#A lot was sacrificed to hit the necessary story beats | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

conspirwbytheorist-inactive · 4 years ago

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I am curious about what characters arcs you think are being sacrificed too much? Like I don't want to criticize or anything just genuinely curious about your thoughts

That’s really fair. Sorry for taking so long to respond. Combo of things with last ep triggered some emotional stuff for me so I needed to step back and process for a bit. Like. I might get more in depth on this later, but my issue is less “specific arcs are being sacrificed” and more that even though the team is still hitting all of the general beats and points that I’d expect them to hit, they haven’t really had the time to provide the context or fallout necessary for the emotional impact of those beats to fully land?

Like. It’s not a sign of bad writing, more a symptom of focusing on ensuring a very full plot happens within the limited space they have. But it can be frustrating for those of us who were drawn to RWBY for its characters rather than its plot. More in depth take below the cut, but I think that more or less captures the gist of it.

Because of how busy the plot has been, it feels like the writers have put its needs before the needs of the characters. And, as a result, we’ve had a lot of things that normally would have been explored in an entire scene or even over the course of multiple episodes get boiled down to a single line or plot beats happening where the characters’ actions don’t quite feel in synch with what we’ve seen from them before. Like I said, it’s not malicious or a sign of bad writing. I suspect it’s a symptom of having so much in the plot that feels it needs to be worked through in such a limited time that there really isn’t room to explore these things.

And, as a result, we get a lot of “controversial” things that can be boiled down to “the narrative did not have time to give us much character perspective and, as a result, the beat’s payoff was not as clear or impactful as it appears the team was intending it to be.”

So, like, I guess as a light example, a lot of people talking about Ren’s semblance change happening really quickly. It makes sense for his semblance to evolve this way. It makes sense that someone with such an intuitive connection to emotions that he can suppress them in others would eventually be able to use that connection to consciously see them. But it just kind of. . . happened? We got the impetus. Him being called out on pushing people away, going into the tundra to think on it. But what did he think about? What clicked for him with the Ace Ops that hadn’t before? What does he think of his new ability? How does he feel about it? What does this mean for Ren as a character?

There wasn’t really time to explore all of that and, as a result, even though it is a good beat that makes sense, it was hard to feel the deeper significance of what this meant for Ren on a personal level. Because what mattered was less what it means for Ren and more “in order for ‘x’ to happen in the plot, we need ‘y’ to happen first”. ‘X’ in this case being “Team JYR finds Oscar in the Whale” and ‘Y’ being “Ren can now sense and track people’s auras/emotions”. In order to make the plot they wanted happen in the allotted time, they could not afford to linger on the impact this had on the character.

Which, from the writers’ perspective isn’t a huge deal. Unlike us, they know where the plot is going, they know what these things mean for the characters, how it’s going to impact them. When someone is creating a work (be it creative or informative) it can be really easy to get so wrapped up in your project that you forget that your audience doesn’t have access to the same information you do. What seems like a small cut or necessary sacrifice or something that can be moved til later on the writers’ end could be very confusing/detrimental to understanding on the audience’s end. It’s not “bad writing”, it’s just a very human thing to do when running a giant production with limited time and tight deadlines and a very ambitious set of goals.

I hope that there is a payoff. Like I said, I think the writers know where they’re going with this. They say V9 has been planned from the start. I hope that this rush has been to ensure that it is as impactful as possible and that we can sit with our characters again. But in the meantime, as someone who is very character focused in how I enjoy media, it has made for a frustrating viewing experience where, even though we have still gotten some good character eps (Cinder’s backstory, “Dark” and “Risk”) the characters largely feel more “along for the ride” than driving the story themselves.

And the last episode stung a lot not because it was inherently bad, but because I was hoping they’d wrapped up the Ironwood/vault/Penny plot lines so quickly to give themselves room to breathe in order to focus on character stakes. Not introduce/reintroduce 3 more high-stakes subplots to also wrap up with only one episode to go. It’s. . .hard to be pumped when they’re gonna have to lightning round for this finale to come remotely close to wrapping things up.

If that makes sense? Nothing wrong if you’ve enjoyed the pacing or don’t feel there’s an issue, just an explanation of where my perspective’s coming from. :)

#ask #anon #it's a conspirwby!#rwby spoilers #I'm really drained atm bc of personal stuff #but this was a very fair question and one I wanted to answer honestly #to be up front on where my concerns are at right now #you know?#rwde #I guess?#I still don't know what the point of that tag is #tagging just in case this falls into that category?#rwby vol 8 spoilers

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starkey · 4 years ago

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[Spoilers for The Haunting of Bly Manor!]

I know everyone is super loving Bly Manor cause ~80′s gays~!!! but some stuff about it sat really bad for me so I’m gonna try to verbalise it. Obviously if you loved it and aren't vibing with a critical analysis I'm not offended if you don't read lol. Also I’m not trying to say that there’s anything wrong with liking it! I just...didn’t, and I want to think about why, for a sec. (Sorry this got a bit long)

I think part of my problem is that I count Hill House as one of my favourite shows ever and I had ridiculously high hopes for Bly Manor, which probably couldn't ever have been fully realised. And there was actually a lot about it that I liked, especially at the begining. I thought the kids were great, and I loved the core group of Mrs Grose, Owen, Dani and Jamie. I liked the fact that the Henry Wingrave element was expanded upon, and I liked the complexity of Rebecca and Peter, and the room it gave them to be fully realised human beings. I quite enjoyed that they kept to the Hill House ghost mythology - that ghosts are lost in time but fixed in place, and that they jump from memory to memory, and haunt the people that they care about without knowing. But there were lots of things I wasn't so keen on...

Until the last episode my issues were mainly that it felt a bit...lazy? I can't stress it enough but the british accents were really really bad. Old!Jamie’s accent was deeply unbelievable and jarring, as was Henry Wingrave's, and although Peter’s accent was passable (I assume because the actor is English and not American like the others) it still didn’t match his mothers, or his ‘background’ - i.e. it sounded like a private school Edinburgh accent, not a Glasgow kid dragged up through poverty in the scheme - and yes there is a significant difference in those accents. I appreciate there’s a degree of privilege at play here - I’m used to the BBC producing high quality television where these details aren’t messed about with, and the production of Bly Manor was thoroughly American, but to put it in perspective, it would be like... if a character had a deep south dirt-poor Louisiana upbringing and spoke like somebody from a private school in Virginia. Other details also felt off - Rebecca’s costumes all seemed weirdly 2020-adjacent, none of the fashion or ancillary details seemed to match the UK in the 80s (which has a distinct feel), and the house that Peter returned to on his ‘memory bumps’ looked much more like an LA condo than a Scottish council house. Really, they should have just set it in America, because it felt more American than British, and they clearly didn't have any British people involved in the production.

I really didn't enjoy the narrative framing device of 'someone telling a story to a group of people at a party'. It makes sense in the Turn of the Screw, because the narrator is reading from a document written at the time of the events, so the narration becomes a first person one where the degree of detail is logically accounted for. In this take, the story alternated from being one which made sense - us just watching the characters move around normally - to one in which 'Jamie' (who’d apparently had a complete personality transplant that had turned her from a feisty northern lesbian into a coy, mysterious victorian englishwoman with a severe accent problem) adopted a falsely old-fashioned manner and told the wedding guests a ten hour long story about a haunted house. And somehow neither Flora nor Miles recognised any part of this story in the least, in spite of what must have been overwhelming similarities? It was very jarring.

I also kept waiting for a twist on a level with Hill House, but never got one. The big twist about Mrs Grose was, I thought, obvious from almost the first episode. I mean the woman didn’t eat or drink anything and spent most of her time confused about where she was, I thought it was fairly clear that she was a ghost. And yeah, I suppose because I’ve read the book I was never in any doubt that Peter was already dead. The ghosts in the background were much less spooky than in Hill House. They stood around in broad daylight while the characters talked and joked and it kind of felt like the ghosts had wandered in by accident and felt too awkward to leave. I really liked how spooky Hill House was - even apart from the jump scares I thought the psychological elements and the open discussion of death and grief was really affecting. I didn’t feel that at all in Bly Manor, and by the time we found out the details of Mrs Grose’s death, I’d already come to terms with it. But all of this would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the last episode.

I really really didn’t enjoy the bury your gays ending. And I’m not even usually against this in principle! I think in a dark/horror context, where there’s implied to be an ever-present threat of character death, it’s unreasonable to expect that no characters will die or experience tragedy - and in cases where there’s abundant LGBT rep some of those characters will by necessity not be cis/straight. So I don’t have a problem with gay characters meeting tragic or dark ends, as a general rule, particularly when it serves a narrative purpose and isn’t gratuitous. My problem here was in the manner and necessity of that death.

There were ways in which Dani could have died in this story that I would have felt were narratively meaningful and cathartic, but the manner in which she did die failed to hit those beats for me. This is a story in which two women in the 80's fall in love and are doomed by the world around them (we're already in Meryl Streep 'groundbreaking' territory here, in terms of metaphor). They know death is coming for them, that it will likely destroy them both, that they won't have an opportunity to grow old together, that eventually one day it will catch them and everything will be over - they're on borrowed time, and they spend a lot of that time looking over their shoulders waiting for shit to break bad. In the end, they're destroyed by a force in Dani's body/mind that she can't fight, that she can't win against, and the spectre of which haunts her through the years. Like... the obvious parallel here is mental health, and suicide - they even go out of their way to feature that classic heartsink moment with the overflowing bath. And to me, any story that has a message of 'no matter how strong you are, no matter how much love you have and give, or how beautiful the life you've built is, eventually the dark forces in your mind will Get You and it'll probably be before you make it to middle age' is... really shitty. The other echo that struck me was the HIV/AIDS crisis - obviously wlw were relatively spared from this, in comparison to mlm, but it still carries a cultural legacy of pain and trauma, and I really didn't need this show to grind down on that for me.

And the thing is... in the original story, the governess doesn't even die! Miles does, so maybe there's an argument here that Dani sacrificed herself in exchange for Miles's life in this retelling, but I'm still struck by this element of, like... they added this in! They chose to do this! Only one character dies in the course of this show (with Mrs Grose dying before the show starts) and it's the gay woman?? Why?? What did it show?? Why was it necessary?

Not to mention, the 'epilogue' scene paints Jamie as being very lonely and isolated. I'm not sure why the children didn't recognise ANY elements of this story from their past - even assuming they forgot the ghostly elements of their childhood, they should be able to see the similarities in the characters, but the scene also seems to imply that Jamie really isn't very close to Miles and Flora, and that she doesn't even really get to have a relationship with them as adults, in spite of losing everything to protect them, and not having any family of her own.

Almost everybody else gets a happy ending, but Jamie ends the night of the epilogue standing alone at a table, with the love of her life dead in a cursed lake, doomed to spend eternity watching over a crumbling house, and idk to me? that kind of sucked.

#the haunting of bly manor #bly manor #the haunting of hill house #hill house #bury your gays #spoilers #long post

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drop-of-infinity · 4 years ago

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I have continued my weird destiel fic thing! This part is canon compliant with season 6.

Chapter one is here

Chapter two is here

<><><><><><><><><>

Chapter 3: season 6

The Third Man

{“I pray to Castiel to get his feathery ass down here-“ and then suddenly Cas was there in all his trenchcoated glory. He hadn’t come when Sam had prayed all those times, but Dean had called once and here was Cas. Well, no time to think about that now.

{“Dean and I do share a more profound bond..” he’d been very careful with his wording, yet the that was too honest feeling had returned. Cas sighed inwardly. He was not built for emotions. He was not built for choosing his words.

{“You’re gonna torture a kid?”

“I can’t care about that Dean! I don’t have the luxury.” Cas’s voice cracked as he said it, and Dean knew he did care about it. After all, if there was one thing he knew about Cas, it was that he cared more then he should.

6-7

{“I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but I do want to help.” Couldn’t that be enough for Dean? Cas had a war to worry about, he didn’t have time for this. Yet he was helping Dean anyway, because- no. Shut it down. Yet he was helping Dean anyway. Wasn’t that enough? Aren’t I enough?

{“Of course. Your problems always come first.” Coming from anyone else, Dean would think that was sarcasm, but this was Cas. Plus, the look the angel gave him... well, he was pretty sure Cas was being honest. The guy had a war to fight, and he was still helping them. Dean felt a twinge of guilt, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it, because Cas was already gone. Fricking angels.

Caged Heat

{“I learned that from the pizza man.” Dean couldn’t help but stare at Cas and the demon he had just been making out with. Since when has he been interested in that stuff? He watches Cas smooth a hand over swollen lips. An odd burning sensation roots itself in Dean’s stomach. Suddenly, he wants to strangle Meg. Because she’s a demon, probably, he tells himself. It’s just instinct.

My Heart Will Go On

{“You have me confused with the other angel. You know, the one in the dirty trench coat who’s in love with you?” Dean’s brain wisely decided to shut down at that. When Balthazar left, the only thing he let himself think was Cas’s coat isn’t dirty. The other thoughts-well they weren’t so much thoughts as half formed screams and fast heartbeats-he pushed to the back of his mind to be taken out and examined never.

{“You need new friends Cas.”

“I’m trying to save the ones I have, Dean.” It’s always strange to call Dean his friend. The word friend encompasses so much to humans, everything from ‘this person makes me happy’ to ‘I don’t want to live without you.’ Humanity is still fascinating. Cas will keep Dean safe. It is his priority, always. This person makes me happy.

{“50000 new souls for your war machine.” As fate talks, Cas can only be grateful that the Winchesters can’t hear her. If they knew... well, it wouldn’t be pretty. Dean takes trust so seriously. Cas has the odd feeling that he is digging himself into a hole. This is the only way, he thinks. Lie, beat Raphael, keep them in your life. Simple enough. He stops Balthazar from stabbing fate, because her sisters would come after the Winchesters, and he can’t have that. As time unfreezes, and Cas watches Dean startle awake back into his own timeline, green eyes flying open, he realizes something terrifying. He is an entity, an eldritch being millions of years old. He has known Dean for less then a fraction of his immortal life and yet... I don’t want to live without you.

18-19

{“I think you call him when you need something.” Rachel’s words cut deeper then they should. Dean considers Cas the best friend he’s ever had, but their life means friendship is built in the middle of life threatening situations. There was another thought too, buried deep. At least needing something gives me an excuse. At least if he doesn’t show up I can pretend he doesn’t want to help, not he doesn’t want to see me. It’s strange to need an excuse to talk to someone, but Dean can’t help it. Instead of studying either of these revelations, he denies what this angel has said, and resumes arguing with her.

{“There are millions of lives at stake here not just two!” Even as Cas says it, he feels the weight of his words on his own actions. How many people had he sacrificed to save two recently? Cas doesn’t stop Dean from leaving with the children. He could have, but he knows how hypocritical it would be. The greater good doesn’t always mean everything, he reasons.

{When Cas gets his powers back, the first thing he does (well, after smiting all the monsters in the diner) is heal Dean. The bite on his neck vanishes as Cas places a hand on Dean’s shoulder. He tells himself it is for grounding purposes, but he knows he doesn’t need to touch someone to heal them. He also knows he doesn’t usually want to. He also knows that he’s had to use the word usually instead of always a lot more since he met Dean.

The Man Who Would Be King

{“But Cas, you’ll call right? If you get into real trouble?” There is more Dean wants to say, but he can’t. Usually they would be hunting Crowley together, but Sam and Bobby think Cas-their Cas, who has saved their lives more times then he can count-might be working with the king of Hell. It’s ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. And yet... his instincts are telling him they’re right. He always goes with his gut, but with Cas... there’s something in his heart straining against it. Innocent until proven guilty, he thinks stubbornly. As Cas teleports away, Dean wishes he could believe the angel will call if he has to, but he has a feeling those words will be ignored.

{“I still considered myself the Winchester’s guardian. After all, they taught me how to stand up, what to stand for.” As he goes over the story in his head, Cas thinks about what else he’s learned from them. From Dean. How to smile, how to cry. How to feel so much and then repress it like your life depends on it. How to love.

{“This is Cas guys!” Dean knows it’s a weak argument, but they don’t know the guy like he does. He thinks of Cas saying “profound bond” and realizes it’s true. Sam and Bobby weren’t there in Hell. They weren’t there sitting on that park bench, or in that bar. They didn’t sit in the Impala afterwards, actually laughing for the first time in years. Dean blinks a few times. There is an emotion hovering at the surface of his mind that he does not want to look at too closely right now.

{“Where were you when I needed to hear it?”

“I was there. Where were you?” There are tears in Dean’s eyes as he looks at Cas over the fire. I hurt him again, he thinks numbly. Sam and Dean don’t understand the stakes of the war in heaven is all. They don’t understand that this betrayal was necessary. But as Cas looks at Dean, his certainty wavers. It feels like the moment before he chose to stop Lucifer, except this time he is already in the wrong, and it is too late, and he hurt Dean.

{“I’m doing this for you Dean. I’m doing this because of you.” Dean stares at the angel in front of him. Cas is always saying shit like this, but this time it’s a lie and they both know it. Has it always been a lie? What were his real motives? Of course he wasn’t always doing this stuff for me. I was stupid to believe it. His father’s words ring in his head. Useless. Pathetic. Cas betrayed them. Cas betrayed him, and it hurts like hell.

{“Next to Sam, you and Bobby are the closest things I have to family.” It feels like a knife, sliding below Cas’s layers of self righteousness and belief and inserting itself into his chest. He stops breathing. Dean did legitimately care about him, and now he’s gone and burned it all down. What choice did I have? He thinks desperately. It is too late now.

Let It Bleed

{“I do everything that you ask, I always come when you call, and I am your friend.” Dean wishes he could accept that. All he wants is to hug Cas and tell him it’s okay, and have everything go back to normal. But Cas betrayed them, and now Lisa and Ben are in danger, and Dean feels like he’s falling through the floor.

{“I wish this changed anything.”

“I know. Me too.” He ruined it. Castiel, the broken angel, the fallen angel. Whatever he might have had with Dean he ruined it like he ruined everything else. It feels like a black hole opening up inside him. He feels something on his face, and lifts a shaky hand to touch his cheeks. They are wet. Just keep going. All you can do now is defeat Raphael. Now you have no reason not to. Now you will do what you must. Dean clearly doesn’t care anymore, so there is nothing holding Cas back.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

{“we were family once. I’d have died for you. I almost did a few times. I’ve lost Lisa, I’ve lost Ben, I’ve lost Sam. Don’t make me lose you too.” It was the closest Dean could come to saying what he meant, which was please, I need you here. He thought he saw Cas’s expression waver for a moment, but then the angel steeled himself and Dean felt a sinking sensation. He knew it-whatever it was or had been-was over before Cas opened his mouth.

{“You’re not my family Dean. I have no family.” He almost choked on the words as he said them. It was true, he told himself. Dean wasn’t family, he never would be. He was just a human. He is more than family, whispers the traitorous part of himself that had made him betray Heaven for this one human. But Cas sees his words hit Dean like a javelin, and he knows there is no going back. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

{All the souls from purgatory are in Cas, and he remembers why he wasn’t supposed to fall. This is his destiny.

{As Castiel tells them to kneel or die, Dean remembers why he’s been scared to fly since forever. There’s always a crash.

Then all hell-well, all Purgatory breaks loose, and neither of them have time to get lost in memories.

#destiel #supernatural #spn #deancas #castiel #supernatural thoughts #spn thoughts #destiel fic #destiel fanfic #deancas fic #deancas fanfic #spn season 6 #supernatural season 6 #the man who would be king

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aquawtales · 6 years ago

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I saw a lot of story making Harley inherited Stark Industry by making Tony his biological father or adopt him. While I love the concept that Harley is SI’s heir, the circumstance for that to happen goes a little bit different in my head canon.

Harley and Tony still keep in touch with each other after the event in IM3. Mostly it was Tony who calls to make sure that the kid who once save his life is still alive and kicking. He gives Harley his personal number in case of emergency, but never once did Harley call him first which was surprising considering it’s the same kid who guilt trap Tony when he were leaving Tennessee.

When Harley gives Tony a call, it was with a request if Tony could introduce him a lawyer who specializes in divorced case, whose service won’t charge him a fortune but still good enough to win them a case.

It took a lot of effort, but Tony finally success in prying the whole story out of the kid’s mouth. Long story shot, Harley’s father come back as an alcoholic asshole with a tendency to rise his hand against his wife and kids when drunk. Harley did endure a few beatings, but finally snap when the same hand that was hitting him was aimed at his baby sister.

Tony not only sent Harley the best divorce lawyer in the country, but he also sent Pepper to keep an eye on the situation in his stead.

With the help of the lawyer and Pepper, they win the case easily. Harley’s mother got full custody of both of her children and the other have to pay an alimony money monthly until his first born finished high school.

The whole process takes roughly a week at most, but enough for Pepper to sees Harley’s true potential. Not his talent in mechanic or engineering, though that was impressive as well. What really catches Pepper attention is Harley natural ability to manipulate the crowd. He knows how to conduct himself in front of the public to create an image that best fit for the situation.

Pepper decides then and there that she will personally take this kid under her wings. This is when Harley gets the offer for the internship in the Stark Industry, though not he will not be in Tony’s care but Peper’s.

The Keener’s family move to New York for a fresh start. They denied Tony’s offer to pay for everything they need, but did allow his help finding a job for Harley’s mother, and the recommendation letter so that Harley and his sister will get accepted to the school without having to wait for the new school year.

Harley work for his internship three after school and a whole day on Saturday. Pepper’s work as CEO means that she not only have to deal with the Board of Directors, but she has to be working closely with the company’s both Legal and PR department. Which also mean Harley, as Pepper’s personal intern, have to be working with them as well. Within two months, both departments started to see the same potential that Pepper discovered in the kid too. They all saw how much Pepper invests in the teenager’s skill growth, and somehow come to a conclusion that Harley’s internship is a cover for the training so the kid can step up into the role of the company’s heir in the future, so they started to act accordingly to it. Harley now gets an intensive training and a lot of exercise in both Legal and PR department. During weekdays, Harley has only seen on either Legal’s or PR’s floor, though Saturday is booked for R&D and bonding time with Tony as a fellow mechanic.

Harley is bright, but he isn’t a genius like Tony. He is good at fixing and upgrading or improving things, but he can’t create or come up with a new element in a matter of days like Tony. His preference also tends to lean forward cars and automobiles more than other field of technology.

Harley’s unofficial position as the company’s heir is slowly getting more and more defined in the eyes of its employee the more time pass. Things only start to get complicated when Tony introduces them yet another genius teenager two and a half years later.

Peter Parker hasn't only been introduced as Tony Stark’s personal intern, but the kid also invokes the “Dad vibe” from the man whenever they interact with each other.

This sending most of the employees into confusion, because the Boss’ son has shown up, what will happen to the, unofficial but widely acknowledge as the, heir they had been training all this time? It took a couple of weeks before everything gets sorted out. Tony might see Peter as his own son, though the man also seems to be oblivious to his own feeling and action, but he did make it clear that the kid will never be involved with the company unless it was necessary. On the other hand, Harley is already neck deep learning and occasionally dealing with the company business for years.

To the SI’s staff, Peter is the boss's son while Harley is the company’s heir.

When Harley learns about Peter Parker, the first thing he did is called Pepper and blurting out. “Did you train me to be your replacement when that Parker kid success Tony? Because if you did, I will need all the file on him so I can be prepared to deal when sh*t hit the fan. I swear that guy is worse than Tony when it comes to being a self sacrificed hero! Don’t expect me to end up dating him like you did with Tony though.”

They end up dating anyway.

#headcanon #harley keener #peter parker #stark industry #pepper pott #tony stark #harleyxpeter #parkner #i love business typhoon harley #probably never going to actually write this though #i take me like a week to just get this outline out #writing in english is soooo hard #writing in any language acutally

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driedletters · 5 years ago

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The Cruel Prince • Holly Black ★★★★★

• Quotes

Jude ran at the man, slamming her fists against his chest, kicking at his legs. She wasn’t even scared. She wasn’t sure she felt anything at all.

•

As for dancing, once begun, you mortals will dance yourselves to death if we don’t prevent it.

•

Three is an odd configuration of sisters. There’s always one on the outside.

•

“Dirt. It’s what you came from, mortal. It’s what you’ll return to soon enough. Take a big bite.” “Make me,” I say before I can stop myself.

•

Nicasia’s wrong about me. I don’t desire to do as well in the tournament as one of the fey. I want to win. I do not yearn to be their equal. In my heart, I yearn to best them.

•

Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest, with black hair as iridescent as a raven’s wing and cheekbones sharp enough to cut out a girl’s heart. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

•

You mean because of Cardan and his Court of Jerks?

•

The pictures are taken one right after the other, the kind you have to sit in a booth for. Vivi is in the photos, her arm draped over the shoulders of a grinning, pink-haired mortal girl.

Having stepped off the edge, what I want to do is fall.

•

Liking both girls and boys is the only thing in this scenario Madoc wouldn’t be upset with Vivi about.

•

I delight in the chemicals that would doubtless sicken all the lords and ladies at the Court.

•

We’ve gone three rounds like this already. I keep thinking of the lazy blink of Cardan’s lashes over his coal-bright eyes. He looked gleeful, gloating, as though my fist tightening on his shirt was exactly what he would have wished. As though, if I struck him, it would be because he had made me do it.

•

Beg. Make it pretty. Flowery. Worthy of me.

•

You think because you can humiliate me, you can control me? Well, I think you’re an idiot. Since we started being tutored together, you’ve gone out of your way to make me feel like I’m less than you. And to coddle your ego, I have made myself less. I have made myself small, I have kept my head down. But it wasn’t enough to make you leave Taryn and me alone, so I’m not going to do that anymore.

•

As I make my way back to the tournament and my sisters, I can’t stop thinking of Cardan’s shocked face, nor can I stop considering Locke’s smile. I am not altogether sure which is more thrilling and which more dangerous.

•

Not that I’d be the first to green gown her. Faeries

•

It feels a little bit like expecting a proposal of marriage, only to get offered the role of mistress.

•

“Now no one will be able to control you,” he says, and then pauses for a moment. “Except for me.”

•

Truly, he has come by his cruelty honestly in Balekin’s care. He has been raised up in it, instructed in its nuances, honed through its application. However horrible Cardan might be, I now see what he might become and am truly afraid.

•

Welcome,” says the Roach, “to the Court of Shadows.”

•

Not totally Cardan’s puppet like the rest of them.

•

Hard enough to dig through the page, maybe to scar the desk beneath. If that’s what he did to the paper, I shudder to think what he wants to do to me.

•

I have been trying to feel nothing about what happened. I am afraid that if I begin to feel, I won’t be able to bear it. I am afraid that the emotion will be like a wave sucking me under.

It’s not the first awful thing I have endured and pushed into the back of my brain. That’s how I’ve been coping, and if there’s another, better way, I do not know it.

•

He’s kind of a weird kid, maybe because he’s a faerie or maybe because all kids, human or inhuman, are equally weird.

•

Why don’t you ever trust me with him?” I shout, and Oriana wheels around, shocked that I said a thing we don’t say.

•

Mithridatism, it’s called. Isn’t that a funny name? The process of eating poison to build up immunity. So long as I don’t die from it, I’ll be harder to kill.

•

I do not understand why he likes me, but it is exciting to be liked.

•

We are children of tragedy.” He shakes his head and then smiles. “This is not how I meant to begin. I meant to give you wine and fruit and cheese. I meant to tell you how your hair is as beautiful as curling woodsmoke, your eyes the exact color of walnuts. I thought I could compose an ode about it, but I am not very good at odes.”

•

He watches me as the girl kisses his mouth, watches me as she slides her hand beneath the hem of his silly, ruffly shirt.

•

Do not reveal your skill with a blade. Do not reveal your mastery over glamour. Do not reveal all that you can do. Little did Prince Dain know that my real skill lies in pissing people off.

•

I think of Cardan’s mouth, flaked with gold

•

I love my parents’ murderer; I suppose I could love anyone. I’d like to love him.

•

Time to change partners,” a voice says, and I look to see that it’s the worst person possible: Cardan. “Oh,” he says to Locke. “Did I steal your line?”

•

Dark silver paint streaks over his cheekbones, and black lines run along his lashes. The left one is smeared, as though he forgot about it and wiped his eye.

•

With a sigh, I take down my braids, rubbing my hands through my hair until it hangs wild in my face. “You look…” he says, and then trails off, blinking a few times, not seeming able to finish. I am guessing the hair thing worked better than he had expected.

•

Jude?” he asks, up against the wall, pronouncing my name carefully, as though to avoid slurring. I am not sure I have ever heard him use my actual name before. “Surprised?” I ask, a fierce grin starting on my face. The most important boy in Faerie and my enemy, finally in my power. It feels even better than I thought it would. “You shouldn’t be.”

•

The High King Balekin is a friend to my lady’s Court,” Cardan says, silver-tongued in his silver fox mask.

•

Tell me anyway,” he says, and yawns. I really want to slap him.

•

I hate how I feel around him, the irrational panic when I touch his skin.

•

Cardan’s clothes are disarranged, from crawling under tables or being captured and tied, and his infamous tail is showing under the white lawn of his shirt. It is slim, nearly hairless, with a tuft of black fur at the tip. As I watch, the tail forms one wavering curve after another, snaking back and forth, betraying his cool face, telling its own story of uncertainty and fear.

•

Only in my dreams has Cardan ever been like this. Begging. Miserable. Powerless

•

...a love mark on my brow so all who looked upon me would be sick with desire, ...

•

Let’s talk about your behavior tonight,” says Madoc, leaning forward. “Let’s talk about your behavior tonight,” I return.

•

So he proposed to you,” I say. “While the royal family got butchered. That’s so romantic.

•

I think of Cardan tied to a chair to cheer myself.

•

Then I think of the way he looked up at me through the curtain of his crow-black hair, of the curling edges of his drunken smile, and I don’t feel in the least bit comforted.

•

... ‘mortal feelings are so volatile that it’s impossible to help toying with them a little’.

•

He smiles down at me, as if the reason I’m on my knees is because I am curtsying.

•

I’m nervous,” he says. “I smile a lot when I’m nervous. I can’t help it

•

Very well.” He fixes me with a spiteful look. “I hate you because your father loves you even though you’re a human brat born to his unfaithful wife, while mine never cared for me, though I am a prince of Faerie. I hate you because you don’t have a brother who beats you. And I hate you because Locke used you and your sister to make Nicasia cry after he stole her from me. Besides which, after the tournament, Balekin never failed to throw you in my face as the mortal who could best me.

•

Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.”

•

Just looking at him makes me feel hot with shame. “You sure you brought me here just to talk.

•

Jude Duarte, daughter of clay, I swear myself into your service. I will act as your hand. I will act as your shield. I will act in accordance with your will. Let it be so for one year and one day…and not for one minute more.

•

I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?” He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.”

•

Oh, really?” The human surprises me by speaking first. “Yes, mortal,” I say, like the hypocrite I am.

•

We go over the plans again, and Cardan helps us map out Hollow Hall. I try not to be too conscious of his long fingers tracing over the paper, of the sick thrill I get when he looks at me.

•

By this point, I have told this story enough that it’s easy to hit only the necessary parts, to run through the information quickly and convincingly

•

With Vivi, I feel forever doomed to be the little sister, foolish and about to topple over onto my face.

•

I do not have endless patience,” Balekin growls. “Cultivate it,” Cardan says, and with a small bow, he navigates us away from Balekin and Madoc.

•

Jude?” I may never be used to the sound of my name on his lips.

•

The Ghost tosses the crown to my identical twin. It falls at Taryn’s feet.

•

Of Nicasia giving Cardan a lingering kiss on his royal cheek.

•

He rises from the throne. “Come, have a seat.” His voice is replete with danger, lush with menace. The flowering branches have sprouted thorns so thickly that petals are barely visible. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks. “What you sacrificed everything for. Go on. It’s all yours.”

• Black, Holly. “The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air Book 1)”. 2018.

#my fav quotes #the cruel prince #holly black #tcp #the wicked king #the queen of nothing #quotes #the cruel prince quotes #quote #principe cruel #rei perverso

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daffietjuh · 5 years ago

Text

Five times Kyle tried to ask Alex out and failed, and the one time he succeeded

A/N: I blame this entirely on @likebadgal-riri! You put this in my head! I’ve never written Kylex before, but here it is. Here are our lifeboat babies for S2! Our emotional support ship.

Alex had just gotten back into town. Kyle even went to the parade. He wanted to go talk to him, but he chickened out. Alex had looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole. It was the same look he’d had on his face when they were kids, and Kyle would coax a secret out of him. The same look, but on a much more deliberately closed-off face. He’d grown up since they were close, that part was obvious, but he’d also become so much harder to read. Kyle hated it.

He wanted to be close to him again. Be able to read his face like he used to. He wanted to be able to read his eyebrow raises and his sighs and the way he’d press his lips together.

But he was scared. He wasn’t like Alex, he wasn’t brave like he was. He was just the kid that turned his back on his best friend. The one that left a guy that already didn’t have much. The one that hit the kid that was already getting beat up enough.

The wave of shame made him feel sick. So he left. He walked away from the parade and headed to the Crashdown. He was going to eat some fries. He’d regret it later, but he didn’t care.

Arturo smiled at him knowingly when Kyle came in, but he didn’t say anything, which Kyle appreciated. He just brought Kyle his fries and left him to eat in peace. When the bell at the door signalled the arrival of a new customer and Kyle saw the wide grin on Arturo’s face, he knew immediately who it was. There was only two people that made Arturo Ortecho smile like that. Liz, who wasn’t in town, and Alex.

‘Alex, my boy.’ Arturo smiled brightly as he came from behind the counter and disappeared out of Kyle’s sightline.

‘Hi mister Ortecho.’ Kyle could hear the tell-tale tapping of Alex’s crutch on the linoleum floor. It made a swoop of dread dip through Kyle’s stomach and his fries suddenly tasted like ash. Alex almost died. He came so close to having to stand at the back of the crowd at Alex’s funeral.

He turned on his seat so he could see him. Almost like his mind demanded a reassurance that Alex was there and breathing.

He hadn’t been prepared for the wave of… something unfamiliar. Alex, despite his clear discomfort, looked great. A little more pale than Kyle remembered him being, but strong. His jawline was still sharp and his cheekbones still looked like those of a supermodel. The scar over his eyebrow was new and there was some colour high on his cheeks and his eyes were still warm and soft. Kyle wanted to stare at him over a candlelit dinner table.

Wait.

What?

Oh. That was new.

Alex’s eyes darted to him, and his smile turned harder and sharper. Anger. He still recognized that emotion.

‘Valenti, you couldn’t stare harder if you tried.’ Alex said and his voice was lower than Kyle remembered it. ‘Careful, people might start to get ideas that you’ve missed me or something.’ It was maybe a little bit of a low blow, not that Kyle didn’t deserve it. He would have said something snarky in reply, but his brain was still hung up on that dinner date he’d thought about for only a split second.

‘Good to have you back, Manes.’ Was what he said. Surprise flickered over Alex’s face for only a second before Arturo swept him away with the promise of fries and a milkshake.

It wasn’t really breaking and entering if your father had owned the place, right?

That was what Kyle told himself at least when he approached the door of his father’s cabin with a block of wood, intending to just… break a window. That was all. He wasn’t expecting the voice behind him.

‘You know, you could just knock. It’s less of a felony, but it’s also less dramatic, so it depends on what you’re going for here.’ He wasn’t sure what his body did, just that he nearly dropped the wood on his foot and whirled around. Alex was there, looking like he hadn’t been sleeping well, crutch tucked under his arm. He looked calm though. Not like this bothered him much, but maybe that was just his poker face. Alex had always wiped the floor with him at poker.

He ended up inside with Alex, and the whole thing came out. His father left Alex this place. His father had seen that Alex needed someone, someplace and he’d given that to him. He’d been there for Alex, after his death. He needed Alex to understand, what his father had thought of him, what Kyle thought of him, now that he wasn’t blinded by teenage bullshit.

‘You’ve got it wrong, you know.’ He said. ‘My dad didn’t leave you that key because he thought you were weak. He would never have thought that about you.’ And neither have I. ‘You’re the bravest person I know.’ He said without giving himself the time to overthink it. The way Alex looked up at him nearly floored him. Those eyes and that soft smile and the tiniest hint of warmth in his face. It was enough for him to want to try and coax that out more. He needed Alex to smile more. He wanted to be the reason for Alex to smile more.

So while they were bantering like they were kids again, “This is the part in the horror movie where the audience starts screaming no don’t do that”, Kyle had to fight his smile and focus on the actual, literal skeletons they may have been about to find.

They didn’t find skeletons, instead Kyle found a half-sister. One that had died ten years ago. He felt like he was on a fucking rollercoaster, and he’d never liked those very much. Alex was watching him closely with concerned eyes as he walked him out and Kyle felt like he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve Alex’s concern, his forgiveness, his love. Not that he had any thoughts of Alex still loving him like he’d loved him when they were kids. He had broken that, all by himself. It was on him to fix it.

And he would try, but not today. He’d ask Alex out to get some beers another day, as a friendly thing, with Alex, his friend.

He accepted that he now had a thing for Alex when they ended up working together in the bunker for hours. When he had time to familiarize himself with Alex again. The way he’d tap his fingers on the keyboard, even when he wasn’t typing. The way he’d bite his lip in concentration. How he’d shift his leg every so often, but didn’t acknowledge that he was uncomfortable whatsoever. How the blue lighting of his screens made him look ethereal, otherworldly beautiful. Which was kind of funny because aliens.

He opened with “I know you don’t like me, and that’s cool, but all this is a lot” he nearly said that they could go have dinner. Instead he said they should go have a beer sometimes. Alex sighed, but he didn’t say no. It was a start.

He felt so off balance around Alex, it was almost hard to believe that Alex couldn’t tell. Alex who had eyes like a hawk and saw everything. Maybe that was why he suggested Alex should go talk to Guerin. He didn’t think Guerin was good for Alex, hell, he didn’t think he was good enough for Alex. Not with the way Alex had been looking every time Guerin was so much as mentioned. The guilt and the pain that was written all over Alex made Kyle want to snipe and sneer at him. But he also saw that Alex wasn’t at that point yet. He wasn’t angry, just confused and hurt.

Maybe a talk was exactly what they needed. So Alex could see that all Guerin would ever do was hurt him. He wasn’t even sure what exactly happened between them. All he knew was that the darkness in Alex’s eyes, the forced smile and the painful longing looks were Guerin’s fault.

Guerin, who was, apparently an alien.

So instead of asking Alex out to dinner, Kyle told him to go talk to the man he’d been in love with for ten years. He just wanted Alex to be happier, and if Guerin was necessary for that, he’d push Alex in that direction, but if it turned out he wasn’t the thing that would make Alex smile more? Kyle had other options.

Caufield was a nightmare in so many different ways. Kyle found out his father had been killed by an alien, but also that he’d been a part of what was basically a war crime. The systematic imprisonment and torture of aliens. Kyle felt sick thinking about it.

‘Alex and you, huh?’ Guerin’s question was… slightly jealous? Which was fucking ridiculous. Alex had told him about Guerin sleeping with Maria. To his credit, he’d been exhausted and on his way to tipsy and Kyle had coaxed the story out of him because he’d looked wrecked. Guerin had gone and slept with the best friend of the guy he was supposed to be in love with. That didn’t really spell “love” to Kyle, that took away his right to be jealous as far as Kyle was concerned. Not that there was anything to be jealous off.

Alex’s brother had made Kyle want to throw his oath aside and bash him over the head with a fire extinguisher. The alarm going off was the only thing that stopped Kyle. Alex running further into the building about to blow made Kyle feel sick to his stomach. Would he have done the same for Kyle? Probably, it was just Alex’s nature. Self-sacrificing. He believed that he had something to make up for. Kyle didn’t believe it for a second. What their families had done, was not on them. His father’s crimes were not Alex’s to atone for.

Running away from a building about to blow wasn’t as cool as it seemed in the movies. In fact, it fucking sucked. Alex grit his teeth and Kyle refused to let him fall behind, he would have carried him out of there if he had to. Alex pushed him behind the truck first. The explosion was like a punch directly to Kyle’s heart. The look on Alex’s face was a second hit.

Alex didn’t really talk about war, or what it was like, so when he started talking, Kyle stayed quiet and listened. His hatred for Jesse Manes grew by tenfold. Alex had always had a kind heart. He had been a gentle soul. One that believed in love and that good would prevail, he’d believed in happy endings, and now he was questioning if he was the evil? Kyle hated it. He hated Jesse and he hated anyone else who had ever told Alex he was anything but kind and wonderful, himself included. He’d spend the rest of his life, as long as Alex would have him around, making up for his lapse of judgement in high school. Where he’d thought his reputation was more important than the boy with the soft eyes and the kind heart.

Things just got worse after that. Every time he spend an extended amount of time around Alex, his brain would just start chanting “ask him out, ask him out, ask him out”. As it turned out, it was hard to focus when that happened.

Especially when things went from bad to worse to godawful and Alex ended up on his doorstep at noon, looking like he hadn’t slept in three days with the simple words:

‘He didn’t show.’ Kyle didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. ‘He said he’d come back and we’d talk, and he didn’t show.’

He just pushed the door further open and let Alex in. He looked as close to tears as Kyle had seen him in a long time, and if Guerin had shown up at his front door in that moment, he would have broken his nose. No one should ever make Alex Manes look like that.

‘How long did you wait?’

‘All night.’ Alex’s voice cracked and he followed it up with an annoyed cough. ‘I guess I deserve it. I left so many times, it’s only right he leaves me too.’

‘No.’ Kyle said and Alex turned, he looked almost surprised. ‘No. Don’t say that. You don’t deserve to get hurt Alex. If he cares about you at all, he shouldn’t hurt you like this, no matter what you have or haven’t done. Which, by the way, you didn’t have much of a choice in. You couldn’t have stayed, you would have been court-martialled.’ He could already hear Alex’s next argument coming. ‘And when you were seventeen doesn’t count. You were young and scared and you saw an opportunity to learn how to fight back, that’s not on you, that will never be on you.’

Alex watched him for what felt like hours. His frown slowly disappeared and was replaced by a shaky smile. It didn’t quite reach his eyes and he still looked like he was about to keel over from exhaustion, but he didn’t look quite as shattered anymore.

‘You’re a good man, Alex. You deserve to be treated like it.’ He added, just for good measure. He actually could have said something there, it was a good leadup. He’d treat Alex right. He knew Alex was a good man. He wasn’t going to sleep with his best friend (…..anymore). He’d take him on dates and hold his hand and love him and treat him like he deserved to be treated. But now wasn’t the right time. He knew that. So he just offered Alex a beer and kicked the voice in his head to the curb, now was not the right time.

It had been months. The “relationship” between Maria and Guerin had fizzled out. Kyle was unsurprised. It was based on lies and at the cost of someone they both claimed to love. Maria found out about the alien thing. Kyle had seen them around each other, and they tried, he had to give them that, they tried to make it work. But it was clear that there wasn’t much there beyond liquor and trauma fuelled hook-ups. Guerin’s heart wasn’t in it, and Maria’s heart was broken. One half longing for a man she knew would never love her like he was supposed to, and the other half longing for a broken friendship, one maybe broken beyond repair.

And Kyle? Kyle put all his time and effort not spend trying to resurrect Max or get to know Rosa into helping Alex figure out who he was without the Air Force and without Guerin.

It was amazing. Hearing Alex laugh, warm and free at one of Kyle’s silly jokes. Watching him listen to old albums with Rosa. Watching as he taught Isobel how to defend herself, his proud expression when she kicked a dummy so hard it fell over. Seeing how he systematically dismantled project Shepard. How he used his powers for good, to take down evil, how he proved his father had created his own downfall. He’d treated Alex like shit, for years, he should have been broken or angry at the world, instead he made it a better place. He proved he was stronger than his father, stronger than Kyle, stronger than Guerin. He refused to give up. He took care of Liz as she worked herself nearly to death, he let Isobel cry on his shoulder and faced a screaming Guerin without flinching.

‘Why won’t you let it go!? He’s dead. Gone! Stop trying Alex, just leave it alone! You’re good at leaving, we both know that.’

Alex stopped Kyle from breaking Michael’s nose with a simple gesture and a soft “no”.

‘He’s hurt and terrified and he misses his brother. It’s okay.’

‘No it’s not.’ Kyle said, still seething. ‘Get out Guerin. Don’t come back unless you’re ready to apologize to Alex.’ Guerin had tears in his eyes when he stomped towards the ladder and climbed out of the bunker. Kyle couldn’t find much sympathy for him, especially not when Alex sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. He was upset. He hadn’t shown it in front of Guerin, but he was upset. He was letting Kyle see it.

‘Let’s go for dinner.’ Alex looked at him, question in his eyes. ‘You and me, let’s go have dinner.’

‘Like a date?’ Alex asked, his face wasn’t as unreadable to Kyle anymore, but he still couldn’t quite tell what Alex was thinking in that moment.

‘Yeah, like a date.’

‘If you’re just doing this because you feel bad for me-‘

‘No. That’s not what this is at all.’ Kyle said firmly. ‘I wanted to ask you out when I saw you on the day of the parade.’ Alex blinked at him, soft smile spreading over his face.

‘That long, huh?’ Kyle shrugged.

‘You weren’t ready, there was other things going on. So I waited.’ He simply said.

‘You waited for me.’ Alex said like he couldn’t quite believe it, so Kyle stepped closer to him and took his hand.

‘Yeah.’ He said, squeezing Alex’s hand as a reassurance he was here and he was real.

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re worth the wait.’ Kyle had hoped for a fond smile and maybe some kisses, instead he got a solid punch to the chest and a Alex-Manes-special-eyeroll.

‘You’re an idiot.’

‘But I’m your-‘ Alex cut him off with a kiss and that might have been exactly what Kyle had been going for.

#kylex #kylex fic #sometimes i write things #IT'S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT THAT THIS EXISTS #I DON'T REALLY CARE THOUGH #because i kind of love it

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midnight-in-town · 6 years ago

Note

Rin has been my favorite AnE character since the beginning. Such a sweet guy, and an interesting take on the traditional Idiot Hero. I like Kato's take on several of the Shonen manga archetypes for that matter. What are some of your favorite reconstructions of familiar character types in AnE?

Hey Anon! To be honest, I can’t say I’m that aware of the usual shonen archetypes considering that I read seinen more. :) And I’m not a literary reference, so it’s kinda hard to use the right words too.

That being said, Rin’s a fave too, with Mephisto, Shiro, Shura, Shiemi… and the rest of the cast. xDD So I’ll try to answer you.

For Rin, I like how he doesn’t simply get stronger with each arc, but he grows up on many aspects at once. Sure, first he learnt to control his flames, then he learnt to focus his attacks, and then his sword was broken in ch98 destroying the seals over his power, but otherwise each arc gave Rin other things to focus on.

In fact, I like that it’s not just his nature as a demon that he has to deal with, but also the consequences of that with the people around him. Like, as the story begins, we see Rin as kind of a loner, because he tries to fit in but can’t.

So having friends (and falling for Shiemi) was a really new experience for him, one he’s enjoying but that he still has to learn about sometimes:

And as he’s getting better with that, that’s when the one constant in his life so far…

shatters. Mostly though, I love Rin because he’s… so sweet, as you said.

Initially, he was presented as your usual Shonen hero indeed, especially with his goal to defeat Satan after Shiro’s death, but slowly the whole story moves on from that. That goal of his is less and less mentioned (which is not typical of usual shonen heroes who tend to cling to their goals in my opinion) as Rin is simply going through life and now…

And in my opinion we went from “beating Satan’s ass” to…

…a slight difference I really enjoy, even I’m no fan of Satan (and I want to see him lose).

Similarly for Yukio, who’s as much a main character as Rin is, his angst defies usual levels you have for characters of a similar type and what I love is that it’s really building up throughout the whole story: Shura showed signs of having noticed it before Toudou was introduced, we found out that he was already preoccupied back when Shiro was still alive (ch93), up till his own despair and pure self-loathing got the better of him.

And I really feel for him and his illustration of the “fallen angel” trope. I mean, I’m the first to say it’s easy to roll your eyes and hope that he’ll stop seeing everything in the darkest black, but it’s the slow unravelling to this state through so many arcs that makes it so impressive and seemingly impossible to solve at the moment.

A lot will probably have to happen before he’ll manage to come back.

The thing is, we all knew Yukio was going to break down at some point. He got some sort of a recess with the Aomori arc, but before we eventually reached the anti hero/fallen angel level, we passed by attempted suicide and that gave a whole new tone to the manga (especially since it’s shonen) in my opinion.

I said before that there is a lot of cliché tropes about twins in manga that I don’t really like: the good twin/bad twin trope is one, but by showing us the extent of Yukio’s issues before he completely fell into the abyss, I find that Sensei is avoiding cliché once again.

And both for Yukio and Rin, I like that romance took a more unexpected turn that one could have expected at first, at least in my opinion. :)

Moving onto Mephisto, I love the fact that he’s both literally The Chessmaster…

and incredibly powerful as Samael, but his behavior most of the time doesn’t reflect that.

…Which is usually the case with the clown type (looking at UT in Kuroshitsuji, or Checkerface in KHR, same for the Clowns in TG even if it’s Seinen), so this part isn’t exactly surprising, but it’s more how his true nature was never exactly hidden and yet he can still completely surprise us on many things.

That’s why I really enjoy the theory that he might be the big bad, as far as the twins are concerned, because knowing he’s on Assiah’s side, you tend to think that even if he’s an ass at least he’s on “our” side, when it might be more complicated than that. :)

Plenty of others reasons to appreciate Mephy’s character though, as I shared here. :)

For Shura, it’s mostly a matter of contrast. She’s The Mentor, but she’s not particularly acting responsible otherwise (due to the thing with Hachiro), because her motivations are initially related to her own pet peeve (Shiro).

She’s also without a doubt the hottest girl of the whole series (not a big fan of Iblis and her three eyes personally) and yet her behavior once again doesn’t fit what you’d expect of this kind of characters in other shonen series, again just in my opinion.

She’s not a dignified or proper lady, who bats an eyelash and everyone is wooed, or who behaves coldly/unaffected to others: she used to be a heavy drinker, she’s hardly ever serious, she loves getting on people’s nerves on purpose, etc.

Again, this is related to her issues with Hachiro (and Shiro), but I like that the fact she’s Hot™ (trademarked by Mephisto) doesn’t mean she can’t be powerful, or Rin’s mentor, or getting on people’s nerves, or insulting her superiors, etc.

Just like I enjoy the fact that she can dress scantily (probably because she likes it) and that doesn’t mean she’s a hoe or only about fan service, as we could see Shiro lecture her on the subject, in ch78.

Maybe I’m not explaining super well, but it’s really about Sensei not being too over the top with any character and that shows up in Shura as well:

she’s Rin’s mentor but sometimes she’s at a loss with what to do;

she’ll do anything to protect the twins but she still gets scared by Mephisto’s shenanigans;

she’s older than the boys but she still needed their help with an issue even Shiro couldn’t help her with

after the Aomori arc, she started to act more mature in general because the twins are going to need her, etc.

Again, it’s really a thing for most of the cast, but I like it even more in Shura’s case, because, even with just the way she dresses as an example, she really could have been a shallow character but Sensei managed to weigh in everything properly.

Now, as far as Shiro goes, I love how Sensei deconstructed his character through several flashbacks, slowly shedding his coat of “the perfect dad” he seemed to be after sacrificing himself to save Rin in ch1.

Oh sure, he was a good parent, but not perfect as we can see with Yukio or even Shura and that is something that we needed to make clear, both for the plot but also for the twins’ sake.

Speaking of the plot, I like that Shiro’s a walking mystery very plot-relevant and not just The Hero’s Father Figure Who Died Helplessly. It would have been very easy to make Shiro a symbol Rin was becoming stronger to get revenge for, but it’s about so much more than that.

Because if Shiro is a symbol of anything, it’s about how the Order is full of bullshit and enslaving the pawns that are necessary to them…

…as Mephisto made sure we got right:

Even now that he’s dead, I have doubts about Shiro being free from whatever he’s supposed to owe the Order/Mephisto. So yeah, he’s so much more than the Dead Symbolic Hero or whatever trope he’s supposed to illustrate, in a very tragic way actually, and I love that!

And finally about Shiemi (because I really gotta stop somewhere), what can I say besides the fact that she’s a very surprising one. :D

We’ve been getting many character arcs ever since the beginning and yet it was so unexpected to me when it turned out she was going to have her own and that it’d be so very main plot-relevant. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, since everyone in the main cast gets one, but I still definitely wasn’t envisioning anything at all like the theories about Shemihaza before we hit the current arc!

Other examples of why she’s kept on surprising me throughout the story: the first time we meet her, she’s this helpless and mourning girl who’s been possessed by a demon, then she gets used by Izumo upon trying to make friends. I’m sure you remember that girl.

And yet she saved Paku and then everyone else in Neuhaus’ arc immediately after. Same in the Kyoto arc: she was as pissed and scared as everyone (not counting Izumo) about Rin’s origins, but she was the first who managed to admit how misguided she was when she realized how much he suffered about being different.

What I’m trying to say is that Shiemi constantly surprised me and also other characters in the story (for example), despite the fact that Sensei wrote plainly what her character was about very early on in the story:

So yeah actually she helped Paku, she helped Rin, she helped Izumo, she tried to help Yukio, she saved everyone from being burnt by Rin going Satan 2.0… And now she’s in trouble with the Vatican.

In a way she’s more the typical Shonen Hero than Rin is, when she’s supposed to be the Main Girl, lmao. For example, everyone found out about who Rin was pretty quickly in the story, meanwhile…

…her own identity is more of a secret than Rin being Satan’s son or Mephisto being a high-level demon and something both characters and readers are getting angsty about.

And, as I tried to explain above, Rin’s currently more involved with acknowledging where he comes from and bringing his brother back over having to save the world or denouncing that the Order is probably really no better than the Illuminati.

Even his goal of defeating Satan, which is very Shonen-like, hasn’t been mentioned in a long time now. Meanwhile Shiemi’s character arc directly delves into how shady the Order is as an organization…

and this might indirectly lead us to her having to play a very important role with protecting everyone from Satan/the Illuminati (whether it’s by her will or not).

Of course, Rin’s own journey in the past is showing us many of the Order’s dirty secrets but the point is for Rin to learn about the past so that he can bring Yukio back (what he wants) and possibly defeat Lucifer (what Mephisto wants). When it comes to the state of the world with the opening of the artificial Gehenna gate, for now it’s not exactly Rin’s problem, but it might be more related to Shiemi’s arc if she’s truly related to Shemihaza (because of the Grigoris).

It’s probably badly summarized, but that’s how I see it. xD As I said in the beginning, I’m really not good about precisely describing shonen archetypes, so this may not be making any point. I just like AnE because I find that Sensei does manage to avoid making her characters a bunch of stereotypes easy to read through, in a very realistic way. See below, with Lightning’s example:

Even Arthur, who’s presented as the most stereotypical dude in the whole cast in my opinion, might be hiding his game better than most of us can probably imagine.

That’s what I like the most when it comes to what you were asking about. :) Kato-sensei is an excellent writer because of this amongst other things.

Sorry it took me a little while to answer you Anon, but I had a lot I wanted to write and it was actually very hard to explain. I hope this answered your question at least a little though. Have a nice weekend! ^3^

#ao no exorcist #okumura rin #okumura yukio #fujimoto shiro #mephisto pheles #kirigakure shura #moriyama shiemi #lightning #lewin light #arthur auguste angel #personal #anon #answers #my analysis

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snellyboi · 5 years ago

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Psst, hey, you! Want a Steven Universe hot take?

Words: Too damn many Summary: It’s a Steven Universe hot take about hurting connie, and how it ties into the show, the original Steven Universe, the lack of filler, and Steak Dinners. Warnings: Longe boi, a bit of a text wall but I do use paragraphs so it’s not awful I guess? A lot of talks about filler and stuff at the beginning.

ALSO I SHOULD POINT OUT this isn’t, like, some sort of SU critical circa 2017 post. I have qualms with the show, which are discussed, but overall, I think it’s pretty good stuff. Please be aware of that. I’m not gonna say it’s the worst thing on the planet because it’s not.

UNDER THE CUT:

Before we get into the meat of the conversation, I need to tell you where I’m coming from.

I have...strange feelings about Steven Universe.

It came out when I was starting High School, when I was bingeing cartoons like nobody’s business because peer pressure for years had made me repulse them. I didn’t care much about the deeper meanings of the show at the time, if I wanted to do deeper meanings I could go back and watch ATLA or those Rebecca Sugar episodes of Adventure Time, or OTGW. This was a bunch of magic space rocks fighting other magic space rocks! I was SO down!

Near the middle, though, and closer to the end, I guess I got a little...bored with it? I dunno what it was; well, I do now, but at the time I had no clue. it just seemed...a little over the top. I guess I had signed up for something like early Adventure Time, or the early parts of any given ATLA season. It became more of a drama than anything else, like a hundred Zuko and Iroh moments rolled into one, emotional punch after emotional punch.

This isn’t the most sound assessment, no, and current me would be...a little annoyed at best if a show started doing this today. Sure, one could make the argument that I sound super hypocritical in retrospect, as I’m a huge fan of She-Ra and Infinity Train, but for every ‘Mermysteries’ in She-Ra there’s a ‘Roll With It’, and Infinity Train’s seasons are 5 nights long, perfect for punch after punch, but on Steven Universe? For every ‘Mirror Gem’, there was a...’Gem Harvest’. Which, sure, it was alright, but c’mon, calling an episode where we meet an entirely new character, even if only for a moment, filler, is a bit of a stretch. Filler is like ‘Always BMO Closing’ or something. And that hits the bone of the weird part here, does Steven Universe even have filler?

The whole 'no true filler’ idea is one of those things that sounds great on a show, but falls flat, because when people complain about filler, it’s complaining about bad filler, not the presence of it in general. If I get a steak and fries, and the fries are bad, I’m not complaining because they’re fries, I’m complaining because they’re bad fries. She-Ra is a good porterhouse with great fries. Infinity Train and OTGW are filet mignon with lobster tail, not really filler, but perfect in a way. Near the end, and really, for me, all the way through, Steven Universe felt more like a strip steak with no sides, just a little bit of A1.

Isn’t this post about Connie, SUF, and how that all works?

Yes, it is. We’re getting there.

Steven Universe Future has been all emotional roller coasters the whole way through, seemingly. I’ll be honest, I’m not as into it as I was into Steven Universe, for a few reasons. Mostly, it expands on that no filler problem, big time. Nothing feels like it can be out of place, there’s even an episode titled the ‘Very Special Episode’, a slang term used in TV to talk about stuff like stranger danger specials, or the Golden Girls tackling the issue of gay marriage, etc. With the tense build of Steven’s mental health issues, I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. Whether I like it or not, it’s doing what it needs to do, and I’ll acknowledge that it does exactly what it sets out to accomplish.

So in Steven Universe, the main conflict is Steven and his past, and trying to convince people that no matter who someone is, they can be redeemed. It’s not a space war epic like I thought it would be (I used to be angry about that, but, just like the show said, people change, and now I have different qualms with it) but it does really well with that. So what is the conflict in SUF?

Steven has lost his raison d’etre.

He’s going through that most existential of crises; “I’m at the top of the mountain, now what?”

NOW WE FINALLY GET TO THE HOT TAKE!

The reason I brought up any of what I just did is to link it back to this heinous, outright stupid idea that Steven would just, like, I dunno, choke slam Connie or whatever you sick monsters wanna see.

All of this No Filler, Everything is important stuff told us a lot about the characters. After all, it’s hard not to have character development in a show environment like that. Steven was shown as someone who genuinely cared, a lot, about everyone around him. He almost over-empathizes, to the point where he’s able to see the good in a bunch of arguably fascist space rocks voiced by former broadway divas. As much as I dislike the show for only ever being weighty and never having any ‘true filler’ or whatever, the reason it did that makes stylistic sense; Steven has no filler in his life. He’s way too empathetic. He cried when he found out that Snakes don’t have arms, for christ’s sake!

As annoying as it felt watching it, it’s an unfortunate reality that some people are forced to live their lives that way, empathizing with anyone and everyone they meet, and it hurts, and when you fix all the problems people had, but they suddenly leave?

That fucking hurts. And that’s how I think we ended up here.

That’s also why I think he’s not gonna hit Connie. At least, not purposefully.

Steven has pretty openly expressed feelings for Connie before, and while we haven’t seen a romance line yet, it’s pretty obvious it’s slated to at some point.

Now, if Steven can empathize with Space Stalin™, he can empathize with a girl he’s had a crush on for years at this point for going away to seek higher education. Sure, these pink outbursts are getting to him, as recent leaks may have shown, but I doubt that hurting Connie would crop up. It goes against a lot of the show’s themes of community and healing. But most of all?

It’s just crappy writing.

The show has had its fair share of clunkers in my opinion, as every show longer than 2 seasons is bound to have. Remember that episode where Nanefua runs for mayor? Or how about the one with Lars and the Off Color gems where they’re there for a grand total, of, like...the opening?

None of those were terrible episodes though, just...forgettable. It’s not as if Steven just pulls out a chain gun and starts blasting in one of them. That would be stupid, and garbage, and a copout to generate ratings. Punching Connie would be like killing Brian on Family Guy; no weight, just shock. Flash in the pan. A bomb going off with no warning, no suspense. A jump scare.

And that’s why I talked about the whole No Filler thing, and how it annoys me to no end, but how it’s necessary and worth while!

No one would ever have spent this whole time building up Steven as an over empathizer with an Atlas personality just to have him punch someone whose been his love interest since 2013.

We would never spend an entire show cycle building someone up as caring too much about the people around him for his fatal flaw to be punching his girlfriend. The no filler thing was a noble, brave idea, that in my opinion fell over. But damn, did it do great things for the characters on the show, even if it sacrificed pacing.

It should come as no surprise by now that the no filler thing, to me, is a bit of a stretch. Of course there was filler; sure, lore gets expanded, but when it’s not expanded well it just feels like the writers aren’t quite sure what to do (hmm, maybe they’d be better at filler if they’d written some beforehand...).

But it portrayed the lead amazingly well, giving us a world through his eyes, and set up an amazing story about someone who cared too much about a world that was starting to care less and less about him. Setting us up for an amazing show, whether I want to watch it that often, or not.

Let’s face it, it may not be my favorite meal, but sometimes you just can’t beat a strip steak with a little bit of A1.

#steven universe #suf #steven universe future #connie maheswaran

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aliceslantern · 5 years ago

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Beyond this Existence: Atonement, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic, chapter 13

Ansem always had a penchant for strays, so it's not at all surprising when he takes in the orphaned child Ienzo. The boy's presence changes everything, far more than Even is willing to admit. Ienzo's brilliance seems promising, but the arrival of a young Xehanort pushes the apprentices onto a dark, cruel, inhumane path which will affect the future of the World. And even once it's all over with--once Xehanort is dead--they still must pick up the pieces, forgive one another, find a way to atone for their atrocities, and struggle to accept the humanity which has been thrust upon them.

Or: Even's journey from BBS through post-KH3

Chapter summary: Ienzo wakes up, but that doesn't mean things are peaceful. Leon has questions about the experiments.

Read it on FF.net/on AO3

---

He’s actually working on the new replica’s samples when it happens; he’s astounded to find they’re developing their own DNA, their own signatures--essentially, becoming organic humans. But before he can compute the thrill of this, his door is being thrown open.

“Boy, I told you if you want to come you must knock--”

“It’s Ienzo,” but he’s grinning, his eyes alright. “Even, he’s awake!”

"He… is?"

Demyx grasps his hand and pulls him towards Ienzo's room. "He's been talking and everything. His vitals look great. He's… he's really…" His voice hitches a little.

"Don't get emotional on me, boy. I'm sure you want to be on your best behavior. Not when you have so much to tell him."

"Yeah… I do."

Even squeezes his hand gently. "It'll all be alright. He's nothing if not understanding."

“Do you think we’ll be… different?”

“...I’ve no idea why you’re asking me about the state of your own romantic affairs.”

He takes a breath. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“You are different, Demyx. But I think he’ll see any changes as for the better.”

Demyx nods once. “I’m sure you two want to talk.”

It occurs to Even that, after all this time, he’s unsure of what to say to a conscious Ienzo. “We all have a lot to catch Ienzo up on.”

Demyx winks once, and disappears. The change in the boy is immediate. He’s so much happier.

Even feels something like a flutter of nerves when he sees the open door. He takes a deep breath to compose himself. And enters.

Ienzo’s sitting up, his feet over the side of the bed, a blanket draped around his shoulders. “Hi, Even,” he says.

The relief is uneven in him. “Oh, child,” he says. “Have you any idea how worried we’ve all been?”

“Apparently so.” He smiles.

Even approaches the boy. "How do you feel?" he asks cautiously. "Spare me no small ache--you truly did a number on yourself."

"Actually quite well, against all odds," he says. "Ironically I'm rather tired."

He takes the boy's wrist, feels for a pulse. He brushes some of the dirty hair out of Ienzo's face. "It was a brave thing you did," he says softly, in case anyone is listening. "Brave… and foolish."

"I'm afraid I can't watch idly by anymore. Not if I have the power to make change."

"Nor should you, but… Ienzo. If you're to be as self-sacrificing as this, you must be more careful." He sits next to him. "You… essentially liquified your own organs. For some time you read as braindead. We thought--"

"I wouldn't make it?" He nods once. "It was quite hard, to claw myself back. I do not intend on going anywhere. I have so much to do still."

"Well. I'm afraid you must take things easy. Your body's likely going to be weak. You shouldn't do anything strenuous, physically or mentally."

"Human fallibility," Ienzo mutters.

"...Quite."

"I suppose it was illuminating," he says, twisting the end of the blanket in one hand. "I… regained my lexicon. But it's different. Let me--" He holds out a palm; Even grasps it and pushes it down.

"You can show me another time," he says. "I'm sure it's fine, considering your miscreant has gotten his weapon back too, but it never hurts to be too cautious. And you should be, boy. Do you realize how close you were to--"

"That's what I fought for six weeks, Even." His tone is sharp. "Every minute, if I didn't consciously concentrate, I could've--" He trails off. "What happened? Out here?"

"You were asleep. No neural activity. Nothing. We weren't sure--"

"That I had a will at all?"

"Yes. Were you conscious of anything? Did you hear us talking to you?"

Ienzo thinks. "No," he says. "I heard Demyx's sitar, but I was in his memories. I might not have actually heard anything."

"He did play for you. Extensively, and much to Dilan's displeasure."

He laughs a little, then sobers. "I… know how you feel about it. Thanks for tolerating him."

"A lot can change in six weeks. It's been… surprising. I figure… it could've been worse. He was devastated. I was worried that he might not be invested in you."

"...That he would use me." He shakes his head. "You needn't worry. Not about him, anyway."

"No. Clearly you're your own menace."

He bites his lip.

"Your life has worth, too. You needn't spend it to atone."

"I'm trying to realize that. Truly I did not mean to do anything reckless. But by the time I got out, it was too late."

Even squeezes his hand. "It's alright, little one."

"I'm twenty. You needn't call me that." He offers a smile. Then, rather timidly, he embraces Even.

"Alright. Both of you so emotional. Pull it together, yes?"

He chuckles. "I suppose… now we find out what comes next in this life."

"Yes, well. Not until you recover. Do you feel up to eating something light?"

---

Now that Ienzo’s awake again, the mood at the castle has brightened; or at least it does for several days. It’s beyond a relief to know everyone is well.

Even feels as though he’s wilting. He tries to be there for the boy, to offer him any help he can with his recovery. They walk, the two of them. They do have a lot to talk about. But what to say? How to say it?

Ienzo looks a bit withered as well, a dullness coming back into his eyes. “You alright, boy?” Even asks.

He fiddles with his turtleneck, pulling it higher over his scars. “Strangely, I am rather dejected,” he admits. “Without work… I feel listless. Moreover, I fear I’m beginning to process… all that has happened.” He’s silent for a moment, shoving his hands into his pants pockets.

Even sighs. With all the boy’s gone through over the years, this could be dangerous.

“It feels like something of an iceberg. All these complicated feelings keep washing over me, and I’ve no way to adequately deal with them.” He opens his mouth, then shuts it.

“What is it you need to say?”

“I am twenty years old… and yet… my heart is quite literally that of a child’s. I’m not prepared .” He scratches at his cheek, fidgeting anxiously. “Demyx and I are talking to each other about it. He’s incredibly supportive, but yet--he also has so much to deal with. So much.”

“I’ve heard… stories,” Even admits.

“It’s all so complex. I know I need to open myself in order to heal. But I’m afraid that, should I…” He trails off.

“You might not be able to bear up against the pain?”

“...Quite.”

It’s a snowy day, as have been most recently. “But you must,” Even says softly. “You can’t deny your past forever.”

“I know this.” He takes a long, deep breath. “Which is why I want to go to the basement.”

Even feels his heart skip a beat. As calmly as he can manage, he says, “Why would you want to do that? It’s just all moldering architecture.”

“Something must be down there. I can no longer feel it the same way I used to, but I still feel something. They were the first artificial Heartless--likely they could not burrow into the realm of darkness. Our victims might still very well be trapped there.”

Even turns to face him. He sees a muscle in Ienzo’s jaw twitch, bracing himself. “How do you propose to do that? I know Zexion was a powerful mage, but Ienzo--you’re recovering from a coma, and you have no power.”

He drops his eyes. “I suppose you’re right.”

“There’s also no proof anything is down there. Boy, I’m afraid that chapter is over--done with. You need to move on.”

“And how do you propose I do that?” he asks, coolly.

Even can’t think fast enough to respond.

“You don’t know either,” he says instead. “Do you?”

“Ienzo--”

“I should go. I said I’d meet Demyx for lunch.”

---

Ienzo’s right. The boy’s not going to take unsubstantiated platitudes--nor should he.

Even turns back to his writings. His head is positively spinning, but every time he tries to focus, to brainstorm, he hits something of a dead end. He never used to be so incapable of thought. So much for being a devious researcher.

He finds himself gravitating towards their research during the Organization years…

Why was the use of power so dangerous for Ienzo? He reads what they learned about the will… its nebulousness, its intangibility… and something clicks.

Ienzo doesn’t have a human will.

Rather, it wasn’t , considering he became a Nobody before it was fully formed, but it became. The energy caused by that shift alone must have only destabilized him more… Trying to slam together the humanity of his decision to save his beloved and the fact that this was a Nobody power must’ve been cataclysmic. Increasing the risk a thousandfold.

In the middle of all this research, he receives a message from one of the restoration committee members, asking to talk to him about his report. It’s been close to two months since he sent it; he’s surprised it’s taken this long for someone to have questions.

He meets the man in the hallway. He’s not sure what to expect; honestly it puts him a bit on edge, like he’s been caught. But this was a willful confession.

“You’ve been cleaning the place up,” the man says. He’s perhaps a few years older than Demyx, but more mature in his bearing. Even’s eyes catch the scar on his face. “It looks good. Name’s Squall Leonheart. Call me Leon.” He offers a hand.

“...I am Even. One of Ansem’s former apprentices. But you know that, I’m sure.”

He nods.

“Could I offer you anything? Coffee? Tea? I’m afraid it’s always rather cold in here.”

“Not necessary, but thanks. Is there somewhere we can talk?” His expression is stoic and his voice betrays little. It’s rare that Even has trouble reading someone.

“Of course. There’s a fire in the sitting room. You’ll likely be more comfortable there.”

It’s here they settle; Even on the small sofa, Leon in one of the high-backed chairs. He pulls a steno pad and pen out of his pocket, all business. “So I heard you were MIA, for a while,” Leon says.

“I was… tying up a few things. Doing what I could in that fight.”

“Solving Ienzo’s body problem,” he says, with a small smile. “He almost ended up on the business end of Yuffie’s shuriken, when she was patrolling the place. We didn’t know anyone was here. But he offered his help. I’m not surprised by much anymore, but that was… something.”

“He wishes to atone. Like the rest of us.”

“So I’ve heard. Aerith is beyond excited Demyx wants to learn from her. It’d be nice if she could actually sleep for once.”

Even has a feeling the small talk is supposed to be warming Leon to him. But he has no idea what the other man wants. “How can I help you?” he asks. He tries to smile.

“I’ve been combing through your report. I just had a few questions.”

“...Anything.”

Leon seems to think for a few minutes. “After you… experimented on these people,” he begins slowly. “What did you do with them?”

Even takes a slow breath to compose himself. “There were no bodies,” he says. “Little physical to dispose of. A vast majority became Heartless, and the few that begat Nobodies… Braig quickly eliminated them. You likely remember him as Xigbar.”

He scribbles quickly. “What were the families told?”

“Well--nothing. It was only when the junior apprentices--Lea and Isa-- called the authorities on us that Xehanort… convinced us to cast aside our hearts.” His hand flutters at his breastbone; he forces himself to drop it back to his lap. “I’m not sure if they still know.”

“And the list you gave me was comprehensive?”

“Yes. We were rather meticulous in our records--for good and ill.”

“How long was it really going on?”

“In total--only about two years. These things escalated unusually quickly. And once Xehanort was found, all bets were off, weren’t they?” Even sighs. “It took us all too long to realize the boy was corrupt. By then… so were we. There are no excuses.”

“And no law,” Leon says. He looks up and smiles, and Even doesn’t know what to get out of it. “But seems like humanity has changed you.”

“I was able to return to myself, the person I was before darkness, that is. That gives one… clarity. I think the others feel similarly. I only became Vexen again to assist the other side in finding and giving form to their lights. The least I could do. We’ve already caused so much destruction--this town included.”

Leon keeps writing, his eyes on his pad. “What you did made us vulnerable, sure. But ultimately it was Maleficent, and her stupid plots, that made us fall.”

Even blinks. “What?”

He looks up. “She was the one who spread the darkness--didn’t you know that?”

“If I did… I surely did not process it until now.” He shakes his head. When he caught wind of Radiant Garden’s fall, he’d just assumed--

It does not matter whether or not they made it fall; they made so many other worlds fall as well. Xemnas needed Heartless for fodder, for Kingdom Hearts. How else to get them? “I guess the only other question I have concerns Ansem, but I haven’t been able to get in touch with him,” Leon says. “Maybe you can help?”

“I can’t pretend to understand that man. But I can offer an answer.” It doesn’t surprise Even at all that Ansem’s been dodging those calls.

“Is he going to try and retake power?”

Even blinks. He’s been expecting more questions about the genesis of their experiments. “I don’t believe so,” he says slowly. “Would you even want something like that?”

Leon purses his lips. “It’d be a bandaid on a larger problem,” he admits. “There’s no government, nothing ruling the town. And now that so many people are coming in--it just gets more and more obvious we need some rules, just to keep people safe.”

“What, no robbery and murder?” Even asks dryly.

“...Pretty much. Should that happen, what could we really do to stop them? Not to mention, without an adequate headcount of people, we can’t be sure how to allocate or plan for resources. Anarchy is well and good--if people have good intentions.” He shuts his notebook. “Thanks for this. You were pretty thorough, for the most part.”

“I would hope so.”

“The only outstanding question I have… do you all intend on staying here? Better than the place rotting, for sure, but I just need to know how far our patrol has to stretch.”

“It was--is--our home,” he says. “We can be the most useful here.”

“Alright. Thanks.” Leon stands.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything I can assist with?” he asks. He hopes he sounds calm.

He shrugs. “Not so much that I can think of, at least right now. You must have a lot on your hands as is, getting this place habitable.”

The subtext, such as it were, is clear. You’ve done enough. “...Alright.”

“Stay warm,” he says briskly, and leaves.

Not a moment later, Dilan saunters in. “What was that about?”

“Oh, he just had some questions,” Even says. “I had given over an impact statement.”

Dilan’s eyes widen in horror. “Why would you do that?”

Even blinks. “As if they don’t already know?”

“Even, you’ve--you’ve no idea what you’ve done, do you?”

He cocks his head. “We can’t hide behind these walls. The things we did have hurt everyone here--the least we can do is be honest about it.”

“There’s no government. What of those seeking revenge?”

“Like they wouldn’t have already?” Even asks.

His face is very red.

“The least we can do is cooperate with what the committee needs.”

“For all you know, you might have just signed our death sentences.”

Even rolls his eyes. “I hate to break it to you, Dilan, but times are different. These people are not nearly as ruthless, as merciless, as us. As if we’d ever get such an easy escape from the guilt.”

He’s scowling, his fists clenched tightly. “You do not get to make decisions for us anymore,” he snaps, and storms away.

Anymore? Had he ever?

Even isn’t angry, though. He’s just tired. He goes back to his rooms, notes with annoyance that he needs to do laundry. He gets it done and is just folding the dry things when he hears a gentle knock at his door. “Enter.”

He sees Demyx poke his head in.

“Did you need help with something?” he asks. Then frowns; the boy’s face is pinched, anxious. “You do not look well.”

He hesitates, then shuts the door behind him. “Ienzo wants to go to the basement.”

Of course he told him about it. “Yes. And?”

“Well--what if something’s down there?”

“I thought you could adequately defend yourself now?” It’s making sense. Ienzo wants Demyx to go with him, to supposedly free whatever’s down there--if there even is anything.

“It’s not me I’m worried about.” He exhales and rumples his hair. “He’s got the lexicon. What if he tries using his powers again?”

He shakes his head. “He’s aware of the risk. I doubt he’d try.”

“What if he doesn’t do it consciously?”

He raises an eyebrow. “I had the impression it took a lot of effort for him to traverse your memory.” Not to mention the return...

“But he couldn’t control it. I don’t know what this is going to entail. If I’m just going to beat up some Heartless, or maybe there’s nothing down there and this is just for closure. But what if .” His hands are trembling as he gestures.

“Since when was forethought a strength of yours?” Even asks. “Boy, now you’re making me worry.” The last thing they need… he’s only just--

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else to ask.”

He sighs. He sets aside his things, noting that his hands are shaking now, too. There’s one way he might be able to get ahead of this--to stop Ienzo from killing himself, because this is what it’s rapidly becoming. “Come along.”

In a blur, they both go downstairs. He packs him a simple med kit, and then reaches for the nuclear option, with a syringe. He places them on the table in front of the boy. “You’re aware of the correlation at this point, of heart failure and overuse of power.”

“Well--yes.”

“I’ve been poking through our research. The reason why it struck Ienzo so intensely has largely to do with the fact that he quite literally grew up as a Nobody. Trying to adequately corroborate his humanity with a Nobody will served to heighten the risk. It may not happen again. Perhaps he’s adjusted. At the same time… it may.”

Demyx eyes the vial. “What’s that?”

“A serum to induce sleep. Should he begin to exhibit the same symptoms, you should dose him. And then call for help. I’m giving this to you as a precaution only.” Even unwraps the syringe, preps it, and then caps it off.

Demyx shudders. “That’s a poison. Not a sedative.”

“Sleep akin to death,” Even murmurs. “Better than actual death, is it not?” Anything to stop the damage before it stops him. But Demyx doesn’t take it from him. His skin has gone ashen.

“I can’t.”

“You must. This is--” He exhales, exasperated. “For goodness' sake, you might not even need it.” Even places it on the table in front of him. “Have you tried convincing him out of it?” If Ienzo will do anything for anyone, it’s Demyx.

He nods. “Yes. But how can we escape it? We live here. He’s reminded of it every day. If it’s not now, it’d be some other time.”

“The boy is… determined.” He sighs. “I’m trusting you with this. With him. Do you understand?” Don’t let him slip away.

Another nod. There’s something like resolve in his eyes.

“So take it.”

After a moment where he seems to struggle, he grasps the syringe and leaves without another word.

Even finds it hard to breathe. He tries to convince himself that this won’t happen--that there’s nothing down there, and if there is, that Ienzo can’t be of any help to them. Heartless don’t have memories.

That wasn’t all Ienzo did to Demyx.

He altered things. Lessened the brunt of trauma, the binding of it.

What were Heartless--theirs--other than pure trauma, pure darkness?

Even rests his head in his hands. He can’t. He can’t let him--

But the suffering of those poor people--

He hears himself gasping. He can’t lose Ienzo to darkness. Not again. Was it truly the boy’s decision? Or is it some--suicidality he isn’t fully conscious of? Doesn’t he have things to live for? Can’t he see that?

The boy can never be happy if he can’t move on.

The boy can’t move on unless he does something to atone.

He can’t atone without helping their victims.

Even sinks wearily onto his cot and prays for unconsciousness.

#beyond this existence: atonement #even (kingdom hearts)#ienzo #demyx #leon (kingdom hearts)#dilan #beyond this existence

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ashleaannya · 5 years ago

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The 2200, Chapter 1

Everything for Kamiya started with a deep breath. She took a deep breath before writing her hit single “Marketplace,” an semi-autobiographical Indy rock ballad about how men (her exes) treated women’s bodies like a grocery store. It was a hit. “It resonated” was how Billboard described her riffs and runs about feeling like, quote, a “man’s meat market”, with no say in how she should be loved. That was five years, two Grammy’s and three tours ago. She still took a deep breath before approaching the microphone, before recording herself in the studio, and before giving her fans the BTS (Behind The Scenes) content her 35 million fans craved—no, demanded.

“Let’s do this,” Kamiya said to her herself, breathing deeply and sitting on the goose feather bed in her presidential hotel suite. She adjusted her DSLR camera to better frame her upper body and flipped the lamps on the hotel suite’s end tables. The tripod creaked with newness as she made the micro-adjustments to get her and her hotel suite backdrop in perfect focus. It was a little dark, but it would fit the mood she was about to create for her fans.

Her phone pinged and vibrated beside her as another thousand comments on her social media rang through. Text messages burst through as people who wanted her money, attention or both made their voices heard in all capital letters, exclamation points and emojis. Without looking away from the camera flip screen, Kamiya reached beside her and powered her phone off. She glanced over at her hotel door, looking at the silk and gold furnishings and designer dresses hanging on a rolling rack. Rows of flowers from athletes, and fellow musicians wanting to sleep with her wilted on a glass dining table designed to seat twelve. No one ever ate there. It was a reservoir for gifts and miscellaneous stuff. She lived in this room now. The floor of this hotel was more her space more than the three homes she paid ghastly mortgages. Kamiya’s eyes lingered on the cream colored double doors, making sure it was locked. What she was about to do would cause her team to beat her door off the antique hinges. By then it would be too late.

The camera’s light flickered and then settled on a bright amber. Kamiya knotted her fingers in her lap seeing the word “REC” blink in the upper corner of the screen. It was time. She had already left written, detailed instructions for her manager, accounting team, design team, social media team, and news outlets she wanted to break the story. The courier would deliver her instructions in exactly one hour. The timing mattered. Her wishes were explicit and once her video aired, the necessary parties would have no choice but to honor her demands. There would be nothing to second-guess. The video especially would be very clear. She practiced how she would do it and even recorded herself doing mock versions of the act to make sure she would not loose her nerve.

“You got this, Miya.”

Kamiya also knew that nothing else “groundbreaking” would be going on in the social media sphere that would distract from her message. The good thing about being connected was other celebrities in her circle and members of famous teams (say a stylists or nanny) told her what dates to avoid. For example, when Kamiya’s second album was set to drop on Sept 1st, a friend of a friend whispered that she should not use that date because TMZ was about to report on an impending divorce. Divorces in her world were common enough, but this divorce was a megachurch pastor and there was digital evidence the break-up of his marriage was due to a transgendered mistress who had a massive social media following. Needless to say, she changed the date. Her album release would have been overshadowed and her release week would have been abysmal. She released a week earlier to the delight of her voracious following and debuted at number one on the Pop charts. The same connections would today make sure her choice went viral. This was her one life. She should get to live her life on her own terms. A tear fell down her cheeks, realizing that her freedom was on the other side of this post. She would have her body back, her mind, her music, her voice. Should she go live instead? That way people knew it was real.

Kamiya jumped up off the bed and grabbed her laptop. She would record both. Just in case.

“Hey guys,” Kamiya said, waving at the screen.

The numbers in her Live Chat jumped from 300 to 3,000 to 2 million instantly. Kamiya swallowed. Her mouth was dry and her hands were damp with sweat. Texts jumped up on the bottom of the screen as her followers flooded the Live Chat with emojis, declarations of love, and sexual comments that would make a porn star blush.

“Whoa, whoa, guys, this is going to be quick so I can’t answer a million questions right now—um, guys, whoa, um, no, no I can’t do a video chat with anyone. Thank you though that went bad last time,” Kamiya said, laughing awkwardly.

She glanced up to make sure her camera was still recording. It was.

“Ok. I have an announcement. I wanted to record it and make it all fancy, but my career started here, right?”

Thumbs up emojis and hearts flooded the screen in unison. She smiled and tears pricked at her eyes, but she coughed and rubbed her eyes into her sleeves. People were commenting about how they had followed her since abandoned building days.

“Wow, that’s a throwback. Um, for those who don’t know, let me explain all of the abandoned buildings comments.”

Kamiya sat up and twisted her long curly extensions in around her fingers. She dug her nails into her spray-tanned legs, leaving pink nail marks. She was already black, but her team told her, going a shade darker would make her skin look even and was the ideal skin tone for her audience.

“Ok. So most of the videos have been deleted because, well, I was fat then.”

That comment was met with encouraging remarks and angry emojis. She felt relieved at that response. Then as if reading her mind, onscreen comments appeared. Some people were proud of her ‘healthy weight loss journey’. This pride flooded the comments. She ignored them. She was thin now with the dimensions of a doll, narrow waist and all. She ate 400 calories per day and had more cosmetic surgeries than a Kardashian. She was discrete about them and timed everything so it looked more believable, but nothing was healthy about her new body.

“Um, yea. I actually started on social media for singing in abandoned buildings with my sister. She would record me singing in old churches and subways and other random places that were technically condemned but had great acoustics. That’s how I build my fan base and YouTube channel. A lot of people think it was from Marketplace, my first single, but I didn’t get attention until after my Abandoned Concerts page went viral or whatever.”

The comments zoomed by so fast she could barely ready them. The emojis were all wide-mouthed shocked faces and then there were demands for her to post the old videos. Kamiya shook her head and laughed. She did not want to see her old body ever again. Kamiya froze seeing a familiar handle enter the Live Chat. It was @Camera_Cat, her sister. She was in the hotel lobby grabbing dinner and would likely be banging on her door at any moment. Everyone knew that Kamiya hated going live so Cat would be giving her the Catrina patent “WTF” face.

“Okay, guys, real quick. I have an announcement,” Kamiya said, straightening her back and lowering her voice. She had to say this seriously or people would think she was playing a game. As you all know, I hate social media and, like, hardly ever post, because—well, let’s keep this all the way real, okay. You guys are trash.”

Question marks and angry and shocked emojis flooded the screen at lightning speed. Kamiya smirked ready to drop every bomb in her arsenal before the grand finale.

“Yes, you are. Half of you lie to yourself and to others every day and will never accomplish your dreams because you are inconsistent and talentless. There. Now you know.”

Kamiya jumped hearing rapid knocking on her hotel room. She pulled her laptop closer and swallowed. She could hear her sister calling her name.

“I don’t care if it hurts your feelings. It’s true. You aren’t loyal to yourself or your dreams so why should I expect you to be loyal to me or care about my mental health. I have done so much and sacrificed so much to make you bastards happy. I’m literally so damn lost right now I barely recognize myself. I hate having you guys around me.”

Some of the comments were consolatory and others were curses and name-calling. Kamiya did not care. She was right and she would show them.

“If half of you were forced to be honest about how jealous you are of my life before you could comment on my posts, you would never hate on me. You hate me because your dreams are dead and your work ethic is trash. Do you have any idea what I go through to be here. I’m supposed to be nice to you hateful bitches when you are all collective trash.”

The banging on the door sounded like thunder. Muffled yelling echoed outside of the room. The voices were getting louder and Kamiya was glad the deadbolt was on because her sister and manager had keys to her room. Well, technically, they could access her room through the hotel app. The app could not work against a deadbolt and an old fashioned chain.

“I’m being honest when I say I hate most of you. I wish you never heard of me. I wish I never shared my music with you. You don’t deserve me. I give so much to you people. You people who are supposed to be the woke generation. I hope you die alone.”

Kamiya sat back and watching as the number of people watching her quadrupled. Screenshots of her and clips of her ‘rant’ would be viral in seconds. She smiled ready for the final blow.

“Effective immediately, my social media is closed. My website is closed. My brands are closed. I am closed. You hear me? You no longer have access to me. You all have officially been fired from being my fans.”

The word ‘no’ with about a hundred Os flooded the screen, followed by side-eye emojis and comments about her going crazy.

“There is one exception,” Kamiya took a deep breath. “Moving forward, I am only accessible to 2200 loyal fans. I will hand select these people. If you look at my main page now, you will see that no one is following me and I am following no one. You will also notice that all of my posts are now gone. In one hour, my page will be private, so get your screen shots now. Yes, I’m talking to you Shade Room.”

The number of people watching her, now exceeding the number of followers she had ever had on any platform. Tears pricked her eyes realizing she finally had their attention. The same question kept popping up: “How do I join the 2200?”

“You don’t join. I choose you.”

Kamiya slammed the laptop closed and fell backward on the overstuffed pillows of her European king bed. Phase one was complete. Now on to phase two.

#writing #creativewriting #writers #writeblr #writing-prompt #excerpt from a story i'll never write #writeaway #story #storytelling

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charanteleclerc · 6 years ago

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You Feel Like Coming Home

Cross posted to AO3 here

A/N: Hi guys! It's been a long time since I've written anything for this fandom, but it's felt so good to do so again. I've been working on a couple of stories, especially one for Helena but this is the one I'm happiest with and it's properly finished as well. Also prompts are open! I have a little free time for the next week so plan on doing a lot of writing!Hope you enjoy!

Jev could already hear the cheers before he stepped out of the car. He was elated that he could bring the car home in first at the team’s home race, he was elated that the last season didn’t seem to be a fluke. He was still on top of his game, he was still proving to himself and the world that he was good enough. It was never going to be enough of a ‘fuck you’ to Red Bull, but it was a start at least.

He made his way in a daze up to the podium, barely even recognising the national anthems being played. A trophy was being thrust into his hands, and there was champagne and confetti flying into his face. This was the best feeling in the world, being on top of this podium, and there was nothing that could ever beat this.

He held the trophy up to the crowd, listening to the cheers all around him. There were so many faces, so many different team clothes and the confetti was covering everyone in a gold tint. He always kept an eye out for friends or family in crowd, but he wasn’t really expecting to see anyone all the way out here, on some random island off mainland China.

So he must be hallucinating, seeing Daniel Ricciardo in the crowd.

He blinked a few times, trying to see if his eyes were playing tricks on him. Dan couldn’t possibly be here. He hadn’t seen him in years, there had been so many opportunities to, but neither had wanted to make the first move. Why here? Why now?

He could still see Dan in the crowd, curly hair and a smile on his face. Not one of the big smiles he remembered, from their teenage days, from late nights in Milton Keynes and those carefree days at Toro Rosso. It was a ghost of one of those smiles, the edges dimmed. This was a Dan Ricciardo that had grown up - he just hadn’t been there to see it happen.

He got off the podium as quickly as he could, trying to pretend to himself that he hadn’t seen Dan. Out of sight, out of mind. Easier said than done. He’d done a good job of convincing himself over these last few years that he didn’t need Dan. He’d been trying to tell himself that for years, ever since Dan had walked out of their flat with the quiet resignation that hadn’t been expected. Not from someone as loud and full of personality. In the weeks and months that followed - in his life post-Dan - he thinks that final quiet calm at the end was the most shocking part of it all. Not the fact that it ended, that had been something he’d resigned himself to some months before it actually happened. He just hadn’t wanted to be the one to finally call it. He wanted to clutch onto the ends of their relationship, to pretend that his boyfriend still felt something, anything, for him.

In the end, he felt relieved when Dan walked out the door for the last time.

But he’d never stopped loving Dan. It was a part of him, just as natural to him as breathing. He got up, and he loved Dan. He had breakfast, and he loved Dan. He did his workout, he talked to friends, to his team, and he loved Dan. He raced, and he loved Dan.

There was never going to be a time where he would fall out of love with Dan. But he could live without him, to the extent that the hole where Dan should’ve been was just a dull ache in the background, almost unnoticeable. Life carried on, and he was happy. He’d tried moving on, there had been guys and girls, but nothing more than a passing fancy. André was always on the lookout for him though. “You’ve been single too long Jev.” He would always say, winking. “You need to play the field.” Jev just didn’t have it in him to tell him that his heart was a puzzle and a piece was missing, carried around by someone who treated it carelessly.

How could anyone explain that away?

~*~

Jev closed his eyes, letting his head rest against the back of the room. He just needed a minute to clear his head. The last few minutes had been overwhelming, he was feeling choked. There was a panic growing inside of him, trying to overwhelm him. He’d been ecstatic, and then just seeing Dan for the first time in years just threatened to destabilise his entire life again. He’d picked up the pieces when Dan had left five years ago, pushing down the hollowness from where the heart had been. And now Dan was back, to do what? To finish what he’d start, by destroying him completely? How was that fair? And there were certainly easier places to do it, rather than thousands of miles away from home. Maybe that was why, out of the way and out of the limelight. There were less hardcore racing fans here, and it didn’t look like he was being bothered in the crowd. He could just blend in. The perfect cover.

A knock at the door jolted him, making him jump, just about holding onto his trophy. He shook himself a little, placing the trophy down on the seat. He took a deep breath as he opened the door, bracing himself for whoever was on the other side. There was a small part of him hoping that it was André, or someone else with the team, but in reality he knew exactly who was behind that door.

Dan was stood there, a hand raised like he was getting ready to knock again. He looked tense, Jev could see it a mile off. Like he was ready to run the moment it was necessary. Dan dropped his hand, shoving it awkwardly into his pocket.

“They said… the team said it was okay to come back here.” Dan explained, shuffling a little. Jev stared at him, not sure what to say. Of course the team would say it’s okay. As far as the world knew, they were old teammates. Even friends once. “You drove a good race.”

“Thanks.” Jev replied, his mouth finally working. They fell into silence again, looking at each other awkwardly.

“I was kinda in the area.” Dan shrugged. “I had a layover in Hong Kong, and I remembered that this was happening, and I thought…” he trailed off, looking at the floor. He’d always rambled when nervous.

“What are you doing here Dan?” Jev asked. Even saying his name felt painful, but even worse it felt so much like coming home.

Dan’s head snapped up at the question. It was the first time Jev had looked Dan in the eyes for five years. He hadn’t forgotten the exact shade. “I don’t know.” Dan replied quietly. “I don’t know Jev.”

Jev winced at his name coming out of Dan’s mouth. “You don’t get to do that to me Dan.” He shook his head. “You don’t get to come and find me after five years and tell me that. Fuck, Dan. You’ve gone thousands of miles out of your fucking way, for what? For nothing?” He took a deep breath, trying to stop his hands from shaking. “This is by far the cruellest thing you’ve done.”

“I didn’t mean… Jev.” Dan sounded pained. “Fine. But, inside? I really don’t want to do this in the corridor.”

Jev stepped inside, shutting the door a little too forcefully after Dan was inside. He stood with his arms crossed, watching Dan pace the room. He looked so out of place here. Dan had never inserted himself into this piece of his life, this had been all Jev’s.

Dan stood, looking like he was gathering the strength to say something. “I…” he started, taking a deep breath. “Fuck, I came here because I’m selfish, okay? I am scared and angry and I really fucking missed you. I’ve missed you since I walked out of that fucking door and that’s my biggest regret. Not Red Bull, not the Championship,it was letting you slip away from me.” Dan broke off, breathing heavily. “I chose Red Bull five years ago and I was wrong. And I needed someone to talk to, to really talk to, and you were the only person I could ever talk to, the only one I ever really wanted to. And I’m not here to ask you to take me back, because I’ve done nothing to deserve that. God, I don’t even know if you’re seeing someone. I’m that fucking selfish, and - I just don’t know what to do.” Dan ended the sentence on a choked sob. “I don’t know what to do, and you always do, Jev. You’re the clever one, you deserved that seat so much more than me. I refused to play politics, I sacrificed you and for what? I lost everything the day I walked away from you, and it has taken me this long to realise it. How fucking stupid am I, that it’s taken five fucking years to realise I’m walking around as half a person, because you’re still the best part of me And I… fuck.” Dan stopped suddenly, clenching his fists. “I shouldn’t have come here. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry Jev.”

Dan started towards the door, hand already outstretched before Jev’s mind could catch up.

“Dan.” He really hoped he would stop. “Please don’t go.”

Dan stopped, hand quivering where it rested on the door handle. “Why?”

“Because you’ve already come in here and upended my life. And I can’t - I can’t see you walk out of that door again. I don’t think I could take it a second time.”

Dan dropped his hand, but didn’t turn around. The silence great longer and more uncomfortable, the tension rising by the minute. What could either of them say or do now? Jev thought. They’d reached a point where sorry was never going to be enough, but that it might also be too much. It wouldn’t erase the hurt or regret, but they’d both moved on. What was the point of dragging it out again? And on his part, he’d forgiven Dan. Not to say that he’d make the same choice in that situation. He wouldn’t. Or maybe he would, but that was five years ago and he had been an entirely different person. But he understood what Dan had done what’d he’d done. His heart had already begun to heal before it was supposed to break, so the full force of Dan’s decision had never really hit him. It’s easier to forgive a person who you didn’t really hate, when their actions were being predetermined by someone in the shadows.

“Maybe we should go somewhere.” Jev suggested quietly. Dan turned around at that, his face emotionless. Jev wondered how often Dan had practised that face, how often he’d been told to use it.

“Go somewhere?” Dan asked quietly. “Like…?”

“I don’t know, a bar?” Jev shrugged. “I’m still in my race gear, I should probably check in with the team, I need to talk to André… I have stuff to do, but I just need you not to leave.”

Dan nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I can do not leaving.”

“Give me an hour?” Jev asked. Dan nodded, reaching out again and finally pulling the door open. The door shut quietly behind him, and Jev was left in silence again.

~*~

A shower later and he was starting to feel a little more human, and he sent a quick text to André to let him know what was going on. André was the only one who had part of an idea about what had happened, and what could be going on right now, he was a smart man. He’d talk to the team on the way out, and duties done he’d be able to go for the evening.

He’d be lying if he said that his heart wasn’t in his mouth though.

He walked back through the garage, thanking people as he passed them. Thankfully the team seemed to be more focused on breaking down the garage than noticing him.

Dan was sat on the pit wall, headphones in and hands tapping along with whatever music he had on. Dan hadn’t spotted him yet, and Jev just stood for a minute. It seemed so natural, so right, for Dan to be here waiting for him. He couldn’t count how many times this exact scene had played out before, in lower formulas, in F1. It felt like the last five years had almost never happened.

Dan finally spotted him, pulling off an earbud and sliding off the wall. “Ready?”

Jev nodded. “Is the hotel bar okay? There isn’t really much in the area I’m afraid.”

“That’s okay.” Dan nodded. “I can have one, Red Bull isn’t around to kick my ass anymore.”

Jev forced himself to keep looking forward. He was surprised Dan had even brought up their previous team, knowing the problems it had caused them. “Renault are more forgiving then?”

“Towards the end, Ferrari would’ve been more forgiving that Red Bull were.” Dan’s voice was trying for joking, but it wasn’t quite getting there. “They were…”

“Controlling? Evil? Brainwashing?” Jev supplied. Dan laughed.

“Not quite what I was going for but yes. Petty and vindictive is what I was going to say. Max was never the friendliest to start with, too much self-importance. Helmut… well, I never trusted him after you left Toro Rosso. I know you didn’t ‘leave’,” he said as Jev opened his mouth. “I didn’t want to know, but they kept me and Seb in the loop on those talks. We fought for you, but Helmut was nursing a grudge it seemed. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Jev shrugged. “But thanks.”

Dan smiled. “Seb got really defensive. He gave a great speech. But yeah, Helmut really wanted you to go, make the way in for Max. So I couldn’t trust him after that. Christian was the worst though. He had pretended to be my friend so many times these last few years, but I knew Max was the golden prize. I was an extra. And after I gave in my notice,that I was leaving for Renault, he looked on me like I was a piece of gum on his shoe.” Dan laughed, hard and bitter. “I’ve finally learnt that you shouldn’t trust people in this sport.”

“You have me.” Jev blurted out suddenly, unable to stop himself. Wasn’t that supposed to be had? Dan shook his head, giving a sad smile.

“No I don’t. I lost you a long time ago, and I had to make my peace with that. I used to have you, I used to have friends, and I pushed everyone away. I will never be sorry enough.”

“It is what it is.” Jev shrugged. “I doubt Fernando got to being champion by being friendly. Kimi didn’t, and Lewis certainly didn’t.”

“It’s still a lonely place to be.” Dan replied. “If I could go back five year… if I could do it again I would’ve never let you feel second best.”

“That’s good to know.” Jev smiled. They both fell quiet, as they walked into the hotel. The bar wasn’t hard to find, though an empty table was more of a challenge. They finally sat down in the corner of the room, each with a beer in hand.

“Have you ever had Chinese beer?” Jev asked, taking a sip. Dan shook his head, making a bit of a face as he copied.

“Not bad, but not exactly Aussie beer.” Dan replied.

“Well, Aussie beer isn’t exactly beer.” Jev grinned as Dan made an outraged face.

“Beer snob.” Dan muttered. “So. What did you want to talk about?”

Jev shook his head. “You’re the one that followed me all the way to China.”

Dan nodded, taking another sip of his beer. “I just… the last year? With all of the big decisions and Red Bull being utter dicks and just everything, I needed someone to talk to. And that’s always been you Jev. I tried pretending that you were there, I wrote messages, but I guess I needed to see you. Everyone else sees ‘happy-go-lucky’ Danny Ricciardo, and just assume that I’m on top of the world.” He broke off. “Red Bull was so toxic for me. I was being stifled at every turn, being made aware that I wasn’t good enough - ‘woefully inadequate’ is the exact term Christian used I think - and what has it achieved me? A lifetime of self-doubt, crippling loneliness and a broken heart.” Dan looked at his beer, refusing to meet Jev’s eyes. “I found something the other day. I was doing some tidying, y’know, a clean house means a clean soul, whatever. But I’ve loved you since Silverstone with Tech1, and before everything went to shit, I bought a ring.” He fell silent there. Jev could feel his heart hammering. Dan had meant to propose all those years ago? To him? He couldn’t… Dan couldn’t mean…

“Why?” Jev managed to say hoarsely. Dan looked up at that, and he looked more broken than ever.

“I loved you. So fucking much and I always will. I tricked myself into thinking I couldn’t.” Dan gave a sigh. “I don’t know why I didn’t. Because it had to be perfect, at first? And then by the end, if I had you would’ve said no. And I’d deserved that. But, finding that box, it made me realise all the mistakes I’d made. No world championship could ever make up for it. Red Bull definitely wasn’t worth it, Renault is… me trying to make amends I guess? To prove that I can do this myself, that if I do this on my own then it shows I made those decisions I suppose? Like it’s all my fault?”

“Dan -” Jev started. “I’m not going to lie and say none of it’s your fault. But Red Bull are good at manipulating, it’s what they do.” Jev stopped, watching Dan biting his lip, trying to stop the tears. “I always knew Red Bull was a big reason of why we broke up. I’d forgiven you a long time ago. Them, I could never.”

Dan gave a weak smile, grabbing Jev’s hand. “See, I knew you’d know exactly what to say.” He tried jokingly.

Jev ignored the panicked oh shit inside his head as Dan gripped his hand. It was only the love of his life. Holding his hand. Like this day hadn’t already been a trip down memory lane. He squeezed Dan’s hand, shrugging. “You just needed reminding. But make Renault your thing. Don’t lose yourself again.”

“I won’t.” Dan smiled. “Made that mistake once.”

Jev smiled. “Yeah you did.”

Dan laughed as well, and to Jev? It was the best sound in the world.

And he wasn’t going to think about how they were still holding hands.

~*~

No matter how often he travelled, Jev could just never get used to hotel rooms. They always felt a little impersonal, too plain. There was never any character with them.

He didn’t know why he was even thinking about the character of his hotel room, but it was a safe topic to think about lying in the dark. He couldn’t focus his mind on his race today, and he definitely didn’t want to focus his mind on Dan. They’d talked for hours, whilst keeping to their one-drink limit. There was no way they could get away with drinking more, what with his own team here with him in the hotel, and photographers everywhere, waiting for one wrong move. One photo of either of them drunk could seriously cause problems.

He let out a huff, turning onto his side. He just wanted to go to sleep, and continue with his life. Dan wasn’t about to just appear back in his life permanently. They were both different people now, maybe they couldn’t go back. It was good they’d talked, it was closure. It had been a good talk, but it would be difficult to just pretend to be friends that just texted and rarely saw each other. It had never been just that for either of them. It was just closure. That’s what André had said as well. He’d been right when André was smart, he’d already put two and two together. Jev still hadn’t given details, but the understanding was there. But yes. Closure. Shutting a door on that part of his life. André said it was good, to do that.

Maybe André should start dictating his life. It’d be less messy that way.

He heard a knock at the door, breaking his train of thought. Jev groaned, pushing himself up. He glanced at the clock, muttering under his breath.

“It’s two in the morning, if that’s the hotel -” He pulled open the door, the annoyance on his face disappearing as he realised who was standing there.

“Hey.” Dan stood awkwardly, shuffling a little. “I, er… couldn’t sleep.”

“Okay.” Jev could feel himself staring. It felt like his brain had flat lined, because all he could comprehend was that Dan was standing outside his hotel door, in just a tank and shorts.

He was a strong man, but c’mon. He didn’t have a will of iron.

Dan grinned, and oh, Jev’s knees went weak. “I was wondering if I could just hang here for a bit. I won’t disturb, well, anymore than I already have done.” The cheeky smile was back in force, and fuck. If it wasn’t the most perfect image in the whole world.

Jev nodded, turning around and heading back to his bed, switching the light on. “I was having trouble sleeping too.”

“Oh?” Dan frowned a little, shutting the door. “Thinking about the race?”

“Thinking about nothing.” Jev admitted, sitting down and pulling his legs crossed in front of him. “Too much to focus on so my brain just -” he mimes a little explosion, “dead.”

Dan nodded, wandering over and sitting on the bed. Jev stiffened a little, enough for Dan to notice. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah. Just… need to put my head in the right place first.”

“Why, where’s your head at now?” Dan waggled his eyebrows. Jev swatted him with his pillow, ignored Dan’s muffled laugh.

“Mind out of the gutter.” Jev rolled his eyes. “Not like that.”

“More like, wow, mind trip, Dan’s back.” Dan replied, the cheerfulness starting to sound fake again. Jev nodded.

“A little. But it’s good. I’m sorted now. So, you want the TV?”

Dan shook his head, shuffling further down until he was horizontal. “I may have exaggerated the hanging out bit.”

“The nightmares?” Jev guessed. Dan had started having them in the last six months of their relationship. He’d kinda figured that they’d continued after.

“Yeah.” Dan was quiet. “They got worse after you, so I’d hoped… y’know.”

“That being near me would help.” Jev understood what Dan was asking now. “I’m happy to help. I’ll just go and get the light.”

He jumped up quickly, padding across the room to flick the lights off. He crawled back into bed, so hyper-aware of Dan lying next to him.

“Stop thinking.” Dan mumbled. “Get some sleep.”

Jev smiled in the darkness, moving around until he was comfortable.

“Goodnight Daniel.” He said quietly. He didn’t hear anything for a minute, then a small rustle.

“Night, Jean-Éric.”

~*~

Jev blinked awake, blearily wondering why he was so warm. A couple of seconds passed as his brain caught up.

Last night. Dan. Bed.

He shifted a little, but Dan was pressed all along his back, an arm thrown over his hip. Jev shut his eyes, whether trying to pretend it was a dream or if he’d really time-travelled, he didn’t really know.

“You awake?” Dan asked sleepily, hand tracing a pattern on his hips. Jev hummed a little, not calling Dan out on his actions. Dan nestled even closer, mouth on the back of Jev’s neck. Jev could feel his skin prickling, and the want to squirm a little in Dan’s grasp was growing stronger.

Jev turned around, meeting Dan’s dark eyes and holding them. Dan reached a hand up to Jev’s face, stroking some hair out of the way.

“Please say I’m not reading this wrong.” Dan whispered. Jev stared at him a second longer, before leaning in to kiss him. Fuck. It was perfect, and it he felt like a man drowning. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten how Dan kissed, but it was muscle memory. He just knew how hard to bite down, where to place his hands, how to touch. Dan moaned into his mouth into his mouth, grabbing desperately at his shirt. Jev moved away, pulling his shirt over head. Dan moved to do the same, and all Jev could do was stare.

He knew what Dan looked like, of course he did. But there were changes. He looked even fitter, if possible. He was still tanned, golden all over. There were tattoos now though. He’d only know about their existence because of twitter. They looked even better up close. Exquisite.

“Jev.” Dan said hoarsely. “Please.”

Jev put his hands back to work, putting them on Dan’s hips and expertly rolling them so Dan was underneath. Dan whined, rocking his hips slightly. Jev sucked a kiss onto Dan’s collarbone, knowing it wouldn’t be seen there. He continued lower, small kisses down Dan’s torso until he reached the waistband of Dan’s shorts. He pulled them down, pushing his own down to his knees.

Dan was pawing at him, the desperation clear on his face. “Jev… Jean-Éric…”

Jev grinned wickedly, wrapping his hand around both their cocks. Dan bucked his hips in response, but Jev held his other hand down on Dan’s hips. He leaned in close, pressing a kiss on Dan’s chin.

“How much do you need to come?” Jev asked lowly, nose to nose with the man underneath. Dan whined again.

“So much Jev.” Dan whimpered. Jev started to pump his hand, trying not to tremble himself. Dan was shaking all over, bunching his fists into the sheets as he tried to hold on. Jev continued for a few more strokes, until Dan started to mutter.

“I’m gonna, I’m gonna…” He cried, and suddenly Dan was coming, and it was all Jev needed to follow him over the edge. Jev collapsed next to Dan, resting a hand on his hip.

“So,” Jev started, trying to sound calm. “That happened.”

Dan started giggling, turning so he could face Jev. “That is possibly the worst after-talk ever.”

“But true.” Jev joined in the laughter. “I’ll grab some tissue.”

“Cheers.” Dan stretched out, catching the roll of tissue as Jev threw it at him. “I’d forgotten how good at sex you are.”

“You forgot.” Jev sounded incredulous. Dan made a noise, making an indeterminate movement with his hand.

“Not like forgot, forgot. But like, tried not to remember.” Dan finished cleaning himself up, throwing it away and snuggling back down. “Get in.”

Jev didn’t need telling twice, burrowing back down into the covers.

“Hey.” He smiled. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Dan grinned. “Unexpected places and all.” He yawned, pressing his head into the pillow. “This wasn’t my original plan.”

“I know.” Jev shrugged. “But it was a point of no return once I’d seen your tattoos.”

“Knew you’d like them.” Dan replied smugly. They lay in silence for a bit, comfortable in the quiet. They had never needed to talk all the time, but before the silences had become tense and unwelcome. This silence, this quiet, felt natural.

“I’m happy to try.” Jev broke the quiet. Dan looked over, surprised. “I mean, if you are.”

“I definitely am.” Dan smiled, reaching down to clasp Jev’s hand. “I swear, I’m never going to let you go again.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

~*~

The heat was still formidable in the Abu Dhabi desert, even with though the sun had set long ago. Jev was waiting outside the Renault motorhome, sitting at a free table. The championship was over for another year, and he was just waiting for Dan before going to join the Renault party. There was no need to pack anything up because of the testing the following week, and some of the mechanics were taking their small freedom to the extremes.

“Ready?” Dan almost bounced out of the motorhome, giddiness and excitement wrapped up into a human being. Jev stood up, leaning in for a kiss, hooking his fingers in Dan’s belt-loops and dragging forwards.

“Congratulations. Good race.” Jev whispered. Dan’s smile got impossibly brighter, blushing a little.

“It’s only third.”

“Third in a Renault. You didn’t get to see Max’s face afterwards. And when Helmut and Christian walked past, I am honestly surprised they didn’t spit on the ground.”

“Because of Renault, or you?” Dan teased.

“It might have been me, I was putting on a bit of a show.” Jev laughed. “Draping myself all across the front of this lovely motorhome. I was tempted to steal one of your shirts, but I wasn’t sure if yellow was my colour.”

“Every colour is your colour. And I can’t believe I missed that.” Dan pretended to look put out. “Shame on you.”

Jev grinned. “Ah well. C’mon, Mr Podium. You have fans to entertain.”

Dan leaned in for another kiss, staying close. “I fucking love you. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“Yes you could, you just needed to be reminded.” Jev murmured. “But I’m here every step of the way.”

Dan smiled, a small private one just for the two of them. They’d never forgot the time apart, but they were stronger now. They were better drivers, better people. Jev gave Dan a squeeze, pulling back.

“Let’s go celebrate.” He offered his hand, grinning when Dan took it.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

~*~

#jean-eric vergne #daniel ricciardo #andre lotterer #formula 1 fanfiction #f1 fanfic #jevcardo

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kalico-to-the-letter · 6 years ago

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REVIEW // RWBY | 6.13 | “OUR WAY”

AKA the welcome home.

Welcome in to my review of the thirteenth chapter, and the finale, of RWBY’s sixth volume, entitled, “Our Way”.

In this episode: Light reigns. Greetings are extended. Darkness gathers.

Rise.

TELL THEM – I CAME THE LONG WAY ROUND.

I’ve praised the overall efficiency of this season of RWBY; for the most part, and particularly in the second half of the season, the episode times have been spent wisely, hitting plot points without sacrificing too much build up or leaving us feeling too shortchanged when it’s truly mattered.

But that want to tell expansive, multi-character stories within these kinds of thinned-out structures is always like playing with fire, because one inevitably risks running into one of two things: not doing as much as it can, or trying to do far too much.

And this has been the story of RWBY for all of this season. They nailed that balance, in my opinion, for the first half of the season, by anchoring the story to Team RWBY’s struggles and smartly dotting other teases around the perimeter. But introducing Argus meant introducing a new setting, new side characters, and a new sub-antagonist, all while needing to marry with those established setups – creating a readjustment period which the show then struggled to leverage into anything truly remarkable – and somehow running into both of the above problems.

Question: Do we particularly like Argus, after all this? It’s a nice enough town, with fairly chill people, and that was definitely a breath of fresh air after the darkness of Haven last season, and traipsing through the snowy woods in the first half of this season. But beyond it being the home of the Cotta-Arc family, and providing a truly heartfelt moment remembering Pyrrha, I can’t see that it’s left much of an impact. All the action happened outside of the town itself, and ultimately, it was just another pit stop on the way to Atlas.

There are two principle reasons for that. First is the antagonist – despite the actual mechanics of her character arc working really well, Caroline Cordovin has done very little for me. Sure, she plays a big part in the story, and is ultimately somewhat redeemed by taking down the Leviathan, but when you sit back and look at the wider context of the season, and realise that she, this gatekeeper figure, was the season’s most prominent character antagaonist, it’s a bit unimpressive. Adam played his part, but that part was to essentially appear out of nowhere and die, while the series’ biggest antagonists were kept to the sidelines, even after a number of promising teases.

The second reason Argus has struggled is the lack of a meaningful mooring point. The most appealing characters Argus gave us, in Saphron and Terra Cotta-Arc, were introduced immediately, as well as given an interesting potential subplot thread. Unfortunately, nothing came of it, and their role in the story was quickly reduced to shepherding the protagonists out of town, with a minimum of callback to that tease. If the protagonists’ escape had been more strongly linked to a local subplot, then the experience would have felt more important than it does now, which is really a bit of a blip.

It adds up to a story which didn’t do as much as it could have in defining the basics, and then tried to do a bit too much. A difficult situation, to say the least, and the way it wraps up in this finale doesn’t fix or really even attempt to justify some of the season’s recent creative directions.

Say, if the Argus story we’d had drip-fed to us had ended with a Grimm fight at least matching the intensity of Blake and Yang vs Adam or Gang vs Cordovin, then sure, I wouldn’t be so irritated by how this Leviathan element was executed. But in this finale, there was no epic battle, no time for any drama to build. The big moment just kind of … happened, and then we moved on.

It was a great moment, don’t get me wrong. Seeing Ruby facing off solo against this huge monster was a big deal, and I got quite emotional at seeing all the flashes of her memories as she tried to summon her Silver Eyes. I liked the swell of that moment, and how it finished with Cordovin remembering her purpose and using the mecha suit for the thing for which it was designed.

But this “battle” did not justify how the Leviathan was so clumsily inserted into the story at the end of the previous episode – the creature’s presence hammered in the consequences of the Gang vs Cordovin fight, but really it just existed as a plot device to redeem Cordovin and give Ruby a reason to try her Silver Eyes in earnest.

And ultimately, that was the clear, main objective of this now “in the interim” season, to take Ruby and properly work on her character to the point that someone like myself, who was always just “ok” with her, is now very positive about her and her position in this story, going into the series’ likely final phase.

So here we finally are. In Atlas. Where a lot of things will surely come to a head, and in time, this transitional season will not be remembered as being too difficult of an experience – just a necessary step to get to the big stuff. But right now, in this moment, having spent the past fourteen weeks thinking about the ways that this season’s story was developing, I can’t help but be a little bit flat about it all. Especially when it promised so damn much in the early going.

OBSERVATIONS

Keep in mind that when I talk about the antagonists, obviously I’m putting the Grimm in a separate category – they don’t have characters, after all.

Do I even have to say that I loved the post-fight interactions between Blake, Weiss and Yang? You know I did. As weird as this show has been to follow at times, the best part of it has always been its characters, and these days I can definitely admit my attachment to these three girls, and Ruby now as well.

I believe that’s the first time we’ve seen Neo’s semblance in action – materialisation, seemingly hologram-based in nature.

So, Ozpin helped Oscar safely crash the airship previously, then disappeared again. All right then.

I almost screamed when I saw Summer Rose’s face reveal, I will not lie. The whole animatic was very emotional, especially seeing its progression, and how just the thought of Pyrrha caused Ruby to lose control of her positive energy.

I noticed a couple of spots where the animation seemed to lose or skip some frames – Cordovin leaping at the Leviathan and when Salem shrouds herself in darkness to cut the episode to black.

I like that the main parameters for Volume 7 are already being laid down – everyone is going to Atlas, and things are going to burn.

It seems like the overarching story is proceeding into its end phase, and there is probably a larger discussion to be had about how the rest of the series will unfold on a structural level. RT seem to be scaling back focus on this show as they move onto other projects. I suppose it makes sense – this series is well past the point of having “potential”, and has probably already peaked at a commercial level, so all that’s left to do is manage what remains. It will be interesting to see what happens going forward in terms of production and output for RWBY.

GRADE: C+

As a finale, “Our Way” is a very appropriate encapsulation of season six’s latter half – charged with very good psychology and enough baked-in character work to carry its stories, but also guilty of not doing the best it can with some of its ideas. This was the moment to pay off the season’s recent efficiency with something epic or escalated, but instead it rushes through a number of its important story beats and moves on without batting much of an eyelid. Even though big things are being set up for future stories, the lack of depth in the overall Argus storyline hurts this finale’s attempts to serve as a definitive, grand closer. However, it does complete the season-long ascension of the Main Heroine with emotional aplomb, and leans on its strong characters to the point that it becomes … fine.

Volume 6 of RWBY is a strange beast, stranger than Volume 5’s up-and-down swings, or Volume 4’s all-consuming melancholia. What makes this the case is that it opened by serving up six episodes of consistent, quality storytelling, only to run into roadblocks of its own creation in the latter seven episodes. Some of the worst parts of this season? The meandering in Argus, dropping the “tension within Team RWBY” angle as soon as they’d reached Argus, and the meagre, in hindsight, teases of the antagonists “making moves” but not really doing that much. Some of the best parts of this season? The constant focus on character, the attention paid to the fight psychology, the reestablishment of Team RWBY as a unit, the focus put on Blake and Yang, and the unwavering effort to solidify Ruby Rose as the primary heroine. – KALLIE

#rwby spoilers #rwby reviews #rwby6 #rwby volume 6 #rwby

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bugheadjones-the-third · 7 years ago

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title: See You Soon

summary: Post 02x21 - Jughead is not answering and the entire world around her starts to crumble. Betty knows she needs to think fast in order to save him, but real life cannot be compared to a medical manual.

a/n: Yes, Betty Cooper knows first aid. I only wrote what I felt like doing at that moment, and I regret nothing… (Well, maybe I do because I really want to write a part 2 now after this). I really LOVED writing this, and I hope you can feel this love! Please, tell me your opinion, and TO THE STORY!.

His limbs were hanging apathetic from his father’s arms as the leader of the South Side Serpents left the foggy forest behind him with each, heavy step. Blood and dirt covered his entire body, and there was just no sign of his beautiful, blue eyes she loves so much. It was dark, there was mud on his face and tears were pooling around her eyes, and all of that just made it incredibly hard from her to see if there was any kind of movement coming from him.

No. That couldn’t be happening, she thought. He couldn’t be de—

Betty swallowed dry, for she just couldn’t even imagine that word related to Jughead— to her Juggy. The boy who has the sweetest smile she knows, and has this smooth voice that makes her heart skip a beat whenever he says her name. The boy whose hands are always there to hold her and whose lips fit perfectly on hers—

No, such word could never be used to describe Jughead Jones. She was not going to accept it. She was not going to say it.

Her lips were firmly pressed together as they trembled, her hands were shaking and her nails were begging to pierce the skin of her palms. The world went mute around her, the colors became more vibrant, somehow, and suddenly, there was a lump lodged on her throat that made it hard— almost impossible— for her to breath. She could feel an anxiety attack building up inside her, the signs clear as day as she started to hyperventilate, and if not for the look on his father’s eyes, the Cooper girl would’ve succumbed to all those feelings that were about to lash out.

Those eyes… Those eyes that resembled his so much.

FP has always been a strong and tough man, who has never did as much as tremble near her after he got a hold of his drinking problem. He has always been the one she would look at whenever she was scared, but at that moment, as he carried his son’s body, Betty could tell that man was really close to fall and cry like a child. His lips were mumbling incoherent words, his eyes were glassy as he looked straight at her, and it was as if that grown man, who has gone to hell and back, was begging for her help. He was desperate, she could tell. Desperate and in search of any flicker of hope he could find in the girl who never gives up.

He didn’t know what to do. She didn’t, either, but something had to be done before it was already too late.

Her nails dug into her palms and the blood running down her fingers prevented her from spiraling away. Finally, she managed to move, almost tripping on the short distance that separated them, and by the time she managed to reach both of the Jones man, FP slowly crumbled down, placing Jughead on the floor in between them. She was on her knees now, watching as FP’s tears streamed down his bony cheeks. He was breaking in front of her, and at that moment, she knew he wouldn’t be of any help.

Betty was going to have to take over that situation. She was going to have to do it for him, and she was going to have to be strong for all of them in order to save the love of her life.

God help him.

“ Mr. Jones….” She was biting her lips now, trying ( but clearly failing) to bring him back into this whole mess. For she was but mere inches apart from him, the blonde could make up the ghosty words his lips were forming. Cold, they said. So cold.

It was clear that he was talking about his own son, for as soon as she touched his dirty skin, the girl could feel that temperature freezing the tips of her fingers. Her heart broke a little more after that, and all she wanted to do was to keep him warm. She wanted to scream for a blanket or even for his beanie, but it was clear that there were more important things that had to be solved at that moment.

First things first, she thought, trying her best to focus her mind on anything but that desperate urge to cry.

Her shaky finger quickly went to his neck in search of his pulse, and her head was soon pressed against his chest in order to check his breathing. At that moment, there was nothing in the world she wanted most than to hear the soothing sound of his heartbeat and to feel his breath fawning over her hair. She wanted to feel the weight of his hand on the small portion of her back, and she wanted to see those icy, blue eyes of his opening up just for her.

Any reaction would be enough, but as expected, she found no sign of either vital signs. Her face felt warmer during the tears that threatened to wash her focus away, however, thanks to all of the emergency courses she took during her life, Betty had a manual in her head and she knew what to do next.

“ Someone call an ambulance!” She screamed from the bottom of her throat, startling everyone around her whose hopes had already vanished.

“ But Betty—“ Archie started, hurt and concern clear in his voice.

“ Hurry up! We have no time to waste if we want to save him!

“ There’s no reception here.” Cheryl said, trying to lift her phone in order to look for signal. They were too deep into that shitty hellhole the Ghoulies had decided to meet up, and it was no surprise to actually have no signal around there. Trying to look for it would be a waste of time, and time, for sure, was not a luxury Jughead possessed.

They needed a plan B, and they needed one as fast as possible. If they couldn’t call out for help, then—

" Sweet Pea, Toni, please! Bring them here! Go get help!”

The young Serpents were quick to understand what she meant by those words, and they wasted no time before heading towards their bikes. Even if Sweet Pea didn’t really love Betty, he knew that, at that moment, the war between North and South had nothing to do with that. Jughead’s life was in danger, and he couldn’t simply accept that fate was taking away another friend from him. Jughead was their leader. He was the one who sacrificed himself for the entire gang, and the one who stood by their side even against his childhood best friend. Just like Betty, Pea couldn’t simply watch as the boy in front of them died.

He was not going to let Jughead die.

And with a simple nod, the tall boy, the pink haired girl and her girlfriend started their engines and left in search of help. Even if there was no reception, they were going to find someone who could help, while the others tried their best to stabilize the Serpent Prince.

As she continued to examine her boyfriend’s body, Betty realized his shirt was glued to the right side of his abdomen. She was desperately trying to look for the wound, but the sole fireplace illuminating the area wasn’t enough to offer her enough light. Betty could feel herself getting madder as time went by, and if not for the sudden that suddenly came from FP’s phone, the blonde would’ve probably just kept tapping aimlessly in order to find the origin of the blood.

The flashlight wasn’t strong, but just like FP, it was going to have to be enough to be enough. She could see a little better now, and behind all the mud and the ripped clothes, the blonde finally found what she had been looking for. Bingo! There was blood coming there, she could smell it, and she knew she had to stop that as fast as she could in order to prevent him from bleeding to dea—

“ Arch! I need your help!”

When his time came, the ginger wasted no time before running to them, practically throwing himself at the floor. He watched as she removed her coach and handled it to him, clearly not minding the cold breeze striking them at that moment. Archie has never been the smartest kid around, and seeing his best friend— no, his brother— laying there, motionless, was breaking his heart; but even he could connect those dots before she could say anything.

“ Apply pressure there. You need to stop this bleeding!”

“ Betty, I-I—“

“ You can do this, Arch! He needs us.”

Even with fear clearly spread around his face, the Andrews boy did as he was told. He placed her jacket over the wound and pressed it with the strength he judged to be necessary to stop the bleeding. Red soon spread around the pink material, and no matter how terrifying it was to see that whole thing from such a short distance, the blonde knew she could count on her neighbor to take care of that while she did the rest.

Archie was also afraid of losing Jughead, but just fear wouldn’t stop him from doing the right thing. They are brothers, after all.

With the bleeding secured, and with all the orders given, the Cooper girl was finally ready to start CPR. She adjusted her position, intertwined her own fingers and placed the heels of her left hand between his nipples. She looked down at him one more time, and for a fraction of second, Betty allowed fear to cross her mind.

How the hell did they get there? How did they go form worrying about homework to her trying to literally bring him to life with her are hands?

That was not how things were supposed to be. They were supposed to be worried about stuff like football or what to wear for prom and not wether or not they would make it through the night.

Stuff like that were not supposed to happen in Riverdale. Not with the children of Riverdale. Not with them—

But then it hit her. It’s already happened. There was no turning back now and no way of undoing what was already done. Those kids couldn’t be brought back to life, lies could not be untold and everything that happened had already changed their lives. For the better or worse, neither of them were the same kids from before. They’ve experienced things no children should have, but for that, they’re a lot stronger now. They’re smarter, braver and they’re no longer alone.

They’re in love now. Betty and Jughead. They only happened because of all the things that brought them to this very moment. All the deaths, gangs, murderers and heartbreaks brought them here, together, and if anything, such terrifying episode would only bring them even closer in an even more messed up Riverdale.

It all started with Jason Blossom, but it was certainly not going to end with Jughead.

A new wave of confidence hit her and she quickly started massaging his chest according to the manual she has read so many times. The hardest thing about the whole thing was maintaining a steady rhythm— not too slow and not too fast— while she could feel an emotional breakdown just around the corner. Betty knew the recommendations were 30 compressions to 2 ventilations, and that if she could sing Staying Alive she wouldn’t make any mistakes. Yes, she knew it all, but such knowledge meant shit when her boyfriend was the one whose heart was stopped.

“ Come on, Jug. React!” She said, in between compressions, as her face was slowly getting redder due to pressure. She could feel his sternum succumbing under her weight, and if not for the fact that she was mentally keeping track of everything, Betty wouldn’t believe time was actually passing. The world around her had gone completely mute, and it was as if there were only the two of them left in the world.

After the 30th compression, her lips met his in a cold kiss, and she fought hard to ignore the disgusting taste of iron as she offered air to his lungs. His chest went up two times before she restarted the compressions, and the entire cycle restarted as they fought side by side in order to keep him alive. Again, they were doing something dangerous together. And god— she was getting tired of this.

Even if she was supposed to have another person helping, Betty was too deep into that trance to even step away in order to let someone else do the job. At that moment, she just didn’t trust anyone with his life, and all of her actions suddenly fell into an automatic rhythm, allowing her to focus on him.

To focus on the real him.

His cheeks under the mud, his blue eyes behind closed eyelids and the tons of jokes Jughead himself would be making about his own condition if he knew what was happening. He should be making her laugh instead of crying, and she made a mental note to scold him for that as soon as he recovered his senses. She was going to give him a piece of her mind when he woke up, and together, they would send all those ghoulies to the jail. They were going to pay for what they did to him, and she wouldn’t give up until she made sure of that.

“ Jughead, you better open your eyes! Y-You better open them, because we need to go to the Blue and Gold in the morning.”

Memories of their days at the school paper started to fill her mind, and before she knew it, tears were finally spilling from her eyes. Until that moment, the blonde hadn’t allowed a single one to fall, but due to the physical exhaustion, her control over her emotions were slipping away. Sweat dripped from her forehead and into his own skin, and the freezing breeze of the night made nothing to her. The adrenaline running through her veins kept her warm and filled with enough energy not to stop the compressions, and she knew that her heart was beating enough for both of them at that moment. Betty wasn’t really sure for how long she had been doing that, but there was no way she was stopping until there was a reaction from him.

“React, Jug!! Please!” She begged him, more tears falling from her red cheeks. Her ponytail was a mess right now, her clothes were all dirty in a mix of mud and blood, and she could feel her knees starting to complain for being like that for so long. Under normal conditions, even Betty would’ve already passed out, but at that moment, he needed her. He needed her in order to live, and she was not going to let him down.

Not again.

She would bring him back with her bare hands, and she would do it all by herself if she had to.

Betty was not giving up on him. She was not giving up on them.

And thankfully, neither were their friends.

“ Fuck!!”

Her screams were coming out without filter now, and she could tell that she was starting to lose her sanity as well. A different noise was invading her ears now, and for a moment, she could swear there was a new light coming from the background. She leaned down to press her lips against his another time, and in her mind, she could only whisper the last words she wanted to tell him before he hung up on her a couple of hours earlier.

I love you too, Jug. Please…

She made his chest rise up two times more, and when she lifted her head one more time, Betty could swear she saw his lips trembling, as if in a weak attempt to breath by himself.

Did he just…?

Her green eyes widened at that, and she desperately wanted to check his pulse one more time to see if that was not just another trick of her tired head. The blonde placed a hand on his cheek before lowering to his neck, but before she could even touch him again, a strong hand pulled her away from him. All her breath escaped her lungs, as her hands succumbed to the ground, and even if she wanted to reach out and touch him again, her body just wouldn’t move.

The world around her was still mute, but flashes of light surrounded her now as people dressed in white approached his body. Sweet Pea was by their side along with FP and Archie, and as if in slow motion, she could only see as they took him away and into the ambulance.

Be careful with him, she begged in her head. She wanted to stand up and go to him, but her knees were too weak to do so. She wanted to scream, but her voice wouldn’t come out, and she just wanted to follow him, but there were more hands holding her back now. Hands warmer than any part of his cold body, and hands that were, doubtlessly, trying to protect her from the world.

Her mother was there now, along with Veronica, but Betty couldn’t care less about them for her eyes were set exclusively at the white car that was taking Jughead away from her. She wanted to be there, by his side and holding his hand, but there was no time to waste anymore. FP exchanged one, last glance with her, and quickly, the ambulance disappeared from view, taking her heart with it.

I’ll never stop loving you. Those were the words echoing in her head at that moment, as all the people cried around her. Betty couldn’t move or breath, and at that moment, for as helpless as that could feel, all she could do was hope.

Yes, at that moment, hope was all she could do, and so she did it.

Betty Cooper hoped that, soon, Jughead could, finally, fulfill his promise.

I’ll see you soon, Jug.

the end. (?)

#bughead #bughead fanfiction #bughead fanfic #bughead fic #riverdale #mybugheadfics

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miscellaneous--musings · 7 years ago

Text

Three Times, One Time

Detroit Become Human

Prompt by @brascul

Prompt: The three times Connor protects someone and the one time someone returns the favor.

Characters: Hank, Connor, Gavin, Kara, Alice, Markus, Luther, North, Josh, Simon

Ships: none

Warnings: contains swearing, blood, gun fights

A/N: This prompt was by the lovely @brascul you can go to their blog to find the lists of prompts. I’d like it here but my internet is too slow to find the post...sorry. This is one of my first Detroit: Become Human fics. I have some experience in writing imagines, not fanfictions. As for warnings, that is fairly new to me. So if I missed something or you would like to request something be listed in warnings, let me know. But I hope this is good.

Word Count: 2,649

Connor was done chasing deviants. They were legal now, there was no reason to chase them. But his programming was still law enforcement. For that reason, he offered to take up a protection detail for Markus. With Markus’s new position as an android leader, he would be under threat constantly. From humans obviously. And there were a few androids who were content with their lives before Markus caused chaos. Those were the biggest threats.

Markus had forgiven Connor for his actions against him and Jericho. And Connor had nearly killed him when CyberLife tried to take control of him. So Connor also felt honor bound to help Markus. And Markus reluctantly let him aid him in this way. Markus didn’t want Connor to risk his life, Markus wasn’t keen on sacrificing anyone. In fact, Markus had a bad habit of throwing himself in harms way to save others. But Connor would protect Markus. In truth, he was glad that Markus agreed in the end. Because Connor would’ve protected Markus anyway.

Markus and his trusted group—North, Josh, Simon—were the unofficial leaders of the android race. There had been no official decision on who should represent the androids or how representation should be carried out. But Connor had no doubt that Markus would be the first android representative. Right now, however, he was the one to meet with the humans. He was the one to carry out negotiations and talks for peace and civil rights. North, Josh, and Simon were his advisors. Markus called Connor and advisor as well. And while Connor would occasionally weigh in with his opinion, he knew his place. He was security.

The group was just leaving another peace talk when Connor’s assistance was needed. An android came up to Markus, and AP700 model. The woman profusely thanked Markus for freeing the androids. This was a usual occurrence, androids appreciated what Markus had done for them. Connor took a moment to scan the android. AP700, registered name: Lucy. She had shyly approached Markus, hands politely clasped behind her back. Connor noticed the change though.

While Lucy began to talk more animatedly, she would gesture with her hand. But only one. The other one stayed behind her back, never really moving. Connor eased closer to Markus as he noticed this abnormality. The Lucy android glanced at him, and seemed a little surprised to see the famed ‘deviant hunter’ with the freer of deviants. Connor really wished that title would go away.

However, Lucy inched closer to Markus. Connor noticed she was trying to get between him and Markus. But Connor kept staying close enough to keep and eye on her and intervene if necessary. His fears were well founded. “Oh, enough of this.” The Lucy android grumbled. She brought the other hand out from behind her back and was brandishing a knife.

Connor placed a hand on Markus’s shoulder and pulled him back. This effectively put Connor in front of Markus in a protective stance. Lucy brought the blade forward in a downward strike. Connor moved to avoid in but Lucy still managed to slice Connor’s left arm, exposing circuits and causing blue blood to leak from the opening. But Connor was unfazed. That didn’t damage any important biocomponents. Lucy swung the blade out in front of her causing a gash on Connor’s torso. He let out a strangled noise as it clipped a biocomponent. He steeled himself against the interruption and went to keep protecting Markus. It was his duty.

But suddenly, the Lucy model was tackled. Josh was holding it down. North was contacting the authorities. Simon was finding some way to restrain the android. Markus was checking on Connor. “You didn’t need to do that for me.” Markus told him.

“Yes I did, I am your security officer. I am here to protect you.” Suddenly, Connor felt the effects of the damaged biocomponent. He grunted and dropped down to one knee, and hand over his wounded torso.

“Well, now it’s my job to ensure you get fixed up.” Markus said. He turned to the others. “Do you have everything under control here while I take care of Connor?” He asked.

“Of course Markus.” North answered.

“Good.” Markus reached down and grabbed Connor’s uninjured arm to help him stand upright. He took that same arm and placed it around his shoulders. He assisted Connor back to the old church they used as a back-up shelter. It was being renovated so they could use the building once more. Right now it held all the blue blood and biocomponents they had stolen. Markus stayed by Connor’s side until he was fully repaired.

Connor stumbled into Hank’s home, his home as well. His shirt had cuts in it and was stained blue. Usually thirium evaporates, but it stains clothes just like any other liquid. And Connor’s white shirt would never be wearable again. “Jesus Christ, what happened?” Hank said. He was in front of Connor in mere seconds, looking for the damage.

“I was mildly damaged after protecting Markus. That damage was minimal and I was repaired.” Connor said.

Hank huffed. “Be careful kid. You may be a machine but I’d hate for you to get damaged beyond repair.”

Kara didn’t exactly like Connor, which was fair. He had tried to capture them when he hunted deviants. He thinks he made up for that by now, but Kara was still wary of him. Kara’s family unit, her as well as Alice and Luther, had crossed the boarder successfully. They even set up citizenship in Canada. However, Markus asked them to return and share their story at one of the peace talks.

It was a smart move. Luther talked about working for Zlatko. He talked of all the androids that came through and were torn apart by a cruel human. He told of joining Kara and Alice and the family he found with them. Kara talked about being owned by an abusive owner. How her memories only began in a CyberLife store after being repaired from one of Todd’s beatings. How she became deviant to protect a small girl who was being abused.

And Alice didn’t speak. She was technically a child. But Kara spoke for her. Her trials as well. Alice stayed outside the room. Connor had slipped from the room at one point. He knew Kara’s story well at this point. He was exactly bored because these were important matters, but he knew everything Kara was saying. If anyone had asked him why he slipped out, he would say it was because Hank was trying to contact him. Which wasn’t a lie exactly. However, Hank had just sent Connor a picture of Sumo laying on one of Connor’s shirts (which Connor wasn’t sure how he got it as all his shirts were hanging up in his closet but he suspected Hank had something to do with it) with a caption ‘I think someone is missing you.’

Connor noticed Alice staring out the window. He stepped a bit closer to see if he could determine what the little girl was staring at. There was a cat sitting outside. A small grey tabby cat. Alice watched it as it licked its paws. Kara had talked about Alice’s growing desire for a pet. Connor agreed that the little girl seemed very fascinated by animals. The tabby scampered away from the building. Alice didn’t hesitate before running outside to follow it. Connor instinctually followed.

A child shouldn’t be left unsupervised. And he could contact Kara with their location. Alice walked down the sidewalk a bit to follow the kitten. She reached out a hand and the kitten tentatively sniffed the hand. Alice lowered her hand and pet the cat. She smiled at the animal. The kitten noticed Connor walk up behind Alice and it was enough the frighten it. The kitten ran into the street to flee Connor.

The small cat froze up as car whizzed by. Alice, worried for its safety, raced out into the road after it. She scooped up the cat. Time froze for Connor as he computed the events and options before him. If he failed to do anything Alice would be hit by the cars. So he ran out into the street and pushed the little girl forward. She stumbled forward and onto the sidewalk on the other side of the road. Connor flew forward a shirt distance as a car drove right into him.

Connor grunted in pain. His biocomponents were all malfunctioning. He struggled to send a message to Kara. ‘In street out front. Alice is fine. I require assistance.’ His LED circle spun as the message was sent. Then the circle flashed red before staying a steady red as he lay motionless.

Luckily, Connor had merely gone into power down mode. And they were able to fix all damaged parts. He powered back up and found he was on Hank’s couch. “What did I say about being careful?” Hank said.

“I was trying to protect a child.” Connor defended.

“I know. And you did protect her. You did good kid. You just scared me, that’s all.”

“I apologize Hank.”

In the end, Kara ended up adopting the kitten that Alice had saved.

Gavin Reed. The police officer that hated Connor. But that was alright. Because Hank hated Gavin. And Connor wasn’t fond of Gavin either. It was like a mutual hatred of each other. Unfortunately, Officer Reed was lead investigator for murders. So homicide and murder crossed over a lot. The boys tried to play nice for the sake of their jobs and justice.

While investigating a murder, the three were following a lead. Usually Gavin let Hank and Connor follow up on leads alone. But this was a big case according to Gavin. “And I’m not gonna let the local drunk and Ken doll get all the credit.” So Gavin came with them. And he decided to pester them the whole car ride. There was plenty of cursing in that car ride.

They found a warehouse full of various items and boxes and crates, so they began searching. At one point, a few suspects walked in. When the suspects noticed the cops, they all pulled guns and began firing. The three men dove for cover behind boxes. Hank and Connor dove behind a study and full box. Gavin moved behind a rather empty box. He stood against the box. Connor looked to Reed’s hiding spot.

The box was getting shot up, multiple holes appearing. The box would either be destroyed or a bullet would penetrate the box and hit Gavin.

Gavin Reed had a 31% chance of surviving if he stayed in his current hiding place.

Connor turned toward the detective and got in a position to stand and run. Hank gave him a curious look. “I may need some cover Lieutenant.”

“What the fuck for?” Hank asked. He had his gun drawn but had little opportunity to fire his weapon. Connor pushed himself into a standing position and ran out toward Gavin. “Connor, the fuck are you doing?!” Hank yelled. He stood up and drew fire while Connor ran forward and tackled Gavin, successfully getting him behind a far sturdier box that wouldn’t be penetrated.

“What the fuck are you doing you useless piece of scrap?” Gavin screamed. Then the box he had been standing behind shattered. “Shit.” Gavin breathed and looked to Connor in surprise.

“What I was ‘fucking doing’ was saving your life Detective.” Connor replied matter of factly. Connor then drew his weapon and Gavin did the same. The three men quickly apprehended the suspects.

“You two alright?” Hank asked after the suspects were down.

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Connor replied.

“I’m fucking fine Anderson.” Gavin snarked at Hank.

Hank walked over to Connor and scanned him up and down. He smiled slightly. “That was the furthest thing from careful. But there’s not a drop of thirium on you.” Connor looked down and realized he had indeed not been hit by any bullets. “Good job kid.”

It was only a few weeks later that they were investigating another crime. Gavin was not present this time. The duo was investigating the crime scene. Both the men involved in this crime had left a small blood trail. One led to the victim. Connor knelt down and stuck his pointer and middle finger in the blood pool near the victim. A quick glance to confirm Hank was not watching, and he stuck his fingers in his mouth. A few moments later the analysis came back. Indeed the victim.

Connor found a different blood pool. He did another analysis. He heard Hank grumbled about something. Probably the fact that Connor was “licking” the evidence. It was the suspect. “Lieutenant, the suspect left a trail of his own.” Connor began following the trail. It lead to a different room. Right to a closet. Connor leaned in and pressed an ear to the door. He heard some deep breathing, indicative of someone who is scared or stressed. The suspect was still here.

Connor slowly backed away. He kept the closet in his line of sight. He came close to the room Hank was in. He looked towards his partner. “Hank, please come here for a moment.” Hank walked over to Connor.

“What’s wrong?” Hank asked.

“I believe the suspect is still here.” Connor said. In hindsight, he maybe should’ve lowered his voice. The suspect broke out from his hiding spot. He had a gun trained on Connor. Hank tackled Connor as the suspect fired.

“Argh! Fuck!” Hank said, and pressed a hand to his leg.

“Hank! You’re wounded!” Connor said, worry, a quite unwelcome and unfavorable emotion, filling him.

“Don’t worry about me. Get that motherfucker!” Hank commanded. But Connor knew there were other officers who could apprehend the culprit. He knelt down next to Hank to examine the wound. Luckily it only grazed Hank’s leg and he would recover in only a matter of weeks with proper care and following doctor’s instructions. So it would take Hank longer.

“Why would you risk yourself like that?” Connor asked.

“You were about to be shot. Why the fuck do you think I did that?” Hank said.

“You should’ve let me get injured. I am repairable. You can recover but parts are not replaceable for humans.” Connor reasoned.

Hank grabbed Connor’s collar. “If you got shot through that chest of yours, there’d be no coming back. You are an advanced prototype. That means no parts for you. A bullet would kill you son. And that is the last thing I want. Get that through that plastic skull of yours. Be careful.” With that Hank let go of Connor’s collar and fully laid back on the ground and waited for an ambulance. Connor kept pressure on the wound but remained silent.

A few hours later Hank was waking up in the hospital with his leg wrapped up. “Are you alright Hank?” Connor asked, leaning forward toward Hank.

“Can I get out of here?” He asked. “Then I’ll be fine.” Hank grumbled.

“You will be discharged soon I am sure. The doctor’s confirmed that you will recover fine.” Connor said. “But you have to follow all the doctor’s instructions.”

“Like hell I do.” Hank grumbled.

“Well Hank, if you failed to follow those instructions then you wouldn’t be acting very carefully.” Connor said, the smallest hint of a teasing smile on his face.

Hank looked to Connor is slight disbelief. He knew the android could be a bit of a smart ass but it had gotten worse since he deviated. “Oh fuck you kid.” Hank said. And though those were harsh words, Connor picked up on the compassion in each one. He just hoped his words would actually make Hank listen to the doctors. However, Connor still wasn’t surprised when Hank wasn’t fully recovered for nearly two months.

#fanfic #detroit become human #detroit become human fanfic #dbh connor #dbh hank #dbh markus #dbh alice #abh kara #dbh gavin #not hankcon #don't tag as such

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