#I based this song off of blooming in the mud

[rubywolf0201]

At the end of an endless journey, there must be a “time” where it’s now or never.

“It’s impossible to drown in the rain”, even so, it feels like it’s hard to breathe.

Let us draw a line inside the maze that obstructs the path of the world now.

This line will be the overlapping map: the flower that blooms for the sake of illuminating you.

A saturated gray Boucheron/Louis moodboard with street backgrounds and hydrangeas.

[saudariel]

the playlist! my contribution to the adar prayer circle lmao 🕯️🕯️🕯️

heavy, aggressive alt/metal. lots of saudar vibes because i feel like their dynamic is so central to adar's arc. or what we've seen of it at least! some of the songs are purely vibes based, some are more based on lyrics. honestly i made this for gifmaking and for background noise when i'm at work but can't escape the Brainrot, so it's not a fully fleshed out character playlist, but i'll add more to it (if our man lives 💀)

enjoy! lyrics under the cut 👀

listen on Spotify here

moth // HELLYEAH

I've been cast out, sequestered Pushed the fuck around Blindsided, beaten Locked up and bound Always thought I was human But maybe I was wrong I've been treated like an animal Since the day I was born The wounds that I wear like the crown upon a king So heavy they lie with all the pain that they bring My life is full of longing, but for what I'll never know I've been drawn into the fire as I reap what I sow

blood // bad omens

There's no rest for the wicked There's not a home underneath the mud And we're all dead, so what's the difference Between a god and a loaded gun? I am the sun, rain, the ocean I am the flood, flames, the chosen It's in our blood, it's on our breath It's in the taste between life and death

soft spine // spiritbox

Soft spine, ascending up to meet my Eyes wide, I am a witness to your regicide The dissolution of your soft spine You all deserve each other You steal the echo from their ghosts You pick your teeth with sacred bones I hate the ones that love you And those who profit from you It's time to reap the tide you sow

god's image // mike's dead

If I was made in God's fucking image Is he as fucked up as I am? Is he sick like me? Is he sick like me? Is he sick like me? If I was made inside the holy system Where the fuck are all my friends? Only space to leave, only space to leave, only space to leave

DEAD THRONE // arankai

Look what you've done, all your skeletons have come to life On a dead throne, tell me how you sleep at night All your sins will be paid in blood a hundred times This isn't retribution, this is fucking regicide

alpha & omega // king 810

Welcome to the truth God made me in His image, who the fuck made you? You want my voice from me? You can have it just know I sound like this, because the Devil has my throat I make your insides shift, that is my gift The sea parts, and then comes the flood And men have died to make this, you can't imitate shit The talent I have, I paid for in blood

house of cards // deadlands

You may think that you have leverage But I'll lay this shit down Think that you're a high-roller Just a joker and a clown Under the gun You'll confess to all the wrongs you've done And when push comes to shove There's nowhere you can run

welcome to hell // mike's dead

I bet you thought that i was finished but I'm back at the gates I am back with the demons and embers and flames And I am not alone I brought a couple million souls So you can see for yourself I'm the king, I'm the goat As above, so below where the light is removed And your death is in bloom on the path seldom took I am here, I am now in the shadows of doom You can call this hell, but I call this home

counting bodies like sheep // a perfect circle

I'll be the one to protect you from Your enemies and all your demons I'll be the one to protect you from A will to survive and a voice of reason I'll be the one to protect you from Your enemies and your choices, son They're one in the same, I must isolate you Isolate and save you from yourself

necessary evil // motionless in white

Strip off the weight of mortality and check it at the door I'll show you the worst in me Blow out the candles, I need not a wish for I am everything Now crawl to my boots and lick (kneel before me) Imma have my cake and fucking eat you too It's my party and I'll die when I want to Die when I want to, die when I want to The monster you've made is wearing the crown I'll be the king and you'll be the clown I'll take the blame, parade it around You've made me the villain you can't live without

before i forget // slipknot

Stapled shut, inside an outside world and I'm Sealed in tight, bizarre but right at home Claustrophobic, closing in and I'm Catastrophic, not again I'm smeared across the page and doused in gasoline I wear you like a stain, yet I'm the one who's obscene Catch me up on all your sordid little insurrections I've got no time to lose, I'm just caught up in all the cattle I am a world before I am a man I was a creature before I could stand I will remember before I forget

black sheep // crown the empire

You kick me in the teeth, then pin me to the ground You take the sickest part of me and spit it out your goddamn mouth All my life I've been running with the black sheep Cast me out, watch me come back as king

exit wounds // bad omens

Raised by wolves in sheep's clothes that abandoned me But taught me to get up when I fall to my knees Man makes monster, monster kills man Taking your crown's always been part of the plan

villain arc // bury tomorrow

These walls can't hold us No prisoners Godless, no control I'll say it, "Fuck your halo" This world can't take us No prisoners, Godless evermore Fuck your halo Destined to go through hell For this fire inside of me I am labelled an enemy And I like the way it burns It's like they'll never learn

WAR // mike's dead

All of my life I’ve been yearning for violence I’d sell my soul just to burn in the riots All of my life I’ve been clinging to pain I need someone to blame For these thoughts in my brain Feel the blood on my chin I’ve been off of my shit don’t tempt me Feel the parasites in my skin Didn’t know I could feel this empty Who’s at fault, for my lack of resolve?

red // woe, is me

Now I'm free, you goddamned leech Fuck your pulpit, and fuck what you preach You may have the world at your feet But nothing in this life is concrete You’re self-indulgent at my expense So let me give you my two cents

power // king yosef

This being was made a long time ago I've peeled the wound and I let it show Change for better or worse Perpetuate pain 'til the flesh meets the Earth I've always been like this, it sits in my skin Reinvent myself, won't let you in You do all you can, I do all I want The things that make a man The things that make a God

crushed // deadlands

I'm done being seen as a motherfucking pawn You use and abuse me to get what you want I'm done being burned and a game that you play I'm so fucking sick I'll do it my way We'll do it my way The predator is now the prey Enough is enough Now you're the one who's fucking crushed

remember me // dal av, andy cizek

Amidst a violent night, there is a dying star Mired in lies and spite, it's fading from afar I used to chase the sun, now I'm afraid of it But if I'm honest, I never thought I would get this far I was a loaded gun, now I'm in front of one A catatonic cycle, over and over Am I alive? Am I a phantom? What was on fire is now but a fading ember Will I survive? Is there an answer? And if I die now, will anyone remember?

higher than death // 3TEETH

How should we die? Our beautiful freedom Can't keep it alive when you can't find the meaning Look at us now, beaten and bleeding I'm higher than death It's theft, everything they took from us And left lies, lies, lies What's left? Motherfucking selfish greed As they let us die

the hell i overcame // bad omens

Oh, did you really think the pain Would send me to an early grave? Did you think I couldn't break these chains After all the hell I overcame? God, please, forgive those who doubt me Forgot about me Then throw them down into the flames

burned at both ends // motionless in white

Nothing is like it was before I know not who I am anymore Chasing something that's behind me When will I be set free? Broken promises left to mend Burning the candle at both ends No light to find my way back home But I don't know where home is anymore The sinking ship has washed ashore

burned at both ends II // motionless in white

Leaving you behind left me aimless Staring in the mirror and I feel like I'm faceless The only thing I know is that I'd rather die Than live in a world where you still control my life The curse you left, it ends tonight Even if I have to tear out my insides Never again will this heart be your home I'll be happy as someone else Today, I found my open door I set my sights on something more I'm done reliving the pain you dealt me I'm sick of trying to take back time Today, I live for something more

[mismefancy]

Day 9 of Emmet Month: Storm

My first entry for the event and it doesn't even look like a storm. :'D

Have an Emmet enjoying his rainy afternoon.

---

Fun fact:

This is based off on art from a song called "Blooming in the Mud". The song doesn't really relate to Emmet in anyway, I just wanted an excuse to redraw the rain scene but with Emmet, simply because it looked cool. Lol

[obanzi]

Hi sweetie! Thank you so much for doing this!! <3

My name is Amber and one of my nicknames is Bee!! I go by she/her and am bi, but lean towards dudes. I am a Taurus :^)) and ppl say that I definitely have the vibes of one lol. My hobbies include gaming, knitting, roller skating and sewing. I love animals, naps, cold weather and singing. I also love daydreaming and creating fantasy worlds. l don't like crowds, leaving things messy or scary movies. I would like to be matched with a male human please! :)

Do you like PDA ?

-Not really, I am easily embarrassed! Hand holding at most.

What would be your breathing style ?

-Sun breathing! I would like to be radiant.

What’s your love language ?

-Acts of service. I'm a headstrong and otherwise independent person, so it means a lot to me when people go out of their way to help me!

Do you like indoors or outdoors ?

-Bougie outdoor? I don't like bugs. Or mud. I could sit on a pier on the water for hours though. I love being near the sea!

What’s your favorite flower ?

-Daffodils, for sure. I love the white ones!

Top Kins ?

-Kanae Kocho, Bloom from Winx Club, Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Ponyo,

What’s your ideal date ?

-Going to a festival! I want to try all the foods with my s/o and browse all the cute little shops :)

For the manga panel, my favorite color is burgundy! Thanks again for doing this! You really put so much effort and love into each match up, it is so cute and heart warming!! ❤❤❤

hellooo ! i hope u like ur match up <33 also it wont let me tag — oh also , he seems a bit oc sorry ..

Match Up For @emerald-tempest

You Got ..

INOSUKE HASHIBIRA

— i was also thinking Zenitsu and couldn’t decide so i flipped a coin .. ( kanao ^^ )

Songs Based Off Relationship :

I’ve Got a Huge Crush On You — SNCKPCK

Make You Mine �� PUBLIC

Hometown Smile — Bahjat

How You Met :

You met Inosuke in the woods , you were on your way to a mission when you noticed a boar head guy sleeping next to a tree .. he had wounds all over him . You being you .. you took the boy in your home and cared for his needs . When inosuke woke up he saw a girl making some type of food — he screamed , alerting you he woke up !! You tried your best to explain why you took him in but he wouldn’t budge . He ran away with bandages all over his body that were slowly coming off — you thought you would never see him . One raining day , a boy came knocking on your door . You opened it and surprise surprise you saw the boar mask guy again ! He was soaking wet .. and that’s where your relationship started ! He would come visit for some odd reason , giving a lame excuse .. “i come make sure my servant is okay !!!!” You liked how the boy acted , you fell in love with him >:D did he too ? Well , Inosuke doesn’t understand the term ���love” but after awhile .. you two would work out c:

Relationship Head-canons :

Inosuke wouldn’t know the term “PDA” but he will show you off to everyone , not necessarily kisses or hugs but a big yell — you’ll have to explain to him what PDA is and that you don’t like it that much , he’ll be okay with it but will sometimes forget — Inosuke will just randomly kiss you in front of Tanjirou or Zenitsu .. he secretly likes it when you get all blushy c:

Your first date with Inosuke will be a big mess , you both were at a food festival .. although in the end he will make up for it ! In the beginning he was yelling at everyone who looked at you , he would also try and pick fights — inosuke will probably only listen to you so you’ll have to handle the situation (ﾟ∀ﾟ) , it was tiring in your opinion . In end however , Inosuke will calm down and cling to you ( kinda , he would think your clinging to him ) . You both would walk together at night enjoying the quiet with all the lights lit up <3

Inosuke takes everything you dislike very seriously ( as he should — ) , you don’t like crowds ? he will yell and tell everyone to make space — you don’t like messy places ? He’ll clean up for you , somewhat .. he’ll put everything in one big pile so the floor is clean — although he’s trying c: you don’t like bugs ? He’ll squash all of them for you >:D you don’t like mud ? He’ll carry you across the mud pile —

I think Inosuke’s love language would be Gift giving and quality time ! He would bring you berries , rocks , flowers or anything he could find in the wild / forest . Along with your always with him ! He likes it better when your in his present ( did i use the right word — ) ! He also sleeps better , behaves better when your with him ! So tanjirou thanks you most of the time —

Inosuke wouldn’t understand “daydreaming” so you’ll have to explain it to him because he’ll think you froze or something — he’ll purposely punch you to make sure your okay .. after you tell him what the term daydreaming means , he’ll try it with you ! Although he will get bored quickly and drag you to the ramen shop afterwards — even so , most of his daydreaming is with you .. either it’s clam peaceful area or a adventure that could harm you — 



[calebdumes]

for @pretchatta who wanted kanera in evening wear and romantic tension. i hope i lived up to your wishes!

fandom: star wars rebels

relationship: kanan jarrus/hera syndulla

rating: n/r

word count: 2.6k

~

When it came to opulence and beauty, the estate of Count Jafan Harik had it in droves. From the marbled walls etched with gold and lined with expensive art, to the exotic foods served on guilded trays, every inch of the mansion displayed the man’s abundant wealth and taste for the grandeur. But even surrounded by priceless artifacts and glittering gems, Kanan couldn’t take his eyes off of Hera. 

Her gown was simple, compared to some of the other dresses Kanan had seen that evening, just a form fitting bodice that left her shoulders and arms bare, showing off the graceful white markings that traveled down to her wrists. The skirt hung off her slender waist like water, long flowing layers of gauzy fabric that had been dyed varying shades of dark blue and purple. The tiny crystals that had been woven into the folds caught on the light when she moved, giving off the impression of a shimmering night sky. 

Kanan had nearly tripped over his own two feet when he first saw her emerge from her cabin, dressed and ready for the mission - his mind going completely and utterly blank. Hera was beautiful no matter what she wore, but dressed in that gown, the deep color of the dress against her green skin, the gems in her headdress glittering as brightly as her eyes, Kanan felt the breath punch from his lungs and heat pool in his belly. 

She was stunning, like a dignitary from Ryloth, all the sophistication and grace of royalty surrounding her as if it had been there her whole life. It left Kanan mesmerized. He wanted to reach out and touch, to trace the white markings on her shoulders, to feel her lips against his own. She was the most beautiful being in the galaxy.

And Kanan wanted her. 

“Have you seen him yet?” Hera asked out of the corner of her mouth before taking a sip of her bright red cocktail. 

Kanan mentally shook himself and forced his eyes to do a sweep of the ballroom. It wasn’t the first time he had been distracted by Hera tonight and he had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last.

“No sign of him yet.” His eyes caught on the two ISB officers standing stiffly by their stormtrooper escorts, somehow managing to look completely out of place even in their regal dress uniforms. Kanan’s lip curled at the sight of them but didn’t let his gaze linger. For once, the Imperials weren’t the target of tonight’s mission. 

Hera frowned, setting her glass down gently on the silk covered table they were standing at. “I don’t like this.” she said, scanning the small gathering of beings had gathered on the polished dance floor. “He should be here by now.”

“Relax.” Kanan said, reaching out to touch her bare shoulder, her skin warm under his fingertips. It sent a thrill of electricity racing up his arm, his heartbeat doubling in pace. “It’s still early. And from what I hear, he likes to make a grand entrance.”

Hera didn’t look convinced but a light blush had begun to form on the tops of her cheeks. Kanan looked down and his hand and quickly withdrew it from her shoulder. 

Things with Hera were...complicated to put it simply. He was in love with her, that he could at least say with one hundred percent certainty. Kanan had loved her from the moment they met in the mud covered streets of Shaketown and he hadn’t stopped falling for her since. Hera had more charm and charisma in her little finger than most sentient beings in the galaxy possessed. She was headstrong to a fault, impulsive (even if she said otherwise), and cared so much that she was willing to risk everything if it meant that people could live free. Hera was good and smart and funny and Kanan was helplessly gone for her.

But he never did anything about it. Because she was his partner and his friend and they had built a relationship based on trust and respect. If she wasn’t ready or didn’t want anything more than friendship from him, then Kanan wasn’t going to push it. He valued their friendship too much to ruin it over unrequited feelings. 

Except there was something, more than just friendship between them. He could feel it in the quiet spaces after a mission, in the lingering glances and easy touches that came on so naturally. There was something there, Kanan just didn’t know what to do about it. Not without Hera making the first move. 

“I guess it’s too much to ask that the Count would show up to his own party on time.” Hera said, taking another sip of her drink. 

“Eh, you know these rich types,” Kanan shrugged. “They think the galaxy revolves around them.” 

“Sounds like you know from experience.” Hera drummed her fingers on the table. Kanan’s eyes fell to the white markings on her wrist that snaked their way up her arms to her shoulders. They were the same markings that decorated her lekku, gentle sloping white arches that formed a graceful design that put most artwork housed in the Count’s estate to shame. 

But then again, Kanan was a little bit biased. When it came to Hera, she beat out just about everything. 

“You meet one, you meet them all.”

“Is that so?”

Kanan rested his elbows on the table. “That’s been my experience.”

Hera hummed thoughtfully at his response before saying, “You know, I’m surprised you decided to help out on this mission. I know you still aren’t fully on board with my...cause.”

“I make excellent arm candy.” Kanan winked, his heart flipping as her jade green eyes trailed up his body. “Besides, we can help a lot of people with the information that’s on that list.”

There was pride shining in her eyes as she looked up at him, the light catching on the many gems that made up the silver headdress that sat on her head and twisted down her lekku. Kanan tried to ignore how his stomach flipped at her expression. “We can’t help anyone if the Count doesn’t show.”

“Give it time, he’ll be here.” He could tell she was growing impatient, the tips of her lekku flicking sharply in odd intervals. Naboo wasn’t the safest place for rebels and he sensed that Hera would rather get off this rock sooner rather than later. Kanan glanced over to the bodies swaying on the dancefloor as an idea struck him. “Come dance with me.” he said. 

Hera blinked at him in surprise. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Sure it is.” he smiled. “It’ll give you a better view of the room.” he pointed out. And it would hopefully help her relax until the Count decided to grace the party goers with his presence and they could get this show on the road. 

Hera continued to look at him doubtfully but made no move to stop him from leading her onto the dance floor. “Fine.” she said as Kanan settled one hand over her hip, the fabric of her skirt soft against his palm. “But just for one song.”

Kanan smiled at her. “Sounds like a deal.”

They swayed in an unhurried motion on the outer fringes of the dancefloor, keeping the entrance to the ballroom within their sights at all times. The music was light and heavy on the stringed instruments, a gentle melody that reminded Kanan of the many waterfalls of Naboo’s capital city. As they danced, Kanan watched as the tight line of tension slowly dripped from Hera’s shoulders. 

“Have you ever gone to parties like this before?” Hera asked as they swayed together.

“You do remember where you met me right?” He arched a brow in response. 

Hera rolled her eyes but there was a smile growing on her lips. “Don’t pull that with me. I know Gorse was just another one of your many adventures traveling through the galaxy. You could have gone to something like this before.”

Kanan smirked at her. It was true, Gorse was just another stop along his way but even as a youngling at the Temple, he had never been to something as extravagant as this. “I’ve been around but all this,” he waved a hand at the ornate room, “is too rich for my blood. What about you?”

“Once.” She nodded. “When I was really little, before the Clone Wars. I don’t remember much about it but I remember how beautiful my mother looked in her dress. I remember thinking that I wanted to be just like her someday.”

“What was she like? Your mother?”

Hera smiled at him, her eyes going distant for a moment. “She was kind. Always willing to lend a hand to those in need. And brave.”

“Well,” Kanan said softly. “For what it’s worth, I think you’ve accomplished that.”

Color bloomed over Hera’s cheeks. “You’re just saying that to be nice.” she mumbled. 

“Hera.” he said ducking down to capture her gaze. “When have I ever said anything just to be nice?”

“Do you want that list alphabetically or by date?”

“I’m being serious.” He said, pulling her closer to him. “Look around this room. Not a single soul here gives a kriff about the state of the galaxy. They wouldn’t lift a finger to help. But you, you’re doing something about it. You don’t think your mother would have done the same?”

The blush on Hera’s cheeks grew deeper, her chest rising and falling in light breaths. Kanan could feel her pulse beneath his fingertips. There was a look gleaming deep in her green eyes, bright and burning. It pulled him in, setting his soul on fire while the world around them melted away until all that was left was just Hera.

He loved her. He loved her more than anything, more than the air in his lungs or heart in his chest. He loved her. And he knew, in that moment, surrounded by all the riches the galaxy could afford, he would never love anyone as much as he loved her.

“Kanan,” Hera said, her breath ghosting over his lips. She was so close now, her body a long line of heat against his. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” He swallowed thickly, his throat suddenly bone dry. He could barely hear the music over the rush of blood in his ears. She licked her lips, her fingers tightening against his hip. “Kanan I-”

But before Hera could finish speaking the music suddenly cut off as the doors to the ballroom were thrown open and the Count made his grand entrance. The people clapped as a tall man with raven hair and white silk robes strode into the room, his dark eyes drinking in the adoration from the crowd. Hera took a step back. Kanan tried not to frown. 

Count Jafan was oddly enough, not escorted by any type of private security. He didn’t seem to mind as people milled up to him, shaking his hand and tittering on about the party. Kanan watched as the thin man smiled and carried on as if the party goers were his adoring subjects. In many ways they were. Just about everyone here at the party wanted something from the Count, themselves included. But while most tried to wine and dine the man to get what they wanted, Kanan and Hera had a...different plan. 

“Just say when.” Kanan said as they walked back to their table, leaving the dance floor behind. “I’ll follow your lead.” 

Hera flagged down a protocol droid and took another bright red drink off of the serving tray. “Wait until he gets closer, then we’ll make our move. But we need to intercept him before our ISB friends over there come to collect.”

Kanan eyed the Imperial officers that were now watching the Count with sharp eyes as he fawned with his guests. They were after the same thing he and Hera had come for, only they had paid the good Count a reasonable fee. Kanan and Hera didn’t see the need for money to exchange hands for this type of transaction. A small distraction and deft fingers would do the trick just fine. 

 “You know,” Kanan said while they waited for their moment to arrive, “I have to give the Count some credit, making the Imperials come to him for the information. It’s a gutsy move. They must want that data chip pretty bad.”

“Yeah,” Hera laughed without humor. “Too bad the Count is on their side. We could use someone with his connections.”

Kanan gave the man a once over as he drew near. Other than the fine clothes he was dressed in, there wasn’t much to the man. His dark hair was slicked back and there was a perpetual smirk on his face that made Kanan want to punch it off. “His money, we could use. The Count himself? I think we’d get more help from a blurrg.”

That time, Hera’s laugh was genuine. “Alright.” she said with a mischievous grin. “Let’s go meet our host.”

Kanan wrapped his arm around Hera’s, mindful of the drink still in her hand as they moved towards the Count. The music had returned, the dance floor filling out now that the Count had finally made his appearance. Kanan and Hera walked arm in arm around the edge of the ball room, past the gilded tables laden down with rich foods and groups of beings reflecting on the numerous painting that lined the wall. They moved at a leisurely pace that put them on track to walk right past their host.

Just as they were about to pass the man, Hera tripped over the hem of her dress, her drink crashed to the floor as she landed in the unsuspecting Count’s arms. Kanan reached from her, pulling her back on to her feet and away from the startled Count.

“Count Herik!” Hera said in a thick Rylothian accent as she adjusted her headdress. “I-I am so sorry!” 

The Count’s deep brown eyes landed on Hera, a slimy grin spreading across his face. He took her now empty hand in his own and brought it to his lips.

“It was merely an accident, my lady.” he said. “Enjoying the party I hope?” 

“Oh yes!” Hera said breathlessly, still trying to regain her composure from the slip. “You have a lovely home Count.”

“I certainly hope so.” Count Herik chuckled. “I spent a fortune on it!” The crowd around them laughed at his joke and Kanan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. 

“Our apologies for the mess.” Kanan cut in. “But my wife, she isn’t feeling very well. We were about to leave.” 

Count Herik flicked a disinterest glance at Kanan before turning his attention back to Hera. “I hope you get a chance to view the gardens before you leave my dear, I had some Rylothian vine flowers imported in just a few rotations ago. They seem to be taking to Naboo quite well.”

Kanan bit down on the inside of this cheek. “Perhaps on our way out.” Hera smiled at him, leaning heavily into Kanan. “Thank you again for such a wonderful evening.”

“Of course.” Count Herik nodded to her before stepping away. Kanan led Hera out of the ball room and into the hallway that would take them to the entrance. As soon as they were outside, Hera straightened and lifted a small data chip up between her fingers. 

“The Count should really learn to protect his valuables.” she said with a smirk. 

“Nice job Captain Hera.” Kanan said, taking the chip from her fingers and slipping it into the pocket of his pants. “Now let's get out of here before he realizes it’s gone.”

“He won’t know it’s gone until it’s too late.”

“You have a lot of practice in picking pockets?” He asked as he flagged down a hover taxi. 

“More than you I bet.”

Kanan laughed. “Honestly, you’re probably right.” He held open the door for her as she climbed into the taxi, gathering her skirts around her delicately. They didn’t speak on the trip back to the space port, the glowing lights of Theed passing by out the window. At some point, Hera’s head fell onto his shoulder, her eyes closed. The metal of her headdress pressed uncomfortably against the bone but he didn’t mind. He let her rest until the spaceport came into view and the taxi slowed. 

He helped her out of the cab and paid the driver before turning back to see Hera standing under the dim light of the street lamp looking tired but accomplished. A soft smile broke out on his face as he walked up to her. 

“What?” she asked, arching a brow.

“Nothin’.” He replied walking with her towards the Ghost.

“Hey Kanan.” She said, pausing. “What I was going to say earlier��”

“Don’t worry about it Hera.” Kanan cut her off, not willing to break the pleasant mood that had fallen between them. He didn’t know what she wanted to tell him before, back on the dancefloor but he had a sinking suspicion that he wouldn’t like it. He rather be left wondering than have to confront the truth. 

“No, I want to say it.” she grabbed on to his wrist, holding it tightly. “I’ve been wanting to say it for a while now.”

Kanan’s breath froze in his chest. “What is it?”

Hera bit her lip, her eyes searching his face as if it held the answer. Instead of saying anything, she stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him lightly on the lips. Kanan blinked at her in surprise as she pulled away, his mind going blank for the second time that day. 

“I like you.” she said, still holding on to his wrist. “I know I said that my mission comes first and I stand by that but I can’t help the way I feel about you and I think you might feel the same way too.”

She was looking at him with a worried look on her face but Kanan couldn’t quite get past her words. She liked him. She had feelings for him. She was ready for them to be something more. 

“Kanan could you please say something? You’re kind of freaking me out.”

Without thinking, Kanan pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She melted into him, her hands cupping the sides of his face as he spun them around in the air. They broke apart, breathless and smiling. 

“I like you too,” he said. “If that wasn’t clear.” 

Hera nipped at the side of his mouth. “I think you might need to explain it to me again.” 

“Hera.” he said in between kisses. “I’ll explain it to you as much as you like.”

She rested her forehead against his. “I love you.” She whispered. 

Kanan held her close, his whole world resting in his arms. “I love you too.”

[3pirouette]

Fic: Say You’ll Remember Me (1/1)

Title: Say You’ll Remember Me By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette Disclaimer: They're not mine. Word Count: 3599 Distribution: AO3

Story Summary: The first time he heard it, it triggered a flash back just as bad as any he’d ever had before. Later, Natasha told him he stood stock still, a sweat broke out on his forehead and his left hand shook just enough that she was concerned there was something medically wrong with him.

Chapter A/N: I’m… sorry? I have ALWAYS thought this was a Steggy song, and this just seems… angsty. But… I needed it. About/inspired by Taylor Swift’s Wildest Dreams. Wildest Dreams came out in 2014, so this is set just before the events of Winter Soldier, in 1945 just prior to the train incident, and post End Game.

If you know of any other Wildest Dreams inspired fics, please tell me where I can find them. I NEED THEM.

I know that I am VERY vague in how I reference this song in the story. I don’t want the story to be about the song, but rather Steve’s reaction to it. Also, I wrote some HORRENDOUS song-fic back in the day- lyrics before sections, italicized in sections… crazy references throughout the story text. And not that there’s ANYTHING wrong with that- but I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I ain’t going back. So… this isn’t song fic- it’s just inspired by. However, if you haven’t ever heard Wildest Dreams, 1. How did you manage that? And 2. PLEASE go listen to it before/while reading because it will change this for you.

~*~

The first time he heard it, it triggered a flash back just as bad as any he’d ever had before. Later, Natasha told him he stood stock still, a sweat broke out on his forehead and his left hand shook just enough that she was concerned there was something medically wrong with him. He stood there with his eyes boring a hole into nothing for so long that she worried other people were going to start noticing.

He remembered Natasha’s voice pulling him out of it, the way she drifted into his consciousness, the way the vision faded from his reality to the world around him, the way her face stayed calm but her eyes were concerned.

“Where did you go?” she asked gently, just as acquainted as any of them with the traumatic effects of the lives they lived.

Steve had to clear his throat before he could speak, the memory left him choked up and just a little heartbroken. “A long time ago,” he managed to get out, low and hoarse.

“Want to talk about it?” Natasha asked, the mask of the ever-adaptable spy slipping, revealing the friend beneath.

He shook his head, squared his shoulders, and started moving forward on the street again, the sound of music coming from the store next to them fading away, the song now different and far less triggering. “No.”

“Offer stands,” she tossed out flippantly, the mask sliding back into place as she kept pace beside him.

He managed to make it through the day, and their mission, without opening the pandora’s box of emotion that one silly song had caused, but that night he dreamed, vividly.

~*~

It was rare, to get leave. Even more rare to get leave at the same time.

Bucky stole a jeep, and the Commandos piled in, heading to the only pub in driving distance that was remotely open after a bombing raid a few weeks ago.

He didn’t know she had leave, she hadn’t mentioned it, but Peggy knew he had leave, and it wasn’t a mistake that she just managed to be at the pub, waiting at the bar, manicured nails tapping the wood nervously as he walked through the door.

He knew it wasn’t a mistake when Bucky pushed him towards her, the guys laughing and raising their eyebrows good naturedly, Peggy smiling at them like she was in on it all along.

They had been, and she had been, and Steve thought it was the best surprise he could have asked for. “You look beautiful,” he started, still a little off balance. “Nice to get out of the uniform.”

Her smile lit up the room. “Well, it was the nicest dress I had for the occasion.” She reached out, letting her hand fall over his shirt. “You clean up nice, as well.”

Steve laughed nervously. “Best I could manage. Most of the clothes I have are uniforms or from before…”

“Probably a tight fit,” she joked, letting her hand ghost over the arm of his shirt. “Though this fits well.”

“Bucky’s.” He looked past her shoulder at the guys who were looking back at them. Dum Dum raised his glass and his eyebrows suggestively, and he shook his head at them, looking back at Peggy. “Why didn’t you tell me you had leave?”

She shrugged, her curls bouncing over her shoulder. “Quite frankly, I thought Phillips would pull it any minute, right up until I left.” She turned and took a long sip of her wine. “I’m surprised he let any of us go, really.”

He was entranced by her, seeing her away from the base, seeing her seem so much more relaxed, so much happier, gave him a sense of purpose. They’d stolen kisses behind tents and held hands when they thought no one could see them in the dark, but they were still dancing around one another in a way that was both frustrating and enticing. This seemed like the first real chance they had to be themselves, to be more than Captain and Agent, and solidify the stolen moments as something much more meaningful. It was, very nearly, a real date. “Maybe… maybe we should get out of here.”

She didn’t need convincing. “Alright.”

Steve knew he’d made the right choice as the sounds of catcalls and whistles came from the Commando’s table in the back. Outside, where the air was just a little fresher and a little cooler, and he felt safe twining his hand in hers away from prying eyes that would gossip the next day.

They walked slowly up the little road, not knowing exactly where they were or where they were going, they managed to come across a small bridge on the edge of a park, just the barest hint of water trickling over the rocks beneath it as the sun started to sink in the sky, bathing them in a bright golden light.

She pulled him to a stop, looking out over the edge of the bridge. “Seems untouched, don’t you think?”

He stopped, watching her come alive in the lushness of the space. She seemed so happy to be away from mud and ranks and tents, that it almost physically hurt to know he’d have to bring her back. He took in the little park, the first hints of spring starting to bloom in the grass and trees surrounding what he was sure would be a lovely little creek once the spring rain started. “Beautiful.” He smirked, “But not quite as lovely as you are.”

Peggy rolled her eyes, unable to take the compliment. “Cheeky.”

He didn’t let her spoil it, though. “I wish I could draw you, just like this.” He looked her over, surrounded by the bright greens of the new spring, her dress and hair bouncing in the light breeze, her red lips standing out and begging to be kissed, the light in her eyes seemingly untouched by the war. His heart thudded in his chest with how beautiful she looked, how bright and vibrant. “I want to remember you like this forever.”

His words surprised her, and her smile softened. “You’ll remember me. That photographic mind of yours won’t let you forget, I’m sure, and then one day you can paint me, just like this, and they’ll hang it in the Louvre.”

He chuckled, taking a moment to look over every inch of her, hoping it would really commit to his memory like she seemed to think. “If they ever hang anything of mine in the Louvre, it’ll be because I was Captain America, not because it’s any great work of art.” He leaned on his elbows on the rail next to her, changing the topic quickly before she could form a rebuttal. “Rare to find anyplace out here that looks like this,” he mused quietly.

She wound her arm around his, leaning her head on his shoulder as she gazed out at the slow sunset. “It will take years for some places to recover… decades, even.”

Steve nodded, the feeling of her warmth against him comforting. “People are resilient. We’ve seen that already.” He reached over, letting his hand cover hers, gently moving the pads of his fingers over her bright red nails for long, quiet moments. “After the war—”

“After the war,” she sighed, cutting him off. Peggy leaned away, turning and taking his hand in hers. “There will be an ‘after the war,’ Steve.”

“I know,” he nodded, a soft smile on his lips, though her change in demeanor from soft and happy to serious and concerned did catch him off guard.

She almost laughed, huffing a bit then squaring her shoulders just like she did when she had to tell Phillips something he didn’t want to hear. “No one’s ever accused me of being overly sentimental,” she started, fighting to keep her eyes on him.

Steve just smiled, giving her hand a soft squeeze. “I think I’ve come to appreciate your… Britishness.”

She did laugh at that, and he watched just a little of the anxiety fall from her shoulders. “What I’m trying to say, what I want to say…” Peggy laughed again, a bright burst of nervousness. She turned away, mumbling to herself, “Good lord, why is this so difficult?”

Steve gave just the barest tug to her hand, bringing her back to him, eyebrows knit in confusion. “Just say it, Peg.”

She took a deep breath, and it all tumbled out. “I haven’t seen futures with people before. I haven’t wanted to… or, or needed to. Even… even with Fred it was just… I just expected it was what I was supposed to do. And then with this war, it was harder and harder to see past what tomorrow might bring. But Steve…” Peggy smiled, like she finally knew exactly what she needed to say. “Steve, I see a future with you. I see tomorrow, and the day after, and next month, and next year. I want…” She took a deep, steadying breath. “I want there to be an ‘after the war’ with you, even though I know I don’t show it much. Even though I know I can be hard to read sometimes. Even though I don’t write you long love letters when you’re away and I don’t spritz my perfume on your pillow for when you get back. I know I don’t always show it, but I want that. I want an ‘after the war’ with you.”

He knew he was grinning ear to ear. He couldn’t help it. “I want that, too, Peg.”

Peggy took a deep breath, smiling. “Good. Good. Yes.” Though she fought to keep it inside, her relief showed in how her eyes sparkled. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

Steve looked down at their hands, then back up to her. “I want to grow old with you, Peg, if you’ll have me.”

The sun was setting, shading her pink and purple, more like a dream now than anything. She squeezed his hand tight. “Yes, I think that’s quite a good idea.”

He kissed her, soft and gentle at first, but they quickly found themselves carried away and breathless, with her pressed up against the rough rock of the bridge.

Steve pulled away, her red lipstick staining his mouth, branding him as he tried to catch his breath. “Sorry, I…”

“No,” she whispered, equally as breathless. Stolen moments always seemed to end like this, and she was having none of it tonight. “No, don’t be. In fact, I’ve rented a room not far from the bar.”

“Peg…” He still hadn’t caught his breath, one hand still caressing over her ass as the other untangled itself from her skirt. He wasn’t sure if he was declining her offer, or simply asking her to rethink it. So much of their restraint had been to keep her reputation safe, to protect what little credibility she had with some generals who felt she shouldn’t be where she was in the SSR. It was a reaction to say they needed to stop, to pause, to protect her.  

“I’m not waiting until after the war to love you,” she retorted, taking his chin in her hands. “Not when I have you right here, right now.”

He kissed her again as the sun set behind them. “You’re right,” he whispered against her lips, taking her hand tight and pulling his handkerchief out to wipe the lipstick from his face. “Which way?”

~*~

When he woke up that next morning with the feeling of her lips still on his and her skin beneath his fingers, Steve hoped to never hear that song again.

It was popular, though, and it felt like everywhere he went he heard the lilting soprano: in grocery stores and walking on the street and on the radio. Most of the time when he heard it he was in public, and had no choice but to grit his teeth as the lyrics cut him to the quick, his mind supplying an image like a movie that looped over in slow motion, that distracted him and slowed his body down and made his heart beat quicker.

By somewhere around the twentieth time he heard it, he sat down and found the lyrics online and read them word by word, ignoring how his eyes welled up and how he felt an emptiness deep in his gut.

At least he knew the enemy now, knew the words that had snuck past his conscious mind and triggered what should have been a happy memory but was now only a signal of lost opportunities… lost time…

Lost love.

~*~

“I do wish you’d stop coming, Steve.”

Her words seemed at odds with the way she cradled his hand in both of hers. He lifted his other hand, setting it on top of hers gently, gripping her hands so, so softly. Sometimes, he was afraid she’d break under his touch she seemed so frail. “What do you mean?”

She laughed, and he saw the spirit that, no matter how her body failed her, was tough as nails. “I’m barely lucid these days.” The laughter was less frivolity and more self-pity, though, and he felt her fingers grasp at his as she kept their gazes locked, serious. “I don’t want you to remember me like this.

“Peggy,” he whispered, his words failing him.

There was no reassuring smile left for him. “I don’t want anyone to remember me like this.”

He looked away, hiding tears that had formed in his eyes. “I can’t just leave you here alone.”

Her whisper was soft and resigned. “I won’t know the difference.”

He left her, hours later, unsure if he should heed her request or hope she forgot it by the next time she showed up. He sat on his bike, trying to force himself to re-center, when a car stopped on the street a few feet away at a red light, windows down, the only song he didn’t want to hear at the moment blaring from its speakers.

He shoved his helmet on, knowing that at the very least, people wouldn’t be able to see his tears through the face shield.

~*~

Weeks later, the song had been replaced by some innocuous pop hit on replay on radio stations, and he started to breathe easier in public when there was ambient music playing. He thought maybe, just maybe, he could hear it and not think of her, of that day in 1945, of her lying in the bed at the nursing home, and be hit like a freight train with pain and loss.

Which is why, when the familiar heartbeat started to play one morning as he was cracking an egg into a frying pan for his breakfast, he was surprised to find the radio in pieces in his hands, the smoke of the burning egg breaking him out of the trance that had taken time, and the radio, from him.

He supposed it was safer if he stuck to his records. At least with those, he knew what kind of memories and melancholy he was in for with each mournful trumpet. He’d never imagined a song could cause physical pain before, but as he cleaned up the burnt egg and pulled the sparking end of the radio’s cord out of the wall socket, he couldn’t doubt that there was something about that song, something about the way this woman sang those words, that broke him just a little bit more each time he heard them.

~*~

He let his hand run over the cloth, just as soft as he remembered, though he didn’t remember the line of neat stitches at the hemline. He hadn’t known, until right this moment, she still had it.

“Steve?” Her voice floated through the hallway and back to him in the bedroom. He looked up just in time to find Peggy peeking around the door frame, smile on her bright red lips. “Find me something suitable to wear for this mystery date?”

A different him, a younger him, would have been embarrassed at being caught going through her dresses even though she’d asked, despite all that they shared now, but he was neither embarrassed nor bashful about it. “Sorry, got caught up.”

Peggy never seemed anxious about his little moments here and there, when a memory or loss hit him and he needed a minute to shake it. She was just as well acquainted with those moments, and those kinds of losses, herself.

Just like so many friends he’d lost, so many people he’d left both by circumstance and by choice too many times over now, everyone he seemed to know had lost something to the ravages of war.

She stopped, slipping into the room quiet as a mouse in her bare feet and robe, her voice calm and gentle. “No matter. I just need to get dressed. A preference?” She moved to him, the violet scent of her powder still hanging around her from just finishing her hair and make up for their dinner out. She took the dress from his hands and smiled fondly. “Oh, I remember this one. And our little… walk… that night.”

She held it up against her and shifted side to side, a vague model of it, as she smiled brightly.

The memory still punched him in the gut, even with her right there in front of him. He knew the singer wouldn’t be born for decades yet, and still he could have sworn he heard that damn song ringing in his ears.

She let the dress fall to her side, reaching out to take his hand. “Something wrong?”

He’d been back for months, and yet he still worried that she didn’t understand. “I remember,” he whispered, looking away. “I remember you on that bridge, smiling at me like we had our whole lives ahead of us.”

She held his hand tight, her voice low and serious, “We do.”

“But we didn’t,” he whispered fiercely, turning back to her. “Not when I was there- in that future or that timeline or whatever it was.” He shook his head and lifted the fabric of the skirt in his free hand, looking at the cloth as if it held the mysteries of the universe. “All I had left was this memory of you, standing on that bridge, with your hair waving in the wind and your bright red lips smiling at me like you didn’t have a care in the world. I had that memory so clear it felt like I could touch it, and it was everything I’d lost.”

She dropped the dress and it fell from his fingers between them as she moved closer, cradling his face in her hands. “I’m right here, right now, Steve.”

He couldn’t stop the heavy weight of his voice. “I’d lost you, and I’d lost my future when I woke up there.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “I lost my ‘after the war,’ because when I woke up there was just one fight after another and the war was never over.”

“It’s over now.” Her voice was thick with her own emotion as her thumb traced his cheek. “And you found your way back to me.”

“Peg,” he didn’t like the way his voice cracked when he said her name, but there was little he could do to stop it.

She pulled him close, kissing him fervently. “You’ll never have to remember me again, Steve.” She nuzzled her cheek close to his, pulling him even closer. “I’m right here. And God himself couldn’t tear me away from you again, do you understand?”

He clutched at her, holding her tight, as he nodded against her neck.

“We’ll stay in tonight, yeah?” She pressed her lips against his neck, and not or the first time he was struck with how thankful he was for this second chance.

~*~

He thought it was fitting that the first time he heard it again was right after her funeral, right after he was done shaking hands and consoling grandchildren and was still half dressed in his suit with no tears left to cry.

He hadn’t been avoiding it, truthfully hadn’t thought about it in years. But as soon as he heard that lilting soprano again, he stopped in his tracks.

This time, he sat and turned the radio louder.

This time, he could remember not only that moment of her on the bridge, telling him she wanted a future with him, but that night in her house, only months after he’d shown up on her doorstep.

He remembered the way she looked when they got married by the Justice of the peace.

The way cuddled next to him on the couch, scowling as soon as the Captain America Adventure Hour came on the radio.

The way she smiled at him when she told him she wasn’t deathly ill, but rather pregnant.

The way she looked with their daughter at her feet and their son on her hip, playing dolls as she talked with Phillips about national security over the phone.

He remembered all of these things and more: ever blinding smile, every tear, every laugh in their time “after the war” together.

He didn’t shake, didn’t freeze up, but rather felt a small, warm feeling in his chest: happiness tinged with just enough loss that the song still felt like an old, unwelcome friend.

He waited until the last, breathless notes were sung and snapped off the radio, done with music for the night.

If her were lucky, he’d see her in his dreams tonight, and that would be no bad thing.

[peakyswritings]

The London Air Raids

Requested by: @writerdream22

Based on the song “The London Air Raids” by Vian Izak

Warnings: war

The gif is not mine, credits to the owner

And we sit here so close in the dark

And we're so close to being torn apart

Ever crash I can feel in our foundation

It runs through my veins and I hate the sensation

You sighed as you laid with your back on the tree behind you, the soft breeze lightly ruffled your hair while you looked up at the starless sky, sat on the cold grass. You were away from the city, from the smoke and the fires and the dirt. It was a quiet night. It was unfair, you thought, how peaceful everything was when there’s was nothing to be peaceful about. When so many young lives where about to be broken because of somebody’s hatred, when so many people where mourning their loved ones. When somewhere, in that very moment, thousands of soldiers were fighting to stay alive, to see another day, to come back to their families, without the warranty of actually making it. Yet, the flowers kept on blooming, the wind kept on blowing and the sun kept on rising everyday, unaware of the carnage that didn’t seem to want to reach its end. It was like the earth was mocking you, laughing at men’s foolishness, showing that it didn’t matter how many people died, the world would keep on turning and life would go on, with or without them.

It was definitely unfair.

You turned your head to the guy next to you, trying to memorise every single detail about him, every freckle, every line, the way he frowned, the way his lips curled into a smile. That beautiful smile, would you be able to see it again? To hear his voice, his laugh?

“They say it’ll be over before winter comes” he stated, taking a drag from his cigarette “it won’t last long”

You stayed in silence, not quite knowing what to say. It didn’t change anything, a lot could happen in a couple of months.

“Don’t go” you whispered, hoping that you could change his mind.

“I have to” he affirmed “what kind of man would I be if I didn’t fight for my country?”

You gently stroked his cheek, looking him in his beautiful blue eyes. They were filled with life and spirit and you knew by the look he gave you that nothing could change his mind.

“Promise me that you’ll come back to me”

He placed his hand on the one that rested on his cheek, giving you a soft smile.

“You know I can’t. But I’ll try. I’ll do everything I can to come back to you, it’s a promise.”

But I know that I'm safe here with you

Cause we made it through everything the old and the new

Just wake me up when all this is over

Wake me up and tell me it's not true

“Dance with me” he said as he stood up and held out his hand of you to take it.

“But there’s no music”

“We don’t need it” he suddenly pulled you towards him, making you giggle. He put his hands on your waist and you wrapped your arms around his neck. Your heart ached at the thought that that could be your last dance with him. You tried to take in the way he held you, how his hands felt on your waist, how you felt when he was close to you. You placed your head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat and letting it comfort you. You inhaled his reassuring smell, it was a mixture of soap, whiskey and tobacco. That was the one thing that you knew you would never forget, it didn’t matter how much time passed.

My sweet love watch the air raids

As the streets of London are not safe

And I wish that we could escape

As the beat of the drum keeps on its play

And I long to feel the rain on my face

So I wait, I want the bombs to fade away

Contrary to what people thought, the war didn’t last a few months. It was supposed to be a brief war, but the weeks became months and the months became years. You didn’t spend a day without thinking about your fiancé, about how close he was to death and danger. The thought of him in the trenches, surrounded by mud and blood and destruction kept you from sleeping at night. How could you sleep in your warm bed while he was out in the cold and the rain? Your exchange of letters was slowly decreasing, because it took them a lot to arrive, but you didn’t lose hope. You waited for them like a child waits for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve and you kept them in a box placed on your desk, reading them again when his absence was too much to bear.

Under the bombs, the shooting and the cries of the hurt soldiers, Tommy thought about you. In the middle of chaos and destruction, the photograph that he kept in his pocket was his only comfort. Whenever he felt like it was all too much, like he wanted to give up, he looked at it and your smile gave him the motivation to go through another day. When the cold penetrated his bones, when the noise made him feel like his head was about to explode, when the rudimentary masks weren’t enough to protect him from the toxic gas, when he crawled in the mud, your memory made him go on. When your letters arrived, he ran his fingers on your handwriting, finding comfort in it. You wrote a letter and you sent it to him, it meant that there was still hope.

And the hum of the airplanes is such a sweet sound

As we're coming up from underground

Coming up to see our ruined state

Coming up to see those ruins that you made

And in the east I hear a nation shout

And we wait for the day that we can sing it out

Four years later, the war was finally over. You stood next to Polly, Ada and little Finn at the train station, your heart beating like crazy in your chest while you looked through the flow of people, hoping that the Shelby brothers would make it home safe and sound. Polly sighed with relief as John and Arthur got off the train, walking towards them with her arms open. You hugged the men who were like brothers to you, happy to see them safe and sound, but you couldn’t keep your eyes off the train, waiting for the one person who was missing to show up.

Your heart skipped a beat when you saw his familiar face standing out of the crowd. He didn’t see you right away, the multitude made it difficult to see clearly. It took him a moment to notice you, but when his eyes found yours, it felt like everyone around him disappeared, leaving just the two of you. You literally ran in his arms, holding him like your life depended on it. He tightly wrapped his arms around your waist, closing his eyes and inhaling your scent. You moved away a little to take his face in your hands, looking at him as if you wanted to make sure that it was not just one of your dreams, that he was really there.

“You’re here” you whispered, feeling your eyes starting to well up.

“I’m here” he nodded with a soft smile “and I’m not going anywhere for a long time”

He leaned in and kissed you, gently stroking your cheek. In that moment, everything fell back into place.

My sweet love watch the air raids

As the streets of London are not safe

And I wish that we could escape

As the beat of the drum keeps on its play

And I long to feel the rain on my face

So i wake

Two months later, you finally got married. You were so happy to be together again that you didn’t care if it was rushed. You had been apart for too long, it was time to keep your promises.

The guy who went to France never came back. You could see it in his eyes, that had lost their spark of youthful happiness, you could see it in his smile, that wasn’t as natural as before. His laugh was still the same, but you rarely heard it. Nevertheless, you knew that he was still your Tommy. Sometimes, when it was just you and him, you could see the boy he used to be through a spontaneous laugh, or a sarcastic remark, or a joke.

You saw him the day you got married, when he watched you walk down the aisle arm in arm with your father with tears in his eyes. That day, you promised to stick together for better and for worse, in sickness and in health. You had never realised the importance and the worth of those vows until you found yourself pronouncing them, meaning every single word you were saying. You would always be by each other’s side, no matter what.

Till death would do you apart.

[goodbysunball]

Bring it on home

Comparatively easy listening from the set of records showcased this time around, but there's a world of grief settin' your jaw to grind. You deserve a neck massage and a cocktail; lean into these after you put your misery rectangle aside for a spell.

Astute Palate, s/t (Petty Bunco)

Emily Robb, David Nance, Daniel Provenzano, and Richie Charles got together and hammered out this LP during "48 sleepless hours" in Philadelphia. It's definitely a fairly rough documentation, but if you know the players, that's generally what you'd be gettin' into with 'em anyway. Gotta admit that I'm not a huge fan of what I've heard by David Nance - respect his hustle, though - and the same goes for the tracks he leads here; in particular, the studied classic rock caterwaul employed on "Stall Out" basically rolls my eyes for me. I am, however, fond of David Nance the Guitarist and his heroics on "Stall Out," and "A Little Proof" definitely has me more curious about his recent solo work I've skipped. These are pithy grievances, though: the album rules, as a whole, but it's just hard to stomach some of Nance's lyrics when they're side-by-side with bonafide jammers like "Bring It On Home" and "Treadin' Schuylkill." "Bring It On Home," in particular, with its Velvets-inspired chug and Robb's bleary vocals coolly beckoning you to do as the title says, heats to a boil with the blustery, fried guitar interplay. For me it wipes the floor with anything else on the album, and pretty much anything else I'll hear this year, so let's put all my petty complaints aside and declare this the Summer of Astute Palate, OK? Looks like the secret's out - the LP's sold out from the source, but can be found hiding in various distros and shops. Hunt it down, crack a tallboy, and embrace the sweltering heat of our melting planet with Astute Palate.

Maraudeur, Puissance 4 (self-released)

New and best LP yet from Leipzig's Maraudeur, self-released with some of the best packaging/artwork I've seen in a minute. My memory's usually a bit faulty, but I recall the band being a three-piece on their last, still very good LP from Bruit Direct Disques. I'm inclined to think that the group's ranks have swelled to five anyway, since the sound here is a bit more bright and full, lots of different moving parts zipping and moving around, giving the crisp recording some effervescence. Compared to older songs like "Computer Dreams," Maraudeur sounds sharper, capable of backing up any threats rather than coming across as deflated and listless. Even the slower songs on Puissance 4, such as "Slow Dress," thrive on tension, guitar strings set to snap amidst the robotic/hypnotic vocals. The band seems to have located a sweet spot between the simmering minimalism of Household and the technologically damaged vision of Chrome, and "TWYWYS" basically sounds like a collaboration between the two groups. Guitars are used as window dressing, favoring instead synths and showcasing the chops of the rhythm section. "Face/Figure" and my favorite track "C'est Caché" are the best examples of Maraudeur's rhythmic foundation, but nearly every track causes inadvertent head bobbing. While accessible and familiar on the surface, Maraudeur's dry humor, the carefully camouflaged layers of sound, and whatever is going on in "I Am Here" keep boilerplate post-punk comparisons at bay. Puissance 4 is a refreshing, addictive brew from the not-too distant future, and probably a blast to experience live.

Astrid Øster Mortensen, Gro Mig En Blomst (Förlag För Fri Musik)

New Gothenburg talent alert! Mortensen is apparently a newcomer to the scene, and her debut LP fits in nicely amongst the Förlag För Fri Musik discography. Gro Mig En Blomst features lonely and debased late-night solo explorations with guitar, piano and what sounds like an accordion, accented by electronic manipulations and the found sound that accompanies most FFFM records. It's dreary and stark, and can quickly bring the mood down when it's on. For me the most obvious reference point is Grouper's Ruins, in that both are recordings so intimate that it feels like an interruption to move while it's on. But I also get bits of Picastro's Whore Luck ("Hvor Kommer Mørket Fra?" sounds like it was plucked directly from that album), and there are similarities to Chloe Alison Escott's solo work, on the title track and "Piano i" and "Piano ii." Gro Mig En Blomst is a far cry from more traditional singer-songwriter music, dabbling in Stars of the Lid-like drone on "Brud ii" and jumping into the "Is there a record on or...?" genre on "Solen Er Et Lille Hus" and "Brud i." I can't say I go out looking for records this fragile and surface-level bleak anymore, but Mortensen's work is more often beautiful and calming than hopelessly gray. Another keeper from FFFM, sure to be one of the most sought-after records from the label, and for good reason.

Nightshift, Zöe (Trouble In Mind)

Travel back in time with me, if you will, to a time when "indie rock" was a genre label that had some meaning. After getting rid of the bad taste in my mouth and shaking off the embarrassment at who I was when I largely listened to stuff that'd broadly fall under that label, I'll allow that Nightshift is making a strong argument for some of the music released during the comparative naiveté of the late '00s/early '10s. Across Zöe, you get shades of Broadcast, Lower Dens' Twin-Hand Movement, the UV Race ("Spray Paint the Bridge"), Belle & Sebastian and A Sunny Day In Glasgow ("Power Cut" and "Romantic Mud"). The trick to Zöe is that it folds all these reference points in neatly and places it on a sturdy percussive base. I won't argue that every song here is memorable, but they're all enjoyable, and the songs that hit - "Outta Space," the title track, "Infinity Winner" - send chills down my spine every time. Guitars are plucked and scraped for leading beats, accentuating shuffling drums and giving the bass the spotlight. The vocals are dreamy and lyrics direct, and for the duration of Zöe you're relieved of the pessimistic present and allowed to rigidly dance to Nightshift's hesitant groove. They've charmed their way through my cynicism, and Zöe's been on heavy rotation despite my reluctance. Take it for a spin, and fall under Nightshift's spell.

Hugo Randulv, Radio Arktis: Samlade Ljud Från Den Norra Polcirkeln (Förlag För Fri Musik)

First solo LP from Hugo Randulv, an active presence in the Gothenburg scene with his involvement in Enhet För Fri Musik, Skiftande Enheter and Amateur Hour, among others. Though typically a guitarist, on Radio Arktis, he drops the guitar and instead fills both sides with glacial synths and dusty samples. The label's original write-up for this record called it "grand ambient," though to me it sounds and feels much more personal than something that would soundtrack the Olympics. His use of samples, most notably on "Radio Reykjavik," sounds intimately tied with some fleeting memory, the music serving to enhance or exorcise the feeling tied to it all. It reminds me most of the Fun Years' "God Was Like, No" in that both records used the tools common to ambient/drone music but applied a much more personal touch, that certain nameless attribute that keeps drawing a listener back in. Can't put my finger on it, but both records just sound like they had to be made, rather than serving as a genre exercise or one-off exploration. I don't know that Radio Arktis is going to change anyone's life, but it could, and I've been hypnotized by its wordless, sparkling gray tones for weeks. Even though the "solo musician embraces synths" thing is usually pretty tired and pointless, Hugo Randulv's contribution shows why it's an alluring proposition at all.

Sunhiilow, Beyond the Cycle (Ikuisuus)

More solo synth, this time coming from Valerie Magisson and her Moog Mother-32. Magisson's Sunhiilow project veers into new age/ambient with its bite-sized kosmische explorations. There's something about the combination of the short length of these tracks and the sense of movement present within each that allows Beyond the Cycle to transcend the lifeless drivel that's usually tagged "new age" and "synth." It seems intentional that Magisson was trying to capture the mood of each track title in its corresponding music, and she is largely successful, though its unclear if the title provided direction or was applied afterward. The somewhat jarring introduction of "Wilderness Bloom" and the stoned growth of "Circle Motion" are my top picks, but the album works best as a whole and played very loudly, the overall effect immersing the listener into heady zones traversed by the Nightcrawlers. Leave it to Ikuisuus to release an "ethereal ambient music" record that satisfies, and sounds and looks great to boot. Sunhiilow's a lot more tame than most of what Ikuisuus releases, but it's an accessible, recommended starting point to one of the best active labels. HOWDY.

[writefightandflightclub]

Violent Delights: Chapter 6

Pairing: First Order!Poe x reader

Author’s note: This is different to the other chapters, but I hope you like it! I’ll probably fix typos tomorrow. I’m impatient.

Summary: This definitely answers that KEY QUESTION I left hanging at the end of Chapter 5! If you’re new to this story, there are MAJOR SPOILERS under the cut, so please do read the other chapters first (series masterlist here). Even if you’ve been following, you may want to recap Chapter 5 first! 

Song inspo: Oh, in my ears / My blood is just roaring / When he's the only one I've ever wanted / I suppose that's just the way it is / Just to think this could be / The last time I hold you, hold you / Ever again / Oh, I don't think I'll ever sleep till / Morning. (Nicole Aitken, The Way It Is)

Warnings: 18+ only, dark fic. This is nowhere near as dark as the preceding chapters but still some warnings: OOC!Poe, FO!Poe, Violence inc: injuries! shooting! Explicit language. Mentions of: torture / sex / death / poison! Let me know if I missed any others.

Taglist: @aussiefangirlwolfy, @localashe, @fictionalcharactersownme, @a-somehow-functioning-dumbass, @itsamedeemoney, @woakiees​​ @tintinwrites​@jyn-z-solo​ @spaghetti-666​ @kittyofalltrades​ @planetpoes (TAGLIST OPEN- let me know if you wish to be added / removed)

Word Count: 6K. Yikes.

GIF by @solorenskywalker​

It hurts you. Somehow, it hurts you.

And yet, you are solidified in place, no wound observable.

The moment slows almost to a halt as you register the shot.

Dameron is hit.

The blast hits first. Then, shock, pain, and anger strike all at once, eddying between you and the Commander like the swell of a vicious storm, the air charged and practically humming. At first, his rage at this insulting wound sunk into his flesh is so vital that an immediate hope blooms in your chest; how can he be fatally hurt if he seems so alive? Then; something alien surfaces in his eyes. Something which looks a lot like fear. He delivers an agonised moan, already sounding hollowed out, and your fleeting hope wanes with him.

He unfists his hands from your clothing as he moves to clutch his shoulder in agony. He is cleaved from you and you are split in two, in every figurative way possible. You are ruptured by the blast like a fault line snaking beneath an ocean. This boiling rage is subdued only by the heavy, cooling sea of grief with threatens to depress you down on to your knees. You are torn, the desire to erupt in retaliation on behalf of your “enemy” in stark opposition to your need to sink with your lover. You want to fall to the floor with him. To your knees. To hold him. No question. But if you try and help him, Barret might shoot you too.

The indecision burns you.

It hurts you, this shot.

But it hurts Dameron more.

The commander groans, creaks beneath the weight of this pain. It presses down on him and his body curls in on itself as he creeps further towards a colourless exit, the knives in his eyes blunted. There is no vivid, crimson tide of blood to warn you of death incoming. Not this time. This is death pouncing from the long grass like a whip crack. The predator no-one saw coming.

The commander’s face contorts in a rendition of agony, his face almost beautiful with it. But this is not the kind of pain he has made his friend. This is pain without pleasure. And, since you can’t reach out to him, pain without comfort.

The cruellest pain of all.

“No. No. No.” you repeat -almost inaudibly- as Dameron sinks to his knees. You feel like he’s sinking into the depths of a cold, dark sea. Sinking out of reach.

His dark, tempestuous eyes are directed up at you, teeth gritted, lips sucked thin as agony grips him. On his knees like this, he could easily appear like a beast defeated; defanged and declawed. But there is some fight left in his eyes yet. Enough for him to try and spur you into action. “Time to go, Rebel. You fly, he guns, understand?”

You don’t understand. How can you comprehend leaving him like this?

His voice is shot with gravel, full of holes, but it still speaks its way into the depths of you. “Now. Go!, he insists, his voice winding its way around your bones and pulling you into motion, as if he holds the reins in the palm of his hand. As if he can bend you to his will, even now.

He has been dragging you to him all this time and now he urges you to leave, as if he’s unaware of the strength it will take to release yourself from his orbit; from his gravity. But staying isn’t helping him. In fact, it’s worse than that, you’re a danger to him every second you’re still on this ship. You know too much. He needs you gone from his sky.

You obey reluctantly, giving him the smallest of nods, letting your trembling fingertips drag ever so gently, subtly along his jaw as you turn towards the TIE. You move with strings still on you, dragging you back to him and making each step feel like you are wading through mud.

Progressing towards the craft, you are vaguely aware of Barret barking at you, calling you in to the interior of the fighter. You clamber up the ladder and into the tight cockpit just as Troopers swarm into the hangar, the blaster shots bouncing off the ship’s exterior. Your shaking hands hover above the ignition controls, ready to punch it. Instead, you wait. You wait until you are assured that the Troopers have made their way over to the vicinity of the Commander. You wait until the last possible second.

With a final glance through the transparisteel windshield, you look down at his now stilled form on the ground below you. His crown of pitch-dark curls and his uniform-clad body splayed out -helpless- over the cold floor. You don’t know if it was a killing shot. Without a crimson tide of blood, you can’t tell if Dameron’s still alive. But you do know that you have to go, regardless. With a sharp growl of regret, of anguish, you boost the ship out of the swiftly closing gap in the hangar doors. Just in the nick of time.

And so, you fly.

You fly with a pounding heart, blood raging in your ears. You fly, so enraged with your passenger that you are tempted to crash the ship just to make him pay. But there is nothing around you. No ground, no sky. Nothing to cling on to. Just a loss. An emptiness. Just space. You fly away from him, like a satellite released from its orbit. Equally lost and purposeless in the endless dark. 

From out of the darkness, the thought of the Resistance base should be calling out to you right now like a beacon. A beacon inviting you home, now that you are finally free. But you’ve never before had to escape somewhere you wanted to be and return to somewhere you were no longer sure you belonged. The thought of retuning to base with Barret suddenly seems incomprehensible. And so, when you’re clear of the fleet, you don’t know what else to do except keep flying. No destination in mind, except away.

Flying. Simply flying away, is all you try to focus on. But all you can think about is turning the blasted ship back around. Flying toward him. Following those strings the commander has tied on to you which extend across space, drawing you back to him.

But you know that’s untenable. You fly, and it’s likely a good thing that the Order is in chaos, that the chain of command is interrupted. Otherwise, you’re not sure how -or if- you’d manage to lose the pursuing fleet. Not in your current state of fury. Not with Barret’s meagre attempt at gunning, through intermittent groans of pain.

Somehow, you shake them regardless. As the remaining TIEs abandon pursuit, you hear Barret breathe a sigh of relief from the gunner position behind you. The reminder of Barret’s presence is enough to make your hands tighten so hard on the controls that your fingernails dig crescents into your palms. To make your chest tighten.

Then: “They track these things. Did you disable the tracker?” he asks you.

You are loathe to acknowledge him. Even so, you fiddle with the dash until you’re satisfied that the Order can no longer trace you. You cut the strings leading back to him and you feel that you’ve just cut a lifeline. That suddenly you’re lost to liminal space, in-between anywhere and anyone you’ve ever considered home. Still ruptured in two. The feeling sets a hollowness in the pit of you, like you are a ripe fruit which has been scooped out by a cool spoon.

“Affirmative. Plotting a course to base.” You confirm in monotone, all emotion scrubbed from your voice.

“I can’t believe I got such a lucky shot at that bastard.” Barret continues, his voice sickeningly jovial and full of relief.

You feel like you might throw-up.

“Don’t speak. Save your strength.” You say curtly, inordinately thankful that you are back-to-back in the TIE. At least you don’t have to look at him. At least he can’t look at you – can’t get a read on the emotions you would be incapable of obscuring right now.

Still, as you programme your course you feel like his eyes are roving over you, all the same. You feel like he’s poking around inside you, wondering what’s wrong with you. You can imagine the gears in his brain working in an attempt to figure out why your reactions seem off, to unearth whatever happened to you on that ship. Whatever tortures you may have been subjected to. You can imagine him retrospectively register the bite marks on your neck, the cuts to your hands. The blood on your face and clothing. You practically feel his thought process creep over you in the cockpit like a cold chill.

“What happened to you?” Barret asks then, ever so softly, his voice heavy with the implication of imagined atrocities.

“It’s not my blood. It’s Hux’s. I killed him.” You say, hoping to deflect from exactly what happened to you on that ship.  

Barret hoots with laughter, and the sound jarrs you. You hear his hand slapping against his thigh in celebration. “Wow, we really fucked the Order over today, partner. Hux and Dameron dead!” Barret reaches behind him to squeeze your shoulder and you flinch away as if you are afraid of his touch; as if you don’t deserve it; as if he disgusts you. Perhaps all of those things.

“You don’t know that Dameron’s dead.” You bite off without thinking, molten tears of rage threatening at the corner of your eyes. The break in your voice is giving too much away. Emotion floods the cracks in your words like tributaries joining the churn of an unstoppable river. You can’t choke back the sob which follows.

Barret’s voice softens so much that you want to wring his neck to choke the pity out of it. “Did Dameron... hurt you?”. That’s why he thinks you’re crying, then? Because you can’t be certain that the commander’s dead, and surely you must want him dead for the terrible, unspeakable things he enacted upon you?

The truth might be even more unspeakable. The truth that you’re a traitor. The truth that you’d sell your soul to have the commander do those things to you all over again. To have him fuck you and hurt you and hold you. The truth that, yes, he did hurt you, buy you liked it. Barret doesn’t understand that you’re wretched with a crushing and unexpected grief at the thought that it may never happen again. Not since Barret did what you should have had the sense to do all that time ago. Not since Barret shot the commander.

You hope Barret doesn’t notice the course of the ship waver as your hands slip on the controls. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

The close air of the TIE is suddenly thick with a loaded silence as the ship shudders back along its trajectory. As you regain control of yourself and the craft.

Barret, however, does not relent for long. “Do you think when we get back to base we’ll be welcomed as heroes?” The question simply makes your stomach turn. You refuse to pluck at the question while it hangs there, ripe, and so it becomes a rotten thing in the air between you. You feel that chill creep over you again, as if Barret is reaching inside of you, panning for your secrets. No escape within the confines of this ship.

You think back to the last time you were confined with Barret. It seems so long ago that you hunkered in that stakeout room, tracking that shipment and thirsting hard for the commander. The commander who had consumed you with just one bite. Now, mere days later, your partner seems like a stranger and your enemy seems like your lover. You indulged your appetite for that tempting, delicious darkness; you were willingly suckered into Dameron’s honeyed trap. And now that you have been given a taste, you should feel sated. But the truth is you would gladly open your mouth and drink more of that darkness down. You’d drink it until you were spoiled and loathsome with it.

The most disconcerting aspect of these tumultuous events is how little you know yourself. What you are capable of. What you crave and how far you will wade in to the darkness to get it. You know these are your mistakes, your weaknesses to atone for. You know that despite what you’re feeling now, Barret doesn’t deserve your hate. A part of you still knows that. Knows that, objectively, he’s simply a good guy who shot a bad man. That objectively, you should still be on his side. You know you owe it to him to take him home. At the very least.

An older, softer part of you resurfaces as you hear Barret grunting behind you with a fresh wave of pain. It’s likely that the initial burst of adrenaline is wearing off and he is beginning to suffer.  

“You’re hurt.”

“I’ll be ok. My stomach is hurting like a bitch, though.”

In all the chaos, you’d given little thought to the extent of his injuries, until now. So, next, you ask a question you’re not sure you truly want an answer to. “What happened to you, Barret?”

There is a beat. He replies in a small voice. “The kinda stuff our training tried to prepare us to resist.” His answer is vague but loaded. That’s enough. That’s enough to understand what they’d subjected him to. Guilt flares in the pit of you, knowing that while he was being tortured, you were indulging your darker whims. Knowing how much you were enjoying yourself while he suffered. Enjoying yourself at his expense, when you could have been trying to get him out of there.

So, you still can feel guilt, then? You still know that, on some level, it was wrong. Maybe there is something of the Rebel left in you, somewhere. Buried under the landslide of darkness. But you know there is little chance of that part of you clawing itself out when your next thought is of the commander. When your whole body clenches around the memory of him, clings on to it. You think of how he can torture you in an entirely different way, until you’re begging for mercy. A part of you feels you’d raze everything you ever loved to the ground for a chance to beg him again.

Still, you’re curious. You’re curious whether your commander was involved in Barret’s torture. Perhaps so that you can weigh precisely how much you should loathe yourself. “Troopers, or one of the higher-ups?” you ask, trying to keep your voice level, void of feeling.

“Troopers mainly. Some droids, doctors…” Barret trails off, remembering. “Though, it’s funny, really. Dameron came to my room this morning. Told me -don’t worry- it would all be over for me today. Guess the joke’s on him. The bastard.” Barret’s voice sounds darker, more malicious than you’ve ever heard it.

“He came to your room? This morning?” Something about that doesn’t sit quite right with you, leaves you uneasy. Dameron doesn’t do anything much unless there’s something in it for him, you’re learning. Maybe the games he has been playing aren’t quite over yet. Is it wrong to relish that thought?

“He visited a couple of times. To mindfuck me, from what I can gather. Yesterday he tried to make me swallow some horrible lies about you. To make me think I was alone, I guess- to get some intel out of me. Today… well, he brought me my daily rations and told me it was all over. Well, fuck him, he’s dead.”

Panic flutters in your stomach. You try to remain steady on the flight controls, to calm your breathing. You know Barret doesn’t fully appreciate the implications of his words. Of the commander’s actions. But you might.

You have two burning questions you need answers to.

The first: How much did Dameron tell Barret?

The second: What did he feed him?

Your mind pores over any detail of Barret you can remember from the escape to establish which question is most pressing. You hark back to the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the glassiness of his infuriatingly concerned eyes. The way he was clutching at his stomach. More than being injured; Barret looked ill.

Realisation strikes you, and if you didn’t feel guilty before, you sure as hell do now. You can’t be sure, of course. But somehow you know. You’d bet that the commander had fed Barret some juicy, ripe, red fruit.

Bile rises in your throat, but you force yourself to gloss over your voice with a kind tone. To paint your face with a soft, reassuring smile. “Why don’t you try and get some rest, huh? You’ve been through it.” Your passenger hums, considering your proposition. “If I divert the power from the interior electrics into the thrusters, I can get us back to base a little faster than expected. If you don’t mind flying in the dark?”

Flying in the dark is all you’ve been doing ever since the commander hit your life and turned it upside down, like a hurricane. Ans it turns out you’re still caught in his wake. You can’t tell if you’re soaring or if you’re about to crash and burn.

“Yeah.” Barret reaches a hand around to squeeze your arm again and it is like a hand rising out of a grave. His hand is cold. You resist the urge to flinch away, despite the chill it sends down your spine. “Oh, and, partner? Thank you for rescuing me.”

You bite your lips between your teeth. You’re not sure if that statement could possibly be further from the truth of what happened. Hadn’t you doomed him, right from the start? From that first bite the commander took of you? A throwaway “You don’t need to thank me.” is all you can muster.

Barret curls himself in his chair and you are grateful to fly on in silence. Now that the affront of him is over, you suddenly realise how tense you are, how the emotions wracking you are beginning to take their toll. You can’t explain how it was more comforting to be in the arms of your enemy than trapped in the confines of this ship with someone you’d let down so badly. You owe it to Barret to try and make part of this right.

Don’t you?

An alternative option niggles at you, hiding somewhere beyond protocol, beyond the rules and conventions and obligations. Then you think that, perhaps, it’s a good thing for Barret that you can’t be sure if Dameron’s dead, after all. Because if you knew that he was, you don’t think you could find the compassion or strength to try to bring your partner home. You think you might seek retribution, in the end.

Regardless, you fly. You try and allow the darkness of the cockpit to swallow you. As if Barret is not sitting there, as if Dameron never marked you. You try and push it all down, but the commander did mark you. He’s branded you as his. He’d told you “don’t forget you’re mine”, and now his words are wrapped around your bones. His words will be buried with you. And every time you try and escape, your thoughts orbit back to him. His mouth swallowing your hot core, his hands delivering delicious tortures, his cock pumping into you. Most of all: those dark eyes, like shadowed planets you would kill to be marooned on again.

Left to the dark and the dark alone, your thoughts are consumed by him. That is, until you reach your destination, and swing your craft around in the air to bring her in for touch down. Until you approach base and spot that something isn’t right. Until you see the thick pillars of smoke billowing into the air.

“No. No. No.” You plead to no-one in particular, your protestations and erratic flying drawing Barret abruptly from his sleep.

You land harshly on the runway, avoiding blast holes and charred ground, and scramble hurriedly from the ship. Your feet relentlessly pound the tarmac until you’re in the centre of it all, scanning the scene around you with eyes wide.

No-one comes running to greet you or shoot at you. No-one is left. You look around you, surveying for damages. Surveying for bodies, you realise. That the X-wings and larger crafts are gone from the hangar provides some immediate comfort. Signs of a likely evacuation. Then, your eyes pick out the remains of familiar munitions, the tell-tale shell of a downed and lightly smoking TIE fighter.

The strike was committed by the Order. While you were taken. You shake your head in disbelief. It can’t possibly be a coincidence -not after everything that has happened. That means the Order somehow found out the location of the base while you were captive… but you hadn’t…

Oh. Oh.

You put the pieces together and turn back to Barret in disbelief. He has now come to stand several paces from you on the runway. Laughably, you know you must look betrayed when your eyes meet his. In one hand he grips a blaster and the other hand waves around defensively. No, he doesn’t look well. Now that you’re truly seeing him, he doesn’t look well at all. A sheen of sweat covers Barret’s face, his eyes red-rimmed, tears seeding at the corners. He instantly recognises the accusation in your eyes, in your stance.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” he professes, voice trembling. “I wasn’t strong enough. I hoped we’d make it back before the Order could put the intel to use. Or that we’d disrupted their plans. That maybe no-one would need to know.”.

“You sold the base out?” you spit with utter disgust, looking Barret over like he’s scum.  

Apparently, neither of you were returning to base as heroes after all.

He meets your question with silence, which says it all.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” You are yelling now. “You let the Resistance down! You betrayed them!”

You’re so angry that it feels like your blood is boiling beneath your skin. Your breath is ragged, your thoughts swirling. You feel darkness crowding at the edges of you. You feel like you are sucking it up through your fingertips, draining your surroundings of it. Feeling it course through you, like the hum of static before a storm. Barret betrayed the Resistance. He did this. And you’re so angry that you can’t see straight.

You are devoid of any sympathy or empathy for him. You’re so angry at him, of course, because you’re angry at yourself. If you can berate him for being a traitor you will take it, if it makes what you did seem to pale into insignificance.

Instinctually, although you are stood some distance away, you lift your arm as if you could simply reach out and choke Barret. Make him pay for his weakness. Your arm extended towards him, you have the desperate urge to just close your grip and crush. “I wish I could just…”

You are as shocked as Barret when he physically clasps his throat and starts wheezing, his eyes wide and afraid. It shocks you enough for you to drop your arm and physically step back from him. You shrink back from the look he’s giving you as he processes what just happened, raising his blaster arm unsteadily toward you. He looks at you questioningly. He looks at you as if he’s looking at a stranger.

All you can do is look back at him. You look Barret dead in the eyes, and you must reveal just too much. Because, if it’s possible, Barret pales even further, his eyes swimming with disbelief.

“It’s true, isn’t it? I’m not the only one who let down the Resistance, am I?” His voice is so thick with disgust that you can’t bring yourself to keep looking at him. To keep facing what you did.

“The things Dameron told me yesterday. They’re true.”

“What?” you say weakly, a pitiful attempt to backtrack, but you already know it’s futile. You’ve been found out. And you might be a traitor but you’re not a liar.

“You fucked the enemy.” Barret spits. “While I was being tortured in that cell. You could have stopped this.” He yells, gesturing around to the scene of devastation which envelops you. And, in his anger he overdoes it - ends up clutching his stomach in evident pain.

There is nothing you can say. No protestation you can muster. You had been angry and ashamed at yourself, but when confronted with it, you find a small, absurd part of you which is proud of it. Which has no desire to deny it. To apologise for it. Barret may have caved in to weakness, but you found power on that ship. Whilst he may dish out judgement, with the commander you had found understanding. Affinity.

Barret’s blaster wavered with the fresh burst of pain but now he has it pointed back at you, trained intently on you. “I didn’t want to believe Dameron. I didn’t at first.”, he bites off, chewing on his words. “But I promised him that if it was true, I’d kill you both myself. I picked your bastard boyfriend off earlier- so I guess I just need to make good on the other half of my promise, eh, traitor?”

You’re getting sick of this righteous bastard already. Hadn’t he been weak? Hadn’t he caved too? Maybe all rebels were simply hypocrites.Maybe the Order were on to something.

Then, of all the things you should say or ask right now, the next question out of your mouth is entirely self-indulgent. “What did he say?” you ask slowly, stringing out your words. In no rush. You have all the time in the world. Unlike your partner.

“What?!” Barret replies in utter confusion.

“What did he say when you promised to kill me? Because given that he poisoned you I don’t think he was too happy with you about something.” You know it’s wrong, that it’s too cruel, but you can’t help that your eyes flash with a perverse kind of satisfaction as you watch the realisation play over Barret’s face.

Is that why? Is that why the commander has poisoned your fellow rebel? To protect you? Because he threatened you? Oh, how a part of you hopes that’s true.

His blaster arm wavers again, and Barret is so weak of body and wrapped up in turmoil that you are able to walk towards him and take the blaster easily, gently from his hand. You look into his eyes, your voice steely, suddenly not feeling worthless or ashamed at all. Not anymore. Maybe you were cut out for these games, after all. “You don’t look so hot, Barret. So maybe we agree that we both made some mistakes on that ship, yes?” Barret considers your words carefully and then nods, and it acts as a meanwhile truce of sorts. You keep your tone impartial. “I’d suggest that if you want me to help you, you should take a seat. Before you drop. I’ll see if there’s anything left of the med bay.”

“You’re going to help me?” Barret looks at you in confusion.

“Yes, I’m going to help you. I’m not a monster.”

The way he looks at you in response signals that he thinks otherwise. You huff out a breath, perturbed by the condemnation. And so, for the second time that day, you aren’t able to offer comfort to someone in need. Instead, you sling Barret’s blaster on to your belt and jog towards the med bay. Barret’s only hope is that there are some shots left which haven’t been blown-up or cleared-out.

You move as fast as you’re able, gathering whatever supplies you can, but by the time you return, Barret is lying still on the runway.

You are too late.

Barret is the third body you’ve had lying at your feet that day. Three enemies, in the end. One of whom was a lover, and one of whom was a friend.

Despite what Barret had done, you feel no satisfaction in his fate. You sigh deeply and turn your head into your shoulder. You don’t look. You try not to look. All you can do is drag him into the hangar and cover him over, paying final respects to the fallen Resistance member.

Now, you are truly alone.

Feeling somewhat numb, you wander around base, confirming there are no signs of life left at all. Passing collapsed buildings, smoking craters, and remnants of devastation. You act on autopilot, and before you know where you’re walking to, you’ve reached the canteen, picking up some remaining rations and stuffing your face. Then, before you realise it, you’ve meandered across base and stand at the spot where your quarters should be.

All that’s left is a shell.

Suddenly, it’s as if you dropped the bombs yourself. As if you’ve intentionally obliterated everything you used to know and used to be beyond all recognition. You pick through the rubble, try to leaf through the ashes, but nothing at all remains. Still nothing to cling on to.

In your wandering, your quest for solace of some kind, the next place you find yourself is General Leia’s room. Hers remains intact. You find it empty, but her presence is there in all the tiny details. The uniform hanging up by the small closet, the table covered in datapads and holo equipment. Her comb and tumbler of water on the nightstand.

You dearly hope that she’s safe.

Being as quiet as possible, as if she’s sleeping there and you might disturb her, you perch yourself on the edge of her bed, grabbing her blanket and tugging it around your shoulders. You let yourself dwell on all the ways you’ve let her down, the ways you may yet break her heart, and you will the grief to hit you. But it doesn’t. You feel like you should be primed to lie down and cry, letting sobs wrack you. But there’s nothing. Only numbness. Perhaps, deep down, you feel you don’t deserve Leia’s comfort. Perhaps, deep down, you’re not truly sorry. Perhaps you are still too ruptured to start healing. Perhaps all of these things.

At least, sitting still allows the exhaustion to hit you. Still, you don’t feel like you could sleep. You feel restless. A lost celestial object with no course and no orbit. A dark, unlit moon. So, you continue your wandering, digging out some fresh clothes and taking a shower, the cool water sluicing Hux’s blood away. It circles down the drain in a crimson vortex. You redress and rewrap Leia’s blanket around your shoulders.

Without knowing where exactly you’re headed next, you find your feet gravitating towards the TIE fighter, which you half-landed and half-crashed into the tarmac.

Of course.

It’s the closest you can be to him right now.

You clamber inside, the snug cockpit encasing you. And then, finally, the rush of feelings hits you. You remember the Troopers swarming around his still form and it’s as if a vice clamps down on your chest. You imagine the chaos on the ship, the discovery of General Hux, washed up on that crimson tide of blood. You remember how it felt to kill him, and then to have the commander exalt you and kiss you and rail into you. You picture how it should have gone; General Dameron sitting coolly, smugly on the bridge. Taking Hux’s place, knowing exactly what he’d done. What you’d done. Sitting there as calm and devastating as the eye of a storm.

You screw your eyes shut tight against the thought you know will follow.

Is he alive?

And, as you close your eyes, various thoughts and faces eddy through the blackness, coming and receding like waves. As you focus in on each of them, in turn, it is as if you are slipping into a current, or a hyper stream; as if you can follow the tide which might lead you to them. One thought begins to jump out at you, tugging at you like a riptide, causing your mind to drift towards it.

Leia?

You reach out with your mind, searching for her energy. You can’t explain it, but you feel that maybe you can establish where they’ve evacuated to.

At least you think that’s where your heart is reaching out to. But wait; it’s not Leia. It’s something connected, but something darker.

Kylo.

Your eyes shoot open in fright and you startle in your seat. For a moment, it’s as if you have linked to him, as if his face is blinking in front of you. He looks just as surprised as you feel. You recoil in terror. For a good while, you sit motionless in the cold shell of the TIE, as if Kylo is a creature hunting you and any small movement might allow him to pounce. You don’t know how long you sit there, heart racing, and your fingernails digging into your knees threatening to draw blood.

You just touched something so deeply dark. Something frightening. Something you are not quite ready to face.

You don’t know how much time passes, but you sit there, practically frozen, until a blue light begins to blink on the dashboard of the TIE. Your curiosity overriding your fear, you press the button. It’s a holo, patching through.

A cool, rich voice resounds through the cockpit of the TIE.

“It’s General Dameron here.”

Your relief is palpable – a fluttering in your chest. A smile which begins in the pit of you and blooms through your whole body. You hold your breath until you’re sure you can believe what you’re seeing. Your eyes pore over the holo, trying to establish where he is, how he is. He looks as though he may be patched up and lying in a med bay.

“Maybe you thought you could run or hide from me, Rebel, but Kylo -the space bloodhound- tells me he found you.” He looks off to the side of him. “You don’t mind if I call you that, do you, Supreme Leader?”

His voice is still full of holes, shot through with gravel. But he’s alive. You’re sure you can see the hint of a shark smile spread over his features. He dips his head slightly towards the camera droid at that moment, lowering his voice just a touch, his eyes narrowing. Unconsciously you lean in toward the transmission. “So, Killer. As you know, Hux is dead, and you’re responsible.” He leans in even further and even through the holo his intense eyes bore into you. “But I’m very much alive. So, I just needed you to know...” he exhales a breath and bites his bottom lip as if his next thought amuses him. “...that I’m gonna be coming for you.”

Whether his statement is a threat or a promise, you can’t be sure. However, you know that the games are far from over. Whilst tomorrow you may need to figure out your next move, for now, you finally feel like you could cry and you could sleep.

You lean back in the pilot’s chair and allow yourself a deep, relieving breath. And yet again, you can’t hold back your own resplendent shark smile.

You press the button to reverse the transmission before sending a message back to General Dameron.

“Bring it on, General Dameron. I’m ready for you.”

He’s alive.

It’s not over yet.

As much as you would like to run back to him, you know now, more than ever, that you have to return home to the Resistance - to see if it’s still where your heart is. Or whether you have any heart left at all. Then, if you happen to discover that your heart does belong to the darkness after all, at least you know the darkness is coming for you. And at least then, you will truly know that you are ready for it.

You lean back in the seat and close your eyes, allowing your relief to wrap around you -like a blanket- as the darkness holds you and rocks you to sleep.

To be continued (Chapter SEVEN coming soon!)

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[thefamouswhitewolf]

It was a long winter and Geralt didn’t come down from Kaer Morhen until mid April, meaning the ground was still swampy and covered in muck, and the ponds and streams still had ice collecting at the edges. It meant cold baths in said bodies of water, and the wish for a warm bed by the time Geralt reached ground that wasn’t uneven and hard to sleep upon.

The fruit trees had begun to bloom and the smallest of the bothersome insects had woken from their winter slumber, forcing Roach to swat her tail endlessly and toss her head to avoid the mayflies that went for her eyes. Geralt swatted at them with his hand when they went for his face and growling, the Witcher made camp away from the water the insects enjoyed, meaning he was well hidden from the road, but had to walk a good distance to get fresh water.

One trip was to fill a pot with water for boiling some eggs; Geralt had met a trader along the road that didn’t show as much fear of a Witcher as usual. Pleased with a sale so early in his travels, the man sold Geralt a dozen duck eggs, two loaves of bread, a block of very hard, fragrant cheese, and a sack of potatoes. It was a good haul that Geralt wasn’t charged extravagantly for. The man thanked Geralt for lightening his load early on, and he left with a wave and bit of advice for the Witcher; there was a wandering spirit in the woods beyond the next town that didn’t hurt anyone, but haunted the woodsmen at night.

“Cryptid?” Geralt asked, sure that the man knew he meant monster. 

“Nah. Word is it looks human. Sings a song that entrances, but then sucks the life outta them while they sleep. Don’t kill ‘em, just tires ‘em out. Be mindful, Witcher. I doubt it’s picky on what kinda man it catches.”

“Thanks.”

Geralt wasn’t exactly frightened of whatever was lying in wait for himself or another weary traveler; he could handle the worst of the monsters birthed from the bowels of the Continent. It was the trader’s mention that the creature didn’t kill its victims that had Geralt’s attention. 

It could be something as simple as a succubus or incubus, but Geralt thought it may be a Manchachicoj; a very seductive yet deformed creature that wandered the world having relations with many people, in an attempt to seek out an impossible love with a kind, understanding human.

The Manchachicoj was an elusive creature Geralt had only read of in Vesemir’s bestiary, but he didn’t for a second think that they were extinct. He’d been surprised by the discovery of any number of beasts once thought obliterated from the Continent, and no amount of trader gossip and sworn statements from local villagers would make Geralt believe anything until he’d seen--or not seen-- things with his own eyes.

The woods the trader spoke of sat less than a half day’s ride from the base of the mountain and Geralt, still stocked up on supplies from Kaer Morhen and the trader, settled down for the afternoon in a small clearing away from the nearest stream, for the same reason as before: bugs. They weren’t nearly as bad where he was making his fire, and even Roach wandered away a little to munch the fresh spring grasses popping up at the base of nearly every tree in the forest.

Seeds and squirrel stores, no doubt, growing thick where the sun lit the ground and where the trees dripped water during the heavy spring rains.

Fire roaring and swords at his side against the log he’d rolled over for a bench, Geralt again boiled water from the stream and this time added all of his ingredients to it, making himself a thick stew. He wouldn’t hunt that night since he wanted to keep his presence low, but he had everything, including dried venison from the keep’s larder, to make a stew even Vesemir would eat, the picky bastard.

Only evening birdsong and the haunting chirps of the treefrogs came, as the sun began to set. Geralt had heard travelers on the road hours earlier and they didn’t so much as mention his camp. Most people were grateful for warmer weather and were eager to get on with their springtime business; a random fire in the woods with a saddled horse meant another traveler, no more. None suspected it was a Witcher in their midst.

There wasn’t even anything for Geralt to work on as he waited. His armour had been mended and his swords were sharpened long before he even left Kaer Morhen, so he closed his eyes and had a bit of a meditation break, listening to the crackling of the fire, the birds, the frogs. 

He could pinpoint Roach’s snorts as she stalked through the longer grasses nearer the camp, and the sound of a lute coming from far off to his left. 

A lute?

His eyebrows drew together as he rumbled a suspicious growl, opening his eyes and gathering his swords together, one in hand and the other over his back. It could be a man, some minstrel wandering from town to town now that the snows had ended and the road was again passable, or it could be some creature Geralt hadn’t seen before.

There weren’t any footfalls advancing on his camp site, but Geralt ducked back further into the woods anyway, keeping one eye on the fire so he didn’t lose his bearings. The scent of the burning wood was a good compass to a Witcher, but Geralt was trying to use his sense of smell to determine what was instead around him. Trees, rotting leaves, mud. Empty badger den, deer shit, rabbit shit, nightcrawlers. 

He focused until the weaker scents became noticeable; pine tar, mushroom dust, the faintest hint of apple and cherry blossoms from the barely-open fruiting trees in the orchard on the outskirts of the town he’d already passed. Lavender.

That was different. Lavender was a plant grown only in the south of the Continent, and it wasn’t in bloom for nearly two more months, sometimes three, during a bad spring season. A liniment perhaps, or a balm? It certainly didn’t smell like anything other than a light scent on human skin. 

Human skin. It wasn’t a creature sneaking up on his camp. It was a human.

Geralt slipped out from behind the knotty pine he’d used as a temporary shield and held his sword out only until the stranger came into view, then he lowered it so the threat was at least lessened.

The human was dressed in the bluest clothes, and the flamboyancy of them definitely suggested a performer of some kind. The lute strapped over the man’s back confirmed what Geralt had immediately suspected: a bard.

But a bard wandering through dense woods at night? Alone? A shapeshifter, perhaps? No human was stupid enough to do such a thing, unless they had a death wish.

Or a purpose.

Geralt’s medallion wasn’t reacting to magic or monster, so he listened without interruption. Though it didn’t mean the person before him wasn’t some kind of non-malevolent spirit. Trickster beings, woodland child spirits, fae folk; all were playful but harmless so the medallion often stayed silent in their presence.

“So,” the bard began, his voice light and his face pleasantly youthful. “The rumours in town were true. There is a Witcher in the woods. I suppose it’s better than a witch in the woods. Far more dangerous, those.”

Geralt snorted but didn’t immediately put his sword away. Wordplay was the trick of a great many forest spirits, and he wasn’t about to get himself killed simply because this was a very pretty looking being before him.

“Depends on the Witcher. I could kill you before you have the chance to make another sound.”

The bard smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners; aged slightly, Geralt thought, but still couldn’t be more than thirty or thirty-five in human years. “But you didn’t. Do Witchers kill humans? I thought you had some kind of honour code or something. No meddling in the affairs of men.”

“That only means I won’t kill a man at the request of another. If you’re a threat, I’ll easily dispatch you and be on my way.”

“But I’m not that; a threat, I mean. Just a bard, wandering the world on his way south now that the snows have ceased. Bloody winter was so long, wasn’t it? Anyway, care for some company? The townsfolk thought me mad to come in search of you but I’ve a taste for adventure and you, Sir Witcher, look very tasty.”

[corisanna]

When you're designing and/or naming the witches the characters face (not the witches they themselves turn into, like Alexandria), what inspires you to make them what they are (a poisonous tree, a... pumpkin lady..., etc.), and do you try to do what the show did by tying those witches to what the characters fighting them are going through?

She short and unsatisfying answer would be “context, whim, and extensive word/concept association.”

Getting into the thick of it, it all starts with questions:

Which characters are going to be fighting it? What are those characters’ skillsets/strengths/weaknesses? Do I want them to have a hard or easy time of things? What would be hard/easy for them to handle? Is there some kind of shout-out I’m in the mood to make?

Cynthia, the Pumpkin Witch, was the first I made. In that case, I started backwards: I wanted to make a Witch labyrinth based on one of Hachi’s Vocaloid music videos because when I first saw InuCurry’s art in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei I thought of Hachi’s vids. My favorite was “Mrs. Pumpkin’s Comical Dream,” which appears to be about a train crash with multiple fatalities. “Aha, that’s macabre enough for a labyrinth,” I said. The labyrinth I made was kind of a love letter to that song/video. Some of it overflowed into Beatrix and Isidora.

“official” lyrics [bolding the bits I used; also ref unofficial lyrics in the video]

The jacaranda's blooming, an impolite exchange of speeches Where shall we go? A merrily weeping song Jack laughed, "Leave your heretical feelings behind!" Give me chocolate, a beggar's weeping song A scarecrow suddenly shaking with sobs Prejudiced against pumpkin pie Oh la lu la lu la, will you dance with me? The moon's still sleeping ("You called? You called?" asks Turnip-Head) See? Now all the caskets are gone How boring I'm sensitive to fake magic and power lines Said the witch glaring beneath the overpass Jack got all huffy, "Keep your obscene emotions!" The datura bloomed as if to spite me The goats are up to something... Waiting for the train Let's hold hands, two may pass Wandering home through the [subway tunnels] (Superior, inferior, a pile of corpses?) See? In the swarm of ants at the swap meet The moon's still sleeping "Hey! Mrs. Pumpkin! I'm here to escort you home!" When did this night destroy my dream? I want to stay here and dance! Derangement like a dream (Inferior, inferior, a pile of fools) The joy I spit out lit up by the lanterns Oh la lu la lu la, will you dance with me? Not that I expected an answer ("Too bad! Too bad!" says Turnip-Head) See? Now all the caskets are gone How boring In the settled mud Waiting for morning in the thicket On the train

So I tossed bits from the words and the visuals together. I needed more material, so I played word/concept association.

Pumpkin, dancing, having to leave a dance led to Cinderella. That’s why the lanterns are glass slippers with embers (cinders) in them and where the clock/midnight/bell-tolling theme came from. I think I slapped fairy wings on the scarecrows as a reference to the Fairy Godmother.

From Cinderella, I Googled Cindy and Cynthia. I focused on Wikipedia’s disambiguation page for “Cynthia.” The two things that stuck out were the bizarre fame of a plaster mannequin named Cynthia in the 1930s (if I got drunk you could probably convince me to research and argue that she was an early example of both a meme and viral marketing) and the butterfly subgenus commonly called painted ladies. So there were the mannequin and butterfly wings. I thought that was batshit enough for one labyrinth. I named the turnip-head scarecrows Jakob because Jack(-o-lantern) is short form of it and jack-o-lanterns are/were turnips as well as pumpkins. I think I named the dancers Charles and Charlene for the Charleston dance but I’m not sure now.

I knew I wanted this Witch to be more tricky than powerful in a way that Karin and Yuzu would have extreme difficulty taking down without help or foreknowledge. I decided to have the actual weak spot be high and distant because the twins (at that point of the story) are weak at ranged attacks and Homura is basically the queen of ranged attacks. All the obstacles and enemy abilities were created by working backwards from the weak point by thinking of ways the girls could get to it and conjuring up ways to cut off that option or make it a trap.

So. There’s the Pumpkin Witch.

I have a post about Beatrix somewhere in my Infinity tag if you want to see the process for that. My starting point for it was the girls’ cover story that they met at the botanical gardens in Tokyo. So I knew I wanted a plant/garden theme. When I thought of “dangerous plant” I thought of “poisonous plants.” For me, that brings to mind the story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” I went wild from there. The woman in that is Beatrice. That made me think Beatrix, which made me think of The Bride in Kill Bill. I researched minutiae about Kill Bill characters and found a scrapped concept for Gogo Yubari to have a twin named Yuki. There was my batshit homicidal magical girl.

It all depends on what hole I need to fill, really. Then it’s the equivalent of a wiki walk of word/concept association.

I hope this makes sense and isn’t too rambly.

[peter-pan-on-neverland]

When He Sees Me: Part 2

Request: Hi I was wondering if you could do a Peter Pan x reader were the reader is really headstrong and sees Peter as a brother and can tell when he’s lying and stuff and Peter has Wendy on never land and is toying with her feelings but the reader doesn’t care and the reader isn’t the only girl she has two friends one who is hooks daughter and she sets you up with her brother but doesn’t tell you it’s him and before the date is kind of based around the song when he sees me I know it’s a lot sorry

Pairings: pan x reader

Warnings: some cussing not much tho and a little suggestive ;)

< Part 1 || Part 3 >

"Who?" She asked breaking the silence which desperately clung onto the air.

"Its not important" he muttered.

"Who!" Wendy desperately pleaded, as if she needed to know.

"Just go!" He demanded.

"No" she said "I won't leave you, you belong with me and you know it."

"Felix! Take her away" he ordered.

The blonde giant came marching up towards the small girl, towering over her like a sky scraper. Grabbing hold of her arm so tight that his knuckles had turned white and her skin began to bruise.

"You can't do this to me Peter!" She yelled while being dragged away by the leaders second in command, her light blue dress getting covered in dirt and mud.

"Oh but darling" he darkly called back to her "I can."

Not moving a muscle, I remained silent and still, too afraid to move. This was not the Peter I had known and it's not the Pan I want to be around yet there was something about the insanity which hid behind those green eyes that seemed to draw me in. This boy never cease to amaze me, he's like a mystery, wrapped in an enigma and squeezed into a some pants which are just a little bit too tight.

As quietly as I could I tip toed back to my tent, trying not to breath in fear that the king of Neverland might hear me.

Drawing back the fabric door to my little home, I heard a yawn coming from inside.

"Where were you?" Maya groaned rather loudly.

"Shhh" I hissed at her "I just went to get a little snack."

"What at seven in the morning? Most of the boys don't even wake up until ten." She argued.

"Yes, yes I know. Let's just go back to sleep, ok?" I dismissed her before I crawled under my warm blanket, letting my head hit the soft pillow.

"Come on" she persisted "Where were you really?"

I stopped, sighing as I contemplated what to tell her.

"Well I woke up early and went to go get some food when I heard yelling" I explained, knowing that she would want more details about the situation

"And" she spoke, begging me to continue.

"It was Wendy and Peter."

"Shut up" She practically squealed while sitting up in her bed "What were they arguing about?"

"She was saying how he didn't love her and he said that she was worthless and didn't do anything for the island."

"True" Maya commented.

"So she asked him why he kept her around and he said something really weird." I stated.

"Well what did he say?" She asked while resting her elbows on her knees and placing her head in her hands.

"He said that the only reason Wendy's here is because he's sleeping with her to make some other girl jealous."

"Shut the fuck up" she exclaims "shut the fuck up, I knew they were hooking up and its obvious that this 'other girl' is you! You have to go back out there and talk to him."

"No way" I shake my head.

"Yes" she insists while pulling me from beneath my warm blanket and pushing me towards the entrance of my tent "I'll cancel your little date."

She gives me one last shove before I stumble out.

The whole place was eerily quiet, suspense floating around in the sky. Pan was sat on a log, quietly munching down on an red apple while he focused on the dying embers of the once powerful fire, I took a seat next to him.

"Morning love" he smiled at me to which I returned "sleep well?"

"Yeah" I shrugged "you seemed to have fun last night" I added while playfully elbowing him in the side.

"What do you mean?" He chuckled while raising an eyebrow.

"You er... y-you went off with Wendy" I stuttered, almost certain that my face had turned a deep shade of red.

A proud look spread it's self across his face like butter on toast "Yeah it was good." He smirked.

"Come on Peter, you know I can tell when you're lying" I giggled "how did you really find it?"

Now it was his turn to blush, a deep shade of red blooming on his face.

"It was ok, but I'm sure someone else could do better." He said biting his lip while his emerald green eyes scanned over me.

My cheeks turned a deep shade of red as I went all hot by his words.

A comfortable silence hung over the both of us, as we sat there, no words exchanged.

"Come with me" he said finally, standing up with an out stretched arm.

My small hand slowly gliding into his, fitting like a glove as he pulled me up from the rough surface of the log. Silently stalking behind him, wondering where we were going. We arrived in the middle of the jungle, the tall ever green trees towered over me and the leader as we stood next to a wall of vines. Slowly placing a finger over his plump lips as though he were about to reveal one of the islands most treasured secrets to me.

"Close your eyes" he whispered, I hadn't realized how close he was to me until I felt his hot breath travel down my neck causing the hairs to stand, making me feel as though my knees were going to buckle beneath me.

Without breaking eye contact I simply nod at the king of Neverland before obliging his request and letting my eye lids slide closed. I could feel his fingers laced through mine as he guided me.

I could feel his lips graze against my ear lobe "open your eyes" he whispered once again.

My eyes fluttered open to reveal a water fall, crystal blue water cascades down into a calming lagoon. Lush green vines and brightly coloured flowers cling to the sides of the charcoal rocks which surrounded the pool as fish swim around aimlessly, their beautiful scales shimmering when they hit the light of the beaming sun. The whole demeanor of this hidden gem was calming and peaceful, instantly relaxing me.

"What do you think?" He whispers while his hands are still intertwined with mine, although it's a small gesture it was still enough to turn my face a deep shade of red, yet nether of us had any plans to remove them.

"It's beautiful" I exclaim, at a loss to find any other words.

He let out an airy laugh "I'm glad you like it. I like to come here when I'm seething with anger or frustrated, there just something about this place which instantly calms me down. I don't know if it's the way the bright sun beams down onto the rippling lagoon or if it's the sound of the blue water meeting the creatures the lurk at the bottom of the pool."

A huge grin plasters itself on my face as I watch this mysterious boy.

"What?" He asks me, his face turning slightly pink once he realizes I was staring at him.

"I just" I began, struggling to scavenge for the right words "I've just never seen you so passionate about something before."

His ever green eyes settle down onto the ground as he shuffled his feet, almost as if he were nervous about something.

"I'm passionate about you" he mumbled.

"What?" I asked, wondering if the words which were pouring out of his mouth were true.

"I love you, I always have and I always will. From the moment you stepped foot on my island I knew I wanted to make you mine. I love the way you smile... like really smile, so much that your eyes scrunch up and your laugh is like music to my ears. I love your eyes, they are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I could stair into them all day. I love that when you're nervous you bite your sleeve and when your excited to cover your mouth with your hands only displaying your eyes, making you look like a kid in a candy shop. I love that you'll drop whatever you're doing just to watch the sun set because you like the way the clouds turn pink and I love that you're so entranced by the stars because of the way they twinkle against the dark blue sky. I love the way your voice goes slightly higher pitch than normal when you're happy about something and how your cheeks turn slightly pink when I call you love."

To say I was stunned I to silence was a huge understatement, I was at a complete loss for words.

Leaning up, I close my eyes placing a light kiss on his soft lips. His hands tangled themselves in my h/c hair, the other snaking around my waist pulling me closer to him as the kiss got deeper and deeper. It was as if nothing mattered in this moment apart from me and him, the feeling of safety washed over me as I was wrapped in his arms. Our soft lips molded together as he bit down on my bottom lip.

Pulling away, I look deep into his ever green eyes, my cheeks instantly heating up at my actions.

"I love you too" I whispered before he flashed me a smile, leaning down once again. Kissing for what felt like an eternity.

"We should probably head back now" he spoke, pulling away while landing his finger in-between mine.

I giggled while biting my lip and pulling him back towards camp. Holding hands as we walked through the thick jungle, listening to the birds chirp as we walk along.

Once we arrived most of the boys were up and hustling about in a lazy manor. His large hand slipped out of my small one before lightly pecking my cheek and making a bee line towards his taller second in command, Felix.

"Y/n" Maya yelled, waving her hands in the air, trying to capture my attention.

I stumble over to her before plopping myself down on a log.

"So" she begins "how was it?"

A wide smile spreads it's self over my lips as my eyes drift towards Peter, finding him already staring back at me with the hint of a smirk lingering over his lips.

"Amazing." I said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Part 2!!! I might make a part 3 with smut in it but it depends if you guys want that or not. I hope you like it! 😍💖 Xx

@britishfangirl @fiveisadorable @hufflepuffpotato

[freelancer-chronicles]

A story about someone new! And a nice nod to our Season of Skull hoods in the image lol

Kiir adjusted the magnification on her visor and peered at the almond-shaped karrid leaf. Its jade-green shine was marred by a dusting of white frost — the gift of an early Icetide.

The frost didn’t concern her. Instead, she peered at the lightning bolt of pinkish, luminescent crystals that struck diagonally across the leaf’s surface. Where the strange accumulation met the green flesh, odd aberrations swirled. Veins knotted into geometric patterns. Cell structures exploded.

Ember bloom. Chimeric mutations.

Kiir dropped the leaf and looked up at the karrid tree. Two parallel slashes of pink ember had crosscut its rugged bark. These crystals were much bigger, as large as her hand, and had formed into the typical square-based pyramid with the points shaved off. But the light within was rosy. Simmering with power.

Unlike any ember known.

Excitement surged in her. Triggering the jets in her suit, she leapt into the air and surveyed the valley from on high. It was typical of the Sundric lowlands. Here, the mountains of Heliost gave way to soggy heath. Thick fog blanketed the land, punctured by distressed trees and crumbling castles. All of this terminated at the Sundric Sea, a silvery expanse about ten leagues north. Beyond that, Stralheim — a strangled signature on the far horizon.

Ice crystals on the wind. And something else… an unfamiliar tang.

The sensors in Kiir’s interceptor whispered. They drew her attention to a northwestern promontory overlooking the valley. Tuning up her optics, she saw peaked roofs and a palisade wall. Both played ghost games in the fog.

She returned to the ground and hooked the air sled to her suit. Spying a decrepit castle outside the village, she rocket-jumped clear across the valley and landed amid its crumbling ruin. There, she hid the sled, packed with her weapons and camping gear, taking only her SMG and dagger.

She walked straight through the swirling ice fog towards the village. The palisade wall emerged. She leaped over it and landed noiselessly in an alley between two wooden buildings. Arabesques of pink crystals snaked across the walls on either side. She followed them into a wide plaza.

All around her — devastation. Peasant dwellings blasted to ruin. Bodies frozen in the mud. A Sentinel watchtower broken off at the third story, its upper ramparts smashed across the street.

Crystals everywhere. Etched in curious double rows across the ground and walls. Looming over the town like blushing titans hewn from pink gemstone. Erupting from the skulls of victims. Hissing their little ember song.

The echo of the Anthem.

The wailing again pierced the silence and it drew her to the town’s edge. There, a village girl, some twelve winters old, wept near a quintuplet of recently dug graves: her peasant clothes, tattered and burnt; the snowy ground, stained with blood.

Such unchecked grief was hard to watch. And yet...

A smile itched at the corner of Kiir’s mouth.

Yes. Yes, it was here.

***

She set camp in the exposed third floor of the Sentinel tower. From there, she could see all around the town and across the valley, antics of the fog permitting. She’d brought a suspension tent, a tripod for her spyglass, a notebook, and a small armory: sniper rifle, hunting rifle, two SMGs, a bolt lance, and the Leach, her signature nine-inch, green-glowing, poison-seeping dagger. Everything needed to execute her hunt.

Then she exited her javelin and checked it for damage. It was a custom-fitted Interceptor, decked out in metallic black plating and fireproof muslin half-cape, hood, and trailing skirt. She checked the ember rings on all the joints; the pin-thin orange hoops glimmered reassuringly in their ceramic fittings. The sigil of the Princess Zhim, her patroness, etched in silver along the jaw of her faceplate, reflected the falling snow.

Then she flew a recon pass over the valley. In summer, this was a verdant but cool paradise fed by a river from the Helossar glacier. Now, frozen falls crowned the southern end of the valley, and two hilly ranges extended outward like a “v.” There were five rugged peaks: two on the left, three on the right, with the village below the first peak on the left. Between the ranges: a vast wilderness of frosty muskeg, lake ice, and snow-blasted forest.

It would take days to search it all.

When the white sun touched the horizon, she returned to camp, lit a fire, and waited. Wolven lingered at the forest edge; their blazing, yellow eyes betrayed their intent. With her scope and hunting rifle, she killed five in one breath and stacked them beyond the fire’s heat, to freeze.

While she roasted one, the rest of the pack receded into the dusk.

Daylight began to dim. She ate the cooked wolven, the stiff scars on her face resisting the simple act of chewing.

For a long time, she sat. Listened to the sounds of the wilderness. Of the village ruins creaking in the wind. Watched as the sky turned violet, then indigo, then black. As the constellations emerged and recounted the legends of old.

Gods and monsters. Hunters and prey. The deeds of mortals engraved in the heavens, with stars for words.

She swallowed hard and drew a pinch of grey dust from the pouch around her neck, tossing it in the fire. A blast of sparkling silver figures and prismatic symbols erupted upward, writing their own mysteries against the twilight.

She scanned the obscure imagery for meaning. Attempted to divine a prophecy of what her hunt may bring. Glory? Fortune? Perhaps contentedness to come? A return to joyful days long submerged in a life of misdemeanor?

Kiir sighed and closed her eyes. She could not read Shaper words — no one could. They were the musings of beings far greater than anything left alive on Coda today. But she held out hope that somewhere, someone, something knew she was there. Validating their great works.  

In return, she asked for the one thing she needed most.

Salvation.

***

The next day, she drew a rudimentary map in her notebook, jotting down all relevant landmarks: the village, the five peaks, the frozen falls, the coastline, two large frozen lakes, a scattering of lagoons. At the same time, she tracked the rosy, parallel trails of ember. They jagged and snaked all over the valley, sometimes congregating in snarled knots, sometimes running for leagues and terminating for no apparent reason.

Twice that day, she saw the survivor girl gathering berries from the mander bushes. Many the child ate voraciously; many more she carried through the snow back to the village. Later, Kiir spotted her entering the Sentinel barracks, one of the few buildings left standing after the attack.

Through her spyglass, Kiir watched as the girl nursed a wounded Sentinel. He was unconscious. Suffering. Still locked in the towering javelin of his order, propped up against a column inside the barracks. She fed him berries with gentle desperation.

After almost an hour of hand-feeding the dying man, the girl went about various tasks: propping up a wall on the verge of collapse; patching wind-torn gaps in their ravaged shelter; tending her meager fire. Kiir rubbed her jaw and frowned. Despite the hard work and singular focus, the girl’s situation was dire. The winter was young, and the wolven were starving.

Later, when the girl left again, Kiir entered the barracks and stood over the Sentinel. Something in the room smelled worse than decomposition: floral and acrid, like fermenting perfume.

The man’s head was a horror. A chimeric mutation had overtaken the left side of his head, the flesh bubbled and sculpted. Erupting from the centerline of the infected area was a ridge of that unreal pink ember: flat-pointed pyramids, glowing and humming, apparently anchored to his very skull. A wound on the man’s neck and collar had been bandaged by an amateur.

She avoided the ember wound and stripped the bandages off his collarbones. The whiff of rotting flowers rose like a cloud — not like any infected wound she’d known. She swallowed her nausea and peered closer.

Blood pumped easily from four deep, ragged tears below his neck.

An animal wound. Certainly fatal.

She dropped the bandages on the dirty ground and shook him. When he didn’t respond, she touched the freezing Leach to his neck. That brought him around.

“Who…?”

“What attacked you?”

His eyes drifted over her javelin. “You Corvus?”

“Did the creature make you smell like this?”

He took a long breath and seemed to grow suspicious. “Help her first.”

Kiir raised her faceplate to reveal her maimed and wretched leer.

All hope drained away. His voice quavered with disgust. “Regulator.”

“My questions first. Then I save you and the girl.”

But the Sentinel’s integrity was intact. He looked away from her and spoke no more.

***

Later, Kiir sat by her bonfire on the watchtower roost and rubbed at the stiff scars on her face. She’d picked off another half-dozen wolven during the day and one was nearly done roasting on a spit.

Meanwhile, the girl crept near. Her grubby feet picked over the rubble. Never taking her eyes off the black-clad hunter, she sat by the fire and shuddered with relief.

Kiir watched as the girl cautiously inspected the hunter’s possessions: the tent, the air sled, the tripod and spyglass, the array of modern weapons. Finally, she stared wide-eyed at the roasting wolven. After a moment, a question began to form on her lips.

But Kiir turned to reveal the injured portion of her face. Its ghastly texture rippled in the firelight, like molten metal. And so the girl’s question died right then and there.

Kiir smiled. Though the injury was truly disfiguring, she enjoyed its tendency to simplify discussions.

Instead, there was quiet for almost twenty minutes. Then, without warning: “Why did you come here?” the girl asked.

“I’m hunting.”

“For the mantikar?”

Kiir’s brow raised and a thrilled shiver ripped through her.

This is no legend. The mantikar is real to her.

“I didn’t see it. I was sleeping when it came. They said it was a young one.”

Kiir stared long at her, then sniffed and returned to the fire. “I would have traded you meat for that information. I couldn’t have known if you were lying.”

That didn’t faze the girl. “What do you want with it?”

“Can’t let a dangerous creature run around, terrorizing the folk.”

Silence and doubt.

“Okay,” Kiir grinned. “I’m actually just a wicked, greedy bitch. I’m gonna capture it and trade it to a crime lord to curry her favor.”

The girl pondered that and nodded.

Fourteen, maybe? Makeshift boots and nothing but a torn smock? Somehow still alive… everyone else dead. Kiir shifted and frowned at the fire, went back to rubbing her face.

“You won’t help him, will you.”

“Who, your Sentinel? He’s already dead. Or will be by tomorrow.”

“What happened to your face?”

Kiir snorted. “This? I did this on purpose. To scare children.”

“You’re not scary. You’re just old and ugly.” Then she got up and left without hesitation.

Kiir’s neck warmed with indignation. She suppressed the urge to shred the girl’s back with SMG fire. Instead, she snorted out a rough laugh, leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

But the laugh didn’t work. The girl had nicked something vital.

Doubts flowed up from below. Much closer to the surface than ever before. Dreads and regrets. Disappointments and betrayals. The threat of punishment if she failed. No… as redress for a long line of failures.

So many years since it all began. Zhim and Kiir. The girls who killed to survive. Now she’s a princess… and what am I? Barely her pitiful subject.

She swallowed hard and fished out a pinch of dust, flicking it angrily into the fire. In the blast of ethereal Shaper symbols, she hunted for a remedy.

But there was nothing. Just more Shaper nonsense. She kicked a burning log, erasing the ancient diagrams with a flurry of sparks.

***

On the third day, she went deep. Followed every trail. Roared through the forest, kicking up a wake of flurried snow, shattering the frozen trees with rocket wash and sending animals screaming into the underbrush.

The risk of failure nipped at her heels. Like a pack of starving wolven.

Late in the day, high on a rise leading to the third peak on the east side of the valley, under a vaulted cliff hung heavy with ice, she found it: a pile of frozen corpses. Nineteen wolven, three licked-clean arnisaur shells, a host of smaller wildlife, and twenty-seven humans — the majority of the village.

They were surrounded by a dizzying gallery of blushing ember striations, painted on the walls and ground, always in that perplexing parallel helix. The mantikar was definitely triggering these ember blooms. How was a matter for Arcanists.

And the smell... It was different here. Still floral but also deathlike. A mortician’s catastrophic mistake.

She fought through it and tried to get a sense of the animal. It was big, that was certain. Perhaps a cat-like quadruped. At least the length of two korox, end-to-end. Taller than a Sentinel. Maybe two heads taller than her diminutive Interceptor.

A young one, the girl had said.

She pondered this as she traced the ember up the flanks of trees, over and beyond cliffs, raking across the ground. Again, she noted how the crystalline lines sometimes terminated without leaving any trail. Almost as if —

As if it could fly. A winged predator stinking of necrotized aristocrat. As big as a strider cabin.

A primitive instinct made her take a step backward.

Should have brought the Colossus.

***

That evening, her state of mind was an even split between apprehension and glee. Some of the corpses had been fresh. She knew where the creature ate. She knew that it must return.

As she tore through a wolven leg and pondered the construction of a blind, a wail reached her on the wind. This time, it wasn’t the girl.

She leaned over the edge of the watchtower’s shredded ramparts and peered with the spyglass down through the hole in the barracks ceiling.

The Sentinel was dying now. With wracking seizures and giant white eyes. Absurdly, the girl was shaking him by the shoulders and holding his face. Crying the whole time. Wet streaks flowing down her cheeks. It did little good. In moments, his body stiffened. Then it went slack, for good.  

Kiir watched as the girl embraced the body for nearly an hour. Later, she roused herself and took a shovel outside the palisade. Heavy with grief and lethargy, the girl dug a sixth grave alongside the others.

Kiir watched as the girl struggled to part the Sentinel from his suit. As she dragged the body through the village to the gravesite. As she failed in her attempt. As she was too weak to continue. As she fell half on the dead Sentinel, half in the snow. And as she lay there, still.

This Kiir watched with a pounding heart. The sun passing behind the peaks and the sky turning purple. Suddenly, the girl arched her back and screamed skyward. With renewed life, shrieking like a dying animal, she heaved the body towards the grave.

And then… yellow eyes blazing at the forest’s edge.

They came low and silent, their protruding ribs and sunken bellies betraying a desperate bloodlust. The girl was unaware. Single-minded in her task. Perhaps delirious with grief. Exhausted and starving.

The pack jumped forward, snapping at her hands and hair. She swung the shovel in wild, frantic arcs, both feet planted over the dead Sentinel. But, though malnourished, the wolven were massive compared to her — the leanest was fully ten feet long — their skulls pitted with metallic accretions. No human could stand against even a single wolven. Not without a javelin.

One got hold of the dead Sentinel’s arm and tore the body out from under her. She landed hard in the snow and struck her head on the ice-packed ground. In a heartbeat, the pack ripped the dead Sentinel to bloody, shredded tatters.

Then they were on her. Leaping forward. Snickering and drooling. Baring their gleaming fangs. She couldn’t get her footing. She was in a daze, momentarily stunned by the fall.

Suddenly... a luminous tangle of green light scribbled over a whirl of black, like a murder of crows eating a swarm of fireflies. One wolven was cut nearly in half. Two more died in the split second that followed. Their senses soon caught up to what was happening, but three more lay dead before the pack fled into the forest and Kiir slowed to a visible speed. Her armored chest heaved with tension; her suit’s padding slithered with sweat.

***

The girl woke slowly. She found herself tucked under a blanket by a roaring fire. A spot on her head was oozing and red. A wolven was turning gently on a spit.

Kiir sat nearby. Her usual leer was fixed in a resolved grimace. She laid a plate of wolven meat down beside the fire. “Eat.”

The girl rose slowly and looked all around. At the meat. At the hunter.

“Eat. You’ll need it for tomorrow.”

“... Why?”

“We hunt mantikar.”

***

No one mastered a javelin in a week. But Kiir made the girl a promise. She would shoot. She would fly. She would hunt and defeat the mantikar. All that — in one week.

The Sentinel's suit was a Captain’s designation, possessed of a few special capabilities. The ember rings crunched slightly when Kiir inspected them, and a wisp of glimmering orange dust sifted out onto the ground. But she brushed it away and made the suit ready. There was no time for details; there was no proof the mantikar would remain in the valley for long.

In a day, the girl was shooting and reloading. In two, she was recharging her energy shields. In three, she could work the Sentinel barrier, protecting both herself and one other ally from a frontal attack. On four, she had the knack of the Captain’s lightning burst ability. Might come in handy, if she got close enough. Flight would be the challenge. It always was with beginners.

In the meantime, they built the blind. It had to be done carefully. Every time they visited the feeding grounds, new animal corpses had been added. The creature was so near.

On the sixth day, the girl had the basic gist. Years more training was required. All Kiir could do was caution the girl against trying anything complicated. She’d seen more than one novice snap their spine while attempting a wingover.

But the girl was strengthening. Not only physically, but mentally. Her focus was inborn — that much was clear from the outset. But with the javelin under her control and a weapon in her hand, the focus was maturing into a dark resolve. Kiir recognized it well enough.

The power to fight back is the power to seize your destiny. To project your very existence into the future.

“He told me you were evil.”

They sat on a frosty bluff, overlooking the valley while resting from flight training. The girl’s silence had been growing.

Kiir smirked as she polished her SMG. “Who?”

“Sentinel Jenin.”

Kiir shrugged and went back to her work. “Smartest Sentinel I ever met.”

“So you are. Evil.”

Kiir frowned and looked up at the cold sky. “I’ve had my moments.”

“Did she make you this way? The... crime lord?”

Kiir put the gun away. “You speak of her Royal Majesty Princess Zhim. And no — we sort of did it to each other.”

The gap that followed would have normally suited Kiir. But something urged her to go on. “We were abandoned as kids. I’m told we met on a fishing boat. Gutting salt-larkins before I could even talk. That was out of Vadys, in The Reaches. You know where that is?”

The girl shook her head.

“Lucky. Most kids there are slaves. But when we were twelve, we decided slavery wasn’t really our thing.”

“What did you do?”

“Stole everything. Ate whatever we could scrounge. Traded things for favors. Traded those favors for friends.” Kiir paused and stared down the well of those long years. Through all the schemes and traps. Lies and poisonings. Four bloody hands and strangulations in the dark.

She sniffed and rubbed her jaw. “Things kinda escalated from there.”

The girl blinked heavily. “You killed people?”

“It’s how we survived.”

“But now you’re fighting?”

“Hm?”

The girl swallowed and selected her words. “With the Princess? You said you were hunting the mantikar to… ‘curry her favor.’”

Kiir looked sharply away. Sometimes this girl was too smart for her own good. It reminded her of Zhim.

It stabbed her square in the heart.

She stood. “Tomorrow, we go. Get yourself ready.”

***

They soared through the freezing air, rocketing towards the mantikar’s feeding grounds. Kiir pointed down at the overhang, at the concave dent in the hillside. The girl nodded. The blind they’d built was still there.

A cloud passed overhead. Something moved in her peripheral. She smelled it before it struck.

Death and flowers.

Her visor was blinded and every alarm in her suit blared at once. She was tumbling through the air and shouting inside her helmet. But there was no communication except in person; there was no cypher to relay those words.

Everything was dead. Her rockets became useless weights on her back. Gravity loosened its pull as her heavy steel body dropped like a stone amid the snowflakes. The world spun around and around, in total blackness.

A series of hard crunches. Everything gone still. She thought she was dead.

Then her faceplate blew off. The electrical system had sensed that she was running low on oxygen. But everything powered by the ember rings was offline. All her weapons had been flung away. All but maybe one…

White wilderness surrounded her. Snow fell in a lazy whirl. Not a thing stirred. All she could do was struggle hopelessly, and call for the girl.

If your suit dies, you die. One of the less cheerful Freelancer sayings. But it was true. A dead suit was just a lead-lined coffin.

She swore to herself not to panic. To breath and shout and hope the suit reset itself. But all she heard was the quiet clicking as the engines cooled and the metal contracted. And so the panic didn’t listen to her. It just did its thing.

Then the mantikar slammed down into the snow before her.

It was enormous. Like two ursix back-to-back. A cat-like body: long and low, with clawed feet, sinewy tail, and thick muscles. There, the similarity to back-alley fort cats ended.

It had a huge, heavy canine head with massive looping horns and a wide, thin-lipped mouth with multiple arcs of shining teeth. Its slate-grey body was covered in alternating rows of shining indigo scales and patchy fur. Five tiny. glowing pink eyes arranged in a diamond pattern on the front of its head. All five were looking right at her.

Kiir hollered for help as the beast stalked closer. The powerful odor intensified with every inch. Roses. Decaying meat.

But what she saw next was like something out of a Shaper myth.

Two pink tendrils — rope-thin and transparent — snaked out from the beast’s shoulders. They spiraled and twisted above it, forming into shapes. Diagrams. Figures.

Shaper words.

They wove and drifted as though underwater. And wherever they touched the ground, lurid, pink ember blinked into existence, fully formed.

She suddenly felt the suit twitch and the motors actuate. Like a dead body enslaved to a dying brain. The ember rings in her suit were hissing a screechy little song.

It’s talking to the ember.

In a flash of reason, she remembered the Sentinel’s crunchy ember seals. They’d been altered by the mantikar’s attack — probably warping and changing shape, grinding against the ceramic fitting. Even the slightest misalignment of ember could destabilize a jav. How could she have been so foolish as to have not seen this coming?

As if sensing this distraction, the mantikar growled and bowed its head low. Its hindquarters angled up and shifted back and forth. It would pounce next. Batter her body to death. Tear her out of the suit piece by piece, like a clam from its shell.

Assault rifle fire rattled out and a shadow landed nearby. The mantikar withdrew under a hail of bullets, the pink tendrils weaving themselves into a deflecting barrier. The girl in her Sentinel suit rushed forward and stood over Kiir, activating her shield barrier.

“Get up!”

“I can’t! Don’t let the tendrils touch you! They’ll glitch your suit!”

But the mantikar roared and leaped forward, drawing a double path of crystalline growths in the snow. It pounced over the barrier to swipe at the girl with a snarling, deep-gutted roar.

She dodged with incredible alacrity. Managed to flip the release buckle on the back of Kiir’s suit before drawing the beast off.

The suit unfurled. Kiir clambered out and grabbed at the suit’s thigh compartment. The bolt lance fell into her hand and she whipped it aloft. From the palm-sized cylinder, white lightning erupted from both ends, crackling with power. Then she took off through the snow, pursuing the two combatants.

The mantikar threw its flank towards the girl, deflecting all bullets with its indigo scales and snapping the gun from her hands with one swipe of its thick tail. All around them, pink crystals shot up from the ground, like geysers of frozen glass. The girl dodged another pounce, rolled in the snow, snapped up the gun, and came up at max boost. The deadly pink tendrils flung out at her, missing by mere inches.

In a flash of action, Kiir wound her body up like a piston and prepared to hurl the lance. But she hesitated; she would only get one shot — she had no suit to recharge the weapon for a second try.

The mantikar seized the moment. In a split second, the pink tendrils formed into wyvern-like wings, and the beast launched upwards.

The girl went after it, both of them rocketing skyward, disappearing into the clouds.

Kiir ran forward and looked above. The clouds thundered with blasts of pink, blue, and the stuttering flash of assault rifle fire. All she could do was watch. Listen with a heaving chest.

Suddenly, pink crystals pelted down all around, slamming into the snow with deadly force. Kiir ran for the trees. The creature had turned the clouds themselves into an ember hailstorm.

The mantikar punched out of the clouds and tore down through the deadly rain like a rider on the storm. It spotted Kiir and torpedoed straight towards her. The girl was in its claws, limp and lifeless.

Kiir ran desperately into the forest, straight for the densest patch of trees. The mantikar followed at freefall speed, its tendrils releasing from the wing shape and instead dancing and raking across the ground and trees, decorating the forest with humming garlands of deadly crystals.

But the trees did their job. The mantikar crashed headlong through them, snapping some in half and tumbling across the ground, kicking up a pall of whirling snow. The creature grew confused. It lost sight of Kiir. It did not notice her slip behind it. It did not notice her raise the lance.

A supernova of flashing electrical arcs, blasting snow, and erupting ember spikes suddenly consumed the creature. Kiir fell back and shielded her eyes.

When the storm quieted, she looked again. A crystalline garden of rosy ice had grown tall and expanded outward in rings to obscure all within; at the center, blue light and sparks zagged into the air. A low moaning ricocheted around the valley.

No sign of the girl.

Kiir walked carefully through the maze of standing, translucent stones, hands shaking from the battle, and beheld her quarry.

The mantikar was trapped in a glittering web of blue starlight. The blast from the bolt lance had condensed like a net around the monster, trapping its limbs and stunning it into a stupor. The tendrils floated lazily above, no longer under any conscious control. Its five eyes twinkled with sedate rage.

The girl was there. She stood over it, her suit steaming in the snow. The rifle was in her hand.

“You killed them,” she mumbled, as though in a surprised stupor.

Kiir knew what came next. The resisting pull of her own survival begged her to intercept. To stop the girl before the hunt fell to ruin.

“Everyone… everything I had.” She touched the barrel to the creature’s forehead, in the center of the diamond eyes. Pressed it down with the full weight of her body, as if to punch straight through into the creature’s brain. Her finger trembling on the trigger. Her face seized in the red heat of vengeance.

Kiir was paralyzed. She needed the creature alive. From the barrel of the girl’s gun, Kiir envisioned her future forking off into two very different directions.

But then the girl buckled. The gun tumbled from her grip and fell along with her knees into the snow. There, she wept, and the red heat washed away.

In Kiir’s eyes, she was again the wailing child at the village grave. Fighting with all her might against the cold dirt even as it drove her down into the earth. Next in line to join those who’d failed.

In that moment, Kiir knew this girl.

***

The fanfare blew and the page announced her entry. “The Lady Aushkiir.”

The “nobility” parted as the hunter — in her shining black armor, bristling with weapons — entered Zhim’s court.

“Well, well, well… the hunter returns from her legendary deed.” The lanterns waved in the cave wind, casting the princess in a shifting golden light. She smiled darkly, as ever.

Kiir glanced sidelong at those gathered and bowed. “Your Highness.”

Zhim smirked theatrically around the room as if playing hide and seek with a child. “What? No mantikar on a leash?”

The court tittered. Everyone knew the mission had been a sham to get rid of the Lady Aushkiir. A suicide mission. The hunter who had disappointed the Princess one too many times. The friend turned failure. “Instead, all I see is a bedraggled rat. And… phew!” she waved her hand before her nose. “One in need of a bath. I wonder where you shall ever find one,” she laughed, heavy with meaning.

But Kiir saw the tired resolve behind Zhim’s eyes. A commitment to her new “royal” role. Of the need to expunge any appearance of sympathy. Especially for an old friend who couldn’t pull her weight.

Kiir straightened up and produced an engraved box. The stink in the room grew exponentially. Even the Princess seemed to lose her sense of humor. For a moment.

“I found the mantikar — or one of them — in a mountain valley north of Helios. It had devastated a local village, killing all Sentinels, many villagers, and hunting the local wildlife near to extinction. I tracked it to its feeding lair and... it did not survive. I made a number of sketches for the Arcanists.” She produced a scroll case from her cape.

One of the Arcanists adjusted his spectacles and rushed forward to seize it. But Zhim held him back with a wave and a stern frown. “I wanted a pet. Not a picture.”

Kiir nodded. “On the hunt, I met the only survivor of the attack on the village. It had taken everything from her. Everything... but her will to survive.”

Zhim’s stare grew gloomy. It was a dangerous business this, cutting a crime lord to the quick.

“I gave her the mantikar, Your Highness. She needed it. More than us.”

Zhim stared at her in the face. Kiir felt it all hanging by a thread.

“As an apology, I brought a gift,” and she lifted the lid on the box.

Inside was an organ — some combination of starfish, mushroom, and squid — wriggling, squelching and smelling for all the world like a rose bouquet rolled in fermented carrion. “The pheromone sac of a young mantikar.”

Three nobles and the court Colossus vomited on the rugs. Most others bolted from the room. Soon, only Zhim and the Arcanist remained, the latter constrained by Zhim’s iron grip.

“I just felt you’d find a use for such a singular treasure.” And Kiir offered the box to the Princess.

Zhim smiled slow and wide. She closed the box and gestured at the Arcanist. He reluctantly took the box, snatched the scroll case from Kiir’s hand, and fled.

Then Zhim took her by the arm. “Aushkiir…” she spoke low and honestly. “You have reminded me that it is your gifts which I value most among all the treasures in our realm.”

Kiir breathed deep and started to bow. But Zhim denied her the motion and instead guided her into the tea lounge. “Now, about this mantikar. You must tell me everything. Spare no detail.”

They sat and drank. The tea disappeared and was refilled, accompanied by multiple plates of rare and imported delicacies. Kiir recounted the whole story — every detail. Zhim listened with growing attention. Soon they were laughing and reminiscing about other adventures from the long well of their years. And, for the first time in ages, Kiir felt content.

But, more than once, Kiir’s mind drifted back to the girl as she’d seen her last: standing on the bluff overlooking the shattered remains of her village. Clad in a bone-white javelin, the greatest weapon humanity had ever made. Projecting her very existence into the future.

With that image in her mind, Kiir smiled to herself and wondered if her quest would be told to children someday. The villain who came to capture a beast, but instead forged a hero.

On the surface, it seemed a tale worthy of a constellation. A story told with stars for words.

Special thanks to Jessica Campbell.

[aki-chan2014]

And So It Begins playlist

imiSome of you might know that I started a new DanganRonpa fic called ‘And So It Begins’, which happens to be an SYOC. A lot of songs have inspired my writing of it so far, as well as some of my planning, so I figured I may as well begin a playlist of sort. It is a work in progress, so more songs will be added over time, and the links (put in the song name) to the videos will also only be put in as and when I can. But yeah, I hope you enjoy: (Quick note 11/11: I have also decided to add some quick notes next to certain songs to explain why they have been chosen for the playlist, where I did have specific things in mind for them. If anyone else has interpretations of how certain songs relate I’d be all for sticking those in here too-with credits, of course)

Mafumafu-Keep Out

Fantastic Youth- DAYBREAK FRONTLINE (rap arrange ver) (This song is for the happier moments in the story, particualrly those between the whole group/ larger parts of the group, and any moments that, in a different story, would have simply been carefree and youthful. Also check out this dance version, as I will be making an Ending Song chapter based on it)

Nuyuri ft flower-Proto Disco (This song is meant to be reflective of how the characters are descending down a dark path in the choices they make and the events that draw them closer to creating a killing game.)

HENSHIN ft GUMI- One Moment’s Crime (This song can relate somewhat to the system Hope’s Peak has in this story. It is also the ‘opening song’ for the story, as you may have noticed)

THE SIXTH LIE- HIBANA

Eve-Dramaturgy

Jonas Blue ft Jack and Jack-Rise (This one is about the rebellion aspects of the story)

Police Piccadilly ft Miku Hatsune-Separate (This song is meant to relate to certain pairs and possibly trios in this story, and the bittersweetness of the fact they have developed such closeness in such bad circumstances. I’d say I have Mizuki and Mokomichi in mind particularly here, but it could easily apply to others too. This is also the first ED song of the story)

Do As Infinity-Kenshin no Kemono

Foreground Eclipse-When Innocence is Just a Mask (This one is definitely also about the rebellion aspects of the story, but perhaps at a later stage of the story, where some characters may be more fatalistic about it. When they are further down the rabbit hole, so to speak.)

Natsushiro Takaaki-Endroll (also check out this chorus cover done by CATINABOX for round 2 of the Ascencion Chorus Battle 2019-my personal headcanon is that Reirei’s voice is like Emiko’s singing voice)

brave elements-Bakudan Ma (cover)

Zutto Mayonaka de ii no ni-Humanoid

Wowaka-Unknown Mother Goose

Luschka-Moratorium (This song is related to the remorse some people might feel from being involved, wondering if they’d ever be forgiven)

Sayuri x MY FIRST STORY-Reimei

Dima Lancaster ft BrokeN-Feed the Fire (cover) This one is definitely related to the point of the story where everything gets awful and there’s no turning back

ONE OK ROCK-We Are (This song can relate in some ways to how some characters see themselves as doing something good in the situation. Also a song for how they may have started off feeling when setting off on this endeavour, or the general feelings of Reserve Course oppression. )

AmaLee-Again (English Cover) (This song could link to some relationships within the story)

Cepheid ft Un3h-Chronos (this one is about feeling helpless about the situation, and how some characters are having regrets about it)

Minstrel-Fiction

AViVA-Blame it on the kids

Hanatan-Niwaka Ame

Misumi ft flower and Miku Hatsune-FAKE (see also this cover)

Dean Lewis-Waves

nameless-Toumei Elegy (cover)

HarryP- 泥中に咲く(blooming in the mud)

MurasagiYT-Little Parade (English Cover)

DECO*27 ft Miku Hatsune-Otome Dissection

Three Days Grace-Riot (Thanks to tobi-is-an-artist-too for this one. I am sure the reason for it’s inclusion is self explanatory lol)

Yunosuke ft Miku Hatsune-Spiral

2NE1-Come Back Home (Japanese unplugged ver)

Tears of Today-Corregret

Zutto Mayonake de ii no ni-mabushii DNA dake

Pizuya’s Cell X Barrage Am Ring ft Meramipop -my temperature is zero degrees

Rupert Pope and John Robertson ft Isla Meller-Coming Round

After the Rain (Soraru x Mafumafu)-yuudachi (evening rain) (this one could relate to some of the character dynamics between certain pairings, particularly between cast members and some side characters as the relationships become more distant/deteriorating. It can also relate to the feeling some characters might have at their youth slowly slipping away as the story continues)

ONE OK ROCK-Mighty Long Fall

Akiakane-FlashBack (I am planning to use this for a second OP song chapter at some point ^.^, and the actual PV of the song will inspire the sequence I write for that. Also, this is such a good song about falling apart and grief and betrayal so it fits really well with later events)

*Luna ft  來 -Epilogue (Also check out the chorus cover done by EncripT for round 1 of the Ascencion Chorus Battle 2019. Anyway, this one is about being able to make one’s own choices and how the idea of doing this has served as a motivation for some characters)

Fractured Light Music-These Final Words

Fractured Light Music-We Dream of Stars

Fractured Light Music-Goodbye

Ludovico Einaudi- I Giorni

Eve-Yamiyo

Tokyo Teddy Bear English Chorus Cover

YURRY-CANON ft GUMI-Humanly

Eve-This World To You (For the bittersweet moments and the bereavement)

CYPHER-Redmoon (another one for the rebellion themes, and also the theme of doing something that you cannot go back from)

Misumi ft Hatsune Miku-Weird Beast

chorus cover of ‘Bolero’

Zutto Mayonaka de ii no ni-Seigi (justice)

After the Rain (Soraru x Mafumafu)-The equation for the beginning of love (a particular couple relationship is what I have in mind with this song, because the song characters are sweet awkward dorks and so are the characters of the couple)

Fantastic Youth-Mairieux (acoustic arrange)

Nathan Wagner-Innocence (because well, they will end up losing it, won’t they?)

Fantastic Youth-I thought I was an angel (cover and rap arrange) (Kinda self explanatory-they started out trying to do the right thing, thinking they were the ‘angels’ in this. Of course, they aren’t really, are they?)

Jayn-With Love (for the slightly more supportive/positive aspects of various character relationships, both platonic and romantic) UVERworld-Touch Off Dasu x Ensou ft Len Kagamine-Jet Ammo

Memai Siren-Ajisai

Crusher-P ft Miku Hatsune-Propaganda! (both about the elitism of Hope’s Peak and how they’re trying to present this very particular image, and also how dangerously close-knit the cast get)

ALEXANDROS-Pray (There’s a lot of cases of characters wanting to help each other, and not knowing how. So this song is about that, and those particular relationships)

FELT-Until Tomorrow

MAN WITH A MISSION-Remember Me

Aron Wright-How You’ll Be Remembered

JubyPhonic- Häagen-Dazs Ika no Sappuukei (English Cover) (This inspired the scene with Keiko on the roof in Party Time, part 1. I guess this could be a song for the main event of Preparation/Party Time in general)

BRAVES ft Nikki Reed-World’s On Fire

Fantastic Youth-Totemo Suteki Na Rokugatsu Deshita (cover)

Wolpis Kater-1% (Melon soda no hoshizora wo)

Studio Yuraki-Mukanjyo(English cover) (this fits with the themes of the story so well in general)

Misumi ft Hatsune Miku -Alter Ego (there’s something about the darkness of Misumi songs that fit so well with ASIB aaaaa)

chorus cover of ‘0verf10w’

Raon Lee X KOBASOLO-Philosophy of Adversity

chorus over of ‘Yankee Boy Yankee Girl’ 

Eve x Rib-Lear

Pizuya’s Cell-Midnight Liberty

Studio Yuraki-MAYDAY (cover)

Mitei no Hanashi-Drown in the Night

YOASOBI-Racing into the Night (check out this group cover too)

Fantastic Youth cover of no title

chorus cover of Los!Los!Los!

Sou-Mr Fixer

Techniken ft Lollia and Sohly-Make Me, Hate Me

Eve - ‘Love & Destroy’ (cover ver-originally by Mi8k ft GUMI) There are a fair few good covers of this really, but I picked this one because Eve.

FUZI x Neru ft Luschka and Mas Kimura-Optimi2er

Chorus cover of ‘RENEGADE’ (come on, tell me this isn’t a Shino song. Or even an Emiko song, for that matter. I dare you.)

SYND!CATE-In The Elegy (a chorus cover mash-up of ‘In the End and ‘愛迷エレジー ‘. Yes, really.)

Nathan Wagner-New Horizon

Neru ft Len and Rin Kagamine-Becoming Potatoes

Wild Fire- Everybody Knows (cover)  (about the elitism, obvs)

Harry-P- 徒花の涙

Ivy Adara-Rebels

GRIMES- We Appreciate Power (feat Hana)

Opening song for ‘Get Even’ (BBC drama)

THE BINARY- 花に雨を、君に歌を

MILGRAM-Undercover

Mafumafu- 悔やむと書いてミライ

Sou’s cover of ‘Penguin’s Detour’

HANDEAD ANTHEM-Why Not?

MARETU- ドクハク  (The link leads to a dance cover because why not? But this one would link to the more violent events and mindsets that develop over the story)

Stray Kids-District 9

KIRA-RISE UP NATION (Quite a few of the cast could be seen as misfits in some way, and they are all for causing trouble and making changes)

*Luna ft GUMI-Black Out Stray Kids- SLUMP (English Ver) (Deteriorating relationships of all sorts, and the emotional conflict that some of the characters are going through especially as they realise that they are at the point of no return.)

Red-The War We Made (Well, it’s more or less a war anyway)

Citizen Soldier-Hope It Haunts You (I’ll let you all theorise over this one lol) Citizen Soldier-Would Anyone Care? (Suggested by PainX65, as fitting certain characters, moments and even Hope’s Peak’s actions over the story)

Eve-How to Eat Life

MYTH&ROID-Remembrance (Goes without saying that Remembrance is in a way one of the stronger motives behind what our cast are doing, in a macabre way)

No Resolve-What You Deserve

Nine Lashes-Guilty Hands (They all have them)

Nathan Wagner cover of ‘The Kill’

Mako Niina-Sensen no Realism (The implications/consequences of what they are all doing hitting them)

After the Rain-Kono Yubi Tomare

Mashiro cover of ‘That Summer Saturates’ (the heady fallout of being involved in a crime with friends, and the general intensity of adolesence, and how the two combine)

chorus cover of ‘Nocturnal Creatures’

Fumiko Uchimura-Dotte Koto Nai Sympathy

[sims-e-blog]

SEASONS TAG

i was tagged by @mrsmeowness ^__^ i tag @beeberries @voidboredom @moodensim @xbelorsims , and anyone else that wants to do it! 

(this is under a readmore)

1. which season are you going to play with first?

hmmmmm hard to choose :^o! i think there will probably be a lot to do during the summer, but i love how everything looks in the fall

2. from what you’ve seen in the trailer, what are you most excited about?

i think its going to be so awesome seeing legacy series that actually have time passing.... families celebrating christmas and thanksgiving! im also really pumped about the custom holiday thing

3. what’s your favourite season irl?

SUMMER. i live in alberta so its the only habitable season

4. what’s your favourite flower/plant?

umm i really like wild strawberries + rhubarb together. make a tasty pie that way. i babysat a neighbours farm and got literally about 20 pounds of rhubarb from his garden as thanks. i might still have a pic of my friend holding all of it it was ridiculous i love that guy

5. are you going to create a new sim/family or are you going to keep your current household?

probably both!

6. what would you like to see in this new add-on that we haven’t seen yet?

hard to say! its small but i miss the lounging chairs from ts3. the ones the sims sit in by the pool and just relax in

7. how do you feel about not having a new neighborhood?

haha i dont even know what a seasons based neighbourhood would look like. i think we would just end up with a duplicate willow creek anyway. plus u know EA would pull that bs and make seasons only available in the new town if they were to add another :^p

8. snow, rain, sun or wind?

SUN...

9. favourite refreshing drink in summer?

i really like iced coffee, but i dont drink it too often. ice caps from tims.... delicious

10. favourite hot drink in winter?

apple cider probably, its festive

11. walk through the forest or by the beach?

REALLY HARD TO CHOOSE.... probably a forest tho! as much as i love the beach id rather be in the water than on the sand

12. swimming pool or ocean?

ocean. lakes are better though to be honest

13. where would you like to travel if you could leave right now for a week?

somewhere rural in japan

13. how is the weather today?

its cloudy out, its been sprinkling on and off all day

14. what new traits would you like to see in the new add-on?

umm well we already have a "loves the outdoors" trait but maybe something pertaining to holidays? festive trait = sims get better mood boosts from holiday events. idk

15. do you like to play with supernatural creatures like vampires and aliens? and if so, would you like to have witches/fairies/elves?

YES!!! yes and yes. absolutely

16. what is your favorite thing to do during winter?

curl up n die. or yknow. hockey or something

17. …during spring?

spring is awful here because theres so much snow to melt. if you take a landscape pic youd have to crop out the bottom because while the trees' flowers are blooming the ground is covered in mud, sludge, and snow mould. :^p

18. …during summer?

probably a tie between biking and tennis! street hockey is fun too but i havent played in a while. i love just biking out into the county and laying on the grass for a bit watching the sky

19. …during autumn?

well autumn is back to school time so nothing usually :^( playing pc games i guess

20. have you already pre-ordered seasons? and if you haven’t, are you going to pre-order it or wait until it comes out?

no haha im not rich, once i have enough money ill probably preorder it tho

21. in which neighbourhood are you going to play first with seasons?

um! maybe willow creek? its the most normal suburban neighbourhood so i think that could be fun

22. do you listen to music while playing? and if so, what are your favourite songs to play to?

i usually listen to podcasts or my personal music playlist on yt, or just have a yt video on in the background

23. what’s your favorite thing to do in the sims? creating sims, building, etc?

hard to say haha, depends on my mood i guess. lately ive been really into making sims in CAS but i also love building. and playing obviously :^p

24. what’s your favorite kit/pack/add-on?

vampires! i take what supernatural content i can get

25. and finally, what add-on/pack would you like to see next?

supernatural stuff would be SO GREAT! when they separated the vampires/aliens into their own "occult" category in CAS i was like hm. eyes emoji.  

[eadazs-orange]

I was tagged by @daenerysromanoff <3

Rules: Answer 20 questions and tag 20 people you want to know better.

1. Name: Deepra / Dee

2. Zodiac sign: Scorpio

3. Height: 5'2 (probably)

4. Languages spoken: Bengali, Hindi, English, basic Spanish and Nepali.

5. Nationality: Total Indian khichdi

6. Favourite fruit: Mango, grapes, peach, papaya, orange, pear.

7. Favourite scent: Mint, old parchment, burning pine wood, rain soaked mud, oranges.

8. Favourite colour: Black, dark purple, grey, Dark Green (olive), Blue.

9. Favourite animal: Dogs.

10. Favourite fictional characters: Jessica Jones, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Rey, The original Avengers, April Ludgate, Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley, Newt Scammander, L, Saiki Kusuo, Ed and Alphonse Elric off the top of my head and so many others.

11. Dream trip: Egypt, Machu Pichu, PCT, Mt.Everest Base Camp trek, Tour du Mont Blanc, Tanzania, Netherland's Tulip Gardens, Man Sarovar Lake trek, and many many many more (Korea has been added recently :3). I might sound crazy but I really want to visit Afghanistan. The natural beauty of the barren mountains is mind blowing.

12. When your blog was created: 2017(?)

13. Last movie you've seen: 5 centimetres per second.

14. Song you've had on repeat: The Truth Untold and Begin by BTS, Waves by Ira Wolf, Bloom by Troye Sivan.

15. Favourite Candy: Gummy bears, Twix

16. Favourite Holiday: Durga Puja

17. Favourite MCU character: Jessica Jones

18. Favourite MCU movie: Black Panther

20. Favourite food: Bengali, East Asian Cuisine, Italian.

Anyone who wants to do this can go ahead :)