him?”

“Is it really that difficult to understand a man that expresses everything with anger?”

“I suppose not that difficult, or different to understand as yourself, a man that expresses everything with a calm stoic face, here we are after all, expressing our feelings in such a matter, I should be offended, you should be more romantic than this”

“Does Wei Ying want to know about what I feel when I see him? about my racing heart, about how much happiness it brings me? about how much I missed him for years and years?”

Wei Ying blushed. “No, no, stop, I thought I could take it, but I don’t"

“um” he nodded and felt the disappointment.

“You miss understand. I... feel very deeply for you too, but this not about what we feel for each other. I do know. I knew that night before the temple. And I though....”

Wangji closed his eyes.

“But the world.....”

“I know”

“I did so much wrong”

“You didn’t.... everyone makes mistakes, but they weren't born out of evil intentions. They weren't plotted and malicious, they never were, and the world knows this”

“They know, but they aren't going to stop being hypocrites and judgmental. How are you going to maintain such an important position, with me hanging from your arm?”

“Then I don’t care anymore.”

“What about our son?”

“He can remain with my uncle. But I gladly would quit and travel the lands. It is our promise to each other. How many years have to pass, before we fulfil it?, How many years are we supposed to wait? I can't...not anymore. Wei Ying is my soulmate”

Wei Ying sighed. “I thought this was going to end sooner too. Less than a year, but they are so clueless, like a pack of children, making and making the same mistakes”

“Then we have to solve it in other ways. We might never agree with the current leaders Wei Ying. But you are an excellent teacher, and you have been taking unofficial hunting trips with the boys of every clan. And the leaders constantly bring this fact to my attention. I think that if you officially joined Gusu Lan Clan, this wouldn’t be a worrying matter anymore, you would have expressed permission to do it”

“And how do I join Gusu Lan?”

“Marry me...”

Wei Ying looks surprised. “you mean...besides cultivating together you want to....not as...platonic soul mates...”

“As husbands”

“With kissing and everything?”

“Everything....”

“Bed sharing?”

“Everything”

“Clan allowance?!”

“Everything”

“Fucking?”

“Yes”

“Oh....”

His heart beat faster and faster and he’s getting light headed, it was not an answer yet.

“Can't say I expected that...you hide it very well...”

“umm” he hums' disappointed.

“So, I wonder if you are as passionate with this in action, as you are with everything else. You are a man of actions, not words...”

He looks into his eyes. They are shinning with mirth.

“Wei Ying might like to find out”

“He might indeed...” he smiled fully. “But seriously are you really sure you want us to be....so publicly together?”

“I'm not ashamed of what I desire, I want Wei Ying as my husband and Sizhui as our son”

“You are being very shameless” he smiled softly. “And... I'm happy. Glad. I do want to be with you, but I need to know you are completely sure you want this”

“I do, with all my passion, with all my hopes for the future. I never wanted to be chief cultivator in the first place. I did it because it seemed the right thing to do. But I can't go on without you anymore, its drowning me, it's killing me, I'm tired and alone, and I can't be apart from you a single day more. They either accept what you mean to me, or they can destroy themselves however they see fit”

“You are so sure...and I....”

“I understand....you want pace, you don’t want to go back to those clowns and jesters”

“I just don’t want to cause more trouble, it frightens me, politics....people's opinions, it has scarred me, it was so horrible last time, I did everything wrong, didn’t save the people I loved, I'm so afraid of failing you”

“Take your time thinking about it. I too need to know Wei Ying is sure to accept me and my responsibilities.”

“Thats a bit unfair. Makes me look like the bad guy. If I don’t go back to Gusu with you, you want to quit your job, how can I steal you all to myself, you know that doesn't settle with me, and this fear I feel.....”

“I don’t need a big position to keep our promise. And I do want to settle with you. We gave them too much before. And I know now what I might lose....I don’t want to lose you ever again....”

They both submerged into a contemplative state, only interrupted by the noise of the overcrowded Inn. When it was time to retire. Wei Ying made a big fuzz about the bed. But then again, he always did.

This time tho, it was different. A soon as the candle was blown. Wei Ying moved close enough to touch. Close enough to be held in his arms.

It felt so right, Wangji couldn't think of ever sleeping apart from him again. He was older now, so he knew that often, what people said it was wrong, it wasn’t actually. It was just misunderstood. And what people thought to be harmless, it often was.

He was not a youngster easily swayed into believing a set of hard rules and supposed truths.

People would always talk, they would whisper, they would plot. But being with this man, no matter what they tough or said. It was not wrong.

What felt wrong was to keep them apart.

If a good man can be driven into perdition, he thought this was his edge cliff.

And he’s sure to jump.

++6++++

Next morning, before sunset, they departed from the Inn in search of the hugger of the woods.

“Let's go this way, there's a stream nearby. And I believe a starved woman would set camp near it, it’s a very plentiful place, been there fishing too”

“umm”

“Hanguan-Jun, please don’t be disappointed if I can't be so sure to answer your kind attentions”

“I'm not. It is a serious matter”

“Of course, and there's also that our son is in pain”

“Must hurry”

“I'm serious, It's not that I don’t want.....its just....I feel fear, I feel so tired too, some days I feel like I can't love anymore. I feel that if I lose a single person on my life, it would break me again, everything would be dark”

“I'm here for you”

“And sometimes I wished you weren't....it's painful to think about, but the fear I have of losing you sometimes keeps me awake at night. Sometimes I dream my sister, and sometimes I dream it's you whose death I provoke. I...I feel so empty without you, but I keep thinking that I can't do this. I can't do it anymore”

Wangji stopped walking and felt his heart shattering.

He knew like an abstract concept that Wei Ying had lost so much, and that his pains and ghost would always be with him. But hearing him say these things, made him feel like he failed him. Like he was not enough to protect him. Like once again he couldn’t do a single thing to stop him.

Maybe he shouldn’t.

When they were younger, he tried and tried to stop him from suffering and that made him go away.

But then, what was he supposed to do?

“Lan Zhan...” he begins. But stops abruptly.

From the foliage, a needle sails the air. Wei Ying’s talisman stops it. A furious scream is heard and in just a matter of seconds, Wangji takes his sword and takes a stance.

The woman comes out of the shadows. Shes as described, a shabby dirty woman with crazed gaze.

“Why are you attacking people?!!” screams Wei Ying full of anger, Chenqing on his hands.

“Not people, just you!” she rages and storms in his direction.

No time to think about it. Wangji sways his sword to stop her. The woman to his surprise, takes a sword out of a shahs on her back just in time to stop him from cutting her in half.

They dance around, taking blows and stopping deathly hits. Shes no joking around, she truly wants to kill them, no explanation.

“WHY?” screams Wei Ying throwing more talismans than what Wangji can track, but she is so much experienced than expected.

She is definitely a cultivator, but her face is not one he remembers

“Who in this land does not want to kill you, Wei Wuxian?, haven't you killed enough people to warrant a revenge?”

“Too many to count!”, he says angered. “But I'm asking why did you attack my son?”

“Lan Wangji son!” she screams and, in her rage, she nicks him on the face. He frowns and looks at her feet.

He’s seen that before.

As soon as he thinks he seen it before, he knows where he’s seen it before. DeJa'Vu.

“This are Gusu Lan techniques, badly done.”

“Shup up!” she screams. “Bastard, fucking bastard, you got the gall to tell me that to my face”

Wei Ying stops long enough to examine her, then he throws into the battle again, dancing in the way the Yummeng Jiang Sect does when in defensive attack, but he does not carry a sword with him anymore. And just dances around, his back glued to his, as the woman desperately moves in look of an opening.

But with Wei Ying guarding his back, they both moving in tandem to the sound of an erratic dark melody. The restless souls in the woods come, ghostly lights in the shape of screaming faces.

No human voice's, empty expression forever etched in agony. Their voices are the cruel screams of the ghost flute.

She keeps the pace, never underestimate the power of anger and the thirst of revenge. And of course, never understimate a Gusu technique even when badly performed. But in the end, she slows down her attacks.

Shes starved, she's tired.

“Why do you want this revenge?!” grunts Wei Ying with the effort.

“Because I swearer to kill you both, that child too, if I could, and the opportunity presented itself”

“What did we do?!”

She roars and moves quicker in one more powerful blow. Shes erratic and she stumbles and yet, she still grazes him in the arm and then very nearly gives Wei Ying a poke. But because he thinks Wei Ying has too many scars. He moves lighting fast and shoves her out.

She falls to the ground with a hard hit. She bleeds from the deep wound he gave her on the shoulder. She hisses.

“Enough is enough” says Wei Ying. “I’ll give you one chace to break my sons curse. Or I'll kill you”

“I won't do it!” she grunts.”

“I'm just fine with it. Some people a better off this world”

“Why couldn’t you stay dead?”

“I don’t know what business I have with you, so you shouldn’t care about mine”

“Underserving bag of dirt” she spats. “You!..... you two!,..you killed my husband”

They both understand then.

“Who?” asks Wei Ying.

Ok, maybe just Wangji understands, but he can't blame him.

“Su she...” he says ending the mystery.

“Who?, ah?!, wait....that guy was married? and to a formidable cultivator?”

She begins laughing. “You ended my life. He was my world. We were very happy”

“He took wrong choices and bad turns” Wangji says. “He was a lying traitor”

Her laughter turns into crying. “Yes....but I loved him”

“You can still turn around, it's not late, whatever he might have done, your life should be spared. You can love again if you wish”

“As if...” she says looking at Wangji. “As if one can have more than a soul mate on one lifetime, you should know Lan Wangji”

He does. It is sometimes impossible. It's so rare to find even one. He can't imagine ever finding another soulmate. Not in the way Wei Ying is to him. He has never doubted that their fates are tied by romantic love from another lifetimes.

A tie so strong can only mean a wife or a husband. Otherwise, his lust is not necessary. Fate could have them as friends, as brothers, as any other thing. But he was born into a cut sleeve to make it work.

“Then its better if you go meet him soon” he says. Because he honestly thinks it's a mercy.

When Wen Ying was lost to him, he considered the possibility of just going after him. Another chance in another place, in another timeline.

He did not, because of their child. Said child was sick and hurting. And that made him pause. If he had given up, he might miss Wei Ying’s return.

“Do you have a keepsake of him?”

“No” she closes her eyes. “We couldn’t....”

“Then why did you hold on? if you don’t have...hope” he asks.

“Revenge is a hope” she says with frown. “Because I promised him at his grave”

“Thats bad...” Wei Ying says. “No matter what he did, he took some Karma he would have to repair later. And if you do more damage, you’ll lose your chance to meet him again, too busy repairing your own wrong doings”

“I don’t care anymore”

Wei Ying sighed. “Then....we.”

She scoffed. “Fuck you....I hate you so much, but the mere thought of ever seeing you again even if I don't know it's you, it's disgusting. I don't want to ever cross fates with you, I’ll let the boy live, but you better kill me, I'm done”

“I don’t want to do you wrong either” said Wei Ying slumping his shoulders.

“Coward” she said. She removed a wooded box out of her sleeve and the putrid remains of a heart were inside filled with needles and ribbons. She untied them all. “He should get better...” she sighed. “You are a such bastards, and I hope one day, you feel this pain again”

She took a dagger out and ended herself. The splatter covered the ground. Wei Ying flinched and looked away as she struggled for breath.

And that was the end of that.

+++7++++

The journey back was peaceful and quiet. Both of them too worried to resume their talk. They needed to know that Sizhui was safe.

But also, the woman's words were etched into their minds.

It sat heavily and unsaid.

++8++++

When they arrived at Gusu, they were informed that Sizhui was getting better. When they visited him, he was awake and full of questions.

Wangji still needed to reprimand him about the incident.

“Be more careful, be more vigilant. Some people would always look to do you harm, just because who your parents are....”

“You mean....”

“I feel responsible for you A-Yuan, when I joke and say I am like a mother to you, what I really mean is that I do love you like a son, I always did. You were so small...” Wei Ying says. “I'm sorry that would make your life harder. But I don’t regret it. Loving you as a father”

The boy blushed and nodded. “Thats...more than I can hope for and deserve, honestly”

“Nonsense, you are a sweet kid”

“I’ll be more careful from now on. It honestly passed my attention. I didn’t feel when she prickled me, but I should have checked out as soon as I felt it, it was just like a bug bite as the days passed”

“Yes, you should inform us at once whenever you feel something out of the ordinary. Your father is the chief cultivator and head of Gusu Lan after all. You are too burdened by us, but also, very, very loved”

“I will!” he says earnestly. Wangji feels a deep warm on his chest.

Even if they aren't husbands in the future, they still are fathers together.

+9+++

After two more days of rest, Sizhui is allowed to stand from the bed. They let him sit on the garden outside the infirmary, he sits on a warmed patch of grass. The sun over his head, book in hand.

Wangji and Wei Ying sit on the shaded porch of the budling drinking tea in pace.

It's very, very peaceful, and exactly what he needed. Those days are blurred with quiet happiness. A vacation of sorts to him.

“He shouldn’t stay in the sun to long unless he gets a hat” comments Wei Ying.

“um” he agrees.

“This feels too domestic”

“um?” he asks

“the three of us.... sitting here as time passes. I know it can't be like this all the time, but this stolen moment is perfect”

Wangji looks over at Sizhui and agrees.

“Maybe we should get another one....”

“Another one?...” he asks confused.

“Another child...” he smiles. “Just to keep stealing moments like this....”

He grunts a small smile.

“We could do that. Adopt another child in need. Educate him”

“Yes...”

“Because no one would bat an eyelash if we are married all good and proper”

Wangji looks quickly at him.

“Yeah...” Wei Ying smiles. “That woman made me think. It's true that soulmates are a rare gift from fate. This is my chance to be with you. Who knows when would I get the chance of finding you again? You are the one for me, we have known this since when were young. As an adult I can't deny that I was born for you. I have done too much damage, and I will be expected to repay all my wrong doings, I'm sure we’ll find each other again, but that’s a problem I don’t have right now”

“What about your fears?”

“Can it really get any worse than what has happened? I'm sure I won't be all very peaceful like this. I'm sure it would be hard and sometimes dark. But you are a light to me. You don’t have to run after me anymore. I'm done running. And I believe it is my time to sit beside you and wait. I’ll wait until you are done with whatever you need to do, and then, when we both are free with our time. We could do anything we want. And besides, I do have a knack for teaching”

Wangji took his hand.

“I’ll be a great life” said Wei Ying with a smile. An Wangji knew then, that it was true.

The race was over, but they’ll kelp walking beyond the finishing line.

#alightbuthappypen #wangxianLNY21 #*LNYfic21 #*LNYgifts21

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mmikmmik2 · 4 years ago

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First impressions of episodes nine and ten under the readmore

The Castle Car

OHHHHHHH

I loved...... the backstory with Jeremy.........

laksdjalkfadsj Amelia taking over the car completely offscreen while Min-Gi and Ryan are like WHAT IS HAPPENING!!!

Okay this established something I'd been thinking about for a while - Amelia seemed a /lot/ more benevolent at this point, which makes sense! I think it took a long, long time and a lot of little falls for Amelia to sink to the depths of The Ball Pit Car and The Engine. I mean even in S1, it took her a while to work up to "fuck it, I'm just going to murder this child". Back when she first took over the train, she /was/ thinking about other passengers, she /was/ thinking about how her actions would affect them and at least /trying/ to take steps for their benefit. The Amelia we met in S1 would not have bothered sending the Steward out to give even a half-assed explanation, nor cared about removing the boots.

Ryan clearly projecting himself onto Kez during the "you don't think and then you just fly away from the consequences", and... I think... it seemed like Min was also projecting Ryan onto Kez at the end there when he was telling her that he knows she tries and that he thinks she's basically good? Hm.

Kudos to people who predicted that this season would have themes of societal pressure and bigotry, personally I do think that was a big running thread of subtext this season. Morgan made a comment along the lines of like, "you can stay here and not deal with all the crap that sent you to the train in the first place", iirc. And like I said - Amelia taking over the train during Min-Gi and Ryan's story /does/ kind of deprive them of agency, but loss of agency does seem to be a theme this season. Ryan's reaction to Amelia showing up via the Steward basically seemed like him just losing it that bullshit keeps happening to them that they can't predict or control and that he doesn't know how to go forward.

Leaving and being left behind still huge themes this season

Keeeeeeeeez ;_;

God Morgan is actually really interesting though - Jeremy's journal said that there were lots of passengers at his first anniversary party but none afterwards? And Kez said it felt like the passengers leaving was getting to Morgan over time? So to me that kind of implies that like... Morgan has given up on wanting to help passengers, /but she actually used to be really good at it?/ I mean there were multiple people with her and she was getting them out? She kind of embodies the strengths of the train, as a weird out-of-context place where people can get some space from their lives and take time to /just/ work on their problems, but in a situation where they're safe and comfortable and not afraid of death

OKAY LAST EPISODE

The Train to Nowhere

Hmmmmmm. A lot about this episode felt really, really good and I liked it, but I think this season is one I need to think more about. Part of that is a genuinely good thing imo - the writers went out on a limb making Ryan and Min-Gi's arcs so convoluted and nonlinear, and I think it was a good choice. And the most important moments - and again this I would characterize as a deliberate storytelling choice and one I liked - weren't dramatic confrontations, it was times the characters just sat down and talked to each other.

Because of that last point up there, I like that Kez's pursuers ended up being like... kind of dumb and pointless? Honestly, I thought the dialogue in that scene ended up being clunky, which really bothered me. The execution could have been a lot better imo. But the themes of like, "you don't have to fight, but you do have to stop and think and deal with the consequences of your actions" worked for this season.

Season three still stands head and shoulders above as the best season imo but I gotta think about where I'd rank season four compared to the first two... but even if I land on thinking it wasn't as good as/liking it less than seasons one and two, it was still a great season. I loved it!

I really like that Ryan confessed he tried to leave Min-Gi behind and Min-Gi accepted it and didn't turn it into a fight. It's like I was talking about earlier, where all those big progress moments have to be built up to by a lot of little moments where characters practice healthier behavior and are working hard to internalize important lessons. The guys had to practice forgiving each other and not assuming the worst of each other, and building trust that even when they each backslide or hurt each other, they're still going to be there for each other. And that practice paid off here.

I think Ryan and Min-Gi's ages are important... they're still /extremely/ young, but they are adults. And they're like. moving into this age where how they relate to each other, and whether or not they're in each other's lives, is entirely dependent on their own choices - they can't just coast on seeing each other because their families are neighbors and they go to the same school. If they let themselves think "this is unforgivable" or "I can't fix this", then that is going to be true. If they think "okay, let's work on this together", and genuinely mean it, and trust that the other person means it too, then there's very little they can't fix. I think a lot of what we're seeing in episode ten is them successfully transitioning into that new stage of their relationship. Kez struck me as awfully young in this episode... there's no point to trying to assign a human age to a living concierge bell, but it's like she's prepping to enter that phase of life that Ryan and Min-Gi are now fully within.

also thinking Kez seeming "young" is a consequence of Kez seeming to be like. literally created to be the Comedy Relief Funney Bell who clowns around. the court jester to Morgan's castle. whoops she had too much character development!

ahhhhhhhh I did like that ending though... Chicken Choice Judy plays again... I love them

"Train to nowhere" is... a good ending to the series... god I wish it didn't have to end...

#infinity train spoilers

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elfindreams · 3 years ago

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SOME THOUGHTS NOW THAT I’VE FINISHED ADWD:

• good god I can’t imagine having been a fan of this series all along and having to wait ten-plus years for TWoW, which STILL hasn’t been released... WHAT HAPPENS TO BRIENNE IS SHE OKAY I NEED TO KNOW

•I have a weird and terrible premonition that the prologue chapter of TWoW, if/when it ever comes out, will be from the POV of Rickon or perhaps Shaggydog.

•I haven’t kept proper count or anything but there have to be at least five different characters (all male, incidentally) who are described within the narration as grotesquely fat and repulsive and smelly. Like, constantly. In excruciating detail. After the second or third instance of this, I began to have this uncomfortable sense that there are some kind of sublimated body image issues and self-hatred at play here, because GRRM himself doesn’t exactly have a slender body shape... is this guy okay, emotionally speaking? I’m not even saying that in a jokey way, like, seriously, is he? ._.

• On a separate but not-irrelevant note. This man just LOVES himself some titties, huh. Absolutely adores them. (Relatable)

• I have a reasonably high tolerance for disturbing shit within fiction provided that it’s handled well, and I’m the last person to insist that authors need to show their characters brushing their teeth before crossing the street lest their grown-ass target audience absorb negative moral values, but the Victarion chapters in ADWD crossed the line for me. Yes he’s an intentionally awful person yes you’re not supposed to feel comfortable yes it will surely all make sense once TWoW comes out blah blah blah blah blah but, like... what’s the point of Victarion? I mean, really? His chapters are unpleasant to read, they contribute very little to the plot so far, and on a thematic level, the only thing that really comes across is “LOOK HOW AWFUL AND MISOGYNISTIC THIS GUY AND HIS CULTURE IS!!! WOW, ~TOXIC MASCULINITY~ SURE IS BAD!”, which is just as simplistic and didactic as only writing nice characters who perfectly fit our world’s moral sensibilities. And that’s especially strange because Jaime and Sam’s respective subplots are both about men who are super emotionally fucked-up (in completely opposite ways) because they were raised to think that the best and only way to be a man is to be a Cool Tough Badass Whomst Fights Real Good™, and both are done really well. So on that level, the Victarion chapters are treading on well-worn ground, and also faceplanting.

• It belatedly occurs to me that Ygritte was described as “pug-nosed”, which implies that pugs exist in Westeros...

• I was more sad about the presumed deaths of Pretty Pig and Crunch than about Jon Snow, tbh.

• *kicks rock* I wish Ser Barristan was my grandpa...

• I remember seeing Discourse on my dash circa 2014-2015 regarding Dany’s subplot in Astapor/Yunkai/Meereen as a white savior fantasy, and it’s certainly not for me to say whether that part of the show is Good, Actually, because I am super white and also haven’t watched the show. But if anything, the book version seems like a critique of that type of story: Dany shows up in these places that are completely foreign to her, swiftly and forcibly fixes their major societal ills using her superior firepower without knowing anything about the underlying factors which contribute to their existence... and then she is shocked when everything goes horribly wrong like 20 minutes later. (i.e. she ends slavery but the rich and powerful former slaveowners are still rich and powerful and still ✨control the means of production✨ so most of the formerly enslaved people end up right back where they started, it’s just that they’re now “free” but being paid starvation wages and barely surviving instead of being literally enslaved. Which she maybe could’ve avoided had she spent time learning about how the city’s economy worked and would need to be changed, and/or sat down with people and directly asked them what they wanted and needed, what would be useful to them in starting new lives for themselves, etc.)

• (I feel like I’ve already mentioned the above bullet point in a previous post but I am dumb of ass and pure of heart and also don’t feel like going back through to check)

• Satin lives!!! YES!!!

• oh right uhhhh yeah R.I.P. Quentyn, you died as you lived: doing your best but unfortunately also being kind of below-average

• Regardless of whether Young Griff/Aegon is actually Aegon, Varys’ master plan seems... bizarrely short-sighted and risky? Like, he spends 20 years intentionally destabilizing the realm plotting to put this perfectly-molded prince on the throne, but what happens if his perfect prince gets randomly thrown from his horse or gets an infected cut and dies? Even if he ends up on the throne, how can it be guaranteed that his own children are equally perfect future rulers? Is that why he and Ilyrio helped Viserys and Dany survive, so they could serve as backup in case anything happened to Aegon? But if so, then why didn’t they keep those two closer at hand, and try to educate them in a similar fashion, and keep them safe? And if his whole motive is peace and prosperity for the realm, then what was wrong with the existing state of affairs by the end of ADWD, with Cersei stripped of political power, a good-natured and pliable child king on the throne, and Kevan serving as the regent and doing a legitimately good job? Instead of the whole convoluted Aegon plot, he could’ve just... I dunno, found a way to maintain a position with court and pulled some strings to make sure Tommen was properly taught how to be a good king.

• oh yeah right R.I.P. Kevan, too

#text post #asoiaf shitposting #long post

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ibijau · 4 years ago

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Worst engagement AU // on AO3

Lan Xichen has a chance encounter with Nie Huaisang and, for once, it goes well.

warning for mentions of canon-typical corporal punishment on a character

The punishment for a lower case of assault is thirty strikes of the discipline rulers on the back. The punishment for not coming forward with a fault with due diligence is also thirty strikes. So is taking advantage of one’s position to commit a crime. Then, because Lan Xichen’s status is special, the total ends up rounded as one hundred strikes, since as future sect leader, the elders feel he ought to behave better than he did and be an example to other juniors.

Although it is not a light punishment to go through, Lan Xichen counts himself lucky. When he explained to his uncle some of what happened with Nie Huaisang, omitting any unnecessary details such as who exactly he kissed by force, he was sure his behaviour would have earned him not just the disciple rulers, but one strike from the disciple whips. He had also been terrified that his punishment would be public, but due to his position and the current political situation, Lan Qiren and the elders had the kindness of dealing with this privately.

When it is over, one of the elders severely orders Lan Xichen not to repeat such shameful behaviour. He is then released from the ancestral hall, and advised to take the rest of the afternoon to reflect on his conduct. So as Lan Xichen walks away, very slowly, his only question is whether he ought to meditate in his room where he is sure not to be disturbed, or in the cold ponds which promises some relief for his pain.

The first one is probably what is expected of him, but the second is immensely tempting and Lan Xichen’s steps start turning in that direction when his path crosses that of Nie Huaisang.

It’s unusual, these days, to find him alone. It is even stranger for him to spot Lan Xichen and not turn around or pretend he didn’t see him. Instead Nie Huaisang, after only some hesitation, walks closer and grins.

“Told you we’d talk before our next meeting,” Nie Huaisang greets him.

“You did. Are you going somewhere, Nie gongzi? I don’t think I’ve often seen you in this part of the Cloud Recesses.”

“I was looking for you, actually. Everyone else has started studying for the finals, so I’m left on my own. I thought we could… chat?”

Lan Xichen pinches his lips. Meeting Nie Huaisang at such a time is really less than ideal when he just wants to rest and meditate, but refusing this offer would be deeply unwise. It's the first time Nie Huaisang has ever sought out his company and Lan Xichen doesn't know how his fiancé would react to being turned down. Badly, if past interactions are to go by.

"I would love to," Lan Xichen replies. "Do you want us to walk together, or may we go somewhere to sit?"

"Well, actually…" Nie Huaisang hesitates, his usual assurance failing him. "Since you've said before… I thought we could go to my cabin and I could show you my paintings?"

There's fear and uncertainty in the younger boy's eyes as he makes his offer. Lan Xichen doesn't notice it, too overwhelmed at being finally offered what he has wanted for months. Suddenly the intense pain in his back isn't such an issue anymore.

“I would love that,” Lan Xichen says.

“I won’t be able to offer you tea,” Nie Huaisang mutters. “We’re not allowed to make it in the cabin anymore since I almost burned it down.”

“You what?”

His confidence slowly returning, Nie Huaisang cackles and, apparently on an impulse, he grabs Lan Xichen by the arm and starts pulling him along. The pace is a little faster than Lan Xichen would really prefer with the current state of his back, but he easily allows it when Nie Huaisang starts babbling about the incident which cost him the right to make tea in his cabin. It’s a convoluted tale, and one that involves the breaking of a number of rules, but it’s still a funny enough story. Nie Huaisang is a little shy at first, but after Lan Xichen chuckles a few times, he gets more exuberant until Lan Xichen is struggling not to laugh when they finally reach the cabin.

“Nie gongzi, I think you’re a menace,” he says as they go in.

“I think so too, thanks!” Nie Huaisang proudly replies. “Well, just… go sit on the sofa, I’ll get my paintings. I mean, if you still want to see them?”

This time Lan Xichen does notice the other boy's uncertainty, which puzzles him. After how many times he's asked, it should be clear that he is very interested in Nie Huaisang’s work.

"I haven't changed my mind," Lan Xichen insists with a smile. "Are we to expect your comrades to join us?"

"No, Jiang xiong is conducting a group study and a lot of people joined since they noticed him and his disciples always get good grades. I think he kind of likes teaching, even if he always grumbles about it."

With great care and a little difficulty, Lan Xichen sits on the sofa and tries to find a position that won't put too much strain on his back. He ends up sitting very stiffly and having to avoid resting against the sofa’s back. When Nie Huaisang joins him on the sofa with a stack of papers in his arms, he immediately notices.

"It's fine, you can get comfortable," Nie Huaisang says with a half grin. "I told you, there won't be anyone to see you, so just relax. You said there's expectations about you but it's just me here, and I already know you're not perfect."

It is not an attack. At least, Lan Xichen thinks it is not intended as such, but it feels like one all the same.

"My back hurts today," he explains. "This is as comfortable as I can get right now."

"Then why agree to come with me if you're in pain?"

"I wanted to see your paintings, of course."

Nie Huaisang is baffled by that declaration, his cheeks colouring a little as he looks away, preferring to focus on the papers he brought.

"Lan gongzi, you're so weird," he mutters. "It's fine, we could do this another day… I'm not so cruel that I'd wish for you to be in pain."

"I'll be in pain whether I'm here or somewhere else," Lan Xichen points out. "At least here, the company is good."

The colour on Nie Huaisang’s face gets more pronounced. To distract from it, he all but shoves his paintings onto Lan Xichen’s lap.

"There, enjoy I guess," he grumbles. "They're not as good as yours for sure, but these are my best ones, I think. Well, the least awful ones, anyway."

Perhaps Lan Xichen should object to such depreciative language. If this happens again, he surely will. Right now though, he is far too excited by finally getting to see his fiancé’s works instead of contenting himself with stolen glances or forgotten studies. It was well worth the long wait. Nie Huaisang has progressed immensely since the rabbits that still hang in Lan Wangji’s bedroom. He may not have gotten good grades in class this year either, but Nie Huaisang’s time in Gusu was put to good use.

When he paints animals, they look ready to leap off the page and go on with their own business. When he paints landscapes, Lan Xichen can almost hear the wind in the trees, the song of the river. Even his portraits, which Lan Xichen would admit are not Nie Huaisang’s strength, are still rather good and capture the personality of the model if not their exact likeness.

Painting after painting, Lan Xichen makes sure to comment on the quality of each work. It’s hardly a conscious decision, he simply cannot look at them and not point out how good each one is. Here and there, a very flustered Nie Huaisang tries to object that this particular work is a little weak, or that another one fails to follow the rules of what makes a good painting even if he personally likes it anyway. Sometimes, Lan Xichen agrees with the criticism, and offers his own opinion on what could be improved. At other times, he has to defend the creation against its creator. Rules are one thing, but beauty can transcend them.

“Lan gongzi, you don’t have to try so hard to get my good opinion,” Nie Huaisang mutters after such a speech. “I’m decent but not great, I know it, so there’s no need…”

“I haven’t said a word I did not mean,” Lan Xichen protests, more amused by his fiancé’s heavy blush than he’d care to admit. Nie Huaisang has been acting so confident and indifferent around him all this year, it’s nice to see him affected by something. “You asked me to be open and honest, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Nie Huaisang huffs, and grabs back the painting that sparked this.

“I guess Lan gongzi’s tastes must have changed a lot since last year,” he bitterly remarks. “For you to turn this encouraging…”

“From the first moment I saw one, I’ve thought the world of your paintings,” Lan Xichen objects, glad that nobody except his brother was there the first time he saw one of Nie Huaisang’s works. He’s more than a little ashamed of the way he retracted his good opinion after learning who, exactly, had painted these rabbits, but at least Nie Huaisang wasn’t there for that and it’s a relief.

Nie Huaisang huffs again, his blush calming down at last.

“You discouraged me from pursuing art last year,” he reminds Lan Xichen, “so clearly you didn’t think I was very good at it.”

“Oh. No, that was a different matter,” Lan Xichen says, feeling uncomfortable from more than just the pain in his back. “That was never about your skill. Back then, didn’t I already say the painting you gave Wangji was good?”

“Did you?” Nie Huaisang sneers. “I just remember you telling me that I should drop painting and focus on cultivation. That’s how bad I must have seemed to you, if you thought it was that much of a waste of time.”

Guilt shoots through Lan Xichen’s chest, radiating painfully in his body and making him tense, which in turns pulls on his bruised back. He doesn’t remember his exact words, but he’s sure that he never intended to imply Nie Huaisang was bad at art.

“It wasn’t like that at all,” Lan Xichen sighs. “I really did think you were very good, but I thought… I thought it would be selfish to encourage you.”

Nie Huaisang frowns and wrinkles his nose in disbelief, but he looks a little less angry already.

“Makes no sense. How is it selfish to tell me to do something I like?”

“I thought if I encouraged you, it would be because I would eventually benefit from it since it would ensure we had something in common,” Lan Xichen explains, looking down at the paintings on his lap. “While if I told you to study… everyone around us was talking about your cultivation and how it needed to improve. Frankly, it doesn’t impact me whether you have a high cultivation or not, while it certainly does change things if we have a passion to share. I thought this would be the right thing to say.”

“You discouraged me from art because you thought whatever made both of us miserable would have to be the better path?” Nie Huaisang gasps, definitely more baffled than angry now. “Lan gongzi, your mind is really twisted sometimes. And here I told myself you just thought I was too awful at it to pursue painting anymore...”

“You are excellent at it!” Lan Xichen protests, eyes snapping up toward Nie Huaisang. “Even back then, when I did not want to think well of you, I couldn’t deny that. In fact, it is your skill in painting that first forced me to reconsider what I believed about you. I’m very sorry if I made you doubt your capacity. You are a painter of rare talent.”

Nie Huaisang’s eyes open wide at this renewed praise, while his blush returns, more intense than before. He is very cute this way, and Lan Xichen finds that he likes the other boy when he’s flustered, just as much as he likes him when he’s confident and cocky. He wonders if there’s any aspect of Nie Huaisang he wouldn’t like. Aside from his occasional bouts of cruelty… and even those have never been unprovoked, so Lan Xichen can’t fully blame the other boy for that.

“Lan gongzi, you’re really too much!” Nie Huaisang grumbles, slapping his shoulder and shoving him slightly, the way Lan Xichen has seen him do with Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan.

He would be happy to be treated with this sort of easy casualness, but the movement ripples through his back and he can’t help hissing in pain. Nie Huaisang notices and frowns.

“Does your back bother you that much?” he asks. “If you want, I probably have something for the pain, but you should get that checked.”

“I’m quite fine,” Lan Xichen assures him, only for Nie Huaisang to roll his eyes and jump on his feet, dropping the painting back on his lap before striding toward his bed. “Really, there’s no need… why would you even have medication here? All guest disciples are encouraged to seek out…”

“I’m a Nie,” his fiancé grumbles, dropping on his knees and wriggling under his bed to grab something there. Lan Xichen forces himself to look away. “My brother would never let me travel without the adequate necessities. I’ve got money saved aside, talismans, warning flares, and basic medical supplies. I’m sure it’s fine if I give you a few pills though. Ah, right there!” Nie Huaisang triumphantly exclaims, pulling a small, dust covered box from its hiding place. “It should at least make you feel better until you see a healer. But really, Lan gongzi, you’re unreasonable! You should have told me you were this unwell.”

“I’m not feeling so bad,” Lan Xichen replies, wishing he could rise up and go kneel next to Nie Huaisang to make him stop rummaging through his box of medication. A quick attempt at getting up makes it clear that it will take some effort, though, and he prefers to remain sitting for now to avoid giving the other boy any reason to worry. “I was happy you’d want to spend time with me. That’s worth a little discomfort.”

Nie Huaisang looks up from his box, clearly unconvinced.

“You swear you’re fine?”

“Maybe not fine as such,” Lan Xichen concedes with a grimace, “but not so unwell that you need to be fussing over me.”

Shrugging, Nie Huaisang carelessly shoves his box back under the bed and stands once more, dusting his knees.

“It’s your back,” he says in a tone that he implies he would never put up with pain if offered another option. “Hm… it’s almost time for dinner. Do you want to start going now, since you might need to walk slowly, what with your back that really doesn’t hurt at all?”

Nie Huaisang smirks, which Lan Xichen can’t help answering with a smile. It’s not the first time Nie Huaisang teases him, far from it, but it feels like there’s less of a bite to it at the moment. Maybe someday they’ll be able to joke together, or even to laugh. Just thinking of it, Lan Xichen’s heart beats a little faster.

“I don’t mind if we stay here a while longer,” he replies, hoping it isn’t too obvious how eager he is for more time alone with Nie Huaisang. “I really enjoy looking at your paintings.”

Nie Huaisang grimaces playfully, but still saunters closer.

“Lan gongzi, I’ll be honest,” he chuckles. “It’s a little embarrassing for me to sit here while you say all those nice things. If you want, I can bring the ones you’ve not yet seen to our next meeting, and then I can look at yours. It would be a nice way to pass the time, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Lan Xichen replies, ready to agree to anything if he can continue looking at Nie Huaisang’s paintings. “Or perhaps… if you’re still willing, what about another lesson? I’ve tried again to copy your style, but I’m still rather dreadful at it.”

Nie Huaisang’s eyebrows rise high on his face. “You’d still want to? It ended so badly last time… though I suppose that’s my fault. Knowing your brother, I should have expected you were like that about being touched.”

Lan Xichen shakes his head, slowly to avoid putting too much strain on his back.

“That time, I was just surprised. I wasn’t expecting you to help me that way, considering you didn’t like me too much then.”

“Oh, I still don’t,” Nie Huaisang retorts, his good humour dropping like a mask. “Though I dislike you a little less than I used to.”

Hearing that hurts, especially when seeing Nie Huaisang change his countenance from cheerful to disdainful so quickly once more. But since his voice doesn’t appear as venomous as it was all these other times, Lan Xichen decides to remain hopeful. It’s too soon for them to be friends, but he’ll take being hated less.

“I’ll take that as progress, and be content with it. As I said last time, that you’re willing to consider this at all is already more than I expected. And this isn’t me trying too hard!” Lan Xichen adds, recognising the expression on his fiancé’s face. “I mean that.”

“Lan gongzi, you’re just too much,” Nie Huaisang grumbles, grabbing the paintings on his lap and turning his back on Lan Xichen while pretending to put them in order. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Let’s start walking toward the dining halls, I’m starving and you’re going to be slow, I can just tell. Do you need help getting up?”

Lan Xichen carefully shakes his head, but hisses when he tries to leave the sofa. Sitting stiffly for so long did his back no favours. He is still wondering how to maybe ask for Nie Huiasang’s help when the other boy, having unceremoniously dropped his paintings on his bed, returns to his side and casually grabs him by the elbow to pull him on his feet.

“You’re just as stubborn as Da-ge!” he scolds. “He’s the same when he’s hurt, too proud to let anyone give a hand. I’m going to ask again, are you sure you shouldn’t go see someone for that?”

Even through several layers of fabric, Lan Xichen feels as though Nie Huaisang’s hand is burning him. It takes him a few seconds to realise a question was asked, and a few more to decide what to do. His back is killing him, if he’s honest, but the infirmary is much closer to the guest disciples' cabins than the dining halls, and that informs his decision.

“I can bear with it for now, don’t worry. I’ll go to the cold spring after dinner and I should be perfectly well again tomorrow or the day after.”

“So stubborn,” Nie Huaisang grumbles, but he doesn’t release Lan Xichen’s elbow. “Fine, it really is your choice, in the end. But let’s get going. I wonder what they’ll serve tonight? I’m a growing man you know, and all that rabbit food is stunting me. It’s your sect’s fault if I’m still so short, Lan gongzi.”

Lan Xichen chuckles, and doesn’t bother pointing out that it’s a very flimsy way to excuse his height when all Lan cultivators his age, and quite a few younger ones, are taller than Nie Huaisang in spite of never eating anything but ‘rabbit food’.

“There’s nothing wrong with your size,” he says instead as they leave the cabin, Nie Huaisang still holding his arm as if he were an invalid.

“Hush, I’m complaining, don’t start being sensible, I shan’t bear with it,” Nie Huaisang retorts, sticking his tongue at him. “Horrible rabbit food, I say! I shall perish of hunger. Already, I am wasting away.”

They walk slowly towards the dining halls, and reach them just as the bell for dinner rings. Now that there are more people around them, Lan Xichen feels somewhat self conscious about the way Nie Huaisang holds on to his elbow, but since his fiancé (now complaining about the weather in Gusu) finds no issues with being seen this way, Lan Xichen does his best to act unaffected as well. It does get difficult to keep a straight face when his eyes meet those of his stunned uncle, but thankfully the malaise doesn’t last since at the same time, Nie Huaisang spots his friends.

“Jin-xiong, you went to study with Jiang-xiong as well?” Nie Huaisang exclaims, dropping Lan Xichen’s arm and rushing toward his friends. “Betrayal! Since when can the two of you even be in the same room without having an argument? If I had known, I’d have come as well!”

“And that’s why we didn’t tell you,” Jin Zixuan retorts. “It’s impossible to study when you’re around, and some of us would like to pass, thanks.”

The two start getting into a playful argument until Jiang Cheng, never the most patient person around, gets tired and drags them both to sit down so they can eat. Lan Xichen watches them, and is amused enough that he doesn’t even mind having been abandoned so quickly. He did get to have Nie Huaisang to himself for a long while after all, longer than they’ve ever been together so far, and it is no small feat that they didn’t even have a single argument that whole time.

Lan Xichen takes the victories he can get.

#xisang #jau writes #this and the next two chapters are intended to be quiet moment so welp enjoy while it lasts!#it's boys learning to get along at last!!#worst engagement au

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moontheoretist · 4 years ago

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"Sometimes my teammates don't tell me things. I was kind of hoping Thor would be the exception." "Yeah, give him time. We don't know what the Maximoff kid showed him." ―Steve Rogers and Tony Stark

I really don’t want to demonize Wanda more than she already is, but when MCU tells us that Wanda is “just a kid” it is wrong statement. This is the exact moment when we get told something by the movie, while what we are shown (or aren’t shown) by it is the exact opposite of the relayed information (and I really don’t want to say it, but Tony is nearly twice as old as Steve, so for him everybody who is past 20 can be “a kid”, especially if they look young). Wanda Maximoff is not a kid, not in Age of Ultron and not when she volunteered for Hydra experiments. Comics which covers the experiments gives us the rough timeline for when it happens. Twins volunteer for the experiments probably after 2012, around the fall of SHIELD, because Baron von Strucker mentions Project Insight in a way which sounds as if it was close to realization. And it is close to realization in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which according to timeline (no matter how weird, convoluted and full of errors that timeline is*) happens in 2014, while Age of Ultron happens in 2015. Wanda and Pietro say that they lost their parents when they were just 10yo, and considering that their “official”* date of birth is 1988, we can say that Sokovia was an active warzone at least since 1998 or earlier (which fits the timeline of Kosovo War), as it was when Maximoff twins lost their parents. And now using a little math, we can say that when they volunteered for the experiments they were past 20yo, if they volunteered around 2012 they were 24yo, if around 2014 they were 26yo (they could be younger if their age of birth is different, but still around 20yo). And as much as I personally still feel as a dumb kid (I am 26 now), by law and morals I would be judged as an adult, no matter how I personally felt, so yeah. Wanda was an adult when she volunteered for Hydra and later when she's done all those bad things. I just wish she got her own movie in between Age of Ultron and Civil War, because her redemption is very poorly handled by the MCU and most of it supposedly happens off-screen, which doesn’t count as a proper redemption arc.

*I really don’t like relying on wiki timeline and ages of birth and MCU idea of a timeline at all, because they told us in Infinity War that Maria was expecting Tony in 1970, and it would mean that he lost his parents when he was 21, and Iron Man 1 clearly states the opposite, when it says that Stane took SI over for a while when they died, implying that Tony was either too young or not emotionally ready to take it over yet, and took it over when he was 21 instead. So going with 1970 as Tony’s date of birth erases the fact that Stane was in charge of the company. For me personally Tony being born in 1972 makes much more sense just as much as Rhodey being born in 1969 instead of 1968 as MCU says. So anyway, I have no idea from where wiki takes the idea when Wanda was born. Maybe they go with the actress age, but Holywood is actually very well known for casting adult actors as teenagers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that actually happened, if the movie actually tried to sell to us the idea that Maximoffs are teenagers. It really doesn’t, the only people who sell this idea are Tony, Clint and Steve. Two first are really, really old, they are basically dads, they have zero ability to see age, and Steve is 20+ who slept over 70 years, he sees anybody as kids, including himself to some extent, so... we cannot rely on anything what they say. It is called an unreliable narrator. Character may always state one thing which turns out to be untrue, so Clint mentioning high school in CW is NOT correct information, it is just his assessment (and in the context this comment was not supposed to be taken at face value anyway, I never take it as such).

Edit: On quora there was one very interesting comment which claims that you can use word “kid” in regard to someone in early 20s, and that Captain America often calls himself a “kid from Brooklyn” when he is clearly 20+. And other ppl point out what I already did, that for the older Avengers who are 40+ Wanda is a kid in a sense, she is twice as young as they are, but she is still an adult anyway. (I still cannot from this one person who tried to sell the idea that fashion sense of a character determines their age, because this is so untrue - when we talk about what movie shows or not we talk about full scenes and settings not the clothes, because clothes are just one factor, and they aren’t enough to establish the feel, that’s why we are shown that Peter Parker is a teen by showing him into HS, which we do not see with Maximoffs because their whole story revolves around protesting the injustice in their country after the years of war tearing it apart and taking revenge on the man who supposedly killed their parents (he didn’t), but I cannot stress how much it would help if there was a flashback scene with 10yo Maximoffs seeing their parents die and date being slapped somewhere on it).

Conclusion: Wanda’s age is relative depending on what you want to see, but I personally will always go with her being at least 20yo, because I know people in real life who are older than they actually look and who act younger than they are, who are seen as kids or minors by mistake even though they are in their twenties or late twenties. So for me it makes sense that Wanda could be seen as a kid by older Avengers, but not actually BE a kid in the legal sense.

#wanda maximoff #it's hard to make a character redeem themselves if they do not #get much screentime and quotes to say in movies which aren't actually about them #mcu critical #wanda maximoff critical

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spidercakes · 5 years ago

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ABO prompt if you will - Tony is an alpha but Peter is a beta. They can’t be together as laws prevent alphas from mating with betas so they pine in silence. Peter gets kidnapped by Ross who is trying to figure out how Peter got his Spider-Man powers and one experiment changes Peter into an omega. When he is rescued, he is in heat and throws Tony into rut and the alpha claims his omega.

This prompt: implies smut

Me: ok, angst.

I mean, its still technically what you asked for minus the smut but also there’s like many angst.

Its not, Tony has decided, that they don’t want to. Its more like they can’t, not really, not without a level of backlash at every level that would make a relationship impossible. Its not exactly reasonable to start a relationship with someone full well knowing that everyone, including the damn government, will do their damndest just to tear you apart. Tony has no idea why there are laws preventing alphas and betas from being together, there’s no reasonable explanation for it. Omegas might be more fertile and have an easier time with alphas reproducing but its not like betas are infertile. And also he and Peter wouldn’t be a reproductive couple anyway.

Beyond that the reasons get even more senseless given that betas are just as capable of dealing with heats as alphas, and its not like alphas can’t survive without omegas in heat- they make it through most of their lives without that. That particular set of laws are, Tony has gathered, little more than forcing people to fit into the hegemonic mold of acceptability and he’s never been fond of that, but he’s also not stupid. Generally speaking any alphas and betas who test that shit see betas in jail for an extended period of time, not alphas. And he can’t do that to Peter. If either of them should end up in jail its him- first of all he’s actually broken like a stupid amount of laws in his lifetime and Peter hasn’t, and also he’s the older one. He’d miss out on less in prison, but the laws are designed to punish betas for not falling in line, not alphas or omegas.

So he gets stuck watching Peter from afar, working with him in the lab, and trying his best to avoid him blowing up in the field. “You know we wouldn’t say anything, right?” Bruce asks softly, disrupting his line of thought. Across the lab Peter is trying and failing to teach Dummy to fetch.

“Wouldn’t need you to. Since when have I been known to do anything subtly?”

Bruce sighs because they both know he makes a point. Its not like he hasn’t thought of that either, and Peter absolutely has. Came to him a couple months ago insisting they could manage it and Peter he’s sure could. But Tony has never been known for his ability to keep secrets or keep anything from the public eye. He literally decided to throw out Pepper’s cue cards and proclaim himself Iron Man because that felt less difficult than playing like he wasn’t. There’s no way Peter wouldn’t end up in jail over his stupidity.

When Peter goes missing it takes them a day to notice. Its not entirely unusual for him to disappear from the public eye for a day or two thanks to school and its exam season so Tony hadn’t thought much of it until May showed up at his door. “So you haven’t talked to him either?” she asks, clearly on the edge of panic.

Tony is too but he’s also not totally stupid- Peter isn’t exactly easy to contain with his abilities and hurting someone with super healing permanently is difficult. He once tested out a few theories on Steve and the guy is next to immortal. He can be killed, Tony is sure, but not through any normal means and that includes aging. Peter’s genes share a lot in common with Steve’s now, so he suspects he has a lot of the same resistances not that he’d ever dream of testing that out on him.

“May, I once watched someone drop an entire building on him and he mostly crawled out pissed off. I’m sure he’s fine, we just need to figure out where he is.”

“Is that actually supposed to make me feel better?” she asks and Tony sighs.

“My point is that he’s durable, exceedingly so. Causing genuine, permanent damage is nearly impossible. Its why we tend to send him out with Steve and Bruce- the three of them are stupid strong, hard to kill, and their collective intelligence makes them hard to deal with strategically too. Trust me May, wherever he is it might not be pleasant, but he’ll more than likely be fine when we pick him up.” Psychologically? Probably not, but he doesn’t want to freak her out and they’ve all, in some way or another, been held captive and tortured. At this point its like an Avengers rite of passage. That’s at least half their hero origin stories.

“How are you going to find him?” May asks and Tony sighs.

“His suit has tracking in it partially to keep tabs on him but also to keep tabs on the suit itself- that kind of technology wouldn’t exactly be put to any good use in the wrong hands. If we’re lucky no one has turned the tracking off. If we aren’t we’ll see where it went before he disappeared and go from there.” There’s also the added benefit of seeing where Peter ends up the most, where all of them do. It tracks villain patterns well so Tony will cross reference the rest of their tracking against Peter’s too, see if any data points stick out.

Bruce looks at the screen in front of him while Tony paces. Bruce is more than capable of tracking a wayward spider suit, a literal child could do it if need be, but Tony is stressed. “Ping is coming back,” Bruce tells him. “In uh… Florida? He have anything going on there?” he asks.

Tony walks over to the computer and pulls up where, specifically, he is. “No. We’ve all heard him refer to Florida as the smelly armpit of America so I don’t see why he’d go there on his own either,” he points out.

Bruce sighs, “I maintain that the smelly armpit is Texas, but you make a point. The suit shows a pretty much direct travel path too, which is unusual. How the hell would someone manage to get someone with his abilities that far in a straight path? It doesn’t even look like Peter fought back.”

No, it doesn’t. He went from one spot to the other, no zipping around in between to indicate a sign of struggle. He pulls up Peter’s vitals around the time he went missing and frowns. “What the fuck?”

Bruce leans in and frowns too. “Stasis?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re telling me you think he was instantly frozen?” Tony asks, eyebrows drawing together.

“Not instantly, looks like he reacted but not in time. And the information is from his web shooters, not his suit. Don’t think he would have been in it at the time. Isn’t it pretty much frozen proof anyway?”

Not exactly, but for the purposes of this conversation yes so Tony nods. “Okay. Given the time of day he was probably about to patrol but why the fuck would anyone freeze him? Why the hell would that be a solution to how to kidnap Spiderman?” Seems kind of stupid, convoluted too. Yes he would be exceedingly difficult to get a hold of given that he’s flexible, strong, and not exactly lacking in intelligence and fighting ability but freezing him? That could go wrong in so many ways. The fact that it didn’t is probably a weird fluke.

Bruce frowns, looking over the information again before pulling up his location. “Tony. I could be wrong, and I’m probably not, but I’m pretty sure that’s one of Ross’ beach houses.”

Tony squints, “who the hell is stupid enough to take their victim to their house? Can’t be Ross.”

“The freezing would make sense if it was Ross,” Bruce says. Tony raises an eyebrow, unsure how Bruce figures that. “He has most of out data on our genes, he’s already tried to experiment on me like five times, and Steve was at his least dangerous when he was frozen. And he’d have enough information on Peter to know they work in really similar ways. Freezing makes sense if its Ross otherwise what kind of idiot would decide to try and freeze a super person with no guarantee that it would work? If not for the information that being frozen essentially stuck Steve in a suspended state of animation, which would make it a lot easier to run a few tests on him, then that makes no sense.”

He says that like villains make any sense at all. The last couple Tony has personally dealt with rode his ass because his father was a dick and because he was kind of mean and didn’t talk to the guy on a roof. Villains are people too, and people make no god damn sense. But he does make a point about the freezing thing, with knowledge of Steve’s suspended animation it would make sense to try and recreate those conditions and hope for the best. It might be common knowledge that he was found frozen in the ice and lived, but its not common knowledge how that happened. There are whole fan theories about it that proper everything from the correct assumption that the serum made him able to withstand extreme cold with a lowered heart rate and slowed brain activity to conserve energy to aliens. And clearly whoever took Peter wanted him alive otherwise what kind of dipshit tries to freeze their victim to death, then panics and takes them to Florida? Though, Tony supposes, that does seem like a Florida man thing to do.

“Do you really think Ross is that bad at strategy? What if it failed? What if Peter didn’t react to freezing the same way Steve had? What if he chose a different route that day for patrol? Ross might be a dumbass, but is he really that stupid?”

Bruce laughs a little. “Sometimes I forget how often you and Steve run every available option through your heads before you do something. Ross isn’t stupid by any means, but he has Peter’s patrol schedule and around this time of year he doesn’t break pattern, can’t because of exams. Strategically its a good time to move on a plan that requires him to be in a certain spot when you know he’s far less likely to deviate from his normal plans. And Peter might be super, but he’s not going to not have a reaction to being flash frozen. If Ross’ goal is to experiment on him if he managed to escape the freezing he still learned something. Its unethical science, but its not exactly bad science.”

Yeah, he’ll agree to disagree there. Tony knows a thing or two about winging it when it comes to experiments and it never goes well. Okay, it never goes well for him. Everyone else seems to not have problems with it but he’s got bad luck. Still makes him weary of that kind of thing and also Bruce has a vested interest in pointing the finger at Ross. Tony doesn’t think he’d do something like that on purpose on account of unlike Ross he’s not a shitty person but still. its worth it to verify Bruce’s suspicions. He runs the address and turns back to Bruce, “you seriously think Ross would be dumb enough to drag Peter’s ass back to his house? Come on, even Ross can’t be that stupid.”

“Its under his mother’s name, I think. Its still not smart, but its close to a secret army base in the area. Peter might be there, not the house.”

“But they left his suit in the house?”

“Ross might not be dumb enough to do that but a tactical team might be,” Bruce points out.

Yeah, alright. Address results return and sure shit Bruce isn’t wrong, including the bit about the house being under Ross’ mother’s name. Except the woman is dead so it shouldn’t be but that’s a whole other bag of shit Tony doesn’t give a damn about.

“Is he really this stupid?” he asks Bruce.

He shrugs, “he tried to shoot me with a gun he knew wouldn’t work given that I’d survived being bombed at that point so yes, I think he’s that stupid.”

Tony sighs. “I guess I should be grateful for it but something about this feels too easy.” Nothing these days is ever this easy for him, usually its Steve that gets all the luck so something is going to go wrong, he knows it.

Steve lets Bruce take the lead because he knows Ross the best but it doesn’t work well when he keeps deferring to Tony. Probably because he knows Peter’s suit’s information best, and the information they got from the web shooters, but still. That and he probably has the most vested interest in getting Peter back. But Bruce’s suspicions are right in that he’s not in the house- his suit was, and one of his web shooters, but Peter was nowhere to be found.

“Are you sure your scans are accurate?” Steve asks him and he knows he can’t see his face in the suit but he glares at him anyway. Steve’s cheeks turn a little red. “For a mask that thing has a surprising amount of judgement on it,” he mumbles.

“We’ve found him,” Natasha says over the comms. “Bruce was right about that army base- Clint, don’t you dare piss on- oh my god, someone get here and deal with this,” she mumbles.

Steve frowns and Bruce sighs, concentrating for a moment before he turns green and gets considerably larger. Tony’s mostly glad that the pants he made to accommodate worked and no one has to risk being exposed to Hulk dick ever again. And if Natasha isn’t concerned he assumes Peter is okay, if likely shaken. Or still in stasis. That’s probably the most preferable option, all things considered.

“He’s loopy,” Natasha tells him, leaning against the door frame and Tony frowns.

“Can you smell that?” he asks Steve, who looks red enough for Tony to assume that’s a yes.

“Smell what?” Nat asks, looking between the two of them and Steve sighs.

“Shit. Neither her or Clint have a strong sense of smell. Budapest,” he says in way of explanation not that Tony believes it. They say that to everything and fuck sakes he knows, he knows that’s Peter.

He pushes past Nat into the room they’ve found Peter in and his brain is already fuzzy but he forces himself to focus through the smell and attraction. Peter has bigger shit to worry about than Tony’s biology to react to his. Shit. Peter notices him fast too, perking up as he sees him and when Tony gets to him he reaches out, circling his arms around Tony and pressing his face into his neck. Tony swears for a moment he sees white and he doesn’t mean to let out a small, strangled moan in response but its almost impossible not to all things considered.

“Hey, Tony,” Peter murmurs, voice at his ear and Tony counts to ten to try and refocus.

“Hey, baby. Lets get you out of here, hmm?” He pulls away, or tries to, but Peter pulls him back fast.

“No, don’t go. Please,” he asks, voice small and eyes wide.

Jesus Christ.

Bruce looks over at Tony, who looks half lost himself let alone Peter, who is happily curled into his lap, face at his neck smiling away deliriously. Every time he sees some poor omega in heat he’s a little happier he’s a beta because it looks awful. “Do… do you think you can reverse that?” Steve asks.

His self control is remarkable, Bruce will give him that. His senses have to be going haywire at the moment and Tony is having a hell of a time holding back. Granted out of the two of them Bruce supposes he expects Steve to have the better self control anyway. He looks over at Peter though and winces. “I… don’t think I can,” he says not because he can’t, he’s sure he could figure it out eventually. But after so long of watching him and Tony dance around each other it seems cruel to pull them apart when they can actually be together now.

“How the hell does that happen?” Steve murmurs.

Bruce shrugs, “no idea. Presumably some type of gene therapy but it looks like the rest of his biology is the same, including the altered bits. I don’t see why Ross would want to turn a beta into an omega, there’s no real use for that.” And of all the eugenicist ideas that have stuck around the idea that betas are useless and should be either eliminated or turned into omegas or alphas isn’t one of them. Now the assumption is mostly that they should just stick to being with each other because omegas and alphas belong together and betas don’t fit into that binary at all. There’s no real reason Ross would have done this except by accident and that’s one hell of an accident. The Nazis spent years on it and they never figured that out either, and god knows his own experiments went terribly.

“What did he want with him to begin with?” Steve asks.

Good question but they don’t have all the answers at the moment. Right now there’s like five different police agencies crawling all over that army base looking for motive and evidence. “As far as we were able to tell he wanted to know how Peter’s powers worked, and yours. But I suspect he chose to capture Peter because he’s the easier target. You’re well versed in military strategy and Peter is a stressed twenty two year old- he’d be my choice too.”

“And off the record?” Steve asks, correctly assuming that Bruce has his own theories.

He sighs, “off the record I assume he picked up my research where it left off. We found one of those spiders Oscorp had, the one that turned Peter into what he is. It looked different from the one Peter drew out for us.”

Steve snorts, “are you sure that’s not because Peter isn’t exactly a good artist?”

Bruce smiles too, looking over to Peter, who’s still curled up in Tony’s lap looking content. Tony looks like he’s given into his urges to actually react to Peter and he’s got his arms curled tightly around him, face tucked into his hair as he gently runs his fingers up and down one of Peter’s arms. “Could be that, but I doubt he got the colors wrong. They look cute together.”

He looks over at Tony and Peter but something looks off in his expression. “Yeah, I guess they do,” he murmurs.

Tony knows he should leave Peter be, stick him in a warm bath to cool his skin some and leave him alone but he can’t. Peter doesn’t want him to either and its hard to say no to him when he’s wanted him for so long. Peter has had an interest in him for longer, probably since before they met given that he wasn’t exactly unknown to Peter before then. He’d been so gangly and adorable and green, but full of promise and someone had to get the damn kid out of crime fighting pajamas. May might have lost her shit when she found out but Peter was Spiderman before Tony and he’d be Spiderman without him though he suspects Peter would have grown a brain cell or two and made himself a suit.

And then he got better, seemed to learn from everyone else’s mistakes and he grew up too. He stopped being so gangly and filled out, and his voice started to sound more like an actual person’s and not a squeak toy and he’s smart. He’s always had a thing for intelligence but with Peter its different than the way he usually is. Normally he likes the showy types, not unlike himself though usually they don’t present that showiness in the same way. Pepper was brilliant and had no problem showing off, but she never actually stated that’s what she was doing. She’d just do something better than everyone else and give them a look. Rhodey was the same way, except he had no problem rubbing someone’s nose in it if he felt like they didn’t get the point enough. Even Christine Everhart fell into that given that she’s tenacious and kind of an asshole, but genuinely better at reporting than most.

Then there’s Peter, who’s so quiet about his intelligence, who mostly just uses it to help people and make other people’s lives easier. Its a soft show of the way his mind works but its just… hard for him to get out of his head, the way Peter consistently manages to find easier and faster ways to evacuate people out of cities, or respond to whatever calls for their help they get, or new features for his suit that help him do his job better. People like to think of Steve as the golden boy but the truth is that he’s jaded and stubborn and sometimes that makes him mean and hard to work with. Peter is the one everyone should look toward but he’d never say so himself, even if Tony is sure he knows its true.

“Missed you,” Peter murmurs, curled right into his side, one leg thrown over Tony’s hip and his arms curled tightly around him. Every time Tony moves a little Peter clings harder and that’s adorable even if he’s sure that’ll leave bruises in the morning.

“I missed you too,” he says, running his hand up and down Peter’s back. Poor thing starts to get fussy if Tony stops, irritated that he’s no longer being scented. “Are you okay?” he asks. Its the first time he’s gotten the opportunity to ask and he can feel Peter smile.

“I can finally be with you, so yeah.” Fuck, doesn’t that just break his heart. He curls his arms tighter around Peter, earning a soft noise of happiness for it and Tony feels his heart squeeze. He’s wanted this for so long and he can finally have it so he huffs out a laugh and releases Peter from his grip. He gets a dirty look for it but Tony quickly tilts Peter’s head up and kisses him to remove the frown. Peter lets out a surprised noise and presses himself into Tony, shifting fast so he’s straddling him and Tony has no idea how they ever managed to go this long without doing this anyway.

When he wakes up Peter isn’t there and something doesn’t smell right. He frowns, wrinkling his nose and getting up. He feels hungover, which he knows is stupid but taking care of omegas in heat takes a lot out of someone and more out of the omega, so he has no idea where Peter has gotten off to. Can’t be far but he’s not in the bathroom so Tony decides to check the kitchen only to find him absent of that space too. He does find Steve though and he looks weirdly guilty.

“What’s up with you?” Tony asks, somewhat irritable.

Steve looks away for a moment and sighs, “whatever… whatever Ross did didn’t stick,” he murmurs and no. No. This can’t possibly- he just got Peter, he can’t give him up now.

He turns and walks out of the room fast, hoping he’ll manage to find Peter in the lab.

Bruce looks pained and Peter doesn’t have the patience for it because he felt his fucking heart break this morning and he has no time for Bruce’s pain too. “Please, you have to be able to do something,” he says, voice cracking.

He shakes his head though, taking a small step back. “Peter, the last time I did anything like this I turned into, as Tony not so delicately put it, a giant green rage monster. Do you seriously want to take that risk?”

Peter throws his hands up, “well I might as well!” he yells. “Because I’m tired of living like this, always skirting around my feelings because I’m a beta and I can’t date anyone who isn’t! Its bullshit Bruce and you should know that!” He’s the only other beta in the Avengers, he figures if anyone can relate is has to be Bruce. No one else has to deal with all the stupid weird laws that they have to follow to properly fulfill their role in never shaking up the alpha/omega binary that people think makes some type or equilibrium or something- he doesn’t fucking know. But he does know its all a bunch of garbage and all because people don’t like betas dating alphas or omegas, there’s no other reason to act like that.

“Peter,” a soft voice says from behind him and he turns to find Tony there. He turns back around immediately and squeezes his eyes shut because he can’t deal with this right now. “Hey,” Tony murmurs and Peter can feel his arms circle around him. He wants so badly to hug him back but he won’t, not when he knows Tony will just leave him and he can’t do it, he can’t deal with that. “Peter,” Tony says, “baby, I love you.”

He feels his breathing slow a little as he sinks into Tony’s arms but he doesn’t turn, doesn’t respond. He can’t because Tony is telling him that to make him feel better, not because he’s actually going to stick around in their barely even was a relationship. Bruce, on the other hand, looks uncomfortable and Peter wants him to leave as much as he wants him to stay.

“You’re just going to go,” he tells Tony, “so do it.”

Tony’s arms tighten around him some and he hears Tony let out a shaky breath. “I should,” Tony says, voice cracking a little, “because you’ll be the one punished for this if anyone found out but-” his words cut out for a moment and he takes another deep breath. “But I can’t, I can’t leave you.”

#tony stark x peter parker #starker #fanfiction #alternate universe #abo fanfic #omg lmao this is so not what you wanted im so sorry

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quickspinner · 5 years ago

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I’ll Give You the Stars - Ch 3 Share Your Dreams with Me

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Luka was about ready to nominate Penny Rolling for sainthood. It had become crystal clear over the past couple of days that while Jagged could put his name in the spotlight for a brief flurry of publicity, it was Penny who could actually get his foot in the door of the industry. It was Penny who had sent Luka a list of classes and private tutors he should consider, not only on musical subjects like composition and performance, but on business and publicity as well. It was Penny who gave him tips for handling the media attention his unexpected performance had temporarily garnered, and asked for his approval on the press statement she had prepared for Jagged.

It was Penny who kept him from being completely overwhelmed and paralyzed with her prioritized action item list, and included with that list were applications for music scholarships Jagged sponsored—both for his age group and Juleka’s. Because chasing your dreams costs money, after all.

She’d also suggested he consider selling some of his compositions, and implied that Jagged Stone would love to have the first chance at whatever he came up with.

Luka had to take a long walk to calm down after she’d suggested his music might actually sell. That Jagged Stone might be willing to perform something he wrote. Rose was going to flip.

Finally, while Penny explained that she herself couldn’t represent him as repping Jagged alone was a full-time job, she had also sent him a list of agents she knew and trusted and promised to get him a meeting when he was ready.

So when Penny sent him a release form for his unscheduled appearance and begged him to have his mother sign it before her legal team paraded her corpse down the Champs Elysee for letting Jagged pull a minor onstage without parental consent, he gladly went to bat with Anarka, who despised paperwork in general and legal documents in particular, and pestered her until it got done. His mom would probably be extra contrary for at least a week, but that was fine, he could handle it. At this point Luka was so grateful that he was pretty sure he’d donate a kidney for Penny if she needed it.

Now, she told him, it was just up to him to keep the ball rolling until he was musically and emotionally ready to try for the big time—to keep his name out there and build his fanbase.

Fanbase. Like he was ever going to be emotionally ready for that.

Luka coped with his sudden crushing case of imposter syndrome by focusing on the band. He saw no reason why keeping the ball of his popularity rolling, as Penny put it, couldn’t include bringing the rest of Kitty Section along for the ride. After all, none of this would be happening if Marinette hadn’t done the same for him. He’d asked Penny to include Kitty Section’s Instagram in her press release, though he’d cringed at her insistence on the wording “Kitty Section featuring Luka Couffaine,” as if he was any more important than any other band member, and their number of followers had tripled overnight. Rose had posted pictures and a short clip of him on stage with Jagged, and she’d been calling every club and venue she could find to pitch Kitty Section.

It was a beautiful madness that was at the same time overwhelming and so far removed from his daily life that it didn’t quite seem real, and finally he decided to give himself a break from trying to figure it all out, and he took his guitar out on the deck.

Luka was staring dreamily into the sunset, singing softly along with his guitar, when suddenly his view was blocked by a curtain of black and purple hair with lace sleeves.

“Okay,” grumbled a familiar voice from within the curtain. “What the hell happened when you walked Marinette home?”

Luka sighed as Juleka came to plop herself down in the other chair.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You haven’t sung in ages.”

He eyed her suspiciously. She was speaking in full sentences so something was up. “You didn’t want me too.”

“Not while you sounded like a cat in heat, but that’s been over for a while. Why now?”

Luka shrugged. “Why not?”

“Luka.”

He said nothing.

“Do you realize that ever since the concert you sound like you’re putting together the soundtrack for a heavy metal romcom?”

“I do not,” he grumbled. Yeah, smooth. God, nobody could get under your skin like a sibling. Especially his.

Juleka was silent for a minute. “She has a crush on Adrien Agreste.”

Luka’s jaw tightened and he turned his pick in his fingers, pressing into the hard edges.

“Like a super-mega-nearly-stalker crush, Luka.”

He said nothing.

“You know that stuttering, word-scrambling thing she does that you think is so cute? She’s a million times worse with him. It’s a small miracle that he hasn’t decided she’s a complete psycho.”

Luka sighed. “You’re telling me this why? And why now?”

Her face screwed up the way it used to when she was five and he wouldn’t let her play with him. “Because you’re my stupid brother and you’re getting in over your head, and I hate you and I’m scared you’re going to keep me awake with your sobbing when she breaks your heart.”

Luka had to smile at that. “I love you too, Juleka,” he said, with more sincerity than he’d intended. “And I already knew she had a thing for Adrien.”

“Has a thing, Luka. A big thing. Eiffel Tower big. The Great Wall of China, visible from space big.”

Luka plucked at a string, pretending to tune it. “Does he have a thing for her?”

“Luka.”

Luka groaned and rolled his eyes. “Look, I know the score. It’s fine. I’ll be fine. I’m just...we had a nice moment, okay? We don’t have to be destined soulmates for me to enjoy her company. Now get lost so I can watch the sunset without your mopey goth doom and gloom.”

Juleka sighed gustily. “I’m going to have to smother you with my pillow, aren’t I?”

“Tell me about Lila,” Luka said abruptly, and Juleka tilted her head.

“Why do you want to know about Lila?”

“I don’t know, I just kind of got a weird vibe that night while you guys were talking about her.”

“Marinette doesn’t like her.”

“Why?”

Juleka rolled her eyes. “Because Lila is pretty and confident and wealthy and well-connected, and Marinette’s insecure and jealous. She thinks Lila wants Adrien and it makes her act crazy.”

Juleka’s words were so discordant with Luka’s reality that he almost felt nauseous. “That doesn’t sound like Marinette at all,” he said cautiously.

“I told you, Marinette loses her mind when Adrien’s involved.”

“Yeah...so much so that she agreed to help him ask out another girl.”

“She probably did that so she could spy on his date. She’s as threatened by that Kagami girl as she is by Lila, only nobody actually likes Kagami, so she’s a tiny bit less crazy about it.”

“I was there, Juleka,” Luka reminded her sharply. “Nothing like that happened.”

Juleka leaned her chin in her hand and looked at him. “You’re biased, Luka.”

“Biased, not blind, and Marinette’s not exactly hard to read.” Luka put his guitar aside and turned in the chair to face her. “Juleka, you know me. I’m not wrong about this. I was there. She told me when she asked me to go that we were going to support Adrien, and that’s what she did. I watched her smile at him and encourage him when he was nervous. I gave him advice myself right in front of her. And yeah, she looked at him like a sad puppy whenever he couldn’t see, but she didn’t even give him a hint at how upset she was.” He sat back, studying his sister. “I thought Marinette was your friend.”

Juleka started. “She is.”

“Are you even listening to the things you’re saying about her? Does anything you’ve said actually make sense with what you know about Marinette? Look, I believe you when you say she’s crazy about Adrien, that makes sense, and I can believe she’d come up with some crazy convoluted things to get his attention, but do you really think she’s that jealous and petty? And if she were, that I’d be so crazy in love that I couldn’t tell?”

Juleka chewed her lip.

“Marinette’s done a lot for us...and for you, Jules.”

Juleka lowered her eyes. Luka just shook his head and reclined back on his chair, picking up his guitar. “Look, I think I’m done talking about this, forget I asked. Tomorrow’s the first day back at school since the concert and to be honest I’m kind of freaked out about how things will go, so…” He made a little shooing motion with his hand. “Can I just get some space please?”

Juleka didn’t move or speak for a moment. Then she said, “Are you going to be up here singing more sappy barely-rock love songs?”

“Vocal practice was on Penny’s list. I’m more marketable if I can perform my own vocals.”

“Right,” Juleka drawled. “Penny’s list.”

Something about her tone made him put down the guitar again to look her in the eye. “Juleka, anywhere I go, you go too, for as long as you’re up for the ride. I promise.”

She held his gaze for a moment, and then stood up, and started to walk off. “Whatever. Enjoy your quest for the perfect rock ballad to serenade Marinette. Just don’t call me to bail you out of jail when Officer Roger arrests you for public disturbance.”

“It’s not for Marinette.”

“Sure.” She waved over her shoulder. “Try not to be a total cliché or I’ll disown you.”

Luka just smiled and shook his head as he picked up his guitar.

***

The first day back in class after the crazy fever dream of the concert night was as surreal as he expected it to be. Some of his schoolmates were at the concert, enough to whisper and point and spread the news around the school. The weight of his guitar on his back was steadying, but it marked him. There were a lot of awkward conversations with people he barely knew.

The attention he got from girls who were suddenly giggly and handsy was what really threw him, until his best friend took pity and passed Luka his phone, open to a news site that had a photo of Luka playing at the concert. Luka stared at the photo and covered his mouth to keep from...something. He wasn’t sure if he would laugh or swear.

It was clearly a professional photo, not like the slightly hazy ones that Rose had taken from the pit. They’d caught him mid-riff, his arms flexed as he played, his hair flying about his face, his eyes focused and a smirk on his lips. He understood now why girls kept grabbing onto his arm or cuddling up and slipping their hands under his jacket. The picture made him look hot, and there was a lot of muscle on display in that custom-fitted MDC Original shirt that was totally hidden in his usual layered look.

Luka passed the phone back and put his head down on his desk while Evan tried to smother his laughter.

He wondered if Marinette had seen the picture. Maybe he should see if Penny could send her a copy. For her portfolio.

***

A week after the concert Rose texted that she had big news and asked if he could meet the rest of the band at the collège after class.

Rose and Juleka were the first band members out, walking with a red-headed girl Luka didn’t recognize. He’d expected Rose to be bouncing, bubbly, excited after the tone of her messages, but instead Rose looked a little uncomfortable, and Juleka...Luka’s eyebrows rose. Juleka had her murder face on.

“That’s so great, I knew Gustav would come through,” the redhead giggled to Rose. “He and I are such good friends ever since I grabbed that fire extinguisher and saved his club from burning down. I knew I could convince him to book Kitty Section!”

“Um, that’s really sweet of you, Lila,” Rose was saying. “When I called, you know, he said that he saw Jagged Stone’s press release and—“

“Oh, yes, I sent that to him as soon as I got it!”

“You...got it?”

“Of course, I get all of his press releases. You know we’re like this.” She held up her crossed fingers. “And honestly, I felt bad for you guys! I’m sure Marinette meant well but singling out one person to meet Jagged, it just seemed so unfair! You all deserved that chance, but maybe she just didn’t know him as well as she said—I mean, as well as she thought she did! I wish I’d been there like I planned, I could’ve done something. It’s too bad that I had to cancel to go help Prince Ali with that emergency at the children’s hospital.” She dropped her voice so that she was only barely audible to Luka. “Honestly I’m surprised Marinette would use her connections like that just to impress a boy, I would never dare, but I guess we all know how far Marinette will go when she has a crush!”

Juleka’s eyes lifted from the ground and met Luka’s.

He realized he had his murder face on too.

The two siblings smirked at each other and then both looked at their feet. Luka breathed, reminded himself of little black butterflies, and when he looked back up his face felt more normal.

“W-well, I understand why you might think that, but you haven’t heard Luka play, he really was the best choice and—“ Rose began, then Juleka caught Rose’s chin and turned her face toward Luka. Rose brightened. “Oh, there he is!”

“Oh!” Lila slipped ahead of them to plant herself in front of Luka, hands wrapped around the strap of her bag as she looked up at him from under her bangs. “You must be Luka, I’ve heard so much about you,” Lila gushed, batting her eyes at him. “Juleka talks about you all the time.” Juleka gave her a sidelong look, which made Luka want to laugh. Juleka hardly talked about anything, and never talked about Luka if she could help it. “Rose and Juleka and I were just talking about this gig I booked for Kitty Section at L’Accord d’Or!”

Luka smiled over Lila’s head at Rose. “That’s great Rose, I know you’ve been trying to get us in there for months.”

“Yeah,” Juleka said flatly. “Who knew that all that time all Lila had to do was make a phone call.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rose fluttered, not seeming to know where to look. “What’s important is that we got the gig now!” Her face brightened with genuine excitement. “And it’s not at the open mic, we’re the headline act. And it pays!” She bounced on her toes, hands clasped together.

“That’s great news, Rose. I know you’ve worked really hard to make it happen.” Luka said, giving the girl’s shoulder a little squeeze. No wonder Juleka was pissed, if Lila was trying to take the credit.

When he looked back at Lila, Luka could practically see the calculations appearing over her head as she looked him up and down. He gave her a bland look back that was part disinterest and part warning. He knew that look, he’d seen it over and over in eyes the same blue as his own. It wasn’t even any special kind of insight that told him this girl was selfish and self-centered, just cold, hard experience.

Maybe he’d done too well at shielding Juleka if she couldn’t see it too. Luka turned his attention back to Rose.

“I thought we should get together and talk about it right away,” Rose was saying, “since we only have a couple of weeks to get ready. He wanted to do the gig soon while people are still talking about Luka. And I thought maybe Marinette could help us make up some T-shirts and things we could sell.”

“You’re so forgiving, Rose,” Lila said with admiration. “Even after Marinette ditched you guys to be with Luka.”

“Marinette’s done a lot for all of us,” Luka said mildly. “But Rose, If we’re getting paid, we need to make sure Marinette is too. She’s already done all of our costumes and the backdrop.”

“Wow,” Lila cooed, curling her hand on Luka’s arm with that slip-squeeze move girls had been pulling on him all week. “She did all of that? She must be so into you.”

Luka didn’t even hear her, gaze suddenly focused on the door. “Here she comes now.” He tried to keep his expression neutral, but he knew he hadn’t entirely succeeded. It was kind of impossible, given the rush that flooded his system. He hadn’t seen her since he had kissed her in the hall at the bakery. He pulled his arm away from Lila absently, plucking her hand off when she didn’t let go, and reached for the guitar pick in his pocket, pressing the edges into his fingers. He’d promised her when they kissed that it wouldn’t change anything and he was going to keep that promise if it killed him. Marinette caught sight of them, blushed, waved, and tripped on the steps.

Luka moved without thinking, even knowing he was too far away to help. Suddenly there was a flash of white and blond in front of them and Adrien was lowering a red-faced and stammering Marinette carefully to the pavement.

“Adrien,” Lila squealed, bouncing over to them. “Oh, it’s so good that you were there, that was a really bad fall, Marinette. I know you must be excited to see Luka but you should be more careful.”

Marinette’s face turned even redder as she got to her feet. Lila pushed in between them, and linked her arms through both Marinette’s and Adrien’s, pulling them with her back over to Rose, Juleka, and Luka. “I was just telling Luka about the gig I booked for Kitty Section!”

Juleka growled at Luka’s side and he put his hand on her shoulder. He got an elbow in the ribs for his trouble, but then she folded her arms and huffed out a sigh.

“Hey Luka, good to see you!” Adrien waved, trying to discreetly pull his other arm free of Lila’s. Marinette was less delicate, shoving the girl’s hand away with a disgusted expression. Undeterred, Lila simply wrapped both hands around Adrien’s arm as he continued. “I saw the clip of you on stage with Jagged, it was awesome! You looked like you were born for it.”

Luka ran his fingers through his hair. “Thanks, I’m just glad he picked that song since I’ve played it so many times at home. I thought I was going to pass out just meeting him, but he was really cool, and it was really funny watching him tease Marinette.” She blushed slightly when he smiled at her, and his heart did a little flip.

“Really?” Adrien chuckled. “I know he’s a fan of her work. She signed my copy of his last album cover.” He grinned and nudged Marinette with his elbow.

“Yeah, it’s adorable actually, he treats her like she’s his favorite niece or something.” Luka kept his attention on Adrien but watched Lila out of the corner of his eye. “And he brags about her like a proud grandpa.”

“Wow,” Lila said, opening her eyes wide. “Marinette must really have wanted to impress you to use her connections like that. That’s so brave, Marinette! I mean, I would never have dared to bother Jagged Stone just to impress a boy. Oh, isn’t it sooo cute that Marinette likes Luka so much, Adrien! They make such a cute couple!”

Marinette flushed from her hairline to her collar. “We’re not a couple! It wasn’t like that! I only know Jagged because I was in the right place at the right time and he happened to like my work. It was crazy lucky and Luka’s so talented, I just thought he should have the same chance that I had. And he did great and now he’s opening doors for Kitty Section. I think it’s awesome that we can all help each other succeed in our dreams. After all, what good are all these ‘amazing connections’ if you can’t use them to help your friends?”

Something ugly flashed across Lila’s face but Adrien spoke up before she could bite back. “You’re right, Marinette,” Adrien agreed brightly. “It might have been luck that you met Jagged but you’ve definitely made the most of it, and paying it forward to help Luka and Kitty Section is really cool.”

“Y-you think so?” Marinette nearly whispered, still red in the face.

“Yeah, it makes me think I should be more active thinking of ways I could do the same,” Adrien rubbed his neck. “I never really thought about it before, but there’s got to be more I could be doing.”

“Oh, Adrien, it’s so like you to think that way,” Lila purred. “Maybe we could have coffee sometime and we could talk about it? You know I’m involved in so many charity projects, I have tons of experience at that kind of thing.”

Marinette looked like she might explode. Adrien laughed uneasily and finally managed to get his arm away from Lila. He started backing away from the group, glancing back towards the silver car waiting for him. “Some other time, maybe, I have uh, somewhere to be right now. Bye guys, and congrats again on the gig!”

“Bye Adrien,” Lila waved cheerfully, and then turned to Marinette. Luka felt a physical pain at the way Marinette tensed up. “Oh, Marinette, it’s so good to see you’ve finally moved on from your hopeless crush on Adrien. I hope that means we can be friends now since there’s no more need for you to be jealous.”

Marinette folded her arms and gave Lila a look that Luka had last seen aimed at Bob Roth. “I think we both know that’s not going to happen and why.”

“Oh, Marinette, it’s really not fair for you to lead Luka on if you’re still hung up over Adrien,” Lila returned, sugary sweet, and Marinette went from red to white, and Luka felt his own face heat. “Or,” Lila lowered her voice to a perfectly audible stage whisper. “Don’t tell me that you went to all that trouble for him and he still turned you down. You poor thing, that’s so…” she paused, as if looking for the word, and then smirked. “Pathetic.”

Lila whipped around as Luka began to laugh. “You can’t be serious,” he managed to get out between chortles. Beside him, Juleka was smirking. “You’re not taking anyone in with that one.”

“Yeah,” Juleka drawled. “He’s been stupid over Marinette since they met.” Rose giggled, though she still looked uncomfortable.

“All right guys, are we having this meeting or what?” Luka stepped around Lila and put his arm around Marinette’s shoulders to guide her away. “Anybody know if Ivan is coming?”

“Oh, he asked me to tell you he had to stay and talk to Miss Bustier for a little bit,” Marinette said. “He’ll be along in a few minutes. Um, if you want, we could have the meeting at my place? It’s not big but at least we wouldn’t be standing in the sun. Plus you know Maman and Papa will feed us.”

Rose and Juleka both perked up. “Sounds like a plan,” Luka grinned. “Lead the way.”

“Don’t worry, Marinette,” he heard Lila purr behind them. “I’ll take good care of Adrien now that you’ve moved on. You couldn’t have gotten in at Gabriel even with Adrien’s help, anyway.”

“Ugh, she makes me nauseous,” Luka said softly to Marinette as they approached the crosswalk. “I see what you meant, now.”

“Oh my God, Luka, I’m so sorry, that must have been so embarrassing for you,” Marinette whimpered.

“Not really. It was the truth, I’m crazy about you and I’m not ashamed of it.” Luka tightened his arm around her, and then reluctantly let her go, pretending not to see her radiant blush. “She wouldn’t be so threatened by you if you weren’t so amazing. People like that, you almost have to feel sorry for. How lame must her life be to make her so bitter?”

Marinette was silent for a moment, her blush fading as her expression fell. “So you think I should just let it go?”

“What? No!” Luka said, surprised. “Feeling sorry for her doesn’t mean putting up with her crap. Whatever’s going on in her life, she has a choice about how she treats other people. And I can tell you from experience, people like her will take everything they can get and then burn down the rest just out of spite.”

“Adrien knows how she is,” Marinette said quietly. “But he didn’t want me to say anything. He said making a bad guy suffer has never turned them into a good guy.”

Luka snorted softly. “All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.”

Marinette’s head whipped around to look up at him. He met her eyes got a moment and then focused on the sidewalk ahead of him.

“Look, it’s to Adrien’s credit that he is the way he is. In a way he’s proof of what I was saying. He has a crappy home life and he still chooses to be optimistic and compassionate, and maybe that means he has a weak spot for people like Lila and Chloé. Maybe if he admitted to himself that some people are beyond redemption, then he has to admit that there’s no hope for his own father. That his dad will always be cold and calculating and manipulative and Adrien will never be good enough for him.” Luka paused and took a deep breath. “It’s a hard thing to admit to yourself. It’s even harder to admit that the reason those people won’t change, is because they don’t care enough to try.” He glanced back at Rose and Juleka, glad to see they were trailing far enough behind that they wouldn’t overhear. “I get it, you know? He still has hope. I just…” He lowered his voice without really meaning to and she swayed a little closer to hear. “I remember how it felt when there wasn’t any hope left, just all of us exhausted and used up and tossed away, and all I can think about is how much time we wasted believing the lie that if we just tried hard enough we could make him want to stay. So no, I can’t agree with Adrien. Giving in to selfishness never turned it into generosity either.”

Marinette stopped walking and put her arms around Luka’s middle, squeezing tight. He patted her arm, and then pulled away, a little uncomfortable with having said so much. “Anyway, you do what you think is right, Marinette. Protect yourself and trust your instincts. You might not always get it right the first time, but I know you will in the end.”

“Thanks, Luka. I think I needed to hear that.”

They waited in silence at the crosswalk for a moment for the others to catch up. Luka chuckled suddenly. “You know, she made a mistake today.”

“What?” Marinette blinked at him.

“Lila screwed up. She pissed off Juleka.” Luka grinned. “Rose has been spinning her wheels for months trying to get us into that club, and Lila just up and claims it was all because of her that Rose finally got through. I’m not sure whether Juleka believes Lila and is mad that she didn’t do anything sooner, or if she knows Lila didn’t do anything and is mad at her for lying, but either way, she’s mad that Rose is unhappy. So that’s one less person on Lila’s side anyway. That’s how I know you’ll come out on top no matter what you decide to do.” He didn’t even try to hide the affection in his face when he looked at her. “You can call it karma or whatever, but I’m sure you’ll always have people on your side. Maybe there will always be a Lila out there, taking the credit and name-dropping and looking out for number one. But you...you’re always lifting up the people around you. You don’t let pursuing your own dreams stop you from caring about everyone else’s.”

As he said the words, the world seemed to stop for a heartbeat, and suddenly he knew what he wanted to sing for her. Her pink cheeks grew a little pinker as he smiled a slow, secret smile, but before she could ask any questions, Rose and Juleka joined them and they all crossed the street. “You’ll come to the gig, right?” he asked, trying to keep his tone casual. “We wouldn’t even be playing a place this big if it weren’t for you.”

Marinette sighed. “I wish you’d stop saying that. You’re the one who impressed Jagged. You’re the one who played in front of all those people.”

“You’re the one who gave me that chance. But I’m sorry, I’ll try not to bring it up anymore if it makes you uncomfortable. Anyway, will you come? I’d really like you to be there.”

Marinette waved her phone. “Already on my calendar. Actually I was thinking I might try to get there when you guys do so I can help you get ready, if that’s okay? I want to make sure your costumes are perfect for this!”

Luka smiled. “Better make sure your website is ready for all the traffic you’re going to get. Rose said people are already asking about T-shirt’s and things.”

“I’m not surprised, you did make it look good.” Marinette slapped her hand over her mouth and Luka looked away and coughed to hide his laughter.

***

Kitty Section worked harder than they ever had for the next couple of weeks. It was a scramble to finish the new song Luka and Rose had been working on, and then they had to figure out what else they were going to play and practice that. (Penny said covers would be a good way to pad their setlist, Luka had informed the group.) Fortunately all of the band members were extremely motivated, so once they got over the hurdle of agreeing on which songs to play (which turned out to be a very high hurdle indeed), they worked relentlessly to get them down, meeting every chance they got to practice.

Marinette had to miss a lot of those rehearsals, but that was fine--that was actually good as far as Luka was concerned, since he had to get the band on board with his plan and then teach them the music he had reworked to suit Kitty Section's metal sound.

He tried to frame it as platonically as he could, but he still spent almost as much time ignoring teasing comments (and Rose’s overly romanticized fantasy world where he and Marinette had a wedding officiated by Jagged Stone before honeymooning during Luka’s first international tour) as he did practicing. As he lived with Juleka, he was accustomed to blocking out things he didn’t want to listen to, so he let most of it roll off his back.

Luka was surprised when Ivan stopped after practice one day to lean against the rail next to him.

“Hey,” Ivan said, rubbing his hand over his hair. “You um...okay? We were kinda giving you a really hard time today.”

“Yeah, you were.” Luka shrugged. “But it’s okay. I know I’m an idiot.”

“You’re really in love with Marinette?”

Luka sighed. “Head over heels, man.”

“Wow,” Ivan mumbled, and then was silent for a moment. “So you think the song’ll work?”

“Nope.”

Ivan blinked. “Really? But…”

“Rose’s romantic fever dreams aside, I’m not doing this to try to win Marinette over. I know she loves somebody else and—well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish for something different, but that’s her choice to make, you know? I just…” He paused, automatically beginning to play his feelings as he tried to find words.

“I owe Marinette a lot,” Ivan said after a moment. “She was the one who really encouraged me to confess to Mylène. I might never have gotten up the guts of it weren’t for her.”

Luka grinned, looking up at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I was the first akuma victim, you know. Yay me.”

Luka huffed. “I feel you on that one.”

“I was so in love with Mylène but every time I tried to get close to her, I scared her. I was feeling super down about it. Marinette gave me a pep talk. I mean, things still kinda got worse before they got better, but it turned out all right.”

Luka shook his head, smiling to himself. “She’s something else. You know I was impressed with her before we even met. You wouldn’t believe how much money I’ve spent on ice cream and nail polish every class photo day for years. I was all set for Juleka to come home crying yet again, and instead she comes home with a smile on her face. Even having been akumatized that same day, she was so happy. I asked her what happened and she just smiled and said, ‘Marinette.’”

“She’s always helping out, huh?” Ivan rubbed his hand over his head again.

Luka slid his hand over the fretboard thoughtfully. “I just...want her to know how special she is, you know? Like I said, it’s not about winning her over, just...letting her know.”

“Yeah, I think I get it.” Ivan punched him lightly in arm and Luka tried not to wince. “Still...good luck, man. You and Marinette, you both deserve good things.”

“Thanks, Ivan.”

Even though Marinette couldn’t always be at practice, she was still working for them. She presented them with three new t-shirt designs, all of them simpler than the ones she’d originally made for the band so they could be easily sourced out to a printing company. She’d teamed up with Marc and Nath (names Luka only vaguely recognized) and they’d created posters and fliers featuring comic-book style drawings of the band playing on the back of a winged cat unicorn. Luka had to admit, once he stopped laughing, that they were pretty awesome. The band plastered them all over their schools, in as many local coffee shops and music stores as they could get to, and Luka had to smile when he passed one proudly displayed in the bakery window.

And somehow, the image, including the gig date and time, got passed to Jagged Stone, who tweeted it out to his billions of followers. “I thought we were going to have to give Nath oxygen when we told him,” Marinette giggled.

By the time the gig night rolled around, it was no shock to anyone that the club was packed.

***

“Are you nervous?” Marinette asked as she helped Luka lift the breastplate into place and began to fasten the ties.

“If you’d asked me that yesterday, I would’ve said yes, totally, but tonight? Honestly, I’m stoked,” Luka told her, tilting his mask in his hands to admire the play of the glitter under the club lights. “This place is amazing, the set list is sick, the crowd energy is amazing, and your costumes look unreal under these lights. We’ve worked really hard and I feel like we’re ready for this. I can’t wait to get out there.”

Marinette shook her head. “You guys are amazing, if it were me I’d pass out. Is this okay, can you move?”

Luka moved his arms experimentally. “Good as gold. You’re amazing in plenty of other ways, Marinette.”

He wasn’t even sure she heard him. She bounced and squealed. “You look so great, you’re right, this is gonna be awesome! You’re gonna knock ‘em dead!”

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. He blinked at her but Marinette just flashed him a shy smile, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and turned away to help Rose.

He took a few minutes to himself to just close his eyes and breathe, and when he opened his eyes again the rest of the band was ready, and Marinette was passing him on her way to the door. “Hey,” he caught her shoulder. “Can you try to get a spot up front? I want to be able to see you.”

Marinette smiled. “I’ll be there. Adrien’s already out there and he has his bodyguard holding space for me and Nino and Alya.”

“Great,” he said, letting his hand fall to catch hers and squeeze it. “Hey guys, all in real quick before Marinette leaves?”

The band crowded together to slap a high five. “Kitty Section!” They yelled together. Marinette and Mylène went to find their places.

Luka slipped his mask over his face. “All right guys, let’s do this.”

The crowd roared as the band walked on stage. Luka took a deep breath as he slipped his guitar over his head. Remember the plan. He played a short riff to get the crowd’s attention as the others took their places. He stepped up next to Rose at the center mic as she welcomed the crowd, and then handed off the microphone to him. There was a cheer as he took off his mask and waved to the crowd.

“Thanks for coming out to hear us tonight,” he began. “Let me introduce the members of Kitty Section, first on lead vocals, Rose Lavillant!” Beside him Rose lifted her mask, waved, and held up a victory sign. “Rose is also writes our lyrics, runs our Instagram, and books our shows, she’s amazing and her hard work and persistence got us here tonight.” Eat that, Lila. “Next, if you didn’t know, I have the coolest kid sister in Paris and she’s here on bass, Juleka Couffaine.” Juleka left her mask in place and her wave looked more like clawing the air. “And last, he plays a killer set of drums but he’s also one of the greatest friends any of us could ask for—especially if you have furniture to move—ladies and gentlemen, Ivan Bruel.” Ivan stood up behind his drum set and punched his arms in the air as the crowd cheered. “Alright, let’s get this place rocking, I’m Luka Couffaine and we are,” they all bellowed together, “Kitty Section!”

Ivan counted them off as Luka slipped his mask back on and relinquished the mic to Rose, her own mask back in place as she belted, “Oh I love unicorns…”

The energy in the crowd was amazing and it definitely fired up the band. Luka didn’t think they’d ever played better. They went through the first half of their set flawlessly and Luka felt incredible.

Then it was time, and for the first time that evening the chill of nerves wound down Luka’s spine.

“Thank you!” Rose hollered into the mic. “And now we have something special for you tonight, so ladies and gentlemen, kittens and unicorns, give it up for Kitty Section’s own Luka Couffaine!”

The audience erupted as Luka took off his mask, handing it to Rose as he took his place at the mic.

“Wow, thank you,” he said, grinning out at them and hoping his nerves didn’t show as he raised the mic stand to a more comfortable height. “Really, thank you, I’m so humbled and grateful to have all your support.” Chants of Luka, Luka broke out and he laughed. “Wow, seriously, you guys. Thank you so much.” He cleared his throat. “So this next song is maybe an odd choice for a rock band, but I hope you’ll like what we’ve done with it. I’ve been thinking a lot about hopes and dreams lately. I think you can probably guess why,” he grinned as laughter rippled across the audience. “It’s been a pretty surreal experience. And it’s got me thinking a lot about dreams and life and just...potential, you know? I think about how lucky I am to have gotten the opportunities I’ve had. But, at the same time it feels disrespectful to call it luck, because it was intentional. It was a very special person taking the opportunities she’s been given and passing them on. If you ask her, she’ll tell you she didn’t do very much, but that’s not even remotely true. For one thing, she designed our awesome stage gear,” he tapped the sparkling kittycorn on his breastplate. “And if you could have been there in the band meetings and listened to what the poor girl had to put up with while we were tossing ideas around, you’d be even more impressed.” There was another ripple of laughter, and Luka chuckled, turning his pick in his fingers. “You know, some people think you have to be ruthless to follow your dreams, that you’ll never get anywhere without stepping on the people around you.” His eyes locked on Marinette, who was gaping at him, mouth open and one hand locked on Alya’s arm. “But then there are some people who aren’t afraid to share their dreams and who are excited to share yours, and that’s what Marinette has been for us. I don’t have time to tell you half of the things she’s done for Kitty Section and also for me personally, or to tell you how she’s encouraged and inspired a lot of people in this room, and if I tried she’d probably pass out.” He grinned and winked at her. “So instead I’m just gonna say, this one’s for you, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the girl with a million dreams, and a heart big enough to hold all of ours.” There were scattered cheers from Marinette’s friends, but for the most part the room seemed to hold its collective breath.

Luka closed his eyes for a moment, gathering himself. When he felt ready, he began to play what he’d been working on for weeks. He took a deep breath, and stepped up to the mic, eyes still half-closed as he began to sing, his voice low and mellow despite the metal sound of his guitar beneath. “I close my eyes and I can see a world that’s waiting up for me, that I call my own…Through the dark, through the door, through where no one’s been before, but it feels like home…”

Luka opened his eyes, and smiled down at Marinette, who now had both hands over her mouth. “They can say, they can say it all sounds crazy, they can say they can say I’ve lost my mind...I don’t care, I don’t care if they call me crazy...we can live in a world that we design…”

Luka tore his eyes away from her, scanning across the crowd, feeling Ivan’s rhythm through his feet and Juleka’s bass thrumming behind him and Rose’s voice coming in to support his. “Cause every night I lie in bed, the brightest colors fill my head, a million dreams are keeping me awake…I think of what the world could be, the vision of the one I see, a million dreams is all it’s gonna take...a million dreams for the world we’re gonna make.” He was starting to see faces in the crowd, now, friends that had come out to support them, faces with dreams for their own. He wanted every one of them to have the same gift Marinette had given him. He sang on, and his already racing heart tripped and stuttered, and he closed his eyes again to keep back the tears trying to spring up as he poured his heart into his hands and voice.

“However big, however small, let me be part of it all...share your dreams with me...we may be right, we may be wrong, but I wanna bring you along, to the world I see, to the world we close our eyes to see, we close our eyes to see…”

He dropped his hands from the guitar and held the microphone instead.

“Every night I lie in bed, the brightest colors fill my head, a million dreams are keeping me awake.” He barely remembered to pick up his guitar in time to catch the crescendo. “I think of what the world could be, a vision of the one I see, a million dreams is all it’s gonna take, a million dreams for the world we’re gonna make…”

His voice caught on the last line. “For the world we’re gonna make.”

There was a beat of total silence, and the crowd exploded. Luka could only raise a hand to acknowledge them as he stepped back, and accepted his mask back from Rose, who hugged him impulsively before coming back to her place at the microphone. He settled the mask back over his face, breathing hard, and tried to remember what they were supposed to play next. It was several minutes before he felt composed enough to look at Marinette.

Her face was in her hands, but she looked up just as he looked down and caught his eyes, and though her face was tear-streaked, the smile she gave him was blinding.

#quickspins #backlog #i'll give you the stars #lukanette #i am lukanette trash i admit it #luka couffaine #marinette dupain-cheng #miraculousladybug #miraculous ladybug #mlfics

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 5 years ago

Text

if you won’t protect one another, then who will?

i love how this show uses two whole episodes--15% of its total season runtime!--to tell us something that could’ve been just as easily told in short bursts of flashbacks, but will drop something totally new, fantastical and downright psychedelic with only two episodes left in the season and walk away with absolutely no explanation. did i say i love it? i mean i hate it. by which i mean i also love it.

SPOILERS ahead.

1. i love that, despite getting a whole-ass actor to play him, this show is very much committed to the idea of a phantom!bruce: sort of an omniscient, omnipresent shadow, all-knowing but unknowable. apart from a brief flash of vulnerability when reuniting with dick in 2.01, we have had no engagement with bruce as a person, and so bruce becomes this frustrating, over-blown, mythical figure not just for the titans, but for the audience itself.

like. when i was trying to google ‘elko’ and ‘dc comics’ to see if it was in reference to any comic event/character, i came across a number of reviews of the episode (and no actual comic book references) that seemed to take it for granted that bruce wayne masterminded the elko meet-up. like. he had rachel talk to donna over the phone, had rachel’s voice crackle over dawn’s radio and her car engine nearly die at the same time, flashed the diner ad at the exact right moment and place for kory, and... what, hacked rachel’s mind? bruce is made to seem like some sort of divine trickster, “helping” the heroes through riddles and convoluted puzzles, setting them on the path where they’re supposed to go and being a gigantic asshole about it the entire time. if bruce was this concerned about dick and his team, why wouldn’t he step in and help in a more direct and efficient way? why would you for a second even entertain the idea that bruce wayne--for all of his intellect and resources--would even be capable of this, let alone do it? because this fucking show loves its unreliable narrators and weird, hallucinatory mindscapes, and i love it for being this cheerfully kooky.

1.5. i think it’s safe to say that we didn’t see the real bruce wayne at all this episode. so what actually happened? others like @maurianasravenholdt and @seekingxanadu have already (very astutely) posited that it all has something to do with rachel and dick’s Special Connection: something that was established in moment one of the very first episode of the show. maybe halluci!bruce managed to project to rachel and the others through this connection. let’s consider a few things and see if we can get to a conclusion:

a) halluci!bruce appears whenever dick is especially unwell--be that physically, mentally, or spiritually. it’s the form his subconscious assumes when it’s trying to cut through all of the hand-wringing and suffocating guilt that’s clouding dick’s mind and preventing him from consciously putting things together and moving on

b) rachel has had some form of access to dick’s mind and memories right from the beginning, considering that she dreamt of the night his parents died even before she knew that he existed

c) rachel could send psychic messages to people very far away, like she did to dawn in the s1 finale

d) it’s implied that rachel is struggling to control her powers throughout this season, and established that she wasn’t aware that her possessed gargoyle killed a man (also, she can possess inanimate objects now? neat.) maybe trigon is still lurking in that jewel of hers, biding his time, trying to manifest every time rachel uses her powers

e) halluci!bruce disappears briefly while dick is still out of his mind with fever, and that coincides with time “bruce” is talking to rachel, kory and the others

f) dick in rachel’s vision implores her “not to give up” and she sees elko’s diner for the first time when holding his hands

g) dick sees a goddamn RAVEN in his prison cell

a possible conclusion? rachel’s awesome (subconscious) powers facilitated her connection to dick, reached out and passed on messages to all the other titans, and gave a chance for dick’s subconscious to directly address the other titans and get them on track to what they should be doing. why would all of them see his hallucination? well, trigon had free access to their minds and their realities in 1.11 and 2.01; what’s to say that just a fraction of that power wouldn’t tweak their perceptions just so that they were all experiencing the same hallucination at once? (tellingly, the cook is never shown reacting to bruce wayne.)

i mean, it’s plausible, if a bit convoluted. i just don’t understand why this would be the way they are all saved, especially now, given that rachel and dick have barely talked to each other for several episodes. it’s just--completely out of the blue.

(heh. blue. geddit?)

1.75. other possible explanations: um.... jericho....? so we know that jericho’s alive and in slade’s body. is it possible that he could’ve orchestrated this somehow? he clearly had access to some weird, liminal world back in the beginning of 2.08. maybe he’s tapping into those hitherto-undefined abilities to subconsciously connect the titans together and give them a metaphorical kick up the ass after realising that dick was too busy drowning in guilt and grief to help jericho any time soon? I DON’T KNOW. but maybe...?

1.8. maybe dick has been a meta all along? maybe not, but would you honestly put this past the show?

(i’m reminded of the fic i wrote after the s1 finale where i basically implied that dick had been trigon all along. stop trying to out-weird me, titans.)

1.95. the image of dick grayson alone on a prison bed, sweating and burning up with fever, delirious, sighing “jericho...” at the ceiling while closing his eyes is going to fucking haunt me forever

2. some much needed insight into kory! (tho, in true titans style, they had her hook up with an actual psychiatrist who laid out exactly what was going on with her in plain terms. listen sir, it’s poor form to do this to someone who didn’t explicitly ask you for your advice or come to you for a consultation! and if you think somebody’s unwell or at least their decision-making ability is compromised, do not have sex with them! take the time you spend in the gym to think about this! sir! this is Not Okay!)

2.5. god that she says she experienced things like friendship love and freedom “for the first time” when she lost her memories last year! no wonder she put off going back to tamaran for as long as she could after trigon was defeated at the start of this season, and no wonder she was absolutely fucking delighted to explore new experiences and interact with other people. and now here she is, obligated to go back to her planet and save her people but with no way to do it and no one to talk to about it.

like dick, she bears the burdens of others (maybe a little more easily than he does), but prefers to deal with her own issues alone, until it’s a hard icy lump in her chest and she can hardly breathe from the anxiety. both she and dick recognise this in each other and respect it--which ironically means that they are able to be honest and open to each other in a way that they can’t be to everybody else.

(which just makes it a great pity that they’ve had all of two conversations this entire season.)

3. so jason/rose is a Real, Actual Thing now, which i did not expect, and rose is slade’s mole in titans tower, which is totally something i called ages ago. their scenes were cheesy but in the best possible way--i groaned when they started quoting musicals at each other, but it’s exactly that kind of corniness that does more to make them more human and likeable than say... the past several episodes

jason recognises in rose another rebel who pushes people away to protect herself and i can see why he’d cling to her in a world full of hypercompetent emotionally constipated people who always seem to know where they belong. it’s so sweet and brave of him to make himself vulnerable in the way that he did, which means learning of rose’s deception is going to further devastate him and send him firmly down the path to red-hood-dom. which is honestly a great pity--it really was shaping up like dick and jason were going to bond and help each other grow, but now he probably thinks that dick thought so little of him that he thought jason was acceptable collateral to keep his secret re: jericho safe.

4. so a lot of people are upset at donna and dawn seemingly up and abandoning dick, but having seen the scene for myself, it makes a lot of sense? sure, it was a little harsh, but they do know dick--and they correctly guess that he’ll get out of there if he wanted to. conner and gar do need them more, and frankly it’s a bit concerning that rachel didn’t realise that on her own

4.5. and, like. the reasons they’re angry with him haven’t changed. dick is consumed with guilt about his role in jericho’s death, but donna (and maybe dawn) are furious at dick for living with this for so many years, denying his friends a chance to process the information and make choices for themselves. dick thought he was sparing them all the pain of realising just how badly they’d fucked up with jericho, but for the others it’s just another way in which dick is paranoid and secretive and more their tortured leader than their best friend. again, the fact that dick’s narration dominates this season makes it hard to see, but donna, dawn and hank took away different kinds of trauma from the jericho incident and their refusal to engage with dick right now might legitimately be seen as an act of self-preservation than any actual malice on their part.

5. GIVE GAR A BREAK GODDAMN

the best, most loyal titan, and his reward is to be repeatedly violated and traumatised and turned into a killing machine. i just--*sigh*

once they save him, at least half of season three better be the other titans grovelling for forgiveness and gar having fun, healhy relationships with people who can reciprocate his enthusiasm and loyalty

5.5. so we’ve got slade and jericho-in-slade on one side, and mercy graves and her machinations at cadmus on the other; raven and nightwing ready to burst out of their cocoons, and hank, forgotten somewhere in the wilderness, about to spiral back down a very familiar hole. and there are only two episodes left in the season. *rubs face tiredly*

6. anyway, titans is a trip and a half, and makes just about as much sense. I LOVE IT. 1000/10.

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #dick grayson #rachel roth #bruce wayne #koriand'r #garfield logan #jason todd #rose wilson #donna troy #dawn granger

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