#Also I want to know more about your game (if you can tell me)

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 I BITE MY TONGUE, IT'S A BAD HABIT

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: dazai doesn't care about stupid holidays, but when he sees everyone but him being gifted chocolates from you, he starts to find himself severely bothered. it's the principle, he tells himself—nothing more, nothing less, just the principle.... right?

(wordcount: 6.9k; fem!reader, sfw, dazai is jealous and silly. unedited.)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: HAPPY LATE VALENTINE'S DAY, take pmreader and dazai being silly teens in love who refuse to tell each other how they feel in words. i had this posted on valentine's day but then turned into a big baby and deleted </3 i am still a big baby but i am a big baby who is going to leave the post up this time HAHAAH

Dazai doesn’t care about stupid holidays. 

In fact, Dazai can count the things he cares about on one hand—he cares about Odasaku and Ango because they’re his friends, he cares about crab because he likes eating crab and he can recite every known fun fact about them off the top of his head, he cares about the arcade a few streets over because his favorite video game is there and he beats Chuuya every time and it’s funny watching him get mad, and he cares about you because you’re also his friend and you gave him a room in your apartment even though he could have his own but is just stubborn about not wanting to be in Mori’s building.

So, he’s not sure why his feet are rooted to the ground in Mori’s office as he stares down at the small round box of chocolates sitting on top of his desk. There’s a note on top of it that’s partially blocked from his line of view, but he can very much see your signature at the bottom of it. 

You complain about Mori all the time, so it doesn’t take him long to put together that there must be a reason why you went out of your way to get him chocolates even though he knows you’ve been busy with some conflict happening in Russia. It’s not Mori’s birthday, and Dazai’s mind quickly tracks back to the stands of chocolate he saw set up on the same corner that the arcade is on.

Valentine’s Day, he realizes, eyes narrowing down on the chocolate.

“Such a dear she is. She dropped it off for me this morning,” Mori sighs when he realizes what Dazai is looking at. “Elise-chan hasn’t gotten me chocolates yet.”

“That’s because you don’t deserve chocolates, stupid Rintarou,” Elise’s familiar pitched voice comes from Dazai’s left—he hadn’t even noticed her sitting on the ground coloring because his gaze was pinned to the chocolate the moment he stepped into the room. Elise looks up at Dazai with a smile that’s just a bit too sweet, “Aw, she didn’t get you any? That’s too bad, Dazai-kun.”

Dazai’s jaw twitches at the snide comment, and he looks away from Elise back to Mori, who looks oddly intrigued by Dazai’s reaction, which is enough to let him know that he’s over-reacting, so he’s quick to smooth out his expression, even if the irritation in his chest continues to swell. He doesn’t even know why he’s so bothered—he doesn’t care about stupid holidays, and he doesn’t care about chocolate. It’s really not a big deal, but he can’t seem to snuff out the growing annoyance.

“I’m sure she’ll give you one later, Dazai-kun,” Mori says with a placating smile that almost sends Dazai over the edge. “No need to fret.”

“I’m not-” he starts to say, but is cut off quickly by Elise.

“Or, maybe she just doesn’t like him enough to give him any,” Elise says with gleeful giggle. “How did she word it again? Oh, yeah, you forced your way into her life, didn’t you?”

Dazai doesn’t take anything anyone says to him or about him to heart, but he especially knows not to take anything Elise says to heart, considering the girl’s ardent distaste for him. He’s never been sure why she hates him so much, but he figures that it’s because he can make her disappear with his ability, and he’s half-tempted to grab her arm and do just that, but he knows it’ll only make Mori even more interested in why he’s so emotional over this. That’s the last thing he wants considering he doesn’t even know why he’s getting so worked up about it.

But what did Elise even mean? Why would you tell them that he forced his way into your life? If anything, you’re the one who forced yourself into his life when you showed up at his shipping compartment during that winter storm a few months ago. He just… capitalized on it, that’s all. You would’ve kicked him out if you didn't want him hanging around, but you didn’t. And Elise is known for twisting the truth, but then… Why didn’t you give him chocolates? That’s the whole point of the holiday, right? To show appreciation for the people in your life?

It’s not the holiday that’s bothering him, it’s the principle. 

Dazai is suddenly ten times more antsy than he was when he first noticed the chocolates. There must be a logical explanation for this—maybe you really are giving him them later, or maybe you’re only giving them to Mori because you have to. Snidely, he notes that the chocolates you gave him looked like they could be bought at a convenience store, so it’s not like you put much effort into it. 

“Elise-chan,” Mori chides, although he still sounds terribly amused, violet eyes glittering as he scrutinizes Dazai. “Don’t say such cruel things. I taught our hime to have good manners, Dazai-kun will get chocolates from her, even if they’re just obligatory.”

Obligatory, Dazai has to force himself not to physically blanch at the word. He thinks he would almost prefer not to get chocolates from you. How are you just going to give obligatory chocolates to someone you live with? You guys are friends, aren’t you? He doesn’t know much at all about Valentine’s Day, but he does know that there’s different types of chocolate depending on your relationship with the person, and he thinks he’ll jump off the roof if you give Chuuya nicer chocolates than him.

Chuuya.

“I have to go,” Dazai says abruptly, turning to leave.

“Goodbye, Dazai-kun,” Mori sings, much to Dazai’s surprise. He was half-expecting Mori to tell him to sit back down so they could go over whatever he was called to his office for. He still doesn’t even know why the man called him up here—maybe it was just to flaunt the chocolates he received, Dazai thinks bitterly. “I wouldn’t worry too much.”

“I would!” Elise calls after him as he lets the door slam shut behind him, but Dazai doesn’t pay her any mind.

Surely Chuuya wouldn’t have gotten chocolates if he didn’t, right?

———

“Give me those right now.”

Chuuya pauses from where he’s about to pop a round chocolate into his mouth, eyes cutting to the side in irritation when he realizes that Dazai is standing in the doorframe of his office. Dazai is tense and jittery all at the same time—he’s not even looking at Chuuya, he’s staring at the set of chocolates sitting open on his desk and the familiar handwriting on the note next to it. Chuuya’s set is much nicer than Mori’s; they’re his favorite truffles, imported in from Belgium, and there’s a red wine on his desk to go along with it.

It makes Dazai sick. 

“The fuck?” Chuuya asks, sitting up a bit straighter and giving Dazai a weird look before pointedly eating the chocolate in his hand. Dazai’s eye twitches. “What’s your problem this time, you freak?”

“I said give me those right now,” Dazai repeats, inhaling deeply as he takes a few steps closer. “Give me them.”

Chuuya looks a bit concerned now, grabbing the chocolates you gave him and dragging them closer to him. Dazai is undeterred, stalking forward and reaching quickly for them. Chuuya reacts faster, snatching them off the table and holding them close to his chest.

“Fuck off,” Chuuya spits, sounding confused and irritated all at the same time. “What the hell is your problem?”

Dazai could think of an excuse—they’ve been tampered with, poisoned, you accidentally gave him the wrong ones and you sent him here to grab them before Chuuya ate them all—but the only thing that escapes his lips is the same demand.

“Give me the chocolates.”

“What?” Chuuya demands. “No, you fucking psycho, get out of my office.”

Dazai’s hand instinctively twitches in the direction of his gun, and Chuuya catches it from the way his eyes shoot open.

“Yo,” Chuuya says loudly, rising to his feet. “What the fuck, Dazai?”

Logically, Dazai knows that whether he gets the chocolates from Chuuya or not, it won’t change anything. It’s the principle of it that’s the issue. Even if he manages to get his hands on the chocolates, you gave them to Chuuya and you didn’t give them to Dazai, but still, the sight of Chuuya with them is setting Dazai off in ways that he just can’t seem to get under wraps. 

“Give me-”

Chuuya’s face twists in irritation and he slams the chocolates down on his desk before walking around it in Dazai’s direction. Instead of making a smart decision and running out of his office before he can get a faceful of Chuuya’s fist, he takes the opportunity to dart forward and grab the chocolates he put down, throwing them onto the ground and driving his heel right into the box. 

“You bastard,” Chuuya shouts, grabbing Dazai by the collar of his jacket hard and throwing him hard into the side of his desk. Dazai barely withholds a wince as the corner of Chuuya’s desk drives deep into his side, crumpling to the ground hard. Chuuya kneels down to see if there’s anything left to salvage of the chocolates you gave him, but finds himself sorely disappointed. “What’s your fucking issue, Dazai?”

Stubbornly, Dazai doesn’t respond, raising his chin and meeting Chuuya’s gaze, trying to pretend that there is no issue and like he isn’t acting deranged over chocolates. 

Not chocolates, he reminds himself, the principle.

“I knew you were weird about her but jeez,” Chuuya scoffs, picking up the mess of chocolates on his floor, brows furrowed in irritation. “You can’t even handle her giving someone else chocolates on Valentine’s Day. You need some serious fucking help, man. It’s the whole point of the goddamn day. You gonna go around and take everyone’s chocolates, you possessive freak?”

Dazai cringes and can’t stop himself as he asks quietly, “How many people has she given them too?”

Instantly, he knows he’s made a mistake—his voice came out all wrong and Chuuya notices it from the way he squints and frowns. He forces his expression to clear of any possible emotions and rises back to his feet, tilting his head to the side as he dares Chuuya to point out that his voice wavered when he asked the question.

“I don’t fucking know,” Chuuya shrugs, side-eyeing him suspiciously but choosing not to point out the weird tone he asked the question in. “She came in with a ton this morning, figured I was the last since she didn’t have any left with her when she came up here before.”

Oh, Dazai thinks, staring at Chuuya absently. Dazai didn’t anticipate that. At once, both of his theories to explain why you didn’t give him chocolates are disproven, and Dazai falters. If you came in with all of them at once and had none left by the time you got to Chuuya, then all signs pointed to that you’re just not giving Dazai chocolate for Valentine’s Day.

But why? Dazai doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong lately—in fact, he’s barely even had time to talk to you lately because you’ve been busy talking with your informants in Eastern Russia. You spent most days in Tokyo, and by the time you got back to your apartment, Dazai was out on his own missions. He hasn’t had the chance to do anything wrong, unless him just being around you is wrong.

How did she word it again? Oh, yeah, you forced your way into her life, didn’t you?

Elise is known for twisting the truth, she doesn’t usually lie about things—why did you tell them that he forced himself into your life? Do you not want him staying at your apartment? Mori did mention that he taught you to have good manners and he never says anything without there being an ulterior motive behind it. Was he trying to imply that you’re just being polite in letting him stay? Dazai doesn’t know; he’s always struggled to read you, but you’ve always made him feel welcome and wanted more than anyone else. It disconcerted him for a while, but he’s grown used to it in a way that he probably shouldn’t have. 

Now, he’s doubting it all.

Chuuya’s eyes suddenly widen, his small brain clearly realizing something it wasn’t meant to. Dazai’s gaze hardens as he waits for Chuuya to say whatever it is he wants to say, but instead of speaking, the slug snorts. His hand flies to his mouth to smother the noise, but he just can’t stop himself from bursting into laughter. Dazai bristles.

“What?” he demands.

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Chuuya howls, eyes tearing up as he laughs so hard that he wheezes. Dazai stiffens but otherwise doesn’t say anything, and that’s evidently an answer enough for him. “God, shitty Dazai, you’d think you of all people would know better. Get the fuck out of my office.”

Dazai doesn’t want to admit he has no idea what Chuuya’s talking about, but he also isn’t going to let Chuuya order him around, so he stands there stubbornly until Chuuya rises to his feet to grab Dazai by the back of his jacket again. Dazai instinctively drives his elbow hard into Chuuya’s chest, but he’s unbothered by it, shoving Dazai forward through the door of his office.

Chuuya gives him a mocking smile and goads, “How about you go ask her why she didn’t give you chocolates?” 

Before Dazai has the chance to shoot back a snide comment, Chuuya slams the door right in his face. It’s not the principle that’s bothering him, Dazai realizes glumly, it’s the implication that maybe he’s been wrong about his friendship with you this whole time.

———

Dazai doesn’t even get out of the main building before he runs into someone else who has chocolates that are definitely gifted by you considering it’s your new partner. Itou Asahi is lounging in the lobby of headquarters with Hirotsu and a few members of the Black Lizards that Dazai doesn’t recognize. Dazai has never particularly liked the man—in fact, Dazai despises him and he despises how you seem to think the world of him—but now, his jaw is tight as he glares at the man from across the lobby.

Itou seems to be able to feel the daggers being shot in his direction. He looks up as he pops a chocolate into his mouth, eyes narrow as he tries to pinpoint who exactly is staring at him so intensely and pauses when he notices Dazai. He nudges Hirotsu, and to Dazai’s horror, he realizes that Hirotsu also has a set of chocolates that he hasn’t opened on the couch next to where he’s sitting with a note that Dazai can’t read from the distance but is the same pale pink parchment that Mori’s and Chuuya’s were written on.

Mori. Chuuya. Itou. Hirotsu. Why not him? What did he do?

Dazai sneers in Itou’s direction when the man lifts his hand and awkwardly waves, turning on his feet to leave the building. He had been planning on going to your apartment to sulk to see if you notice that he’s wildly irritated over the fact that he’s not received chocolates from you, but instead, he’s going to go grab a cheap bottle of whiskey from the nearest liquor store and drown himself in his misery back at his shipping container.

He doesn’t know what he did to you, and he thought if he did something wrong, you would’ve said something to him instead of icing him out. Isn’t that what you preach to him? Communication? Yes, Dazai sucks at it and has made no attempts to be better about it, but since you’re the one preaching it, you should at least have the decency to act as you preach. 

You’re such a hypocrite, Dazai thinks bitterly, his throat feels clogged and his chest feels tight and his side hurts a shit ton—he doesn’t like any of this, and with each passing second, he’s becoming increasingly more bothered by this situation. 

He’s not irritated anymore, he’s just hurt.

———

Dazai doesn’t end up going right to the shipping container. It’s late afternoon on a Friday, so when he’s halfway to the convenience store, he decides to make a pitstop at Bar Lupin to see if Odasaku and Ango are already hanging there. Luckily, one thing can go right for him today, because the two of them are in fact already sitting in their designated stools drinking their alcohol of choice.

Neither of them have said much of anything to him since he’s arrived besides greeting him. He wonders if he interrupted them—very extremely sour, he thinks that he wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case considering he seems to be a burden on just about every single person he thinks is his friend. 

“I didn’t think you’d be free today,” Odasaku finally says. “We would’ve texted you.”

“I didn’t have a mission scheduled for today,” Dazai replies flatly, unable to muster the energy to put on an energetic front for the two of them. Usually, he doesn’t need to fake it around them because he does genuinely have a good time with them, but he’s just in such a bad mood because of everything with you and all of the newfound doubts plaguing him that it’s impossible for him to take his mind off of it. “Why would I be busy?”

Odasaku and Ango share a look with one another, Dazai catches the way Ango subtly shakes his head and is instantly suspicious. Odasaku either doesn’t pick up on it or doesn’t care, because he says, “It’s Valentine’s Day. I thought you’d be spending it with…”

Odasaku trails off when Ango’s headshakes become more frequent, but Dazai already knows what he was about to say. Stiffly, he asks, “Why would I spend Valentine’s Day with her?”

Ango’s smile is unsure as he shares another look with Odasaku before turning his attention toward Dazai and prodding, “Did something happen?”

“No.” Neither of them respond to his sharp answer, and after a few moments, Dazai blurts out, “She doesn’t want me living at her apartment anymore.”

“What-” Ango begins before seemingly rethinking his question, letting out a sigh. “Did she tell you that?”

“No,” Dazai says after a second, “but I know.”

“How do you know?” Ango presses. “Did you overhear her talking to someone?”

“Well, no,” Dazai responds awkwardly, “but I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she didn’t get me chocolates,” Dazai finally explodes, voicing the words that have been bothering him all day. “She got Mori chocolates. She got the slug chocolates. She got her moron of a partner chocolates. She even got Hirotsu chocolates, but she didn’t get me chocolates. And Elise said that she told her and Mori that I forced my way into her life. Isn’t that rich? She’s the one that forced her way into my life. I don’t need her, I never did. I just liked her stupid apartment. I could get my own if I wanted to, I just didn’t want to put in the work.”

Dazai thought maybe getting all of his complaints out would make him feel better, but he only feels worse, because half of that isn’t even true. He likes being able to bother you at night instead of rotting alone in his shitty shipping container, and he likes when you make him coffee in the morning before heading out to a meeting. He likes Friday night movies and he likes forcing you to play video games just so he could beat you and brag about it. You told him that you were his friend, so shouldn’t you like doing all of that with him too instead of it being a burden?

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Odasaku asks bluntly, never one to mince his words. Dazai slowly turns his head to look at the older man, barely catching the way Ango briefly shuts his eyes in exasperation. “I mean, you don’t even know if she’s not getting you any yet. You’re just assuming. The day isn’t over.”

Odasaku is usually logical, and he’s one of the few people who Dazai will take the advice of without question, but this time, Dazai shakes his head. He knows that’s not the case, you brought all of your chocolates to headquarters, and you handed them all out and didn’t give any to him. You knew he didn’t have a mission today so it’s not like he was busy, and even if he was, you could’ve given them to him this morning before he left. And either way, it’s not like that explains what Elise said.

“You should head back to her apartment,” Odasaku continues. “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

“You know what, you’re right,” Dazai says, becoming increasingly more incensed with each passing second. He knew befriending you was a bad idea—nobody actually wants to be Dazai’s friend once they get to know him, it’s been true his whole life, he’s still half-convinced that Odasaku and Ango only humor him because they think he’ll just kill himself. Once people start to see how odd and fucked in the head he really is, they start to distance themselves from him; you can’t distance yourself from him since he’s living with you, so this is just your way of silently telling him you’ve had enough. He knew things would turn out this way, and he hates the way it still makes his chest hurt. He rises to his feet abruptly, “I am going to head back to her apartment—so I can pack my stuff and leave.”

“Dazai,” Ango calls after him, but Dazai doesn’t respond, storming out of Bar Lupin without another word.

He doesn’t need you, he tells himself again, willing the pain in his chest to turn into something more manageable—anger, resentment, but preferably, he just wants to be indifferent. He doesn’t need you and he knew this was going to happen, so it’s time for him to just take the hint and go on his way, back to how things were before you forced yourself into his life.

———

You’re not there when he gets back to your apartment and you’re not there by the time he gets his things together and leaves. He was especially frustrated when he found himself disappointed by that, because he realized he was unintentionally wasting time packing his things because he was hoping you would show up and stop him. 

But you didn’t, so Dazai is now back at his shipping container huddled under a blanket because it’s cold. He’s almost done with his first bottle of whiskey, trying to numb the pain in his side and all of the shitty emotions he just can’t seem to rid himself of. It’s been three hours since he moved his stuff back into his shipping container; you should be back at the apartment by now—it’s thirty minutes off when the two of you watch your Friday night movies, and you’re usually back at your apartment getting snacks together with him by now.

You’ve realized he’s gone by now. Dazai hasn’t checked his phone, mostly because he doesn’t want to know if you cared enough to reach out. If he’s right about all of this, you’ll just take it as a blessing and move on, not wanting to risk an opportunity arising where you’d have to be polite and ask him to come back. As if he would. If Odasaku is right though… No, Dazai isn’t even going to go down that route, the last thing he needs is-

He’s startled when he hears three loud bangs on the metal wall of his shipping container. Instantly, his gaze focuses on the door. He knows it can only be one of two people, because you and Chuuya are the only ones shameless enough to come by without warning. Odasaku and Ango would text first and everyone else is too wary of him to come anywhere near the shipping yard, much less bang right on his door.

“Dazai, open up! What the hell?” He hears you shout from the other side of the thin wall. “It’s cold, come on! What are you even doing out here?”

You came looking for him, Dazai realizes, swallowing thickly. Dazai isn’t often wrong about things, so he doesn’t dare get his hopes up and he doesn’t respond to you. The roll up door rattles as you try to pull it up, but Dazai doesn’t budge to help you. It’s locked, so you won’t be able to open it and Dazai just waits for you to leave so he can go back to sulking in peace. 

“Dazai, come on,” you complain. “What’s wrong? I was waiting for you back at the apartment, why didn’t you come home?”

Though Dazai intended on just ignoring you until you went away, he can’t help the snide comment that escapes his lips, “Home? You mean your apartment?” 

He immediately takes another swig of whiskey, but the burn of the alcohol does nothing to take away from the bitter taste the words leave on his tongue. From the way you pause, you seem to realize something is wrong—extra snidely, he wonders when you became as slow as Chuuya.

“Yeah, my apartment, the place you’ve been living at for three months?” you say incredulously and Dazai winces. “What’s your problem?” 

“My problem?” Dazai asks coolly. “Maybe you should be answering that instead. You’re a hypocrite.”

He knows that will set you off—he’s always been good at getting under people’s skin—and he’s noticed how you bristle whenever Mori hits you with “Now, dear, let’s not be hypocritical.” He can almost imagine the way you go stiff and the way your face goes cold, but it doesn’t bring him the malicious satisfaction he expects.

 Instead, he only feels heavier.

Unfair, he thinks tightly. You’re always so unfair.

“Can you let me in?” you ask after a few moments of silence. Dazai is even more bothered now that he didn’t get the reaction he expected, gaze lowering to the ground. “I’d prefer not to freeze to death out here.”

This time when you ask, Dazai finds himself rising to his feet. He hasn’t drank enough yet to be unsteady, but he can certainly feel the blood rush to his head as soon as he stands up.

He makes his way over to the door, only fumbling once with the lock. He doesn’t slide it open for you just to be petty, but he doesn’t need to anyway—as soon as you hear the lock click open, you’re pulling open the door and Dazai pointedly turns his back to you before you can step in.

“Seriously?” you ask. Much to Dazai’s pleasure, you do sound a bit irritated now. “Dazai, what the hell? Why are you acting so weird?”

“Me?” Dazai demands, voice shrill at the sheer audacity you have coming to his shipping container and insulting him after what you did. Didn’t do. Same thing. He whips around to face you, a barrage of snide comments about to fall from his lips only to hesitate when he sees a fancy box in your hands. “... What is that?”

Your gaze sharpens and your brows furrow. You move the box out of sight behind your back, but Dazai dances around you to try to get a better look at it. The two of you play a game of swivels and twists for a few moments, but Dazai has to call it quits when the pain in his side gets worse and the alcohol goes right to his head. 

You give him a concerned look, but don’t press about the way he winces. Instead, you say, “Tell me what your problem is first. Why are you drinking here alone in the dark?”

“... No,” Dazai says after a second. “What’s in the box?”

Dazai really doesn’t want to get his hopes up, so he chews the inside of his cheek and rocks back and forth from his toes to heels, hands clasped behind his back as he tries to distract himself. You roll your eyes, but your lips curl up into a fond smile that almost eases all of the stress Dazai has felt all day. Almost.

After what feels like an eternity, you pass the box over to him and Dazai immediately darts forward to grab it before you can change your mind. Though he knows what it is before he opens it, he can’t control the relief that floods him when he sees the expensive chocolates sitting inside the box—most of them are shaped in the typical Valentine’s Day heart, but some of them are-

“They’re crabs,” Dazai says gleefully, a genuine smile spreading widely across his lips as he reaches down to pluck one out of the box and pop it into his mouth. The chocolate is soft and creamy, it melts in his mouth the moment it touches his tongue and he lets out a delighted hum. He eats another, and then another after that. “How did you get them crab shaped?”

You don’t answer the question; you stare at the chocolates, conflicted, and Dazai isn’t sure why. You seem to be trying to decide whether or not you want to say something, but you let out a sigh, seemingly deciding against it. 

Instead of whatever you were debating on saying, you rest your hand on your hip and ask him, “Why did you take all of your stuff out of your room?” 

Your room, Dazai swallows the chocolate in his mouth as he tries to figure out how to respond to your question. He doesn’t really want to admit that he had a meltdown triggered by the chocolate that you just handed him, and you do seem genuinely put off by the fact that he left. Maybe he was wrong, he thinks, pressing his lips together as he considers the possibility. He’s hardly ever wrong, but he supposes it wouldn’t be the first time that you’ve managed to surprise him; since the day he met you, he feels like his mind is dulled when you’re around. He hates it.

So, he throws Elise under the bus.

“Elise said that you told her I forced myself into your life,” he says, voice coming out far more bitter than he intended for it to. He raises his chin stubbornly. “I wouldn’t want to keep imposing.”

Your expression flickers momentarily and you look a bit hurt, Dazai immediately swallows another chocolate, hopeful that he’ll swallow the sudden guilt he feels along with it. He doesn’t.

“Mori was trying to get me to convince you to live in the apartment he has set up for you in the main building,” you explain quietly after a few moments, crossing your arms over your chest. “I told him that he was better off trying to convince you himself because it was your decision to stay at mine. I didn’t have much of a say in it.”

Dazai lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, and because he has no self control, he starts to ask, “But if you did have a say in it…”

Your expression softens in a way that makes Dazai’s stomach turn in on itself and your eyes flicker down to the box he’s holding before you quickly look back up at him. The box of chocolates in his hands suddenly feels a lot heavier, and his grip instinctively tightens around it.

“I… my apartment is a bit too big to live in alone,” you answer, and then add, “I would prefer you stayed.”

Dazai doesn’t respond, but his gaze does dart down to the three bags of clothes he brought back to the shipping container with him, all still packed. It wasn’t all of his stuff, just enough for it to be noticeable to you when you went to his room looking for him. Maybe he had been hoping you would come bring him back.

“I don’t have a movie picked out for tonight, if you want to pick,” you offer when the silence stretches on.

Dazai glances down at the chocolates you gave him again and then he says, “The Discovery channel has a new documentary on -”

“No.”

“What?” Dazai demands. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“I am not watching another crab documentary, Dazai.”

“The last one was good.”

“The last one bored me to tears.”

Dazai rolls his eyes, leaning down to pick up one of his bags and you grab the other two after sending a narrowed look to his left side, slinging them over your shoulder as you step outside of the shipping container. Dazai follows you, rolling the door back down before giving you a mocking look.

“So you just want to watch one of those stupid superhero movies again? The only one actually entertained by them is bird-brained Chuuya, anyone with two brain cells knows how it ends just from the first scene,” he says snidely, enjoying the way you immediately scowl at him.

“Just because you know how it’s going to end doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining,” you argue. “You can be entertained by something predictable.”

“Not me,” Dazai sings as he follows you out of the shipping container yard and to the road. Much to Dazai’s displeasure, he realizes that you did not come here alone—your new partner is sitting in the front seat of the car waiting on the side of the road, scrolling through his phone. Distastefully, he demands, “Why is he here?”

“He drove me,” you say like it’s obvious. “What’s your problem with him anyway?”

“Nothing,” Dazai mutters, making sure to give the older boy a dark look as he slides into the back seat. 

He expects you to get into the passenger seat, but instead you move to sit in the back with him. Before you do, he stiffens as he remembers his clothes were not the only thing he stole from your apartment. Your eyes narrow in suspicion and you place your hand on your hip.

“What else did you take before leaving?”

Dazai sulks at how easily you figured out what the issue is and lies when he repeats, “Nothing.”

“If we get back home and immediately have to come back out here, I’m going to waterboard you, Dazai,” you say flatly.

“I’ve been waterboarded before,” he says stubbornly.

“Not by me,” you threaten.

 Dazai sighs dramatically, letting his head fall back against the headrest.

“I stole all of the remotes in the apartment,” he admits, shifting to push himself up to walk back over to the shipping container, wincing again when he shifts the wrong way. He pauses when you roll your eyes and hold your hand up to stop him.

“I’ll get them,” you say. “Stay here.”

“Don’t leave me with him,” Dazai complains, but you slam the door in his face.

Instantly, the light and playful expression drops from his face as he turns his attention to the rear view mirror, eyes locking with Itou Asahi. The blonde raises his eyebrows tauntingly, as if he’s daring Dazai to say something to him, and Dazai has half a mind to reach for the gun stuffed in the pocket of his black jacket. He refrains if only because he doesn’t want to piss you off even more.

After a moment, Itou twists in his seat to look at Dazai. Dazai’s eye twitches in irritation, realizing that he’s about to speak to him.

He nods to the box of chocolates. “She spent a month at my place trying to get it right.”

Though Dazai planned on ignoring him, he can’t stop the quiet, “What?” that slips from his mouth.

“The chocolates,” Itou says like Dazai is stupid, which irritates him but he’s still confused so he’s forced to wait for him to explain. “She tried custom ordering the crab shaped ones but had a tantrum because they looked ugly. So she spent a month learning how to make them so she could mold them on her own. She only just finished this batch today—still isn’t satisfied with how they came out, but ran out of time.”

Dazai’s throat swells up as he stares down at the chocolates, an odd warmth spreading through his chest that he can’t snuff out. Scrutinizing them more carefully now, he sees all of the tiny imperfections that wouldn’t be there if you’d store bought them—the hearts aren’t all perfectly even, some of the legs on the crabs are longer than others, there’s an indent on the back of the heart shaped chocolate he’s holding like you’d touched it while it was too soft.

His fingers close around it carefully, lips parting to speak but he can’t find any words. When did you have the time though? You’ve had so many missions lately-

Oh.

“All the missions in Tokyo…”

“Her missions were learning how to fucking make chocolate and they were in my apartment, not Tokyo,” Itou scoffs. “I’m never going to be able to eat chocolate again in my life the amount she’s force fed me. I can hardly stand the smell of it now. I had to send her to Nakahara for him to taste test the last few batches.”

Dazai’s gaze sharpens, obscenely bothered at the thought of Itou Ashi and Nakahara Chuuya being your taste testers and Itou is complaining about it. “You should be grateful you got to try her chocolate,” he snaps immediately.

Itou’s jaw drops and he immediately shakes his head. “You two are so fucking-” he starts to say but cuts himself off when he sees you approaching the car again. 

Dazai squints at him, almost wanting to dare him to continue, but his expression lightens when you open the door, remotes in hand and an irritated expression still painted on your face.

He only moves over enough to give you room to sit instead of moving to sit behind the driver’s seat. You squint at him, but Dazai gives you a small smile and says quietly, “My chocolates are much nicer than Chuuya’s.”

Your expression immediately softens and your lashes flutter as you avert your gaze—the telltale sign of you being flustered. Dazai’s lips part to say something else, but no words come out, gaze pinned on the pretty glow the moonlight casts over your face. You look like you want to say something as you look down at the chocolates again, but again, you seem to decide against it.

“How do you even know what Chuuya got?” you ask suddenly, clearing your throat. Dazai freezes. “And what happened to your side? Every time you move you’re wincing.”

“I… stopped by his office and saw them?” he offers, his next smile is too sweet, and you catch it from the way your eyes narrow. Defensively, he says, “The slug didn’t deserve chocolates from you.”

“Oh my god, Dazai,” you complain, burying your face in your hands. 

Dazai’s face flames up, and he shoots a dirty look in Itou’s direction when the older boy bursts into laughter. 

“Slugs can’t eat chocolate,” Dazai insists. “I was helping him, really.” 

“I can’t stand you,” you sigh, but when you shift in your seat, you shift so that you’re sitting a little closer to Dazai, shoulder pressed against his and thighs knocking together.

He glances down at the box of chocolates in his lap again, and the chocolate heart resting in his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, he passes it over to you. You give him a questioning look, but Dazai pointedly looks away as he wills his cheeks not to reflect his flustered thoughts, waiting for you to take it. His breath catches when your fingers brush his hand as you take it from him.

“Thanks,” you say softly.

Instead of directly responding, Dazai prods, “So, about the crab documentary…”

You let out a heavy sigh as you side eye him. “Fine,” you agree, “but you’re doing the garbage this week.”

“What?!” he demands. “It’s not my turn.”

“The price you pay for forcing me to watch nature documentaries for movie night.”

“It’s not just nature, it’s crabs.”

“Deal or no deal?”

“Fine. Deal.”

“Good,” you say with a saccharine smile that Dazai doesn’t like because he knows you’re thinking something bad. “Deal.”

After a few moments, you add, “I would’ve put it on even if you didn’t agree.”

“I’m going back to my shipping container.”

You laugh loudly, and Dazai’s heart skips a beat at the sound of it. He very much ignores the way Itou shoots an amused look back at them, focusing instead on the way your eyes glitter as your laughs fizzle into soft giggles.

“As if,” you say, knocking your shoulder into his. “I’ll just drag you back again. You’re stuck with me whether you like it or not.”

His lips curl up into a small smile in response to your words, gaze dropping back down to the chocolates sitting in his lap, and then back to you.

“Will you?” he asks quietly, a bit too seriously.

Your smile softens, and Dazai’s heart lodges right in his throat. “Count on it.”

[moonstruckme]

hi, how are you?

really move your writing, it has def helped me through tough times, so thank you for that so much, I cannot tell you how much appreciation I carry for you

I was wondering, since you are okay with writing about self harm scars (I think, if I understand your list or off-limit request stuff correctly, if not, sorry, then just ignore this) if you would maybe write something with Sirius x reader, where maybe r isn’t feeling all that great abt her scars (preferably on her thighs, but if not also totally fine) and Sirius draws on them and reassures her and all that stuff

Hope you have a great day, sending you lots of love

Sending love back angel <3

cw: past self harm, discussion of scars

Sirius Black x fem!reader ♡ 922 words

“What’s that supposed to be?”

“Gorgeous, you can cut the shit. We both know I’m a modern Poussin.” 

You smile, radiant in the sunlight spilling into your sitting room. You came here to read, but Sirius was hellbent on distracting you, and as always he’s succeeded. Your book has been long since closed, the two of you lazing the day away with kisses and go-nowhere conversations while Sirius draws on your skin in black ink. 

“You’ve just said some obscure artist to show off,” you accuse. “You know I don’t know who that is.” 

“Yes, well, two can play at the game of belittlement.” 

Sirius is quite obviously drawing clouds. They live in the crook of your elbow, and they’re perfectly nebulous. You’re only pretending not to know because you enjoy playing with him. Luckily for you, Sirius enjoys letting you. 

“Is there going to be a sun?” you ask after a while. 

“Don’t need one. That’s you already, sunshine.” 

You make a phony groaning sound, clearly delighted. “You’re so cheesy.” 

“I know. See what you’ve done to me?” Sirius grins, tilting his head up for a kiss. 

You indulge him. You’re in an indulgent mood, all sun-warmed and languorous, reclining against the cushions like a goddess. You wouldn’t likely let him doodle all over you otherwise. Sirius is taking advantage of a rare opportunity. 

He goes back to work, adding some raindrops and then stars trailing up your arm. He thinks you’re dozing, but when Sirius turns to look at you again your expression has gone solemn. You’re looking down at your own lap like it’s a piece of gum stuck to your shoe. 

Your scars bother you, sometimes. Sirius can never really predict when those times will be—it depends on your mood, how often you’ve been thinking about them, and a slew of other things inside that lovely head of yours—but here in the sunlight he can see how you got hung up. They’re showier than usual, light and shimmery in the crease of your thighs. Faded, but there. 

Sirius puts his hand over them. Not to cover, but to caress. 

You seem to snap out of your reverie. “Sorry,” you say. 

“What for?” he asks. 

It’s a trick question and you know it. You’re silent for a time. Silence is not usually Sirius’ favorite thing, but he lets it lie, stroking his index finger over your leg. 

“I’m just,” you admit in a soft voice, “not liking them very much lately.” 

“Yeah?” He looks up at you, seeking. “Have you been feeling okay?” 

“Yeah. I have, really.” 

“You’d tell me if not?” 

You nod. Not quite looking at him, but Sirius knows that’s more evidence of shame than dishonesty. You trust him, and he trusts you. 

“I don’t think you have to like them, baby.” He kisses gently beside your chin. “I’d like it if you didn’t hate them, but I know you can’t always help it.” 

“I don’t know if I hate them.” Your eyes seem glued to where Sirius is rubbing your leg. Your voice is small. “I just…sometimes I don’t care if people see them, but other times they feel so embarrassing.” 

Sirius scoffs. “Well, that’s silly.” 

You frown. “Why?” 

“Because,” he says, uncapping his pen again. You don’t stop him when he starts drawing small flowers over and in between your lines. “I—look, you’re allowed to feel any way you want about them, okay? Obviously. But the way I see it, they’re just something that happened to you.”

Admittedly, Sirius didn’t always feel that way. When he first saw them, he’d been angry—at you, at your brain, at anyone and anything that had ever made you feel awful enough to do this to yourself—but it hadn’t taken long for that initial wrath to deliquesce into a wet, formless sorrow. Sirius doesn’t like not having anyone to blame. He likes thinking of the people he loves hurting even less. But it was a reality for you at one time, and there’s nothing either of you can do about it now. All Sirius wants now is to keep enough light in your present that maybe someday it washes out the past. It may never happen, but he can hope. And he can hold your hand no matter what.

He twines the fingers of his free hand loosely with yours, making looping lines for petals on your leg. 

“I don’t like that they did happen,” he admits, “but I don’t like that I broke my arm in fourth year either.” He senses your eyes going to the scar on his forearm. Once large and long, but now faded. “Nothing we can really do about them, though.” 

You hum. “Yours was an accident.” 

“I know,” Sirius murmurs. He looks at you. “I know they’re not the same thing, baby. But I don’t think you wanted your scars any more than I wanted mine, right?” 

You hold his eyes this time, your gaze tentative but full of love. “No.” 

“Right.” He kisses you. Lingers until you soften into it, your lips parting for him. Sirius pecks the corner of your mouth once he’s done. “So, you just keep talking to me, and I’ll tell you when you have something to be embarrassed about. Okay?” 

Your smile comes almost unwillingly, your eyes slipping from his to look at the blooming garden covering your legs. “Okay,” you say. 

“There’s my girl. Now, do you think it would tickle terribly if I drew a circus on the bottom of your foot?” 

“Yes.” 

“Perfect.”

[batchilla]

In Any Kinder Universe - Prologue

There's a boy on your front doorstep. He looks about ten, and you would not be at all concerned, where it not for the league of assassins garb he wore. You were still fairly sure you could take him, but if you could, you would prefer to avoid beating up a child. You allow the curtain to float back down into place, and move out of the living room to the entryway. Had you known the league would come, perhaps you would have let him slip something a little more heavy duty into your bag … but then why would Ra's send a little boy? and why does he have a suitcase half his size? You open the door, looking down at him. "You lost, buddy?" "No," the boy replies, staring at you as if you've disappointed him. Wait. That stare.

"Your address was on father's computer as a safe house for code red or black scenarios." He moves into your house, leaving the case behind as if he expects someone else to collect it.

"Father's?" you echo, blinking. Oh. "My father; perhaps you are a lesser detective then I was lead to believe. It seems the trend. The Batman." Maybe it would have been preferable if Ra's Al Ghul sent him to kill you. "A son of the bat in leagues robes?" "My Mother is Thalia Al Ghul. I believe you have met. I am Damian Al Ghul, heir to the demon's head and the bat." You had indeed met Thalia. Ten years ago when you were a scrap of a girl, still learning to flip and jump and fly, yet to be given the mantle, she had come to Gotham. You saw why now, or at least the consequences. The boy's heritage was obvious. You roll your neck, flexing your hands to fight the urge to reach for something in a belt you no longer have. "fascinating as that may be, it doesn't explain why you came here." The boy levels another look you know well at you, as if he sees all you are and finds you lacking. "I understand you trained alongside Gordon and Grayson, and then Todd, later training Drake and Brown." discomfort wells in your chest as you feel the ghost of a too tight cowl suppressing your face. "I don't know that I trained alongside Babs and Dick… I came in right before the … before she was attacked and he left." "But you did in fact train with and later train every previous Robin. It is also true that you yourself were once slated to replace Grayson." You nod. "But I didn't, and then I left." "Then you quit. Soon, I will take my rightful place by my father's side, and I will not be the first denied your tutoring." Your head aches, and vision blurs slightly. "Tim isn't Robin anymore? what- what happened?" "He was replaced by the Batman's true heir. He is not dead, if that's where you went. Grayson said you were sensitive now. weak. I see why my father had you go. Still, he speaks highly of you. When I asked about you - do you know what he said?" "I'm sure you're about to tell me." you mutter, but the boy pays no heed to the bitter tone. "He named you his greatest protege. Claimed Drake and Brown flourished under your guidance. Then demanded I stay away. Leave well enough alone and let you rot here in central city suburbia." you scoff. "Healing, not rotting. I hate to burst whatever weird bubble you're in, but I am out of the game. Scram." Damian shakes his head. "No. If you are what father claims, I will study under you." "And if I refuse?" "Batgirl, turning away a Robin asking for help? Unlikely." It happens before you can think, you grab his shoulder and slam him against the door frame. "That is not my name anymore!" He grabs your wrist and tries to twist out of your grasp, but you lock in and stand as stone. It takes you a minute to realise what's happening. Thalia's boy or not, goading little shit or not, Damian was a child. You let go and take a step back. It's not your name anymore. The mantle no longer yours. Technically if he wanted Batgirl, he ought go to Stephanie Brown. But he was a child, and name or no, if you turned him away and something happened to the kid… Sick laughter rings in your ears. Jason, so broken down, sat in that chair. The shot. Your partner… your best friend and first love dead so quickly after so much pain. "Take your stuff upstairs, third door off the landing. I- I need to have a diazepam and make a goddamn call."

You stare at the contact, as if that will fix the scenario. As if you can inflict your ire on the man who lent you his last name through manifestation alone. You cannot. He answers immediately, his tone completely blank, as if he's not even registered that this is the first time you've spoken in over a year. Your first name and nothing more, clipped and short. "Bruce, hi. Lose a brat, lately?" You are proud of how level you keep your voice. "Might've appreciated knowing I had another brother before he showed up. I'd have stocked the fridge with goldfish or something." Except you didn't, you didn't have a new brother, not really. Bruce didn't truly see you as a daughter, just a toy soldier. A truth that had slapped you in the face after you'd had a breakdown and needed to step out of the cowl, and your use to him was over. He hadn't even said goodbye. Just slipped an emergency alert into your bag at some point. The one trinket you kept from 'home'. "Damian arrived safely then." Your eyebrows raise "You sent him?" "I told him to stay away. To grant you space. Someone will be around shortly to collect him." "…" you feel pathetic to ask it. "You told him I was a good teacher?" "Something like that." is the unreadable reply. "Think he has anything to learn from me?" Your voice is thick and you fight the need to let it rasp as you swallow back the panic and the fear and the hope he brings. Even now, after so much time, and anger, and therapy, some part of you is that little girl desperate for the love of the only father you have ever known. "I do." "Then… maybe he can stay, just for a little while."

INCIDENT REPORT Concerned Parties: Batman. Batgirl Metahuman - Civilian {SEE FILE}. Incident nature: Phone call. Duration: 3 minutes 34 seconds. Notable information: Damian to reside temporarily with civilian to receive training. First contact with Civilian in 13 months, 2 weeks and 3 days post incident {SEE FILE} Personal notes: Damian has broken prototypical regarding his sister. She is to be left alone, per her request. To be reprimanded on return. She sounded initially calm and making snarky commentary but swiftly became distressed. Confirms suspicion that her leaving this life is for her best health. Distance to be maintained. Greatly relieving to hear from her again. She is missed. Incident marked closed at 1900 by Batman.

Hi! Batchilla here! Repeat after me team: if I vote on the poll and don't reblog, I am a piece of shit and need to learn basic tumblr etiquette!

Files MAY become available if they do not win the poll they first appear in... but I make no promises. Thank you to @k1ssyoursister for making the divider. Thank you to @sunnie-angel for giving this a beta read. and the biggest thank you possible to @heavysighing-dreamyeyes for letting me yap at you so much about this series, you have been unreal.

[pomrania]

Beta pass! First I'll be reading the whole thing through and jotting down page numbers of stuff to take a second look at, then I'll go back to those pages and see if there's anything I need to say about them. Because I remembered how good it felt when I discovered that method (it works really well!) so I wanted to share it.

…you know, I've never actually asked: how many figures are there on the cover? Is the Fizzgig-looking one a separate character, or a symbiote of the one on the left? And I've also just realized an that character has at least three arms; I don't know HOW that's slipped by me for so long.

Huh, there's bits where I can definitely tell that you rephrased it from previous versions; generally I prefer how it had been, but "getting the meaning across clearly" and "having it be able to fit in the space available" outweighs a witty turn of phrase.

Something that occurs throughout, I believe: the thing about "you can find these [cards] in your download package if you obtained this game digitally, or on the Penguin King Games website". Individually, each instance makes sense that it's written out in full. Put together, it feels kind of odd, like why is that repeated. (There's other things that are repeated in full, but they're rules elements where "being able to find relevant information to what you're looking up" is more important than "artistic flow when you read the whole thing straight through", so I don't consider those to be a potential issue.) My suggestion would be to have it written out in full in the "what you'll need" section, while other instances of it to just refer to the cards, maybe giving the page number. If you make/made a conscious decision that you do indeed want that written out in full, in all instances, then I'll respect that, because you have enough experience in the field that if so then it's probably the best idea.

((So I wrote this all with page numbers listed, but then when I tried copy-pasting it into here, it decided to treat the whole thing as a sequential numbered list, so I'm having to put in the proper numbers manually; if something seems like it's referring to the wrong page, then it's because of that.))

2. "Random selection table" is listed as being on page zero.

6. In the third paragraph, the "optionally" just feels weird as something starting the sentence. Maybe move it to elsewhere in the sentence? I'm also not sure about the paragraph arrangement, like if the thing about a deck of cards should come before or after the thing about the print-and-play cards; it's not WRONG, but it could stand to be looked at some more for considering what the ideal flow is.

10. In the second paragraph, the phrasing "able to bring to bear, or tag, on a test" is mildly grammatically ambiguous; "tag" could replace "bring to bear" (as it actually means), or it could replace "bear" leading to "bring to tag". My preference would be for it to be rephrased, but it's not a major issue or anything. In the third paragraph, "afforances" is presumably a typo. In the shaded box, "descripition" is a typo.

14. "Cunning crafter", "centring" just looks weird to me, like it would be "cent-ring" instead of the "centre-ing" it actually is. If it doesn't look weird to you, then I guess it's okay; otherwise, consider what other words/phrases might work instead.

16. "Extra organs", the "always" effect: I'm assuming that you HAVE to make up an organ to say why you're immune to it, and you're not just "generically immune to environmental effects"? So it's up to the player to be on top of that. And the "with effort" thing for it, that's also an exception to the rules against doing multiple effortful things at once?

17. "Flowing form", if I recall correctly this isn't intended to work as a disguise unless you get creative with your in-'verse excuses, yeah? "Fluttering flight", it feels weird that the link is on "six on"; like, it should include the "take". Maybe also put the page number before the "on", but I hadn't been paying attention to how you'd formatted that in other instances, so I don't know if there's something established or not.

18. "Hearty humours", the description says "drawbacks" but I can't see any in the rest of that entry, unless you count "not being able to tag it for the rest of the scene after you've used its effortful use", but that isn't listed as a drawback for the OTHER forms which have something like that. "Hundred-handed", in at least one other instance later on, the "handed" is capitalized, but it's not capitalized here (or in the "random forms" table). One of those should be changed for consistency.

20. "Menacing missiles", so I assume that if being very accurate is important, then that calls for a test? But just hitting a medium-sized target, when neither it nor you are moving and nobody's trying to interfere, would be an automatic thing. "Mighty muscles", it refers to "striking stature (puny)" and vice versa, but they might need to be looked at together, to make sure that the multiplier on lifting capacity doesn't get applied twice; or more accurately, that it's very obvious that it should NOT get applied twice. "Mobile members", does the "always" effect mean you can act through your main body AND a detached member at the same time, or only one at a time?

21. "Peculiar poise", the "with effort" use, so I'm assuming that it gives you a few seconds of leeway with the GM's description, but once they've described someone's action AND the results of that action, it's now too late to interrupt?

23. "Striking stature", so being Puny doesn't reduce your lifting capacity but it divides your weight by ten, and I'm actually looking back at "mighty muscles"… okay, I see, that one doesn't increase your "lifting capacity" per se but rather sets it at "X times your weight". They do NOT in fact have an unfortunate interaction with each other; but they SEEMED like they do, when the text isn't directly compared. So this would fall under "potentially rephrase to make it EASIER to know what the answer is", but it's still functional as-is. "Vague visage", I'm trying to think of actions you COULD perform while doing its effortful use… that'd be stuff that doesn't involve acting on parts of your environment that you can't carry with you, so you could read a book, or doodle something, but you can't sketch your surroundings because that relies on your being "somewhere in particular" (unless the view is the same from anywhere). And I remember that this Form doesn't allow quantum teleportation without a high-calamity-threshold test; but while staying WITHIN the "somewhere around here", where do you end up when the effort is no longer sustained? Specifically, if it gets dropped involuntarily.

25. This still doesn't feel like "inventing new Forms", or at least, not with its current set-up. You have "the easiest way" which is reskinning things, and then in a shaded box there's something about a concept being represented by multiple Forms. Those both feel like side-things to an actual "how to invent a new Form", because saying "the easiest way" implies that there's a less-easy way, and a shaded box has generally been used for clarification or edge cases. If "how to invent new Forms" isn't something you want to write and/or you feel it wouldn't benefit the game, I'd recommend rephrasing things (possibly including the section title) to make it clear that these are the available options if you don't like the Forms as described. (Also, "hundred-handed", with the "handed" being lowercase, is here, if you decide to go with it being uppercase.)

27. "Hundred-handed" has the "handed" as uppercase here, if you decide to go with it being lowercase.

36. "Art of abundance", can the "summon more copies of yourself while sustaining the Art" only be done once, or can it be done as often as you can pay for it? "Art of alteration", I see you've changed the "forced to end it" thing from "being verbally called out" to "someone speaks your true name aloud". Does that mean "if they say it anywhere in the world", or does it have to be in the vicinity? Plus, that would mean that with what rules we have so far, it could only be done by other party members, which… MIGHT be the intended gameplay, but it doesn't match my albeit extremely vague and distant memories of the relevant cartoons.

37. "Art of autonomy", no problems here, just want to comment that I REALLY wish I had this, since later on today I'm walking somewhere and I can't rely on anyone having plowed or shovelled the sidewalks on the way. "Art of exposition", the bullet points (arrow points?) feel like they're just the sentences from a paragraph put on a new line each. EXTREMELY low-priority, since it clearly conveys all the necessary information, but it can be made to feel a bit better with the format it's in.

38. "Art of guising", so if a role is held by a specific person and it doesn't make you look like that person, then if somebody knows who that person would be… I'm not sure which option is funnier, "I hadn't realized we got a new [role]" or "huh the [role] looks different today". I'm assuming that if someone has a personal connection to the [role] then Shenanigans would ensue. "Art of indulgence", typo, "or the part of to be eaten". If it's not a typo and it's actually a valid construction, then I'd suggest that it be rephrased, because it FEELS like a word got dropped there. …Also, I'm assuming that this doesn't count as "removing Stress by eating something", except in VERY niche cases. "Art of iteration", can it be activated multiple times for the same outcome? Like, you activate it once, get a new result; decide you don't like that new result, then activate it a second time.

39. "Art of keeping", I'd suggest moving the "later" from the start of the sentence, to fit better as part of a bullet point. "Art of making", another instance of "bullet-point division doesn't feel quite right". Very minor issue. "Art of miscellany", does "item in another character's inventory slot" count as "held" or "worn/carried"?

40. "Art of negation", for an ongoing effect where the Art must be sustained, it's possible to act (or have others act) in such a way to end up somewhere that it's no longer an ongoing effect, yeah? And I'm assuming that if it gets dropped when the situation is still there, that you'd then immediately take the Stress you would have earlier. "Art of realization", I wouldn't say that a STATUE counts as a "visual depiction"; like, "a sword in a statue's hand" isn't a real sword, but it's still a physical (sword-shaped) object. Maybe change it to "artistic depictions"?

41. "Art of transition", I just realized; the "sustain" effect isn't just to chain leaps together to go farther, it could also be used to briefly check (as in "take a glance around" not "search the area") a bunch of unoccupied rooms behind closed doors… and I just realized that it doesn't include stuff on what counts as a valid destination any more. "Art of ubiquity", oh I LIKE the change you made to the last point of it, how a creature can react to your action as though you were at Touch range; it's more elegant than the previous thing, AND it neatly suggests potential (direct!) consequences.

48. The "maximum five dice" thing still confuses me. If your intent is that no roll should EVER have more than five dice, I'd suggest putting that BEFORE "you get an extra dice for each Trait you tag", since otherwise it feels like a) when using Traits you're limited to five dice, but Obstinacy and pushing your luck can give you more than that, and/or b) you can get up to five dice from "tagging Traits", which are then added to the "starting" dice to result in SIX dice.

57. Typo in the second paragraph, "quanities of food". Also, I don't believe an that meaning of "atomic" (as "indivisible") is commonly understood; I like how it's used, and it can be figured out from context, but it's up to you to decide if you think it's sufficiently clear.

59. In the shaded box, typo, "eligible perform a reversal" is missing a "to". Also, NOW it's clear what kind of circumstance there'd be where "participating in a test even if there's the maximum amount of Traits added" would be beneficial; genuinely uncertain if that should be mentioned alongside 'cooperative tests', you're the expert when it comes to writing this stuff.

62. Typo in the first paragraph, "immeditiately".

63. Typo in the shaded box, "conjuction".

67. I really appreciate the stuff in the shaded box, about how it's "swapping out Forms" because that's what makes it easier to play. Plus, "trying to figure out which Form/s would best represent the Shenanigans that happened upon the character" is good enrichment.

79. For 11+, when it says "probably shouldn't require a test", my thought was that it should mention "taking six" on a roll.

81. In the first paragraph, "impact penalty for that would normally be suffered" feels like it's either missing a word or contains an extraneous word.

85. Typo in the shaded box, "explicity".

87. Typo in the last paragraph, "inflcit".

88. Ooh I like that thing about ganging up on NPCs, it makes so much SENSE for this game. Third paragraph, I'm genuinely not sure if there IS an HTML version of the current document; I'm reading it from the pdf, since the other relevant option was an epub file. (Also, another instance of the full text about print-and-play cards.)

102. Typo for the first word, actually, "Ths". So, it makes sense that a particular Gizmo has to be rolled for, if it's part of your starting inventory, since some of them are of more obvious use than others. But do you have to roll for ALL your starting inventory if you include a slot or two for Gizmo, or only what Gizmo is in that slot?

120. The note here made me grin.

122. Calling something "Western fantasy" raises the question of whether "EASTERN fantasy" will be a future table. Also, what other kinds of settings there could be… I've recently read the Murderbot books, and I think a lot of the corporate-run stations and planets there could ABSOLUTELY be improved by a bunch of God-eaters running around.

Not specific to any page, but something I realized I should prolly mention. Impact modifiers. When they're listed as "+1" or "+2", it FEELS like they should be additive with each other. (Most often it was seen in the playset stuff, like "XYZ approach has a +2 impact modifier in this situation" feels like that +2 is "in addition to" and not "instead of".) My thought is maybe renaming them to "tier one/two/three positive/negative"; this would add a layer of distance between "what it is" and "what it does", which would be a benefit for "not getting it confused with direct modifiers of the kind encountered in other games most notably D&D", but a detriment for "remembering what it actually does to the roll". Plus all the hassle which goes along with changing something. You're better equipped to make any judgement on the issue; it's just something an I had to raise.

Eat God playtest draft 0.5.0 is now available

Version 0.5.0 of Eat God brings several major changes, foremost among them a full rewrite of the Forms and Rebellious Arts, in a more structured and (hopefully!) more readable format than the previous wall-of-text presentation. This update also includes print-and-play cards (and corresponding VTT resources) for all Forms, Arts, and playset NPCs and locations. A full list of updates is available here, or under the cut below:

Download package now includes print-and-play cards for all Forms, Rebellious Arts, and playset and NPC locations

Revised introduction to provide a link to the new Form, Art, and playset cards

Expanded discussion of the mechanical effect of Traits

Forms and Rebellious Arts are now numerically indexed in their descriptions as well as in their lookup tables

One additional Form (bringing the total up to a full 36 for the first time!), and a full rewrite of all existing Forms

Full rewrite of all existing Rebellious Arts

Added discussion of how to handle resisting Stress when multiple God-eaters are affected by the same threat simultaneously

Small clarifications to activation timing for Rebellious Arts and what it means to "activate an Art in conjunction with a test"

Greatly expanded discussion of how to adjudicate Limit Breaks

Reformatted examples of Limit Break effects and added a few more examples

Random inventory table slightly revised to make its implicit milieu more consistent, and moved from the Inventory section to a separate appendix in preparation for adding multiple random inventory tables for different milieux

"Effect modifiers" renamed "impact modifiers" to avoid ambiguity with other uses of the word "effect"; relevant terminology throughout document revised accordingly

Simplified rules for how Forms influence impact penalties (formerly effect penalties)

Added first-pass rules for imposing temporary Traits upon NPCs

Added discussion of how cooperative tests work in the context of multiple God-eaters ganging up on a single NPC

Reformatted playset location/NPC/calamity tables for better readability

Added "Appendix B: Additional Tables"; right now this just contains the relocated starting inventory table (see above)

[noxiatoxia]

Mikan wants to be "forgiven"...but what does that really mean?

Hello. This is something that has been quietly on my mind for a while.

It's something shown in the game in chapter 3. Mikan really focuses in on "being forgiven".

And while not a mistranslation per se, I think it's inaccurate to what is happening in the game.

I've talked about this extensively - the fact ENG DR team has a very bad habit of translating things literally or very directly. This leads to either clunky dialogue, missed nuances, or just incorrect interpretations sometimes.

I think this in particular falls somewhere between 2 and 3. I'll explain why.

If translated literally, the English text works just fine, but as with a lot of literal translation, it misses the "feeling" of what was trying to be conveyed. If you want my translation...

Mikan: Won't someone just tell me what I did wrong!? Why won't anyone just let it be already!?

While Mikan doesn't say "What did I do wrong", there is a subtle emphasis on her talking about herself...I feel like it's a more natural way to word what is essentially "What is it that I did differently [to warrant this]?"

Anyways, to the main point...I hope you can kind of see what I'm getting at.

"Forgive" feels like...Mikan is seeking people to "pardon" her for perceived wrong-doings. And while not untrue I would say, the way Mikan specifically uses the word and the context it is in, to me, feels much more like she is using it like "allow" or "excuse".

Let me use another example to better explain myself.

The last line to me reads like Mikan needed this person to pardon her for being born; for existing. That her existence in and of itself was a mistake or wrong-doing that needed to be forgiven.

I think that's missing the point, though.

Mikan: They allowed me to exist.

See, the point is...Mikan is a very troubled person. She admits as much in the freetime events that wherever she goes, she is horribly bullied just for existing. That she hated being bullied, but even more she hates being forgotten.

She emphasizes her beloved (Junko) did not hate her, and in fact allowed her presence...

This line was heavily misread, I think. 許して受け入れて was read as two verbs in one sentence (which it is) but as "forgive and accept" which is incorrect to what it means. It's closer to "they tolerated me" (like, accepting and moving on). Which comes to how I would translate it, and my final point:

Mikan: They accepted me for who I am.

This is why I think the "forgive" thing is not only incorrect, but actually opposite of what this scene was going for. Junko did not "forgive" Mikan for the sin of existing. Rather, she was the only person who seemed to not mind that she existed, that didn't bully or ignore her.

She didn't "forgive" Mikan, she allowed her to be herself.

Another reason DR3 totally missed the mark, but I digress...

I guess while I'm on the topic, we all know that scene where Mikan has a little back-and-forth with Nagito...that, too, was misrepresented somewhat.

Putting the English here just for comparison sake. And while not the worst translation in the world, it certainly isn't how I would go about it.

Nagito: I don't...really get what you're trying to say... Mikan: Oh, you don't? (lit: you don't understand?) Mikan: Is that because you don't have any loved ones in your life? Mikan: Is it because there's no one who will love you?* Mikan: Oh, you poor thing...I feel very sorry for you.

*Literally speaking, she says "Is it because you are a person nobody allows" but considering the context thus far, it's easy to conclude she means that there's no one who will love/accept him for who he is.

*Adding "also" to the line is a mistranslation, I believe. も means also but it is also used for emphasis, which I think it is here. Not that it's impossible Mikan is using it to say "also", but in these lines of dialogue she is intentionally contrasting how she does have someone who loves her and that she can love, so to then identify a similarity between her and Nagito, I think, wouldn't make much sense...

Mikan is one of my favorite characters, so little details like this matter a lot to me.

[meadowfics]

Can you write a Cho Hyun Ju fic or headcannons for me. Reader and HyunJu move in together and this is where Reader starts to behave unusually because she grew up in a toxic home where she never liked being outside of her bedroom. HyunJu gets worried and understands once Reader tells her why she does the things that she does

safe space

cho hyun-ju x f!reader

moving in together was a big step, and at first, everything felt exciting.

unpacking boxes, choosing where to put things, and even having a small debate (playfully) over which side of the bed to sleep on.

soon, hyunju starts noticing little things about you that she hadn’t before.

you always gravitate toward the bedroom.

even when hyunju is in the living room watching tv, you'll sit on the edge of the bed with your phone or a book instead of joining her.

at first, she thinks maybe you just need some alone time and needed adjusting to living on your own with her.

hyunju notices how you keep the bedroom door slightly closed, even when you're inside alone.

it's subtle, but it makes her wonder.

when she invites you to do things in the living room, like cook together or play a game, you'll agree, but there’s always a slight hesitation.

sometimes, you’ll say you're too tired, even if it's only 6 p.m.

she also notices how you clean the bedroom obsessively.

you make the bed perfectly every morning, rearrange your books, and dust surfaces that aren’t even dirty.

it’s almost like you're trying to make the space feel safe.

it really hits hyunju when she comes home early one day and finds you sitting on the floor of the bedroom, scrolling on your phone with the curtains drawn.

she sees the way your shoulders are tense, like you're waiting for something bad to happen.

she decides to talk to you about it gently. she's careful not to make it seem like you're doing anything wrong.

“hey, i noticed you spend a lot of time in here… is everything okay?”

you hesitate at first.

"yeah, why wouldn't it be?"

you try and lie.

eventually though, you open up, your voice shaky.

you tell her about growing up in a toxic home, how your bedroom was the only safe space you had.

it became your sanctuary, the one place where you could hide from the chaos and arguments outside the door.

hyunju listens carefully, her heart breaking a little. she realizes why you behave the way you do now, and instead of pushing you, she reassures you.

“this is your home now too, and you don’t have to hide anymore. there will be no screaming matches in the living room or outside of our bedroom, you're safe here. it’s okay if you still need time, but please know that I'll always keep you safe, even mentally and emotionally.”

from that day, hyunju makes small changes.

she starts bringing activities to the bedroom.

movies on her laptop, takeout on the bedside table, even building a blanket fort together.

she wants you to feel safe outside the bedroom without forcing you.

over time, you start venturing out more. hyunju notices when you sit beside her on the couch for longer or when you leave the bedroom door wide open without realizing it.

she never points it out but smiles quietly to herself.

on days when you still feel like hiding away, hyunju doesn’t mind.

she joins you in the bedroom, curling up next to you and reminding you that she’s still here, always.

[doppel-doodles]

That illustration is making me want to slam my head against solid concrete, Art block said no, and I know when to pick my battles so fuck it we ball-

A normal post about Matthew Hallard from Poppy Playtime

I briefly mentioned this in the Jack post, the fact that I didn't think I had anything new or particularly interesting to say on Matthew as I always thought the Fandom had a lot of the bases covered.

But the more I actually thought about him, the more I wanted to talk about one thing in particular:

Let's talk about Doeys tape.

In game we find a vhs tape recorded by Doey, talking about how he almost ditched everyone in favor of running away, ultimately deciding to go back for them instead. It reveals a lot about how he truly feels about the responsibility that has been given to him.

I think it was so important to include this and the reason why is quite simple:

It humanises Matthew for me.

Why I point him out specifically is due to reasons I mentioned in my other analysis, Jack's control is mostly passive, Kevin only really comes to the forefront when he feels like there is a threat to assess or deal with and it has been confirmed that Matthew is the oldest of the children as well as having been a leader of sorts since he was still a human child, so in the tape it's basically him venting.

Which is great as it makes something crystal clear: He is not a perfect saint.

Matthew is a teenager who has been parentified from an incredibly young age, places immense pressure on himself, is suffering from more burnout than a college kid and not to mention the horror that is his current existence and life-

He doesn't WANT this responsibility, he only takes it on because nobody else will or can.

And nobody even thinks to ask him ONCE how HE is doing, no,no it's him who has to do that, he is not allowed to have breaks.

For godness sake he literally tells us in the tape that he is recording it because he feels like he can't talk to anyone about his problems!

The toys- The children having someone like Doey or more accurately Matthew is not a guarantee, it is a privilege but it's a privilege Matthew needs to!

And you rarely ever see kind characters COMPLAIN about having to be kind all the time, truly looking after everyone else drains you, it's exhausting to fulfill the needs of others, more often than not you'll have to put aside your own and when you really pull the shit end of the stick you get more complains then appreciation for your troubles.

It is such a CHORE and I think a character struggling with being so selfless actually can have such a massive impact instead of just being able to handle everything, it's that tiny bit of realism I love.

Despite how exhausted and miserable Matthew was over being stuck in this position in the end he turned back. Because he loves his friends that much, and he should get massive props for that.

And to think he still did so much but didn't think anything he did was good enough is just painful, like no honey you are enough, more than enough-

Also Poppy having once been the leader makes you think that maybe Matthew might have been hurt the most by her disappearing.

Like her leading was the closest thing to a break he ever got- and then she just up and disappears?? And it's all up to him now? Not to mention the concern? The worry??

Boy it speaks volumes that he doesn't seem to display more hostility towards her considering Poppy doesn't even EXPLAIN herself on why she left or why she couldn't come back.

He is even civil in discussing the fact that she demands for them to be okay with being blown up(also correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Poppy also include in her plan that SHE will get to live? If I heard that I would be flabbergasted.) But that's something I should discuss in another post.

For now that is everything I have about my boy, if you want to see what I have to say about other characters here is Kevin annnnnnd Jack, plus some extra stuff on Doey

[dreamingdormouse]

I have two thoughts on this.

First, it's important to humanize bad people... partly because everyone should get human rights, even the people who you don't think deserve human rights, or else it becomes easy, as Ms Demeanor says, to have that "not everyone deserves human rights" idea turned on the innocent and marginalized. But ALSO it's important to humanize them because that's how we hold them accountable.

If a villain in a story is a literal monster, only capable of harm, we must stop them, but we don't waste energy on telling people not to be like that. We don't have to tell people "don't turn into a ringwraith" because that's not a risk. We can't prevent bokoblins from happening, just kill them.

But turning into a bad person IS something that happens, it IS a choice they made. Trauma made it easier to be cruel, but did not force them to become cruel. Plenty of other people experience trauma and either just live with it, or use that horrible thing to make them kinder. The bad people are humans, which means they could have chosen better. They are responsible for their actions in ways that a rabid dog is not. And seeing them as inhuman takes away that responsibility.

Second, we have so many books about this kind of character, and people love those books (not me, but many people).

If you've read The Hunger Games, you may know of a book called The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, about how President Snow became who he was.

If you've read Cinder and the other books in The Lunar Chronicles, you may know of Fairest, the prequel that explains how Queen Levana became who she was.

If you like the Abhorsen series, you may have read Clariel, and seen how Clariel made bad decisions with good motives, although I will admit that the corrupting influence of Free Magic is, like ringwraiths, not an issue for most of us. But a good kid became a villain in that one too.

Then there are the stories that aren't prequels, where you don't know going in that this is the story of a villain's rise. I feel like even naming those is a spoiler! But I'll just mention the movie Chronicle and the book Empress by Karen Miller.

If you want to see how ordinary people can choose cruelty and feel justified, read or watch those stories. Lots of people love them. (I don't, personally - I'm not a big fan of tragedies. When it's a prequel and I already know the character will end up choosing cruelty, it feels like they're doomed. And when it surprises me, it's like a horror movie you didn't know was a horror movie. Like when you're screaming at the screen "Don't split up!" "Don't go in that room!" "Look behind you!" or things like that, I feel like I'm going "Bad idea bad idea!" more and more and seeing them corrupt themselves.)

Anyway, point being...

Your

Enemies

Are

Humans

They may not be changeable at this point. They're someone you stop, not someone you can fix. But they are humans, we need to give them human rights (for our sake, not theirs), it may help to understand how they choose what they did, they are responsible for their own actions.

Stop making them monsters, it lets them off the hook.

I thought it was fairly normal to feel empathy for bad people.

I thought it was common, even.

But after my Elon/Grimes post... now I'm wondering if I was mistaken about that.

I wrote a post about Trump being traumatized after his assassination attempt and a post about his poor adaptation to aging. I expressed sympathy for him in both cases. But I still maintain my white hot hatred of him and wish for him to face consequences.

Elon was abused by his father. Some of the stories are incredibly tragic. Hearing those stories triggers an involuntary response in my emotional systems that I can't stop no matter how much I despise present-day Elon. I also wonder if that abuse never occurred maybe we wouldn't be dealing with this current clusterfuck.

I have never held so much anger towards a single person as I do my brother. But I also see him as a victim of abuse. I know he was once a really good person and he was slowly corrupted. I feel sorry for him. I mourn the amazing person he used to be. And I still love him.

But that doesn't make me any less angry.

[prettyboykatsuki]

caleb is quite literally not mcs brother and it's not in any way reductive to his character to say so. they use brotherly terms bc it's just common in some cultures to do that— including chinese, japanese and korean, where those words that might be literally translated as "brother" are just as commonly, if not more, used as regular terms of endearment that don't exist in english. mcs weird feelings about it also makes sense if she just SEES him as a really close figure, stop tryna twist ur weird ass incest agenda as if you understand the source material better when ur literally just a slow ass westerner who doesn't understand the cultures ur tryna write within 💀 you guys just need to be euthanised i think

okay so. when the game, in canon text, has caleb's companion viper in all three languages except english localization, call him a siscon what do you think that means? what kind of relationship does someone having a sister complex indicate to you?

on another note and i do mean this genuinely: you don't have to interpret the story as incest if you don't want to. just like you don't need to read my fic or be annoying in my inbox about it 💀 telling me you think i need to be euthanized because you're uncomfortable with a very overt narrative theme that i expand on is insane bc you're doing that over pixels but well.

i didn't feel like this was worth answering but you 1. accusing me of being a westerner like im not literally asian disapora is insulting to me and 2. caleb and mc quite literally are adopted by the same person, and are canonically raised under the same roof. they refer to the same woman as grandma. if this does not read to you like a familial relationship ... 💀💀. all of my characterization is based on cn since its the original language the game is written in.

i don't think there is like. any reason to argue over the logistic use of honorifics. i come from a culture that uses honorfics. i know the way older brother can be used affectionately between people. but this is still SO questionable given the actual specifics of how caleb calls mc

it is additionally questionable because caleb also uses 家人 "jia ren" during bigger scenes which explicitly means family member (thank you mao for the translations). this kind of explicitly familial dialogue is also found again the original cn version of chapter 9. the localization butchers the original meaning and completely gets rid of the tragedy aspect. caleb essentially implies in that dialogue that their entire family was a lie, that the memories they had as a family were a farce and caleb did not feel the bond at all. this is the source of her devastation. go watch the cn translation done by a native speaker if u dont want to believe me 💀💀💀

your main argument seems to be that there is some great distinctive line between older brother figure and straight up older brother. and potentially if caleb was a neighbor or someone from a different family with a different guardian then this maybe would hold water.

but they are canonically raised in the same house, by the same person, adopted together. so either - you don't view adoptive siblings as a legitimate form of incest because it's not blood-related incest and you think that's somehow less taboo.

or you're genuinely implying that a person that you view as a sibling, who is raised with you, is on paper canonically adopted together with you from the same orphanage to the same person is, who you call your older brother and all of your friends view your sibling as affirmed in several cards in the original cn... is not actually your sibling but your childhood friend?

incest between people who are step-siblings or adoptive siblings is still incest. its taboo because the nature of the relationship is familial. the story literally uses forbidden fruit? do you think someone whose merely a vaguely older brother like figure warrants that level of intensity? like im crying.

no offense but i do understand the source material better than you also. like. sdkjfjfsdkldmfnksdfksjan

[seasidefallenangel]

gimme, gimme, gimme a man

calling bllk boys your husband while you're still dating ft. isagi yoichi, nagi seishiro, itoshi rin, itoshi sae

notes: fluff, banter, down bad loverboys, use of "wife" in sae's but gn other than that

༄ isagi: “... i’ll grab a chocolate shake, and my husband’s gonna get the vanilla.”

✣ freezes on the spot and stares at you with wide eyes. him? husband? you wanna marry him? he was hoping you were in the long haul the same way he was, but hearing those words from your mouth made him even giddier than he assumed he’d be. imagine when you two actually get married? he’ll be in the trenches.

⁀➷  “did you mean that?” he asks when the worker closes the window while you wait for your order. you can practically see the tail wagging behind him as he beams at you with those sparkling blue eyes. when you give a nod and a small smile, he has to stop himself from blowing up with excitement. instead, he kisses your forehead and murmurs, “i can’t wait to marry you one day.”

༄ nagi:

“oh, that copy in the corner! my husband’s been looking all over for it.”

✣ eternal soldier in the idgaf war. you can’t even tell if he heard you because his facial expression doesn’t budge in the slightest. he’s still tap-tapping away at his phone while the shop employee grabs the game case and hands it to you. it’s only once you’ve paid and left the store that he finally puts his phone down and rests his head on your shoulder from behind, staring up at you with those big, brown puppy eyes.

⁀➷ “‘husband’”? he asked softly, curious but not displeased. you nod sheepishly, admitting it just sort of came out before you had a chance to think. he hums softly, wrapping his arms around your waist and snuggling into your neck. cute as it is, you’re still very much in public, and he’s not exactly light. when you ask him to get off, his face shifts into a pout and he mumbles, “can’t believe i’m gonna marry someone so mean.” despite his attitude, this’ll be lingering on his mind for awhile.

༄ rin:

“excuse me? my husband wanted to kn-” “boyfriend.”

✣ is having absolutely none of it. he swears his blood pressure has gotten concerningly high since he started dating you and dealing with all your stupid pranks. it seems like he’s annoyed since he immediately interjected, but it’s more the opposite. he knows he wants to marry you, but do you really think he’s worth the trouble? looking that far into the future worries him, but he’d never let you know that. ⁀➷ a pair of lithe fingers squeezes your cheeks after rin pulls you away from the employee with a deadpan expression. he pulls at your cheeks with narrow eyes, asking you, “what the hell was that about? husband? are you stupid or something?” your lower lip juts out as you express to him that you really do want to marry him someday, and just wanted to hear how it sounded coming from your mouth. he knows you’re playing him as you try not to grin, but the confession is rather cute. he lets it slide with an “idiot” under his breath, and you decide not to mention the slight blush on his cheeks and the fact he has your hand in a vice grip as you walk out of the store.

༄ sae:

“oi. my wife asked for a medium. remake it.”

✣ beats you to the punch. he’s always one step ahead in every aspect of your relationship, but this is too much. how on earth did he know that you were gonna call him your husband to see his reaction? well - he didn’t. he just refers to you as his wife internally most of the time, and occasionally when he’s out buying gifts and tells the employee who he’s buying it for. after all, you’ll be his wife one day. might as well start early.

⁀➷ sae glances down at you, raising an eyebrow at your disgruntled expression. when you bemoan that he “stole your thunder,” he flicks you on the forehead before wrapping an arm around your waist. his lips brush against your ear, making you shiver while he speaks, “you do know that you being my wife also means i’m your husband, dumbass. does it matter who said what?” when you sputter and try to pull out the fact he hasn’t even proposed yet, he tugs you closer, looking irritated that you’d even bring up something so simple. it’s a cold day in hell before anyone else gets the chance, and he informs you as such, saying, “because none of the diamonds i’ve found are big enough,” leaving you speechless while he pretends like nothing happened. you’ll never win against him - ever.

[oceansoul001]

Couple of random thoughts regarding KCD2 last conversation with Hans.

[Spoilers!!!]

1. You can have this conversation either still in Suchdol (after talking to Sir Hanush) or in the Devil's Den post credits. They don't differ beside last topic ("What are your plans now?") that is removed if you choose the latter.

2. Generally there is not much of a difference between romance and non-romance paths. Romanced Hans tells you everything that the non-romanced does, just adds a few unique sentences. You can probably notice switch of tone in "What are we going to do about the wedding" topic, for the romanced lines: "I'm not sure what to do... after what happened, you know...? I mean... me and you... I suppose we'll just have to wait and see how things turn out..." I find this reaction very believable given the situation, I recon they both need some time to sort things in their heads, as the ongoing siege/bringing reinforcements didn't leave them much time and space for reflection. So I am very okay with them not discussing the topic further at this point. And, I know this might sound strange, but I also really like that there are no love confessions at this point, I greatly dislike it when games throw them at me after literally one night spent together with someone.

BUT. Directly after this part comes the non-romance part where Hans worries about his bride being ugly and then proceeds to talk about naming his son after Henry, and I don't know... I mean, yeah, we all are aware of the fact that Hans most probably still has to get married, and have an heir, and it does not matter at all whether something happened between him & Henry, or not, but is this really the thing he would casually say at this moment...? Okay, maybe he would, it's Hans. But what is even more bizarre to me is my Henry, who is happily babbling as if nothing has changed at all, even though like a minute ago he was this awkward mess thanking Hans for "the encouragement". So what I'm trying to say is, I would prefer at least for Henry to act/respond differently in the romanced version and remain more awkward throughout this convo. But maybe I'm overthinking this! 😅

3. Another difference in the romance path occurs when discussing Hans' injury, as only in this version Henry asks if he can take a look at the wound later, and I think it is so sweet. Very minor detail, but I love it. ❤️

4. The thing that I definitely don't like is asking Hans about his talk with Hanush, and Hans responding with "You don't need to know everything", like??? My guy. Please. You've just shared with me probably the most intimate and secretive moment OF YOUR LIFE, and now you don't want to tell me some shit about Hanush, even though it is not even a secret and like everyone in Rattay already knows (your own words!). I don't get it at all, why in the romance path this still requires a speech check and why is Hans so weird about not telling me "everything", even though mere hours ago he was ready to die from grief if I don't come back 😭

5. Speaking of dying, romanced Hans can say the following at the beginning of your conversation: "I'm glad nothing happened to you. That would have killed me", but it only happens if Sam does not survive. So not in my game, as I would never leave my brother behind. Hans can also admit that he was jealous of Sam, which for me was very clear during the game, but also under the condition that Sam does not survive.

6. Last, but not least - I wish we could have another conversation with romanced Hans after couple in-game days pass, after we both have had a chance to collect our thoughts. Nothing groundbreaking, just something short and sweet, and you know, maybe get the possibility to share a kiss in our room at the Devil's Den when we want... I know it might sound greedy, or silly, after all we've just got this perfect, almost unreal relationship at all, but nothing can stop me from dreaming. 🥹

Happy to hear your thoughts on the subject! ❤️

[morbid-archive-com]

△Shifting ask game: with Frank⋆˚࿔

⋆˚— What was your first dr? : i know it's cringe but i have to be honest, lt was MHA, i was a very cringy loser kid back in 2020 and watched way too much anime. And for why i switched it: it took a long time but i realized how much o didn't want to be a pro hero and how toxic that dr was. Now my main dr is dead by daylight (my fav game!) and this band dr i really love.

⋆˚— Here my name is Frank Morrison... I stole it! (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠) I just didn't have more ideas for names and decided to take one from a fictional character from my dbd dr.

⋆˚— The garage! Just kidding, i stay with my band member in his house but he forgot to tell his parents, his mom saw me on the garage taking a nap and started hitting me with a broom! ರ⁠╭⁠╮⁠ರ

⋆˚— For edits well, it's 2005 so we got AMVs of our songs, clips from concerts going viral and glittery pfp's of my band members. Also stamps and blinkies people use in Myspace about our band! The fandom is pretty chill, mostly people getting wasted and doing pot or teens who hate their parents.

⋆˚— aaw the outfit of the day! I love that part.

well we have alternatives, being a teen fashion icon by the time looks so good.

⋆˚— free time is all the time, if you think about it... Anyways, just hang out with the guys, writing some lyrics or getting in trouble! Setting fire to cop cars is always an option! (I'm joking-not joking)

⋆˚— My non-native english suffered this one... But i think it means like my comfiest and safe dr that feels like a home. Well it's my alt future dr: already 35, life solved, millionare scientist and married to a beautiful husband. It's just the greatest dr i could have.

⋆˚— Punk band dr: 4 junkies with guittars play like shit and go famous.

⋆˚— My brain just spits ideas like a maniac and i make a pinterest board... Everything is in my braing or in notion written down.

⋆˚— i made a post once about it: i met Lu on highschool, Kristen is my mutual on Myspace and Dan works part time at a videoclub i always go to.

⋆˚— family?... what family? you guys scripted a family? The problem is that i didn't have any ideas for parents and it would be a problem for me so i scripted i was an orphan. This is very common so don't act like i'm weird.

⋆˚— the funniest scenario definitely was a my first awarding, i was so out of place between big artists from the time and i was just a little high so i fell asleep. Can you imagine waking up from a nap with your friends screaming and shaking like crazy, spotlights shining on you and a bunch of applause? I genuinely screamed "ALIENS?"... Anyways that was such a cool week, like having 5 star hotels, meeting a lot of people, getting out of jersey to visit Los angeles was something incredible as just a garage band.

⋆˚— Kristens brother, our manager and promoter. Like dude can you not frown and stare at me with hate for once?!? I just had a few shots, definitely not a whole bottle of vodka.

⋆˚— It's a Myspace blog named "The mischief booknote" i just post stuff about music and rebel shit i do for fun, also listing my 46 commited crimes and adding more everytime. Cause setting stuff on fire is cool when you're a teen.

That was fun!!! Thanks for this Asking game @solstices-dreams

ᓚᘏᗢ﹐𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞. ⁞ ˎˊ˗

shifting ask game reblog for asks ↻ ‧₊˚.

i’m bored so here’s another ask game, i’ll try to ask to everyone who reblogs, as long as tumblr isn't too glitchy, but feel free to send asks to others

— 💡 : what was your first dr and what is currently your main dr? How and why have you made this switch?

— 🏷 : what is your name for your dr and why is that your name?

— 👜 : what’s your house look like? Do you have any roommates or people who live with you? What’s your favorite aspect of your house and why?

— 🎞 : what edits of you would there be in your dr? what is your fandom like?

— 🩰 : what is your OOTD (outfit of the day) for a dr and why?

— 🏛️ : what do you do in your free time? Who are you with? Where do you go?

— 🗝 : what is your most niche dr and why did you make it?

— 📜 : summarize your dr in a sentence

— 🧳 : what is your favorite way to script and share your favorite dr script

— ♟ : who’s in your friend group and how did you make this friend group?

— 🕰 : what’s your family like? Who’s your favorite person and what are your relationships with your different members?

— 🎻 : what is a fun scenario you have scripted and you excited for? (be detailed! :)

— 💼 : who is someone you don’t get a long with in your dr? Why?

— 🍨 : what are your socials like in your dr? Followers? Username? What do you post?

[minas-linkverse]

I'd love to see your though proseces for Finding the Founding! (I love that whole mini arc so much! Even if I feel really bad for wild...)

This is the earliest update anyone's asked about, so I'll be starting here. ALTHOUGH... I kind of dread to, because looking at old art is incredibly difficult. I'll do it-- I'll do it for you all and my love for yapping.

Director's commentary: Finding the Founding Full update <-

I was still far from good at comic making, but I was very ambitious, so although the visual story telling in this update isn't up to my standards now, there's some neat things past-Mina did.

The establishing shot is both telling and cryptic-- I'd say it leans too much towards the latter but she tried. The goal was to have enough hints to clue the viewer who knows skyward sword into the fact that this was the Goddess statue courtyard-- Which would ideally build tension. However past-Mina was too waaay too subtle. I took the liberty to edit how I'd do this panel today: having a part of the statue loom over the panel. This way even the viewers who don't remember the courtyard's birch trees can tell something big is waiting.

Altho I do like the detail that there's some wood planks in the background. Reminds the reader that this is post-game and they're doing building 💪

Groose :) The lore with the accessory that Link, Zelda and Groose wear is that he made them for the squad. The motive was actually polyamorous yearning but he's too insecure to admit it yet. You can see he wears his different and it has alternate feathers, it's like. A metaphor for self isolating or smth.👍I love Groozelink but they're not established in the time the comic takes place, so we get a longing flustered groose instead... Not that I've gotten to show that in the comic yet. Er.

At this point in the comic I hadn't settled on a consistant lineweight, and hadn't started using bold outer lines yet. So although the art isn't bad, it looks chaotic and unfinished. You can also see I was using WAY too thick of a brush for the panels and made the text too small. Gotta start somewhere, I guess!

Another ambitious panel, I was trying to have Groose's dialogue make it more poignant that the statue is BIG and STARING DOWN but the art REALLY didn't work with it. The statue looks tiiiny and besides the clouds curving into a halo it's all just a very boring image.

I super quickly threw a fish-eye-lense distortion on the panel to show something closer to what I'd wanted it to look, but didn't have the skills for at the time.

In the last segment of the update Wild has a panic attack type-o-deal which is again made less effective by the art, but past-Mina did try real hard and I respect that.

These two sets of panels were meant to be kind before-and-after transformations.

Wild going from seeing a family talk -> to the wall being torn and the tree destroyed with a guardian on the move. THEN Groose -> melting into a malice skeleton. I really don't think past me did a good job with that. I should've included more details that stayed between the two panels so they'd be more clearly connected. It's a cool idea tho, and in later updates I started to figure out how to execute cool ideas, so... Practise for the win.

Also nobody ever pointed it out at the time, but Wild's hair actually goes from the hairstyle he has in the comic to a hairstyle much closer to what he had back in the war. That and the colour fading from his eyes are deets I can still get behind whole-heartedly.

In the final page of the update there's a massive tonal shift where the art goes simple and the dialogue silly. It really depends on the tone you want for your comic, as this kind of a move can completely undo any tension you built, but in this case I think it's a very well done whiplash feel-good(ish) ending.

I think LV's updates started very amateurish, but I did seem to have a pretty good grasp on pacing and tone since the start. I'm very proud of that.

_

You can probably tell I don't much like this update anymore, haha. I appreciate what it meant for me back then and have nothing against people who still like it. To me its just a great example of all the things where I was falling flat when I first started.

Besides the panic attack wasn't an idea I even liked back then-- It felt like sudden unnecessary melodrama that could've easily been replaced with more nuanced emotions. However I'd seen people hype up all sorts of angsty art in the fandom at the time and felt like if I didn't put in something intense people wouldn't care about my comic. It's silly looking back-- You should be true to yourself when you make art, that way you'll like what you make and it doesn't age as poorly.

Never-the-less, the journey of making this webcomic so far has been really good for my comic skills and although I cringe at the past updates: they're still valuable stepping stones on that journey and I'm happy to look back and reflect! Thanks for requesting this update for analysis, and hope others can get something out of it too!

[leonawriter]

Ayin, Carmen, and the Circles of Hell Project Moon's Works

First off, what I wanted to go over here is the assumption that at least someone must have started playing through these games without a full picture of who these important people are and what, exactly, is going on.

Part of what makes the games so special to me is the way that they're all narrated, in that... each and every single one so far (three games, but also the webcomics and webnovels so far) has been told by an unreliable narrator - either of the events they're telling, or of their own inner world.

In this post, I'm hoping to tie the games together in as objective way as possible, using as much game/official-backed fact as I can, but I can't promise to be an "unbiased narrator" myself, since there are certain stances I take and theories I back.

That said: expect spoilers for Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina, Leviathan (Vergilius' backstory), and all currently released Cantos and Intervallos (so far, up to 7.5).

Okay.

To start off, I'm going to have to go right back to the beginning.

No, not the backstory of Lobotomy Corporation.

More like "What even is the City" - because unless we can understand that, we can't really say we can understand who these characters are, and why they're doing these things. The setting informs characterisation and cultural norms, after all.

The City is, basically, as those who've played or otherwise experienced Library of Ruina and Limbus Company will know, comprised of the Wings (districts) and then further divided into the Nests (where everyone wants to live, where it's safer), and the Backstreets (where no one really wants to live, but many have to). The main driving motivation for most peoples' lives is that they have to become employable to either a good organisation (legal or not) that will provide for them, as the moment they are not of use they will be fired and/or disposed of.

In other words, your life does not belong to "you." Your life belongs to "the City."

All of that stuff we hear all the time about "find work that you enjoy!"? Yeah, no, the most important thing is to a) stay alive at all, and b) find work that will enable you to stay alive. Being able to keep morals? That's a luxury.

The world (which as far as anyone is concerned here, IS the City) is run by people who do not care about the well-being of others, and "good" people get ground up by it, eventually learning to harden their hearts.

Now that we've got that out of the way...

I can actually go into who the characters are.

First off, and most importantly (and obviously, going by the title) we have Ayin, Benjamin, and Carmen. Later on in Lobotomy Corporation known as "A, B, and C."

We don't know much about them before a certain point. We can, however, easily see that all three of them were from a Nest, rather than the Backstreets; of the original Outskirts lab, only Kali (Gebura) was Backstreets, and both Enoch and Lisa were from the Outskirts. This means that all three must have scored highly in certain exams in order to stay inside their Nest (which ones, though, we don't know yet) as was brought up in an early chapter of Distortion Detective.

For all of Lobotomy Corporation, we see things through Ayin's eyes, and we really only see the events that lead up to the founding of the Facility that "X" (AKA, Ayin's future looped self) is running. Since we only see the worst moments, we aren't really allowed to see the good times. We're allowed to see some very relevant quiet moments, but other than that it's few and far between.

What we DO know, and that we can in fact take on board that is highly important, is that Carmen had a big dream of wanting to improve things for people, on an individual basis, and she was very good at pulling people around to her way of thinking. This is not an exaggeration, or a matter of bias; this woman would go on to recruit people from all sorts of backgrounds, from both the Nests and the Backstreets. She would walk more or less alone in the Backstreets, and as far as we know did not have a bodyguard (or adjacent) until she recruited Kali, a Grade 2 Fixer. Carmen's ability to recruit all sorts of people would later be compared to that of a cult leader in Library of Ruina, and by someone who knew a lot about the City.

(This isn't the only time Roland says something like that; he also brings it up with Netzach.)

Ayin, who would be Carmen's junior, followed after her, listened to her, paid her a lot of attention, did as he was asked, and as we see Angela later state, he would look at Carmen "warmly."

Ayin would also be the one who would end up being blamed for, or the cause of, the worst of what happened, for one reason or another. Much of this was, I would say, either 50/50 fault of the future Sephirot making bad decisions, and Ayin himself having no idea how to communicate with them in a way that would prevent such incidents, or outright being unable to.

Simply looking at him and the way that A describes things, as well as the way that Manager X would later respond to things, tells the story of someone who quite literally had trouble communicating and connecting with other people. After Malkuth's meltdown, when A is talking about and recalling Elijah, we see the line "It was only after a very long time that I realised giving praise every once in a while may have been a good idea." When introduced to Kali, it's pointed out that he seems to be "glaring" at her, and Carmen says that he "always has a serious look on his face."

There are other lines and aspects from other scenes, but going into how and why I see Ayin as autistic is for another post, really. The important part is that the game shows us that he is perceived as cold and distant by others, yet most often only figures out how to interact in a way that grants the social benefits he and others require once it is already too late.

There is also the fact that a lot of his reactions (both in the past, and in the present) are... very human. No one can give the perfect response of a hero while in a traumatic moment. Chesed actually outright states this during one of the flashbacks about himself.

So we have Carmen, whose dream was to have a "beautiful voice" that "everyone would listen to," and we have Ayin, whose dream we aren't privy to - he tells her, and she laughs it off.

I'm not making that up, by the way:

[Source: TeeQueue's LP.]

What we do know, however, is that... for most of his life really, he - as said - follows after Carmen. To the point that, in one particular flashback (during Day 48), she asks him, in advance, that "No matter what I may become, please finish what I started."

However, we can see from both Adam (the third of Ayin's fractured selves) stating point blank that the consequences of Carmen's Light would cause people to become abnormalities, and then in Library of Ruina seeing the direct result in reality... that the Distortion phenomena would begin because of her. Starting with one as big and destructive as the Pianist which destroyed most of an entire district, then the Reverberation Ensemble through the course of the game, and finally firsthand appearances in both Leviathan and Limbus Company.

Carmen truly does become the "beautiful voice" that everyone listens to; Leviathan goes as far as to have an entire conversation between her and a distorting Vergilius, in which we get to see what her perspective is, and... strap in, because this is why I explained what kind of place the City is in the first place.

Carmen, at her heart, wants the Children of the City to live for themselves. To be selfish, rather than living only for the sake of a City that does not care for them. To have their outside appearance resembles the self they keep inside. You can see, in the few times the reader/player is allowed to see what she's saying during a distortion, that she doesn't push people into distorting so much as she plays into their own pre-existing feelings and desires. Enabling them to feel that they are justified in everything that they feel.

The important thing to remember is that the root (ha) of Carmen's argument is not wrong. Remember: those born to the City are subject to the City, and exist only for the City. The City doesn't exist for the sake of the people, but only for itself. Therefore, the idea of someone suggesting "I want to make it so that you can be selfish, and live for yourselves" IS going to be incredibly tempting, and to many people. It's a subversive, inherently rebellious idea!

Even in the real world, we have countries that put a lot of stock into how well a country can function as a uniform system; Japan and China I know for certain put far more emphasis on the group than the individual, even now. Anyone coming from somewhere that doesn't may see this as a strange idea, but it IS a cultural mindset that exists in the present day, and it took certain movements ("egoism" for one, and Ango Sakaguchi's essay that is referenced in Bungo Stray Dogs is "Discourse on Decadence" for another) to get to the point we're at now.

The problem lies in the fact that the moment you start to only think of yourself, when you ignore everyone else you become a force of destruction, harming others, either on a small scale (only hurting those immediately around you) or a large scale (hurting many people as a result of your actions) without regret. You no longer care about the people you used to care about. The "self" is all that remains.

Carmen was/is a well-intentioned (by the City's standards) person, but who took her one good idea too far.

Judging by his reaction to Adam's revelations about the as-yet-unnamed Distortion Phenomena - and he DOES have a negative reaction to it, considering he answers Adam's religious fervour with Hokma's ability to "Face the past, build the future" and Binah's "Facing the fear, breaking the cycle," meaning that he saw Adam as wrong. I'd say it's a foregone conclusion that Ayin did not know that Carmen's idea meant what it did. Nor that it's likely that Carmen's idea was to distort people from the start.

This, then, leads to the fact that although we don't know Ayin's own wishes from way back at the start when they first met so clearly... we can at least say that he wanted at least some of the same as what she did; for people to lead happier, more fulfilling lives, which were not controlled fully by the City. He must have agreed with her on the fact that the City, in her terms, suffered from a "disease of the mind."

Their differences are where things get interesting, because in Leviathan it is stated that simply due to Ayin "joining [her] in the light" at all, the concept of also being able to form EGO instead of Distortion became a possibility. In fact, in that same chapter, Vergilius is shown to be suspicious of her brushing her "junior's" involvement off, in spite of Ayin being "involved in every cause and effect" (Vergilius' words, from the translation).

There is a certain irony, even, to Carmen causing rifts between the future Sephirot and Ayin when they first meet - saying things that could otherwise be playful teasing, yet in later context is, as stated above, rather dismissive-

Her telling Ayin "He's a bit pompous, so don't believe everything he says" about Daniel, and to Kali who, as stated above, asked why Ayin was glaring and was told "He just always has a serious look on his face." In another flashback, she wore him down until he could see no other option than what she gave him (about progressing the Cogito experiment); "What made me, us, so upset... was how much it hurt to listen to her put it so calmly, as if it were none of our business." As I pointed out earlier, she laughs at his dream, before carrying on.

And yet, because she entrusted the project to him, it's Ayin's fingerprints that are over all of Lobotomy Corporation, as well as how to activate EGO at all. "Face the Fear, Build the Future"? That's all Ayin. And yeah, he's hardly a saint; he still did everything that all of the flashbacks show us (and his present day self who is remembering/being shown). But the important thing is that people can be multifaceted, and half the point of Lobotomy Corporation, as I see it, is that people are capable of some truly horrendous things... but you are still capable of building from them and moving into the future if you want to try and be a better person.

That's literally the message that Ayin leaves people through the Light.

Which in turn, pushes us forward in to the later games, because the thing is, everything really does come back to those two.

In Ruina, the Sephirot - now the Patron Librarians - have to tiptoe around Angela, who only has negative feelings about Ayin due to him being the world's worst father by creating her and then refusing to look at her, and then sending her into an unending torture device. I can't fault her for being furious here. She has been given absolutely no reason to see him in a better light up to here, when she was created with the memories of someone who had fond memories of him.

However, that does mean that the Patron Librarians can't truly be said to be speaking their minds amongst themselves, and especially not with Roland. These are the people who came out of Lobotomy Corporation's loops changed for the better, and although you can still see their (metaphorical, psychological) scars, we can see through the things they say that "X" must have been talking back to them at various points, and specifically during and after their meltdowns.

I brought this up in another post, but here's Gebura in Ruina, stating "It's hard to take a step forward if there's no one around to give you honest advice," and that goes for both the Sephirot and also Angela. As they do point out, Angela never had that. Angela herself is very upset about it (which is an understatement).

I've theorised as well that the Patron Librarians would have talked more about Ayin at length, but they held off after Angela interrupted Malkuth.

After she says this, she's cut off, and Angela berates her. Given Angela is basically hearing what to her is her abuser being praised to high heavens by someone who was also harmed by him... it's no wonder she reacts like this, and given the way the Librarians are I wouldn't be surprised if they understood that - but it does mean that we don't see their true thoughts.

They'll talk around him, but rarely directly about him - and when they do, like Gebura above, she snaps at them. So we, the viewer, also do not get to see their full thoughts and feelings.

This isn't the end, however, since the endgame of Ruina throws a lot into perspective that is made rather blatantly clear in later materials such as Leviathan and Limbus Company: that is, the stances of Ayin versus Carmen, and expanding on how they're in opposition in a far clearer way than we had during Lobotomy Corporation.

Because Lobotomy Corporation's final days are full of unreliable narration and Ayin's other selves telling him how he felt (which... yeah, wasn't him saying how he felt), that wasn't as clear as it could have been.

Not anymore!

First of all, in order to get the full, true ending in Ruina, you have to have both Roland and Angela forgive each other and not keep that need for revenge. In other words, they have to face the past, and break the cycle. They've both gone through Realisations, with them venting out their feelings to the Librarians each time... much like how the Librarians themselves had to vent out their feelings to Ayin in order to cool off.

Once you've got that, Angela decides to sort out the Light, and gets one more Realisation/fight - this time something that Hokma had been warning her about. Interestingly, he's the only one who made her question where the ability to create Invitations and use the Library at all came from. He, while having faith in Ayin, makes her question her blind faith in Carmen. Because as it turns out, she has been leaning on the part of her that was built from Carmen quite a bit up to now.

This... doesn't last, now that she herself has The Knowing I.

Angela: As long as I'm part of this light, I'll do everything in my power to stop you.

Given how we know that Ayin's very presence in the light caused awakening EGO to be possible, it's not a stretch to assume that this is the same stance that Ayin has taken now that he knows what Carmen was actually after.

I'd like to add something that is implied by that statement that some might see as treading into headcanon territory here: that Ayin, after having dedicated his entire life, literally ten thousand years of loops, to following Carmen's goal, which entailed committing atrocity after atrocity both personal (putting his deceased friends into metal bodies and bringing them back time after time) and impersonal (the many, many canon deaths of the employees, and no matter how "S rank no death" run you try and make yours, a few Clerks will get themselves killed by something) - would feel horrendously betrayed by Carmen.

I do not see Ayin, when he sees her again after realising what she had been aiming for the entire time, greeting her as a friend.

There's an art I've seen someone do, of them meeting in the light, Carmen reaching out her hand, and Ayin refusing her for perhaps the first time, because he finally has the Will to Stand Up Straight, and the understanding that they're actually on opposing sides now. I strongly feel like that - or the vibe of it - is at least somewhat the intent with their characters.

This is backed up by how, when Angela has accomplished this, fought Carmen, finished what Ayin had been working toward herself (and most importantly, her own personal growth to get there), Ayin tells her "I'm sorry. And... good job."

So. That's Library of Ruina.

On to Limbus Company, and the Circles of Hell.

Because if anyone thinks that Ayin's influence stopped with Angela and the Library, they are dead wrong.

To start with, we have some purely meta things. The titles have the same initials, which makes them easy to confuse if you're used to just going "oh play LC-" because which one? Lobotomy, or Limbus? In the Project Moon interviews before the game was released, they would often refer to future games as "the sequel." First Ruina, and then Limbus. Limbus especially, given its initials, got called "LC2" at least once or twice.

So, Limbus Company is a direct sequel to Lobotomy Corporation, which deals with the aftermath of all the branches having shut down. Simple enough, right?

The next thing is the characters we meet.

So far, both Dante and each of the Sinners has something in common with Ayin. And almost every one of their respective enemies so far has something in common with Carmen.

Dante themself is the Manager. Instead of managing Abnormalities, they manage the Sinners, a group of twelve people who are brought down to the strength of the weakest among them because of Dante's ability to chain them all together- wait, that sounds... familiar?

"The person who learns to think about himself as Ayin will ascend to a spiritual world, where everything is the same and everything is equal."

[Source: Ayin and Yesh, in Hasidism, from Wikipedia.]

Oh, look who it is. Hello, Ayin. Or rather, the spiritual concept of Ayin.

Honestly, a LOT of things about Dante scream out to me as references to Ayin. As a person. If you wanna go look at all of them, my friend Kitty/ @strangefellows has a whole gdoc on it.

My own thoughts on it go from "If you change Dante's red uniform coat to a white lab coat and ignore their head, that is literally the same person and body language" to "Dante's inability to know what they're doing at first echoes how Ayin had no idea at the start of the loops, both of them suffering from memory loss," to "Dante, during the SEA event, sinks into the same sort of uncertainty that anything they say will make any difference that is so characteristic of Ayin's own silences," to "when exposed to a monolith, which induces distortion, Dante is said to remember more than they are capable of at the time and knows exactly what Peccatula are, which is something that Ayin would know intimately given his involvement," to "during the the time when Heathcliff is distorting, the screen flashes with a very specific image of Carmen lying in a field" - which should be familiar to anyone who's gone through Lobotomy Corporation since it's something that only Ayin remembers.

In short: there is a very high probability that we're going to see it confirmed at some point that Dante's past self (with memories) is actually Ayin himself. I personally do not see this contradicting any of the canon Limbus has given us, and it does in fact only build on it. You'll notice that when I talk about Ayin I use he/him, and Dante gets they/them - I personally love the idea that Dante's just gonna go "ooh, I get to play with more pronouns? Cool!" Collect 'em all, you funky tick-tock genderless dude.

(If you don't believe that, it's fine. I've only been listing off canon moments, however!)

Going back to "more than just Dante echoes Ayin, just as Ayin was similar to more than just the Keter," however, and... let's build on that.

Starting with Yi Sang.

Yi Sang is someone who was a researcher working alongside a small group of people, who created a technology that was meant to be a bright spot for pure enjoyment. However, a chain of events happened that had T-Corp's law enforcement coming down on them, forcing them to work for the Wings or scatter. He regains his ability to see that he still has a future, and that he can still attain "flight" (that is, his own ideal self) by working through his past and being proactive rather than simply letting it happen. A large part of his trauma lies in the League of Nine breaking up and him recognising his own loneliness, too, and as a result he can be later seen trying more than anyone else in the bus to stop the others from fighting and causing the irreparable rifts that torn his original friend group apart.

Yi Sang mirrors Ayin in that they are both researchers who were set apart from their friend groups, yet they both had a desire for friendship and to be closer to those people that they could not fulfil due to their own temperament.

Yi Sang also has the EGO "4th Match Flame" which...

If it weren't for the colour of his eyes, I'd outright call that Ayin.

Note that the Matchgirl's story is that of someone who burns themself out in order to gain a little more warmth, which fits both Yi Sang and Ayin.

Next we have Faust, who hasn't had her Canto yet, but we do know some things about her. She is very similar to Angela, in that she fills the role of "walking assistant and encyclopaedia" however as we see in MOTWE, she's also part of a collective, the Gesselschaft, and we do know that when she is disconnected from it she becomes a person who is keen on learning and investigating for herself, and Dante's attitude to her is very encouraging, even while they're having their own private panic/anxiety attacks over potentially being stuck in a 20k+ year dimension with (based on what we know from Canto 4) no certainty that they'll be able to forget. That isn't so much a direct Faust-Ayin comparison as it is a Faust-Angela and Dante-Ayin comparison, but it's still worth bringing up. I look forward to her Canto.

Next we have Don Quixote, whose entire Canto was about breaking free of her dreams and delusions to see how things truly were, but also - more importantly - it's about how one person with good intentions can try to push them onto other people, regardless of how much it hurts those around them. Of how, even if those dreams of a better world were good ones, because Sancho was never fully able to say "hey, maybe this is gonna not work?" they weren't held in check, so they do untold damage. How Dad Quixote sees what the other bloodfiends do to him as a form of "penance," with the sheer amount of time he is kept pinned to the wheel causing him to lose faith in his original hopes and dreams, not fighting back because he recognises that he is the one who caused them to lash out at him in the first place. Sancho-Don being the one to regain her dreams that had previously just been delusions, this time with her eyes open.

This one... barely even needs me to point out, really, but both Sancho and Dad Quixote are echoes of how Ayin and Carmen's best intentions could and did hurt many people, trapping them in Lobotomy Corporation headquarters/La Manchaland, and torturing themselves for their own inability to see the problems they'd cause. Sancho also ends up having locked her now amnesiac self in a very small room for roughly two hundred years, much like Ayin locking his amnesiac self in a small office for ten thousand years, with neither of them fully aware of the length of time that's actually passed. Both of them also are traumatised by witnessing a horrendous massacre of their home; Ayin by the Outskirts Lab, and Sancho/DQ by the sight of what La Manchaland became, and then by having to kill her remaining family.

Next on the list is Ryoshu, and... we honestly don't know much about her past or motivations since her Canto hasn't released yet and we haven't had as much focus on her yet. She so far (given my recent re-watch and read through of an LP) reminds me of Binah, since they both enjoy bloodshed and violence - and Binah herself tells A that she sees them as similar kinds of people, able to perform atrocities by looking the other way.

If we look at Ryoshu's source material, going into headcanon territory, we can see that the character she's base don had a child, who died horribly. One has to wonder how that's going to play out in Limbus. The idea of a parent and child storyline does make me think of Ayin's relationships with both Enoch and Lisa (both of whom died), and also with Angela, however.

Meursault currently doesn't have his Canto yet, but the similarities are plain and easy to see; they are both taciturn people who may seem blunt and/or harsh, and don't really... know how to people. Meursault is pointed at by many as being autistic, just as I've stated way up back in my description of Ayin that he seems to me. At the start of the story, Meursault doesn't seem attached to anyone, and merely does as he is told and not a thing more, yet by Canto 6, he is willing to activate his own EGO without having been told to, for the sake of the people he has grown to care about. Meursault is a lesson in "just because someone seems cold and aloof, does not mean they do not or are not capable of care."

Hong Lu's Canto is coming up in just a short while (it's in sight!) but he's honestly currently closer to having comparisons to Daniel, or rather, Chesed. Both of them are rich Nest boys. Chesed states that as Daniel he could have made it into even A Corp - that is, the Head - and he chose not to. They both have the same breezy yet confident way of talking (which, funnily enough, Dante and Ayin's ways of talking about Chesed and Hong Lu are very similar), too, and a similar trauma-based "I am past the point of caring" mindset, which others have talked about on Hong Lu's side at length on better than I could.

Heathcliff is someone who follows one woman, believes in her, and is the one who inherits her will after she dies. He also finds out that the one who he's been following and placing his faith in has turned her home into a laboratory, her body (dead or alive) is the power source, and she has looked into a mirror showing her countless alternate worlds full of might-have-beens that drove her mad from the revelation. He distorts from the grief and despair, is called back, and fights his evil alternate self at least three times before finally ending it all, with her deleting herself. He then re-engraves his weapon to state "REMEMBER" and in a later Intervallo is seen having taken on the role of assistant researcher.

....More than half of that could have been talking about Ayin. It is also within Heathcliff's "area" (T-Corp, more than just his canto) that we have the monolith introduced (which induces Dante to half-distort), as well as Heathcliff's own distortion (which causes distorted Lobotomy Corporation logos and Carmen's face to flash on the screen). This feels... relevant!

[Image: flickering, slightly distorted image of Carmen lying on the grassy field from after having played through 6-34. Her eyes are open and bright red. It is - other than the flickering - exactly the same as we see on LC1 Day 48.]

Also relevant is that so much of Heathcliff's entire Canto is about the consequences of miscommunication (much like many parts of the original Wuthering Heights). Because in Lobotomy Corporation, a lot of the Sephirot's problems were caused by the same thing. Either Ayin or them refusing or being unable to communicate effectively.

Ishmael's references are beautiful, in that hers is the second Canto where Dante is really getting into their stride as the Manager. I find hers to be so freaking important, because during SEA Dante is faced with Ishmael's mood regarding them heading into the Great Lake tearing the group apart, and when she snaps and tells them that she'll obey their orders but no more and no less from here on, Dante is... well.

The entire situation surrounding Ishmael's Canto goes deep into, first: how easy it must have been for someone like Ayin to fall into the rut of not wanting to say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing, because Dante almost falls into that, starting from SEA and even leading right up into Canto 5.

[Thanks to Kitty for the doc letting me just find stuff rather than go through the cutscenes through theatre!]

This is something that Dante is having to struggle with and overcome through the duration of the Canto - what does it mean when you want to fit in, but you feel that no one around you feels the same way? What to do when your best efforts to try and help only make things worse? Do you give up and stay silent, out of fear, or do you keep pushing forward while following your heart, hoping that this next time, you can help even at least somewhat?

And then there's how Ishmael during the entire Canto, but especially during the dungeon, has to overcome how she has been following in her Captain's footsteps to the point that she can't even see her own path anymore. It's only by listening to Dante (who refuses to sacrifice themself, and who also refuses to ever give up on her) that she's able to change her target at the last moment.

Canto 5 ends with Ishmael having recognised that she had become the mermaid to Ahab's Pallid Whale, following forever in her footsteps... until Dante reminded her of how she could choose her own path. Much like how Ayin and the crew of the Outskirts Lab followed Carmen's wishes and dreams no matter how awful her ideas to follow through on it were, with Ayin only able to break out at the very last moments, the last few days, where he recognised where she was going wrong.

Rodya is one of the two who didn't really get a full deep dive, and yet (especially with TKT) we do get a lot to read into of her. She wanted to be the cause of change, and yet in spite of joining a group that advocated for people having better lives, they... mostly sat in their chairs and talked about stuff rather than doing it, and seeing Sonya's people seeming to be doing things when she left a long time ago is part of why she's not doing so hot right now.

From my notes: Just like Rodion, Ayin tried to do something to change the world around him, only to (effectively) make things worse in the short term. Rodion killed the landlady, who had ties to the Middle; Ayin took over a wing, but that led to the collapse of both L Corps, the stigma of all L Corp citizens, and many people suffering. 

Sinclair was originally just a normal Nest kid with well-to-do parents, who was led astray by a female classmate. He would be led further into the palm of her hand until she causes tragedy to strike, with the people Kromer had led into his home with his key having slaughtered his family. When he goes back to his home with the Sinners, he is finally able to face his past and his trauma, and become a more courageous person. Sinclair also has a male friend who tries to get him to follow the correct path back in school.

Personally, I find this easy to see as being the Carmen-Ayin-Benjamin effect, and we'll get back to that later.

Outis.... has not yet got her Canto, and given her military history it is almost certain that she was a participant in the Smoke War. In which case she would have known Ayin and/or Benjamin, no matter whether it's over the battlefield or in person. Given that she looks very similar to a character who should have known them, the latter seems more likely. She's also said some sus things on that.

I'm sure we'll get to know more about her as we go, but there was a moment during Canto 7 recently, where she's having a knee-jerk reaction to finding out that Don Quixote (read: Sancho) is actually a bloodfiend, and a lot of her objections are due to how many people Don Quixote must have killed. Partway through, it becomes clear that We Aren't Talking About Don Quixote Anymore, and Dante makes it clear that their support isn't just for one of them:

Outis "You don't know how many people she's killed by existing. will you embrace her still?" Dante <I will.>

Like, we don't know much about her for fact other than this so far (and she's started changing because of it since) but I feel like that assurance is going to come up for more than just Don Quixote and Outis. If nothing else, it's an extension of how in both Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina, countless people are sacrificed in the name of the "greater good" - or one person's quest for revenge, or their own desire - and each one of the people who spearheaded those projects (Ayin, Hokma, Roland, Angela) could have this same question turned on them only too easily.

Gregor is an outcast, created by G-Corp, who has Sephirot symbols on the fabric covering his arm, and who participated in the Smoke War (on the side of the old L-Corp, against Ayin and Hokma). While serving in the war, he was the figurehead of his group; however, he was just as much a pawn of the military as any of them... much like how Ayin sure seems to be the one in charge and someone for those he's in charge of to look up to... only for it to turn out that he's just as trapped as the other Sephirot, and he had just as many issues as those in the Outskirts lab.

So. The Sinners as a group are cohesively tied to extrapolating on plot points and the characterisation of either Ayin or someone Ayin knew on a very personal level. The other point being "they may even have known him during the Smoke War, give or take."

The Ayin Narrative continues. It isn't about "his story is over," it's about "how do we further explain who he was, and why he did the things that he did." Even if you don't believe that Dante themself is simply amnesiac clock-headed Ayin, these are immutable facts.

Which then takes us on to the other side of the Cantos: the Bad Guys. The Villains. Sometimes even just The Opposition, as there isn't always a clear Good vs. Evil here, and this time I'll be going more in chronological order.

Hermann is Gregor's mother, and she was the one who was the head scientist of the old G Corp, and the head of the current antagonist group in Limbus to the Sinners. She's the one who "trained" Gregor -and when he encounters her in his Fathoms of Ego, it's by way of the manicured hands coming down to crush them, which they cannot escape, to the point that Gregor realises that the only way out is to let her catch them. It's more metaphorical than we'd usually get, but - he truly does exist in the palm of her hand, wouldn't you say?

Rodya's enemy is, really, the Syndicates of the Backstreets, and the system itself - she tries to fight against it, only for it to come back and crush everything around her, leaving her alive. Which is much like the way the Head came down on the Outskirts lab, isn't it? That said,

Sonya, who she had fallen in with, also wanted to change the world... although unlike Carmen, he never (at least, while she knew him) was able to move forward with any of his plans, meaning that people continued to get crushed under the system while he waited for the right time. What is like Carmen, is that he wanted all of the good effects of activism without dirtying his hands himself (Sonya can't argue that he simply let Rodya do her thing, and Carmen outright left the hard work to Ayin when she knew she wouldn't have the heart to go through with it).

Kromer is a religious fanatic who sees humanity as at its purest form when there is only flesh, no prosthetics whatsoever, and will use absolute violence against "heretics." She also isolated Sinclair from the one who would have been a good influence on him, and she used whistling to call to him. She was very attached to Sinclair, and wanted to make him into her own image - as seen in the mirror Identity "The One Who Shall Grip - Sinclair."

Kromer is basically an entire reference to how in Library of Ruina, Roland calls Carmen a "cult leader." Both Kromer and Carmen wanted something that is an unrealistic standard (humans into monsters/humans without any accommodations for disabilities etc) and both have a younger male character under their proverbial wing, in the palm of her hand.

The "bad guys" in Canto IV are not so much a single person or "evil organisation" as they are the Wing and the System of T-Corp, the breaking down of the League of Nine Litterateurs, and then the former members of his friend group coming back, yet this time in opposition to him... just as the Outskirts lab would fold in on itself, before being sold out to the Head, and the Sephirot holding everything against Ayin while he was managing the abnormalities from his office in a time loop.

Ahab of Canto VI is, like with many others, the woman who is so charismatic that she pulls an entire group of people along with her, and although she tells herself that she's doing this for them, and that they're dying in "glory" they... really aren't, and she's driving them off the edge, pulling them along in fanaticism. Ishmael refers to Ahab as her own personal Pallid Whale, recreating Ishmael in her image of endless hatred and violence.

Although Carmen isn't as outright violent as Ahab, she's more... indirectly violent. She knows that the experiments are going to cause deaths, and she sets them up regardless. She draws people in, and stops Ayin from being able to discourage them if they aren't ready. She is the pallid whale to Ayin's mermaid, following after her and becoming just like her. It's only due to the Seed of Light project having his fingerprints at the end that saves him from basically becoming "Adam."

Cathy... is someone who has Carmen's "weak heart," who "dies" because she gains the notion that something has gone wrong (Enoch's death/Heathcliff's absence and misery), who orchestrates events behind the scenes by being the emotion-powered generator of the lab and entire building that she'd altered. Sound familiar? We even have similar imagery there, given we have "Cathy in the coffin" and "Carmen [as] the Bucket."

Canto VII has Don Quixote (no, not that one) and Bari, who aren't even villains, and the bloodfiends, who... okay, kinda are, but the bloodfiends are acting on instinct, having been starved for far too long. Bari is someone who encourages a person who suffers from ennui to have something to look forward to, day after day. She tells him that he suffers from a "sickness of loneliness." He then takes what she's said, and creates an unrealistic dream from it, without thinking of the consequences and without thinking of how to make it a realistic reality.

In other words, Don Quixote (no, still not that one) has a grand dream that causes far more pain than he ever intended, to the point that in both the main world we play in and the mirror universes, the bloodfiends of La Manchaland rise up against him, having been suffering because of good intentions. Just like how Carmen had a grand dream, and because of it caused both her immediate team and then after them untold numbers of people to suffer, and to die for it.

Don Quixote sent Sancho (yes, that one) out on a journey to prove to him that his hypothesis (that bloodfiends and humans can coexist, that Sancho can have a grand adventure and come back better for it) only for Sancho to utterly break as a result, since she couldn't hold all of that on her shoulders on her own... much like after Carmen told Ayin to carry on her work after she was gone, Ayin also utterly broke.

So - not only do we get to see all of these different refractions of Ayin, but we also get to see each one of them faced with a refraction of Carmen. A possibility, a different circumstance,

The end result is that Ayin and Carmen are the threads that keep the Project Moon stories tied together. It is outright impossible to remove either of them from the narrative in any way that matters.

And going back to the title of the entire post:

This from Walpurgisnacht. The dev team and scenario/scriptwriters are well aware of what they're doing. Telling the stories of people who are fucked up human beings who are capable of falling face-flat on the mud and then getting up no matter how long it takes, and breaking their cycles no matter if it's even at the very last moment they could.

And the story of a Manager who keeps on refusing to let their people walk the wrong path.

In the really short:

"So, it's all Ayin and Carmen?" "Always has been."

[mendessi]

things i say when you sleep | chapter six

multi chapter bodhi durran x fem!oc

word count: 3.5k

summary: Ania crosses the Parapet into the Riders Quadrant, and finally meets with the marked children of those who got her parents and brother killed. Bodhi Durran is quick to remind her that she's marked too.

tags: slow burn, friends to enemies to lovers, canon typical violence, mentions of death, she falls first he falls harder, majority canon compliant, some canon deviance, eventual smut, angst with a happy ending, additional tags to be added

AO3 masterlist

four | five | six | seven | eight

Things turned strange very quickly after Threshing. 

Between Violet's assassination attempt and Liam being moved into our squad (which I don't mind), everyone is growing testy as signets start manifesting amongst the first years.

"Until you control your anger, I will not channel," Gleigeal tells me. He's not wrong and I can't blame him. Every time I feel like I'm making any sort of progress, something sets me back and I have to start all over again. 

From my observations, there's also something peculiar happening between Violet and Xaden that doesn't have to do with their dragons being mated. I can't pinpoint exactly what, but I trust myself to figure it out soon. 

Training continues with Bodhi, and occasionally Liam when I end up in the gym at the same time as him and Violet. There's hardly any time for the mat anymore which is slightly disappointing. It's nice having him closer and despite Violet's temper tantrum over having him shadow her, he's fitting into our squad quite nicely. 

Things between Bodhi and I remain strictly professional. I meet him in the gym, we beat the ever-loving shit out of each other and don't speak except for when he lectures me on how to be better. Something in me still resents him for what he said to me the day after Threshing. 

You don't exactly make it easy to care about you.

He knows he shouldn't have said it and respects my right to be pissed by not trying to make me let him in anymore. 

Until he and Xaden decide to stop keeping me in the dark, then there will forever be a wall placed between them and my ability to trust them. 

Challenges resume and Ridoc and I are sitting next to each other on the bench when Jack finally challenges Violet. My stomach drops and I look at Liam as he goes pale. 

"Absolutely not," I'm quick to my feet. 

"No fucking way," Ridoc says as he rises to his feet. 

The three of us flank Violet as we accompany her to the mat and my heart is racing. It's no secret that Jack wants her dead, but the fact that this challenge was approved? 

"Tell me I can break the promise," Liam says to Violet and my eyes widen as I look at him.

"You knew?" My jaw hangs open slightly. 

Liam sighs and looks away from me and back to Violet. I'm shocked that he hadn't alerted Xaden considering if she dies on that mat so will he. The idea of Xaden dying makes my heart pound with anxiety. 

Ridoc and I share the same anxious glance as Liam sprints out of the gym with Violet's approval.

"I consider you a friend now, Violet. Do me a favor and don't make me grieve you," I say to her as she steps onto the mat. 

"A friend huh?" She looks back at me with a small smile, "How many months did that take?"

As the match begins, I'm hopeful that Violet will win. She's quick, and he's nothing but angry. He looks like how I feel, and the longer I watch, the more I see myself in Jack Barlowe. The thought makes me grimace, but it's slightly true. The only difference between him and me is that I put strategy behind each blow. He's just thrashing around, hoping he lands his hits. He has no plan, just one end game: kill Violet.

Your anger issues will get you killed.

I see the truth behind that statement at this moment. 

Anger can be a tool strategically used in battle, but it cannot be the key to winning. I'd been using it incorrectly. Letting it take over every inch of my being, so much so that sometimes I'd see red or blackout and not be aware of my actions til after the match. Anger is deadly if you let it consume you. 

Ridoc, Emetterio, and I all run to the mat in an attempt to tear Jack off of Violet. He's using his power and Violet looks as if she's about to pass out, but I'm sure if she passes out she'll die. Ridoc and Emetterio yank their hands back but I'm already on the move. The thought of Violet dying at the hands of Jack has me enraged and I grab his shoulder despite seeing Ridoc and Emetterio pull away in pain. I grab Jack's arm and pull back just as they had.

The pain is instant and I pull away, my arm vibrating with a throbbing power. I fall backward, but I'm back to my knees just as he releases Violet, his hands flying to his throat. Once he falls to the mat, I crawl to Violet, resting my hands on her shoulders. I can still feel the power lightly thrumming through her but I don't let go. 

"Breathe, Sorrengail, breathe," Ridoc says once he reaches us. 

I fall back onto my hands with a sigh of relief as Xaden and Liam burst into the gym. His eyes meet mine and I simply nod as he scoops her up into his arms and carries her out.

Two days later, I'm stretching on the mat in the gym waiting for Bodhi. He's annoyingly late which isn't typical for him.

"My time is valuable," I say when I hear the door open. When I look up I see Xaden.

I take a deep breath and stand up, placing my hands on my hips. 

"Good to see you, little Alistair," He says and my eyes follow his figure from the door to the edge of the mat. "Let's go for a walk." 

"Wingleader," I greet, the formality strange, "Where's Bodhi."

I'd barely seen or encountered Xaden in the past couple of months. I don't doubt that Bodhi updated him on my well-being since our training started. It made sense to me that Bodhi was my Liam. 

"Busy," He lies. "Let's go." 

This isn't a battle I'm winning so I don't bother arguing. I walk at his side as he leads me through the corridors of the main campus and eventually outside into the cold. It stings my cheeks and I have to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. We cross the courtyard and head toward the dorms. 

He opens the door to his room after unwarding and steps to the side to let me in. I stop in the hallway and give him a puzzled look.

"Why?" I question.

"Just get in the room, Ania." He sighs and again, I don't argue. 

His room is so much bigger than mine and rightfully so, he is a wingleader after all. He nods his head to the table in the corner and doesn't say anything as I sit in one of the chairs. He sits next to me and takes a deep breath.

"Why am I here, Xaden?" I ask, folding my hands in my lap. 

"I've been preoccupied with a lot of things and haven't done my best to be there for you," He says and I can tell it's hard for him to release the words. 

"I don't need you to be there for me," I sigh. "I thought we were past this. We're not kids anymore, I don't need you guys looking out for me." 

"I'm responsible for you," His hands are folded in front of him as he speaks. "Between you and Sorrengail, I'm stretched thin."

Liam and Bodhi had both told me that the scars on Xaden's back were his liability for all one hundred and seven of the Marked ones, including myself. It was hard to hate him after that, even harder when I remember what a huge chunk of my life he'd been a part of.

"I know that, but I'm not gonna betray Navarre or anything," I say. "If you get that impression from me then-"

"I swore to Beckett," He cuts me off, sitting up in his chair. "While he died in my arms, I swore to him that I'd keep you safe. I didn't know what that meant then, but it's different now. I am responsible for you and I've done a shit job at holding up my promise. I'm sorry." 

"That wasn't fair of Beckett to make you promise that while he was dying," I say and my eyes threaten to water. I never knew that Xaden had held him while he died. They were only sixteen, I can't imagine how traumatic that must've been. 

"He didn't make me do anything," Xaden sighs, "I made that promise. I made it because you are the closest thing I have to a sister and I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to you." 

His words sit on my shoulders and I look down at my hands as I try to process them. It takes everything in me to fight the tears.

"You showed up and I was thankful that you were here. That I could look after you now. But you'd developed this hard exterior and made it so hard. You're upset and you blame us for what happened that day, and I can't be mad at you for that," His eyebrows furrow and he leans back in his chair again, "We've thought about it a lot and it's not fair for you to be in the dark anymore." 

You don't exactly make it easy to care about you.

The promises Xaden made, he meant to Beckett. To take care of me and make sure I lived. I'd done nothing but act like a brat since crossing the Parapet when all he and Bodhi were trying to do was care.

"Xaden," My voice comes out as a whisper and I shake my head, "I'm sorry."

"You have no reason to be sorry," He says firmly. "You were just a kid, we all were."

"The wingleader is correct," Gleigeal says, "Your grief overcame everything else. You should not feel sorry for behaving in a way you believed to be right."

"The next meeting, you will be at. Promise." He says and I nod slowly.

"Meeting?" I'm confused. 

"Bodhi will touch more on it," He says. 

Xaden and I sit in his room for at least another hour just... talking. He asks about the family I was fostered with and if they treated me right. He questions me on just about everything from the day we were separated to the day he saw me cross the Parapet. I fill him in on the last six years and we even talk for a moment about a shared memory from Aretia. It's nice. It's like how we used to be, just grown up. I wonder what the younger versions of ourselves would think if they could see us now. 

Xaden walks me back to my room and stops in front of the door. 

"Thank you for talking with me Ania," He says and I nod holding my arm out. 

"I should be the one thanking you," I reply with a small smile as he grips my forearm. I do the same to him and a small smile tugs at his lips. The first one I've seen since coming here. 

As I lie in bed with my thoughts, everything seems so much clearer. Now, I just need to talk to Bodhi. I take a deep breath and look up at the ceiling.

"You learned valuable lessons this week, Ania," Gleigeal says and I nod knowing that he's right.

"Isn't that the truth," I sigh.

"You're ready," He replies. 

Squad Games approaches quickly and I feel just about useless without a signet. Just about everyone has manifested their signets except for Violet and I. 

I'm impatient as ever, wondering when my signet will manifest and if it doesn't will I die a brutal death like the other first years. There's one week until the first day of Squad Games and all I can think about how nice it would be to participate with a signet. 

Bodhi has been busy helping prepare his own squad for Squad Games, so our time has been limited. I admire his dedication from afar, I would never be fit for leadership. 

Ridoc and Liam just left the gym and I'm finishing up my stretching when Bodhi enters the gym. 

"You have time for me now?" I tease as I stand up, "I was about to leave." 

"You're in a good mood," Bodhi says as he approaches me. 

The usual anger I'd feel towards seeing him is nothing but a distant feeling. Ever since my talk with Xaden, it feels like there's a weight off my shoulders. 

I shrug my shoulders in response, "I can go one more round." 

He pauses like he's waiting for me to start an argument with him, "Really?"

"Yeah, why not? We haven't had time to talk recently," I pull my right arm across my chest to stretch my shoulder. Liam had me in a hold with my arm placed between my shoulder blades and it was still sore. 

"You want to talk?" He stretches his own arms out, getting ready for our mini-match. 

I get into position with my hands up as he does the same, "Would you rather argue?" 

"Who are you and what have you done with Ani Alistair?" He laughs as he steps onto the mat. 

We're on round three and I've put him onto his back each time. 

He's bouncing on his feet, taking a deep breath when I get into position again. 

"Do you remember those stories that Xaden's dad used to tell us?" He asks as he swings at me. 

"About the venin?" I almost laugh but duck under another one of his swings. I charge at him, my arms wrapping around his torso as I try to take him down. He shoves me off of him easily and I stumble backward. "They're why I was scared of the dark forever. You really wanna bring that up right now?"

"What do you think the world would look like if they were real?" He moves in on me this time and when I swing, he grabs my arm, spinning me around so my back is to his chest. His forearm crosses my chest as he holds me in place, the other on top of my head. He has me in a headlock and is standing still so I can get my way out of it. 

My hands grip his forearm and I maneuver my feet to try and free myself, "I don't know? Ugly and gray, probably." 

There was a time when I was convinced venin were real, but until now I honestly forgot about those stories. I believed in them because I had been wholly convinced that I'd heard my father say so at one of the secret meetings we'd caught our parents at. As I grew up, I realized that that was just a coping mechanism and I wasn't remembering the memory correctly. So many of my memories felt faded and foggy and I had a hard time dissecting what was real and what wasn't. 

"Why are you asking me this?" I manage to get my feet behind him and elbow him three times in the ribs. I grab his thigh and pull his leg out from under him, he's still got me in a hold so we both go down. He lets go of me and I sit up, one leg on either side of his waist as I pin his arms to the ground above his head.

"What did I tell you about this position?" He asks. 

"It's vulnerable, I know." I blow the hair out of my face as I look down at him. "Why are you asking me about venin?"

My brows furrow as I study his features. He always had a hard time lying to me when we were kids. One time I couldn't find Beckett and all I had to do was pout and bat my eyelashes and he told me that he was out hooking up with a girl. 

He sighs and lets his head hit the mat, "Fuck, Ani." 

"Tell me," I say insistently as I let go of his hands.

We're not kids anymore and I know that batting my eyelashes won't get any answers out of him. 

"I was just asking," He says and I glance down at where his hands rest lightly against the sides of my thighs. My breath hitches but I force myself to focus. 

I have reasons for the way I handle things when it comes to you, Ani.

I replay his words in my head and understanding is on the tip of my brain. His bringing venin up was intentional. 

"Think harder," Gleigeal says and it's the final push I need. 

All of the secret meetings, the dangers beyond the border, Navarre withholding information from the public. The reason Aretia wanted to secede. It's all in front of me now, clear as day. 

Fen Riorson was trying to warn everyone. My dad was trying to be on the right side of history and my mother would've rather let innocent people die. 

"Is it true? Did you know?" I ask down my bond. 

"That is something the Colonel and I disagreed on," He says and I feel nauseous.

My grandmother was a fucking traitor. 

She knew. Everyone in charge here knows. And they razed Aretia and killed our parents just so they couldn't share the truth. 

The attacks that we've been going over in Battle Brief.

"Oh my Gods," I whisper as I climb off Bodhi. I climb to my feet brushing the sweat off my palms on my pants as I take deep breaths. 

"Ani, wait. Let's talk about this," Bodhi reaches for my arm and I pull away from him, running a hand through my hair. 

"Talk about what? What is there to talk about? You're telling me that dark wielders are across the borders and there's nothing we can do about it?" I place my hands on my hips, trying to control my anxiety. I hadn't had an anxiety attack in so long, not since the first year after my parents died, but it was looming right now. 

"Keep your voice down," He says stepping closer to me. He puts his hand over my mouth and looks around to ensure we're alone in the gym. It's reaching curfew so we're the only ones left in here. "Come to my room, we'll talk there where it's safe." 

"No!" I scream and pull away when he reaches for me again. Anxiety crackles in my chest and my breathing picks up more. "They're all dead because-" 

The feeling slowly spreads from my chest, through my shoulders, and down to my fingertips and I realize it's not anxiety it's power. 

"Now is not the time to lose your control, Ania," Gleigeal says sharply but the panic fills me regardless. 

This is officially where my power backlashes and I am in no way ready for it. The mage lights behind Bodhi flicker but I hardly notice as I make my way back to the floor. I sit on my knees and close my eyes as my hands vibrate with power.

"Ani, no," Bodhi is on his knees next to me and he cups my face in his hands, "Breathe. You have to ground." 

I haven't cried since the day my dad died, but when his hands touch my cheeks I'm made aware of the stream of tears. 

Everything is a lie. We were sent off to this college as a punishment for our parents trying to expose the truth. And we were expected to graduate and go out there and fight this war and keep up the lie. Beckett is dead. My parents are dead. Venin are real. 

"Ground, Ani," Bodhi holds my face in front of his and forces me to look at him, "Focus. I'm right here." 

"You have to go," I whisper frantically as my hands wrap around his wrists.

I witnessed Ridoc almost get frozen to death when another first-year's power backlashed, I will not be the reason Bodhi gets hurt or dies.

"I'm right where I need to be," He says calmly, but I can see the worry behind his eyes. 

The power rattles my body as I cry out, my hands clinging to his tunic. 

"I'm right here, Ani," He says, one of his hands brushing the hair from my face. 

I see the strings of Gleigeal's power flickering in and out of my vision and I do my best to grasp them. I try to shape them into something, anything. The flickering of Gleigeal's power is slowly burning brighter and brighter and I fight to contain it. 

"It will be okay," He says down my bond but I can feel his worry, "Don't fight it." 

I follow Bodhi's breathing and ignore the glass shattering behind us. Bodhi pulls me to his chest, using his body to shield mine from what I'm not sure, but I hold onto him tightly, like he's the only thing that can save me from what's about to happen. 

It pounds against my skin and I stop fighting it allowing it to crawl its way out with a primal scream ripping through my chest.

Every mage light in the room shatters all at once. 

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tag list: @lynnieluvsu @sherlockstrangewolf

[schrijverr]

It’s my House. I Live There

Divergence from chapter 7, where the 118 gets a call to a very familiar house, causing Buck to panic as he realizes they’re answering to an emergency Eddie is having. His reaction to the call and Chris recognizing him, causes their marriage to be revealed.

On AO3.

Ships: Buddie

Warnings: medical emergency

~~~

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” Josh picks up as always, mentally prepared for anything.

Still, it’s never a good day when a young voice comes through the phone, saying: “My daddy, he- he fell down and he’s not waking up.”

Shit, that is not good. Josh puts on his gentlest professionalism as he starts typing, meanwhile asking the kid: “Can you tell me your name?”

“Christopher,” the kid replies. “I’m Christopher.”

“Hi, Christopher, I’m Josh. We’re going to get your daddy help, okay? Can you tell me where are?”

“Home,” Christopher says, before in a rare twist of luck rattling off the address. Most kids don’t know where they live, but Josh can’t know that Buck made sure Chris would, just in case something like this would ever happen.

While Josh continues to make sure Chris and whoever his dad is are okay and optimally taken care of so that when help arrives he’s still there, the alarm at the 118 rings.

As the 118 gets into the rig and drives off, Bobby tells them what they’re walking into: “Unconscious male, 25, fell down and isn’t waking up. He has a pulse and is breathing, but appears to have a high temperature. Call was made by his son, so let’s hurry, people.”

All of them tense at that last tidbit of information. Even though the kid is not in danger, it is never good when a child has to call in an emergency for their parent, because that is fucking terrifying for a kid to go through. But it also must be a very young kid going off the age of the parent.

Buck fidgets nervously. He hasn’t been with the 118 for long and is still trying to find his own footing, both in the team and in the work. A medical call hasn’t been his area, but it’ll be good training, he supposes.

Maybe he can help with calming the kid, Chris has made him good at that… Not that anyone here knows that though. They’ve all been nice so far, but Buck doesn’t know if he wants to share. His life at home is fading more and more as Eddie recovers and soon he won’t have it anymore. Does he want to face the humiliation of sharing it when it’s not even his to keep and it’ll be gone soon? Won’t it be easier to keep this a little closer to his chest, to ignore his reality for a little longer?

He tries to shake the thoughts off. They’re answering to an emergency, he needs to get his head in the game. He can have a crisis about his life later.

When he forces himself back into the present, he blinks to find familiar streets outside the window. An apprehension fills his chest as he remembers the details from the call. Right now he curses that he still struggles with listening to the call alongside the alarm, because a horrid thought takes root in his brain and he can’t shake it.

“Uh, what was- what was the address again?” he asks, voice cracking without his permission. A part of him doesn’t want to know, but he has to.

Everyone gives him a weird look and Bobby repeats the address. Buck’s address.

The air gets sucked out of his lungs and a pit forms in his stomach, pulling in all his life force as he feels momentarily weakened. Before his eyes flashes a thousand horrible possibilities that they’re about to walk into, making him feel like he is going to pass out.

“You good, man? You know the place or something?” Johnson asks, brow furrowed in concern as he does.

Buck faintly nods, barely managing: “It’s my house. I live there,” before they pull up to his porch, Eddie’s truck still in the driveway. He doesn’t stick around to see the shocked expressions, instead flying out of the rig like a bat out of hell.

Hen and Chimney are unloading the stretcher from the ambulance, having missed the exchange in the rig, when Buck comes running by. The two of them share a confused look, before hurrying after Buck into the house. Neither of them want to be responsible for the probie making things worse and both wonder if they missed new information over the radio that would cause Buck to react like that.

When they get into the house, they’re not prepared for finding Buck on one knee next to their patient, checking his vitals.

Meanwhile the kid they’d been informed would be there, has his arms around Buck’s neck, sitting on his propped up knee as he buries his head into Buck’s shoulder. Buck hugs him close, rubbing his back with his free hand.

It’s a bit too close than standard, but they didn’t see him come in and Buck is new. However, they have to share a look when they hear Buck mutter: “Come on, you son of a bitch, open your eyes.”

Hen puts the medical bag down while Chimney ushers Buck to the side. She half expected him to put up a fight or something with how eager he seemed to be here and the words he’d just spoken. If this is what he is going to be like on medical calls, they might have to reconsider if he can complete his probie year. Period.

She is surprised to find that she would be saddened by that fact. Despite how new Buck is, he has been a pleasant addition and she knows those can be rare to come by in this field, so if it turns out he can’t be professional on medical calls and they might have to let him go, that would suck. It’s not his usual behavior either, so she hopes it might be a one off and they can keep him.

The thought has barely entered her brain when Buck’s unusual behavior explains itself. Because as they check their patient over, Buck says: “He has a shoulder injury that he’s still recovering from, but there is still shrapnel in there. He was fine this morning, just tired, but that could be cause of his meds.” Then he lists of the medications the man unconscious on the floor is taking.

With his words, they realize that Buck knows this person. That he knows him well enough to be able to list his medical history, current ailments, his medication, fucking hell, he knows how he was feeling this morning.

“He’s burning up, I think he has an infection,” Chimney says, having checked their patient while Hen got out the equipment to get some fluids back into him, a neck brace just in case. He fell, but they don’t know how he landed.

They quickly work to get the brace on, while Bobby and Johnson pop their heads in too. Hen notices them looking around while her and Chimney work. She can’t blame them, this is very much not where she thought Buck would live. Because this is, in fact, where Buck lives.

She spares a glance around too as they lift up the gurney and start moving to the ambulance as they work. She notes the quaint living room with bookcases and a comfy couch, as well as pictures on the wall showing the man on their gurney along with the kid and Buck.

While Chimney pushes the gurney, she performs a sternum rub on their patient and he thankfully startles awake. As he blinks he mutters: “Wha happened? Where’s Chris?”

“You passed out, because you’re a dumbass who didn’t tell me he was feeling sick,” Buck tells him, coming to walk alongside the gurney with who she gathers is Chris on his hip, since he leans a little so the patient can see him. “Chris is fine. Called 9-1-1 for you when you didn’t wake up.”

“Daddy,” Chris exclaims, clearly very relieved to see his dad awake again after what must have been a terrifyingly long wait.

“Oh…” the man blinks guiltily. “’m sorry. I thought I was fine.”

Immediately the concerned sternness melts away as Buck’s expression softens. “No need to be sorry, Eddie. You just scared me. And Chris.”

“It was really scary,,” Chris nods in agreement.

“I am so sorry, mijo. Promise I’m okay,” Eddie says as they load him in the ambulance and Chimney drives off with the sirens on.

“Maybe let the doctors decide that,” Buck interjects, before carding a hand through Chris’s hair and assuring him. “But I’m sure they’ll agree. Daddy is a bit of a dumb dumb, but he’s strong, like you, so he’s going to be just fine.”

At that Chris smiles broadly, the worried little frown he’d had earlier disappearing entirely.

Hen gives the kid a fond look. He seems like a sweet kid and it’s clear both of his parents care a lot about him. It is a bit of a shock to classify Buck as a parent, since he seems pretty young to have a kid Denny’s age, but he has picked up the responsibility well despite his age.

However, now is not the time to contemplate this, so she turns to Eddie and says: “I’m going to check your shoulder now. Can you tell me how you’re feeling?”

Eddie is feeling a little cold and achy despite his temperature and his shoulder definitely looks red and puffy, irritated. Fuck, that is an infection indeed. Hopefully it won’t turn into full sepsis, because if it goes wrong, Eddie could be loosing that arm.

“Chimney, drive fast. Could become sepsis,” Hen says, glancing over at Buck when she shares the news because she knows Buck will know what that means.

Indeed Buck’s face is a little pale, as he tries to keep Chris entertained and distracted. He doesn’t let his worry show beyond the blood that leaves his cheeks and the way he reaches out to grip Eddie’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly as Eddie gives a similar expression back.

The quiet in the ambulance, which is made more poignant by the loud sirens right outside it, is interrupted by Chris going: “What is this for, papi?” as he points defibrillator.

Buck explains what it is to Chris, who looks at it curiously, expression mimicking one she has seen on Buck in the past. The atmosphere is a little weird as they watch Buck desperately try to be normal while also clearly wanting to freak out and worry about Eddie, while Eddie half falls asleep, getting woken by Hen sporadically.

She can’t imagine how Buck must be feeling right now and she gains a new respect for him with how level headed he manages to be despite the circumstance. She has no clue how she would have reacted if they pulled up to an emergency and she found out it was Karen, with Denny right there on the scene with her.

Maybe more crying. Though, Denny would always be a priority, she knows that. For Denny’s sake, she’s sure she could keep the freak out at bay.

All of them are relieved when they get to the hospital and even though they normally don’t follow patients through the glass door, this time they do.

Hen holds out her arms for Chris, letting a grateful Buck deposit the kid in her arms with a quick kiss to his head and a promise he’ll be right back. Then he runs after the nurses and doctors, telling them all he knows and probably getting sign in papers. Eddie is moved up the line, which is never a good thing in an ER and she hopes he’ll be okay.

Chimney softly tells her he’s going to call Bobby, figure out what to orders to pass along to Buck when he comes back out. She nods at him to go, guessing that Bobby will let Buck go for the day, so it’s more a question if either of them can stay behind to keep him company while they wait on the news.

However, she doesn’t need to worry Chris with any of that, so instead she smiles at him saying: “Hi, I’m Hen. You were really brave, calling for help for your dad.”

“Thank you,” Chris says in a tiny voice, before he asks: “Is he- Is he going to be okay? He didn’t look so good.”

They’re not allowed to make promises, but she doesn’t have to be negative either. “Your dad made it here really fast and the doctors are going to make sure he’s well taken care of, yeah? He’s in the best hands there are.”

That seems to cheer him up, which is good. Though now his attention is elsewhere, asking: “Where did papi go?”

His curiosity makes Hen smile. He certainly gets that from Buck, she thinks, before she answers: “He has to tell the doctors about what happened so they can take care of him well. It’s important that they know everything, so they don’t give him something that he can’t have.”

“Like when I had to take an allergy test because my meds made me itchy and then I didn’t have to take them anymore?” Chris ask.

“Uh, yeah, like that,” Hen replies, a little taken aback by how candidly Chris talks about that. Though, on second thought, maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s clear he asks a lot of questions and with what she has seen, his dads aren’t the types to not answer them.

“That makes sense,” Chris informs her.

“I’m glad it does,” Hen says with a smile.

At that point, Chimney joins him, holding out his hand as he says: “Hi, squirt, I’m Chimney. Good to meet you, kid.”

“Chimney is a silly name,” Chris giggles, while Chimney squawks in mock offense.

It’s nice to see him being able to laugh after what was surely a scary experience. And when Hen is the first to spot Buck coming out of the ER doors again – looking a little like he’s been run over – it is clear he agrees. His whole expression changes into a relieved exhaustion, tears welling up in his eyes.

She watches as he swallows the tears down and plasters on a grin, taking Chris back in his arms with a happy: “Hey, if it isn’t my Superman. Come here. God, I’m so proud of you.” He nuzzles his nose in Chris’s hair, taking a deep breath.

“Papi,” Chris half-laughs, half-complains. “That tickles.”

“Oh? Does it tickle?” Buck smirks, nosing Chris’s hair more, while the boy giggles.

“Ahh, papi!”

“Alright, alright, I’ll stop,” Buck smiles, dropping a kiss on Chris’s cheek and holding him close for a moment, before he relaxes his stance. “We forgot your crutches, little man, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, papi,” Chris assures him, patting his back in a way that is a clear imitation of an action that has been done to him in the past. It makes Buck smile, though that smile dims somewhat when Chris asks: “Where is daddy?”

Both Chimney and Hen hold their breath, having watched the previous interaction with fondness, but now also curious for news. It’s not often they get to know how their patients end up.

Buck maneuvers Chris so he can look him in the eye as he says: “Daddy is with the doctors. Remember when you had to go to the doctor and they made you feel better? They’re doing the same for him. We just have to wait. You know why?”

“Because people waiting for you is good luck,” Chris says, as if reciting something. It hits Hen that with Chris’s CP he’s probably been in hospitals before and that’s something they told him to make him feel better, making the moment more touching.

“That’s right,” Buck nods with a smile. “So we’re going to find a spot in the waiting room and call tía Pepa so she can bring us some stuff, like your crutches and art supplies, while we wait for daddy to get better, yeah?”

“Okay,” Chris nods.

Buck looks over to Chimney and Hen for the first time, his expression caught between apologetic and uncertain as he says: “Uhm, I- I know I still have half our shift left, but could you maybe-”

“Kid,” Chimney interrupts him. “I already called Bobby. You’re off today and tomorrow. Go wait for your husband. Text us updates on how he’s doing and take care of yourself, okay?”

“Thank you, thank you so much,” Buck tells them gratefully, surprising both of them with a hug, before telling Chris to say goodbye and thank you.

With that behind them, the two of them make their way back to the ambulance. Hen is a little saddened that they can’t stay, but she gets it too. Their house is already slightly understaffed, they can’t really miss one person, let alone two. Still, she hopes Buck and his family will be okay.

Back at the firehouse, everyone surrounds them, asking if everything is okay and how Buck was doing, which they try to answer the best they can.

None of them had seen this reveal coming with the way Buck presents himself here, but Hen gets it. He hasn’t been here for long enough to fully gauge everyone and the LAFD is a space where there is also a lot of toxic masculinity.

She knows she’s a green flag for their house, but if Buck didn’t want to say, she isn’t going to judge him for it. It’s totally fine to want to be closeted, even if it’s an accepting environment. Maybe he likes to keep work and home separate, despite his oversharing tendencies.

But the cat is out of the bag now. There is no coming back from everyone standing in your living room as you comfort you son and swear at your husband to wake up. All Hen can do is press home not to ask questions unless Buck shares first. Just ask how Eddie and Chris are doing, don’t prod.

After hours of all of them continuously checking their phones when not on calls, their group chat chimes with a notification.

The message from Buck reads: Eddie is okay. More shrapnel removed and on antibiotics. Thank you all, also from Eddie and Chris.

He goes radio silent again after, but they don’t mind. He’s had an emotionally exhaustive day and they’re just glad to hear everyone is alive and well. It must have been scary for Buck too. So, they just reply with their relief and more well wishes, letting him be for now.

When Buck’s next shift rolls around two days later, all perk up as he enters the building. His eyes are tired, but he seems okay as he joins them at the table for their family meal.

“Hi, everyone,” he greets them. He pulls out a few drawings handing Chimney and Hen one and putting a third one on the table. “These are from Chris. As a thank you.” Then to Bobby he adds: “Uhm, I also want to thank you for giving me yesterday off.”

“Of course, kid. You needed to be with family,” Bobby says.

Buck blushes a little and nods gratefully, but stays quiet beyond that. There is something about his demeanor that Hen can’t really place, but like she told the others, she isn’t going to pry. If Buck wants to keep details about his family to himself, then that’s his right.

Before anyone else’s curiosity can win out, the alarm starts ringing again. As they all jump into action, Hen hopes it’ll be a more impersonal call. They’ve had enough family emergencies to last her a good time.

~~

A/N:

Shout out to honeyblooms on tumblr, who send me an ask with the idea of Eddie being hurt as a reveal, because it was a blast to write! Thank you :D

Also yes, I did not add in the whole Buck explaining everything bit, because I thought it would be a little funny for him to not really know how to bring it up after he gotten free to look after his husband, his family. So instead of his main verse shenanigans he is now stuck in this lie xp