#I WILL be back with my metas though and that's a threat

[karamazovposting]

I really wanted a meta I'm quite proud of to be out by the end of this month but I still have to finish AND then edit it and it's been twenty-three days since my last cigarette y'all I'm in the trenches I can't do this

[clockwayswrites]

Bird Brained, or something. Part 22

masterpost NGL this part might be really rough. This migraine is killing my, but I wanted to get it written.

“Just stay behind us, Mr. Wayne,” Maria Ramirez ordered.

Bruce nodded as he paced. Facts about her ran through his head without his bidding. Ex Air Force. Bruce had hired her after she left, angry and with an honorable discharge the Air Force hoped would keep her quiet while the man who assaulted her got a pension. She was a little hot headed, took shit from no one, and was impressively competent.

If she continued this way, she’d be Bruce’s choice for the next head of security.

He still didn’t want to listen to her.

His kids were at the end of that stairwell along with the Mad Hatter and several of the man’s goons. Bruce was confident in Robin and Red Robin’s abilities to protect themselves from the threat, but this was different. This was Damian and Tim.

Robin might be magic, but the child in the suit was just a child. And children could die.

Bruce shook his arms out to try and get rid of the nerves. He could afford the motion as Bruce Wayne where he couldn’t as Batman.

As Batman he could have been at the front of pack and already through the door.

Bruce measured his breathing, forcing it to slow.

Ramirez held up a fist. The rest of the security force readied themselves.

One—

Two—

Three—

They breached the door with shouts of ‘hands in the air’ and ‘get down on the ground’.

“I work here! Doctor Daniel Fenton, R&D,” Danny’s voice called out.

“Get on the ground, hands behind your head slowly,” Ramirez ordered.

Bruce burst out of the stairwell. “I can vouch for—” Wings. Danny had wings. He was still human, human enough, but he had inky black wings that were spread wide along with his raised hands. “—Dr. Fenton.”

Ramirez glanced at Bruce, but kept her tranq gun trained on Danny. “Sir?”

“I can vouch for Dr. Fenton, he’s a friend of the family,” Bruce said more evenly as he took in the rest of the scene.

There was a remarkable lack of blood for the bodies scattered across the small space. Some were unconscious while others clutched their heads. The floor was scattered with crushed mind control devices and the occasional feather. The Mad Hatter was as far back in the elevator as possible, mumbling about ravens and writing desks. Danny stood in front of the door to the safe room. His spread wings assured no one got past him. The outside of Danny’s wings were white, Bruce realized. It was like they were inverted from the larger bird form.

“Tim and Damian are in the safe room,” Danny said quickly, breaking through Bruce’s thoughts. “They’re not hurt.”

Bruce’s shoulders slumped. “Thank you.” He ran his hands over his face and sucked in a purposefully even breath. Then he dropped his hands and looked at the security squad. “Dr. Fenton’s meta status is a personal mater not to be discussed, am I clear?”

There was a course of ‘yes sir’ from security and a soft, relieved, ‘thank you’ from Danny. Bruce nodded and strode towards the safe room. He snagged Danny by the wrist as he passed and pulled the stunned man along with him.

“Bruce?”

“Thank you,” Bruce said again as he started the biometric scans for the safe room. His thumb ran rhythmically over the back of Danny’s hand. The skin there was soft, like the down feathers of a chick. “Thank you for protecting my boys.”

“Of course, I always will,” Danny said, sounding completely serious, though Bruce could feel Danny’s hand trembling in his own.

The vault like door hissed as the air seal released and it started to open. Bruce knew that Danny said that the boys were fine, but as soon as the door was open enough, Bruce pulled Danny into the room and the semblance of privacy that it offered.

“Are you alright? Are you both alright?” Bruce asked. He rested his hand on Tim’s cheek while he looked to Damian, who was standing against the side wall, arms angrily crossed.

“No one even laid a hand on us or got close,” Tim said. “Danny, Dr. Fenton, made sure of that.”

“Which was completely stupid,” Damian bit out, his words harsh and angry and hurt.

“Damian,” Danny tried.

“No! It was stupid! You willing deprived yourself of allies! If you insisted on us being in the safe room then you should have been in it also!”

Danny’s wings drooped. “Damian, honey, this… this form of mine is still new. I didn’t want to risk—”

“You said you wouldn’t hurt us.”

“I would never, but there’s still things that could go wrong—”

“Shut up!”

Danny flinched back at the should, wings pulled tight against his body. Then he took a carefully measured breath and made himself relax. The wings opened up again a little and, with clear uncertainty, Danny opened his arms.

With all the speed of his training, Damian dashed forward. He rammed into Danny hard and wrapped his arms around Danny, clutching him tightly. Danny leaned down a little. His wings came forward to wrap protectively around Bruce’s youngest.

“You are an idiot,” Damian said harshly into Danny’s sweater.

“Some times,” Danny agreed, “but it’s alright. We’re all safe. It’s alright, little chickadee.”

[arcadian-vampire]

How to not be anxious about upcoming therapy appt: Start a project relating to your special interest, so you end up glancing at the clock feeling more annoyed than anything else

[deadsetobsessions]

Some night, he flew above the twinkling lights of Blüdhaven’s buildings, wind rushing through his hair and the feeling of weightlessness pushing at the curve of his back.

There were a multitude of things that Dick Grayson appreciated, loved, Bruce for. One of those things would always be that his adopted dad allowed him to fly once more, even after his parents’ wings were cut.

In the air, he was home.

In the air, Dick Grayson felt like he was living up to, flying alongside, the Flying Graysons. Every flip, every trick he used to go faster, to fight better, felt like his parents were there guiding his every move.

Time healed his hurt, but still, the hole in his heart remained.

So when one of his best friends, a ghost vigilante by the name Phantom, asked him if he wanted to see his parents, he froze like a deer in bright white headlights.

“What…?”

Phantom did a flip in midair. “Wanna see your parents? They’ve been asking if they could talk to you.”

“My parents… are ghosts?” That was the least pressing question he had right now, but it was all his mouth could speak.

“Kind of. It’s complicated,” Phantom side-eyed him. “It would require going into the zone.”

And just like that, Dick understood. After the Amity Park came onto the map and the Justice League fixed the human and alien and meta rights violations that were happening right under their nose, Phantom had permanently closed all access to the Zone. Save, of course, for himself and a few magic users, who all refused to anger the King of the Dead.

“The only way you’re getting to my people now, is through me. Should anyone try to get into the zone, without my permission… I will make sure that you and your family’s afterlives will pay the appropriate price.”

No-one wanted to test his threat. The afterlife is something few fucked with and came back whole.

The Phantom they’d seen on the news then was incredibly different than the one in front of him now. Dick knows, understands now, that it was because Phantom trusted him. After years of being denied help, years of struggling all by himself to keep reality from collapsing while avoiding getting experimented on by humans understandably closed his heart.

“You’d take me into the Zone?” Dick didn’t know what he was feeling. Hope, fear, trust, touched, happiness, something.

A lot of things.

Danny shrugged. “Yeah. I trust you,” he said as he glanced back at Dick-at Nightwing. “Only you, though. No one else.”

The question that remained was whether Dick trusted Phantom too. And considering the fact that the ghost king ironically saved his ass from being killed a couple of times meant, “Yeah. I- I’d love to.”

Danny smiled, all pointed teeth and solemn trust. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Now?!” Dick stood up anyways, his heart in his throat. Danny held out a gloved hand.

“Yeah, now. Haven’t you heard that death waits for no one?” At Dick’s concerned look, Danny added, “Don’t worry. You won’t actually die. You’ll come back whole and alive, I promise.”

“Oh, okay. Let’s go, then!”

——

Clark Kent threw himself out of the window, Superman suit already on.

Seonds later, he was hovering in front of Bruce’s shadowy form on top of a gargoyle.

“Clark,” Batman greeted in his gravelly voice, irritated. “What.”

“Batman, Nightwing’s heartbeat- it disappeared!”

Bruce’s heartbeat stuttered.

[evilminji]

*slams the door open, eyes manic* Sovereign State!

A Sovereign State: "International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined territory, a government not under another, and the capacity to interact with other sovereign states."

The USA already HAS several that exsist within its boarders? And there was that Gay Island of Australia (no really, look it up.) There is a LONG history of humanity going "well fuck you too then, I'm leaving. But also I refuse to leave. I am METAPHORICALLY leaving." *leaves your country and makes their own*

And??

Where's the FUCK were you? Mr. President? During that INVASION by Pariah Dark??

No, really. Social contracts, my dude. That is WHY you have AN ARMY. For INVADING FORCES.

You ALSO have declared us, your citizens, non-sentient and stripped of us our Constitutional Rights WITHOUT hearings, studies, or any due processes. Not to mention just desecrating the dead like it's NOT a well known religious and moral taboo. AND attacking out dead family members! The list goes on!

Why do we pay you taxes, if YOU are the active threat to us AND you offer us no social services?? You've all but cut Amity off anyway!

.......*Takes our ball and goes home* FUCK IT.

They are literally Limnals. It's a TOWN OF METAS. Can you honestly tell me that they WOULDN'T look at the Ecto-Acts and just think: "Yeeeeeah, how about No. Hard Pass."

You can have your INCREDIBLY stupid and offensive law. In OUR country, that's illegal. "We can't do that?" Yes. We can. We informed you in a Formal Document, which you received, you had the opportunity to STOP us, you did or could not, AND we got Regonized by another government.

It's a Ghost Goverment. We, the city state of Amity, were recognized by like... going on 23 at this point. We have a list. All Ghost Goverments, too. Sucks for you that you don't recognize those, they've decided not to recognize YOURS back until you do.

Politics, baby~

Aaaw D:> Does the Upset Baby wanna call, Superman? Boo Hoo. Somebody's forgetting the Justice League serves EARTH, not AMERICA. Suck on a lemon and die mad about it. Better not come back as a Ghost though! Your Goverment will declare you a lab specimen!

Now if you'll excuse us, WE have interplanetary trade routes. Because WE can use alien tech from our Ghost Buddies. And the Fenton Anti-Creep Barrier means you can't do SHIT. So *large crowd of teenagers making rude noises at frustrated government officials*

*Justice Leauge taking picture in the background* You're doing great sweeties! Aquaman is? So proud of the younger generation? They really are the future, you guys. Can he come in?

Oh of COURSE, your Majesty! *somehow ONLY Aquaman is able to get past the barrier, much to the impotent fury of the GIW and various officials*

@hdgnj @stealingyourbones

[stromblessed]

Mizu's spectacles, and the levels of her disguise

In drafting some more Blue Eye Samurai meta posts, I find myself writing out the comparisons between what Mizu can and cannot hide about herself, and how that affects how she moves through the world.

Like, I get the jokes about Mizu's glasses, if only color contacts had existed back then, etc. etc., and I think (hope) that most viewers don't take the glasses jokes seriously, as in "I don't care about the suspension of disbelief because BES is a cartoon." But I wanted to write these thoughts out anyway without burying them in a text post about something else.

I think the points I'm going to lay out here are viewed very differently by different people, so please feel free to add to this post, reply, or put your thoughts in the tags!

Not only do Mizu's glasses not actually help her that much, there's surely more to Mizu's mixed race appearance than just the color of her eyes.

In my view, this was pointed out in episode 1:

I'm willing to bet most of us were expecting young Taigen to say "blue eyes," not "ROUND eyes."

Obviously this is still about Mizu's eyes, but not even spectacles can hide their shape.

I don't think the show is obligated to point out everything about Mizu's face that isn't quite as Japanese as the people around her expect. Though the creators have said that they specifically designed Mizu - and her clothes - to read both as "white" and as "Japanese," as well as both male and female. I think there's more about Mizu's features that read as "white" than just her eyes.

This is where my own headcanons start entering the picture, but it's my impression that people can just tell that Mizu looks different, whether or not they can put a finger on exactly how.

There's the little girl who looks at Mizu and then hides on the way into Kyoto:

When there's more to your face you'd like to cover up than just your eyes, big hats are a big help!

By the way, most of these examples have to come from the first half of the season, since by the second half, either Mizu is too preoccupied with fighting henchmen, or everyone Mizu is facing knows who she is already, and she therefore has no reason to hide her mixed race identity.

It's worth mentioning that the mere fact that Mizu has to hide multiple aspects of her identity - her mixed race and her sex - results in her having to choose clothes that really, really cover her up, which doesn't win her any favors either:

(Zatoichi reference, anyone?)

If it were as easy as, for example, tying her glasses to her head and wa-lah, nobody would ever know she was half-white - then (1) Mizu would've just done that long ago, and (2) Mizu wouldn't be so on guard and on tenterhooks 100% of the time the way she's depicted in the show, even when her glasses are on.

Her spectacles sure don't help her in the brothel, which is full of observant women who are trying to seduce her, meaning they get good long looks at her:

Mizu never takes her glasses off, but they still send a woman to her who has light eyes, thinking that must be what will interest a blue-eyed man:

No wonder Mizu gets mad after this, lol

So Mizu never takes her spectacles off in the brothel, it's dimly lit inside, and the women can still tell that she has blue eyes. I'm getting the sense that Mizu putting on her spectacles isn't a guarantee that people suddenly can't tell that she looks different.

And yet no one spots that she's female.

Mizu can hide her breasts, can wear her hair in the right style, can hide what's between her legs, can walk and talk and behave like a man - and she's been doing it for almost her entire life, to the point that not only is she very good at it, but the threat of being found out as female is deadly, but isn't presented in the show as omnipresent.

Let me explain.

She threatens Ringo for nearly saying the word "girl" out loud, because while she's constantly ostracized for being mixed race, being a woman traveling without a chaperone, carrying a sword, and disguised as a man will get her killed or flogged or arrested or some combination of these things.

But in addition, it's been drilled into her since she was a child that if she is discovered as female, the combination of her being mixed race and female will identify her as someone extremely specific, someone known to some bad people, and she will be killed:

I think of it as Mizu thinking to herself, "Being found out as mixed race means I'm treated badly. Being found out as mixed race and a woman means I'm dead."

Mizu's hair is cut as a child. But she isn't made to wear a big hat, or cover her eyes somehow, or anything like that. Because hiding her sex is a more successful endeavor than hiding her race.

Ringo finds out she's female by accident, but once Mizu accepts the fact that he won't rat her out, she relaxes pretty early on in the season. Because the threat of being found out as female is mitigated pretty much 99.9%, since Mizu has gotten so good at being a man. And also, because most of the time, people see what they want to see. Even if Mizu's face makes her stand out as "not 100% Japanese," no one in the world of BES looks at Mizu's clothes, her bearing, her sword, hears her voice, and will ever in a million years conclude that she is a woman, because expectations around gender roles in the Edo period were so rigid and so widely enforced.

One detail that proved this to me is after the Four Fangs fight:

Ringo takes off Mizu's clothes so he can stitch her up, then leaves her clothes off even after he's done. He doesn't even throw her cloak over her as a blanket or anything. There's a little a straw (pallet?) as a divider there on the left, but anyone could just peek around it and see Mizu and her chest bindings. (I think it's mostly there as a windbreaker.)

And Taigen is right there, but he doesn't give a shit:

Opinions probably vary hugely on this, but my impression is that because the show doesn't make any kind of deal about Taigen being in the room with Mizu here, my guess is that Mizu isn't in any danger of Taigen thinking she's female. Even when I watched the show for the first time, I assumed that Taigen had seen Mizu out of her clothes here, and that he thought nothing of it.

Eat your heart out, Li Shang (Mulan 1998). I actually do think that this scene is a direct and purposeful side-eye to that movie, lol

There's obviously some nuance to how "severe" being mixed race is compared to how "severe" being a woman is for Mizu:

After all, Swordfather can't bear to listen to Mizu confess to being a woman.

So a Japanese man can go wherever he wants, whenever he wants in BES. A Japanese woman has limited options: marriage, religion, or a brothel. A mixed-race man is an eyesore in this story. A mixed-race woman is a death sentence.

May as well eliminate the female aspect, and do what you can about the mixed-race aspect. Because that's just realistic.

Meaning Mizu can avoid the strictures Edo society places on women. But she can't avoid the repercussions that come with being mixed race. And I truly don't think that it's just because "there's no brown contacts yet."

[escelia]

I took a prompt from @ghostreblogging and ran away with it. I have other parts in progress that I'd be willing to post if you guys are into it. I'm not saying it's good, but I definitely had fun with this and got wild with the next part.

Danny Fenton-Wayne: Big Brother

To say Danny was excited to be a big brother was an understatement. He was so ready to finally be the older one, in a position where he was allowed to be protective but not overbearing. Jazz had trained him well for this. And Damian was just the perfect little brother to him, though he was sure that was weird to everyone else. It was so refreshing to have a sibling that didn't treat him like glass. He reminded him a lot of a smaller, angrier, less tech oriented Skulker. And it was great seeing the others' confused but entertained expressions.

"I will slit your throat while you sleep," Damian had glared at his new big brother. "You are not my big brother!" He insisted. Danny thought it was so cute! Skulker would love him. The other Wayne's had looked mortified as though the comment would scare Danny away. Really, the threat was weak. Slitting Danny's thought wouldn't be nearly as effective as Damian was hoping, and it wasn't even that creative. But Danny was a good big brother, and rough housing was a great way to let off steam and get in exercise, so Danny just laughed and responded,

"You could sure try!"

Damian lunged at him in rage. The kid was fast and efficient; he'd give him that. But Danny had faced things much worse than a 10 year old with a penchant for violence. He dodged and snagged the back of his shirt, scruffing him like an angry kitten.

"Damian! No! Bad!" Tim scolded. "Danny, I would tell you not to take it to heart, but he really will stab you, so please be careful?"

"Stab me? That's adorable!" Damian squirmed in his hold while Danny manhandled him into a hug. This didn't really count as being overbearing if it didn't last too long, right? Besides, with Damian fussing so loudly about it, he was sure this was exactly how Jazz felt when she smothered him. It was amazing. Being a big brother was the best.

He eventually let Damian go and he sped away like Pariah Dark was personally nipping at his heels. No doubt to go plan Danny's demise. He was kind of looking forward to it actually.

~~•○•~~

Dinner that night was eventful. He'd learned that Duke was a meta with an ability that affected his sight. Not that he'd outright said so, but Danny could tell. He also gathered a few inklings about his family being the freakin Bat Brigade? They were all vigilantes, and they thought he was some normal civilian! So was Damian being protective of his family in the face of some stranger? That was understandable. Respectable even. Jazz would have said that he was a newcomer in their space and that he needed to respect that. He wouldn't pry if they didn't want him to. Across the table, his baby brother waved a fork at him menacingly. Danny snickered.

"Damian…" Bruce warned. Dick tutted at him from his seat.

"Sorry about him, Danny. You can just ignore him," Dick assured. Danny found he really liked Dick too, what with his similar penchant for puns.

"Thanks, but I think I can handle him. He's what, 10 years old?"

"I'm clearly 12, you imbecile!" In the next moment, Damian was scrambling across the table embedding his fork into the back of Danny's chair, but Danny was no longer in it. Damian hadn't even seen him move if his stunned blinking was anything to go by.

"Trust me, I would not be good for your diet," Danny joked.

~~•○•~~

Danny had gotten a great idea when several days later Damian rushed him with a whole sword. Even as Phantom, Danny was never familiar with traditional weapons. He'd always wanted to learn, but knew that with Fentons it just wasn't a safe idea. So when Duke came running to reprimand Damian and the child saw an opening, Danny redirected the blade down and out of his hand, offering it back with a question about lessons. Perhaps he could bond with Damian by letting him teach him about his favorite weapon.

Their "training," as Damian put it, was going well. Danny genuinely felt like he was learning a lot from him as well as about him. And even with his ghostly enhanced speed the brat was keeping him on his toes. When Damian nicked him with his blade for the time Danny had been so proud. He knew he wasn't easy to hit.

"Say cheese!" Danny exclaimed, shoving his uninjured cheek up against Damian's for a photo. It had turned out amazing, with Danny pointing to the oozing scratch on his face while Damian scowled at him for enjoying himself.

"Please desist. You're taking all the fun out of trying to kill you." Danny just laughed

~~•○•~~

Damian's new brother was just weird. And apparently Damian was the only one who really knew it. At first he'd thought the fool was underestimating him, but boy was he mistaken. He was a civilian, right? Then why could he not land a hit on Fenton even without the interference of his inferior siblings? The wretched thing was able to snatch him mid air and wrestle him into a hug like it was nothing. He was a professionally trained assassin! This was embarrassing! The others thought Fenton just had decent reflexes and a lack of self preservation instincts, but Damian knew better.

The day Fenton disarmed him quickly went from infuriating to intriguing. His brothers had admonished him for attempting murder again, but Daniel had stood up for him and handed his precious blade back to him, going as far as asking if he was willing to give him lessons. Tt, at least one of his brothers could tell he was a superior warrior. He obliged, eager to show off his skills with a sword. And Daniel wasn't actually bad at it per se, but it was clear he wasn't versed in swordplay. After a few sessions with Daniel, he noticed something odd. Not bad, but odd. The room was always cooler when they sparred, and he found that he didn't often overheat. Daniel was a quick learner and very light on his feet. So light, in fact, that he sometimes seemed to float. And Damien would swear on his grandfather's blade that when Daniel got serious, his eyes would flash a bright, toxic green. Damian was determined to get to the bottom of this, and because he was, in fact, the smartest of the Wayne's, he would do it on his own!

Turns out, he didn't have to try that hard.

Damian woke with a start at the knock on his door. He didn't have patrol so he'd tried to turn in early for the night. Grumbling, he went to see who it was. He swore, if it was Drake and he wasn't sleeping even though he'd been kicked off the schedule for sleep deprivation, he would strangle him. He cracked the door to see glowing green eyes. But Danny didn't seem irrationally angry like Todd did when the Pit Rage consumed him.

"Can I come in please?" Danny pleaded. "I had a nightmare and don't wanna be alone, but the others are out and Tim needs his sleep…"

Damian sighed and opened the door for Danny to come in. He sat at the foot of the bed and curled his knees to his chest.

"I don't know what you expect me to do for you. I'm not some counselor." He closed the door and crossed his arms with an annoyed huff.

"I don't need a counselor, I just need my brother." Danny's tired smile was soft.

"Why? I've been told I don't have a comforting personality." Damain took a seat next to him.

"I don't need to be coddled, I'm not a baby. I really appreciate that you're straightforward and rough toward me. I'm traumatized, but like, I'm not gonna break, ya know?"

"You… like that I'm rude to you?" This had to be the first time anyone had ever said that to him.

"Do you know why I'm here? Why I was taken in?" When Damian shook his head Danny continued. "My parents were always pretty careless when it came to raising my sister and I. Their science always came first. We had to grow up pretty fast. And once you grow up, it sucks to be treated like a kid again. It's what got my sister into psychology, and she was constantly trying to psychoanalyze me. Well, I'd had a lab accident that… changed me. When my parents found out, they vivisected me. Bruce found out and got me out of there, but Jazz was already 18 and in college so she couldn't come with me."

Damian was horrified. Even the League with their harsh rules and cruel nature would never do something like that. Even so, it did explain a lot, and Daniel seemed to know how to handle his trauma. An accident in a lab would definitely explain Daniel's more meta-like features as well. He wondered if his father knew, but figured he didn't because the boy had been very secretive about any abilities he might have gained.

"So to summarize, your parents were atrocious to you and now instead of being coddled or analyzed, you prefer to spend your time with people trying to stab you? I tried to kill you." He pointed out.

"Yea, well so has everyone else in my family at one point or another. It's sort of like a rite of passage and you're the only one that's done it," Danny smirked and nudged Damian. The younger boy could admit he found the humor in that, dark as it may be. "Besides, you get it: not wanting to be underestimated or looked down on just because you're young even though you've been through hell." Damian couldn't deny that. Maybe they were more alike than he had anticipated. Interacting with him didn't grate on his nerves like the others did at least. He sighed.

"So, what now Daniel? We sit in silence until you feel safe enough to go back to your own room?"

"I strongly prefer Danny for reasons I'm not willing to talk about yet, but I get the feeling this is as good as I'm gonna get, huh?"

"Correct."

"Well then, do you mind if I call my dog? He's a good boy, I promise," Danny pleaded.

"I do like the company of animals. I didn't know you had a dog, I haven't seen a new one on the grounds." Danny took this as a go-ahead to summon Cujo.

"I don't take him many places, he can get rowdy and protective sometimes. But I'm positive he'll love you." He let out a sharp whistle and the green ghost puppy phased into the room from under the door. He trotted over to the boys, tongue flopping as he did. He pounced excitedly on Danny before giving Damian a thorough sniff and deeming his presence safe and acceptable. He happily let the boy scratch his belly.

"He's… uh, green. What breed is he?"

"The ghost kind," Danny replied sadly. The implications were heartbreaking. "My accident turned me half-ghost so now I have a ghost puppy," he said as if that explained everything. "You uh, won't tell the others about this, right?"

Damian tilted his head in thought while he scratched Cujo behind the ears. He'd definitely want more details on what exactly Daniel meant by "ghost," but for now, he felt pride at being the one family member Daniel actually felt comfortable talking to. He could lord that over his siblings later.

"We'll, you're no longer in any danger, and your past is none of their business unless you want it to be, so I don't don't see a reason to tell them."

Danny grinned at his little brother. He knew Damian would be his favorite! He already knew he would do anything for him.

[raayllum]

Invert Life and Death Theory

Yesterday, the fandom received two season seven synopses that detail similar mysterious concepts:

The stakes have never been higher as Aaravos and Claudia are on the warpath, determined to destroy the Cosmic Order and invert life and death. With the world’s fate on the line, our heroes must be ready to sacrifice everything to save it.

As Aaravos and Claudia seek to destroy the Cosmic Order and invert life and death, our heroes must be literally ready to sacrifice anything and everything love and believe in to save the world!

I will touch on the 'sacrifice' portion likely here, and then further in another meta that was actually already sitting in my drafts about it (as we've known for a while that S7's main theme is sacrifice, even if I didn't expect it to be so blatantly spelled out in the summaries). But I digress.

Aaravos (and Claudia) want to destroy the Cosmic Order. They want to invert life and death, to turn it upside down (much like Aaravos' chest star I might imagine). Presumably this is to make the Cosmic Order mortal-mortal so that they can be permanently killed and Aaravos can have his proper revenge. He might also be working towards trying to reassemble Leola's spirit somehow.

But what is that attempted inversion going to look like? Well... It does contextualize the weird consistent emphasis his plans have had on the Moon and Sun specifically:

And we might finally know why:

Sun and Moon, Life and Death

In previous posts, I'd speculated there was more than just politics or revenge at stake in Aaravos seemingly killing Luna Tenebris and Queen Aditi 300 years ago. Of course the in-story explanation that's most obvious is that he wanted political instability, which I think is certainly true.

However, thus far there's not really a Reason in-text that it had to be those two. Why not another Earth dragon instead, or a Tidebound king? Throughout the series the elves that have gotten the most focus and worldbuilding have routinely been Moonshadow and Sunfire elves, and it didn't really have to be. And of course we could get into the weeds and say that Earth could've been associated with Life and Sun with death, etc etc. but the point stands that I think this series long focus on Moonshadow and Sunfire elves/philosophies in addition to Aditi and Luna Tenebris' deaths/disappearances makes a lot of sense if Sun = Life and Moon = Death, and these are the things that Aaravos wishes to invert upside down.

The fact that this reflective relationship between Sun and Moon possibly ties into Aaravos being in a mirror, characters having shadow selves running around in the narrative, and the emphasis on mirrored images in the dark magic dreams we see also makes sense.

Aaravos already toppled the Sun Forge and thereby Sun Primal on his way through to the Storm Spire. Going back to the Moon Nexus in S6 was a welcome callback to Through the Moon, but the Moon Nexus specifically having a portal between life and death... reminding us of that location because it's going to play a much bigger role next season (potentially like other characters, like Aanya) could be on the table. In taking Lux Aurea, Aaravos got the corrupted Sun staff after all.

Speaking of which, let's talk about

Rayla and Claudia

I don't think I have to explain why or routinely how Rayla is associated with the Moon as a Moonshadow elf. Secretive yet open, caught between love and duty, life and death, truth and lies, light and dark, Rayla embodies all this and more. Callum has also asked for her to be his Death if push comes to shove and he's possessed again, but she's also what has saved him in S6 from said threat of possession (and likely will again). This isn't to say that Aaravos needs a Moon arcanum and is going to take Rayla's (though I suppose he could), I think the likelier outcome is corrupting the Moon Nexus (and hence why you animate/rig Lujanne, Allen, and a new Phoe-Phoe design under your software at all). But it does mean I think Rayla will be a mirror to Claudia / whatever is happening with the Moon Nexus as a way to manipulate Callum, per usual.

Conversely, Claudia has wielded the corrupted Sun staff — a literally corrupted light that represents dark magic to her outright in S6, and one that she uses as a literal and metaphorical crutch — since season three, only occasionally using her father's staff with Viren only using the Sun staff for the Hearts of Cinder spell. She's a sun that's already been eclipsed by Aaravos, by death, in more ways than one. Someone who's walked a continually bloodier, darker path the further the show has gone on.

If and when Claudia gives up dark magic, she'll be 'restored' as the Sun — uncorrupted, bolstered by the truth ("Careful, if you tell the truth you will lose her"), shining brightly again. In the meantime, though, if Claudia is brought home in parallel with Callum being saved from dark magic corruption in S6, I think someone else will be Claudia's 'sun'. So let's talk about it.

Trials and Tests of Love

While we might see more — I could see Karim getting a trial on a technicality in S7 — as it stands now we see three former trials in the series. The first is in S4 among the Sunfire elves with Lucia, who ruined a sacred ritual by putting out a light, and is declared not innocent but worthy of life over death. Then we see Leola, who despite being truly innocent is condemned to death by the Star/First Elves and is made into nothing more than a light star known as Leola's Last Wish. Finally, we're going to seemingly have Rayla, whose actions did lead to the death of her troupe of Moonshadow assassins in the Silvergrove.

Just like with starlight vs moonlight vs sunlight with the Celestial elves, and Astrid + star magic creatures like Sir Sparklepuff in particular....

AARAVOS: Otherwise the sun will rise, and you will not.

We see this pattern of sun, star, and moon again with the trials alongside ideas of mercy, innocence, and concepts of paying the price.

Meanwhile, in season six, both Claudia and Callum were searching for their deep truths. Their path. Callum found his in Rayla and accepted it wholeheartedly. Claudia thought she'd find hers in Viren ("I'll look at him and I'll know / I need him to show me the right path"), but found only his body and the prison he left behind. Of course, the main reason that Viren died in season six was that he wanted to save Katolis, and more than that, he wanted to save his son.

She said that this was my home, and that my brother and I needed each other.

If Claudia is an eclipsed sun, a form of life turned death, than Soren is the uncorrupted version of the sun, ready and willing to guide her back if she'll just give him the chance. And in going back to Katolis, in sparing/saving Soren, Viren did help give Claudia what she needed in order to find her true path some day, too: a life with her brother and Terry at her side.

Claudia's first real test of love in the series was whether to choose the egg — the world, her father's wishes — over the safety and wellbeing of her family — her brother. She made the right choice.

I'm here.

It'd make sense if one of her final tests of love was a similar trial — maybe even if Callum under possession/Aaravos' control hurts Soren ("Oh I've been stabbed by the stab-prince!") — and Claudia once again chooses her brother over everything, just as he chooses for and fights for her. She ultimately chooses life over death, reflecting the massive change in herself and her character arc.

Likewise, Rayla being a Moonshadow elf saved from death ("I leapt to my certain death, but you spread your wings and you saved me" / "Finnegrin was going to kill you, I didn't have a choice") from Callum means breaking his promise, yes.

However, it also frees her up from needing to be an assassin and therefore from needing to behave like she's "already dead" or that Callum is. The possession/corruption would be a fate worse than death / metaphorical to literal death and rather than delivering either, Rayla would save him in turn. Like Claudia, she chooses life over death, symbolizing the same turning point. Callum, meanwhile, could get the Moon arcanum by realizing he has dark and light inside him; this may not mean a total blank slate (idk if they'd repeat that) from corruption, but a way to permanently throw off Aaravos' control of him regardless.

Life, over death.

Life and death working in harmony under principles of justice, mercy, and compassion.

Conclusion

This is more of rambling "notes on top of all this" place than a proper conclusion, but just a summary of stuff / some speculation for later:

Aaravos needed Moon and Sun stuff specifically from Luna Tenebris and Queen Aditi and that's why he killed them

Aaravos is going to successfully make the Cosmic Council mortal, even if that means making himself mortal.

This makes him more powerful than the Council and they may have reason to ally with our main team in order to take down Aaravos and/or be destroyed themselves

Rayla as Moon and Claudia as Sun reflect both life and death, but each will likely choose life over death; for Rayla this is about a certainty, for Claudia it's more up in the air if she'll have her redemption arc yet (I could see it getting pushed further to arc 3).

I think it'd be really nice if the inversion of life and death had broad implications meant some characters got to say goodbye, like Callum and Ez having a moment with Harrow and/or Sarai

And I think that's about it! What do you think inverting life and death may mean?

[jozor-johai]

I noticed a little subplot happening in the background of ADWD, and I’m wondering if anyone has any theories on where this is going. I have my own theory, which I'll explain in full at the end, but is essentially this: I think that GRRM is placing these Dothraki khalasars strategically along the Rhoyne and telling us about them in ADWD so that if Dany commands the loyalty of the entire Dothraki in TWOW, she'll already have loyal armies in place right by the Free Cities, rather than having to wait transport troops anywhere—even though the Dothraki aren't a threat now, the Dothraki will be in place to attack the Free Cities while the Free Cities have sent all their armies to fight Dany's forces at Meereen.

I'll explain my reasoning, and where I think GRRM is putting the pieces into place here—under the cut, since it's a slightly long post with maps.

We first hear of Dothraki along the Rhoyne in ADWD Tyrion III:

“Griff means to strike downriver the instant we are back. News has been coming upriver, none of it good. Dothraki have been seen north of Dagger Lake, outriders from old Motho’s khalasar, and Khal Zekko is not far behind him, moving through the Forest of Qohor.” The fat man made a rude noise. “Zekko visits Qohor every three or four years. The Qohorik give him a sack of gold and he turns east again. As for Motho, his men are near as old as he is, and there are fewer every year. The threat is—” “—Khal Pono,” Haldon finished. “Motho and Zekko flee from him, if the tales are true. The last reports had Pono near the headwaters of the Selhoru with a khalasar of thirty thousand. Griff does not want to risk being caught up in the crossing if Pono should decide to risk the Rhoyne.”

As a reminder, Dagger Lake is where the Rhoyne in the east meets the Qhoyne in the west to make the full-force Rhoyne that we know and love.

Illyrio dismisses any reason to be concerned with these particular Dothraki, and perhaps he is right. But we do get our first preview into the concerns of Khal Pono, and the premise of Dothraki along the Rhoyne. Are they doing to be placated by gifts, like Illyrio says? Or is something different afoot?

Next we get an update in Tyrion VI, by Selhorys.

Haldon Halfmaester explained. “On the way down from the Sorrows to Selhorys, we thrice glimpsed riders moving south along the river’s eastern shore. Dothraki. Once they were so close we could hear the bells tinkling in their braids, and sometimes at night their fires could be seen beyond the eastern hills. We passed warships as well, Volantene river galleys crammed with slave soldiers. The triarchs fear an attack upon Selhorys, plainly.”

Another reminder for geography, Selhorys is significantly south from Dagger Lake. Like, further than King’s Landing is from the Trident. Once again, we have this concern: will Khal Pono cross the Rhoyne for Selhorys?

That concern is brought up again in Tyrion VI:

“Three,” Qavo allowed, “against thrice three thousand enemies. Grazdan mo Eraz was not the only envoy sent out from the Yellow City. When the Wise Masters move against Meereen, the legions of New Ghis will fight beside them. Tolosi. Elyrians. Even the Dothraki.” “You have Dothraki outside your own gates,” Haldon said. “Khal Pono.” Qavo waved a pale hand in dismissal. “The horselords come, we give them gifts, the horselords go.” He moved his catapult again, closed his hand around Tyrion’s alabaster dragon, removed it from the board.

As predicted by Haldon in Tyrion III, here is Khal Pono across from Selhorys. We hear that Qavo is unconcerned with Khal Pono, despite Haldon’s concerns.

This might be a bit of a meta opinion, but whenever someone is as flippant as Qavo is being here, expect them to be wrong. They definitely aren’t going to go away with gifts, Qavo is totally jinxing it—that’s my prediction.

Then we get another update later on, in The Lost Lord:

Haldon’s horses did not please him. “Were these the best that you could find?” he complained to the Halfmaester. “They were,” said Haldon, in an irritated tone, “and you had best not ask what they cost us. With Dothraki across the river, half the populace of Volon Therys has decided they would sooner be elsewhere, so horseflesh grows more expensive every day.”

By this point, they’re in Volon Therys, which is only barely outside of Volantis—think roughly the distance between King’s Landing and Duskendale, for comparison. And here, too, there are Dothraki on the other side of the river. Are these the same Dothraki, are they traveling south at the same pace as Tyrion/JonCon? Or is this yet another khalasar? We haven’t heard any update from Qohor, and this is the first time that we’ve unexpectedly encountered a khalasar—are they here to meet with the Volantenes about Meereen, like Dany’s advisors fear? Or are they here for another reason? Is it possible that Illyrio and Qavo are wrong?

The last update we get is in ADWD Victarion, when he captures a ship from Myr heading for New Ghis and Yunkai:

Sailing out of Myr, the Dove brought them no fresh news of Meereen or Daenerys, only stale reports of Dothraki horsemen along the Rhoyne, the Golden Company upon the march, and others things Victarion already knew.

Unfortunately, this is stale news for both Victarion and we the readers—this is like a snapshot back to Tyrion II/III, when the Golden Company broke its contract and started marching east, and when we first heard about the Dothraki on the Rhoyne in my first quote.

However, despite this being a snapshot back in time to old news, I wonder about GRRM’s choice to include this again so close to end of the book—is this a reminder for the readers about these Dothraki on the Rhoyne? We’ve learned why the Golden Company marching ended up being important, could this passage from Victarion be a reminder of these tidbits of news because they will continue to matter moving forward?

I am doubly interested because it’s in this same book, in the very midst of all this talk of Dothraki on the Rhoyne, that we hear the tale of a previous time the Dothraki came. This is back in ADWD Tyrion IV, between the reports of Motho and Zekko on Dagger Lake and before the talk with Qavo about Pono. I’ve bolded the relevant sections, because it’s long, but left the rest for context.

“The war left the Disputed Lands a waste, and freed Lys and Myr from the yoke. The tigers suffered other defeats as well. The fleet they sent to reclaim Valyria vanished in the Smoking Sea. Qohor and Norvos broke their power on the Rhoyne when the fire galleys fought on Dagger Lake. Out of the east came the Dothraki, driving smallfolk from their hovels and nobles from their estates, until only grass and ruins remained from the forest of Qohor to the headwaters of the Selhoru. After a century of war, Volantis found herself broken, bankrupt, and depopulated. It was then that the elephants rose up. They have held sway ever since. Some years the tigers elect a triarch, and some years they do not, but never more than one, so the elephants have ruled the city for three hundred years.”

Maybe this wasn’t just to set the stage for the Volantene elections, but to remind us that the Dothraki can come out of the east to wreak havoc…. when the Free Cities are weak. And boy, is Volantis looking undefended right now: the Golden Company is gone to Westeros, other sellsword companies have gone to Meereen, the Volantenes have sent their fleets to Meereen.

Before I continue, here’s a map of the locations of the Dothraki khalasars along the Rhoyne:

Why we should care

We can be almost certain that Dany has to return to Vaes Dothrak to visit the Dosh Khaleen. Though we don’t know for sure if Khal Jhaqo’s forces are going to outpower Dany and Drogon, Dany is already envisioning the future where she returns to Vaes Dothrak when she sees Jhaqo’s outrider at the end of ADWD:

One rider, and alone. A scout. He was one who rode before the khalasar to find the game and the good green grass, and sniff out foes wherever they might hide. If he found her there, he would kill her, rape her, or enslave her. At best, he would send her back to the crones of the dosh khaleen, where good khaleesi were supposed to go when their khals had died.

Of course, we ought to already have known this from Dany’s vision in the House of the Undying:

Beneath the Mother of Mountains, a line of naked crones crept from a great lake and knelt shivering before her, their grey heads bowed.

If Dany was truly seeing her future—and I believe she was—then we know we will inevitably be seeing her return to Vaes Dothrak to accept the homage of the Dosh Khaleen.

However, this creates a bigger problem: we need Dany to get to Westeros, and potentially have time to also reach both Volantis and Pentos (though whether or not Dany will actually go either of those places is purely speculation, however well-founded). Vaes Dothrak is in the entirely opposite direction from where she is now—that would be heading east, away from Westeros, not closer to her end goal.

For some readers, this isn’t a concern: we might trust Quaithe, who reminds Dany that:

To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.

Some readers, though, wonder about the time and ability for TWOW to contain this storyline within its time. GRRM is realistic about how long travel time takes, which is great for the realism, but presents immense logistic problems.

Dany doesn’t need to worry about the time it takes to travel long distances as mucha as she used to—if she can begin to control Drogon, she can fly around at will. However, that’s only her; if Dany does gain the allegiance of the Dothraki at Vaes Dothrak, how can she actually leverage that in a meaningful way when they’re constrained to horseback? While the AGOT timeline is largely unclear, we can use Dany’s pregnancy to at least be sure it takes months to get from one side of the Dothraki Sea (in Dany III) to Vaes Dothrak (in Dany IV). Does Dany have months to mobilize Dothraki from one side of the Sea to the other?

With the Dothraki along the Rhoyne, though, she doesn’t need to wait for anyone to ride across the sea. Conveniently, they’re already there. If there’s some way to send a message that the Dosh Khaleen have decreed that the Dothraki will follow Dany, that she is the Stallion Who Mounts the World, then she has a ready-made army just waiting for her word to cross the Rhoyne after all, and take the Free Cities. Then Dany can fly over there on her own and just meet them.

I know we’re all looking forward to Dany taking Volantis, so I don’t want to propose something too contrary, but how about this: sicne we’ve been hearing all through ADWD that there are a ton of Dothraki already in place, conveniently for story purposes, ready to accept their regular gifts… or perhaps ready to act if, for example, word came that the Stallion Who Mounts The World has come after all. That might speed things up a bit. We know Volantis is only weakly defended, we know there are Dothraki outside of Selhorys, Qohor, and Volon Therys. Dany has spent five books searching for home and finding one among the people she’s freed. Maybe this is how she makes sure it’s the Volantene slavers who don’t have a home to go back to this time.

[deaddovedecadence]

Meta reader anon here! (Got nervous when I asked 😭)

Anyways, how would the Batman react to a reader who’s kinda been through a situation like the one Jason was in? (Lowkey trauma dump I’m so sorry-) like my father’s a really manipulative and narcissistic person so I have a much easier time picking up on stuff like that. Reader would legit already be on high suspicion (not like they weren’t already but like 10x more-)

Also keep up the good work! Really enjoy your stories!

A/N okay but learning about duke in the moonlight verse hours

”Why are you so afraid of me?” Duke asks curiously, some of thier braids swishing into their face.

You shrug, not meeting their eyes because you know that if you do then they’ll know something you don’t want them to. they’ve always been too observant for your tastes and looking at them makes something under your skin crawl.

You know hat Duke is a meta because signal is a meta even though they’ve never used thier powers around you, never made you feel afraid on purpose.

In fact Duke is always gentle with you, like you’re something that could break, something that they’re choosing to keep whole.

“Who are you?” You ask, staring them straight in the face. They smile (it’s not real), “I’m duke, your sibling.” YOu want to scream liar because they aren’t your sibling, because there is something wrong with the way that they are.

“What happened to you?” you try, keeping your expression gentle, open because there’s somethign that they just aren’t telling you.

They laugh,, “nothing, I’m all good.”

“Liar.” You snap, abandoning your game of pretend.

Duke gives you a too sharp smile, says, “I’ll tell you what happened to me if you tell me why you’re always avoiding me.”

That’s an easy choice to make. “You’re off. It’s like you’re constantly hiding something under your kindness.”

They laugh bitterly, the first sharp sounds that you’ve ever heard from them. “I was adopted two years before you. My parents were caught in a fight between Joker and batman. My mother was immunocompromised and joker used his gas to try and finally kill the terror of our city, the batman. Bruce found me, holding her dead body and he took me in. I didn’t have a choice and there was no one there to keep me from making mistakes.”

They pull back their sweater enough for you to see seven tally marks. “One for every member of the family,” Duke says absently.

“So they never forget where they belong,” Bruce cuts in, appearing out of nowhere. He puts a hand on Duke’s shoulder and you watch the way they bristle, but don;t bother moving.

There’s an implied threat in the way that bruce speaks, a warning that you could share the same scars with one addition, Duke’s.

[casscainmainly]

Small question, does it have to be Gotham for Cass? There's charas like Dick that can go establish their identity in a different city. Then there's Bruce, Steph, Jason and Duke who are so intrinsically tied to Gotham that this has to be the city for them. Where does Cass lie on this spectrum? Tq!

EXCELLENT question. I think Cass' situation is somewhat unique because of the way her character was handled post-Batgirl (2000).

In favour of Cass not staying in Gotham, she doesn't have the same emotional connection to Gotham as the four people you listed. She wasn't raised there, and in Batgirl (2000), she has next to no ties to Gotham civilians. In fact, it's when she moves to Bludhaven in Gabrych's run that she gains her first civilian friend and civilian love interest. The iconic volving panel is from Bludhaven, too. It's undeniable that the distance from Gotham, from Bruce (and arguably Babs), helps her grow:

Batgirl (2000) #71

It can't be overstated how important ownership is to Cass. To own something means, necessarily, that you not an object. You are a person who something belongs to, and who belongs to something. By calling Bludhaven the "first place that's ever been... mine," she's explicitly saying that Gotham was not hers. Bludhaven was the first place that made her feel fully human.

But there are caveats to this. Cass goes to Bludhaven in the wake of Stephanie's death, a Gothamite through and through. It's probable that Steph's death colours her view of Gotham here, and her willingness to embrace Bludhaven is in response to the pain that Gotham now brings her. (This is also after Babs calls Cass stupid). Feeling like Gotham doesn't belong to her might stem from these specific circumstances, and not be applicable in current canon.

Still, if the story had ended there, I'd say Cass doesn't need to stay in Gotham. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Red Robin (2009) #17

After Bruce's death, Cass goes to Hong Kong. Well, 'goes' is putting it nicely. She was written off to make Steph Batgirl, which resulted in Cass a) not appearing in most comics, b) being stripped of the bat symbol, and c) being isolated from everyone she cares about, besides Tim. It's a horrific and undeserved fate, reversing everything Cass' story once stood for (narrative agency; becoming a hero; finding a family).

Though Cass regains the symbol and becomes the Bat of Hong Kong, she is no longer part of the narrative; her distance from Gotham became a representation of her distance from narrative importance. That's the real danger of Cass leaving Gotham - unlike Dick, who is a big enough character to be guaranteed solos in Blud, Cass leaving Gotham will forever hold the threat of erasure.

I'm discussing this in a meta-textual sense, but textually Cass knows the danger too.

Gates of Gotham #5

Here, Cass rebuffs Dick's assertion that Gotham will never keep either of them because they don't belong. She says, "It's about how you choose to see the world. Everything else is just an excuse." She's repudiating multiple things: editorial's decision to boot her from Gotham; Bruce's decision to take Batgirl away; even, somewhat, Dick's ascension to the Bat mantle when she wasn't given a chance.

This is ultimately why, though Cass could work elsewhere, I think she should work in Gotham. It's the place she ran to after David Cain, the place she chose to stay in, and the place that gave her Batgirl. Most importantly, it's the place that rejected her. It's not about Gotham itself - It's about how she was ejected from it, and how she fought her way back, over and over again. Cass staying in Gotham ensures history doesn't repeat itself. It rewards Cass fans who survived OYL, Batman Inc, and New 52 with the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is just my opinion! I do love her stint in Bludhaven, so I understand other people preferring her elsewhere. Just for me, she may not belong to Gotham in the way Bruce, Steph, Duke, Jay, or Babs does, but she deserves to be there.

[qlala]

Whump prompt requests?? :o Pretty please can I request Barry gets kidnapped and Len finds him tied up? (Do want: muzzle/gag, handcuffs. Don't want: pet p!ay, established relationship)

i think this is the only prompt i've ever gotten with a detailed list of wants and don't wants, and you know what? i love clear instructions

the devil you know (coldflash, 5.6k, rated M)*

(*note: this fic makes implied reference to threats of SA/noncon, but none occur)

When Iris West tracked Len down three days into the Flash’s latest disappearance, Len sent her on her way with a shrug. He didn’t know or particularly care where Barry was, and he privately doubted Iris’s insistence that Barry wouldn’t have gone off anywhere without telling his team first. 

Still, he made an idle mental note to follow up if another week passed without any sign of him. Making that promise out loud might’ve gone a long way in wiping away some of the bitter disappointment out of Iris’s eyes as she left, but Len had a reputation to protect. 

Besides, Barry had a bad habit of popping up in Len’s life at the most inconvenient time possible. Ten days without the Flash interfering in any heists or Len’s attempts to follow the hockey playoffs undisturbed? He wasn’t that lucky. 

Four days later, a meta-snatcher tossed someone down onto the ground in front of Len's chair in handcuffs, a black hood, and very little else, and Len's first thought was that being right all the time was exhausting.

Narrow hips and shoulders, a lean and powerful body (although, underfed as he looked at the moment, that balance tipped closer to just lean), long legs folding under him as he settled uncomfortably—if prettily—onto his knees before sitting back on his heels. 

The concrete floor couldn’t have been comfortable. Len had put together the de facto throne room they were in precisely for meetings like this. It sat at the heart of a creaking warehouse abandoned at the edge of the docks, largely off the CCPD’s radar given the overwhelming impression that it was going to slide into the river with the slightest gust of wind. (Len encouraged that impression at every opportunity; he liked to post Mardon up on the roof to howl a few well-timed gusts of wind through the corroded metal walls during particularly lucrative negotiations. It made people antsy, and antsy people made worse deals.) 

He’d emptied the place of everyone except for himself and Mick for the evening’s entertainment, though. Call it a hunch; meta-snatching had largely dried up in the past couple of years. Most of the meta-humans with both valuable powers and common sense had already aligned themselves with one big player in Central City or the other—never mind that the distinction felt increasingly like choosing sides for a scrimmage. What mattered was that neither the Rogues nor Team Flash took kindly to their allies getting grabbed off the street, and meta-snatchers had learned quickly and painfully that they were better off finding safer professions. 

Of course, it helped that most meta-humans had also developed a healthy fear of the few meta-snatchers still bold enough or desperate enough to stay in the game. Len had taken that night’s meeting for the same reason that trophy hunters set traps on the edge of their own camps; the bolder the animal, the bigger the teeth. 

When the meta-snatcher pulled the black hood off with a flourish, Barry didn’t even have the good grace to look chagrined. 

“My, my,” Len drawled, settling back into his chair with a slow smirk. “What big teeth you have.”

It was too perfect to resist; he’d had the line ready even before he’d seen the muzzle, and he hadn’t landed on the top of Central’s food chain by ignoring chances landing in his lap like that. 

It was stark black leather, something Len would’ve expected to find in a very particular kind of club and not a meta-snatchers toolkit. He wondered idly if they’d had to improvise; a week of Barry Allen bitching his ear off, he sure as hell would’ve reached for the nearest gag, too. 

And it did seem to be functioning as a gag. It was well made from a single piece of leather, the breathing vents cut into the sides clearly designed not to allow enough give for the wearer to actually open their jaw. It fit snugly over Barry’s mouth and nose, looped securely over his ears, and came together in a heavy buckle on the back of his head. With the way it just skimmed the line of Barry’s high cheekbones, it was nearly a perfect inverse of the Flash’s usual mask.  

It was a better look than the cowl. Shame Barry would probably drop him in Iron Heights for suggesting that he take inspiration from the meta-snatcher’s fashion choice. 

Based on the flatly unimpressed look Barry was leveling him over the mask, Len was going to have to put that one on the back burner for a while. 

A quiet snort from Len’s right pulled his attention momentarily to Mick. Barry was lucky Mick hadn’t boomed a laugh the second the hood had come off; the plausible deniability that he and Len didn’t know who the Flash was under the mask was wearing thin enough as it was. 

Mick leaned against the side of Len’s chair and rumbled, too quiet to carry, “And it ain’t even your birthday.” 

The meta-snatcher cleared his throat self-importantly and Len flicked him a glare as he pulled his smirk under control. He was some distant relative of the Santinis, which made it all the more idiotic that he’d been poaching metas on turf that Len had chased the rest of his family off of years ago. Len had disregarded his first name as soon as he’d heard it; he didn’t plan on needing it. 

“He bite?” Len asked, pushing himself lazily out of the chair. 

Santini tucked the hood into his back pocket, clearly sensing a sale, and backed up a few steps in the universal invitation to inspect the wares. 

“Nah,” he said, conversational now that Len was showing interest. "I muzzle anything with a meta gene. That’s from experience. I caught one once, she could literally talk someone's ear off. And I mean literally. It would shrivel up and just..." He mimed a splat. 

Barry’s dark shock of hair was sticking up wildly around the straps of the muzzle, and Len could see a purple bruise blooming just over the edge of the leather at one temple. However they’d gotten the thing on him, he’d put up a fight. 

A hell of a fight, Len corrected himself, as he got close enough to get a proper look at Barry in the dim light. There were more bruises mottling his skin further down, and they weren’t showing any signs of healing. Len couldn’t see what kind of cuffs were holding Barry’s arms behind his back, but he would’ve put money on power dampeners.

"Meta gene, hm?” Len reached out and trailed his fingers through the air a scant inch above Barry’s mussed hair, just to feel the novel lack of static humming around him. "What can it do?"

The glare Barry shot him at the word "it" looked awfully annoyed for someone who was supposed to be in fear for his life, and Len raised an imperious eyebrow back. 

“Tests can’t really tell you that,” Santini said, patronizing enough that Len cut him a warning look. He put his hands up, an easy surrender. “...as you know,” he tacked on, mollifying. “I’ll tell you, though. He burnt through the first two pairs of cuffs we put on him. Whatever it is, he’s packing heat.” 

Len snorted. There were understatements, and there were understatements. The man had hooked a great white shark and thought he was selling an unusually bitey tuna. 

It gave Len exactly the information he’d needed to know, though. He hadn’t really thought Barry’s identity had been compromised, not with the way Santini had shown up alone, unarmed, and without several other bidders in tow.

He expected some kind of cheek from Barry, a tilted head that said “I told you so,” muzzle or not. Maybe even Barry pushing to his feet once Len got close enough, overly confident that Len would uncuff him and the game would be up. 

But Barry only tipped his head back to hold Len’s gaze as he sauntered toward him, and he didn’t stir from where he was kneeling. 

Len ignored the clear attempt at eye contact and began pacing a wide circle around him, appraising. It left Barry with the option to either twist to follow him or give up, and Len had to tamp down a smirk at the churlish way Barry snorted under the muzzle as he swung his head around to face forward again.

Up close, though, Len’s amusement began to evaporate. Barry didn’t look like he could stand. 

Power dampener cuffs were clamped tight around his narrow wrists, as expected. Homemade, but not shoddily so—Santini was an ambitious amateur. Bruises spanned the range from purple-black to fading yellow-green, the Flash’s missing week accounted for. 

Even with their more recent, less murder-y history, he expected Barry to have enough of a survival instinct to tense when Len passed behind him, some kind of instinctual response to having his back to someone who had once made it his life’s mission to kill him. 

Instead, as soon as Len’s path put him between Barry and Santini, Barry relaxed.  

Len’s feet stilled without permission from his brain. He waited for the trick, but none came. The longer he watched, the slower Barry’s too-sharp shoulder blades rose and fell, breath evening out, chin sinking by degrees towards his chest, like he’d finally allowed a week’s worth of exhaustion to catch up to him at once. 

Like he finally thought he was safe. 

Something dangerously close to alarm spiked through Len’s chest at the thought, and it took everything in him to repress the instinct to rear back a step. 

He shoved the panic down instead, held it under until it drowned, and got ahold of himself. The annoyance that bloomed in the aftermath, on the other hand, was welcome. 

Barry and his stupid, endless, goddamn faith that Len was a good man. He’d always trusted him too much. But up until now, Len had had the plausible deniability that it was only because Barry was counting on his powers in the event that Len did betray him.

Now, he was faced with the unfortunate reality that things were far worse than he’d let himself believe. It was his fault, really. Barry trusted too easily; it was an immutable part of who he was. Len had watched people wriggle close enough to Barry to sink their knives in his back too many times to count. None of it made a difference, not in the long term. 

But usually, Barry seemed to limit himself to second chances, even if he did give them out too freely. There were plenty of people in Iron Heights—hell, in the ground—who had used that second chance to take another stab at him, only to find that Barry’s patience had hard limits. 

Len, on the other hand, had let himself become something unacceptable. An exception. From the moment he’d failed to shoot Barry with his father’s thumb on the trigger that could’ve killed Lisa, he’d become a permanent lesser of two evils. Len didn’t even know what chance he was on, but he had passed second long ago.

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, people said. That was Len: Barry’s devil of choice, every time. Len had enjoyed it for a while, no sense in lying to himself about that. He liked the snarls of annoyance when he turned the cold gun on Barry’s other problems, let it stroke his ego that Barry had chosen him over them. 

But he’d let it go too far. Because Barry, it seemed, had forgotten a crucial part of what that saying meant. He’d forgotten Len didn’t play on the side of the angels. 

Lucky for him, Len was going to enjoy reminding him. 

Len forced himself to move again. His gaze lingered on the bruises as he finished circling Barry, despite his best efforts. The worst of it was centered on Barry’s left shoulder, where a hazy ring of deep purple suggested a dislocated—and subsequently relocated—shoulder. He also had a nasty bruise ricocheting over several ribs, and Len watched him breathe for a careful moment. A slow, measured inhale, then a slight hitch and quick, almost involuntary exhale; at least one of them was broken. 

Len’s carefully curated annoyance was already simmering rapidly and unacceptably toward anger when he caught sight of the marks wrapped around Barry’s upper arm. He’d missed them at first glance, easily lost next to the darker mottling from the dislocated shoulder. But the shape of it was unmistakable: four parallel lines around the strong curve of his bicep—a handprint. 

Someone else’s handprint. 

Len caught the thought by the throat before it made him round on Santini. He shoved the thought, snapping and hissing, back into the possessive corner of his mind it had escaped from, and barred the door after it. 

Barry’s surrender had knocked something off-kilter in Len’s brain, sent boxes he’d kept carefully bolted shut spilling open with the impact. Barry may have been his problem, but that was the only “his” that he was. 

And Barry was only his problem because he’d got himself caught by a two-bit amateur with some jerry-rigged tech. A few bruises were the least he deserved; the only reason he was alive was because that two-bit amateur had dumped him at Len’s feet and not someone else’s.

Still, a nasty thought was churning in the back of Len’s mind, and he had to put both hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for the cold gun. He wanted an honest answer out of Santini, not whatever he thought Len wanted to hear. The truth mattered; he needed to know how many pieces the man would be leaving the warehouse in.

“Looks a little worse for wear,” Len drawled, forcing his tone light and sardonic. “Got a discount for damaged goods?”

“Aw, fuck off,” Santini lobbed back, oblivious and good natured. “So he got a little banged up in transit. I told you, he didn’t like the cuffs. He dislocated his own shoulder trying to get out of ‘em. Not my fault. Hell, I put it back in for you.” 

“Not what I was talking about.” Len slid a pointed glance down Barry’s body—miles of freckled skin, very little else—then looked back at Santini. He didn’t lift an eyebrow; he didn’t have to. 

“Oh, the underwear?” Santini scoffed. “I deal in weapons, Cold, not skin. Too messy. Kid’s got every stitch of clothing and virtue he had when I found him, swear on my mother. Besides, he’s not my type.”

The generous two-handed gesture Santini made in front of his own chest didn’t impress Len, but it was crude enough that he took him at his word. He’d suspected as much, regarding the clothes. Barry may have been stupid enough to get himself caught by a meta-snatcher, but he wasn’t stupid enough to get caught and stay in the Flash suit. Whatever trap he’d stumbled into, he’d must’ve had time to throw the suit into some dark corner. No wonder his team hadn’t been able to track him down. 

That unpleasant matter behind them, Len rolled his shoulders back, settling in for another slow circle around Barry. The business portion of the evening was wrapping up, at least as far as he was concerned. He had the information he needed from Santini, and all that was left was to remind Barry that if the meta-snatcher was the frying pan, he was the fire.

If his first perusal had been business, the second was… well. Call it an advance on the clean-up fee he was going to charge Barry for handling Mr. Virtue over there. 

Barry lifted his head as Len started to circle again, tilted it slightly in unspoken question. The muzzle was inspired, Len would give Santini that. Barry had sure as hell never held his tongue for so long in Len’s presence of his own volition. 

Len could hear the list of complaints he’d be in for once he took it off: thanks for leaving the cuffs on for so long, those were comfortable—you know, they sell this new technology nowadays, it’s called an area rug—probably with a dig about his age, while he was at it. 

Len banished the thoughts and the grin that was threatening. Christ, maybe Barry was right. He was getting soft if he was laughing at just the idea of Barry crabbing at him. 

He reached for his earlier determination, instead. He tilted his head with a collector’s eye as he tightened the circle, close enough to touch. 

Barry really did have freckles everywhere, more than Leonard had imagined in the occasional privacy of his own thoughts. Constellations of them between the colorful galaxies of bruises painted over his leanly-muscled shoulders, his chest, stomach, carelessly parted thighs. There was even a pair of them right on the dimples of his lower back, where Len’s thumbs would’ve fit like the space had been made for them. 

It was a tempting thought. Pressing his own claim into Barry’s body, maybe covering up that hand-shaped bruise with one of his own. He was the one playing big bad wolf now, after all. And with both of them dressed for the part: Len, with the fur collar of the parka brushing his jaw, and Barry in those little red shorts. They left absolutely nothing to Len’s imagination, a delicious payoff to years of idle wonderings about what the Flash wore under that suit.

Something of the thought must’ve shown on Len’s face, because Barry looked decidedly less patient when Len caught his eye again. He glanced pointedly back behind himself, then back up again, as if Len weren’t perfectly aware that he wanted the power dampener off.  

Barry wasn’t the only impatient one. Santini clapped once, businesslike, and began walking closer. “You just window shopping today, or—?”

Len cut him off with a look, winning him back silence and space as Santini course-corrected with a gracious “after you” gesture and ceded ground again. 

A week in a cage clearly hadn’t been enough to break Barry’s pride, let alone his spirit. The muzzle was probably the only thing that had kept the meta-snatchers from realizing who he was. Barry would’ve snarked their ears off no matter what they did to him; he’d taken too many hits to be afraid of a little pain. And even with how stupid Santini was, the bared teeth and complete contempt would’ve added up to Central’s apex predator eventually.

The thought was a butane lighter to the sparks of arousal in Len’s veins. It was unfortunate that he wouldn’t be able to take the muzzle off while Santini was still breathing down their necks. He would’ve liked to see the fear in his eyes when he realized the enormity of the mistake he’d made. Delivering the Flash bound and gagged to the one man in the city who had something of a gentleman’s agreement with him…

Len hummed, a little wistful, as he reminded himself that said gentleman’s agreement precluded him from hauling Barry up to sit in his chair and slitting Santini’s throat at his feet. 

But he let the idea of it linger, knew that it would darken his eyes as he skimmed another lingering look down Barry’s body. 

And there, finally—a hint of wariness in Barry’s eyes when Len bothered dragging his gaze up from the dark hair that trailed temptingly down Barry’s lower stomach and disappeared under his waistband. Beginning to remember, maybe, that Len didn’t work for free. 

Len pushed his advantage while he had Barry off-balance. He drew his hands from his pockets, slowly, casually, and held them up at Barry’s eye level. He was wearing gloves, as he always did when conducting business. No point in keeping the cold gun strapped to his thigh if he wasn’t going to be ready to use it. The gloves were a helpful and very visible reminder of that.  

When he was sure he still had Barry’s attention—and he did, something unreadable passing across Barry’s eyes as they darted between Len’s hands—Len turned one hand toward himself, brought the other to its fingertips, and then slowly, one finger at a time, began teasing the glove off. 

Barry tracked the movement with his eyes without prompting, giving Len a quickly-dismissed impulse to reward him. A quizzical furrow formed between his brows, and he stole a single glance up and risked a quick, faint tilt of his head to one side. Confused, yes, but not combative. The difference between “What are you doing?” and “What the hell are you doing?”  

It was Len’s turn to feel an annoyed burn of impatience. Barry was on his knees in front of a convicted killer, bound and gagged and stripped to his skin, and Barry still thought this was all part of a plan. Len had killed three men in front of Barry—and counting. The only plan he had now was finding out how far that stupid, blind trust could bend until it broke.

Len finished drawing the glove off slowly, and in the quiet of the room, nothing but the distant sounds of the river rolling past outside, he was certain Barry heard the rasp of leather over skin. 

Barry’s attention fractured as Len watched. His gaze flicked up from the glove for a single, distracted glance at Len’s eyes. Just below the line where the muzzle dug into the underside of Barry’s jaw, his throat bobbed on a swallow. 

Good, Len thought. Nervous was the first step toward suspicious, and suspicious might just keep Barry alive. 

Len looked away with easy disinterest, settling his attention to Barry’s unbruised shoulder. Barry sat up straighter as Len reached out with the glove in his hand, a hitch in his breath visible in the stuttering rise of his bare chest. 

When Len laid the glove out on the bare, unmarked skin there, Barry twitched like Len had stuck him with a knife.

Almost getting it, Len mused. Ignoring the urgent, searching flicker of green eyes in his direction, Len reached out with his newly bare hand and rested the tip of one finger just under the corner of Barry’s jaw. 

The black leather there was butter soft and warm from Barry’s skin. Just as slowly as he’d pulled off the glove, Len stroked the finger up the line of Barry’s jaw, following the sharp edge of it through the muzzle. Only then did he slide his gaze back to Barry’s to watch the emotions dart through those pale eyes. Confusion, yes, then surprise, with another sharp inhale. And then, with the first flush of healthy color to Barry’s face since he’d been dragged in, understanding. 

Yahtzee, Len thought with a smirk. 

He didn’t give Barry a chance to pull away. He caught him with two fingers under the edge of the muzzle, hard, knuckles snug against his windpipe, and jerked his chin up.

Barry jolted with the movement, full-body, back arching to accommodate the sudden, demanding angle of his neck, the glove tumbling to the ground. Eyes wide, he made a sound behind the muzzle that might’ve been Len’s name if he’d been able to open his mouth enough to say it. 

Somewhere behind Barry, Santini started to object, but he shut himself up before Len had to look his way again. Likely Mick had warned him off, a pointed hand on the heat gun’s handle, or the man had just remembered who he was dealing with. 

Len held Barry there at attention, letting him hang off the hook of his fingers. Heady wasn’t a strong enough word for it. It was a level of control he hadn’t imagined even back before Barry became Barry, when the Flash was a problem to be solved and not a single facet of a more fascinating, infuriating whole. The hero of Central City helpless at his feet, stripped of that golden cloak of lightning he wore everywhere like armor… 

And still not fighting Len an inch. 

Barry’s chest heaved, breath coming quick and shallow, that broken rib apparently the furthest thing from his mind. When Len met Barry’s gaze, his own eyes narrowing in frustration, Barry’s were stunned and breathless. But still, no fear there. 

Agitated, Len crooked his fingers tighter, forcing Barry’s chin up another inch. Barry’s lashes fluttered—maybe feeling that rib now, after all—and Len watched the muscles in his thighs flex as he nearly forced him up onto his knees.

Fight back. 

Barry didn’t so much as twist in his grip, eyes half shut. With Len’s fingers hooked under the edge of the mask, he could feel the heat of Barry’s breaths, nearly panting now. His face and throat were stained pink, exertion clearly catching up to him, and Len wondered if the mask was starting to cut off air after all. 

He loosened his grip and allowed Barry to relax back onto his heels. Barry’s breathing stayed ragged anyway, blush touching the top of his chest as Len frowned at the unreadable expression in his eyes, gone round and almost glassy. 

When Len slipped his fingers free of the mask, Barry didn’t move an inch, head tipped back where Len had left it. 

Len’s patience snapped, curling his gloved hand into a fist at his side. He could’ve snapped Barry’s neck in less than a second, bared to him like that, all fragile skin and sharp tendons. It would’ve been easy as breathing, and there would’ve been nothing that Barry’s powers or his little team could’ve done about it. 

Len took a sharp step forward, closing the rest of the distance between them. It brought the front of his hips nearly flush with the muzzle, his boots between Barry’s knees, which were falling open a little further with every uneven breath. 

It was—too much, frustration at the completely unearned trust, frustration that Barry had been reckless enough to get himself caught, both tangling confused with frustration at Barry. That even stripped and submissive on his knees in front of Len, offering him his throat, he was still the one goddamn thing Len wanted and couldn’t have. 

Len should have conceded that his self-restraint was clinging on by a thread. He should have taken a step back, drawled something droll and amusing, and ended the night with his sanity intact. 

Instead, Len curved a hand around either side of Barry’s neck and stroked them upwards slowly, deliberately.

How many ways could someone kill you just like this, Barry? 

Barry’s throat worked under his hands and he shivered, hard, even as he tipped his head back further, giving Len more room to take advantage of. Barry made another, fainter noise behind the muzzle, half-swallowed as his throat bobbed. 

One point to Len. Even Barry couldn’t miss the threat of Len’s fingertips pressed against the fragile bones of his neck. 

Len lifted them to the edge of Barry’s jaw, followed the line of the straps around his ears, and then reached forward to trace the leather up until his fingers met at the buckle on the back of his head.

The movement brought the parka up on either side of Barry’s head, caging him in, hopefully adding to the claustrophobia of having Len so completely in his space. Len hooked a finger under the loop of leather where it passed through the buckle. He paused there, poised to pull it tighter, and was about to close his hand around the strap and tug when Barry did the one thing he wasn’t counting on. 

He gave in. 

All of the last remaining fight went out of those narrow shoulders at once, nearly unbalancing Len where he’d been bracing his wrists on the steady line of them. 

Instead of using the opportunity to duck away—point made, Snart, let me out of this thing—Barry only swayed deeper into the circle of Len’s arms. Before Len could jerk backwards, half-certain that Barry was finally passing out—Barry brushed closer and rested his forehead against Len’s lower stomach. 

For the space of two heartbeats, Len’s mind went perfectly blank. And then he realized, with a level of disbelief so incredulous that he could feel it bleeding against his will into respect, what Barry had just done. 

He’d called Len’s bluff. 

No suit, no speed, no backup, bound and gagged and as powerless as Len ever could have hoped to have him, and Barry had called his goddamn bluff. 

Chips down, cards on the table, there was nothing else to do—Len took a step back. 

Cold air rushed back between their bodies. Even with that dampener keeping his powers in check, Barry must’ve been a hundred degrees, and Len’s jaw ached against the loss of his heat instantly. 

Barry fell back onto his heels, and Len didn’t wait for him to get his bearings. He hooked a finger through one of the ear loops, forcing the last shreds of anger into the movement, and jerked his head back up.

For the first time all night, Barry didn’t jolt to meet his gaze. Instead, he let three full seconds tick past before he lifted his eyes, as if looking up had been his idea all along. Hair disheveled, pupils nearly swallowing the thin green ring of his irises—

Barry smirked at him. 

It was unmistakable, muzzle be damned, eyes narrowing in such viciously smug satisfaction that Len was torn between shoving him away or dragging him into a dark corner.

Len tightened his grip in the edge of the muzzle, on the brink of deciding, when a low whistle cut through the room. 

“Well, shit. You really have got a way with ‘em, huh?” 

Santini’s voice was an unwelcome reminder of the unfinished business Len had to attend to, and he dragged his gaze away from Barry only after a dark look, promising him that he’d deal with him next.  

“Or maybe just with this one in particular,” Santini continued, grinning like he and Len had agreed on something. “Funny thing—he finally stopped burning through those cuffs when he overheard me tell my crew I was considering Cold as a buyer.”

Len slid his gaze back to Barry. Barry, who was looking anywhere but Len, apparently deeply interested in hearing anything Santini had to say for the first time since he’d dragged him through Len’s doors. Barry, who was still breathing hard and blushing to his roots. Barry, who was trying to draw his knees together even with Len still standing in between them. 

“Did he, now?” Len asked. 

The question wasn’t aimed at Santini, but he answered anyway. 

“Mmm-hmm.” He rocked back on his heels, inclined his head to Len in a pantomime of tipping a hat. “You got a reputation for looking after yours, after all. He must’ve thought you’d have some use for him or another.” He flashed a salacious grin; his objections to the ‘skin game’ clearly ended where his sales instincts began. “I figured maybe the feeling was mutual, and you’d appreciate first dibs on the sale.”

Lips pulling into a sharp, predatory smirk, Len lifted the toe of one boot and planted it on the inside of Barry’s thigh. “I’m considering it.” 

Len pushed Barry’s legs apart with ease. Barry’s color deepened, and he jerked his head like he had any chance in hell of jarring Len’s hand loose from the strap of the muzzle now. Len clicked his tongue in a light, mocking reprimand, and Barry flashed him a glare for it, even as he stopped twisting under his grip. 

He didn’t fight it when Len drew his head to one side, far enough to give him an unimpeded view down the front of his body. The blush stretched halfway down his chest, past nipples that were hard and peaked like Len had just spent an hour teasing them with his tongue. He didn’t need to nudge Barry’s thighs wider to see the thick, heavy outline of his cock straining at the front of the red shorts, but he did it anyway, and was rewarded when it twitched at the demanding press of his boot.  

“I’ll take him,” Len drawled, and Barry’s hips hitched forward as Len guided his legs apart another inch, pulling the thin material taut over his groin.

Across the room, Santini laughed. “I haven’t even told you how much.”

“Not paying.” Len didn’t bother looking up; Barry had lifted his gaze to him again, and Len was going to need a more compelling reason than a low level Santini to look away from the impatient heat in his eyes. “Mick?” 

Mick strode past them without a glance. Santini took one stumbling step backwards, then did the first smart thing he’d done all day: turned heel and ran.

Something in Len’s smirk made Barry blink, brow furrowing. He said something behind the muzzle, chin lifting in a way he probably thought was authoritative, and came across entirely the opposite on his knees. 

Len had heard the words ���No killing” come out of that mouth enough times to recognize it from cadence alone, but he tugged Barry up by the muzzle instead, until he got the message and stumbled to his feet. 

“Didn’t catch that,” Len drawled. 

Barry looked ready to argue, as if he weren’t half-wrecked already, skin flushed, hair wild. But he did a distracted double-take when Len shrugged out of his coat, and his gaze went dark and intent as it slid down the dark clothes he was wearing underneath, shouts behind him forgotten.

“You can fill me in later,” Len said, turning away. He shucked his belt as he sauntered toward his chair, let the buckle ring when he dropped it to the concrete. 

Barry was still standing indecisively in the middle of the room when Len settled into the chair with a comfortable sprawl, legs spread, boots wide. His gaze caught on the thick press of Len’s cock, hard against his jeans, and Len flashed his teeth at him in something too sharp to be a smile.

“Got somewhere to be, bolt cutters are in the workshop.” Len indicated a door to the side with a tip of his head, even as he moved his hand to the front of his jeans. “If not...” 

He rubbed his thumb over the button of his jeans, enjoying the pressure against his cock—one slow circle, another. The third time, he slid the button free. 

And Barry came willingly. 

[tinylongwing]

Vide Noir's dual narrative structure

All right, here it is, me making good on at least one of my meta threats. Lord Huron's album Vide Noir can be interpreted as an album with two parallel, contrasting narratives - that of the lead protagonist Buck Vernon, as well as that of Johnnie Redmayne.

Disclaimer: this is an interpretation I think is pretty sound and well-reasoned, but I make no claim to any of this being proven canon information.

---

For those unfamiliar or who need a reminder, the primary narrative is this: the year is 1967, and we start near the end of Buck's journey, as he awakens from being black-brained (Lost in Time and Space). Having just suffered an overdose on the drug vide noir, his memories are slow to return to him, but return they do - his fiancee, Leigh/Lee Green (from here on Leigh but both spellings have been used), left him without a word one night, and he decided to follow, heading west to Los Angeles from their home town of Detroit, Michigan. He's been struggling to find her, checking every bar in the city in case she was booked to sing at one as her move was the result of her chasing her dream of becoming a singer. He doesn't remember a lot about himself, really, after that overdose, but he remembers her, and his love for her makes him desperate to find her.

We're then taken back to the night he left to find her (Never Ever) and his journey is mostly linear from there - he meets a fortune teller, Lady Moonbeam, who tells him that pursuing Leigh will end in his ruin, but he refuses to accept her advice and pushes on (Ancient Names I & II). He laments that he's been some kind of fuckup, that maybe he chased Leigh away through his own behavior, but that he still loves her and begs for her to return (Wait By the River). At some point around here he also learns of the drug vide noir and contemplates using it himself for clues.

(Note that unlike in the movie, in the album, nothing suggests that Buck suffered from a murder attempt by Z'Oiseau's henchmen but that instead he may have overdosed himself in an attempt to find Lee. However, there's plenty of reason to suspect that the film is the canon interpretation here anyway and the henchmen kidnapping Buck just doesn't make for a song I guess.)

One way or another, he winds up black-brained, where some deep existential truths of the universe are revealed to him (Secret of Life - namely that everyone and everything dies in the end, and that a human life is brief, fleeting, and ultimately meaningless within the context of the universe as a whole). He somehow reawakens rather than dying (Back from the Edge) and, again, understands that nothing he does will ever matter, has never mattered*, but that *even though* he's suffered greatly already on this quest, he's still committed to trying to find Leigh, pitting himself against that careless universe (The Balancer's Eye).

So he keeps searching (When the Night is Over) until he finds a clue, or a helping hand of some sort, that leads him on the right path to his beloved Leigh (Moonbeam). We get one more reminder of the forces at work here - vide noir is some awful stuff, it nearly killed him, Leigh herself is hooked on it now, it shows you terrible truths and nightmares beyond human comprehension (Vide Noir) - and when all is said and done, as Buck thinks he's about to "rescue" Leigh from her fate and bring her back to his fantasy of a perfect happy life together, she rejects him. He came all this way through time and space, and she doesn't love him at all in the end (Emerald Star).

---

I consider this the primary narrative here because it makes use of all the songs on the album, it has a clear start and ending and a mostly linear structure, and the album basically serves as a soundtrack to Buck's fool's errand. The film agrees - every scene is centered around his journey, after all. But we have context from Lord Huron's other albums, as well as the lyrics and musical stylings of multiple songs on Vide Noir, that show us that Buck isn't necessarily the only narrator on this album. Strange Trails, of course, came out three years prior, and features songs by multiple fictional bands performing songs which serve as narration for a diverse cast of characters. Unlike on Strange Trails, where each track has a writer or band specifically named and assigned to it as well as a character narrative, Vide Noir does not give us such conclusive information, but we can still put clues together to understand at least some of who the in-universe performers might be on Vide Noir.

Most likely, multiple of these songs are by the Buck Vernon Band - this is pretty obvious. Buck's semi-autobiographical music is all over Strange Trails, usually referencing a girl he loves, sometimes referencing that the girl left him, often giving her different names, all starting with L (Fool For Love's "Lily", and "Louisa").

But the other band that we can easily identify as performers on Vide Noir are the Phantom Riders. For those who need an introduction, this is the band composed of four members of the World Enders gang, with Dale Redmayne at the helm as lead writer. They were seen previously on Strange Trails as well, with banger surf/rockabilly hits like Hurricane, Until the Night Turns, and The World Ender. As a storytelling tool, they are primarily brought in to tell us about the man-turned-undead horror entity known as The World Ender himself, and then otherwise mostly we get their songs about Dale's brother Johnnie Redmayne, who is introduced to us in Strange Trails as a fun-loving and presumably fairly young guy, a thrillseeker and hedonist, who lives for the moment as if the world could end any day. The Buck Vernon Band jumps in between some of these songs with an interjection to tell us that wait, Johnnie is dead, or was, but he got back up. In Dead Man's Hand, Buck speculates that Johnnie could have been murdered or may have killed himself, accidentally or intentionally, upon first seeing him. It's in Vide Noir that we actually learn more about the circumstances of Johnnie's death.

Before we get to that, let's first identify which Vide Noir songs are by the Phantom Riders. This isn't all that hard to do. Any song that references The World Ender is presumably theirs - that gives us Secret of Life right away ("I sit alone in the dark, and I try to remember the words you spoke when you summoned the Ender"). This is reinforced in the Alive From Whispering Pines webseries, episode 423 - Secret of Life, when played, shows a skeleton prop the band has jokingly referred to as Cobb Avery on their social media posts in the past, and after the song ends in this episode, the tune continues in a slowed and distorted fashion through a clip of a WBUB movie version of Dead Man's Hand showing Johnnie rising from the pavement when Buck is about to bury him.

Ancient Names Parts I and II are presumably written by the same band as a two-part song. In the Vide Noir film, the Phantom Riders are performing Part II in the underground club. Additionally, in Alive From Whispering Pines episode 426, after Tubbs Tarbell is done reminiscing about the band and their nihilism, Ancient Names Part II is the next song covered - and often in this series, the structure of the segments between songs are intentional and related to either the song they precede or the song they follow, so it's likely that the placement of the Phantom Riders' appearance followed by a track they're associated with is meant to help confirm them as the performers. In addition, Ancient Names Part I references a fortune teller, and we know from the film that the fortune teller in question, Lady Moonbeam, is associated with the World Enders and knows the Redmaynes.

The last track on Vide Noir that is most likely theirs is the title track, Vide Noir. We have two points of evidence for this - one lyrical ("Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys" which feels like a pretty direct reference to the World Enders' nighttime violence) and one musical - the main melody of Vide Noir is identical to that of Ancient Names (and Fortune Teller's Theme, actually). In Strange Trails, using the same melody for multiple songs was an easy way to tie Frankie Lou's songs together, and here we can see that it ties two Phantom Riders tracks together directly, indicating that not only are they both by the same band, but that Vide Noir is a followup to Ancient Names part I, in which our fortune teller did warn us things would go very, very wrong.

(And besides all of that, the Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir all tend to be similar in musical style - psychedelia-flavored garage rock with a heavy bass line, in contrast to other songs on the album.)

With those songs identified, we should also be aware of just how much Lord Huron seem to love their dual narratives. In Strange Trails, we have a really concrete example of this with The Night We Met. This song was in-universe written by Frankie Lou, presumably about her doomed relationship with Z'Oiseau and how much she wishes she had never met him to begin with (as she echoes in her dialogue in the Vide Noir film when speaking to Buck in her dressing room). However, the music video for this song shows not Frankie and Z'Oiseau, but instead Buck, driving west, while reflecting on his own failure to keep Leigh, wishing he could go back in time and fix things, and meanwhile kind of hallucinating her as he goes. In the album Long Lost, we get another dual narrative in I Lied, which is performed by Donny and Midge but is also sung by Leigh in Vide Noir, foreshadowing her breakup with and lack of love for Buck. There are certainly other dual narratives in both of those albums to be found as well - so what we should keep in mind here is that often, songs can be written and performed by a character or band in order to narrate for themselves or someone close to them, but that just as in our real-world movie soundtracks or our favorite character playlists on spotify, those songs can be applied to other characters in different (but somewhat similar) situations than the ones they were written for.

So! We have four Phantom Riders tracks on Vide Noir, all of which were presumably not written originally in-universe about Buck Vernon, because why would they be, Buck and the World Enders only briefly cross paths and at the very least we know that Ancient Names Part II was written well before he ever met them. Instead, it makes the most sense if like the bulk of the Phantom Riders songs, these tracks serve Johnnie's narration instead.

---

If that's the case, what does that give us? Winding around and through Buck's journey is this second storyline. Johnnie Redmayne, having used and enjoyed vide noir himself abundantly ("I had a vision tonight that the world was ending" as one probable example), decides it's time to get his hands on bulk quantities so as to get the Enders in on controlling the flow of the drug in LA rather than letting Z'Oiseau maintain a monopoly, thereby also increasing revenue for the members of the gang.

It's Moonbeam who warns him to knock it off first. We know, thanks to the film, that he'd spoken to her at some point about his plans to investigate the source of the drug at Tobey's arcade and try to get his hands on some to sell. Whatever his exact plan was, in Ancient Names Part 1, Moonbeam warns him that pursuing this is going to get him killed. Vide noir isn't just a drug, it's something extremely dangerous, tied to dangerous people, and he needs to get away from "her" (and note that frequently throughout music history, drugs have been personified as a "her" or an unnamed lover, whether for poetic reasons or to evade censorship that might come from talking directly about drug use - and Cursed, off Strange Trails, is one more in-universe example, where "her" refers both to Leigh Green and to drug use, specifically vide noir).

Immediately afterward, Ancient Names Part 2, in addition to serving as a very classic sort of World Enders nihilism anthem, can easily be interpreted as Johnnie saying "fuck that, I do what I want, you only live one life anyway and even if it kills me, I want to make my mark before I go out." Death is something hypothetical - sure, it'll get him some day, it gets everyone, and maybe Moonbeam is even right, but he isn't going to let her warning stop him.

On Strange Trails, Buck and Johnnie cross paths at Dead Man's Hand. On this album they only cross thematically, and the pivotal moment of intersection might be Secret of Life. This song may be the point at which Buck learns some forbidden secrets revealed by taking vide noir as discussed above, but its lyrics speak a lot more specifically to Johnnie's experience, implying some connection between him, vide noir, and the World Ender.

It may be that as we see with Buck in the film, perhaps Johnnie too has suffered the effects of being black-brained prior to taking it due to the time and space-bending effects of the drug (notice, for example, in Strange Trails we get Johnnie's story in a scrambled chronological order) and here he's confronted with the harsh truths of what those past visions of his possible future mean for him: he has been set on a path that is no longer avoidable due to his eventual future overdose. So perhaps it's at this point that he acknowledges that he is going to die sooner rather than later and that his life and death will not have meant anything to the greater cosmos, but this information, which was new to Buck, is not something Johnnie fears. Johnnie is hardly new to this point of view. He's seen past echoes of the knowledge imparted by vide noir throughout his life, both in his future visions of the end of the world (again see Until The Night Turns) and in the knowledge passed on through other World Enders, including their own motto ("The fair, the brave, the good must die", or in Secret of Life here, "The darkness comes for all of us").

(As an aside, there's still a lot to unravel with Secret of Life that I haven't touched on here. It's a fascinating song with some really mysterious lyrics. I've speculated at length in the LH discord about some additional interpretations this song could yield but won't veer off topic here.)

And yet despite what looks like a very certain and dire end, Johnnie maintains hope that perhaps he, too, will live past this. Because if Cobb Avery did, why can't he? This is part of the gang's core mythos - their founder is a dead man. He clawed his way back out of the grave for revenge, they thought it was just so fucking cool that he was unkillable that they had to join him, and together they dismantled the Winthrop Corporation, one murder at a time. When the police finally caught up to him, they lynched him - but the noose did nothing, for he was already dead, and now in the form of a skeleton, he called the gang to his side (see Strange Trails: The World Ender comic book). In the ensuing chaos, he flees, the gang heads west and relocates to east Los Angeles, and in the time contemporary with the events of Vide Noir, he is still present among them but this appears to be unknown to the public (Daily Trails prop, by Kim Berens, used in both Vide Noir and Alive From Whispering Pines where it was modified to Ten years later).

Whether The World Ender is readily visible to and known by most members of the gang at this point is unknown, but we know that those who were black-brained can see him (in the film, Buck sees him approaching, bumps into him, plunges into a hallucination of his own future, and when he comes too, the Ender is gone). Given the Secret of Life lyrics, it's reasonable to guess that Johnnie at least can see the World Ender just fine and one way or another, in speaking with him and in conjunction with consuming vide noir, has learned enough secret knowledge to make some kind of choice - and this is what later enables him, too, to drag his way back to the world of the living.

Fate catches up to Johnnie and as we learn in the film, his death was at the hands of Z'Oiseau's henchmen for trying to gain access to dealing in vide noir. Like Buck, he is black-brained - forced to swallow enough of the drug to kill him. And so the track Vide Noir opens with the Fortune Teller's Theme previously heard in Ancient Names Part 1, and that tune is woven through the track - Moonbeam's "I warned you, I told you so" to both of these fools who disregarded her advice. Although, again, the lyrics are clearly meant primarily to narrate for Johnnie - "Many evils have I enjoyed, prowling the night raising hell with the boys, getting high on a pure black void" sounds a lot more like what Johnnie gets up to than Buck. We are given a glimpse of his last words and final thoughts as life slips away and his consciousness is sent straight to the final edge of the cosmos.

---

So ultimately, this is what we're left with:

Vide Noir is an album that tells the story of Buck Vernon, whose fiancee has left him. His journey culminates in a near-brush with death, in finding Leigh, and in learning that she does not love him and that he's nothing, his life is worth nothing more than dust and that none of it mattered or will ever matter, that once he eventually dies he will vanish and be forgotten in time.

Vide Noir also tells the story of Johnnie Redmayne, who for once tries to do something that isn't just for his own hedonistic pleasure but that might actually help bring in money to support his friends and family, but he's too headstrong and impulsive to listen to the warnings he's given, and is killed in the attempt.

One lives who probably shouldn't have and comes out at rock bottom and now has to work out how to move on from here, and one dies a nihilist who should presumably just accept the inevitability of death, but has the knowledge and absolute stubborn determination to enable his eventual return, following in the footsteps of Cobb Avery.

And what happens to both of them afterward? Well, we don't know. Hopefully some day (SOON?? BEN PLEASE) we'll get the opportunity to find out!

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hey! Love your meta and your blog in general!!🥰 One small thing I’ve always been curious about is when DreamStat(my beloved, I want to watch him follow Louis around and make bitchy/supportive comments forever) laughs when Louis and Armand exchange “I love you’s” it’s when Armand says it to Louis, not the other way around. Mostly I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on that. Like, I think, given how it seems, at least in the show, Louis never said it aloud to Lestat (I will eat fics where Lestat bursts into tears when Louis does say it for the first time post reunion for breakfast lunch and dinner) the real Lestat would have Words and Big Emotions about Louis saying it to someone else- though I don’t know if Louis would have really wanted to acknowledge that at that point or in general during the interview🤔 And also I always sort of read Lestat’s presence and mockery in the moment as an indication that Louis didn’t mean it when he told Armand he loved him, but if I think about him staying (cuntily) silent until Armand says it back I’m not sure anymore. Was it Louis’ subconscious drawing attention to a suspicion at Armand’s lack of sincerity? Both? Neither?? Send help please and thanks🙏

Hey!

Glad you like :)

So to address the missing "I love you", you need to be aware of the fact that this is a book canon trait that the writers put in for show Louis. They called it "leverage of withholding", a weaponization of language (their words not mine).

This "weaponization" can only hurt when it is meant. Louis withheld the "I love you" from Lestat, on purpose.

And the other thing is... "DreamStat"... is not Lestat.

That's LOUIS.

Louis, mocking himself. Louis being sarcastic about something Armand says in his own mind. Louis, hating that he never said the words. Louis, reading himself for filth at times. Louis punishing himself.

Louis does not believe Armand. That he actually loves him that is.

The little snort Dreamstat gives when Armand says that it's not easy for him makes that very clear for me, he just doesn't believe it - because it feels not the same for him. And the reason why it is not the same, totally apart from his actual feelings that might have developed under different circumstances follows immediately, because Armand spells it out for Louis, namely: "I keep your secret."

That is a statement, as well as a veiled threat.

And it pisses Louis off, he literally addresses it when he makes the candle light back up, that it works best when he is pissed.

Armand then says: "I try and find the vulnerability within the object."

And that... is another barely veiled prod, threat, and one Louis understands very well (remember, Armand threatened to burn him before), because he immediately relents. And offers to come around more though he hates it at the theatre. And offers an "I love you", with a pasted on smile.

And mocks it within his own mind, via his own inner DreamStat. Laughs when Armand says it back! (Which is soooo bitter when you think about the fact that Armand could read that in Louis' mind!!)

Louis does not believe Armand has actual feelings (like that) for him.

And the thing is, I think Armand does, and that is the tragedy of it all. Because to get Louis' love Armand uses coercion, veiled threats and manipulation, which is rooted in book canon. And he thereby loses it, almost immediately after that initial infatuation phase.

Louis will tell Lestat eventually. He does in the books, and if you read the writer's thread then you know they have... plans :)

And until then we have fanfiction :)))

[haitang-blossoms]

On Differential Methods, Politics, & Intimacy for Early Novel!Cezhou (haitang-blossoms' Qiang Jin Jiu meta)

Note: This analysis goes up to Chapter 42 which is where I had read up to before Lianyin's fantranslation was taken down due to official English licensing by Seven Seas. This is also the source of my quoted screenshots of the novel.

The way both Shen Zechuan and Xiao Chiye weaponise perceived incompetence (through fabricated images of "grateful helplessness" and "devil-may-care hedonism" respectively) is so compelling and really serves to flesh out the realities of the environment they are forced to navigate.

It is a recurring narrative motif that both Shen Zechuan and Xiao Chiye are "beasts" trapped and restrained by the political system of Qudu. However, the difference in social position and status between them is key to why they choose the masks that they do.

Shen Zechuan, both as a by-proxy-traitor to the nation and as the son of a dancer, has always had to keep his head down and not act beyond his station. Thus, it is perfectly natural that he operates within this expected framework: both to survive in the hostile political landscape as well as to conceal his own intentions and moves within the shadows.

Xiao Chiye, on the other hand, was born into relative power. While the Xiao Clan of Libei was never in the favour of the Empress Dowager, they are nonetheless a reputable cavalry with a hereditary title. Xiao Chiye, as the second son, has both less direct political influence as well as responsibility than his father (the prince) or his elder brother (the next-in-line). This is how he is so easily made a "bargaining chip" and assigned to what seems to be a hopelessly dead-end job in order to keep a metaphorical "leash" on any rebellious intent that Libei may harbour. Given his wealth and inevitable position of being constantly in the public eye, the easiest way to cover up the target on Xiao Chiye's back is to present himself as a frivolous hedonist who is too busy chasing after liquor and bed-partners to pose a real threat to the established power dynamics of the capital.

The difference between their methods can also be observed in the way that their preferences are perceived by others:

Xiao Chiye presents himself as genial: he loves to drink, he is sociable enough to go out with friends frequently etc. However, as seen in the quote above, Xiao Chiye's "friendliness" is actually quite distant in that even the people who think they know him well are unaware of his true preferences. Yet he conducts himself in such a manner that they would not even think to ponder such things. It is a very effective approach for gathering intel: make the other party assume you are giving away much more about yourself than you are, opening the door for them to carelessly overshare from a sense of fabricated comradery.

Shen Zechuan is the opposite: going along with how he is forced to constantly humble himself and downplay his abilities, his preferences have to be presented as equally accommodating to the will of others. There are many instances where he seemingly goes along with others, secretly gritting his teeth the whole way, in order to "soften" them up to be played into his hand later.

And this goes into my next point:

Even though Shen Zechuan has an image of seductiveness, his entire method revolves around NOT having openly expressed desires because that would only serve as a vulnerability. Xiao Chiye, by contrast, predicates his mask around devil-may-care hedonism.

In this way, desire is both much more familiar to Xiao Chiye as well as easier to integrate into his established reputation than for Shen Zechuan. 

This is key to why Xiao Chiye is the first to accept his feelings and why he is much more comfortable with unabashedly expressing them. Thus, I think the differences in how Cezhou present themselves and the contrasting methods they use to stay ahead in their environment have bearing not only on the political games of their world but also on their relationship and how they relate themselves to each other.

[begrudging-fudanshi]

Do you think Sakura will go back to the old town in certain arc ?

Assuming you mean wherever his guardians live(d), I hope not tbh. Wind Breaker is a very local story for its genre—as far as I can tell, everything important happens within walking distance of Furin—so I kinda prefer it to stay in Makochi as much as possible. (I have a thing I'm writing about this that I'll post at some point.) Based on what we know, I also don't really see what Sakura has to gain from going back.

If anything happens in this vein, I would actually prefer for Sakura's past to catch up with him in Makochi. Having some old enemy appear and threaten him would be a great way to show how far he's come, as well as to catalyze his progress towards seeing worth in himself.

I started sketching an example of how I might like that kind of arc to go and it kinda turned out a lot longer than I expected, so here's... uh... actually, I don't entirely know what this is. It's like a short fanfic mashed up with the meta I'd write about these moments if they were canon. Speculative meta? Metafic? Just a weird fanfic? idk 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, not saying this will/should be canon or anything, but it feels like it gets the gist of what I'd look for in this kind of arc.

(CW: abusive parents. Sakura's dad is the villain here.)

---

When Sakura was young, his dad was a petty criminal, street thug, and an all-around horrible father. When Sakura was 7 or 8, the man was arrested and sentenced to prison. Sakura's mom wasn't in the picture, so Sakura had to go live with relatives (leading to the scenario I've described previously), and afterward he hardly ever saw his dad—their only contact was when the man came to demand money from his relatives for this or that. As far as Sakura was concerned, once he moved to Makochi, his father was out of his life for good.

One day, however, Sakura's dad appears in Makochi, searching for him. He's somehow learned that Sakura has become a strong fighter in a town full of violent gangs, so he's decided that he's going to take advantage of Sakura to build a nice life for himself on the back of his son's hard work. Thus, he comes to Makochi expecting to walk all over Sakura and get whatever he wants.

When Sakura first sees his dad on Tonpu Market Street, he freezes, caught off guard by painful memories that he's desperately tried to forget. Even though he's come a long way, it's difficult to fully let go of the past.

Suo and Nirei are with him and can tell that he's terrified. Sakura mutters to them that this is his father, but he doesn't sound remotely happy to see him. The man tells them to go away, but they stand their ground, refusing to leave Sakura alone. This pisses the man off, so he attacks, intending to teach them a lesson.

Sakura's dad is caught off guard by Suo and even Nirei's strength, but the same goes in reverse as he decides to go all out. As Sakura sees his friends struggling, he jumps into the fight, punching his dad in the face (big symbolic moment!). The trio just barely manage to hold their ground until other Bofurin members start to show up. As their backup arrives, the man finally retreats, but before he goes, he declares that he's going to get revenge. He says that Sakura has forgotten his place and he's going to remind him what his life is really supposed to be like—he'll take away everything Sakura has and show him just what he really deserves.

What follows is a campaign of revenge, carefully calculated to destroy Sakura's life and take everything he has. (A campaign that I'm not going to detail right now, because my ideas for it are depressing and beside the point.)

Let's skip ahead a bit...

Somehow all of the threats are resolved, leaving only the matter of fighting Sakura's dad and kicking his ass hard enough that he'll give up.

Just before the big, climactic fight, Sakura gets ready to face his father one-on-one, trying to stay calm and steady himself. He's caught off guard when his friends jump in front of him and tell him to let them handle the fight.

"Get out of the way!" Sakura yells at them, his voice breaking. "He's... he's my dad. This is my fight. I have to deal with this." The most important word is the one he doesn't even think to say out loud: he has to deal with this alone.

Even with so many people around him showing him that he's loved, Sakura still ultimately believes that he's all by himself. Even though he's tried to rely on his friends to prove that he trusts them, in moments like this when he feels most vulnerable, his default instinct is still to shoulder the burden alone.

His friends can all see this clearly. More importantly, they can see that this is a battle that Sakura shouldn't have to fight on his own—or at all. He deserves to have someone stick up for him, just like he's stuck up for so many others. But they know he doesn't want to hear that, so they tell him off, instead.

"Your fight? To hell with that. We all owe this guy some payback for what he's done."

"C'mon, Sakura, let us have some glory for once. It makes us feel bad when you keep hogging all the action."

"We already know how strong you are—let us show you how much stronger we've gotten, too!"

"Plus, the way this guy treats you makes us really want to kick his ass. Don't tell us you're gonna rob us of that satisfaction."

Sakura sputters in confusion, not sure how to respond. His deepest reflexes are telling him to stop them before it's too late, because this is how he's always believed he would finally lose everything. If he can't fight, if he can't prove his worth through his strength, then what is he worth at all?

This leads to a cool symbolic moment: Sakura is standing there, watching all his friends walk away from him while making it clear they expect him to stay behind. In other words, he's seeing the scene that's haunted him for so long finally playing out in real life. How many times has he pictured this and felt sick with terror and dread?

In his heart, he always knew this day would come. The day when his friends finally saw through him—finally realized who he really was and what he was really worth—and unanimously turned their backs. That would be the day he finally woke up from this dream and found himself back in his old, real life. The life he was always meant to live. Hated by all others, worth nothing but his fists, and totally, utterly alone.

Except, in reality, this scene isn't anything like he imagined it at all. His friends aren't turning their backs on him because they're abandoning him. Instead, they've turned to fight for him, to protect him, just as he's fought and protected them. Not only that, they're doing it willingly—eagerly, even—with smiles on their faces. There's no hint of condemnation, no suggestion that they're doing this because they think he's weak. They just want to help him, in spite of his belief this is his battle to fight alone.

In chapter 138, Sakura says something very telling to himself: "If I lose now, then they—then I'll lose the place where they belong, the one place that they cherish and love. I don't want that. [...] I need to win and protect them. That's all that matters." He draws these lines so clearly between himself and his friends, placing himself on the outside looking in. Now, however, that moment comes full circle with the roles reversed, making the truth so clear that he can't deny it.

As his friends stride forward, Sakura suddenly realizes, in a way that he can't yet put to words, where he really is: He's not on the outside looking in at his friends in the place that they love. Instead, as they spread out before him to form a defensive line, he is standing firmly in that very place that they all want to protect. If they're defending him like this, then they're saying that he belongs in this place, too—and if that's the case, then he, too, is someone they cherish and love.

This realization cuts deep—even deeper than words, cutting into feelings that he's held for so long that he's never even thought to try to name them. It cuts deep enough to finally undermine and start to shake his most fundamental belief. He can no longer deny that his friends accept him and love him for more than just his ability to fight. Why else would they be lining up to fight for him like this?

More than that, he can no longer deny that what they see in him must somehow be real. Until now, he's always unconsciously dismissed his friends' most meaningful praise and kindness as simply wrong. Even if they thought they meant it, he just didn't see how it could be true. When Umemiya smiled at him and called him amazing (chapter 162), Sakura had felt like Umemiya was looking at a completely different person, like he'd made some mistake and confused him with somebody else. He could believe that Umemiya meant it, but not that it truly applied to him. In the same way, he viewed all their kindness and love with that deep distrust. But here, he can't bring himself to doubt all his friends at once. They're all too determined for this to be some kind of mistake or mass delusion.

In the end, Sakura's friends work together to stop his dad, thoroughly kick his ass, and send him packing. As usual for this series, that's enough to stop the threat for good.

Afterward, Sakura probably cries and undergoes a fundamental change in how he sees himself and his place in the world. It's not like all his past trauma is magically fixed or his low self-esteem instantly gets better overnight, but he's made a big step towards seeing worth in himself.