#Fast learning modules

[maxlearnmicrolearningplatform]

Transformative Growth with MaxLearn: The Ultimate Tool for Effective Training

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations must continually adapt and enhance their workforce's capabilities to remain competitive. Traditional training methods often fall short in engaging employees and delivering lasting results. Enter MaxLearn, a cutting-edge microlearning platform designed to drive transformative growth. This platform is fast, fun, and effective, offering a unique approach to learning and development that goes beyond mere completion rates and revenue metrics. In this article, we will explore how MaxLearn delivers training ROI by focusing on both tangible and intangible elements, such as recall and retention of knowledge, skills, and capabilities.

The Power of MaxLearn

MaxLearn stands out as an ultimate tool for driving transformative growth due to its innovative features and learner-centric design. Here are the key aspects that make MaxLearn a game-changer:

Fast Learning Modules: MaxLearn delivers content in bite-sized modules that are quick to consume and easy to digest. This approach caters to modern learners' short attention spans and ensures that training fits seamlessly into their busy schedules.

Engaging and Fun Content: The platform leverages gamification, interactive quizzes, and multimedia elements to make learning engaging and enjoyable. By transforming training into a fun experience, MaxLearn boosts learner motivation and participation.

Effective Knowledge Retention: MaxLearn's microlearning methodology focuses on reinforcing key concepts through repetition and interactive elements. This helps in improving recall and retention of knowledge, ensuring that learners can apply what they have learned in real-world scenarios.

Personalized Learning Paths: The platform offers personalized learning paths tailored to individual learner needs and progress. This customization enhances the relevance of the training, making it more impactful and effective.

Comprehensive Analytics: MaxLearn provides detailed analytics and reporting tools to track learner progress, engagement, and performance. These insights enable organizations to continuously refine their training programs for maximum effectiveness.

Training ROI: Beyond Completion Rates and Revenues

While traditional metrics like completion rates and revenues are important, they do not capture the full impact of a training program. To truly measure training ROI, organizations need to consider the benefits and business impact of intangible elements such as recall and retention of knowledge, skills, and capabilities. Here��s how MaxLearn excels in delivering comprehensive training ROI:

1. Enhanced Knowledge Recall

One of the primary goals of any training program is to ensure that learners can recall the information when needed. MaxLearn’s microlearning modules are designed to reinforce key concepts through repetition and active engagement. By breaking down complex topics into manageable chunks and incorporating interactive elements, MaxLearn enhances knowledge recall.

Real-World Impact: Enhanced recall means that employees are better equipped to perform their tasks efficiently, make informed decisions, and solve problems effectively. This translates to improved productivity and performance in the workplace.

2. Improved Knowledge Retention

Retention is another critical aspect of training ROI. It’s not enough for learners to simply understand the material; they must retain it over time. MaxLearn’s approach to learning ensures that information is not only understood but also retained.

Long-Term Benefits: Improved retention leads to long-term benefits for the organization. Employees who retain knowledge are more likely to apply it consistently, leading to sustained improvements in performance and a reduction in the need for retraining.

3. Skill and Capability Development

Training programs should focus on developing specific skills and capabilities that are relevant to the job. MaxLearn’s personalized learning paths and interactive content are designed to build these skills effectively.

Enhanced Competence: By developing relevant skills and capabilities, employees become more competent in their roles. This competence boosts confidence, job satisfaction, and overall performance, contributing to the organization's success.

4. Employee Engagement and Motivation

Engaged and motivated employees are more likely to embrace training and apply what they’ve learned. MaxLearn’s fun and interactive approach to learning enhances engagement and motivation.

Positive Work Environment: High levels of engagement and motivation contribute to a positive work environment. Engaged employees are more committed to their roles, leading to lower turnover rates and higher productivity.

5. Adaptability and Continuous Learning

In today’s fast-paced world, the ability to adapt and continuously learn is crucial. MaxLearn promotes a culture of continuous learning by providing ongoing access to relevant training materials.

Organizational Agility: An adaptable workforce that values continuous learning is more agile and capable of responding to changes in the market or industry. This agility gives the organization a competitive edge.

Implementing MaxLearn for Maximum ROI

To fully leverage MaxLearn’s capabilities and achieve maximum training ROI, organizations should follow these best practices:

1. Align Training with Business Goals

Ensure that your training programs are aligned with the organization’s strategic goals. Identify the key skills and knowledge areas that will drive business success and focus your training efforts on these areas.

Example: If improving customer service is a strategic priority, develop microlearning modules that enhance communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and product knowledge.

2. Engage Learners with Interactive Content

Use MaxLearn’s interactive features to create engaging content that captures learners’ attention and promotes active participation.

Example: Incorporate gamified elements such as leaderboards, badges, and point systems to motivate learners and encourage healthy competition.

3. Personalize Learning Paths

Tailor learning paths to individual needs and progress. Use MaxLearn’s analytics to identify areas where learners may need additional support and adjust the training accordingly.

Example: Provide additional resources or alternative learning modules for learners who struggle with certain topics, ensuring that they receive the support they need to succeed.

4. Monitor and Evaluate Progress

Regularly monitor learner progress and evaluate the effectiveness of your training programs. Use MaxLearn’s comprehensive analytics to gather insights and make data-driven decisions.

Example: Track metrics such as completion rates, quiz scores, and engagement levels to identify trends and areas for improvement.

5. Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning

Encourage a culture of continuous learning by providing ongoing access to training materials and promoting the importance of lifelong learning.

Example: Create a library of microlearning modules that employees can access on-demand, allowing them to learn at their own pace and revisit content as needed.

Conclusion

MaxLearn offers the ultimate tool for driving transformative growth through effective training. By delivering fast, fun, and engaging learning experiences, MaxLearn ensures that employees not only complete their training but also retain and apply what they’ve learned. Measuring training ROI goes beyond simple metrics like completion rates and revenues; it’s about understanding the benefits and business impact of intangible elements like recall and retention of knowledge, skills, and capabilities. By leveraging MaxLearn’s robust features and following best practices for implementation, organizations can achieve comprehensive training ROI and foster a culture of continuous learning and development. Investing in MaxLearn is not just about enhancing training programs; it’s about empowering employees, driving business success, and ensuring long-term growth.

[fictional-worlds-are-exquisite]

after a lot of muttering under my breath focusing really hard on my screen i suddenly gasped and went 'MY FINGERS ARE VOWELS' so that's how my night's going

[meleeyz]

ekko enemies to lovers? literally metal flowers was SO! GOOD! where reader is a pilte and she goes down with cait and vi in s1?

┈﹒ ꒰ 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗧𝗧𝗬 𝗣𝗜𝗟𝗧𝗜𝗘꒱

ekko 𝒙 fem!reader

୨୧ English is not my first language, so I'm sorry in advance if something reads strangely or is poorly written.

୨୧ Hello darling! Maybe this isn't exactly your idea (?), but I thought it would be fun to have a tension-filled conversation when the reader is supposed to be... you know, kidnapped. Tell me what you think! I'm also glad you liked the metal flowers one-shot 💞💞

୨୧ THANK YOU VERY VERY VERY MUCH FOR THE SUPPORT, THIS IS THE FIRST REQUEST I HAVE AND THAT MAKES ME VERY HAPPY, YOUR NICE COMMENTS ARE ALSO GREAT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH AGAIN 💓

₊˚ ✧ ‿︵‿୨୧‿︵‿ ✧ ₊˚

It all happened too fast: Vi shouting warnings, the blue-haired lunatic and her sick laughter had been the least of your problems.

And now you were here, restrained in a damp, dimly lit room, the sack over your head smelling of grease and mildew. Caitlyn’s muffled voice called for you, distant and strained.

You tugged at the ropes binding your wrists to the chair, teeth gritted. The door creaked open, and hurried footsteps approached. The sack was pulled off. A Vastaya man loomed over you, his bat-like ears curling inwards as he studied you for a moment. Then, wordlessly, he left, closing the door behind him with a resonating clang.

Blinking against the sudden light, you glanced around, your gaze landing on someone seated across the room. He wore an owl mask, his posture lazy yet somehow threatening.

Your stomach churned. You’d seen him earlier—watching from the shadows as Silco’s men attacked. He hadn’t intervened then, just observed with unnerving intensity.

“Got something to say, or are you just going to keep staring?” you snapped, your voice sharper than you intended.

The masked figure tilted his head, amusement evident in the way he leaned back.

“Staring at people like that? Kind of counts as harassment, you know,” you continued, forcing a smirk despite the pounding of your heart. “But hey, let me go, and we can settle this properly. I promise I’ll be… kind.”

The voice that responded came distorted through a modulator, low and mechanical. “You should learn to take care of that mouth. If it weren’t for the other two, you’d already be dead.”

Your eyebrows shot up, and despite yourself, you let out a sarcastic laugh. “Oh, I see how it is. Big bad owl man is bothered by my mouth? Then why didn’t you just kill me outright?”

His laugh echoed back at you, though his tone remained clipped. He stood, his figure tall and imposing as he stepped closer.

“Believe me,” he said, his voice dripping with mockery. “It was tempting.”

You tilted your head, meeting his gaze—or what you assumed were his eyes—through the owl mask. “Oh, I’m trembling,” you deadpanned. “What a scary owl.”

His movements stilled for a moment, the tilt of his head indicating surprise. You pressed on, determined to keep the upper hand in this strange game.

“Let me guess,” you said, smirking again. “Sitting around in a mask all day makes you feel tough, huh? What’s next—dramatic monologues about justice?”

He chuckled, stepping even closer until he was towering over you. “You’ve got guts. I’ll give you that.”

“Oh, please,” you shot back, craning your neck to meet him. “You think this is guts? I just call it basic survival.”

For a moment, silence filled the space between you, tension crackling like static. Then, slowly, he reached up, his gloved fingers curling around the edge of his mask.

Your breath hitched, the weight of the moment sinking in as he pulled it away.

The first thing you noticed were his eyes—sharp, golden-brown, and filled with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. His features were striking, all sharp angles and raw intensity but softened.

You blinked, momentarily speechless, which was enough to make him laugh again. This time, it was unmodulated—rich and almost boyish, a stark contrast to his earlier demeanor.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, his grin wide. “Cat got your tongue?”

Your mouth opened, then closed as you struggled for a response. The sheer absurdity of it hit you like a freight train. For all your mother’s warnings about suitors back in Piltover, none of them could hold a candle to him.

And, of course, he knew it.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said smugly, stepping back.

You clenched your fists, suddenly grateful for the handcuffs keeping you from doing something you’d probably regret.

“Don’t look so smug,” you said finally, recovering enough to glare at him. “You still kidnapped me, remember?”

“Kidnapped?” he repeated, feigning offense. “Rescued is more like it. You’re lucky I was watching.”

“Lucky?” you shot back. “You’ve got a twisted sense of gratitude.”

“Stick around. You might just learn something.”

You scowled, your cheeks warming despite yourself. The silence stretched, thick and heavy, as you sat there under the sharp gaze of the boy—no, young man—in the room. But his attention was no longer casual. His gaze was razor-edged, appraising.

“Enough games,” he said finally, his voice steady, though it carried an undertone of curiosity. “What do you know about the hextech gemstone?”

The question hung in the air, and for a moment, you were caught off guard. Hextech? You wracked your brain, recalling snippets of overheard conversations.

“It’s… like an energy booster,” you said hesitantly, your brows furrowed. “Anyone can use it to build pretty much anything. Something about it being ‘limitless potential’ or whatever.”

Ekko tilted his head, clearly not expecting you to be so forthcoming.

“You just told me, just like that?”

“Why not?” you replied with a shrug. “You didn’t kill me, which is already better than everyone else we’ve run into today. If you’re not trying to gut me on sight, you can’t be that bad.”

His laugh came low, warm, and rough, as if you’d surprised him again.

“You’re either really brave or really stupid.”

“Bit of both,” you admitted, flashing a quick smile “So, what’s next? We keep playing twenty questions?”

He chuckled dryly, though his next words were serious.

“Alright, let’s talk about your friends. What’s their deal? And what’s your relationship with the Enforcer?”

You clamped your mouth shut, trying to suppress the laugh bubbling in your chest. But the harder you tried, the more it broke free, until you were shaking with quiet.

“Enforcer?” you finally choked out, wiping the corner of your eye with your shoulder. “Caitlyn’s more like… I don’t know, a girl playing dress-up as an Enforcer. Her mother would die if she let Cait face real danger.” You tilted your head toward him, smirking. “Like this.”

Ekko raised an eyebrow, waiting for you to finish.

“Oh, and don’t leave the lovebirds alone too long,” you added, voice dripping with mock seriousness. “It seems like Cait’s taken a liking to the pink-haired one.”

That earned another huff of laughter from him. His gaze lingered on you, sharp yet tinged with reluctant amusement, as though trying to figure out whether you were always this reckless or just putting on a show.

“Alright, alright. My turn. That’s how this works, right?”

“That’s not how this works at all.”

“Sure it is,” you shot back, leaning forward as much as the restraints allowed. “If you were a conventional kidnapper, I wouldn’t have said a word. You’d have had to torture me for information—and, frankly, I don’t think you’d do it. Too soft.”

Ekko’s brow twitched, though he said nothing.

“Anyway, this isn’t a conventional kidnapping, right?” you added, your grin widening.

For a moment, he studied you, clearly debating whether to humor you. Finally, with a resigned sigh, he gestured vaguely.

“Fine. Ask your question.”

You leaned back, feigning nonchalance.

“What’s your name?”

He hesitated.

“Ekko.”

“Ekko,” you repeated, testing the name on your tongue. It suited him. “Alright, Ekko. Next question.”

He crossed his arms, his brows lifting in mock exasperation.

“I said one question.”

“You really need to loosen up,” you teased. “I want to learn how to ride that hoverboard of yours. That thing looks incredible.”

His lips twitched, but he kept his expression neutral.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah,” you said. “My wrists are starting to hurt. Being handcuffed is not exactly comfortable, you know.”

Ekko sighed, dragging a hand down his face, though you could see the faintest glint of amusement in his eyes.

“Pretty Piltie can’t handle a pair of handcuffs? I’ll free you when the time comes.”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes.

“Don’t push it.”

“When the time comes,” he said again. “I’ll free you.”

“Ekko!” you called after him, frustration bubbling to the surface. “You can’t just—hey!”

He didn’t stop, didn’t even glance back. The door creaked open as he stepped out.

Outside, Scar leaned against the wall, his arms crossed and a bemused look on his face. He watched as Ekko adjusted the straps of his owl mask, preparing to slide it back into place.

“Something on your mind?” Ekko asked, his tone sharper than intended.

Scar raised an eyebrow, glancing toward the door where you were still yelling.

“Didn’t realize we were starting a dating service for Pilties now.”

Ekko shot him a glare, the owl mask concealing the faint flush creeping up his neck. “What?”

Scar smirked, shaking his head. “Nothing.”

With a sigh, Ekko adjusted the mask, his thoughts lingering on the strange girl tied up in the other room. A rich Piltie liking him? The thought was… well, distracting.

But he pushed it aside. There was work to be done.

“Where’s Vi?” he asked, his voice low.

Scar gestured down the hall. “Waiting.”

Ekko nodded, his mind shifting gears as he prepared for what would undoubtedly be another tense conversation.

₊˚ ✧ ‿︵‿୨୧‿︵‿ ✧ ₊˚

[superdillin]

That Time I was on Adventuring Academy

Ok it's a clickbaity title but I've been thinking a lot about where I was in this moment, and who I am now, and what an ENORMOUS difference there is, a verifiably ocean between moments.

We can get the obvious differences out of the way like:

my name

my gender

my camera situation

all of which have improved drastically I must say.

When I was asked to do this I had published my first game supplement ever, Neverland: The Impossible Island. And I LOVE it still. For what it is, it was a killer first project. A fully playable D&D setting for JM Barrie's Peter Pan setting, Neverland. Concept and execution, I did a pretty decent job.

Gang, I was SHITTING myself during this entire interview. And I don't really even mean just because Brennan was someone influential to me, someone I didn't know at all at this point, but I was new to interviews and being on a public platform too. I was even still new as a performer, which I would confidently say is my strong suit now. I was being held together by adrenaline. Now, it's kind of hard for me to watch myself stumble through that. I've come like...an exceptionally long way since then.

And I have more to say now than I did then. Brennan introduces me so kindly as a game designer but truthfully I wasn't yet! I had written a module for D&D, and that's all. Fine, and fun, and I did a good job - but I've learned so much and experienced so much and I have so much knowledge and love and feral, unabashed passion for games now that I wish I could tell this past version of me about. I get to share that now, every single week, on One Shot - introducing people to new games and beautiful artists.

What I care about in this industry has also grown and shifted. Back then I was still fighting my way through the horde of misogynists to create space as a seemingly feminine person in the hobby by getting my mits all over their favorite franchise (D&D).

Now, I want us free from corporate fast food games, I want people to see the magnificent iceberg of art and exploration and humanity that games have that we can experience. I want designers who are paid to create their own art, not serving a corporation's image for pennies. I want to radicalize this hobby against the colonialism and transphobia and imperialism that snuck into all it's roots.

Anyway I'm SO proud of who I've become and where this moment has led me and for how far away it seems. I've lived and I have grown and I've become someone I'm even more proud of.

((oh and one final aside - this was one of the most professional experiences I ever had, from not just Brennan but everyone who set things up behind the scenes. That also taught me a lot about what was acceptable and what was not, going into future, often less good, interviews. ))

[reasonsforhope]

"A young entrepreneur is using 3D printers to create cheap school campuses in rural Madagascar.

It takes just $40,000 and 18 hours to build a “Thinking Hut,” as they’re called, and founder of the project Maggie Grout is aiming to get the cost even lower before handing the reins over to local professionals.

GNN previously reported on Maggie Grout’s idea in 2021 during the pandemic. It was then that she and a San Francisco architect came up with the idea of making them honeycomb-shaped so that additional modules could be added seamlessly.

And indeed, the first completed campus is called the “Honeycomb.”

Madagascar is one of the most challenging places in Africa to develop, but also the most opportune owing to a lack of any armed conflicts and a government welcoming of foreign workers.

But extreme poverty, lack of infrastructure, terrible roads, and a delicate, priceless natural ecosystem all pose challenges to anyone seeking to implement large-scale development projects.

Instead, Grout brought her 3D printers over in a single shipping container and has now printed a school in the town of Fianarantsoa, a city in south-central Madagascar with 200,000 people.

“From that first project, I really learned how to streamline the logistics,” Grout told Fast Company. “I learned how to put together the supply chain when there’s not a lot of locally available materials. And then I learned how to work in harmony with the local people.”

Local people are the key—lack of institutional presence in rural areas means that almost any economic activity has a foundation built on years of trust between community individuals. When foreigners come in, building trust is often the biggest challenge to getting a project off the ground in Madagascar.

However, from the onset, Grout said she wanted to rely on the locals as much as possible. During the first project, she learned how to best manage a team of cross-cultural partners. She used local people to install traditional windows and doors, and worked with the Madagascar Ministry of Education to bring in teachers.

“We do think through the holistic collateral impacts of what we’re doing,” Grout says. “We’re really just aiming to be a stepping stone for [the community] to be successful on their own… We don’t want them to be dependent on us.”

Her long-term goal is to establish Thinking Huts in many different countries."

-via Good News Network, June 9, 2023. Video via 60 Second Docs, July 18, 2022

Note: A bit older but still good - and still ongoing! This year they started a formal partnership with the Madagascar Ministry of Education and are working on a new campus, The Honeycomb Project.

[gormengeist]

WHAT HAS GORMENGEIST BEEN UP TO

It's been a while since I talked about game things. I even missed GREED's one year anniversary- but worry not, Thanksgiving is coming up, which is (obviously) GREED's cardinal holiday, so we will do something for that. But in the interest of throwing you all a bone, I want to start talking about my million games in progress, one at a time. Starting with the most finished:

ALL THE ACES

I've already talked about ALL THE ACES a lot, but not for a while! It's a detective noir game inspired primarily by post-war detective fiction like The Third Man and Gravity's Rainbow. The reason I'm excited for it is that I believe TTRPGs are the most energetic medium for a mystery to be in, when done right.

ALL THE ACES borrows GREED's basic mechanics, combat, and overall attitude that the players are scum waiting to be scraped off the heel of the world. The initial impetus for making ATA at all was that I found GREED's system (and especially it's combat- fast, swingy, and deadly) uniquely suited to the sort of mystery stories I wanted to tell, where talking things out was a necessity for survival, and threats of violence are Scary

ALL THE ACES is, as a core rulebook, done. Or at least it's releasable. The thing that I've been dragging my feet on for literally ten months now is writing/finishing its opening mystery module. Anyone who knows me knows that modules are the only part of TTRPG design that does not come naturally to me, and indeed, I find it incredibly irritating. But you can't release a mystery game without a mystery, so some day, I will buckle down and finish it, then release the game.

What I mean when I say "done right" in terms of detective games is that it adheres to three tenants of mystery TTRPG design that I hold to, and have been effective in my experience. Below the cut, design thoughts:

1: The players must intimately understand what is possible. For ATA, this means that there are no supernatural elements.

Magic in a mystery game is only awesome insofar as the players are intuitively aware of how those elements work. In other words, I can't make good deductions if I'm not sure what the bounds of possibility are. There is enough impossibility and uncertainty in mundanity, I think, to run on.

This isn't to say that no good detective game has magic, but that it works best in a game that can first immerse its players in the magic (while not doing detective stuff, long enough to really steep in it) and then drop the pop-quiz, which is what a mystery is! It challenges your knowledge about the world, who is in it, what they want and what can't be done. ATA attempts to smooth this learning curve; We already know how real life works, and this is like that but different.

2: Talking is the action.

This is the thing I'm most excited about. In a noir story, the most tense moments, the biggest payoffs, and the best actions are not gun fights or chases, but conversations. This is the one thing that we, at the TTRPG table, are literally doing. Even when we are are fighting in-game, we are talking in real life. The game is already a conversation. ALL THE ACES wants to give you ammo so that in the main action, it can step back, so you can just talk.

3: You can't do it all (or: there is never enough time).

It is dramatic to split the party, to ask escalating questions, and to fail. So there's a clock, and unless we do something stupid, we are never going to figure this thing out in time. A leisurely mystery is just something you're curious about.

Anyways. All The Aces coming.... eventually!

[haveyouseenthisskeleton]

Hello ! I just discovered your blog, and it's sooo good ! I am also French, so I'm happy ! I just want to ask : what king of voice the skellies have ? I'm really curious about it !

Thank you! Glad to see other Frenchies around! We're at least 4 in this community now lmao.

Undertale Sans - He has a nice deep voice, but he doesn't talk very loud, except when he laughs, where he's actually incredibly loud and makes you realize that Papyrus and him are really brothers. He never raises his voice, even when he's angry. It's all in the tone. He can be super warm and friendly just as extremely cold and distant if he wants to.

Undertale Papyrus - Loud. So so loud. Papyrus is extremely expressive and screams when he's happy or excited. Other than that, he has two voices. The one to impress people, being silly and showing off (even though not a lot of people are actually impressed), and the casual voice for his friends and family, where he's actually a lot more calm and natural. Papyrus rarely gets angry (he plays around when he's falsely angry, but never when he truly is), but when he is, people usually never want to make him angry again. Papyrus can be awfully terrifying when he's mad, and well, it reminds some people that even he can have bad days sometimes, and is not forced to be everyone's funny guy. It's still really rare.

Underswap Sans - He has a pretty deep voice, like Sans, but he can modulate it to sound less deep. He actually doesn't like talking too deep, because it's aging him. He prefers an energetic and very expressive voice. He still uses the deep voice when he fails to get the attention he asks, or when he's mad. He's definitely using the deep voice to flirt too. He loves flirting.

Underswap Papyrus - A bit like his Undyne, he tends to stutter on words. He often struggles to make himself clear, and he often sounds like he's not taking anything seriously when really, it's just his anxiety speaking. He's usually silent and even has days where he's non-verbal at all because he's too stressed. He never raises his voice either, which often causes people to ignore him in conversations, because he's scared to say what he wants to say, or scared he's going to mess up. He has a comforting voice though, and when he feels safe, he is definitely talking a little more to show he cares, especially when he's exciting about something.

Underfell Sans - He has a deep deep voice and a hell of an accent. He lost a lot of teeth Underground, so he struggles to make some sounds. And since he's lazy, he tends to abbreviate complicated words so he doesn't have to say them. It's usually hard to understand him at first, but everyone gets used to it at some point because he's a charmer and knows how to play his cards right. He's swearing and cursing a lot, even when he's happy, and even around children. He can't help it, it's entirely in his language. He can sound very scary when he's mad though. It's mainly a bluff to send people away because honestly, he can fight small monsters and drunk humans, but definitely not the big ones, but he likes to scare the people he likes too sometimes because he loves being a pain in the ass.

Underfell Papyrus - His voice is very annoying. He's a lot louder than classic Papyrus, and he has no chill. He gets angry or frustrated very fast, and when he's angry or frustrated, he immediately raises his voice to keep control of the situation. Like Red, it's total bluff, because he learned really small that the scariest you look, the more power you have over people. He tries to control it, but old habits are hard. However, it's easy to understand him, because he talks actually really well, sometimes with an elitist vocabulary. His old instructor in the Royal Guard said that being strong is nothing if you can't make a suspect talk, and he kinda beat him and the other soldiers up until they learned to talk like distinguished people the King could present in important meetings. So yeah, he's more educated than people can think, which doesn't stop him to curse and swear in a very familiar language when he's talking with Undyne or his brother. You definitely don't want to see him furious though. Edge was not nicknamed the Snowdin's Tyran for nothing. He's truly terrifying when he's really really mad.

Horrortale Sans - Talking is hard, so most of the time, Oak prefers animal-like sounds as answers. People understand him like that, so why bother? After Undyne almost killed him, Oak stayed in a coma for half a year. When he woke up, he lost the most basic skills. He didn't know how to eat, how to walk... And how to talk. Willow had to find a way to make his memory work so his old knowledges come back, but for almost two years, Oak couldn't talk. And obviously, it left some sequels. It's mostly why he's more animalistic than his old safe. Walking on all four was easier, just like growling like an angry bear to show displeasure. Even years after, Oak is mostly silent. When he talks, it's always very slow as he tries to not mess up his words. The fact that he tends to forget what he was saying in the middle of his sentence is definitely not helping though. So usually, he prefers to write when he has something big to say, as it's easier to focus on his notebook. At least, you know when he's happy because of his very deep loud tractor noise purr.

Horrortale Papyrus - His voice is similar to his old self, but he had a hard time Underground, mainly because of how painful his damaged teeth were. He had the brilliant idea to try to eat rocks when he was too hungry, but it damaged his teeth. Undyne breaking his jaw during their last encounter for sure didn't help to fix the problem, as for a long time, talking was very painful. With a lot of patience and a lot of work, dentists managed to ease the pain, and so he feels himself again (even though not really, as Willow dissociates completely from his old self. He struggles not to imagine that old Papyrus was actually him at some point :( )

Swapfell Sans - He talks like an English aristocrat. Mainly because he is an aristocrat. Even if he was dumped in the streets at a very young age, he became the Queen's favorite fast and she kinda mothered him until he got educated enough to talk like a future monarch. Well, for sure, maybe that should have trigger him sooner that she wanted him to be her heir, but he had other problems at the time. Nox is really good at arguing with people, and he definitely has a deep nice voice that helps to get to the point. He has a very rich vocabulary and sometimes talks like an old man, which never fails to amuse Rus, who is teasing him to death. It's hard to change his mind when he decides something though. He rarely gets angry or frustrated, as Toriel taught him to stay calm whatever how bad the situation is. I like to imagine him a bit like Levaï in Attack on Titans, but a little less vulgar, even though he can insult people (always with class though, you'll never hear him say shit or fuck).

Swapfell Papyrus - Unfortunately, he didn't have his brother's education, and even if Nox tried desperately to teach him, Rus decided he wanted to do things his way. Rus' voice is... something lol. You're not sure what his voice really is actually, because he can mimic every tone, every voice, every animal sound, that's his little superpower. He's super good at mimicking people, and so he tends to use a lot of voices all at once, depending on the situation. He's insolent, he's cursing and insulting a lot, and he will definitely push topics until you show him clearly you have enough. He never sounds mad, even when he is, hiding everything behind his humor, which usually turns cold or dark when he's angry. Rus is actually not too sure who he is really. He spent too much time playing roles, and he's not sure which voice is the real him anymore. He still has a long way to recover from all the abuse Underground, but he's not sure if he wants to heal yet, it scares him. So for now, humor and provocation is his best defense against everything.

Fellswap Gold Sans - His voice is always gentle and nice, but with a you're not sure what that doesn't sound right. Wine is an excellent negotiator and by extension a very good manipulator. Words are strategy and he uses them with care to get what he wants, even if it means sounding insensitive and careless. Wine takes the longest time to warm up, that's why he doesn't have very good luck in his love life. He's rude, brutally honest and doesn't hesitate to say when something is bothering him. A bit like Nox, he's definitely an aristocrat and talks like such. He's very proud of his education and learned really early that words have as much power as weapons. He's extremely dangerous because you can never tell when he's angry or not. And usually, when he is, you notice it when it's too late.

Fellswap Gold Papyrus - He has only two moods: very enthusiastic, sounding almost childish, and getting overexcited over the little things, and complete panic when someone is meeting his eyes and wants to talk to him. Coffee struggled to make himself understand since he was a kid, mainly because Wine never left his side and kinda translated everything to the other people. But that comes with consequences: he lacks the basic social skills to hold a conversation as an adult. He is always scared to say something wrong and gets usually completely paralyzed when he can't control the situation. When it happens, he switches to being nonverbal. He knows sign language, and he's actually more comfortable talking like this with his favorite people. He panics less when he doesn't have to use his voice.

[anim-ttrpgs]

hi

i'm not going to get into it in your inbox but i've been dealing with some worsening chronic pain this year and the way eureka goes about this stuff (both grievous wounds/literally and monsters/metaphorically) is nice to read. thanks

all the snoops are sooooo cute. i was going to try and name a favorite here but i genuinely can't i love them all. what delightful little creatures

Thank you! Chronic pain is one of the things that I myself suffer from too, since (topically) my medical insurance refused to cover any treatment besides some X-rays and two chiropracty sessions after I got hit by a car going about 60mph. I’m very lucky that I can still walk and even do some martial arts when what’s left of my upper back allows.

One of the reasons that the Grievous Wound mechanic in Eureka is the way it is is because I wanted to represent how humans are both very fragile and very resilient. An injury much less severe than what i went through can make a person’s body never quite as strong/fast/coordinated as it used to be, but also most things in life do not necessitate a person to be at the very peak of their physical potential, not even investigating mysteries.

Also thank you about the snoops! There are some I like more than others, but I really can’t pick a favorite either.

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[theidiotwhowritesthings]

A Fresh Start [6]

Din Djarin x F!Reader

Warnings: angst, but with like immediate follow up comfort, medical trauma? if you’ve ever been blown off by a doctor in the office and that frustrated you then be forewarned

Word Count: 5,119

Summary: When  you made plans for your future they never involved being hired by a   Mandalorian to baby-sit his adorable, green gremlin of a child.   However, after your life fell apart in the span of one disastrous  night,  you found it to be the only feasible option you had left.  Nevarro was a  far cry from Coruscant, but the thriving community turned  out to be  exactly what you needed. Every day you spend in Nevarro you  fall more  and more in love with your new life, but when your past rears  its ugly  head you find that perhaps peace wasn’t meant for everyone.

Ch. #06: TRIKAR’LA, BUIR!    

Chapter Summary: Grogu goes to the doctor, and the Marshal decides he might need to murder said doctor. You get comforted by your boys.

 "Watch carefully,

 the magic that occurs,

 when you give a person,

 just enough comfort,

 to be themselves."

 - a t t i c u s

Nevarro didn’t have a large hospital. It had an emergency center and a clinic for routine appointments. Anything that couldn’t be healed or cared for within a day got transported to a nearby settlement on a neighboring world. Luckily, the transport time wasn’t very long, and Nima told you that the travel there wasn’t intense. The High Magistrate had worked out a deal to keep it that way.

Coming from a Level One Trauma Center on Coruscant, the office was shockingly puny. A simple two story building with emergency services on the first floor and routine medical care on the second. You had learned ages ago that the size of a medical center didn’t correlate to the kind of care a patient could receive. Some of the best physicians you’ve worked with came from smaller hospitals. You had no criticism there. The only thing that made you nervous was not having the kind of resources a Level One hospital would have. Coruscant had spoiled you in that sense.

For what had to be the hundredth time since leaving the station, you glanced over at Mando who walked right beside you. He held Grogu in his arms casually chatting with the boy. Grogu responded in a mix of Mando’a, Basic, and gibberish. It was painfully cute watching the Mandalorian interact with his son. Every inch of him screamed danger and intimidation, but the tender voice leaving his helmet’s modulator was nothing but soft and loving.

“Is something wrong?”

It took you a second to realize Mando was talking to you. “Hmm?”

“You keep looking over at me.”

You were getting pretty decent at reading Mando’s body language, and weirdly you could tell the difference between his head tilts. All of that, yet you still had a bad gauge on how far he could see out of his peripherals while wearing the helmet.

“Oh, er,” You scrambled for a response, “No. Nothing. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong. I was just checking on you.”

You opened your mouth but stopped yourself when you realized you were about to apologize for apologizing. Instead, you tried to steer the conversation away from your staring. “Do you know how many doctors work in Nevarro?”

“Not enough.” Mando replied. “Three rotate on the schedule right now, I think. Karga is still trying to recruit more, but until Nevarro really makes a name for itself it’s a hard sell.”

“It’s pretty impressive so far.” You motioned around to the clean and cheerful street surrounding you. “And growing fast.”

Mando nodded and your lips curled up in a smile as you watched him allow Grogu to crawl onto his shoulder and cling to his helmet. He kept one hand up just in case the child slipped. “Yes, but as always, it comes down to credits. Karga spent a lot to get this place built up. Doctors are expensive.”

“True, but if you’re gonna spend credits anywhere healthcare is a good bet.” You shrugged. “There are doctors out there who’ll take less pay to work somewhere rural. I⏤” You stopped yourself and at the sudden halt Mando glanced your way. You had nearly told him you once considered working in a rural setting. It hadn’t crossed your mind in ages, since before the incident, but you didn't think twice before nearly blurting it out. You cleared your throat. “I knew someone. From the clinic I worked in. They were specifically looking for a job somewhere rural.”

Mando nodded. “Maybe you should send their frequency number to Karga.” You forced out an awkward chuckle. “For now though, we have Bacta and cautery. You could probably find e-bacta if you asked the right people.”

“Spoken like a true bounty hunter.” You teased.

Mando let out a laugh and began to wrestle Grogu from the makeshift jungle gym of his shoulders and helmet. The clinic had come into view and you felt a ball of nervous energy begin to form in your chest. This wouldn’t be your first time in a medical facility since that night, but it would be your first time going willingly. All this morning, you hadn’t thought about it. You didn’t think this would bother you at all, but staring at the building now your mouth was becoming dry and your palms clammy.

The weight of a hand on your shoulder startled you, and your head snapped to the side to see Mando facing you. Nothing about his helmet looked concerning, but you could feel the worry radiating from him. “I’ve been calling your name. You didn’t answer.” Grogu hummed in his arms and tilted his head. “Are you sure everything is okay, cyar’ika?”

“Yes. Just...zoned out.” You tried to find an excuse, but nothing was coming to mind. So, you went for the next best thing. Topic change. “What does that word mean?”

“What?”

“The word you called me. Uh, ‘shar ekah’?” You repeated it best you could, but the word was always spoken so swift and softly that it was hard to remember the exact pronunciation. Saying ‘buir’ had been much easier.

Mando’s hand fell from your shoulder and his entire body went tense. You furrowed your eyebrows at his reaction. He let out a soft cough, and now it seemed like he was the one searching for something to say. Your distraction had been successful. However, now you were very curious as to what he was calling you. Mando didn’t seem like the type to secretly be calling you ‘dumbass’ all the time.

“It’s nearly 2.” He blurted. “We don’t want to be late.”

“Right!” You nodded. As curious as you were, you’d happily accept any advancement of this moment. Anything to avoid him asking you what was wrong again. He passed you to enter the building and you took in one last shaky breath before following.

The clinic’s waiting room was filled with children. This office saw patients of all ages, but with school starting up next week it seemed most families were doing exactly as Din was⏤ getting his child ready for day one. The schedule was running late so despite it being nearly half an hour past the appointment time, Din sat in the waiting room right beside you. Grogu had wiggled out of his lap to run around the room with other kids around his age. It made him nervous at first. He wanted his son to have friends to have fun to not ever feel left out, but the anxiety of him not fitting in was painful. You had reassured him that everything was fine, and you had been right. Grogu squealed and laughed as he played with three other kids.

Din was leaning back in his seat, hands clasped over his abdomen and ankles crossed, in an attempt to look as casual as he possibly could. The truth was the opposite. Din couldn’t stop peering out of the corner of his eyes at you. Luckily, the helmet made it a lot easier for him to hide his actions unlike you. Din was still worried about you. It was obvious something was making you uncomfortable, and he had been determined to get to the bottom of it. Until, of course, you innocently asked what ‘cyar’ika’ meant. That had thrown him.

The first time he called you ‘cyar’ika’ it had been entirely accidental. You had been hesitant about asking him questions about himself, and he didn’t want you to feel that way. In his reassurance the word had just slipped out. Since then, it fell out a lot more. Often by choice. Din liked the way it sounded when he was referring to you with it. He liked that every time it left his lips, you’d turn to give him attention with your pretty smile.

Technically, the answer shouldn’t be embarrassing to him. The best translation of ‘cyar’ika’ was ‘darling’ or ‘sweetheart’, but that didn’t necessarily mean it had to be used in a romantic setting alone. It was a generalized term of endearment. He could’ve said that. Din’s problem was that he knew, deep down, he didn’t feel just a ‘generalized endearment’ for you. Din was much too attracted to you to pretend it was said with any other connotation.

His panic hadn’t helped his situation. Din spent his entire life being trained for a fight. He was taught from a young age that panic led to mistakes and mistakes led to death or worse. It had been ingrained into every single cell of his body to the point where staying calm was a muscle memory for him. It didn’t take a conscious decision. It was his default, and that default was half the reason he was so successful as a bounty hunter. Despite all of that, all it took was one innocent look from you⏤ one simple question⏤ and he melted into a pathetic puddle.

Din glanced your way again. You sat ramrod straight in your seat, shoulders tense, and your fingers were tangled together in a vice grip. He wasn’t sure how you weren’t hurting yourself holding your hands together like that. Whereas his entire body sat casual, though a farce, yours screamed stress. His own hands came unclasped as the urge to touch you in reassurance overcame him. Din managed to resist and instead crossed his arms in hopes that this position would better control his instinct.

“I haven’t been to a doctors office in a while.” You blurted. The sound of your voice had his head snap to look at you in a nearly comical speed. You were watching Grogu play while you spoke in a whisper. “I guess I’m just nervous. It’s stupid.”

“How you feel is never stupid.” Din replied. He shifted so he sat up rather than leaned back. “You didn’t have to come with us. If I had known—”

You chuckled, “I know. You wouldn’t have made me. I think you might be a little too understanding for a boss.” Din swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. That was true. Kriff, if you knew any of the thoughts he had you’d consider him the worst boss in this world— maybe in the entire Outer Rim. “I wanted to be here. For Grogu and— and you.”

“I appreciate that.”

“It’s no big deal.”

Din disagreed. You were acting against an active fear you had for him and his son. That meant a lot to him. He knew the kind of strength it took to press onward into a setting of discomfort.

“Can I ask why?” Din asked. “Why haven’t you been to a clinic in a while?”

You shrugged and your gaze drifted down to your hands which you began to wring together. Din stayed silent. He was content with giving you all the time in the world to respond. Finally, you looked up to meet his gaze. You smiled and your words came out jokingly, “Nobody likes doctors.”

“Still important to go now and then.”

“Uh huh.” You tilted your head at him, smile growing impish. “And when’s the last time you saw a doctor? Mr. Big Bad Bounty Hunter?”

Din’s lips curled up in amusement. He loved that you were comfortable enough to joke with and tease him. He shook his head. “I have bacta and a cautery at home. Those don’t require me to sit in a waiting room for 45 minutes.”

“Fair point.” You chuckled. “Bacta and cautery do have their own faults, you know.”

“Like?” Din asked. He didn’t really care about the faults of either, but if this distracted you from your nerves he’d play along. Plus, the sound of your voice was like music to his ears. He’d sit and listen to you read the instruction manual for a caf machine without complaint.

“Well,” You began, your shoulders beginning to relax, “Bacta is incredible. No doubt. Society called it a medical miracle and they weren’t wrong. It’s only as good as the person using it though. If the wound isn’t cleaned right or debris is left inside when the Bacta is applied then everything gets trapped inside as your tissue heals. Plus, if it’s already an internal issue Bacta can’t target that. It does nothing for fever control or symptom management.” Din could tell you were getting into the conversation because you twisted in your seat to face him. “If you use Bacta on a fracture, but you don’t set it right then it heals wrong. If you mess up the measurements in a Bacta tank or the settings are wrong it can ‘overheal’ a person which just means a person’s tissues and cells rejuvenate and are reborn so fast that it floods the body. Those excess cells wreck havoc and turn to tumors wherever they land.” Din let his eyes shamelessly trace your features. This was the first topic, other than Grogu, that he had seen you get so excited about. You pointed at him with a mocking grin, “And don’t get me started on a cautery gun.”

Din chuckled, “And what exactly is wrong with my cautery gun?”

“You’re essentially creating a wound to fix a different wound.” You scoffed. “It’s great for stemming blood loss and destroying infected tissue, but between infections and scarring⏤”

Din leaned toward you, a confident tilt to his head, “I’ve never had a cautery induced infection.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

You twisted your lips, amused, and he shifted so he was as close to you as he could manage in the separate chairs. You shook your head. “Fine. You, Marshal Mando, are the one exception of the system. Congratulations.”

Din let out a breathy laugh, and he wondered what it would sound like to hear his name spoken in your voice. The beeping of his communicator made you alter your position in the chair so you were back to where you had started. Din did the same and resisted muttering the curse words bouncing around in his head. Looking at the screen he saw it was Cara. Dank farrik. She’d only call if it were actually important.

He accepted the call and Cara started talking without preamble.

“Mando, we got pirates. Mayfeld and I are on our way to the tarmac where a group of them are causing trouble, but Karga said a few were spotted by the school.”

This time he didn’t hold back the curse that came to mind. Din turned to look at you and you gave him a reassuring nod. “Go.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Din stood.

“We’ll probably still be in here.” You motioned to the waiting room.

Din reached out to squeeze your shoulder and on his way out told Grogu to behave.

Kriffing pirates.

Mando had been an excellent distraction. You had never been a fan of pirates at baseline, they were always the worst to deal with when they stumbled into the hospital in Coruscant, but now you really hated them. You tried to focus on Grogu who was still playing with a different set of kids as the ones he had been with before got called back to be seen. Before they left, you had actually exchanged a few frequency numbers to set up play dates at some point.

“Grogu?” A nurse poked her head out of a door.

He dropped the blocks he was holding to perk up at the sound of his name. Still in a playful and active mood, Grogu wanted to walk on his own rather than be held so you walked by his side as you both followed behind the nurse.

She went about taking vitals and getting some more information before leading you back to a simple room. You sat down in one of the two chairs in the corner, by the exam table, and let Grogu bounce around the room to burn off his excess energy.

“You are gonna sleep so good tonight.” You chuckled.

“No sleep. No.” Grogu chirped. “No, no.”

That was quickly becoming one of the kid’s favorite Basic words to use. You glanced up at the clock on the wall to see it was about an hour after your appointment time. Understaffed clinics got backed up, it happened, and you understood that better than most. You felt bad for the poor physician running around the office today. You were actually hoping you’d have to wait a bit longer though.

Mando wanted to be here for this, to be here for his son, and you hated that the damned pirates got in the way of that. If you could swap roles with him and handle the pirates so he could stay here with his son you would’ve. Unfortunately, that would’ve been messy for every single person involved. You didn’t have an extensive history doing well in a fight, and the only kind of blade you knew how to use was a scalpel. You’d never even held a blaster before.

“Skraan!” Grogu called out.

You shook your head. “We just ate lunch, buddy. I think we have some snacks left.” You dug around the baby bag you had packed for the day and found the container of star shaped cereal puffs you had put together this morning. “Here we go.”

Grogu bounced over to you happily and held his hands up to you. You dropped a few stars into his palms and watched him eat them one by one. He’d explored the room while eating the stars and would only return back to you for more stars. That became the routine for the next ten minutes and by then you were out of star shaped snacks.

A knock at the door startled you. “Come in!” You placed the container into the bag and motioned for Grogu to come sit on your lap. “Hi. I’m⏤”

“This is Grogu?” The man interrupted your introduction. He was older, you’d guess in his late sixties or early seventies, and was human. Thick gray hair covered his head and it matched the thick mustache above his lips.

“Yes. We’re here for⏤”

“Let’s see, school registration check up.” He read off the holopad in his hand. You shifted in your seat, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance, and bit back a snarky reply. “We’ll get some blood for lab work, give the usual booster shots, and get you on your way, yeah?”

You held Grogu’s hands, skeptical, “I was actually hoping⏤”

“There’s no need for⏤”

“Please stop interrupting me.” You snapped. There was nothing you hated more than not being able to get a thought out. Maybe you’d have more patience for it if you hadn’t spent all your training being looked down at for being a young woman. You couldn’t count the number of bloated attendings you worked under who were just like the man in front of you. The doctor stayed silent but you could see annoyance on his features. “Who are you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“When you came in, you never introduced yourself.” You said but paused before saying more. This wasn’t a hospital you had any sort of credentialing in. That meant if you wanted anything done, you were gonna have to stroke an ego. You cleared your throat and shook your head. “Sorry, I’m sure it slipped your mind with how busy you are today. I bet they have you running all over the place.”

The man chuckled. “You aren’t wrong. My name is Dr. Daelar. I am sorry about the wait time. I was caught in a different procedure room for the last hour doing a cryoablation of some skin lesions.” You resisted the urge to scoff. Doing cryoablation correctly took five minutes tops. Doing it insanely, incorrectly could maybe stretch it out to ten. You didn’t appreciate the excuse because you knew it was a lie. “As I was saying, we’ll draw some blood and get those booster shots going.”

“Thank you. We’re actually going to be forgoing the blood tests, and I was hoping you’d take a listen to his lungs.” You replied. Over lunch, Mando had explained that he wasn’t comfortable with anybody drawing blood from Grogu. He hadn’t explained the exact reasoning, but you gathered it was something from their tricky past. Even with your back to him, you could tell the topic made him mildly uncomfortable. “He’s had this night time cough I’ve noticed⏤”

Daelar shook his head. “That’s not wise. I strongly recommend the blood tests.”

“Okay.” You drew the word out. “Thank you, and I appreciate your thoughts on the matter⏤”

“These aren’t my thoughts, these are the facts.” Daelar interrupted again. “Blood work should be checked routinely for chronic illnesses. He needs this done.”

You didn’t know if Grogu could tell that you were in a bad mood, but he began to squirm and whine in your lap. He turned around and pushed up on his tip toes so he could bury his face into the crook of your neck. You scooped him up to hold him closer making the action easier.

“I understand the benefits of routine lab work, and I understand the risks of refusing.” You said as calmly as you could. If this was about legal issues then you’d say the magic words that he could type in his chart and waive all liability off himself. “That being said, we’re still refusing a blood draw today.”

Daelar scoffed and shook his head. “You’re being unreasonable. As a first time mom it’s understandable to be nervous and jittery, but it’s no reason to put your son at risk.”

Oh, you really didn’t like this man. Karga had somehow managed to hire a physician that represented everything wrong with healthcare. Nice. Between the bullying and assumptions, that would be enough to piss you off alone. Add the stress of being in a clinic after so long? You really had no chance of getting out of this without losing your cool.

“You’re not drawing labs on Grogu.” You snapped.

Daelar shook his head and shrugged. “Then I don’t know if I can clear him to start school.”

“Blood work isn’t necessary for school registration. Just the boosters.” Your voice began to raise.

“Ma’am⏤” He began once more but a solid knock at the door interrupted the interaction. A nurse poked her head in one second later and Daelar snapped at her. “We’re busy in here.”

“Sorry, sir. The child’s father is here.”

Daelar smirked at you. “Good. Perhaps, this will settle the matter at hand.”

The nurse slid out of the room and was replaced by Mando. You took in the sight of him, unharmed and unmarred, and a wave of relief washed over you. If dealing with the pirates had led to a fire fight then Mando came away with no obvious injuries. Mando’s helmet tilted just a bit and you could feel his eyes on you in the same way you had looked over him. His shoulders stiffened marginally, his stance still intimidating, and you wondered if your anger was notable. You rubbed Grogu’s back soothingly.

“Oh. Marshal!” Daelar greeted. “I had no idea this was your son. I⏤”

“What’s wrong?” Mando walked over to stand beside you, ignoring Daelar entirely. He rubbed Grogu’s head and let his hand trail from his son’s head to rest on your upper back. The way he stood beside your seat nearly blocked Daelar from your view.

You lifted your chin to stare up at the T-shaped visor. “Dr. Daelar has been adamant about a blood draw despite my very clear refusal.”

Mando turned around and his hands drifted to his hips. Daelar shifted awkwardly from across the room and he let out a cough. The doctor held his hands up with a smile, “No, I think this is simply a misunderstanding.” Your eyes widened, jaw falling open. “The little Mrs," Again with the assumptions, “She misunderstood me is all. I was simply offering my recommendation, but obviously the decision falls to your hands at the end of the day. We can just work on the boosters and finish the paperwork for registration.”

A disbelieving guffaw left your throat at the audacity of this man. Mando glanced over his shoulder down at you, and you took a sharp breath through your nose. Whatever. As long as Grogu got the care he needed. Mando looked back to Daelar.

“Have you listened to my son’s lungs?”

Daelar’s eyes widened. “Hmm? Why?”

“I know Soran would have brought it up. She’s attentive. Was there a misunderstanding about Grogu’s cough?”

“No. Not at all. Sorry.” Daelar sighed. “Bring the little guy over to the exam table.”

Without speaking, Mando held his arms out to take Grogu, and you tried to hand him over. Grogu clung to your shirt, his claws digging into the material, and he buried his face further into your neck. He grumbled, “No.” You shot Mando a look, and he reached out to help detangle Grogu from you. The little boy didn’t give in.

“Grogu.” Mando said firmly. He set a hand on his back. “Come to me, ad’ika.”

“No, no!” Grogu finally lifted his head to look at his father’s visor. He shook his head and you had to lean back to keep his ears from hitting you. Grogu whined, “Trikar’la, buir!”

Despite all the tension, despite the fact that you still only knew very, very basic Mando’a, you gasped with a swell of pride. Unable to bite back the smile you wore, you cooed. “Grogu, that was so good.” You had no idea what he said beyond referring to his father, but his words sounded like it could’ve been a full sentence. Plus, he had said it in front of Daelar, a virtual stranger. “Good job, sweetie.”

You lifted your eyes to Mando, expecting a similar reaction, but his entire frame was tense. Again, his helmet gave no signs of anger, but a seething energy radiated from him. You furrowed your brow in confusion. Grogu went back to hiding his face in the crook of your neck, hugging you, and Mando shifted his hands so one rested on your back and arm.

“Let me help you up.” Mando whispered in a kind tone. “You can sit on the exam table with him.”

“Alright.” You mumbled.

You didn’t need any help standing, but Mando kept his hands on you while you rose and all the way to the exam table. Once you sat down on the sanitation paper, Mando settled beside you. He kept his arm behind you, his hand leaning on the table by your opposite thigh. You turned to look at Mando, and because of his positioning you found yourself dangerously close to his chest. If you leaned forward you could bury your face in the crook of his neck the same way Grogu was doing to you.

His head began to turn to look at you and you quickly focused your gaze forward. Daelar came over with his stethoscope and began to listen to Grogu’s lungs. He did this for a few minutes before pulling back with a nod. Daelar cleared his throat. “I’m hearing a little wheezing. Very mild. I can prescribe a nebulizer treatment at home before he goes to bed. Hold the mask over his face and just let him breathe in the medicine.”

“Thank you.” Mando said, but his tone was more intimidating than grateful.

“I’ll send a nurse in with the boosters and the medicine.” Daelar said before rushing out of the room.

You scoffed, still in disbelief on how that had gone, but when the door closed Mando shifted so he stood directly in front of you. Now he had a hand resting on the table on either side of your thighs. You blinked in surprise at the sudden motion.

“Are you alright?” Mando asked.

You forced a chuckle. “Yeah. I mean, that guy was a total ass, but he wasn’t the first jerk I’ve dealt with. Won’t be the last.” You continued rubbing Grogu’s back, not knowing what else to do with your own hands. “Granted, I could’ve done without the gaslighting, but…” It occurred to you then that Mando hadn’t hesitated to take your side. “Thanks. For having my back, I mean.”

“Always.” Mando replied with ease. He let out a soft sigh. “I’m talking to Karga about this.”

You laughed. “You’re gonna get a doctor fired because he was rude to me?” Mando didn’t reply, but his shrug was highly unconvincing. “It’s fine.”

“He upset you. That’s not fine. Grogu said⏤”

You gasped, “Yeah! What did Grogu say?”

Mando paused before leaning back. “He said you were sad.”

Your eyes widened in surprise, and you glanced down to gently pull Grogu away from your chest to look at him. He stared up at you with concern in his large eyes, and you gave him a smile. “I’m okay.” You gave his head a light scratch and let your fingers trail to give his ear a light, loving tongue. “Thanks for looking out for me, little guy.”

Grogu lifted his hands toward your face so you brought it down toward him. He lightly patted your cheeks and did the same thing he did this morning⏤ pressed his forehead as close to yours as you could get it. Everyone in Nevarro showed different forms of affection to Grogu, he was too cute to not pay attention to, but the most important sign of affection was the way Mando lightly set his forehead to his. You had to assume that in Grogu’s mind, that was an important thing. The fact that he was sharing that bit of love with you was overwhelming. You tried not to linger on the thought too long this morning⏤ not wanting to fall apart⏤ but Mando being here sticking up for you without hesitation only added to the situation.

You felt yourself begin to get choked up and quickly cleared your throat.

“Here. Why don’t you go to your dad?” You held out Grogu, and Mando must have sensed your distress because he took the child with no question. You gave him a broad smile. “I⏤I have to use the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

You hopped off the exam table and as you pulled the door open Mando called out. “Are you sure you’re alright, cyar’ika?”

You let a wide smile fill your features, every bit of real, and nodded sincerely, “I am. I promise. I’m⏤ This…” Considering how grateful you felt right now, you owed him as much truth as you could give. You nodded. “This is the best I’ve felt in a really long time.”

Mando nodded once, silent. Grogu lifted a hand and gave you a small wave. You rushed out of the room and made a beeline straight for the bathroom you had passed on the way into the procedure room. Finally away from prying eyes, you leaned against the locked bathroom door and began to trace the scar along your collarbone. Even with your fingers ghosting over the ugly patch of skin, you felt happy⏤ cared for. Maker, you didn’t think you’d actually feel that way ever again.

mando’a translations:

cyar’ika: darling, sweetheart

trikar’la: sad

buir: father

[novantinuum]

Fandom: Steven Universe Rating: Teen Audiences Words: 1.7K~ Summary: In which Steven opens up to Peridot a little about his anxieties surrounding his recent “pink episodes.” Peridot thinks she can help him determine the root cause of this problem, but Steven— marooned amidst age-old insecurities and his fears of hurting those he loves— still isn’t convinced he wants anyone’s help.

Finished up a lil' short fic I've had the dialogue sketched out for since 2020.

Enjoy, folks!

__

“So, have you always glowed pink in your sleep like that…?” Peridot asks out of nowhere later that morning, pulling his attention away from the sordid, pulpy mess of a Great Northern teen drama playing on the television set.

Thoroughly thrown off by this query, Steven serves her an awkward half-laugh, scratching at the wispy hairs at the nape of his neck. “Erm, I—”

“Because I don’t remember it happening on any of those nights you used to spend with us at the barn. And as a Gem, my memory should be perfect.”

“Nah, you’re right,” he says with a bit of a weary sigh. “This is new. I, uh- I don’t really know why it’s happening. In fact…” Inhaling deep, he tries to ignore the tittering background distraction of TV characters Jazmin and Rodrigo’s latest stupid conflict as he considers how best to describe his latest predicament. This isn’t exactly a conversation that’s well suited as an aside while watching a show, but he doesn’t want to make a huge deal out of it. “To be honest, it’s kinda become a bit of a problem, lately.”

She tilts her head. “A problem? In what way?”

“Um, I— I can’t exactly control it,” he admits. “Whenever I turn pink, I’m faster, I’m stronger, but… I don’t like the way it makes me feel. I don’t like the thought of even carrying this kind of strength. And unlike all my other powers, I don’t have a single clue what emotion triggers it or why it’s happening in the first place.”

He nibbles at the inside of his lower lip, considering this quandary. Everything about his powers has felt… different, since that encounter with Jasper in the woods a few months back. More unmanageable. More… volatile. For a time he assumed that life was done throwing him new extensions to his hybrid ability, but with every unimaginable feat he’s achieved lately— the capacity to hurl another Gem miles into the sky… a sprint so fast the surrounding world slows to a screeching halt around him… a scream so potent it can shatter the floor, leaving nothing but a wide crater in its wake— it becomes more and more clear that the diamond at his core has only just begun to reveal the true magnitude of its potential energy. 

And stars, that terrifies him. 

He’s not used to holding his power back, he’s not used to such a lack of control. He may have spent his entire childhood fighting to hone these abilities he inherited into something useful, yes, but he didn’t want this.

Peridot hums thoughtfully, her fingers perched upon her chin. “Well, maybe we can figure that out!”

His brow creases inwards. “Huh-? What are you—”

“Like you just said, all your other powers are modulated by your emotions,” she points out, throwing her arms into a casual shrug. “I’m incredibly knowledgeable about the composition and development of Gems, and you know about all the human feelings stuff! Your problem with this ability is clearly built upon the complex interactions between your Gem and organic makeup, so the most logical choice would be to build an experiment out of it. I bring the necessary genius and my tech,” she says with a beaming grin, her excitement growing more palpable with each and every word, “and you bring your experience! I’m sure if we work together we can learn something about this new power of yours.”

“I-I…” he stammers, shoulders seizing tight as the fullest intent of her idea finally washes over him. “No!”

Her face plummets in an instant, his blunt dismissal stripping the winds of enthusiasm right out of her sails.

“O-oh. I just thought… since you helped me try to fix CPH,” she gestures towards today’s entertainment of choice, still running, “maybe I could sorta… return the favor for you?”

Heart hammering in his ribcage, Steven grinds his fingers into fists at his side. 

“I don’t need to be fixed!” he insists, almost feeling sick to his stomach as that damned glowing pallor rises under his cheeks again anyways, a rote betrayal of all his futile claims. “Didn’t we just decide that’s the whole point of us hanging out now? That we don’t have to fix anything anymore?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“I’m fine, okay?” he snaps. “Really. I’m fine. I don’t need your help!”

Interrupting their long-forgotten entertainment, the television turns to static.

He gasps, tension wresting command of his every limb as he slams his hands over his mouth, wracked with embarrassment. H-he… oh geeze, he did it again, didn’t he? He raised his voice. He lost control, he snapped to pink. His breath hastens, rising to match the hurried, erratic tempo of all the excess energy currently surging through his hard-light veins like an untempered wildfire. 

“Steven—?” Peridot utters, her features twisting with undeserved concern. 

The white noise all but dominates his mind. Eyes growing glassy, his scattered perception hones in on the subtle threads of a second emotion evident within the Gem’s worried gaze, an emotion that strips the air straight from his lungs and makes him literally want to scream in his regret:  

Apprehension. 

Fear.

Considering all the horrid mistakes he’s made these past few weeks (graduation… his cactus… the mess he made of the Reef…), his lip trembles at the mere notion. 

His own friend, afraid of him.

Gosh, he could’ve… he almost—

“I-I…” he stammers, scrambling to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

Head buzzing with the oppressive specter of all manners of horrid what-ifs, he books it down the stairs and barricades himself inside the bathroom. Quivering hands fumble to lock the door. H-he… he just… he just needs to be alone when he gets like this, all tense and pink, every last sense locked on overdrive, his neural pathways swirling with a sense of terminal dread… his chest rising and falling so fast and heavy that there’s nothing else he can do— no quick salve to this panicked predicament— but sink to the floor like the shambling disaster he is and ride this wave out. It’s the only option he’s got. It’s the only way he can make this nauseating pallor recede back into the branching channels of the damned gem it came from. It’s the only thing he’s bodily capable of doing to guarantee he won’t unintentionally hurt someone like his own mother did.

(He’s assailed by an abrasive, neon pink as his shoulders scrunch inwards, all but powerless to stop that infernal barrier as it pinches ever smaller… his friends calling out, pleading for his help—)

Like he nearly did, too.

Slowly but surely… step by harrowing step… he’s almost beginning to grow afraid of himself.

A timid knock at the door blessedly interrupts his spiraling ruminations. Draws all that volatile energy back to his core as he breathes real slow, in and out, that eerie glow dissipating entirely.

It’s Peridot. 

Because of course it is. 

Because she’s too good a friend to not check up on him, even after such an unprompted expression of rudeness. 

“Just a minute,” he says with a bit of a crack in his voice, dragging himself back up to his feet and crossing to the sink to wash his hands as if to naïvely delude himself (and her, really— but he doubts there’s a single universe that exists where she’s gullible enough to fall for such a petty deceit) that he came here to use the restroom instead of the far more pathetic reality.

And sure enough, when he pushes the door open and shuffles out into the living area, her normally affable and carefree expression is streaked with palpable worry. Well, shucks. So much for attempting to downplay his embarrassing little freak out.

Sighing heavy, he gives up the chase. 

“I’m so, so sorry for yelling at you. That wasn’t very kind of me, you were only trying to help. I just—” he pauses to dab away a stray tear threatening to leak from the very corner of his eyes— “gosh, I really don’t wanna feel like I’m burdening you with all of my personal nonsense.”

She frowns as she gazes up at him, shaking her head in blunt disagreement. “I don’t think you’re a burden.”

Steven shoves his hands into the pockets of his pajama pants, his glance skirting away. “Thanks for the assurance, but… right now, it’s really hard for me to believe tha—”

Before he can so much as finish his sentence, his friend surges forwards. He genuinely can’t help the shaky little inhale he makes as her arms wrap tight around his torso, digits sinking in to the fabric of his shirt and her cheek pressed flush against his chest. 

“Steven?” she begins with a dash of timidity, her voice a bit muffled in the throes of their gentle embrace. “It’s okay if you’re not okay. Sometimes… I’m not okay either.”

“Peridot, I-I didn’t—”

“Even now, I… I’m still really insecure about my status as an Era 2 Gem,” she continues, the lingering ache of this admission more than evident within the subtle warble of her tone. “About my diminished height, mostly. And my lack of certain standard abilities. But now, I have so many friends to help me through those feelings. And so do you!” she blurts out before he can even dare to protest otherwise. “Y’know—? I… I’m sorry for pushing the matter earlier. If you’re not ready to talk about any of this, I understand. But if you ever are ready… I’m here.”

Steven exhales slow and shakily, forcing himself to glide past all those skewed, battered mental instincts— instincts that are screaming for him to reject her offered affections and simply bolt away— to sink into her offered hug. His own grip tightens around her petite form. He clears his throat, pushing past all those nauseating layers of shame to express his actual feelings. 

Daring to be brave. Daring to assert some of his genuine desires for once in his life, even if the only desires he can attach concrete meaning to at the moment are just an appeal for distraction, a craving for nothing but tiny, frivolous morsels of entertainment:

“Do you… maybe wanna finish that episode with me before you head back to Little Homeworld?”

“Hah!” she barks with laughter, her features lighting up like a bulb again. “You think you have to ask? Of course I still wanna watch more CPH! Go, go, go, go, go!” she chants, shooing him back up the stairs with a fervent wave of her arms. “Rodrigo can’t make fun of himself!”

[observeowl]

Second Chance | Chapter 21 - Once Again

Series masterlist

You woke up next to Natasha the next day after borrowing some clothes for the night. Perhaps because you felt comfortable with Nat, you slept all the way until 11am, or perhaps it was due to the movie marathon the both of you had the night prior. Either way, you slept soundly and haven’t felt so well rested in a long time. 

You reached for your phone and noted that your friends texted you about the release of the school results. You quickly tapped Natasha to wake her up and told her to check her results too. 

“There’s no need for that, I always get As, darling.” She mumbled as she buried her face in your torso. 

“Good for you.” You mumbled. Natasha whined as you got out of bed to use her laptop to check your results. After logging in, you scrolled through all the other emails and finally got to the one that you were looking for. 

It was quite easy to navigate, you only had one column to look for, which was possibly why it was so easy to see that you didn't get the results you wanted. 

What’s the point in working so hard? Hard work doesn’t translate to good results. Only achieving B+ for 4 out of the 5 modules you take and even getting a C- for the last one. This is the worst result you have gotten in your entire education. 

You let out a sigh but caused Nat to open her eyes and sat up a little. She didn’t know what to say, but she knows for sure that you didn’t get the results you wanted. “Didn’t get what you wanted?” You shook your head as you entered the bed and back in her arms again, this time with a slightly disappointed look in your face. “Doesn’t matter, you know I will earn enough for the both of us anyway.” 

“Yeah… but I just want to get a good result for once. I don’t understand why everyone thinks that I am an A student, when I’m struggling not to get lower than a B. I mean, this is literally my second time taking the exam.” 

“Good things come to those who wait. Who knows, you might be an all A student by the time we graduate.” She holds you tighter as she gives you affirmations. 

“Hope so…” With two more semesters to go, you aren’t sure how much catch up you could make. 

===

Over the remaining holiday, you spent the majority of the time with Natasha. But you didn’t forget to spend time with Diana and Camellia as well. They even urge you to bring Natasha along when everyone hangs out. 

Natasha didn’t mind going anywhere as long as you were going. She even followed you to the hospital when it was time to remove the cast. But even after that, she still made sure you didn’t exert yourself too much. 

It wasn’t long until school started and the time you get to meet Natasha decreased. But nonetheless, it seems like Natasha has gained a tingling sense for you when you’re near. She’ll spot you and leave her friends without a thought just to be able to say hi to you. Knowing that she loves to see your face light up, you gave her a quick kiss before you had to part ways to your classes. 

“We are having dinner tonight?” It has become customary for her to come over to your house to have dinner together and sometimes she will stay over if she feels like it or return to her dorm if she has early class the next day. 

“Always. I’ll be waiting.” You gave her another quick kiss before following your friends to enter the classroom. 

“You guys are really fast balling this.” Camellia commented when she saw the interaction between you two. “From not wanting to be associated with each other to being each other's girlfriends in the span of 3 days. I really applaud you both.” 

“Well… we just really understand each other.” 

Knowing results means a lot to you, she tries to help out on your assignments as much as possible. She may not be learning the same subject, but she is able to provide a new perspective and sometimes all you need is someone with you to brainstorm a little. She’s able to help a lot when it comes to those written essays that have nothing to do with accounting, but more about logical thinking and reasoning. Her way with words is a lot stronger than yours and she’s always happy to proofread your work and amend any grammatical errors or add some flair to earn some marks.

Nat tried to help adjust your study method. Just putting your head down and reading your notes was not going to help you. She offered to be your partner in reciting the key points and making sure it stays in your brain. She even came up with new games to make sure it was fun and interesting. 

In the end the hard work paid off when your results came back finally with one A and the rest B+. You were with Natasha when you checked the results once again and you celebrated the results with her by going out to a nice restaurant. 

“Just dress up nicely. I’ll handle the rest.” She smiled as she dropped you off at your house after having lunch together. “I’ll come pick you up at 4pm.” 

“Alright, can’t wait.” She puffed her cheeks out for another kiss and you huffed before giving her what she wanted. 

“In hurry to go somewhere?” Your mother commented as she heard you moving about quickly. “Yeah, I’m going out with Natasha later to celebrate.” You commented as you hopped into the shower immediately instead of laying in the bed and using your phone. 

“So you’re not coming back for dinner right?” She checked. 

“No dinner!” You shouted through the door to make sure she heard it

You didn’t have to think what you were going to wear. Okay, that’s a lie. You had to think, but not much. You were going to wear the outfit you bought with Natasha the other day when you went shopping. It wasn’t often that you would choose to wear a dress. But you found something that you were confident in. It was just the right length for you. Not too short that you have to worry about your actions and not too long that it’s difficult to walk. 

“Mum, can you help me take a picture?” You gave your phone to your mum and stood somewhere with good lighting. Previously, it’s not often that you took photos of your own, even less of others. You didn’t have good photography skills and it’s not something that bothered you. But, it didn’t give you the opportunity of looking back for memories. “Make sure you take it properly.” You ordered. 

“Yes yes, I wouldn’t dare take a bad picture of you.” She snapped a few shots before giving you the phone to vet the pictures. Once you deemed it acceptable. You sat on the couch waiting for Natasha. 

Knowing what she’s like, she arrived earlier than 4pm and even brought you a bouquet of flowers that you placed in a vase. While filling the vase with water, you were reminded how you had to get one ever since Nat started giving you flowers each time she visits your house. You told her you didn’t have any place to put the flowers and it would be such a waste for them to wilt and she immediately went to get you one. 

“Alright, I’m ready.” You said to break the flow of conversation that Nat had with your mum. 

“You look absolutely lovely, Y/N.” Nat complimented. 

“Thank you, Nat. You look gorgeous as well..” She was also wearing the clothes that she picked. 

“Since we are little early. Do you want to walk around a little or head straight there?” She asked as she brought you to her car which she borrowed from her mother. You thought about it for briefly before deciding to leave the walking for after dinner when it’s much cooler. 

The drive there was relaxing, blasting pop music, excited for the night to come. “We’re here.” She said and rushed to open your doors. 

“Nat, I know you want to open my doors. You don’t have to rush. I told you, I will wait for you.” 

“I didn’t want to keep you waiting.” Natasha said as you linked arms together.

As you approved the door of the restaurant, you noted there was something different. “Are you sure this is the right place? It doesn’t seem open.” You looked at Nat and asked.

She only gave you a cheeky smile and nodded before pushing the door open. True to your observation, the lights were off and Natasha had to find the light switch to turn on the lights. “I pulled a favour to get the place for the night.” She said as she flicked the light switch. 

There were pictures hanging from several lines and some that you don’t even recognise. “What’s all this?” You asked. 

“Just take a look.” Nat led you through the lines of pictures and you realised you were in every single one of them. “I had to ask your friends for some of the pictures.” 

“But how? You only know Camellia and Diana. And they aren’t there for the archery events.” You commented as you noted some of the pictures were during the events that your club held. 

“I asked Clint to give me their numbers. Easy job.” She shrugged her shoulders like it was nothing. “Now you get to have something to reminisce about. I’m sure our kids would love to see how cool their mother was shooting arrows.”

“I think this is my favourite.” Nat said as she took one out from the pegs. It is a picture of you being surrounded by your friends with a medal around your neck after having won the team event. “Your smile looks really great here. One of elation and relief.”

“Yeah. That’s definitely what I was feeling.” You smiled remembering all the hard work you had to put in to achieve that result. Moving forward, some of the pictures were in school and you couldn’t think of anyone who would take those pictures especially when it looked like the picture was taken quite a distance away. 

“This… who did you get this from?” 

“Myself. I also love the way you’re focused in class or trying to solve a problem. Makes you look very sexy.” She whispered next to your ears. 

“That’s kinda stalkerish.” 

“You can’t blame me, babe. I look for you each time in school.” 

“What about this? Why is this empty?” You pointed at a blank piece of paper that was hanging with the rest. 

“This? I am hoping to add the picture of our engagement.” She continued forward until she was at the end and turned to face you. 

“Y/N, consider this the renewal of our vows. I made the mistake of pushing you away causing us to drift apart. Fate gave us another chance but I refuse to correct myself when the best thing has been in front of me all along. Finally thanks to more pushing and guidance, I was brought back to you once again. Something which I would never take for granted or let go ever again. This time, I promise to take better care of you, protect you and fight for you. So, will you marry me again?” She knelt down and presented you with the beautiful engagement ring. 

“Yes. Yeah I will marry you again.” You nodded your head, trying to hold back your tears.

“Really? Yes! Yes!” She jumped up and hugged you and gave you kisses all over your face before slipping the ring on your finger. “My fiance. Not for long though. I can’t wait to actually call you my wife again.” 

“Soon enough darling.” 

“Give me a moment.” She held up a finger before running to the front door and shouting. “She said yes!!” 

A parade of cheer sounded and so many people started streaming in. Your friend, parents, Melina, Alexis, Yelena. She had invited everyone prior to this knowing you would want to share this time with your family and friends but at the same time leave the intimate moment to the both of you. 

“So, did I earn 10 out of 10?” She asked as she came back to your side and held your waist, wanting to hear your praise. 

“9.5 out of 10.” The pout of her face was immediate. “I thought you would bring the marriage certificate as well.”

“I may have some connection. But not that much! I can’t bring the solemniser here.” She defended.

“I know I know. You have done very well, darling. Here’s to the rest of our life.” You took a glass from the table and raised it for a cheer and Natasha did the same. 

“You’re going to get showered in love for the rest of your life, babe. Better be prepared.”  

Series masterlist

@queen-of-chaotic-surprises @esposadejoyhuerta @gemz5 @natsxwife @dyslexic-dreamer @unexpected-character @eternalnight410 @leenasayeed @oh-thats-sad @skz-xii @gay-frogs-dancing-around @justspance

[rockalillygirl]

Mamma mia here we go again…

So I have more thoughts because apparently there’s no bottom to the murderbot mindhole I’ve fallen down.

(Spoiler warning- minor stuff from several of the books, pls check tags etc.)

I’ve been reading a lot of things recently exploring Murderbot as an unreliable narrator, which I think is a cool result of System Collapse (because we all know our beloved MB is going through it in this one). There’s also been some interesting related discussion of MB’s distrust of and sometimes biased assessment/treatment of other constructs and bots.

And I’ve been reading a lot about CombatUnits! And I want to talk about them!!

Main thoughts can be summarized as follows:

We don’t see a lot about CombatUnits in the books, and I think what we do see from MB’s pov encourages the reader to view them as less sympathetic than other constructs.

I’m very skeptical of this portrayal for reasons.

The existence of CombatUnits makes me fucking sad and I have a lot of feelings about them!

I got introduced to the idea of MB as an unreliable narrator in a post by onironic It analyzes how in SC, MB seems to distrust Three to a somewhat unreasonable degree, and how it sometimes infantilizes Three or treats it the way human clients have treated it in the past. The post is Amazing and goes into way more detail, so pls go read it (link below):

https://www.tumblr.com/onironic/736245031246135296?source=share

So these ideas were floating around in my brain when I read an article Martha Wells recently published in f(r)iction magazine titled “Bodily Autonomy in the Murderbot Diaries”. I’ll link the article here:

(Rn the only way to access the article is to subscribe to the magazine or buy an e-copy of the specific issue which is $12)

In the article, Wells states that MB displaced its fear of being forced to have sex with humans onto the ComfortUnit in Artificial Condition. I think it’s reasonable to assume that MB also does this with other constructs. With Three, I think it’s more that MB is afraid if what it knows Three is capable of, or (as onironic suggests in their post and I agree with) some jealousy that Three seems more like what humans want/expect a rogue SecUnit to be.

But I want to explore how this can be applied to CombatUnits, specifically.

We don’t learn a lot about them in the books. One appears for a single scene in Exit Strategy, and that’s it. What little else we know comes from MB’s thoughts on them sprinkled throughout the series. To my knowledge, no other character even mentions them (which raises interesting questions about how widely-known their existence is outside of high-level corporate military circles).

When MB does talk about CombatUnits in the early books, it’s as a kind of boogeyman figure (the real “murderbots” that even Murderbot is afraid of). And then when one does show up in ES, it’s fucking terrifying! There’s a collective “oh shit” moment as both MB and the reader realize what it’s up against. Very quickly what we expect to be a normal battle turns into MB running for its life, desperately throwing up hacks as the CombatUnit slices through them just as fast. We and MB know that it wouldn’t have survived the encounter if its humans hadn’t helped it escape. So the CombatUnit really feels like a cut above the other enemies in the series.

And what struck me reading that scene was how the CombatUnit acts like the caricature of an “evil robot” that MB has taught us to question. It seems single-mindedly focused on violence and achieving its objective, and it speaks in what I’d call a “Terminator-esque” manner: telling MB to “Surrender” (like that’s ever worked) and responds to MB’s offer to hack its governor module with “I want to kill you” (ES, pp 99-100).

(Big tangent: Am I the only one who sees parallels between this and how Tlacey forces the ComfortUnit to speak to MB in AC? She makes it suggest they “kill all the humans” because that’s how she thinks constructs talk to each other (AC, pp 132-4). And MB picks up on it immediately. So why is that kind of talk inherently less suspicious coming from a CombatUnit than a ComfortUnit? My headcanon is that I’m not convinced the CombatUnit was speaking for itself. What if a human controller was making it say things they thought would be intimidating? Idk maybe I’ve been reading too many fics where CombatUnits are usually deployed with a human handler. There could be plenty of reasons why the CombatUnit would’ve talked like that. I’m just suspicious.)

(Also, disclaimer: I want to clarify before I go on that I firmly believe that even though MB seems to be afraid of CombatUnits and thinks they’re assholes, it would still advocate for them to have autonomy. I’m not trying to say that either MB or Wells sees CombatUnits as less worthy of personhood or freedom- because I feel the concept that “everything deserves autonomy” is very much at the heart of the series.)

So it’s clear from all of this that MB is scared of CombatUnits and distrusts them for a lot of reasons. I read another breathtaking post by @grammarpedant that gives a ton of examples of this throughout the books and has some great theories on why MB might feel this way. I’ll summarize the ones here that inspired me the most, but pls go read the original post for the full context:

https://www.tumblr.com/grammarpedant/703920247856562177?source=share

OP explains that SecUnits and CombatUnits are pretty much diametrically opposed because of their conflicting functions: Security safeguards humans, while Combat kills them. Of course these functions aren’t rigid- MB has implied that it’s been forced to be violent towards humans before, and I’m sure that extracting/guarding important assets could be a part of a CombatUnit's function. But it makes sense that MB would try to distance itself from being considered a CombatUnit, using its ideas about them to validate the parts of its own function that it likes (protecting people). OP gives what I think is the clearest example of this, which is the moment in Fugitive Telemetry when MB contrasts its plan to sneak aboard a hostile ship and rescue some refugees with what it calls a “CombatUnit” plan, which would presumably involve a lot more murder (FT, p 92).

This reminds me again of what Wells said in the f(r)iction article, that on some level MB is frightened by the idea that it could have been made a ComfortUnit (friction, p 44). I think the idea that it could’ve been a CombatUnit scares it too, and that’s why it keeps distinguishing itself and its function from them. But I think it’s important to point out, that in the above example from FT, even MB admits that the murder-y plan it contrasts with its own would be one made by humans for CombatUnits. So again we see that we just can’t know much about the authentic nature of CombatUnits, or any constructs with intact governor modules, because they don’t have freedom of expression. MB does suggest that CombatUnits may have some more autonomy when it comes to things like hacking and combat which are a part of their normal function. But how free can those choices be when the threat of the governor module still hangs over them?

I think it could be easy to fall into the trap of seeing CombatUnits as somehow more complicit in the systems of violence in the mbd universe. But I think that’s because we often make a false association between violence and empowerment, when even in our world that’s not always the case. But, critically, this can’t be the case for CombatUnits because they’re enslaved in the same way SecUnits and ComfortUnits are (though the intricacies are different).

There was another moment in the f(r)iction article that I found really chilling. Wells states that there’s a correlation between SecUnits that are forced to kill humans and ones that go rogue (friction, p 45). It’s a disturbing thought on its own, but I couldn’t help wondering then how many CombatUnits try to hack their governor modules? And what horrible lengths would humans go to to stop them? I refuse to believe that a CombatUnit’s core programming would make it less effected by the harm its forced to perpetrate. That might be because I’m very anti-deterministic on all fronts, but I just don’t buy it.

I’m not entirely sure why I feel so strongly about this. Of course, I find the situation of all constructs in mbd deeply upsetting. But the more I think about CombatUnits, the more heartbreaking their existence seems to me. There’s a very poignant moment in AC when MB compares ART’s function to its own to explain why there are things it doesn’t like about being a SecUnit (AC, p 33). In that scene, MB is able to identify some parts of its function that it does like, but I have a hard time believing a CombatUnit would be able to do the same. I’m not trying to say that SecUnits have it better (they don’t) (the situation of each type of construct is horrible in it’s own unique way). It’s just that I find the idea of construct made only for violence and killing really fucking depressing. I can’t even begin to imagine the horror of their day-to-day existence.

@grammarpedant made another point in their post that I think raises a TON of important questions not only about CombatUnits, but about how to approach the idea of “function” when it comes to machine intelligence in general. They explain that, in a perfect version of the mbd universe, there wouldn’t be an obvious place for CombatUnits the way there could be for SecUnits and ComfortUnits who wanted to retain their original functions. A better world would inherently be a less violent one, so where does that leave CombatUnits? Would they abandon their function entirely, or would they find a way to change it into something new?

I’ve been having a lot of fun imagining what a free CombatUnit would be like. But in some ways it’s been more difficult than I expected. I’ve heard Wells say in multiple interviews that one of her goals in writing Murderbot was to challenge people to empathize with someone they normally wouldn’t, and I find CombatUnits challenging in exactly that way. Sometimes I wonder if I would’ve felt differently about these books if MB had been a CombatUnit instead of a SecUnit. Would I have felt such an immediate connection to MB if its primary function before hacking its governor module had been killing humans, or if it didn’t have relatable hobbies like watching media? Or if it didn’t have a human face for the explicit purpose of making people like me more comfortable? I’m not sure that I would have.

Reading SC has got me interested in exploring the types of people that humans (or even MB itself) would struggle to accept. So CombatUnits are one of these and possible alien-intelligences are another. All this is merely a small sampling of the thoughts that have been swirling around in my brain-soup! So if anyone is interested in watching me fumble my way through these concepts in more detail, I may be posting “something” in the very near future!

Would really appreciate anyone else’s thoughts about all of THIS^^^^ It’s been my obsession over the holidays and helping me cope with family stress and flying anxiety.

[commiegoth]

Interview with nonbinary trans author Kate Bornstein, promoting her book Gender Outlaw (Mondo 2000 #13, 1995)

Full text under cut

I‘m walking down 16th Street minding my own business. This good looking woman is coming toward me. She's got on baggy unbuttoned overalls and an orange tank top. Her arms look good, her shoulders look good, and what I can see of her stomach looks good. Two guys are standing on the sidewalk. As she passes them, one says to the other, “I'd like to take that one home.” The other guy agrees. The woman keeps walking. Now it's my turn to pass 'em. “I'd like to take that one home and knock A her around a little bit,” the first guy says. I keep walking. The other guy answers. “That's a her?”

But enough about me. This is supposed to be about Kate Bornstein who wants you to read her new book Gender Outlaw. Bornstein used to be a man; now she’s not. Bornstein used to be a heterosexual; now she isn't. Bornstein used to have a dick; now she doesn’t.

She’s a “used-to-be-a-man, three husbands, father, first mate on an ocean-going yacht, minister, high-powered IBM sales type, Pierre Cardin three-piece suitor, bar-mitzvah’d, circumcised yuppie from the East Coast… a used-to-be politically correct, wanna-be butch, dyke phone sex hostess, smooth talking, telemarketing, love slave, art slut, pagan Tarot reader, maybe soon a grandmother, crystal palming, incense burning, not man, not always a woman, fast becoming a Marxist.”

All that’s not what makes her an outlaw. What makes her an outlaw is she sees a time when folks will look at the binary gender system and throw back their heads and laugh— ha ha ha. Males and females and that’s it? Ha ha ha. Get the fuck outta here.

Bornstein’s looking forward to us all living in what author Marjorie Garber (Vested Interests, Routledge) calls the Third Space. “This whole concept of three is so beautiful,” Kate says, “because it includes the first two. I don’t say there’s a third space that exists between men and women. I say there’s a third space outside of the Binary which leaves the Binary as this construct off to the side, very fragile and apt to fall apart.”

If I were a man, everything about me that brings me grief in the world—the way | walk, the way I talk, the way I think, the way | stand, the way I sit, the way I dress, the way | cut my hair, how much I weigh, how much weight I lift—would not only be acceptable, it would be revered. If we lived in the Third Space, it wouldn't even matter.

Bornstein had to learn a lot of rules in order to fit in. Like when a man walks down the street he looks people in the eye; when a woman walks down the street she looks at the ground. And women talk different. They have higher, breathier voices and their speech is more modulated. In mixed conversations, it’s the woman's job to laugh at the bad jokes and fill in the awkward silences. They smile constantly while they’re talking and use tag questions to qualify sentences, like “you know what I mean?”

“All of these customs are forms of self-deprecation,” says Bornstein, “like learning how to keep my knees together and not putting my arm across the back of my seat in the subway train. A lot of that was not so much to be a woman as to pass as a woman, so that I wouldn't call attention to myself.”

If we lived in the Third Space, she wouldn't have had to worry. In fact, if we lived in the Third Space, she might not even have had penile conversion surgery.

“I don’t do well with might-have-beens,” she says. “I resent that I was manipulated into that surgery by every signpost in the culture. I was not aware of other possibilities at the time. I was a total subscriber to the Binary and to the genitals by which it stands.

“I knew I wasn’t BOY, I knew I wasn’t MAN. Neither of those categories fit for me. It didn’t feel right, I have no idea why. I tried for thirty some odd years and it didn’t work. The only other option I saw in the culture was GIRL, or WOMAN. Nowhere did I see that it was okay to be a “real woman”—which I believed in—with a penis! So the next step was get rid of the penis. This insistence on the Binary and the genital imperative that signals the Binary coerced me into that. If I knew everything that I know now, would I do it again? Yes. Absolutely yes, because sex is so much more fun now.”

Back to this idea of the Third Space, how do we get there?

“Cyberspace would be a doorway into the Third Space,” according to Bornstein. “Cyberspace frees us up from the restrictions placed on identity by our bodies. It allows us to explore more kinds of relationships.

“I can go online as anything. I go online as various kinds of women. I've gone online as a guy a couple of times; I’m playing a stable boy in a vampire scenario now. I’ve gone online as different monsters. I’ve gone online as Mr. Spock in a ‘Star Trek’ scenario.

“Cross-gender identity surfing online is so telling: Men slum and women step into the trappings of power as men. You talk to a man after he’s been a woman online and he'll usually laugh and describe some kind of sex he had, usually lesbian sex. But you talk to a woman who's been surfing as a man, there’s this spark there. There’s this wonder. There's this—'They really do have this power!’ As soon as men cop to the idea that women are learning this, they’re gonna be more frightened.”

Bingo.

In Gender Outlaw, Bornstein asks: “If wealth and power are important, and if in this world wealth and power belong to men, then why did I cease being a man and give up that wealth and power?"

Some male-to-female transsexuals argue—often in response to being excluded from women-born-women only clubs—that they didn’t have a real male experience because they were never real males. Bornstein’s not buying it. “I had a bona fide male experience—of course I did. I’ve been bar-mitzvah’d. I hated it. Being male and hating it sets up a fugue experience. It’s definitely a form of madness. | think one way of dealing with the madness is to say it never really happened. That’s a legitimate way of dealing with it, but the fact of the matter is, I spent over thirty years of my life as a man or boy. I did not like it. I hated it. I drank a lot. I did a lot of drugs. I played a lot of arcade games.”

Once you've altered your gender, it’s gotta seem like anything’s possible. The whole world must open up. Does that mean that transgender stuff is the final frontier? Bornstein doesn’t think so.

She believes that once people get a grip on the idea of the Third Space, and transgender stuff becomes passé, we're probably gonna have to look at other binary divisions. “What are the differences between animals and humans? What are the differences between plants and animals? What about artificial intelligence, androids like Data from “Star Trek?” They're gonna be around. | think the gender binary is the one most firmly entrenched in our culture simply because it’s the one that capitalism trades on the most, other than class. We haven't confronted class. A minor communist uprising in Eastern Europe is not dealing with class. Certainly, the United States has never dealt with class. I think the fact that my book actually got published by a respectable publisher is an indicator that the culture is ready to chew on gender, whereas I don’t think the American culture is as ready to chew on class.

“I'd say gender is the last apparent frontier. It’s the frontier that’s just become illuminated. It’s titillating. In public relations terms it’s sexy. In sex terms it’s sexy. It’s a movement, a real live movement—ready or not, here we come!”

Meanwhile, back on 16th Street.

I take a few more steps, then my brain turns over and I say to myself, “Fuck this shit.”

I stop, turn around, walk back, and stand in front of the first guy. “You say something to me?”

He’s shocked. He starts stuttering and shaking his head.

“Uh…uh…no…I was just…I mean…he was just…I mean…he wanted to know—"

I interrupt him.

“Something about knocking somebody around?”

He starts stuttering again.

“Uh…no…uh, I was just… I mean, he just… I mean, I was just saying—"

I interrupt him again.

“You know what it sounded like you said? It sounded like you said you wanted to suck my dick.”

“Uh…uh… your dick?” He looks at my crotch to see if I have one.

(I do, but it’s back at my apartment.)

“Yeah,” I say, “that’s what it sounded like you said. I think you want to suck my dick, don't you?”

He looks at my crotch again, then he looks back at my face. He grins, still stuttering.

Uh...well...I, I, I... I wouldn't mind.”

“That's what I thought,” I say, and walk away.

For an almost complete collection of Bornsteiniana, start with Gender Outlaw (Routledge), go directly to The Last Sex, Arthur and Mary-Louise Kroker (St. Martins Press), and keep an eye out for performances of Hidden: A Gender and Virtually Yours. The unsatisfied can obsessively watch for guest appearances on Geraldo.

[quantomeno]

@mysterysnail reblogged my post about Layton music saying they were trying to learn the basics about music.

I'm sure there are better resources, but here's what I know (skip to the very end if you just want to hear me analyse some Layton music).

Let's start with some definitions of things that make up music:

Notes: the individual sounds made by an instrument/voice. I often use it interchangeably with pitch, but they are different terms.

Pitch: How high or low the note is. In UK/US etc systems each pitch is given a letter name A to G then which repeats. Other European countries often use 'do re mi fa so la ti' instead. I don't know about other places because our system just copies the UK naming conventions and that's ingrained in my head.

Accidentals (sharps/flats): pitches are separated by semitones (half a tone), which is just a set distance in pitch (the Jaws theme, dah-duh, is two notes separated by one semitone. the second and third notes of Happy Birthday (-py birth-) is a tone, a gap twice the size). An increase or decrease by one semitone makes a note sharp or flat, respectively. You can get multiple notes with the same name (B sharp = C natural), this sounds confusing but it makes sense when you write/play music. Natural means there is no sharp or flat.

Scales: a set of notes ordered by ascending pitch. Each scale has a 'mood' or flavour associated with it. For example, minor scales are often considered sad, while major are happy. The flavour is determined not just by the choice of notes, but by the role of each note in the scale. Often a scale played starting from a different note will become a different scale (if you play C major starting from A, you get the A minor scale). This is because a new note has become the tonic, the base pitch that roots the scale.

Key: the scale used to write a piece of music. This is not always set in stone and deviations are allowed. It is determined by a mixture of factors, most importantly which pitch the piece is centred around. The key can change in a song (key change, or modulation).

Chord: a set of two or more notes played at once. Chords come in many types, but the typical three note chords are major, minor, diminished and augmented. They are named after the the note which defines the chord (e.g. CEG make the chord C Major).

Arpeggio: a chord split up so the notes are played separately.

Interval: the gap between two notes. These go unison (no gap), second (two 'letters', e.g. A to B), third, etc then octave for eight (A to A or C to C etc). After octave you can keep going with ninth etc, but it's rare for jumps that large. Intervals can also be classified as major, minor, perfect, diminished or augmented.

What's a little more generally useful than understanding each of these things is the elements that make up music:

Tempo: how fast/slow all the notes are

Rhythm: the duration of each note. The 'horizontal axis' in sheet music. It's different from tempo since you can play the same rhythm at different tempos. It's like word length in a sentence while tempo is how fast you say the words.

Melody: the movement up or down in pitch. The 'vertical axis' in sheet music. It is tied to the key of the music (the scale/set of notes the piece uses), but with a focus on direction and the 'shape' of the music.

Harmony: the consonance (agreeing sounds) or dissonance (clashing sounds) that occur when you have chords or layered melodies.

Chord progressions: moving from one chord to another, you get certain patterns. This is like the chord version of melody.

Texture: how many sounds are layered on top of each other. How thick/dense or thin/sparse the music is.

Dynamics: how loud or soft (quiet) the music is.

Timbre: the unique sound of the instrument. It's like how a note played on a piano sounds different to when it's played on the flute. This is qualified by adjectives like airy, metallic, brassy, warm, crisp, nasally etc.

Articulation: how the note is made. Is it detached from the other notes (staccato), is it smoothly joined (legato, slurred) is it emphasised (marcato, accented)? Some instruments have different ways of playing separate to these instructions, like a violin can play plucked (pizzicato) or bowed (arco) but it can still be staccato either way.

Ornamentation/improvisation/embellishment: grace notes, trills, glissandi, etc etc. These are little flourishes that add tiny little notes between other notes. I'm including improvisation here because these are all sort of playing around with the basic melody of a piece of music.

There are other things you could consider but this will do.

Below the read more, I'll apply some of these ideas to a song from Layton to illustrate how it all comes together

Let's use Folsense for our example because I happen to have the sheet music for it handy.

So, it opens with a solo piano. We've got melody in the upper register (high notes) and the chords in the lower register.

Note that this isn't the actual score. I think I adapted it from here.

It's fairly slow (63 beats per minute). This fits into how the town feels aged and weary.

The key is ostensibly F Major or D minor, due to the key signature (the sharps/flats before those two fours): there's one flat (B flat), which matches both those keys. This means every B will be B flat. You can see though that we have an accidental, an E flat, in the lower part, which doesn't fit with either of the proposed keys. The music also doesn't really anchor itself to an F or a D.

This can be felt in the music: Folsense sounds rather untethered and ethereal. The whole song, like the town itself, doesn't quite feel real or settled.

The sparseness adds to this, with only one or two instruments ever really playing at any moment. It evokes a sense of loneliness and emptiness: the town in the game feels oddly unpopulated and so does the music.

At about 35 seconds in we get a lot of long, sustained notes on the violin. These are bowed and quite smoothly connected, which almost exaggerates their length.

Note that the rhythms of the piano's chords don't line up with the violin. The violin notes are also of an unusual length. (I forgot to say this, but the two 4s at the start is the time signature and it means "4 crotchets per bar" where a crotchet (quarter note for Americans) is half a minim (half note) which is half a semibreve (whole note). 4 4 is the most common time sign, and means you can count the beat with an even 1, 2, 3, 4). The violin holds a note for three and a quarter beats. This length, combined with the (I'm getting flashbacks to high school exams, sorry) mismatched rhythms in the melody and harmony parts is unsettling, and further emphasises that something in Folsense is not quite right.

At 1:00 we get a return to the opening melody, but instead of accordion we have a trumpet (I think?). This has a brassy, nasally timbre. It feels warm, but there's a certain warbling quality to it which makes it sound plaintive and sad.

The melody is incredibly simple, and its often just ascending notes, with very small intervals. This, combined with the warmth of the strings, brass and accordion, along with the crip, clean sound of the piano, should evoke a sense of calm and maybe even joy. But there is a constant dissonance throughout the piece. It's notable in the second fragment I showed that while the second bar (bar 10, a bar is the space between two black lines and made of 4 beats in 4 4 time) had E flat major as the chord on the bottom (E flat, G, B flat), the melody plays an A, which uncomfortable sits one semitone below the B flat.

All music can be boiled down to tension and resolution. Unpleasant-sounding chords are only unpleasant in that the ear cries for them to be resolved. If you play the chords CEG (C major) then GBDF (G dominant 7th) on a piano, you'll feel a tension. If you play another CEG, it'll be resolved. Resolution feels complete, like the music has properly ended.

Here we have a tension that is never resolved, due to the lack of a defined key and the recurring dissonance, which creates this interplay between joy and sadness. Just like Folsense, brightly lit up but strangely quiet, the piece never feels right. It is trapped in a constant state of inertia, just like the town is stuck in the past and slowly decaying.

[varpusvaras]

Fox had always been athletic. Very much so. He had been able to keep up with the older Commander clones during training by being nimble and fast, with both his thinking and his feet. The training had started from the moment he had been able to stand on his two legs, and Fox's first proper memories were of him, stumbling around on some sort of obstacle course, made to measure how their motor skills were coming along. Over the years he had gone through so many different training modules for speed, for agility, for strength, for many different types of combat, rinse and repeat every single day.

So, yes. Fox liked to think that he was very athletic, indeed. He had been able to keep up with criminals and suspects and whoever it was he had been chasing on any given day, even with his full armor on. He was pretty much made and raised to be the peak of physical prowess, after all.

His feet hadn't got tangled when he had been running around on the roofs and narrow alleys and busy streets of Coruscant. They hadn't got tangled when he had been hiking up the uneven paths of Alderaan's forest.

So why were they doing it now?

"Do not laugh at me."

Bail laughed.

"I am not laughing at you", he said, still laughing, like the laughing liar he was.

Fox frowned at him.

"That sounds like laughing to me", he said, definitely not pouting about it. "Do you find this amusing, Prestor?"

That made Bail stiffle it, at the very least, even if he still looked a bit amused.

"I'm sorry, love", he said, leaning down a bit to kiss Fox on the forehead. "You are getting there, though. We've gotten through the first turn, now. It's more than hour ago."

It was longer than anything else had ever taken for Fox to learn in his life. Fox did not like it, not one bit.

Bail sighed, softly, and rubbed Fox's back lightly, where his hand was resting on his shoulder blade.

"You are looking at your feet too much", he said. "This is not a training room. You are not going to be evaluated for how well you are doing each step. This is for your first dance at your own wedding, to celebrate your marriage. Not for getting a score to see who is going to be sent for retraining."

"I know." Fox tried not to snap at Bail, as he really didn't deserve it. "I just...feel pretty evaluated. Not by you. Just by...everything."

Bail hummed, and kept rubbing Fox's back, his hand moving slowly up and down as he thought.

"Alright", he said, then. "3-XA, can you please start it from the beginning?"

Fox straightened his back as the music started again, trying to keep his head strictly up this time, but Bail didn't move yet. He was smiling at Fox when Fox looked up at him.

"Close your eyes", Bail said. "You know the steps. You know how to read other people without looking at them. Just follow me."

Fox swallowed, breathed in and out, and nodded. He closed his eyes, and let Bail tug him a little closer.

It had been the point of many of their exercises, back on Kamino, to be able to still work as a team, even in situations where any of their senses were impaired for some reason. And Fox knew Bail, by now, and knew how he moved.

Bail's weight shifted a bit as he started to move, his shoulder tilting ever so slightly under Fox's hand, the left side of his body pressing more closely against him as he took the first step. Fox stepped out of the way, mostly, at first. More pressure put on his side and back, leading him to step to the side. A gentle tug on his hand and the arm on his back pulling him closer, making him follow forward as Bail stepped back.

It was...easier, to follow, like that, only listening to the music and feeling where to go. Bail slowed down, after a while, shortening the steps and guiding Fox to come even closer.

"There you go", Bail said softly, with such gentle praise in his voice that Fox had to hide his face against his shoulder at it.

Fox then felt Bail turn a little, as if he was looking somewhere to their side.

"Hello, our love", Bail said, and Fox opened his eyes and lifted his head up, to see Breha standing at the doorway to the room. "Enjoying the show, are you?"

"Very much", Breha said, smiling brightly at them. She walked to them, then, turning to 3-XA on her way. "From the start, once more, please?"

Fox raised his brow to her as she stopped in front of them. Breha only gave him another smile, and reached out her hand.

"May I have this next dance?" She asked. "Bail is, unfortunately, not the best teacher for when it comes to leading. He always trips on the turns if someone else tells him where to go."

"Nobody's perfect", Bail said easily, and stepped back a little. "And I will admit, that you are much better in that part than I am. You'll be in good hands, love."

The last part was aimed at Fox, and, well, who Fox was to say no to that?

"Yes, you may", Fox answered. "I'd love to."

He took Breha's hand, breathed in, breathed out, and did not stumble once.

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 4

Masterpost

Author's Note: I promise this fic will get more mission-oriented soon, but the next couple chapters will be very relationship-focused in the lead up to the Artemis 3 launch. I love these two and have a lot of fun writing them, so I hope y'all are okay with that!

--

Nearly everyone loves Gale Cleven. Those who followed the space program before have loved him since he first came on the scene as an astronaut candidate. Those who are only listening in as Artemis ramps up have the chance to fall in love with him now. Tall and handsome, cool and confident yet a little bashful, bright blue eyes, a winning smile, and a southern drawl. And an accomplished Air Force officer to boot.

Even as controversy over his sexuality continues to permeate certain spheres, for much of the world, it’s hard not to love Gale Cleven. Between training sessions, Marge sets him up with interviews and photoshoots, rushing him onto the Artemis scene as fast as he was selected for the mission. He’s tired as all hell, but he puts on a smile and sweet talks the media. 

“It’s an honor, you know?” he’ll say when reporters ask him what being selected to Artemis 4 means. “I really believe we can learn a lot about our world, and about the human species, through Artemis. We’ve been working towards this for years, and I’ll do my best by the American people to make them proud.”

“It’s real exciting, the way people are interested in the moon again,” he’ll say, with a cute little half smile, a wonder in his eyes, a confidence to his voice. “I’ve been in love with it since I was a kid. I get to share that with the whole world now.”

“Oh, we’ve got a great crew. Two great crews, on 3 and 4,” he’ll say when he’s asked about NASA’s preparedness for these missions. “We’ll get it done, don’t you worry.”

And when he sounds so sure, so calm, how can you not believe Gale Cleven? 

It’s been a long time since NASA has been able to capture the interest of the public so fully, but with the Artemis crews, there is a growing echo of the adoration that surrounded the Apollo astronauts so many years ago. These men and women are budding celebrities, whether they like it or not, and Gale Cleven and John Egan are the face of it.

Since the press conference, everyone tiptoes around the sexuality question. The marriage question. John hasn’t talked to the media since. But if anyone asks Gale about John Egan, no one can miss the undying love in his expression, the way his eyes go soft and his smile becomes just that little bit more genuine.

How can you not root for that?

The days following the Artemis 3 press conference and Gale’s appointment to Artemis 4 are busier than ever, filled with training, media, meetings, and more training. As the back-up commander for Artemis 3, Gale has gone through extensive training already in the Artemis mock-ups, including EVAs, flying, docking, and anything else NASA can throw at him. Now, however, he has a new crew to catch up with, including him as the new mission commander, Sandra as the new lunar module pilot, and Richard Macon and Helen as mission specialists.

He jumps right into the deep end – literally – with the crew. Their first few days training together consist of Orion simulations, excursions on mock lunar terrain while bogged down with EVA suits, and conducting mock zero-G EVAs in the neutral buoyancy tank. This includes donning full EVA gear and taking a deep dive into JSC’s 40-foot deep pool, where they can interact with full scale mock-ups of NASA spacecraft in order to simulate working through EVA activities in zero gravity.

While Gale grapples with performing repairs on the fake Orion hull, using tools through a bulky space glove as he floats around in a 6.2 million gallon tank of water, Bucky and Curt work through one of their final sim days for the Starship lunar lander, combatting scenario after scenario of different ways they can fuck up landing on the moon. While Bucky hops around on fake lunar terrain with a massive oxygen tank on his back, fighting the urge to pretend sword-fight with Curt using their sample collection tools, Gale leads his new crew through flight scenarios in the Orion sim. While Bucky artfully avoids any and all reporters by constantly busying himself with mission prep, Gale speaks transparently with the media about his new Artemis role. 

And while Gale turns in for the night after longer-than-ever days, Bucky is still at the space center, pushing himself and his crew to new limits.

–

October 8, 2025

Nassau Bay, TX

With their schedules demanding more of their time, Gale and John have barely had a spare moment together. Gale can hardly remember the last time they actually sat down and ate a meal together. One of them dropping by to see the other at JSC with a cheap cup of coffee doesn’t count. But their wedding is just a few days away, and, at Gale’s insistence, they had agreed to leave work a little early (or, less late than usual) in order to spend a nice evening away from the endless chaos of their exceptionally poor work-life balance.

Gale had finally managed to pull himself away and is now sitting on a stool at the kitchen island. He’s changed out of his work clothes, thankfully swapping the sweaty flight suit for a thin gray sweater and old jeans. He’s fighting the urge to check the time every twenty-three seconds. He is, however, acutely aware of the fact that it’s past 7pm, and Bucky had promised to make it home by 6:30. He sends him a quick text – “Waiting at home. Dinner’s almost ready.” – and decides to grab his laptop and review some mission protocols, answer emails, and anything else he can think of to distract himself. 

By 7:30, he’s tapping his fingers nervously on the countertop. He’s called Bucky twice, both times with no answer. Texts went unheeded. Marge hasn’t heard from him. Gale takes the pasta dish he’d made off the warmer and fills two plates with it, covers them, and puts them in the fridge. He sends another text – “Are you okay?” A couple minutes later, another – “What if I told you that I’m naked?”

Nothing. Even for that. He tries to brush off his growing disappointment and worry.

Bucky hasn’t been the same in the days since the press conference. They’d discussed at length how to proceed in the future -- Bucky didn’t like the idea of screening and pre-selecting every single question beforehand because he knew he’d come under fire for censorship or some shit. Gale agreed, knowing he’ll be facing the same things as Artemis 4 prep ramps up. However, they had decided to warn reporters that probing questions about the astronauts’ personal lives will result in them being removed from the premises at the discretion of the astronauts and the public relations officer. All Bucky has to do is give Marge a certain look and security will escort someone away. 

Otherwise, he’s avoided all discussion about it. Gale can tell, though, that it’s getting to him more than he wants to admit. 

By 7:50, Gale decides to eat without Bucky. He gives Pepper a few pieces of plain pasta to feel less alone. By the time he’s done, he feels officially stood up by his own husband-to-be. He picks up his phone and calls Rosie. “You guys still at JSC?”

“Yeah,” Rosie says. Gale hears a door swing open to the sound of an evening breeze and footsteps on pavement. “Yeah, we uh, we just finished up for the night. We had a hard time with one of the sims. Got it sorted, though.”

“Mmm.” Gale runs a hand through his hair and tries to figure out how he feels about that.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Gale drawls. “John, well, he said he’d meet me at home tonight for dinner. He’s over an hour late.”

He can imagine Rosie furrowing his brow, looking thoughtfully off to the side. “Oh, he didn’t say.” Gale hums again but doesn’t say anything else. Rosie sighs. “He’s been… off. Since the press conference. Like he has something to prove.”

“Right,” Gale says sadly. “Yeah, I know.”

“Will he talk to you about it?” Rosie asks. 

“Hardly.”

“No, me neither.” Both men go silent for a long moment before Rosie says, “I’m sorry Gale. If I’d known I would’ve kicked him out of there faster.”

“Yeah. Thanks Rosie.” Gale clicks the end-call button, and he buries his face in his hands, rubbing hard at his eyes, not sure if he wants to cry and yell or bang something real hard. He does none of it. He just sits alone at the island, feeling like an island himself. 

When Pepper, tail wagging, runs to the front door at the sound of the knob turning, it’s nearing 8:30pm. Bucky walks into the dark house. He follows the faint glow of light through the living room and into the kitchen, where he sees his fiancé sitting alone at the island, clicking away at his laptop and pointedly ignoring him. 

“Buck?”

Silence. 

“Gale?”

Bucky throws his bag down and walks to the other side of the island, sits down on a barstool, and stares at Gale. Gale stares at his laptop. Bucky reaches across and gently pushes the laptop shut. Gale frowns down at it. “When you’re two hours late, you don’t get to decide if I should pay attention to you.”

“You know how it is, Gale.”

Gale nods curtly and tries – fails – to swallow his frustration. “Yeah, John, I know how it is.”

“Great,” Bucky says. He reaches to take Gale’s hand in his, but Gale jerks away. “Why are you so upset then?”

Gale scoffs, still avoiding eye contact. His words are careful and deliberate. “I know how it is better than anyone. But that’s the point, John. We’ve both known how it is for months. That’s why we agreed to make today different. Just today. That’s all I fucking asked for. And you couldn’t even give me that.”

“We had to-“

“I don’t care what you think you had to do.”

“I can’t just-“

“You can do what you want. You always do anyways.” The words are, somewhere deep down, meant to sting. And Gale wishes he hadn’t said them, but some part of him can’t stand how John’s behavior tonight has left him wounded and defenseless and alone. 

“Gale, come on, I know I’m a little late, but I had to-”

“You’re more than a little late.”

Bucky slams a hand down hard and loud on the counter, startling Gale into looking up. He regrets it instantly, the moment he sees the hurt in Gale’s eyes, a sense of betrayal and wariness that Bucky can’t believe he just instigated. “Can you let me speak?” He grits out, forcing a calm into his voice. Gale stays quiet. Bucky sighs and pulls his hand away, curling his fingers tightly in his lap. “I need… I need this to go perfectly.”

“None of it goes perfectly,” Gale bites back. Even though he knows what Bucky meant. 

“I know. But I need to be perfect. I need to show them-“

“You don’t need to show anyone anything. You just need to do your job, like always.”

“The stakes are higher this time and you fucking know it.”

Gale clenches his jaw, trying to parse out the anger from the sadness from the worry. “This is about the homophobia.”

“No,” Bucky says too fast. Gale arches an eyebrow. “Maybe,” Bucky relents. 

“You won’t talk to me about it.”

“It doesn’t need to be talked about.”

“Clearly it does,” Gale exclaims, spreading his arms out wide. “Everyone is worried about you. Rosie, Marge, and Curt all say you haven’t been the same since the press conference. And they’re right. I’m worried about you.”

“Maybe everyone needs to mind their own business,” Bucky spits out bitterly. 

“You’re training too hard.”

“I’m going to the moon.”

Gale is quiet for a long time. Because he knows. God, he knows. He knows better than anyone. Bucky is going to the moon. Just a month after they get married. They don’t even have time for a damn honeymoon. And now Gale has to train for Artemis 4. The long days won’t get shorter, the short nights won’t get longer. Often, they barely see each other when they’re not at work or collapsing into bed. They rarely have time alone. Time to talk. Time to be close to each other. They knew this was how it would be, but that doesn’t make it easier.

“We’re getting married first,” Gale says weakly. “That’s… that’s still important, too.”

Bucky sighs and grips his hair in his hands. He can’t bring himself to look at Gale. He doesn’t even know why he says it: “you knew what you signed up for. Sometimes we have to prioritize.”

The echo of cruel words rings in the brief silence that follows. Gale stands up, looking anywhere but at Bucky. “Well,” he scoffs. “Good to know where I stand on your priority list.”

He walks away towards their bedroom, but stops in the hallway. “Dinner’s in the fridge. I made you a plate,” he mutters, and the gesture is kind but the words hit like a ton of bricks. Pepper follows Gale, trotting loyally at his heels, and Bucky hears their bedroom door click shut. 

-

He walks through the doors of the Hundred Proof because he doesn’t know where else to go. His head is spinning, pounding with an anger that he isn’t sure is towards Gale or towards himself or towards the assholes of the world who think they get to decide what he is and isn’t worth in the public eye. There’s something else under the anger, too, something that he isn’t ready to name, and it simmers beneath the surface like flames fighting for breath against water. 

The bar is always full of familiar faces, but he doesn’t look at a single one. A couple of voices that his brain doesn’t bother putting a name to call out to him, but they let him slip away. He wonders if that’s all it takes to disappear: just act like you don’t hear the words that people throw at you like stones. Except in the real world, they never stop throwing them even if you pretend they don’t hurt. He sits on a stool near the end of the bar and just stares at the astronaut portraits on the wall. Him and Gale. Always him and Gale. 

“Can I get you something honey?” 

Bucky blinks, adjusting his focus to see Jackie in front of him. She knows something is off, he can tell. He’s alone at the bar around dinner time, without Gale or anyone else, just a couple days before his wedding. All of that, and it’s written all over his face. 

“Whiskey,” he says. 

She nods and grabs a glass. When she sets it down in front of him, it’s got ice in it. He looks at her, and she looks back. “On the rocks,” she says. Like it’s a challenge. But she smiles softly at him. “Cause I don’t think you want it as much as you think you do.” 

Bucky thanks her – he isn’t so far out of it that he won’t be polite to a woman who has looked out for him as long as he’s been in Houston – and he takes a sip. He lets the alcohol sit on his tongue, slide down his throat. He lets it burn, and he sips it again. With a gentleness he doesn’t feel in his heart, his fingers brush across the condensation on the glass, and he thinks about how Gale always does that as a nervous habit when he’s been out a little too long and is starting to get tired of the company. 

He takes another sip. It doesn’t burn anymore, and he wishes it would. His throat feels numb like the rest of him, feeling like he’s drifting aimlessly about with no anchor to hold him down. He thinks about Gale. Shakes his head, tries not to think about Gale. 

He thinks about the press, shakes his head. Grips the glass too hard. Gets worried he’ll break it and lightens up. Tries not to think about the press. 

He thinks about the mission, rubs a hand over his face. Tries, for once, not to think about the mission. 

If we’re lucky the fag will die up there. 

He holds his breath to keep it from coming too fast. Where would that leave Gale?

He shakes his head, feels his lungs start to hurt as he keeps them from exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen. Elevated CO2 levels and suffocation are common concerns in a spacecraft, common obstacles that, if not overcome, could be fatal… He gasps quietly and draws burning air into his lungs. The condensation from the glass leaves little droplets of water dripping from his hot fingertips, rolling down and splashing on the wooden bar top. He sips his whiskey and holds his breath again. 

He’s getting married in a few days. Right before he leaves the fucking planet. He just spat in his fiancé’s face. 

Gale deserves better. 

Bucky really might die up there. Is that better?

He shakes his head, decides, firmly, that that thought process is a little too far even for his brand of melodrama. He forces himself to exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, and rubs his whole hand up and down the cool glass, letting it ground him when he has nothing else to keep his wandering mind on this planet. 

“You okay, John?” Jackie asks. 

What the fuck is he doing here? 

He thinks he nods his head, but he isn’t sure. He might shake it instead. He stares at the pictures on the wall. Blinking tiredly, he looks around the bar. 

What is he doing here?

He looks at his whiskey glass and raises it to his lips, but he doesn’t take another sip. His mouth tastes bitter all of a sudden. He doesn’t want to be here. Why is he here?

He only came here because he didn’t know where else to go: where do you go when you’ve denied yourself access to the only place you want, no, need to be? He doesn’t want to be here at all. 

He can’t be here.

He thanks Jackie in a hurry and tosses some cash on the bar, next to a nearly full glass of whiskey. 

-

Gale has only been sitting in the living room, letting himself feel hurt and lost with a dog comfortingly in his lap and the news on in the background, for less than an hour when he hears the front door fly open. Pepper looks at him, as if she’s asking a question, asking permission. He scratches her behind one ear and tells her to “go get ‘im.” Without another thought she flies off the couch and he hears a faint “hey Pep” from the foyer as he gets to his feet. 

Bucky, assuming Gale would still be in the kitchen or bedroom, comes barreling in so fast that he bumps into him right in the middle of the living room. After a stunned pause, Bucky wraps his arms tight around Gale. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

Gale slowly raises his arms to wrap around Bucky, and he lets his head drop to nestle against Bucky’s neck. 

“Can- can we talk?” Bucky asks quietly. His fist is clutching the fabric of Gale’s sweater, and he still feels sick at the whirlwind of unwelcome feelings in his head. 

Gale nods against Bucky’s neck, holding him just as hard. He still feels dizzy with the relief of his fiancé choosing to come home to him. “I’d like that.”

–

The night of October 10th, 2025, after an evening of low stakes partying with the entire wedding party, Gale is at home with Marge and Pepper while Bucky crashes with Curt. They’d decided to keep with tradition and stay apart for the night. Tomorrow, they’re getting married, and Bucky feels like he could really use a drink. Curt refuses him – for once, he’d agreed not to be the instigator or enabler. It’s his job as best man to get Bucky down the aisle in one piece, and that includes not being drunk or hungover. 

Bucky knows this, and really he’d never disappoint Gale like that, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t use a goddamn drink. 

He can’t stop anxiously tapping his fingers, shaking his leg, biting his lip as they watch some crappy movie on TV. Curt wants to smack him to get him to stop, but getting the groom down the aisle in one piece also means no bruises. 

After entirely too long of this, Bucky suddenly asks, “What if I’m not good enough?”

Curt nearly chokes on his drink as he splutters in disbelief. The day before the wedding, after knowing Gale for over 15 years and being passionately together for much of that, Bucky questioning himself now is absolutely laughable. Buck and Bucky are not the most stable people in this world, but Curt has never in his life seen a relationship as solid and quite literally bomb-proof as theirs. They bridge the gap between admirable devotion and concerning co-dependency quite flawlessly. 

Bucky is furrowing his brow, though, frowning deeply as he clutches the arm of the couch with his right hand and stares at the floor. “What if Gale doesn’t… what if he doesn’t want… me? Anymore.”

“Bucky, what the fuck.” Curt can’t help but actually laugh. Bucky just stares at him with the widest eyes, though, and Curt rubs the bridge of his nose. “I love ya man, but get it together. There hasn’t been a single moment since you two met that Gale hasn’t wanted you.”

“Curt,” Bucky sighs, putting his head in his hands. “I fucked up, man. I… shit, I did and said some things. We’re having a hard time with Artemis you know. I fucked up.”

Curt sets his drink on the coffee table and leans across the couch to put a hand on Bucky’s knee. “Bucky, you both know how this goes. You’ve been through everything together. That man loves ya more than anything in the world, and I don't really get how but he does. So yeah, ya fucked up. But couples fight. You’ll get through it.”

Bucky bites at his lower lip. “What if… what if it gets to be too much? Gale deserves so much better than me. What if I can’t… what if I can’t keep my head straight and…”

Curt tries not to roll his eyes. He is not cut out for this kind of thing. He’s NASA’s least eligible (but he likes to think favorite) bachelor for a reason. “Ok, ya know what, I can’t deal with this.” He pulls out his phone and scrolls through his contacts before pressing call. “Marge, I’ve got a code blue… blue for depressed… Marge, don’t give me that. I’ve got a kicked puppy over here freakin’ the fuck out the night before his wedding cause he thinks he ain’t good enough and Gale’ll quit lovin’ him… yes, I know. I laughed too… I tried… yes I fucking did I don’t need your sass… ok fuck you, I’m putting you on.”

He shoves the phone at Bucky’s face and mouths ‘talk.’

“Hello?” Bucky says into the phone. 

“Honey, what’s going on?” Marge asks. 

“Curt’s the worst best man is what’s going on.” He glares at Curt who sticks out his tongue as he leans back into the cushions on the other end of the couch.  

“Well he called me so he must not be totally useless,” Marge jokes.

Bucky frowns and picks at the fabric of his sweatpants. “I, uh… I guess I’m havin’ cold feet. Is that what they call it?” Marge hums patiently, letting him know he needs to go on. “I just.” He breathes deeply. “I can’t get our fight the other day outta my head, and uh, I still feel shitty about it, you know? And it’s making me nervous about… fuck I don’t know. What if… what if Gale... What if he…”

“Bucky, take a deep breath for me,” Marge says. He follows her instructions. “Now, tell me, do you really think, after all this time and everything you two have been through, you need to be concerned?”

“Yes.”

Curt smacks a palm to his face, and Bucky feels like he can hear Marge doing the same. Curt grabs the phone. “Just put him on,” he demands. Then he hands the phone back to Bucky and there’s rustling on the other end. 

Then, “John?”

Bucky bites his lip as his heart starts beating faster. “Hi.”

“What’s wrong?” Gale asks. Something in Bucky crumbles and reassembles at the same time when he hears the warm cadence of his concerned voice. 

“People keep asking me that.” Bucky sighs. Then it all comes tumbling out. “I’m sorry, really sorry, about the other day. I didn’t mean what I said. I didn’t mean it. I don’t know why I said it. Everything has been crazy. The press is getting to me and this mission is… it’s big Gale. You know that. And with the wedding, all eyes are gonna be on us more than before. And they’re gonna say things. Shit, they’re already sayin’ things. And there’s been threats and… I should be used to it and I am but… it’s hard sometimes. And I was… I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about it more. I fucked it, and I was upset and I hurt you and I still feel terrible and… I’m just sorry.”

“I know,” Gale says gently. “We talked through it that night, remember?”

“I know.” Bucky feels dangerously close to crying and he hates it. Gale’s voice is exactly what he needs to hear and it kills him anyways. “I can’t get it all outta my head. The mission, the wedding, the press. And it’s just, it feels like too much. And I’m… They… they want me to die up there. What if I… and then you’re…” He can’t even speak the words. He’s been a pilot for over a decade now, and he’s barely ever given the prospect of death a thought. But the idea of tying himself to Gale only to… well, only to miss out on their future. Only to leave Gale on his own… he can’t even think about it.  

“It’s gonna be alright,” Gale reassures him. “Y’all are the best damn crew in the agency, John. The risks have never stopped me loving you before.”

“God, Gale, I’m fucking scared.” He hates to say it out loud, this feeling that he long ago decided he isn’t allowed to have. But if he doesn’t say it to someone, he feels like he might self-destruct. And if he can’t say it to Gale, he can’t say it to anyone. 

“You don’t need to be, darling,” Gale says. “I’m right here with you.” 

“But what if… what if you change your mind?” Bucky feels so small, and his voice sounds far away to his own ears, infinitesimal, like screaming into a void.

But Gale chuckles softly and Bucky just cannot understand why that question is so funny to everyone. Until Gale starts to speak, his voice measured and gentle and emotional and everything Bucky loves about it. “John Egan, I loved you the moment you barreled into my life, and I have loved you every moment since,” he says. “I have loved you with my entire being, my body, my heart, and my soul for over 15 years. I don’t know how not to love you anymore, and I don’t want to know.”

Bucky feels the forbidden tears prick at the corners of his eyes, but Gale is just getting started. “Because no matter where we go, or what we do, I want you there. We were just kids when we met. Now we’re pilots, Air Force officers, astronauts. We’ve seen and done incredible things that most people can only dream of, and now we’re both going to the moon. But even with all of that, today is the day that makes everything worth it, because you are the person who makes everything in my life worth it.” 

He trails off, and Bucky takes a deep breath, wiping at his eyes, willing himself not to break down right there and then. 

“Are those your vows?” He manages to choke out. 

“Part of ‘em.”

“Aren’t you supposed to save them for tomorrow?”

Gale lets a brief silence linger between them. Then he says, “seemed like you needed to hear them now.” When Bucky is quiet, he adds “I can’t wait to marry you, John.”

“Well now I really have to step up my vows,” Bucky laughs shakily. “Gotta tell my bride everything he deserves to hear.”

Gale ignores the bride comment. “You’ve always been enough for me. You always will be.”

When they hang up, Bucky doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry, so he grins like a maniac at the phone on the table and Curt sighs dramatically in relief.

- -

Part 5