#I thought posts with links did not show in tags but then my Factor link post did and idk what to believe anymore

[fountainpenguin]

"Your love was handmade for somebody like me..."

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Today is not my usual 'fic update day, but I wrote a dorky one-shot about my OTP and honestly did not want to sit on it </3

"Your family is doing okay"

Read on AO3

Exposition Guy came here for family photos but in my headcanon he has three invisible brothers, idk what to tell you.

(First 1,000 words under the cut)

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Is it… weird to be so, so thankful that you live in a city crawling with supervillains? Probably. But Miah Wall wasn’t meant for a slow-moving life in a slow-moving town. She’ll take a storm of mashed veggies or a cockroach invasion on the bus every other day - not even hesitating! - as long as she still gets to order cookies, cupcakes, and snazzy indie records at the shops along the street.

It is cruel, cruel irony, however, that Miah Wall - who is not built for dull and dreary things - must cram herself into the flabby seat behind the reception desk every afternoon and suffer through her pre-med homework without cookies, cupcakes, and snazzy indie music. The fact that she can see both a floral boutique and a rolled ice cream shop through the photo studio window does not make her dread her empty pockets any less.

I need a new internship… If I’m not getting paid to sit here, can it at least be for something relevant to my nursing career?

Now, Miah Wall is also an incredibly gracious individual who has certainly not forgotten how loving and kind her adoptive mother is for letting her live at home for free during her studies instead of shelling out the cash for a university dorm. It’s just, well… Greeting the occasional customer with a plastic smile and spouting white tales about how they’re “Actually early” and that Mrs. Ford will be “Just one moment” isn’t going to pay for super cute lattes. Or the new state award books. Or a sugar glider.

But a nursing degree pays for a sugar glider.

Mine are gonna be ‘sour gliders’ when I’ve spoiled them rotten, she tells herself in silence, and flips three pages forward in her textbook.

The fun thing about supervillains, though, is that they tend to target those high-profile money-making places like the jewelry store, the bank, the real estate office, and the auto-shop. Every now and then you hear about a guy whose schtick doesn't slot neatly into one of those categories. The Raccoon Wrangler, for example, prefers hanging around the city dump, and the Beetle Kid (accompanied by his six-legged friends) actually does a great job of eliminating random waste after storms.

But no one ever targets her adoptive mother’s little photography studio. It’s not even along a main road. Once you run a business in Fair City long enough, you realize that the foot traffic tends to be heavier outside the downtown area where villains like to strike… and if you adapt appropriately, you too can succeed at life by running an adorable place across from the flower shop!

Supervillains do not rob photo studios. What’s there to take? Some old pics of someone else’s kids? Miah’s helped Mrs. Ford with a couple photoshoots for supervillains in the past (once or twice even witnessing a secret identity reveal in the process). Photography, like costume tailoring, is one of those peculiar businesses that ne’er-do-wells seem to value as much as people on the straight and narrow do.

She knows this.

She has faith in this.

But she almost slams the panic button when a big, sturdy guy pushes himself - backwards - through the glass door. Alone. Jerking his shoulders funny as though someone on the sidewalk has his wrists and is trying to pull him back into the hazy, humid afternoon. Miah’s purple pen falls away from her teeth and clicks against the desk.

What’s he doing here? The last appointment of the day is for a family.

Oh boy.

The ragged, dust-covered, dirt-stained guy at the door looks like he can’t be more than 19 or 20. She can only see a portion of his profile, but that seems right. Something about the dark green sweatshirt and those little rectangle glasses seems familiar… but she can’t nail down the reason why. Maybe she knows him from school? She’s 21. Maybe they shared a generals class last year?

I don’t get the impression he’s into medical science.

Since he’s trying to force his way into the studio backwards, Miah sees the ponytail before any of his face. It’s coming loose, his scrunchie far too low in his hair. It’s probably been hours since he adjusted it. Bouncing bits of frizz make multiple attempts to escape his scalp just in the time it takes him to wiggle his way inside. He’s holding a lot of leashes for someone who just walked into the studio alone. At least three of them. Maybe four, but one of them is rainbow so it’s difficult to separate it from the others. All three leashes are fighting back against his grip, and they look like they’re winning.

Okay. Forget what he’s doing HERE… I can’t tell what he’s doing, period.

He’s… struggling with the empty leashes? He must be. The pull against him is too strong to be the air conditioner. She can’t hear anything outside. No shouting. Maybe it’s the wind? Or someone with telekinesis powers? Miah strains her eyes against the dim light level, then feels stupid for it. Squinting doesn’t reveal anything at the leashes’ other ends.

“Hi?” she offers, rising from her chair. She keeps her forefinger under the desk, right over the button that will send out the Peppermint Kid rescue alarm, but… she’s starting to think she might not even need it. What is this guy doing?

He seems to recognize the absurdity of the situation at the same time she does, because he turns around at that moment. Miah jolts and almost hits the panic button after all. Okay- where does she know him from? His facial hair is overgrown, but uneven in awkward patches. His baggy, half-lidded eyes make it clear from the start that he didn’t come here to play games. Which, you know… makes sense. This is a photo studio. 

Her finger rests against the panic button, feeling out the curves. The plastic-y-ness of it feels sticky and hot, but the metal around it is icier than the crisp wind has been all week. The guy stares at her with the face of someone who just got the back of his ankle run into by a shopping cart and found out his insurance won’t cover it.

Then he tells her, point blank, “I’m here for a family photoshoot with three kids who are invisible.”

“OH!” Miah snaps straight up, grabbing for her purple pen. “You’re the Nightmare King’s son! Or…” She glances at the three leashes dangling from his hand. All three are tugging in different directions. Shoes are squeaking. “… sons, rather. I just saw him in the paper for robbing city hall. Well, I mean, I didn’t see him…”

[Cnt'd on AO3 - Link at top]

[kaybreezy3000]

The Anti Hero's Pitfall of Arrogance

Five Hargreeves / Female OC

What happens when you disarm an exceptionally arrogant person, one that is a self-absorbed, teleporting, teenaged superhero?

The answer is not great things.

Get ready for a taste of Five like you've never had before...

(Chapters Three and Four Post)

- This AU starts off when the Hargreeves are 16 and but is based off the show. It's going to give you a look inside Five's mind at that time of his life and not all of it is good, but I promise it's not all bad. I always make sure to give our boy his day to shine.

Warnings and Tags: sexually explicit content, flashbacks, teen bad behavior, survival horror, bad decisions, regret, POV Five, aggression issues, suffering, humor and angst and fluff, redemption, sweet Five and mean Five in same story, Dolores is a factor, hurt Number Five, Five makes fun and dirty check lists in this one, Young Five is really something, Plot twists and many tags left off to avoid spoiling the story.

Link to Full Summary and Chapter One and Chapter Two

Chapter Three: House On Fire

I followed her.

I felt like I had no choice.

Or maybe I did it because of her very nice-looking butt that was within my hands reach. She wasn’t even trying to cover it, so how could me looking at it be my fault?

Well…maybe she was covering it, but that towel wasn’t doing a great job. It was way too small, and I could see her flawlessly rounded ass cheeks just fine, not that I hadn’t already seen everything else too, but this was all still blowing my mind and I was hardly thinking with my entire brain. 

Even in the very dim light as she was showering, just seeing those perky tits nearly did me in.

My conduct was normally never so rudimentary. I knew that I was acting out of character and that I was better than this.

In my fucked-up brain, I believed that I was better than her, but it was easier to blame my ill-thought-out decision to come in there on anything but myself.

Just the fact that I met up with a girl, all so I could possibly fool around with her was wrong. Me thinking she went to a respected private school somehow made it easier for me to reconcile, but even as dense as I was, I knew that it was something entirely different if the girl was homeless and not at all who she originally appeared to be.

The second she realized I was following her, she let go of my arm and I could have left, but I still didn’t retreat.

That would have been even worse than the first time I blinked away, so I rationalized that was a good enough reason for blindly following her like I was a lost puppy.

What I should have done right then was apologize for showing up like I'd just done after openly blowing her off on the street, and then I also shouldn’t have gaped at her after that, but no, apologizing for either of those things was far from what I did.

It might have been guilt that made me finally pull my eyes off her cute ass, but it was probably just my training kicking in. I glanced around us making sure it was safe. Again, all I saw was the old, deserted workspace where her things were laid out. It was cold, damp, and dark and it didn’t seem right at all, but there appeared to be no immediate danger here.

I nearly ran into her when she stopped and turned my way, and I could tell she thought that was funny because her eyes crinkled at the corners, and she held a hand over her mouth for a second or two in an effort to hide that she was cracking up over my inability to walk.

“Gosh... I can’t believe you are here. I didn’t really think you would come, and then I saw you-" She paused, her smile getting bigger as she carefully hoisted up her bath towel, which showed me less of her chest but offered a better view of her legs. “I am so excited. I am a huge fan of the Umbrella Academy, but mostly that’s because of you.” Even in the dim light I could see her blushing from saying that and I was eating up. “I mean… Oh, my God, that sounds so dumb, I am sorry.”

She looked so worked up over seeing me; it was helping me feel less uncomfortable, but only a little.

“I know this looks bad,” she said, gesturing around her, “but I can explain. This situation is temporary. I swear I’m not a weirdo or anything.” She laughed again ad this time her laugh came out much more openly and I found that I liked the sound of it. It was delicate and feminine, just like her voice and everything about her. “Not that people living on the streets are weirdos or anything, it’s just that something bad happened and well…” She didn’t finish and I didn’t press her about it, because truthfully, I didn't care about anything other than watching her. 

Being a little less of an ass, I cleared my throat while looking around aimlessly to try and keep my eyes off areas of her that I shouldn’t be looking at, like the drops of water dripping from her hair that then slipped down in-between her breasts.

“Ah, yeah," I mumbled, acting totally unaware of what she was talking about. "Sorry about that. At first, I didn’t realize that was you on the corner.” My eyes continued to dart anywhere but at her as I anxiously rubbed the back of my neck and continued lying. “I mean, I didn't recognize you without that school uniform on,” I clarified, before I stupidity rambled on. “I read your note. It sounded like you had something important you needed to see me about. Being available to help people is sort of what we do. I am here, so...”

She said nothing, so I raised a brow at her, indicating that she needed to lead this.

Going with the ‘Superhero, here at your service’ thing was such a dumb thing to say, because helping your normal average people on the street was not at all what Reginal Hargreeves was about or what we normally did at The Umbrella Academy, but seeing as most my blood wasn’t pumping to my brain, that was all I had.

Her eyes widened with what I assumed was recognition, and her hands tightened around her towel as I did my best to level a hard stare at her again.

“Uhm, wah-w-would you just give me a second,” she stuttered. “I just… I am sorry, I’m so nervous. I still can’t believe it’s really you, like the real live Five Hargreeves, with me, here.”

She bit her lower lip with her upper teeth as her eyes trailed up and down, taking me in like I was the most amazing thing she'd ever seen.

“Ah… I just need to-”

She quickly bent down, frantically digging through a plastic bag with what appeared to be clothing in it.

“I can’t imagine what you think of me,” she said as she waved her hand at all her things, “of all this, and-" She looked up from her crouched position. “You know, with this place and my whole improvised shower thing. Since I thought you changed your mind about meeting me, and it started to rain, I figured I may as well enjoy a rinse, but you are probably thinking all sorts of things about me doing that,” she added, snatching a shirt out of her pile.

“I don’t think anything, and I didn’t see anything," I replied, way too quickly, but I'd already lied once, and she didn’t call me out on it, so I figured that I may as well lie again because she obviously was too rattled to call me out on it. 

“Oh... Okay.” Her lips pulled to the side like something was bothering her. “I only wore that uniform because I wanted to look less…” she looked down at her hands, “-less me, I guess. It's just, when I heard about the press conference today, I jumped at the chance to go and I wanted to look nice, so that’s why I wore that.” Her head very slowly shook side to side, then she looked back up. “I did go to that school, but I don’t anymore.”

“Sure,” I indifferently retorted as I tucked both my hands in my pockets rather that anxiously fiddle with my blazer's lapels.

With a puff of air to blow my hair out of my eyes, I tipped back on the balls of my feet in an effort to look as cool and calm as possible.

“That’s…ah, fine," I added. "I wasn’t trying to make it seem like it matters or anything So, yeah... I am going to just look over this way so you can-” I pulled my hand out of my pocket, gesturing the other way, then I turned, giving her a moment to make herself decent.

Behind me, I could hear more rustling, then a few seconds later, the area we were standing in lit up with a warm glow of light. It totally took me off guard, and despite the fact that the girl was trying to get dressed, I immediately turned back her way.

My mouth gaped as I breathed, “What the-"

Her big blue eyes looked startled as I felt.

“It was so dark in here. Isn’t this better?” she worriedly asked, interrupting me from asking how in the hell she managed to light so many candles that fast.

I nodded an affirmative yes, as I thickly swallowed.

My mouth felt dry, and my hands felt so unbelievably hot.

I could see her much better now. She wasn’t fully naked or in her little towel anymore, but she was only wearing a long white t-shirt and it didn’t appear to be her size because it was falling off one of her shoulders, exposing her slender upper arm and the delicate curve of her collar bone. Behind her, I could see that along the ledge of dirty windows that faced out to the factory floor, she had dozens of candles that I hadn’t noticed before, and each one and many of the others that were strewn about were all lit. There were at least thirty or more, but I never heard a strike of a match or the flick of a lighter.

“How’d you-"

She raised a hand, stopping me because when she did, I got a glimpse of her lacey little red panties. Then I turned red, and she giggled at my gawking wide-eyed reaction to that.

“I’m making you uncomfortable,” she taunted.

“No.”

I knew my fast answer was as unconvincing as all my others, but I couldn’t help it.

The girl inched closer.

“Hey, I promise I won’t bite. Not unless you want me to,” she purred. “I meant it when I said that you are my favorite member of the Umbrella Academy. I really did want to meet you and that was in part because I figured you would be the only one willing to listen to me, but I really like you too, Five.”

She was right in front of me now. I held my ground. Something felt off, but when she reached out and took my wrist, pulling my hand out of my pocket, I didn’t pull away. Instead, I let her pull me closer.

“Why am I your favorite?” I quietly asked.

She smiled. “Because you are extremely smart. You always seem to be a million steps ahead of the rest.”

In the glowing candlelight I could see her cheeks light up from saying that, but it only made her look more beautiful. 

“You are my favorite because you are, well… Because you are so-” She looked down, eyeing my neck or maybe my tie, I wasn't sure. “I feel so silly saying this to you, because you are you, and you are famous, and so incredible and everything, but you are my favorite because you are so charmingly mannered and serious all the time and because you are so uniquely handsome."

With each thing she said, I felt like my brain could not compute. “You think I am handsome?” I asked, sounding like a complete buffoon.

“Yes, I do. I have a huge crush on you. I think you are so hot,” she breathed as her fingers ran across the inside of my palm. She twisted one foot around her opposite ankle and her knee bumped into my leg, brushing against my nerdy knee sock.

She was so close. All I wanted to do was touch her.

Again, my eyes felt drawn to her body, especially to her chest because I could see plain as day that she was chilled from the night air coming in from outside.

When I looked back up, she quirked a brow, confidently holding my hungry stare. Her long lashes fluttered as she leaned in expectantly and one of her hands fell against my chest with a teasing softness.

“It’s pretty clear that you like what you see too,” she said, followed by another giggle. “I don’t mind if you do. I am glad you find me attractive. I may have been dangling an intentional carrot when I promised to make this worth your while. But that's only because I really wanted you to come tonight. I did ask you to meet me because I needed to talk to you about something important, but we can definitely do more than talk if you want that. I really, really like you, Five, like a lot."

Her toes bumped my shoes and my eyes moved down to see there was no space left between us.

“It looks like you want to touch me. Do you?”

“Yes," I said as my voice shook.

My answer was so pathetically soft, but I felt at a loss for words, so I was lucky anything came out. This girl was all I could think about, and she was knocking me off my game big time.

Her smile looked so sincere. “I’m all yours then."

Holy shit. This was it.

This is what I came for, so…

Leaning in, I tilted my head down like I assumed you should do if you’re going to try and kiss someone slightly shorter than you. She silently reciprocated my small overture, clearing the distance between us.

My eyes automatically shut.

Then, as if I was having an outer body experience, I felt my mouth pressing against hers.

Wow.

Her lips were smooth as silk. I could smell her even better now; the flowery scent and heat of her body were pulling my mind out of that dank factory and taking away all my usual anxieties and racing thoughts.

All I felt was her.

Right then, I understand why people did this.

I was finally getting what all the fuss was about and why my brothers were constantly going on and on about it.

Who knew that something as simple as kissing was so awesome?

I am sure that I grazed her mouth too hard at first, but I didn’t know how to do it. That was the point in coming there. I didn’t know how to do any of this, but I found that I was desperately wanting to know, and lucky me, I was getting exactly what I came for.

Thoughts of me being better than her, and her being a homeless teenager, one that obviously wasn’t in the best situation, faded far into the recesses of my mind. Everything that normally bogged me down became just more background noise like the steady thrum coming from the rain.

Feeling the warm pressure of her lips against mine sent a rousing prickling sensation up and down my spine. I felt like every one of my nerve endings ignited, and I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her, but instead, I let up because I didn’t want to scare her off. I didn’t want to pull away from this feeling yet, but thankfully she didn’t want it to end either. As soon as I stopped kissing her, she advanced, pushing her mouth to mine again. 

She still had one of my hands in hers and my other hand felt like it needed to be somewhere other than dangling uselessly at my side, so the next thing I knew, it was resting on her slender waist. The cotton fabric of her shirt slid under my hand as my fingers dug into her hip, latching on. She wasn’t trying to get away, but something in me, something that I didn’t quite understand, wanted her as close as possible and needed to make sure she didn't leave me just yet.

Her lips parted against mine and feeling that, I let my tongue dip inside her mouth like I'd heard you should do. She allowed it and even massaged my tongue back with hers.

It felt unreal and I felt very, very erotically wet and hot.

First time seeing a real naked chick (other than in one of Diego’s Playboys that he kept under the floorboard under his bed): Check

First kiss: Check.

First ‘French’ kiss: Check

This one experience was such a great idea. I would have no shortage of things to lord over my moronic brothers if they were making fun of me and I felt the need to shut them down.

A few minutes later, after more soft tongue twisting, I risked moving my arm around her so that my hand was laying across her lower back and, in doing so, the sexiest sound came out of her. Then to even further prove that she was enjoying this as much as me, she pushed her curvy little body flush with mine, her hip falling even more perfectly between my legs.

My first reaction was to move myself back to a safer distance because I was sure that she could feel my dick and that’s because I sure as hell could feel it. I’d been fighting a hard-on since I first saw her buck naked and I was steadily losing that fight the longer I was in her presence.

Oh, but fuck she felt so good. God help me...

Instead of shying away from my body’s response to her, it seemed that she was loving it. She rubbed her body against my pelvic region and that sealed it. There was no slowing down that not so little physiological reaction I was having.

I could feel my dick getting full hard. Before this, when my hands were in my pockets, I had tried to conceal how turned on I was by tucking it up under the waistband of my briefs in the trusty hide your boner method, but now that was doing little to nothing in hiding the fact that I was very turned on.

When our lips finally parted, I was noticeably breathless, but so was she as she asked, “Do you want me to touch you?”

I didn’t know what she meant. I was touching her, and she was already touching me. As I kissed her, she moved her hands up around my shoulders. Her fingers had been gently moving through the hair at the nap of my neck the entire time and it felt so God damn amazing.

When I didn’t answer her question, she lowered one of her hands, taking one of mine under hers. She took it off her hip, placing it back on her ass in an assertive way that caused a smacking sound on impact. It made me startle at first, but I also couldn't begin to hold in my growing smile over how much I liked that.

She giggled as my fingers splayed across the thin lacy fabric covering her. Trying to make her smile even more, I dipped a finger under the fabric over one of her cheeks as I held my breath in a failed attempt to contain my elation over her letting me do this.

“You can touch me, Five. I want you to,” she assured even though it was already apparent that she was fine with this.

After that open invitation to do more, my other hand joined in the fun, groping her butt cheeks. They were firm yet jiggly and so unbelievably exciting to play with. I cupped them possessively, just enough to lift her off the floor a tiny bit. She seemed to like it and I did too and not just because that caused the weight of her to press into me in the most pleasurable way. She was so easy to lift; it made me feel so powerful and that was not a feeling I was used to. I won nearly every match between me and my siblings during training, but that was not because I was big and strong. My only sibling smaller than me was Vanya, and she and I only had interactions that were in conversation, not combat.

With a smile, I dove back in, kissing her even more confidently. It was sloppy and fucking fantastic, and her reaction to it was great.

There was no mistaking her wiggly hips trying to drive me even more nuts as they rolled against my erection.

This was crazy. I knew that. But I didn’t want to stop.

She felt so perfect. She tasted so damn delicious; like she’d been eating fruity flavored candy. I loved the way her mouth felt as it moved with mine. I loved how her body felt under my hands as I let them explore just a little more freely. Moving up the back of her shirt, my palm slid along her velvety skin, edging upwards.

The girl clearly meant that she liked me and that I could touch her as I wished because when I went for it, tickling my fingers across the side of her breast, she made another one of those amazing little noises.

I broke our heated kiss. “Is this okay?” I asked, wanting to be sure before I did anything else.

“Yes. What you are doing feels so good, Five. Touch me however you want,” she breathlessly assured, her swollen lips parting in a soft gasp as I let my fingers trail over her chest. I let her nipples catch between my fingers, relishing in how hard they were, but I was still too jumpy to stay and play with them more than that even though I was all but salivating as I thought about diving under her shirt and taking her with my mouth.

Feeling up a girl’s warm and so soft and tantalizingly squishy boobs: Big Boner Check!

Her head tipped back, and her eyes closed as I continued to let my fingers explore and I carefully studied her responses.

“Are you cold?” My question came out slightly cocky, but I couldn’t help it. Her tits were so hard! I knew she liked this.

Her eyes slowly opened as a cute smirk pulled her lips to the side. “No. I am far from cold. In fact, I don’t usually get cold like normal people do.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it’s my magical superpower and it makes it much easier when taking a shower in the rain or when you’re trying to stay warm on particularly cold nights when you are forced to sleep outside. But even with my talents, I am not planning on staying around here for winter,” she replied as I pressed her up against me just a little tighter, letting her hips dance against the bulge in my pants that was dying for as much attention as it could get.

“Where are you going?” I mindlessly asked because I was only a tiny bit focused on our conversation.

The girl’s hand moved under my blazer. I could feel her trying to work up the bottom of my knitted vest as she answered. “I’m not sure yet, but somewhere warmer. After everything, I think that I need a fresh start.”

When she was done running her warm hand under my shirt and over my abs, she pulled it free then dropped it down over the stretched wool fabric of my shorts, and there was no preventing the groan like noise that followed.

“Oh my God, that feels so good. Please don't stop," I breathed as she worked her hand over me.

Getting my boner felt up by a hot chick: Check!

My hair fell over my closed eyes as my body leaned into her touch. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn't help rutting into her hand to increase the sensation.

“Like I said, Five, I really like you,” she whispered alongside my ear, further sending electrifying tingles across my overheated skin.

With each hard pass of her hand over the fabric of my shorts, I felt myself winding tighter. The reality that she could make me come in my pants by simply groping my dick through my clothes was becoming a very real prospect with each second that passed, but to only further add to my inability to back away and my dismay, she started to lower herself.

“What are you doing?” I frantically asked.

I seriously didn’t know, and I urgently felt the need to pull her back up so I could bury my face against her neck and she could continue to touch me like that.

As I gazed down at her in question, her fingers quickly popped the button holding my waistband closed, and no sooner had she done that, then she was examining my fly. As her fingers pulled down the tiny piece of metal holding my zip up, both my hands flung downwards to prevent my dick from springing out in her face, but she smiled up at me with those beautiful sparkling ocean eyes of hers, looking like she was not at all concerned about that happening.

“I want you to like me too, Five. I want to do this for you and for me. I want to make you feel good,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say to that. My mind was spiraling and coming up with zero.

When her hand came up, moving my hands aside, I didn't fight it.

“Oh fuck!” I moaned as she leaned in and pressed her hot lips over the thin fabric cover of my cotton boxers.

Her warm hand pushed aside my pants as she began placing the softest kisses up my entire length.

“Has anyone ever done this for you before?” she asked, letting her words vibrate my aching tip.

The fabric of my underwear was wet from my pre-cum and when she licked at it and then happily smiled up at me afterwards, I croaked out a very embarrassing, “No, never.”

She beamed even more over my answer, then she began working my shorts and my briefs down my trembling legs.

“I’m surprised to hear that,” she mused as her warm hand tenderly ran back up my left leg and then reached over to tug where my pants got stuck on my other thigh.

Her eyes flit up to mine as I watched her shuffling my clothing down as far as she could. Once she had my uniform shorts and underwear down to my knees, I widened my stance in anticipation of her jerking me off because that’s what I figured was going to happen because she was already stroking me.

It felt odd but also so empowering as I stood over her, watching her seemingly taking pleasure in pleasuring me. I was having all sorts of dirty thoughts about doing more to her, but I kept them to myself as I focused on her hand moving where only mine had ever been before.

“Five Hargreeves, you aren’t what I expected.” When our eyes met, her grin told me that she meant that as somewhat of a joke, but in what way exactly, I didn’t understand, and at the moment, I didn’t care. “I figured by how eager and wonderful you are at kissing, that someone with your sexy skills and fame, would have had plenty of opportunities to get sucked off.”

Just hearing her say that made my cock twitch and more liquid slowly drip out of me, but the moment her lips molded around my swollen bulb of flesh, that’s what made me lose it.

I helplessly swayed backwards. The sudden shuffling of my feet and the scuffing sounds of my shoes as I miraculously stopped myself from falling, all mixed with my uncontained squeak of a moan, and it made it sound like something bad was happening to me and I was trying to get away, but that was far from it.

“You really want to do this?” I asked even though she was already sucking on my dick as the words came sputtering out of my mouth.

Her tongue swirled around before she popped her mouth off and she grinned at me with those cherry red lips.

“Yes, I do, but I have only done this two other times and that was with the same guy. I have only been with one person Five, and from what I understand of it, everyone likes it differently, so don’t be scared to help me make this better for you.”

Well, that little piece of information definitely helped ease my worries about STDs, and it also helped ease the lingering thought that maybe she was not only homeless, but maybe that she was also the type to try and earn money by hanging out on dark street corners picking up drunk strangers on their way home from bars.

I nodded that I understood what she meant by helping her even though I didn’t, then she placed her mouth on me again and began really working me over.

On her knees, her face was at the perfect height for this as she bobbed her head, letting her mouth wet my length, inch by inch. Gazing down at her as she performed this act on me, I very gently placed my hand on her head, feeling her damp hair slip under my fingers before I gently tucked it back behind her ears so I could see what she was doing better.

Getting my dick sucked: Ch-Check yeah!

This was turning into way more than I could have ever imagined. I was knocking off sexual millstones at an alarming rate, but I was normally fast and good at everything I did, so excelling at this wasn’t really anything that shocking, and in that glorious moment, I found myself feeling pretty damn pleased with myself about it.

The sight of my dick moving in and out of her mouth was enough to make me feel like I could do anything. My hips very slowly began to push towards her mouth each time she took me in. This got her making tiny moaning noises of her own and I also found that she was taking me deeper with each thrust, so it had to be okay.

“You are so good at this,” I encouraged because saying that seemed like the right thing to do, and that smart move got me rewarded with her free hand falling over mine where it was still gently resting on her head, her fingers lacing with my own.

I was confused at first, but when she applied pressure to the back of my hand, essentially forcing my dick deeper in her mouth, I got it.

“Are you sure?” I breathed as my feet shifted, causing a deep squeaking sound followed by a sharp squeak as one of my shoes slipped on the water that must have dripped from her hair on to the floor. The old floorboards creaked again as I dug in, looking for any kind of traction as I started to pump my hips a little harder even though she hadn't replied yet.

She made a sound that had to mean yes, and that was it. My entire body felt like it was already quivering in anticipation of my release, but that didn’t stop me from taking her by the back of the head like she had shown me so I could fuck her mouth at the very brutal pace I was used to jerking myself.

All at once, the hand she had been using to assist in blowing me was down at my tensely flexed thigh, and it was joined by her other hand on my other leg shortly after my throbbing dick started to slam down what her throat.

I could see and feel her gagging a few times, but she contained that reaction very quickly. Her short nails dug into my skin, but other than that, it didn’t seem like she wanted me to stop, so I didn’t.

The familiar tension was building in my balls, and I knew the inevitable was coming. Breathing in quick shallow puffs of air as I took a few final marvelous feeling diggers at her wonderful mouth, I finally let up on her hair, letting go of her completely.

The pulsing heat was on its way.

I tried to step back, shifting my weight on one foot to back away and pull out, but she held me tight, even moving one of her hands up to cling to the bottom of my academy jacket so I couldn't escape.

My entire body shuddered as her mouth continued to glide over me. She swallowed my waves of pleasure as they tore out of me, and her other hand made sure to help drain every last quivering ounce of seed I was spurting as she milked my shaft.

I could hardly see straight. My eyes kept falling shut as I shook all over. Feeling beyond dizzy, I’d have to force them open again as I held on to her shoulders because I honestly needed the support her small frame was giving me.

It probably took me a full minute to focus my vision. When I did, I saw that she was still on her knees, but I already knew that her mouth wasn’t on me anymore. The girl’s cheeks were very red, and her eyes looked watery. She was even sniffling a little.

As the euphoria faded, my feelings of deep remorse began creeping in. I was way too rough. I forced myself down her throat, gagging her and cutting off her ability to breathe and for some reason she let me do it, but still, I shouldn't have.

Even as she wiped at her eyes and started to stand up, she tried to smile, clearly making an effort to ease my worries.

Her trembling lips looked so beautiful. I didn't understand it, or her, especially her attraction to me. I had just defiled her and treated her like my own personal cum dump, yet she looked like she was in love with me.

Her soft laugh that came out sounding so genuine as she peered up at me and it helped shake off most of the guilt I was struggling very hard to suppress.

“Again, Five Hargreeves, meeting you had been full of surprises, but also not.”

“What do you mean?” I asked as I fumbled with my underwear and my shorts, pulling them up and fastening them as best I could because I was still somewhat hard and again had to adjust myself northwards in accordance with that.

“I mean that you know what you want, and you know how to get it. I like that, so please don’t take it as a bad thing. And for the other thing, about not being surprising... Well, yeah. All guys like their dicks sucked," she said with another laugh that I think wasn't to make fun of me, but I wasn't really sure.

As was the norm in my brief conversation with the girl, I didn’t know how to reply to that.

“That was truly an unforgettable experience. You were so good at-" I started to say, but then stopped because the right words to thank her for blowing me wouldn’t form in my mouth.

“Thank you for the compliment.” She chuckled at my ineloquence as she straightened her baggy shirt, but a second later it slid down her slender shoulder again.

She crossed her arms over her chest as she continued to smile. It was as if she was waiting for something else. She probably had a right to be expecting something else from me after what she just did.

I didn't know what exactly that would be or what I should do. Hardly thinking, but at least realizing that I should say something other than a few muttered words, I began rambling again.

“Phoebe, was it?”

She smirked as she shifted her weight just a little, lifting one of her bare feet so her toes were rubbing over the top of one of my dusty black shoes. Her bare foot left a clean streak on top of the hard leather as it whipped away some of the dirt that had gotten kicked up on me from the filthy floor.

“Yes. It’s Phoebe. But you can call me Fee.” She appeared to be laughing off my only now recalling her name. “Everyone who knows me does.”

I didn't know her, but I said, “Okay, Fee.” I ran my hand back over my hair as I glanced around, feeling like a total idiot. “So, ah…you said that you don’t live here?”

“No. This place is temporary. I used to live on campus with my mom. Like I said," she laughed at me again, "I used to go there. My mom was employed by them as an instructor under a work visa, so I was lucky enough to get a chance to apply on a student visa and I got in.”

“Where’s your mom?”

I realized this was all something she mentioned before, and I also realized it was rude of me not to have asked more about her or her situation earlier, but I didn’t mention that or that I had actually thought she probably stole the uniform or that I thought she was probably making it up that she attended such a prestigious school.

“My mom passed away three months ago. They diagnosed her with stage four cancer and things happened very fast after that.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but why are you here in a place like this, hanging out on the streets at night?”

For the first time, the girl looked slightly offended. She pulled her foot back from where she had left it next to mine.

She let out a tired sounding sigh. Her eyes looked unfocused as she looked off at a pile of books on the floor next to her bedding. “The reason I am here in this dump is because I had nowhere else to go. Homeless shelters aren’t great or safe, and right now they aren’t an option for me anyway.”

“Don’t you have family?”

“All we had was each other. Mom was an only child and her parents wanted nothing to do with her after she decided to keep me.”

“Why would they do that?”

She shrugged. “Because she was so young. She was doing her own thing, traveling around the world at the time. They weren’t happy about her choice to delay going to university and then when she came home with a baby and wouldn’t tell them anything about how it happened, that was it. They were stuck up, heartless assholes who cared more about their precious reputation than their own child, so they disowned her.”

“Where are your grandparents now?”

She was giving me a look like she didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting this. “For one, those people who left my mom and I to rot are not my grandparents, and two, the last I knew, they are still in France, living just outside of Paris. When my mom was dying, social services and the kind people from U.S. immigration were ready to ship me off to go live with them but I wasn’t having that. I want nothing to do with them and I know the feeling is mutual. They were only taking me in because the law said that they had to.”

“But how are you going to live here?” I stopped and shook my head back at her in disbelief. “I don’t mean here, but like here, in the states. You can’t be much different in age than me, so you can’t live on the streets. If you were on a student visa that would mean you aren't a citizen, right?”

She all out laughed at that and rolled her eyes. “I am almost seventeen, just like you, and my citizenship in the U.S. is a temporary issue, just like my housing situation. I was born in Albania, so technically I guess that means I could claim citizenship there or in France since my mom was French, but I'm not going to do that. I am no child and I'll figure it out. Just like my mom, I am very resourceful.”

“Okay,” I replied sharply, still not understanding what this was all about. “What did you say you wanted to talk to me about? You did say that didn’t you?”

The girl named Fee unfolded arm arms, looking up at me with so much emotion in her expression that I didn’t understand.

“I wanted to tell you that there are others like you out there.”

“What? What do you mean, others like me?”

She licked her lips as her eyes pulled away from mine, looking across the room at the rusty old desk pushed up against the farthest wall. The candles she had grouped together on top of it suddenly flickered. It must have been a gust of wind that blew in from the hole in the roof on the other side of the wall, but to me, it felt like it was getting hotter in there, not colder as the storm outside got stronger and the rain pelted down harder on the roof.

A sad looking smile appeared in place of her other mysterious expression as she looked back up at me.

“I mean that you and your adoptive siblings aren’t the only ones that were born with special powers.”

Taking a step back, I cocked my chin to the side as I narrowed my eyes at her.

“How would you know that? What is this really about? Why do I get the feeling that you are full of shit and that you are trying to get something out of me with all this?”

I shot off that rapid fire of questions and none of them came out very nice, but I couldn't help myself. I was getting very defensive and anxious all of a sudden.

The heat in the room vanished and I could see my breath and hers.

Something felt very wrong.

There was a small puff of air out of her nose and that pretty smile disappeared. “I want a lot of things, but I don’t like what you are implying. I didn’t ask you to meet me so I could get something from you. And I know that there are others like you because I met one of them.”

“Okay, so you say you’ve met one of these other super powered people out there and I’m just supposed to take your word for it? I don’t even know you, so I have no reason to trust a word you say, and what difference does it make if there are other kids like me and my family out there. Why should I care?”

“You should care because Sir Reginal Hargreeves isn’t telling you guys everything he knows and he is clearly using you, and you are right, you don’t know me, but you did just blow your wad in my mouth, so I think that makes us somewhat friendly, wouldn’t you say? You trusted me enough to do that, so why are you being like this to me now?"

My jaw dropped as I clenched my fists at my sides.

“What, you think that you can shower me with compliments and flirt with me and then give me a blow job and then what, I’m going to ask you to come back to the Academy with me and we are going to live happily ever after or some other crazy delusional shit like that?”

Her laughter would have sounded beautiful if it wasn’t coming out to mock me. “Wow! No, that is not what this was about. I told you that I liked you because I do, or I did. Now I feel very stupid for letting myself feel that way about you.”

The girl’s eyes glossed over as she poked a finger at my chest, pushing me back with it, proving that even though she was smaller than me, she was not scared of me, and I didn't like that one bit.

“I actually looked up to you. Fuck!" she furiously yelled as she threw her hands up. "Stupid me because I even idolized you out of all of them! I thought you were different and that you would care to know that you were being lied to.”

“I don’t get it!” I yelled back. “Nothing you just said matters even if it were true. I already know that my dad is using us! There is nothing to idolize about my life, so you were wrong in thinking anything like that involving me. You don’t know what it’s like to be one of us!”

“Yeah, I don’t. You are right about that, but I didn’t idolize you because of your life. I just thought you were something you weren’t. I do know people and when I saw all your fake smiles, I knew that you weren't happy and that you aren’t being given a choice in how you live. I just wanted to let you know that you have one if you are willing to take it. If anything, I wasn’t trying to shack up with you and all the cool kids at the super powered snob academy. I was actually foolishly thinking you might want to leave that place. You don’t owe that horrible man anything for taking you in. You’d be fine if you left him.”

“And how do you know that, huh? You seem to think you know a lot of things, but I really doubt that. I'm also doubting that anything that comes out of your mouth is true.”

If looks could kill, I would have been dead.

“God damn, Five, you are mean when all the walls come crashing down around you," she spat back hatefully. "I never would have guessed you would have been like this.” She laughed away her tears and straightened her back as she stared me down. “You are right. I don’t know everything, but now I can see that you aren't who I thought. You are a total prick who lashes out at anyone that threatens the bogus reality you built around yourself."

“Oh yeah! And what bogus reality are you referring to?”

“The one where you are so terrified of being rejected that you do everything in your power to make it seem like being loved or accepted doesn’t matter to you. You are scared of making yourself vulnerable but it's the only way you will ever get the thing you really want which is acknowledgement. Even big arrogant assholes like you want to be liked. Actually, people like you want it more than anything and I'm pretty sure that’s part of your problem. I know that you and your family aren’t in that place because you want to be. I just thought that maybe knowing that you weren’t alone with your powers out here in this messed up real world would help you see that you could walk away from all that crap, and it would be okay. Like I said, I really liked you, Five. I was wrong to care, but I did.”

My mind was a torrent of thoughts about what she said. It felt like she was deliberately trying to hurt me, and it made me so fucking mad that she was talking about majorly private things like she could see right through me. It was like she knew just how to push my buttons.

I couldn't let her get the better of me.

I had never felt so weak and exposed, not even when I was younger and dad verbally tore me apart, or when he would leave me broken and sick with blood oozing out of my nose and ears from over exertion after one of our lovely private training sessions. He didn’t care about me at all even though I desperately wanted him to. To make that all even worse, it was Grace that would have to scoop my limp body off the floor. My traitorous tears would stain her cheerfully patterned dresses as she did her best to sooth me in her motherly yet robotically programmed way. It was just another hit, another insult among so many others that slowly closed off my heart to the world around me.

“I am not scared of anything, and you don’t know anything about me!" I screamed. "You are a dirty, homeless, Umbrella Academy obsessed slut that is just disappointed that I am not falling for your manipulative bullshit. You have no fucking clue what you are talking about, not about my family, or about what I want!”

I watched her confidence crumble with each cruel word I said.

I smiled.

The candles flickered again, this time the room became fully dark before the flames calmed and it slowly illuminated again. During that confusing and rage-filled moment, she must have swiftly stepped back away from me because now her back was up against the wall, and she was standing on sparkling shards of glass from one of the broken windows. She looked terrified and it was clear that getting away from me was more important than preventing foot lacerations.

My mind was a mess. Her hands were in front of her, held up in a defensive way. She actually thought I was going to try to hurt her and that and seeing her bleeding feet made me even more mad.

“Sure, whatever, just calm down," she said. Her body was visibly shaking, and her voice quivered in fear even though all I had done was yell sort of crazily at her. “I am sorry I wasted my time telling you that stuff. I thought maybe you would have already started to piece all that stuff together and that it was possible you already knew that you guys weren’t the only ones born this way. If you didn’t know, I thought you’d care and maybe you'd at least want to meet my friend, but I see now that you don’t and that this was a big misconception on my part.”

There was a moment of silence and in it, I thought about telling her that I thought she was a lying piece of trash, but something in me knew that was going too far and that it wasn’t fair to do to her after everything that I had already just said and after everything that had just happened between us.

I had no right to call her a dirty slut. If she was one, then I was worse.

None of this was right or fair, not my life or hers, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the truth of that or the things she said, and I unleashed my hatred and resentment on her with no filter.

“Please just leave,” she whispered as her tear-filled eyes fell to her injured feet.

With a sudden flash of blue and an instinctive blink, I did go, but I couldn’t let go but I couldn't let it go.

~~~~~~~

Then the next evening at dinner with my family, I made an even bigger mistake. After agonizing all day over what happened, I found the silence of my siblings ignoring each other, as dad ignored all of us, too much to take. Not even Vanya’s worried looks were enough to thwart my immense anger.

I hated all of this.

I hated my life.

After starting a useless argument about my abilities with dad and getting his usual nonsense that I wasn’t good enough to time travel, with the smile of a mad man pulling on my lips, I took off out of the dining room as he called out begging me to come back.

For the first time ever, Reginald sounded scared.

And he should have been. I was about to ruin my life.

I was about to walk away from it all and leave them and all my pain behind.

Riding high on adrenaline and defiance, at first, I thought I’d done it.

As I propelled my body forward in time, the atoms crackling and snapping as they repeatedly broke apart and pieced back together, I sent myself years ahead of them. I appeared out of my burst of blue swirling light while sprinting down the block away from our home.

I felt free for the first time ever.

I couldn’t control it, but I foolishly thought I could. I kept pushing forward, thrusting my power out like never before and I felt so fucking superior compared to the world around me while doing it.

They were wrong!

That girl was wrong!

Dad was wrong!

I knew that I was better than them and this proved it.

Then, I stopped in my tracks, looking around me, my mind muddled in sudden confusion.

My entire world was on fire.

Panicking, I tried to go back but my power failed me, again and again.

I ran down the block, dodging burning debris as I raced back to my family.

Stopping at the crumbling gates of what was once my home, I watched with tears streaming down my face as the flames and black smoke rose out of the piles of rubble. 

Everything was gone.

They were all dead, and it was just me on what was left of our burning planet, stuck twelve years in the future.

For the first time, I had no one left to blame but myself.

-----------------------------------------

Chapter Four: Train Wreck Fucking Dumpster Fire

The funny thing about passing out is you don't remember doing it, but as I come to, it's pretty obvious I fainted.

I am extremely disoriented, and my face feels like it slammed straight into the ground. Consequently, I have several loose teeth. I can still taste the coppery taste of blood in my gummy mouth, and I can feel a disgusting layer of dried spittle on my chin.

I roll over on my back with a low, very pained sounding groan crawling out of me.

I am hardly functioning well enough to take stock of my situation, but I know that I need to. It’s still light out and the ruthless heat hasn’t let up. With an even sicker feeling sinking in, I realize I might be paralyzed from the waist down, because when I try to move my legs, I can’t. After a few more tries, I find that I can move them but it’s extremely minimal.

“Dolores?” I weakly cry.

I can see her. She’s trapped in our cart, watching me splayed out on my back, sizzling like I am laying in a huge frying pan.

My heart feels like it’s trying to jump right out of my chest, and that’s because my body is fighting to maintain its required oxygen levels. I am no doctor, but I am aware that I’m dangerously overheating.

I fall over and over and over as I ineffectively try to get up.

I helplessly cry out again.

This pattern goes on for an undetermined amount of time and that’s because I black out several more times. Each attempt only pushes me further past my limit, causing my blood pressure to drop even lower.

It’s not until waking in the darkness that I am able to stay awake long enough to pull the wagon closer.

I know that I am going to die here and it’s from my own foolish mistakes.

I never should have left the city where I at least knew my surroundings and had some idea of what to expect. Again, my inability to question my own flawed reasoning is what has placed me in the hands of yet another cruel and torturous fate.

As I tug the strap that’s still hooked around me, the tires of my cart slowly roll up next to my side. From there I can wrench myself up enough to reach inside and pull out our bag with filled with the minimal food rations we have left.

I have no actual water, but I am literally dying for even the smallest amount of it. If I don’t get some moisture in me, my organs will start to shut down. My blood is already full of toxic levels of sludge.

‘You have to get up, Five. I’m getting really scared.’ 

“I know. I am sorry. I'm trying,” I say in panting gasps for breath.

My head is pounding, and I can hardly bring myself to say that, even though Dolores deserves so much more from me after all I have put her through.

Struggling to open the tin can with my corroded opener takes every bit of focus and strength I have left. After shakily wolfing down the mystery contents, I drop the rest of the way back down to the ground, falling against the sun hardened soil hard enough to give myself whiplash.

I black out again and I don’t wake until the next day when the sun’s rays are beating down on us all over again. Upon first opening my eyes, I am greeted with the evidence of my dinner on the ground next to my bruised face. I only vaguely remember vomiting.

I still can’t move my legs enough to get myself up and stay up, but I do manage to pull my injured foot within reach, and with extreme difficulty, I eventually get my boot off and roll up my pant leg to examine the damage.

I am greeted with the tell-tale signs of advanced inflammation, rash, and intense red lines streaming from the soiled bandages. The markings move all the way up what I can see of my leg, and I know this is very bad news and it’s the reason I am in such bad shape.

Infection is a big mean bitch and she’s clearly out to get me with vengeance because I am a supreme asshole.

I cleaned the laceration as best I could when it happened, and I covered it and taped over the hole in my boot. I took the antibiotics I had with me in my medical kit, but that evidently wasn’t enough. Some kind of nasty bacteria must have gotten inside the wound anyway. The drugs were expired but I had thought they were still good and not rendered useless by the extreme temperatures they have been exposed to, but like so many other things, I was wrong in thinking that. I was also very stupid to wander after dark in what was left of that house that I came past because that’s when the knife-like shard of glass sliced right through my weathered leather boot and dug deeper in when I tripped and fell further on to it.

Ironically, I am going to die next to a gigantic crater made by what I presume had to have been something from outer space and was also probably the same thing that is responsible for killing everyone else. The size of the hole indicates that the piece of space rock that collided here was big enough to end all life on Earth, so that at least explains what happened. For all I know, this may not be the only place of impact. Based on what seems to be complete ecosystem failure in every direction I have gone, I am betting it isn’t.

Up until now, I could only guess it was the fucking moon or a meter or something like that smashing into Earth that ended it all, because the newspapers I found didn’t have any talk of looming nuclear war and he moon was missing. I had found it very suspicious that my childhood home was destroyed right before the rest of the world was left in ruins, but perhaps the two things had nothing to do with each other. The eyeball Luther was holding likely means nothing world saving and has nothing to do with the lack of lunar activity in my sky, but I’ll never know.

The thought of laying here, again all day, slow cooking until I am gone, with the pain I am already in… I just can’t.

As I start to lose it and hot tears distort my vision, I feel a manic smile pulling at my cracked lips.

“Dolores, this is it,” I hoarsely laugh, crazed over the fact that after suffering over these years here, this is how I go. “If I could just get back, I might be able to save them somehow, but I failed them and everyone else.” One single tear tries to escape the corner of my eye, but it doesn’t make it far. The arid air sucks it away, just like it’s going to soon devour me.

Feeling a final burst of panic and desperation mixed with sheer terror that I am clearly having a problem suppressing, I throw everything I have left into sitting up one more time. Reaching for the wagon, I tip the whole thing on its side, dumping our belongings and my beloved onto the ground next to me.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp over and over as I tow Dolores across the dirt into my arms. My body shudders as I fold myself around her rigid frame, looking for the comfort that she is always willing to give. Even she feels like she’s on fire, but I won’t let her go.

At least we can lay here together, burning.

‘I love you so much,’ she whispers in her unconditional, beautifully compassionate way.

“I know. I love you too, sweetheart. I am so fucking sorry.”

Not at all thinking straight, when I open my eyes again, looking over her shoulder, I see the shiny black revolver laying there. My labored breath catches, and I instantaneously reach for it.

‘Don’t,’ Dolores frantically begs.

She knows the real reason I carry this gun with us, and it isn’t for protection or hunting. There is nothing to hunt and no one we need protection from other than me.

My throat makes a thick, sticky sound when I try to swallow. I can feel my hand shaking as I clamp my eyes shut. The barrel of the gun is painfully hot as I drive it inside my mouth.

‘Please, Five. No!’

God damn it!

Yanking the gun back, I scream as I pull the fucking trigger over and over, sending a deafening round after round out into the nothing around us.

Rage and defeat and pain, that’s all there is left as my hand flops down and I drop the weapon so I can hold her. Again, I tell the only person that ever loved me that I am sorry I failed them as I shut my eyes and wait for the hurt to end.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometime later, I’m pulled from unconsciousness by something other than the dead silence of our wasteland of death.

Other than the sound of rain, wind, or things that are storm related, there is usually no other background noise in my world. Sometimes the eerie sound of a building collapsing, or even the explosions that were very frequent in those beginning months, could make me look up from whatever pile of rubble I was digging around in, but that is very infrequent these days. There is no reason to look up now.

I stopped hoping to hear real voices a long time ago. This strange sound in the distance isn’t a voice, but it is another human made sound I am familiar with.

The low, echoing bang, bang, bang fills the crater in the vast open space around me, causing the sound to circle back in an impressive refraction of sound.

My breaths are coming so shallow at this point, I know I am not going to make it to nightfall. I feel like I can’t even open my eyes, but my mind is processing this.

Bang, bang, bang....

It happens again in a steady pattern that seems intentional.

I know that sound. I can’t tell what direction it’s coming from, but I know what it is.

It's a powerful gun, one like a rifle and the way sounds when you fire it.

Guns need people to fire them...

But I’m alone. This doesn’t make sense.

Just as I’m drifting off again, it happens again. Three times.

Bang, bang, BANG!

Even though I am hardly thinking, it dawns on me that this is similar to the pattern for Morse code. It’s like someone is sending out a distress signal.

I begin forcing my filmy eyes open, peering out as they burn and blur. Of course, I see nothing other than the heat waves swimming across the ground, creating a mirage effect that makes it look like I’m lying in a river of water, dying by drowning rather than baking like a pathetically skeletal and unsatisfying piece of meat.

Sliding my hand a few inches from where it’s been feebly pressed against Dolores's back, I bump into the revolver.

My stiff fingers wrap around the scorching grip. I am unable to raise my arm, but I twist my wrist enough to fire the weapon out at a small angle from the ground.

The popping sound reverberates in the otherwise motionless air. The sound repeats over and over until it fades away.

I wait because I have nothing else that I can do.

Nothing. Just silence.

I start to think I imagined hearing anything at all.

I shut my eyes again.

I only had one shot left. I left one in the chamber on purpose. That small piece of lead had been my last chance to end my suffering quicker. I had decided I couldn’t do it, but that doesn’t mean that knowing the option was still there wasn't something that was giving me some fucked-up form of solace if I couldn’t take this anymore.

The hope that someone is out there is what circles around and around in what is left of my mind as I drift off into the fiery nothing that makes my parched body rack in waves of fevered chills until even that subsides again.

~~~~~~~~~~~

My mind is gone, lost to the insanity of my thirst. I know this because I swear, I just heard a braaaping, rumbling like sound moving across the landscape somewhere not that far away.

Hearing things that don’t make sense, that’s how the mind of a once admired genius is going out. Figures.

The idea that it might be thunder hits me and that idea isn’t that nuts, but it’s too late anyway. Even if it did rain, I have no way of collecting it in this condition and I still have a raging infection taking hold of me at an alarmingly fast rate, and that’s no doubt because it’s being fueled by extreme dehydration.

In my confused state, it does eventually occur to me that thunder doesn’t sound like this. It stops, then there’s intermittent random intervals between the growls.

This isn’t stopping and it’s getting closer, but I still don’t understand what it is.

Sudden thoughts of getting eaten by a monstrous creature from my childhood nightmares terrorize my mind even though that’s so far out there and doesn’t make any damn sense.

The only thing that gets me to open my eyes at this point is my crazed level of dread over what I perceive to be a very frightening sound. I am sure that a terrifying beast is bounding across the dirt and is about to dig its jagged teeth into me, ripping my body to shreds any second.

Squinting, I don’t understand what I’m seeing even though I am seeing it.

A cloud of dust is blooming out from what looks like a very fast-moving metallic object. My fingernails dig into the hard clay as I try to push up so I can look at it as it shoots past, but I can’t raise my head enough and I lose sight of it.

Holy Shit!

It’s not a huge, green scaly monster!

Panic rips through me when I finally realize that someone or something just drove past me.

Help.

I try to scream but I can’t even do that anymore.

“Help!” My voice cracks. The word comes out so weak, the sound of it feels like it’s sucked up in a vacuum. The effort of my sobs and the thundering vibration sends pain buzzing through my head.

My brain feels like it’s going to rattle out of my skull. If I could cover my ears I would, but my arms are near useless at this point as they remain tangled around Dolores.

The piercing sound abruptly stops but the ringing in my ears doesn’t.

I swear I hear the garbled sounds of a voice behind me. Then all of a sudden, I see legs! I can’t focus my vision enough to see anything other than what has to be a person's shoes.

It’s a real fucking person!

This time when I try to speak, my plea for help comes out as an unintelligible and pathetically pained moan.

“Shit, shit, shit,” the voice curses repeatedly as their figure looms over me.

I feel the strange sense of something touching my neck, pulling down my scarf as what must be cool fingers press just under my jaw, up against my windpipe. Then I hear more cursing and the same fingers traveling along my exposed leg all the way down to my bare foot.

Again, I moan, and I moan even more when Dolores suddenly gets removed from my limp arms.

“No,” I breathe in protest to the blurry face in front of mine.

The sun is setting, I can tell that much. The pink rays from it are reflecting off this person’s reflective goggles.

Even though they are very cautious about it, when they lift just my head up off the ground, it leaves me feeling like I am a piece of petrified gum being pried off the bottom of a table at a greasy dinner.

God…I miss Griddys. I would die for a donut and a coffee.

Not happening, and you ARE dying, you crazy dipshit!

I whimper as my body protests the movement and my head sickly swims as it lays in what I assume is this person's lap.

A distinctly female sounding voice coming from above tenderly hushes my cries. “Hang in there. I am going to help you.”

Her hand brushes across my grimy forehead, sliding back the wrap of my scarf from my head. Then, though it’s impossible, the person’s hand stops in place over my throbbing brain, and both my skin and her hand seem to get remarkably colder. It feels heavenly and I don’t care at all when the icy fingers gently slip over my eyes too.

A divine liquid begins to tickle my split and bloodied lips, making me instantaneously respond by opening them further to accept the glacially cold water being offered.

“There, that’s it,” she encourages, to which I sputter and cough violently on the first swallow. The water stops so I can catch my breath, then I feel the bottle press against my mouth again. “Try to go slow.”

It doesn’t matter that I can see nothing and I’m totally at their mercy. I’d do anything this angel said.

The hand shielding my eyes and making my aching head feel so much better, moves away, only to be replaced a moment later, cooler again. It feels like actual ice, not the palm of someone’s hand.

I can’t help but marvel over the glorious feel of it. It reminds me of when I was just a little boy and I had the flu so bad that Grace had to stay with me all night, repeatedly doing anything and everything she could to ease my pain, including placing dozens of cold clothes against my burning brow.

The water stops when I start coughing again, and the icy feeling moves to my neck again, trying to unfurrow the tight wrapping even more.

“There, that’s better.” It feels like chilly kisses are covering my skin as she touches me. My body shivers. “You are really burning up. You are lucky I had a flat tire moment where I did, because that's the only reason I heard you trying to signal for help. If I'd found you sooner..." She pauses to wipe my face with something. I have no idea what with, but it feels so much better after some of the filth is removed. "I have been looking for you all day. But there’s nothing out here. That’s why I didn’t come out this far until now. When I heard that last shot, I knew you were due west of me, so I knew you had to be somewhere near the crater, which also explains why I was able to hear the shots from that far away. There’s nothing out here to absorb the sound.”

It seems like she's trying to apologize. At first, I don’t know what she’s talking about with the signal thing, but after a minute or so of slowly drinking this stranger’s extremely valuable water, I remember.

Those first shots she’s talking about weren’t a signal for help, at least not in the way she thinks.

The hand on my head moves away and I hear her rummaging through my things. Thanks to having some liberation from the oppressive heat, I am able to find the strength to open my eyes so I can find Dolores. I have to know if she’s okay.

I quickly see that she is, but she’s been discarded in the pile of my other things. I want to reach out to her, but I’m not sure if I can. She tells me it’s okay and to keep drinking, so I do as she says.

I see the woman’s hand snatching up the bottle of antibiotics that I had tried to use. She holds it up above me so she can read it.

“They didn’t work,” I whisper as water runs down my chin.

She seems startled by me talking. “Clearly not,” she mutters before going back to propping my head more so I can drink easier.  She tosses the pills aside and presses her cold hand to my head again. “By the looks of things, you are going to need something that does work as soon as possible, and I don’t have anything with me, or a way to get you back with me to where I do unless you can get up and hold on to me as we ride.”

She says it all so fast, and with the way my brain is working, I don’t get that I’m supposed to respond. All I can think about is how great this feels and how awesome it would have been to have had a working vehicle of any kind over the last two weeks. My mechanical abilities are far from anything even remotely helpful and though at times I have had vehicles started and used them, keeping them working is another story and getting them around in this disaster is a whole different challenge that makes walking much more logical.

But then again, this magical woman did it, so maybe I should have tried harder.

“Well, do you think you can? Hold on to me, I mean?” she asks, interrupting my ridiculously scattered thoughts.

She pulls back the water and after swallowing my thick saliva a few times, and forcing my brain to work somewhat more rationally, I reply very quietly. “I can’t get up.”

The woman sighs but it doesn’t sound like she's mad about my predicament and what she says next proves that she's not.

“That’s okay. I can go back and get medicine. I will come back for you.”

“No,” I moan like a big baby.

“It’s okay, I promise I’ll come back. Driving around out here is not easy on everyday tires but I have an off-road jeep that can make the journey if I am very careful. It’s going to take maybe two hours or more depending on a few factors, but I don’t know how else to do it. If I try to pull you in this wagon, for one you won't fit, and two, I am not sure you’ll make it. It’s too far and it’s going to take too long,” she explains, already shifting my head off her lap.

I have no ability to stop her from leaving. I can only impotently let her position my head on the jacket she just took off and rolled up into a makeshift pillow for me.

As I lay on my side watching her scrambling around, I can see her some better. As I already gathered, my rescuer is a female. Since she took off her protective outer layer, sacrificing it to me, I can see that she’s wearing a rainbow colored, tie-dyed sleeveless top that’s cropped at the bottom. It reminds me of something Klaus would try to get away with wearing under his uniform jacket whenever dad wasn’t around. In my moment of delusion, I find that old memory of him, defiantly strutting around the academy until he got caught and severely punished, very funny for some reason.

The muscles in my face try to pull my mouth in a look to reflect that sentimental yet sad thought but I am not sure I am actually smiling.

Her pants look almost identical to mine in their utilitarian, multi pocket, militaristic style, but hers are forest green, not grunge covered gray. Her arms and her midriff are tanned unlike mine. I almost always stay covered out of necessity. I am like a ghost.

She looks healthy. Contrasting my dreadful condition, she isn’t skin and bones, but she is very thin and couldn’t be more than a hundred pounds, standing at about five-three in her laced-up riding boots. Even from my spot laying on the ground looking up, I can tell she’s petite.

When she pulls my cart over, I can see her muscles straining. She places it behind me where the sun’s setting rays are burning my back. I feel the instant relief from the small shade it provides.

After doing that, she comes around in front of me, looking for a few more things as her lengthy braid swings across her back. Her hair looks reddish or maybe it’s just the light from the setting sun. I can’t tell.

This time when she comes to me, I can see her face because her goggles are pushed up and her own scarf is pulled down, revealing rosy cheek bones and vibrant blue eyes. She is all color and glowing life compared to the muted harsh tones of this barren landscape, but it’s the kind looking and startlingly familiar smile that makes me suddenly stop breathing. It looks so much like the one that’s been haunting me since I saw it over five years ago.

This smile is a shade different. It’s slightly more mature, along with the face wearing it, but…

Holy Hell.

Phoebe?

Quickly running the math in my mind, I conclude that she’d be thirty-three years old now, not twenty-one like I am, and that is because for her, it would have been twelve years before the world abruptly ended and then five years since. For me, my world crashed and burned just one day after I met her. 

This couldn’t be her. That’s crazy.

My heart feels like it could stop even though it’s dangerously racing as my body aggressively refuses to give up in its fight to stay in the world of the living-the world that I just found out I am not the only living member of.

The woman gets down next to me again, her hand coming up to my face to turn my chin to her bottle the way she did before. Her impossibly icy hand presses against my chapped cheek and I lean into it.

“Come on. Let’s get the rest of this in you. I will leave you with more water and if you feel better from drinking that one, maybe you could eat something?” She waves her hand at my last three cans of food that I only now see that she placed within reach. “Don’t worry, I have more.” I can tell that she’s concerned about my hollow looking appearance as her eyes slowly move over my face. She purses her pink lips unhappily. “I won’t take long. Now that I finally found someone, there’s no way in hell I’m going to let them die,” she declares with a breathy chuckle. "The real problem seems to be that you are about as dried out as someone can get before becoming one with the dirt. I don’t think this infection is that bad yet, but I’m sure it feels that way with everything else you have going on. I have strong meds and I know they will work. You are going to make it, I promise.”

Even if I wasn't drinking and I could reply, I wouldn’t know what to say. A thank you would be a start but there’s so much more than that running through my mixed-up head.

Of all the people that could finally find me, it’s her. I know it is. It’s her voice too. I recognize it now. It’s impossible, just like her velvety cold touch in this heat, but it’s her.

After assuring me that I’m going to live, she patiently stays with me utill I finish all her water. And just like she said, she brings back another and it’s equally cold. I can even see the condensation on the outside of the metal canteen.

Crouching down, she reaches for my left wrist, removing my clenched fingers from the ground so she can make me take the bottle from her. My filthy shirt sleeve pulls up from the motion.

“Do you-" Her words abruptly cut off as her eyes land on my tattoo. “No way…” Her lips part and her brows furrow as she stares at the black umbrella branding that I was adorned with as a child. “You can’t be…” She leans in closer, her eyes wide as they look into mine.

All I can do is lay there and stare back, feeling some better but still very much like death and feel equally as floored as she is that this is happening. After a minute of us looking at each other, in utter shock and disbelief, I finally speak up, confirming what I'm sure she's figuring out.

“I am sorry, Fee,” I breathe.  

The line between her brow grows deeper.

“Five?”

“Yeah.”

She shakes her head back and forth as she unscrews the cap and pushes the next bottle closer to my mouth.

“Thank you,” I feebly offer, because I can’t think of anything else to say and I feel like I might throw up the precious water I just guzzled, so I focus on keeping that down and just breathing instead.

My eyes followed her hand as she reaches out and brushes back some of my long hair that’s stuck to various areas of my gritty face. Her amazing fever reducing fingers run along my jawline as she inspects me. I clench the bottle tighter to my chest as I force a few deep breaths in place of my extremely shallow ones.

I know what she is seeing and I’m sure it doesn’t look good. The look of malnourishment mixing with the scruffy, dark, almost black hair growing on my weather-beaten skin, are probably making it very hard to tell that I am the stuck-up jerk that she had so badly wanted to meet when she was just young girl who wanted so desperately to believe that someone like me was actually going to care about someone like her.

“How is this possible?” she asks, her voice coming out in beautifully hushed sounding wonder. “I mean, how did you end up here? They said you disappeared. It was the day right after that night. You look so…”

She doesn’t finish her thought, so I can only guess what she was going to say. Perhaps it's that I look terrible or maybe even that I look weirdly childish. Both would be right because I am basically a heap of useless garbage, and in spite of the way I look, I am a real grown-up like she is, but I am sure I look much younger still because of all the intermittent rounds of starvation I've been through, this moment being one of them.

Also, am not as old at her even though at one time, we were the same age.

I physically changed in the last five years, but definitely not for the better.

I shut my eyes for a second or two before reopening to the slightest traces of tears trying to form anyway. Rather than looking angry that the last man on Earth is probably the last person she’d want it to be, she looks so incredibly troubled.

“Have you been here the entire time?”

I can feel my lips trembling, but I can’t help it. I feel so awful, and that, and the memories of all that has happened since I last saw her, are merging with my current state of mind and it isn’t putting me in a very good place to act better.

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. You don’t have to talk.” She leans in, anxiously adjusting her jacket under my head. Then she tries to move my legs in a more comfortable way for me. Everything hurts and I know she can tell because she moves a blanket from my pack, placing it between my knees so my bones don’t rub together so badly.

More tears threaten to spill over that simple, kind act, but what Phoebe does next for me is nothing but extraordinary.

Folding her hands together as if she’s trying to crush something between her cupped palms, she shuts her eyes tightly. Her whole body seems to tremble from the effort of what she's doing. A moment later, she opens her hands, and at the same time, she reveals what looks like small ice chunks. Reaching up and taking her yellow bandana from around her neck, she dumps the sparkling crystals in the fabric and then props the cold pack against my forehead.

Totally thrown by this, I look over at Dolores.

"It’s her, the one you told me about and she’s special, like you. You’re going to make it, Five!’

Even though there’s tears in Dolores’s eyes, she sounds so happy.

“Can you make it till I get back?” Phoebe’s worried eyes run over me again and it reminds me of exactly how Dolores looks at me when she's distressed over something dumb that I'm doing or have already done despite her warnings.

 Jeezus. I am such a dickhead.

“Yes,” I croak.

She nods, then pushes herself up.

“It’s going to be dark soon, but don’t worry, I am coming back no matter what, so don’t die on me or I am going to be super pissed, Hargreeves.” The corner of her mouth quirks up just a bit.  “And I don’t mean pissed like I was the last time I saw your stupidly handsome face.”

Even though she’s rightly concerned about leaving, she is trying to ease my worries by teasing me and it makes my chest hurt even more. The foreign sound of her unrestrained laughter is so nice to hear. Like years ago, when I first heard it, I love how it sounds and makes me feel.

It’s nuts considering how close I am to death, but my chest is moving up and down as air swiftly moves in and out of my lungs and I could almost laugh over that threatening, and insulting, and sort of flattering comment she just gave me.

She had once told me she thought I was so smart and handsome, and hearing her praise made my head even bigger than it already was. I was so pathetically starved for attention; she was right about that and so many other things she said about me. But we both know she was wrong in both those two assessments. 

Something in my expression must amuse her even more because she smiles at me in that full way that I remember her doing that one fateful night.

I still don’t understand it.

She begins to move behind me where I presume her motorbike is, but all of a sudden, she stops. Swiftly bending down, she takes Dolores by the crook of her arm, hoisting her up.

Placing Dolores down next to me, Fee smiles again, but this time it’s at her, not me.

“Please make sure that he drinks that and doesn’t kick the bucket before I get back.”

Fee is talking as if Dolores can understand her, which of course she can, but it’s still throwing me to see her talking to her the same way I do.

Even weirder, Dolores replies that she will, and I'm so confused, I am only halfway certain Fee didn't hear it. Either way, seeming satisfied with how she’s leaving me, my savior moves to go, swiftly heading out of my sight as I drowsily close my eyes.

“I don’t deserve this, Phoebe.”

There were so many things I didn’t see that one night we were together. I was just a stupid teenaged boy that couldn't concern myself with looking at other people and their suffering. She tried to tell me who she was, and what she could do, but I ignored it. I used her and then I viciously put her down for daring to point out the truth that I was too stubborn and arrogant to see. I have had many lonely years to think about that night and I have never forgiven myself for it or for so many other horrible things I did.

Phoebe comes back. She bends down in front of me. Again, she pushes the bottle towards my mouth. “Yes, you do. You deserve what happened to you. Now don’t die.”

Her lips spread in the most curious looking smirk, then she gets up, and this time I know she’s leaving when I hear the loud roar of the two-stroke engine revving a few times before she tears off over the empty landscape.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fee does come back, but I have no idea how long she was gone because after slowly finishing the next canteen, I drifted off in a fit of intense shivers.

Waking to the sight of hazy headlights beaming across the open field couldn’t be a better feeling even though my fever is so much worse again. I’m shaking even more, but it’s not from cold.

I peer out from under my blanket. The wind picked up at some point and it’s whipping across the landscape, covering me in suffocating dust. I can just make her out as she rushes my way from the driver side of the vehicle.

“You still in there, Five?” she anxiously questions the moment she’s on her knees in front of me.

Dolores gets moved back again. A cold hand covers my heated brow.

“Yes,” I cough out, proving that I’m alive.

“Come on,” she says as she starts uncovering me, “we need to get you away from this enormous shit hole you decided to take a dirt nap by.”

My body isn’t working, and I can hardly find the strength to cling to her as she lifts me, but she manages to roll me into a sitting position.

“Alrighty, on three. I am going to pick you up, just hang on. I will try to take as much of your weight as I can, okay?”

“Okay.”

“One, two, thrrr…eeEE!  Shhhh- shhh -IT!”

She gets me up alright, but right after that, my weight proves too much for her when my body limply tumbles into hers. I nearly knock us both back down to the ground. Stumbling backwards, Fee’s knees swiftly lock and the heels of her boots skit and skirt in the dirt before plowing down to prevent our fall.

“I was not expecting you to be so heavy,” she gasps.

She is clearly struggling, and I feel awful about that and just plain awful, especially when I start to dry heave on her. Thankfully nothing comes out or she'd have puke running down her back.

“I am sorry,” I wheeze, holding her as tight as I can. I try to put weight on my good foot and the other but the lightning like jolts of pain shooting up from my feet are making my legs about as useful as mush.

“It’s okay,” she grates out through what sounds like very clenched teeth.

My feet all but drag as she trudges the few yards to the jeep where she smartly left one of the back doors open. I tumble into the back seat, then Fee has to pull me the rest of the way in from the other side.

I feel so sick, more heaves have me hanging my head down to the floor as I start to weakly cry. “Dolores!” I sob just as Fee slams the door shut.

There is no way to explain how relieved I feel when the door opens again and Phoebe has her. The backseat area is cramped but Fee throws the passenger seat forward and places Dolores on the floor in the back behind it so she's easily within my reach.  

If Fee sees me crying, she doesn’t let on. As soon as she saves Dolores, she's off again and all I can do is lay here. My head feels like it’s spinning as I listen to the back hatch open and things banging around. I realize that she must be loading my things, and even maybe my treasured cart, but I can’t help her.

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes before she’s done and back with me. Opening the back door, opposite from where my head is, Phoebe gets back in. The dome light is dim when she flicks it on, but I can see that her bright clothing is now covered in the same silt that I am bathed in. Not stopping, she reaches in front and grabs a bag. Taking things out, she immediately starts cleaning her hands with sanitizing wipes and what smells like rubbing alcohol.

“I know you feel horrible, and this ride isn’t going to help that, but I am going to try to make it as tolerable as I can.”

I silently lay there, watching as she discards her soiled materials on the floor at her feet, and then starts in, working the button on my cuff so she can get my sleeve up on my left arm.

“It's been a long time, but I have done this many times back when my mom was sick, so don’t be scared, I sort of know what I am doing.” She laughs but it sounds nervous despite her assurances and shot at humor over what has to be a very sad and tragic memory.

The chill of the alcohol as she cleans my skin sends a new wave of shudders through my burning body. I shut my eyes as I feel the syringe prick me, then I hear the ripping of tape before she seals the needle down on my arm so it can’t slip out.

“Okay. That part was easier than I thought. Your veins are very easy to see.”

She breathes a sigh of relief as she scrambles around. Peering up at her again, I see her pulling out a clear bag of fluid and more medicines and supplies all in sterile wrappings.

“I found all this stuff at a clinic that was miraculously still mostly standing. The drugs should be good,” she explains as she hangs the bag on the clothing hook above my head and extends the clear plastic tubing down, attaching it to one of the two ports sticking out of my arm. “We are going to pump you full of nutrients and I will inject the Ceftriaxone all one go. It’s great for treating infections that other antibiotics might not be able to fight, so I'm sure it will do the trick.”

With a determined look in her eyes, she lays her fingers against my arm to steady them so she can slowly inject the drug into the other port that isn’t attached to the bag over my head.

“There, two things out of the way.” Fee appears apologetic for leaning on me as she adjusts herself a little, moving her weight off my pelvis, but I hadn’t even noticed her backside was pressed up on me. “I need to watch you for a little while, just to make sure you aren’t having any bad reactions to the meds. Then, if this part goes well, I have something I can give you to help you get through the trip back to where I have safe shelter,” she explained.

Her hand falls on my upper thigh, rubbing softly and I don’t think she realizes that she’s doing it until my eyes move from hers to her hand. She stops, and starts to take it away, but I sluggishly move my arm with the IV in it over enough to place my trembling hand on top of hers to stop her retreat.

“Thank you for saving me.”

She smiles. “You’re welcome.” The wind outside blows hard enough that the jeep gets rocked from one of the harder gusts. She scrunches her mouth in a funny way. “This weather sucks, huh?” 

“Ah-huh.”

Fee lets out a pretty little laugh over my lame answer.

“Yeah,” she says, still giggling, “it usually does out here and pretty much everywhere else I've been, but playing with the extremes of hot and cold are my areas of specialty, so I can tolerate most of this crap climate we have found ourselves in. But, when these nasty winds come with all the sand, I can’t do shit to make it better.”

I want to laugh over that, but I can’t. Instead, I gulp down a sob and look at Dolores again.

“I am sorry for what I did to you.” My words come out broken by the incredible emotion behind them.

She says nothing, so I hesitantly look back at her. Her smile falters for a moment before the quick easy kindness returns to brighten her stunning features.

“I know, Five. It’s okay," she quietly replies as she gently squeezes my leg.

Confused and on the verge of losing it again, I shut my eyes to block the tears.

I feel her moving her hand away again and I reactively increase my hold on it, and she stops again.

“Hey...it's okay," she quickly assures. "That was a long time ago. I may have been very naïve, but even back then I understood enough to realize that you were acting like that and saying that stuff because you were very messed up. We both were. I was young and so romantically inexperienced.”

She chuckles at herself over that, then bends down and starts picking up the trash as she further took the blame from me.

“I was crushing on you big time and I thought maybe I could make you like me too, and you'd happily want to run away with me if I could show that we were the same. That was crazy and I didn’t tell you everything, and I didn't act right either. I was wrong for not being totally honest about my intentions, and you called me out on it, and you were right to be mad, because I was up to something very misguided, but even so, you were an impressively douchey top shelf dick weed.”

Her mouth pulls to the side in a grin that looks exactly the way I remembered it when she was flirting with me, only now, it's even more beautiful.

“True,” I agree, "But I still want you to know how sorry I am for everything."

The hand she has resting on my thigh pulls away and I have to fight the urge not to reach for it again.

“Five, I forgave you a long time ago, but I accept your apology if you accept mine.”

There’s no hiding my tears from her now, so I don’t even try.

Another strong wind blows the side of the jeep making her look out anxiously into the shadows behind the dark glass. “I need to get us out of here before the tires get buried in this shitstorm. As you found out, when you are out this far, things can get very bad, very fast. Why were you here of all places, what happened to you?”

I don’t say anything, so she looks away again and finishes cleaning up, then she starts trying to adjust my legs for me, even reaching in back to grab a clean looking pillow for my head and a blanket to tuck between my legs again. “Never mind. You don’t have to talk. I think it’s safe to say you’re okay with the meds at this point, so just rest. I’ll get us out of here.”

Fee leans over and starts to brush my hair back out of my face again by tucking it behind my ear. A breathy sound of contentment escapes from my parted lips.

Seeing as I can't even begin to hide how nice this feels to me, she babied me even more, running her cold fingers over my temples over and over and the light pressure feels like it's helping push all the pain away.

My throat clenches and my eyes burn as I start to speak. “I thought there might be somewhere better. That’s why I did this.”

Phoebe’s hand stops and she pulls it back even though I wish she wouldn't. “What happened?” she asks.

Again, I feel like she’s asking me about the ‘big what happened,’ not just about why I wandered into a desert of nothingness to die. It’s easier to look at Dolores again, so I roll my head to the side, burying my dirty face in the clean smelling pillow.

“I made a big mistake. Instead of just leaving my life behind like you said I should do if I wasn't happy with it, I ran from it, only I didn’t think it through. When I took off the day after we met, I didn’t mean to jump so far, or to this.”

“You have been here since then, all alone?”

“Yes."

The sound of the sandstorm fills the void as she appears to think about that.

"I couldn’t get back. I tried and tried. I still try. This whole time, I thought I was the only one left. I did this to myself, and I hurt so many people. I know I deserve this, but it’s been so hard,” I whisper as I bite down and swallow the cannon ball sized lump in my throat.

Phoebe shuffles the things in her hands, and I see that she has another vile and syringe at the ready.

“No, you don’t deserve this. No one does. And I didn’t find anyone either, not until you. I never wanted anything bad to happen to you and I am so sorry that it did.”

She sticks the needle in the bottle, pulling the plunger back to fill it. She spurts out some of the liquid to clear the needle before she sticks it in my arm.

“The only reason I survived is because I didn’t burn or get buried when the shock waves hit," she added. "And then the only reason I have persisted after the world fell into a seemingly endless atomic winter for the first two years is because I can regulate my temperature and even the temperatures of other things. I don’t know how you made it this long in these conditions.”

She looks so sad again and I don’t know what to say.

“You can make ice,” I breathe as I verbalize just one of the zillion things running through my head.

She smiles and then looks down at her hands. “I can manipulate water to either very hot or very cold extremes. I can also somewhat control or create fire. Turns out those two things come in very handy in the apocalypse, especially when that includes being able to pull water molecules from the atmosphere, even when it seems there are none, as you saw with the ice thing.”

It’s as I am thinking about that, linking it back to the thousands and thousands of charred bodies I have seen, and the cold feel of her hands, and her dozens of magical candles around us that one night, amazing yet horrible night that I suddenly realize I don’t feel any pain.

“Wha-dd-you-" I start to groggily ask.

“Just sleep, Five. We can talk all you want when you’re better.”

Thinking of the past, my mind and body slip away into a numb bliss, but I know I am not alone anymore.

Link to chapters 5, 6, and 7 to complete the story and also find and extended scene link.

Thanks for reading. If you are enjoying it, let me know. Three more chapters to go and I will be posting them all together very soon.😘

Master Post List to all my Five Centric stories and art

Link to my other Tumblr posts

Link to this and my other works on A03

[skid-the-mighty-poet]

Introduction + navigation

!!EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS BLOG IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING RIGHT NOW… (or probably ever tbh)

Hello, I’m Skid and I started writing poetry around summer 2021 (well i did some before that too but I got properly into it in summer 2021) and I never told anyone about it but kept doing it more and more. I think art should not exist in a vacuum, that is to say that art is never finished until it is shared (I heard that in a tumblr post once…). Despite believing that I am still too nervous and struggle too much with openness to show my poetry to people in real life or on a blog too closely tied to me (i have plenty of friends who follow my main) so I decided I’d make an anonymous sideblog to release all my poetry into the world! Here I can be as open and self indulgent as I want (I don’t know how committed I am to the anonymous thing so I probably won’t try too hard to like make sure no knows my main or whatever but I’m still not gonna like link them to each.)

Tag System

all poetry tagged with #poetry

all prose tagged with #prose

all poetry + prose tagged with #writing

title of poetry + prose will be repeated in tags for easier searching

poetry + prose tagged with date it started being written (i write in notes app so it all has it automatically recorded) in three tags; #year, #month year, #month day year

Btw, I tend to ramble about stuff in tags, mainly just background info about the work. It can influence or seem to demand a specific interpretation of the work but thats not really the intent there. I just can be really talkative, especially when it comes to my art, so sometimes I end up fully analyzing my own stuff… HOWEVER! I encourage you to make your own conclusion (and analysis, PLEASE tell me your analysis!!! I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on my work!! PLEASE! PLEASEEEE!!!!) of my work. You can completely ignore what I have to say in the tags or you can factor it into your understanding of the work if you want, world’s your oyster!! If there’s a specific location (or other detail the reader could not possibly have the context for) mentioned in the work then it’ll probably be explained in the tags so there is a benefit to reading my tags but if you don’t want someone else’s interpretation to influence yours then feel free to just completely ignore my tags! No hard feelings if you don’t give a shit about my commentary, haha!

If you have any thoughts, analysis, complements or even criticisms please tell me in the tags, reblogs, or comments (if you want to, that is)!! I would greatly appreciate any sign someone is actually reading and thinking about the meaning of my work!!

Thank you for visiting my blog and for reading!!

[milktearosethorn]

I don’t want to try further argue because I think we agree on the most important takeaways, which is that there is a bias in the way certain characters are undervalued AND that individuals and groups should not be shamed for what they love.

I never made my initial post with the intention to make a ‘call out’ or shame anyone. There is a reason I didn’t include any tags, nor did I try to point out a ‘culprit’ for a frustrating phenomena that I noticed. I vented about something on a surface level on main, a bunch of people unexpectedly resonated with that and shared it, I turned off reblogs on the original post and shared data that I collected for every character to try to be fair, and because I thought that the stats were interesting overall!

I do think that it is worth talking about bias on a high level, and doing so without trying to place blame on anyone is not inherently shameful. Personally, I’ve found these wider fandom discussions to be helpful and thought provoking! I thought that maybe that bias was reflected in AO3 stats because of what I noticed at a first glance, but honestly this is not a hill to die on and I’m open to other interpretations (and your own analysis is very eye opening!). It would take too much time that I don’t have to really crunch the numbers in a way that shows due diligence, and there are so many contributing factors that I agree it’s pretty fruitless to try to come to a definitive conclusion.

Just as you say that I still perpetuated shame while stating it not to be my intention, I would like to say that despite your stated intention not to be rude, it was still extremely hurtful to see my words portrayed in a way that I feel mischaracterizes me, and to have myself made out to represent a greater straw man and be made an example of. I apologize if I’m being too sensitive or unfair to you, but for context this is not the first time I approached someone in their inbox to share my thoughts in good faith only to feel like I’ve been put on blast by people I admire. The first instance of this is still persistent because my ask is linked on the blog’s FAQ, so it’s a bit of an open wound. I deleted the other posts about this on my blog because once again, this is not a hill I’m willing to die on, and also my stupid baka RSD acted up. But overall, we are pretty much on the same page, so I don’t want to argue and make this a bigger issue than it needs to be, nor do I want us to have any sour feeling towards each other! I’m also happy to talk further in DMs.

Hi Sif! I saw you addition to my post and I wanted to follow up and say that I did a more complete analysis looking at every character on the Dream SMP. I definitely didn't think my original post was going to spread as far as it did, since it was me just gushing my surface level thoughts. Part of the reason I followed up with a more thorough look was that I didn't want to let misinformation spread without actually looking at the full data.

I agree with some of your points but I would like to push a little and say that I do think that there is still a gender bias. While Hannah's situation might be more related to her later addition to the server and lack of prominent romantic relationships (beyond Tinarose, which still counts as a rarepair by numbers), the numbers for Niki are a significant outlier considering her early presence and involvement in numerous character/story arcs, especially compared to some characters that fared better than her.

I obviously can't control for every variable and every reason the numbers may show what they do. And there are many, many reasons people can and should use tags the way they do. But I think it is not too far-fetched to say that the Dream SMP fandom does have a problem with overusing tags that don't actually portray what happens in their fic AND with under-valuing characters with marginalized identities, which are partially reflected in the way relationship tags and character tags work together as they do today.

Here's the thing, I actually don't think that Niki's story count is weird at all, I think you may just be underestimating how popular certain pairings/platonic relationships are.

Let's take a comparison that I think is more than fair, c!Punz. Punz has a pretty comparable if not larger impact on the story than c!Niki. particularly towards the finales he plays different roles in them. But outside of c!Dream he doesn't have a lot of other major relationships that are popular in fanon, outside of him and c!Purpled. Despite this, c!Punz is often important to the plot, and he joined a full month before Niki did. Hell, he joined before Tubbo and just after Tommy.

But look at his top 10,

He does have 2/10 of his top relationships, but it's platonic/romantic drunz, so just different flavors of the same relationship. Outside of that, you see all the same super popular ships that you saw on ever other characters. It's just what happens in fandom.

As it turns out, some dynamics are just incredibly popular. DNF alone has nearly 25k fics written just for it. So honestly, with that many raw fics, it's hardly surprising that about 5% of them happen to feature Punz. Which ends up being more fics than the rest of his relationship category.

It's not that Punz is being incorrectly tagged in these fics, it's just that DNF is incredibly incredibly popular, and by virtue of that you end up here.

SBI similarly has about 21k fics, and Wilbur & Tommy have about 22k.

Niki's numbers aren't particularly weird, it's just that these particular dynamics are extremely popular. If you filter out just those three insanely popular dynamics, you get this,

Niki ends up in 4/10 (sorta 4/9 since one of these is just "no romantic relationships" which people use as a relationship tag for some reason rather than just putting that in additional tags).

I'm not saying that there aren't gender biases in how certain characters are treated. To some extent people often feel less comfortable shipping female creators because people in the past were being creeps about it and forcing it onto female creators in their chats (lots of creators had to address this with their chats, Techno included). Which will lead to a specific decline in the amount they get tagged in the ship section.

What I am saying is that I don't actually think there's a gender bias in how characters are tagged, and I don't think ship stats are a good way to prove that. Characters can be important to a story and not be tagged in the ship section. Also, frankly, a lot of times authors force in or tag a "popular" ship just to get more attention for their story, even if that ship isn't a huge part of the story.

I'm also not rely sure what exactly you want to see happen with a post like that. Like, should people not tag female characters that are relevant to their story if they're also tagging a really popular ship? I don't think that's a good idea. It is just kinda being the fandom police if that really is your take on it, if you come at it from the perspective that you get to decide how other people should tag. I know you said you weren't trying to be that, but like, that's how it comes off.

Some people will tag based on relevancy, some people tag as warnings. Both are valid methods of tagging, and you don't have a right to control how other people use their tags. That's something I believe very strongly in.

I've also never really been fond of turning enjoyment of characters into a moral thing either. People will enjoy what characters they connect to for any number of reasons, and shaming them for not enjoying particular female characters has never done anyone any good. I've seen it a thousand times before in every fandom I've been in and all it does is make people feel guilty. What actually does a lot more good is instead being excited about the female characters you like, and creating interesting fandom content for them that helps get other people interested.

If you want more people to be passionate about something, start from a point of passion, not a point of shame.

[ladyluscinia]

speaking as someone who reads a lot of ed/stede fic i think you're exactly right re: woobification of ed. if the fic in question touches on e10 his actions are usually given far less weight than stede's, and imo i think it's because a lot of fans don't know how to deal with the gravity of what he did. something i've seen often is that ed will get some grief from the crew and they may be somewhat cautious around him, but mostly it's stede who has to work to win back ed's trust and affection. which, yes, obviously he should have to do that, he fucked up, but ed not having to do the same with the crew & izzy if the author even bothers to write him in has always seemed idk unfair to me? obviously, people can write what they want, but i do feel like this attitude is prevalent in fandom meta as well. it goes on a wavelength of something like: all of ed's actions towards izzy, the crew, and stede are largely excused, stede's behavior towards izzy receives the same treatment, and izzy is simply not around for any variety of reasons and no one cares that he got his toe cut off. the reason i have accidentally read so much fic like this is because every time i open something that piques my interest thinking maybe it will be different and almost always it is not. i wouldn't be so bothered by this if it didn't contribute to the pipeline of me seeing with my own eyes posts made by people on this very website attempting to justify bodily mutilation as some fucked up form of punitive justice.

Hi, yes, all of this.

Like, I will confess that I'm already very lukewarm on BlackBonnet as a ship (just not my preferred dynamic), but I have been avoiding the tag on tumblr and AO3 like it's radioactive because I know I will risk losing all positive feelings for it in a matter of hours (which... probably not a great idea seeing as it's endgame 🤣). I'm sticking to SteddyHands where nitpicks about characterization are easier to spot in advance and often actual nitpicks, not slam the back button levels of drastic.

Anyway, the part of this ask that really grabbed my attention was...

...it's because a lot of fans don't know how to deal with the gravity of what he did.

...because that is a major part of the problem and also kinda interesting to talk about. And I have thoughts on it, both on how the show is potentially equipped to handle it and why so many fans struggle.

So preface: here's a link to my followup woobification thoughts post, which links the original woobification thoughts response right at the top.

Now... Why is reckoning with and forgiving Edward's actions (that are obviously going to be forgiven) proving so difficult that it makes sidestepping the problem entirely such a common fandom response instead?

---

There's two main factors that I think are the most important at the moment. (Well, three, but the third is anti culture declaring that faves must not be "problematic" or "bad people" or you aren't allowed to like them, and that's way bigger than this specific OFMD problem. Those antis just need to be ignored. So two actually interesting to discuss main factors.)

The genre of the show is hitting a very nice spot in handwaviness around violence that is crucial to getting past this in canon.

Edward's character arc spent pretty much all of S1 in the setup phase, while Stede actually progressed through his.

Genre, I'm almost positive, is going to be the show's saving grace in this matter, because they have played some really clever games with it. I talked a lot in this post about how handwaving narrative consequences at a certain point can be a really good thing, but it's also deceptively hard to set up because if you fail to be consistent then it only highlights your issues.

Edward's actions in a more serious show would be pretty hard to come back from, and even in this show, they aren't currently being treated as funny or no big deal. That's why just handwaving them from here doesn't work. Stede fixing the Kraken with a swashbuckler entrance and a kiss is a funny joke and a great fanart, but not a satisfying story for Edward. At the same time, OFMD's humor is actually really dark for a show that is best described as a romcom. Meaning even as Edward does awful things you can keep a running thread of humor to kind of lighten the gravity - like Jim's "What did you do to your face?" comment.

I still maintain that the big three four events of the Kraken turn - Izzy lashing out at Edward, Edward "killing" Lucius, Edward maiming Izzy, and Stede's abandonment overshadowing it all - have to be dealt with roughly equivalently and at the same time. Leave a hurt out (like Izzy's toe) and you mess up the whole balance, so there's one problem for people who don't like Izzy very much. But so long as all the characters get to acknowledge how they fucked up and how they won't do it again (requiring some character growth and communication from them all), then the genre tone will let them collectively move on without unpleasant hurdles (like Lucius feeling unsafe on a ship with Edward for the rest of his life).

This helps the show, but it doesn't necessarily help fans and fanfic, because a lot of fanfic writers are not working in this genre.

Angst people are writing angst, fluff writers are in slice of life romance, plot heavy fics might be adventures... all very fun, but possibly lacking the required tools to satisfactorily resolve these problems the way the show is likely going to. They have to adapt it or discard the need for a solution entirely, and adapting it might be trickier both because it's more work and there's a lot more open questions around Edward than around Stede.

We're back to character arcs.

It's so easy for fans to focus on how Stede needs to fix what he's done because, yeah, it wasn't that terrible in comparison, but also the show has already built and explored the whole framework for him to do so. We know exactly what was going through his head, we know what he wants now, we know the direction his character is going in... He's most of the way there already. For Izzy enjoyers, too, a lot of his character arc was covered this season. We have lots of evidence for his motivations and wants and plausible ways he could grow as a character, even if it's a bit more open to interpretation than Stede.

Edward, meanwhile, has just started. We can try and interpret his behavior this season for hints as to what's driving him, but there have been no recent backstory flashbacks or goals he was openly chasing beyond the general idea of Stede, and clearly the Kraken is not about getting Stede back. His flaws haven't been starkly established, much less the intended solutions. Like, I think that greed for both lives he's been sampling is a major part of it, and the resolution will involve compromising to a life he's satisfied with, but that's just informed speculation at this point.

Edward is so hard to figure out in a fic because first you have to decide what you think the problem and solution is, and then how to adapt it to whatever genre you are working in so that it actually fixes the whole attempted murder of 7 people + maiming and abduction. Not very easy if said genre is, say, the ever popular fluffy romance. Good fucking luck conveying even the idea of a whole arc in a oneshot. It can be done, but not easily. Meta, too, can have a sort of "genre" that causes a similar struggle. I feel like my meta probably isn't overly concerned with how characters are mentally affected by violence committed against them, for example, simply because it rarely interests me long term and I watch so many shows where violence is omnipresent, which probably helps me here.

Anyway, for a lot of fans it's much easier to just focus on what has been clearly established - that Edward has childhood trauma and was hurting - and a solution that conveniently can play out in almost every genre - make Edward feel better. Even if, as I will continue to complain, that's not really an arc and therefore boring. Also pretty woobifying to suggest a guy who committed 7 attempted murders had no underlying issues that are on him to address. Just really hurt feelings and the need to believe in love again.

So yeah. Interesting factors. I think considering both makes impressive strides to explain where the problem is coming from, even if it doesn't really prevent it. Just back to waiting for season 2, I guess.

...also I just realized that this is finally my version of the "only BlackHands shippers get Edward as a character" post 🤣🤣🤣 Because they are actually pretty good at navigating the Edward/Izzy part of this. Sometimes. I have way more faith in them out of the gate, at least.

(EDIT: Follow up response where I make a Helen of Troy joke)

[iam93percentstardust]

so i want to talk for a minute about why it’s so important that you reblog fics on tumblr (yes, i know there’s a problem with art too but this is specifically about fics today)

first of all, let me kick this off by saying, if you’re reading this, this is for you specifically. yes, you with less than a hundred followers, you with less than ten followers, you with zero followers. there seems to be this misconception that it doesn’t matter if you don’t reblog something because no one will see it and i’m telling you right here, right now, that you’re wrong. it definitely 100% matters and i’m going to tell you why

last month, i reached a follower milestone and was very excited - for about a day and a half and then my excitement plummeted because what i realized was that i had just hit this milestone and yet the number of notes on my fics had never been lower. at first i was baffled. how could i have more followers than ever but be getting less notes than i used to? at the time, i was posting one to two ficlets every day so i thought maybe the quality was decreasing because of how much i was putting out and i just hadn’t noticed so i decided to take a break from posting ficlets and focused on my longer works and the events i was participating in

i went back to posting today after asking for prompts from followers yesterday and go figure, the number of notes is still lower than it was compared to posts from the beginning of the year, even factoring in the time that’s passed since then. so then i thought to check the notes themselves and what i ended up finding was that while the number of likes hadn’t changed, the reblogs had (interestingly, this drop in notes coincided with a post making the rounds telling writers to be happy with the silent readers who leave neither likes nor reblogs on works but that’s a story for another post)

this is when i went to a couple friends to complain that i didn’t know what i was doing wrong and made an off-hand comment about wondering if people were seeing all these posts begging for people to reblog and just not thinking it applied to them, which is when may - thank you, may - told me that yeah, that’s exactly what a lot of blogs think so let me tell you why it does actually matter that you reblog, even if you don’t think it does

firstly, as it relates just to the author, when you reblog, you’re telling the author that not only did you like their story, but you want to share it with everyone else too. i don’t know an author out there who doesn’t go through the reblogs and read the tags and i can pretty much guarantee that we all get that warm, fuzzy feeling when someone leaves a particularly nice tag

there are two common arguments that i hear for this point: what if i like something cringey and why does it matter if i reblog something when i don’t have any followers to share it with?

as for the first argument, no media is unproblematic and no media is something that everyone will consider non-cringey. there’s always going to be someone out there who thinks your chosen fandom is cringey and it’s best to realize that now and get over it. you can’t please everyone. besides, it’s your blog. why wouldn’t you want to post things you like on your blog?

as for the second argument, if it’s not enough for you that even just the act of wanting to share fics means something to the authors, then let me bring you to my second point: fandom is built on active, not passive, participation

we’ve all heard stories about the star trek fans who actively passed paper copies of fic around to share it with people. fandom was built on sharing those fics. friendships were built on sharing those fics. and if those fans had taken the fics they wrote and hidden them away, shared them with only a couple friends and told them not to distribute their works, modern fandom as it is today wouldn’t exist. we’d still be hiding our fics, hoping that we don’t get the all-terrifying dmca notice

along the same lines, tumblr is built on active participation. every couple of months, it seems like tumblr comes out with a new way to make it harder for content creators to share their stuff: the 2018 nsfk ban, shadow-banning, problems with the read more, and recently not being able to put links in your work if you want it to show up in the tags. all of this means that it’s up to us to keep fandom on tumblr going because tumblr isn’t going to do it for us

tumblr’s algorithm, unlike just about every other social media site, is designed around reblogs. this, in many ways, makes sense. tumblr is a blogging platform so of course its algorithm is designed around what gets shared. this means that posts that show up in the tags are the ones that get reblogged. the posts that show up in the On Your Dashboard, What You Missed, and Recommended features are all the ones that get reblogged. the posts that show up on the login screen, for those of you who regularly see it, are the ones that get, you guessed it, reblogged

so what that means is that, even though you might have only a couple or even no followers, your reblog counts toward that algorithm and that post gets bumped a little bit higher in the tag

which is why it’s such a big problem when people stop reblogging. i can’t tell you how many times i’ve seen a tag saying something along the lines of “wow this is so good, why doesn’t it have more notes?” well, typically it’s because anywhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the notes on that post are likes, which means that tumblr’s algorithm counted my fic as worthless and didn’t bother promoting it

which leaves me where i currently am: reblogging my own ficlets over and over in the hopes that someone will like it enough to reblog it, tagging it with something as pleading as “if you like please consider reblogging” because if i use anything stronger, i get a whole bunch of people telling me that i can’t tell people what to post

no, you’re right, i can’t tell you what to post. the most i can do is beg and explain yet again why every reblog counts

[obviouslygenuinely]

Babygate Analysis/Conclusions: A Non-Larry Perspective

(Image Credit: Hollywood Life)

I'm prefacing this post with a few disclaimers:

After some consideration, I chose to write this without factoring in Larry whatsoever. No Larry-related points, proof, or speculation in any way. This is solely analyzing babygate from an unbiased perspective. 

I don't claim to know the entire truth. It is impossible for any of us to know.  What I conclude is based on direct evidence, circumstantial evidence, research, and analysis.

I am willing to discuss opposing views. I’m happy to talk about the topic in a civil, kind, and mature matter. I will dismiss any discourse that is aggressive, immature, and so on.

I did not include every single opinion/conclusion/piece of evidence I found. I condensed my thoughts as much as possible (and this is still a novel-length post). There are so many more points I can think of. However, babygate masterposts cover all of that; I’ll link to some of those at the end.

The conclusion points aren't in a very specific order. I aimed to list related points one after another. Aside from that, it's not in order of "hardest to weakest" evidence.

Please read “Author’s Notes” for additional clarity/input. They interject thoughts/etc. that I feel are necessary to include. 

Lastly, I included links to every source I cited in this post. However, I did not tag the Tumblr users. I’m not sure if they are comfortable with having Babygate questions/comments directed to their blogs. If you are a linked source and want to be tagged, please let me know! 

My Initial Reaction To Babygate

In February of 2020, I received several messages on LateToLarry requesting that I analyze something called “babygate”. I had no idea what babygate meant at the time. 

I learned what it meant, and prior to any research I felt the theory was so absurd. I also felt uncomfortable analyzing it because I believed I’d feel bias as a single mom. The idea of discussing a random child in depth initially bothered me, too. I declined to analyze it last year.

However, I did a LOT of research over time. My opinion has changed significantly. Below, I’ve shared my main conclusions and analysis about babygate. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy my post! 

1. No Paternity Test Was Performed Prior To The Pregnancy Announcement

Louis was/is a prominent celebrity and has a current net worth of $70 million. From legal, financial, and practical standpoints, it makes no sense for him to choose not to get a test. 

It’s unheard of in Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Any sensible team -lawyers, PR reps, managers, advisors, etc. - would not just go along with it. They are employed to protect his career and image. 

The Opposing Views

A. “Briana/Louis didn’t want to risk miscarriage with prenatal testing.”

Non-invasive testing is completely safe for fetuses and pregnant women, so there’s no medical reason for the lack of testing.

B. “Louis chose not to get the test done because he wanted to be a father and was invested in the pregnancy/parenting.”

Time has shown that this is not true. Louis does not have custody; there was a brief custody case in 2016 that led nowhere. He does not have a consistent or prominent role in the child’s life.

Conclusion

There is no logical reason for the lack of paternity testing prior to the announcement unless Louis knew he was not the father and all parties knew this to be true.

2. There Was No Confirmation Of A Paternity Test After The Birth

I’ll keep this section fairly short. A quick Google search returns dozens of conflicting reports. Many of them state that Louis demanded a paternity test shortly after birth. Other reports state that he has never pursued a paternity test. 

Here are a few examples:

“Louis Tomlinson not interested in paternity test” - Business Standard

“EXCLUSIVE: Louis Tomlinson Demanded a DNA Test “As Soon as the Baby Was Born”” - InTouch Weekly

“Louis Tomlinson: No DNA Test Needed ... Positive Freddie's His Son” -TMZ

“Louis Tomlinson & Briana Jungwirth: WhyHe Had DNA Test Done on His Newborn Son” - Hollywood Life

This Twitter thread discusses TMZ reports that - as of 2020 - no DNA test was done.

Conclusion

There is no reliable confirmation that Louis pursued a paternity test. The media cannot come to a general/factual consensus.

Again, there is no reasonable explanation for the lack of paternity testing unless Louis knows he is not the father of the child. 

3. The Conception-To-Birth Timeline Is Inconsistent/Unreliable

Pregnancy and conception as a whole can be rather confusing; timelines from conception to birth are unique to each person. Having said that, Briana’s timeline is full of glaring inconsistencies that don’t add up. 

I’ll begin with this timeline based on bulletprooflarry’s post and my own research. Dates I’ve added myself include linked sources:

May 5th, 2015 - Louis and Briana were first seen together in public.

May 6th to May 31st, 2015 - Briana and her mom followed baby-related social medial accounts.

May 12th, 2015 - Louis and Briana were pictured together in public.

July 3rd, 2015 - Louis is seen with Briana’s brother in Hollywood.

July 14th, 2015 - The first pregnancy report is published.

August 4th, 2015 - Louis confirms pregnancy on GMA.

January 21st, 2016 - The child is reportedly born.

Based on the dates above, these are the possible dates/milestones for her pregnancy:

Scenario A - If conception occurred on May 5th, Briana was 37 weeks and 2 days pregnant on January 21st, 2016. This is considered an early-term birth and about 26% of births occur at 37 weeks.

Scenario B - If conception occurred on May 12th, Briana was 36 weeks and 2 days pregnant on January 21st. This is considered a late-term or late premature birth and about 10% of births occur at 36 weeks.

These dates matter because Briana’s alleged hospital stay was not consistent with a premature or early-term birth. She was pictured in public - healthy and holding a baby carrier - within one week of giving birth. 

(Image Credit: Daily Mail)

(Image Credit: larrysbbrbb28)

If she gave birth based on the dates above, it’s extremely unlikely that she or the baby would be out in public so soon.

Below are screenshots of an additional timeline from an archived Tumblr post. It provides excellent points about more timeline inconsistencies: 

The main inconsistencies and red flags are bolded in the post. It supports the unreliable conception timeline, and it also mentions my next point - the official pregnancy announcement. 

The post above mentions that the Jungwirth family followed baby-related accounts before Briana could possibly know she was pregnant. Here’s one screenshot from skepticallarrie proving it:

I’ve also seen several posts that show inconsistencies with the size of Briana’s baby bump. Unfortunately, the most reliable post no longer exists. You can view a web archive of Briana’s pregnancy photos, but most of the image links are broke. 

The only post I have saved is a web archive of a long babygate post. The beginning of the post contains photos showing discrepancies in the size of Briana’s baby bump. 

The Opposing Views

“Pregnancy looks different on everybody, everyone recovers differently, etc.”

Yes, this is true and a valid point! As a woman who has gone through multiple pregnancies and two live births, I truly understand this argument. 

However, the sheer amount of inconsistencies are what make this a red flag. There are too many unreliable and contradicting points to brush this off. It goes beyond the point of “well, each person has a different experience”.

Conclusion

There are a few conclusions/scenarios I believe you can draw from the information above:

Briana was pregnant prior to meeting Louis.

Briana was never pregnant in the first place. 

Both are valid to consider, but I personally believe she was never pregnant. 

(Author’s note: My calculation for dates are based on the date of alleged conception. Most due date calculators, by default, use the date of a woman’s last mentrual period - LMP - to provide estimations.

I also used Date Duration Calendar for my calculations. Accessible due date calculators only allowed me to input dates from 2019/2020. Depending on the tools and dates you use, your mileage may vary.)

4. The Announcement Itself Was Highly Unusual

This point ties into the first and third points. I don’t consider it a major piece of evidence, but it’s noteworthy due to the other points. 

So, there are a few reasons why the Good Morning America announcement stands out. 

A. If Briana got pregnant on May 5th, then she was approximately 10 weeks pregnant when the first pregnancy report was published. This also means she was approximately 13 weeks pregnant at the time of the GMA announcement.

If Briana got pregnant on May 12th, she was approximately nine weeks pregnant at the time of the first report and approximately 12 weeks pregnant at the time of the GMA announcement.

B. The public announcement on Good Morning America raises a lot of questions. I’ve had multiple issues embedding the video; the bolded link takes you to the GMA announcement on YouTube. 

Anyways, these questions/thoughts - disregarding any Larry theories -  come to mind when watching the video: 

This is a segment for promoting/discussing their album/music.

The baby announcement is the sole non-album/music related topic that is mentioned during the segment.

The announcement is not organically worked into the segment as a natural talking point.

Louis’ reactions - such as bringing the microphone to his lips and not talking - is very unlike his standard interview demeanor.

The male interviewer and the band members have noticeable facial expressions and body language that suggest discomfort, stress, or awkwardness. 

A post by skepticalarrie draws similar conclusions. Her post is much more detailed than mine, and I highly recommend reading/viewing it. 

(Author’s Note: I’ve touched upon this on LateToLarry and will make a post here eventually, but body language and facial expressions are valid. They’re valid to the point that they are used in court cases.) 

Conclusion

My conclusions here are twofold. One is that: 

Announcing a pregnancy - especially a celebrity-related pregnancy - this early is extremely uncommon and unlikely.

The announcement itself seems out of place and very forced. 

This particular point, to me, is not extremely strong evidence. I still think it’s worth keeping in mind and is relevant to other points here. So, I’ve included it either way.

5. Briana Posted Stolen Pregnancy/Baby Photos On Social Media

(EDIT: I wrote this piece before the recent release of Briana’s alleged ultrasound and don’t have time to add it. It’s pretty strong proof and can easily be found in recent babygate posts.)

Babygate posts often point out that Briana and the Jungwirth family used stolen/fake pregnancy and baby photos on social media. It’s a well-known topic that’s often discussed. 

I’m condensing this section to a few examples. I encourage additional research if you’d like to see more. 

A. This Tumblr post shows stolen baby bump photos that Briana’s cousin Ashley posted on Twitter: 

B. This Tumblr post and Twitter post show a stolen baby photo that Briana posted on Instagram:

(Author’s Note: Since I was not active in the fandom at the time, I am relying on information from other blogs and social media posts. I vetted my sources pretty well, but any false information is my own mistake.)

Conclusions

The only word that sums this up is “suspicious”. Using stolen photos of a pregnant woman/baby is not necessary if you are legitimately pregnant. That’s really what it boils down to. It lends to the conclusion that Briana was never pregnant. 

6. Photos And Videos Of The Child Are Heavily Altered And Manipulated

It is indisputable that many photos and videos of the child are heavily manipulated to alter his appearance. This goes beyond filters, lighting, and angles. 

Several detailed posts show the manipulations; here are some examples:

A web archive of all Photoshop evidence from tellmethisisnotlove

An in-depth post from genuineconspiracy that includes detailed photo evidence.

A video post from freefreddiereign that shows Photoshop evidence based on photos the child. 

There is no doubt that his facial features are frequently altered. This is easy to conclude using any free software that detects Photoshop. As a photographer myself, I can easily spot the manipulations.

(Author’s Note: I know that directly discussing the child is controversial. When I first heard of babygate, my initial reaction was discomfort about analyzing a child.

I quickly learned/concluded that his family members are responsible for heavily putting him in the public eye. All content I’ve used for research is based on the family’s posts.

Still, I have personally chosen not post pictures of the child, but the links I am sharing contain photos/videos of him.

Additionally, I used FotoForensics on photos of myself prior to writing this. It was important to me to feel absolutely certain about this point. I’m fine with sharing my own FotoForensics images if anyone is curious.)

The Opposing Views

A. “Freddie looks like Louis in pictures that aren’t Photoshopped.”

Parentage cannot be based on whether or not a child looks like his mother/father. I understand the viewpoint, but it’s simply not evidence. Additionally, thinking the child looks like Louis is a matter of opinion. 

There’s also the fact that appearance means nothing overall. Science backs up this statement very well. Examples and references:

“How can children from the same parents look so different?” by HowStuffWorks

“My Baby Looks Nothing Like Me: A Genetic Explanation” by FamilyEducation

Additionally, here is a personal anecdote. I have two sons close to Freddie’s age. One of them looks exactly like his father and nothing like me. The other looks exactly like me and nothing like his father. Despite how they look, they are both of them are our biological children. 

Conclusion

There is no reasonable explanation for altering the child’s appearance - particularly to make him look more similar to Louis. 

I cannot think of a single argument as to why the Jungwirth family would do this unless they need/want the child to look a specific way. 

7. Johannah Deakin’s Official Obituary Does Not Mention The Child

When looking into babygate, I read the argument that the child is legitimately Louis’ son because he is listed as her grandchild in Internet-based obituaries and announcements. 

I also read the counter-argument that Louis’ mother’s official newspaper/print obituary does not mention the child.  I recall seeing proof, but I did not save it at the time. I did some research and this appears to be true. 

The Doncaster Free Press is a local weekly newspaper in Doncaster, and it published an article about the funeral. The article is NOT an obituary itself, but it does list her obituary details. The publication does not list the child among the surviving family members. 

If a mistake is made regarding these details, it’s typical for newspapers to post a correction addressing a misprint. Upon further research, the Doncaster Free Press did not issue a correction at any time. 

(Author’s Note: I lost my own mother and am personally familiar with how local obituaries are written. Immediate family members - i.e. spouses and adult children - provide information regarding surviving family members.) 

Conclusion

The conclusion here is straightforward. Louis and his family chose not to include the child in his mother’s official obituary. This strongly suggests that he is not legitimately related to Louis. 

My Opinion-Based Conclusions

Update: After some consideration, I am saving my opinion-based conclusions for a separate post. I originally intended to include them here; transparency is important to me.

Unfortunately, the section became rather long and took away from the main post points. So, I’ll be working on a post that’s just my opinion-based conclusions. In the meantime, feel free to message me with any questions. 

Final Thoughts

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read my post! I appreciate the interest expressed for it, and I hope it lives up to expectations. 

Again, I want to reiterate this is:

Not an all-inclusive post; I narrowed down my findings to seven points.

Not a masterpost on babygate.

Purposely omitting any potential Larry-related points to remove bias. 

I’ve reread this quite a few times, and it’s as error-free as possible. If you spot any mistakes/errors, I’m completely open to making corrections. Just kindly let me know. 

This list contains references/research about babygate that I consider the most reliable. It includes Larry and non-Larry related Babygate content.

Tumblr posts tagged with babygate by Tumblr use genuineconspiracy.

A web archive of babygate posts by Tumblr user tellmethisisnotlove (her account was deactivated by staff).

Tumblr posts tagged with babygate by darkrainbowlouis.

Tumblr posts tagged with babygate by skepticalarrie.

Lastly, if there’s interest in an opinion-related post or Larry-related post, I’ll consider writing them. Feel free to let me know as you all did with this post. 

Thanks!

Amy (obviouslygenuinely/latetolarry)

[jayeray-hq]

How He Shows You Affection: Iwaizumi Hajime

Another re-post to get it in the tags, luckily just a few more left! 🎉 Notes: 69

Hello! And of of course you can! I’m posting Iwaizumi’s right below, and you can expect Oikawa either tomorrow or Monday depending on how quick I can knock it out! Though I will come back and link it here when I get it up! Edit: Follow this link for Oikawa!

Post Time Skip/Manga Ending Spoilers!

Warnings: None all fluff!

How He Shows You Affection Masterlist - Character Masterlist

A huge thank you as ever to the amazing Tay,@deathcab4daddyfor beta-reading for me!!! 😊💖 He’s Always Looking Out for You You shivered slightly as the brisk spring wind raised goosebumps on your arms. The weather had finally cleared up so you thought it would be perfect for short sleeves. You’d even checked and the temperature had looked perfect. Unfortunately, you’d forgotten to factor in wind chill, and considering it was quite brisk today, it was making you more than a little cold.

Still you were determined not to let it get to you. You were spending the day with your boyfriend, for the first time in a long time, and you weren’t going to let something as silly as a breeze bring you down. A quick glance at your phone showed he was a little late, which was incredibly unlike him. Iwaizumi was a punctual guy in general. He’d never, ever been late to meet you, always on time or early. You frowned a bit in concern, quickly checking your phone, but there were no new messages to alert you that he was going to be late. Pursing your lips, you glanced around the outdoor café the two of you had agreed to meet at, searching for his familiar head of spiky brown hair, his absence making you anxious. You were just about to call him afraid something might have happened, or that he had actually forgotten you when your line of sight was interrupted by warm soft fabric in a familiar white streaked with teal blue that you recognized. Hastily you pulled the fabric off your head to find your boyfriend looking at you in amusement. “Sorry I’m late, babe,” he apologized, as he took his seat across from you, offering you the little half-smile that always made your heart do backflips, “I had to run back to the car for that.” “For me?” you asked, surprised as you glanced down to find one of his old Aoba Johsai volleyball jackets in your hands. “You think I keep jackets in my car for someone else?” he asked, rhetorically an amused huff leaving his lips, “Put it on already, you’re shivering.” You did as you were told, slipping into the jacket, which was roomy, warm, and smelled just like him. A mixture of cedar, earth, and something a little spicy, that made you want to burrow into it to breathe in more of that delicious scent. The familiar smell and the sentiment behind it making you feel warm. “So, you keep jackets in your car for me?” you asked coyly, unable to help the beaming smile on your face. “Of course, I do,” he told in a straight forward and completely unashamed way, “You’re terrible at dressing warmly enough, and this way I don’t have to give you mine.” The words were more than a bit blunt, but they made you smile all the same, especially since you knew from experience that if you so much as hinted you were uncomfortable in any way, he’d jump to fix things for you. Iwaizumi was incredibly protective, a caretaker and a bit of a worrier at heart, even if he could be incredibly gruff and blunt about things at times. He’d given you his jacket on multiple occasions before, even when you’d insisted you didn’t really need it. He also did little things like ensuring you never got knocked around when the two of you were somewhere crowded, keeping you ahead of him, or carving a path for the two of you. Whenever the you walked together, he always ensured you were on the side away from the road. When it was sunny and hot, you got the shade, when it rained you got the majority of the umbrella even if it meant his shoulder got wet. It was just the kind of man he was, and though he seemed to do it unconsciously. He frequently scolded you about taking better care of yourself, not that you minded. You knew it just meant he cared, that he worried for you, and it never failed to make your heart feel warm and full. “Thanks for looking after me, Hajime,” you told him sincerely, thinking not just of the jacket, warm and comfortable around your shoulders, but of everything he did for you. “You’re my girlfriend, aren’t you?” he responded bluntly, even as he rubbed the back of his neck not quite meeting your eyes, the faintest of pink blushes on his tanned cheekbones, “It’s my job, so don’t worry about it.” You giggled, finding the slightly bashful side of him incredibly cute. You couldn’t help but feel incredibly lucky to have him by your side where you knew you’d always be protected and cherished. He Spoils You “What’s this?” you asked curiously, carefully holding the small bag Iwaizumi had pressed into your hands. The two of you had taken the day to go shopping, exploring the area, and enjoying the fact that you got to

travel together with the Japan National team thanks to his position as head trainer. It had been a fantastic day, as the two of you enjoyed the sights and did the tourist thing, taking everything in, and relishing the chance to explore a new country together. Iwaizumi was pretty good at getting around foreign countries thanks to his time in the U.S for college and some of the other traveling he’d done for his job, so you weren’t anxious the way you might’ve been on your own. The two of you had a nice lunch at a restaurant recommended by the hotel receptionist and enjoyed some of the local cuisine, before venturing into one of the better-known shopping districts in the area. You knew shopping wasn’t exactly his favorite activity in the world, but he didn’t complain at all about accompanying you, more than willing to carry the bags if you needed him to. You’d stopped more than once at some of the adorable shops you’d found to collect souvenirs for the people back home, trying to find things for them you wouldn’t find anywhere else. It was a bit of a struggle, but you were pretty pleased with the things you’d found. The only small issue was that you were also finding more than a few things you wanted for yourself along the way. However, you’d put yourself on a budget and were determined to stick with it. It seemed your boyfriend hadn’t quite gotten the message though as you opened the bag to find the necklace you’d been eying earlier. It had been made by local craftsman and was one of the most beautiful pieces you’d seen in your life, one that was exactly your style. However, it was also extremely expensive, so despite swooning over it for several minutes you’d eventually managed to leave it behind. “Hajime!” you scolded, both touched and a bit hesitant, “This was so expensive! You shouldn’t have.” “You wanted it,” he told you gruffly, shrugging as if dropping that much money on you on a whim was no big deal, “And it looks nice on you.” “But I didn’t need it,” you insisted firmly, “We should take it back. Spend your money on something more important!” Your boyfriend paused in his tracks and looked at you, a stern expression on his face that made you a little worried you’d upset him. It wasn’t that you were ungrateful, you appreciated the thought! It made you warm all over that he wanted to do things like that for you, buy you things you liked just because. However, it was a lot of money, and you didn’t feel like you were worth it. “Baby girl,” Iwaizumi told you firmly, gently setting a hand on your shoulder, his olive-green eyes practically boring into your own, “I already did spent the money on something extremely important. I spent it on you, didn’t I?” “Hajime, that’s so cheesy,” you told him, even as your heart melted at how utterly sweet he was, unable to resist teasing him lightly, “I think you’ve spent too much time reading those motivational quotes and giving pep talks to the team.” “Yeah, yeah,” he told you gruffly, brushing it off, though you could tell from the slight pink flush on his cheeks and the way he couldn’t quite meet your eyes that he was a bit embarrassed about it, “It’s still true though.” “Thank you,” you told him, hoping he could hear the affection and adoration in your tone, as you reached out to lace your fingers with his, “You didn’t have to.” “I wanted to,” he told you fervently, “So don’t worry about it and just wear it, okay?” “I will,” you promised adamantly, unable to keep the smile off your face, “And I’ll think of you every time too. Help me put it on?” He nodded shuffling around behind you, to help you get it around your neck, and carefully latched the clasp for you, his fingers surprisingly deft despite how large his hands were. “I love you, Hajime,” you told him quietly, as he gently brushed his fingers affectionately over the back of your neck, making them pause for a brief moment. “Love you too, baby girl,” he answered, equally quiet. The words rough but sincere all the same making you smile to yourself savoring how much he loved you. Though you quietly hoped he

wouldn’t spoil you too much more over the course of the trip, even if you knew by now that the hope was probably futile. He Touches You With Care It had been noted by more than one person, and by Oikawa quite frequently that your boyfriend could be a bit of a brute at times. He was fairly gruff by nature, and extremely physically affectionate with those he liked. Regularly wrestling with his friends, ruffling hair, slapping backs, punching arms and all sorts of rough friendly gestures were par for the course with him. He also tended to dole out things like slapping the back of people’s heads when he thought they were being stupid, or physically shaking them as if he could literally shake sense into them. You probably would’ve scolded him for it, except for whatever reason it seemed to work, and work well, especially with players like Hinata, Kageyama, Bokuto, and Atsumu on the All Japan team. However, with you things were very different, making Oikawa whine, his jealousy evident. Iwaizumi was always incredibly soft with you, treating you with infinite care as if you were made out of porcelain or glass. His hands, always rough with everyone else, only ever touched you softly, gently running his fingers through your hair, tracing his knuckles over your cheek, or holding your hand carefully with his. He was much softer with you than with anyone else, and it never failed to make you feel incredibly special. You were the only one he showed that side of himself, the others forced to deal with tough love on all fronts both verbally and physically. Not that he couldn’t also be tough on you if he thought you needed it, bullying you into taking care of yourself and ensuring you never over exerted yourself or made yourself ill. He also let you get away with things that he wouldn’t have allowed anyone else to do, which you tried not to take advantage of, though sometimes you simply couldn’t resist. “You could’ve just asked you know,” your boyfriend pointed out gruffly. You hummed happily around the treat you’d snitched from his plate in response, while Oikawa, Matsukawa, and Hanamaki all gaped at you. Not surprising considering you knew Iwaizumi wasn’t one to share, and had just smacked the back of Oikawa’s hand a minute ago for attempting what you’d just done and gotten away with. Oikawa was still rubbing at the slightly red skin and pouting at the two of you. “Thanks Hajime,” you told him, offering a cheeky smile, making him huff in fond amusement. “Yeah, yeah,” he answered, waving you off and going back to eating as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “How is that fair,” Oikawa whined, though you could see clear amusement dancing in his eyes, “Iwa-chan how come she gets special treatment?” “Girlfriend privileges,” you told him smugly, before your glowering boyfriend could attempt to verbally eviscerate his best friend. “Ah,” Oikawa noted, tapping his fist into his palm as if he’d just had the most profound realization, “So, it’s because Iwa-chan is like that!” “Like what exactly?” your boyfriend asked suspiciously. “A simp,” Oikawa announced gleefully either not hearing or completely ignoring the warning note in Iwaizumi’s voice. Hanamaki and Matsukawa howled with laughter as Iwaizumi made to lunge across the table and throttle his best friend, making Oikawa shriek indignantly. You just shook your head, a helpless smile on your face as you admitted, if only to yourself, that Oikawa was probably right. Iwaizumi did tend to dote on you and you treasured every moment knowing how very much you were loved.

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[cayenne-twilight]

Professor Layton Iceberg Explanation

As I said in the tags of the original, the iceberg I made was a meme consisting of both real theories and satire/parodies/fandom memes. If anyone is interested, I can work on an unironic version that only has real theories.

Buckle in because this post is LONG and heavily saturated with lore and information.

Actual theories

Parallel universe 1960s where the world wars didn’t happen. There’s an unused file in Curious Village that shows the year as 1960 and the time machine from UF is set to 1973, ten years into the future. The series canonically takes place in an undefined time period (hence the technological inaccuracies and fantasy elements), but it’s based off the 60s. There’s more evidence but we don’t have time to go over every little thing. I linked my “no wars” theory below but TL;DR the outdated airplanes and underdeveloped medicine in the Layton series imply that the world wars may never have happened. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632205992162099200/outofcontextdiscord-timegearremix-zonosils-war

The real meaning behind the statue in Future London. In UF, the purpose of the statue is to spark Layton and Luke’s conversation about their friendship. Luke is stressing out about moving overseas and sees himself and the professor in the story behind the statue, but in the bigger picture, Clive must have been the one to commission it. Some theorize that the little boy is Clive and the man is either his father or the professor. One idea I’ve seen is that Clive wishes he could be Luke for real, while another is that he wishes he died ten years ago, and another is that he’s literally terminally ill explaining why he doesn’t care about consequence. Personally, I think “the boy succumbed to his illness” refers to his mental illness seeing as he wanted the professor to save him from his madness as he saved him all those years ago.

True location of Monte D’Or. there are no deserts on the British isles to my knowledge, so it makes the most sense for Monte D’Or to be in Southwest USA where English is the default language, they have a desert, and there exists a city famous for flashy hotels, casinos, and entertainment. What makes it odd is that nobody ever mentions overseas travel, and all the major characters are from England.

Loosha’s origins are not explicitly explained if I remember correctly, but the implication was that her prehistoric (supposedly) species was sealed away along with the garden, allowing them to survive all the way to the time of LS until Loosha was the only one left. The garden provided a good habitat and protection from predators, and it’s logical that they’d slowly die out anyways, but there’s no explanation of any specific factors that led to Loosha being the last.

Beasley is not a bee I wrote a post about this one as well, but TL;DR Beasly lacks several defining bee traits whilst having several human ones. He is not human, yet, by definition, not a bee. It’s possible that he is the result of Dimitri’s testing, but whatever his untold story is, he remains an enigma of nature. https://cayenne-twilight.tumblr.com/post/632381715250282496/theory-beasly-isnt-a-bee

Subject 2’s identity is currently unknown. There is a subject one (parrot) and subject 3 (rabbit) so there has to be a second. For a long time, people suspected Beasly to be him seeing as he’s a bit of an amalgamation and definitely not a regular bee (see above). After the release of LMJ, though, people began to suspect Sherl, the intelligent hound who could speak to certain people but not others. That being said, it’s possible for one to be subject 4. Sherl’s memory of a bright flash matches up with subject 3’s memory of being electrocuted. They never explain why the animals were being experimented on, but it was probably Dimitri making sure the conditions of his machine were safe for humans before reliving the incident from ten years ago.

Lady Violet died from the plague from DB. There’s no evidence for this or anything, it’s just an idea. People say she died from the flu but I don’t remember them saying that in the game, at least the US version. Extending off my “no war” theory: it’s theorized that the Spanish Flu was spread by the travlelling soldiers, so if that’s true, it’s possible for the epidemic to have been averted for some decades. Maybe the Spanish Flu reached England later than in real life. The hole in this is that DB’s plague must’ve been close in time to 1918 while Violet’s death was much later, so it would’ve had to stick around.

Bill Hawks is working with Targent and Arthur Cantabella. There was a force in the shadows buying the time machine technology from Bill. Someone with a ton of money who helped him cover up a freak accident and get away with it completely, a feat that involved shady means like violence by hired thugs. Some theorize that it was Targent, seeking power over time in exchange for a little mafia magic. The Labarynthia project was sponsored by the UK government, so as the PM, Bill must’ve known about it. He probably supported dubiously ethical, high stakes (witch pun) psychological experiments like Cantabella’s and helped him stay in the shadows.

All the NPCs in St. Mystere and Folsense are dead. I make fun of this type of theory later, but they’re admittedly captivating. I’m pretty sure the canon in CV is that the villagers are Bruno and Augustus’s OCs that they made robots of and built a town around, but it’s more interesting to think that the village was there before, and the townspeople died of a plague and were replaced like Lady Violet. In Folsense, there really was a plague and they never explain the NPCs there. They’re either real people who appear way younger than they are due to hallucinations (even the ones who already look old ?), or they don’t exist at all, which is pretty spooky. This part of the story is a gaping plot hole. In a similar vein to CV, the edgy yet plausible theory is that they used to live in Folsense but died of the plague and now live on as hallucinations.

Hershel seeing everything as a puzzle is a coping mechanism for all his trauma. This was a joke but I thought about it for more than five seconds and it makes way too much sense.

Plot holes and unexplained questions that we like to overthink because it’s fun

The downfall of the Azran was vaguely explained in canon by people being so greedy that it lead to the civilization collapsing. It’s not a stretch to imagine that happening, but it would’ve been more interesting with a little more detail.

Layton and Luke are programmed to routinely forget how to walk. I didn’t know whether to list this in the joke section or not, but it’s odd that the characters actively participate in the walking tutorial (as opposed to showing a little memo to the player) as if they didn’t know how to before, especially when they go through this several times a year.

The truth behind Pavel. He’s simply a joke character who teleports, is a polyglot (sort of, at least he wants us to think he is) and is mega confused all the time. He’s a fun character to make crack theories about because of his cryptic nature that even he doesn’t seem to understand.

Miracle Mask deleted scenes. The first trailer for MM featured animations that were not in the final game. One was the Randall falling scene, except in a slightly different style than the one we know. Others were completely foreign, like Layton and Luke pacing across a theatre stage as if Layton’s about to expose someone with a dramatic point. Cut content and “could’ve beens” are always curious to think about.

Evan Barde: secret mastermind. Arianna and Tony’s dad is a mysterious character who died under mysterious circumstances. I think the canon is that his death was a genuine accident, but concept art of him making a creepy evil face suggests that maybe he originally had a larger role in the first drafts of LS than the finished game.

The secret to how Paul and Des pull off their disguises is unclear and will remain unclear. There is no plausible explanation for their shape shifting. Unless Paul is just a little dude wearing a human suit like that one Wizard of Oz species and Des is the best quick-changer ever and hides his naturally feminine legs under his cloak.

Alfendi’s mom. When LBMR came out people scrambled to piece together who Hershel had a kid with, but there’s no way alfendi is his biological son. This happened with Kat as well and her biological parents turned out to be brand new characters, so I’m sure Al will get an adoption backstory if his arc continues, be his parents old major characters or nameless, faceless NPCs.

Granny Riddleton and Stachenscarfen are omnipotent deities. Idk which section this fits best under, but these two characters have some serious power. At first introduction, they’re implied to be robots, but they appear everywhere in later games. They follow the Professor wherever he goes and assist him on his adventures, GR collecting puzzles and housing them by some odd magic, and Stachen teaches you how to walk. They both introduce and supervise the gameplay. By extension, I guess this idea could apply to Albus as well in the prequels. GR and Stachen even had the power to appear in LMJ, something no major character could do. I consider them akin to the velvet room attendants from the Persona games.

Clive’s kill count is a vague subject in the game for the sake of keeping it PG. I don’t know if anyone’s ever mathematically estimated the damage he caused, and I sure don’t want to try, but the game appears to push the idea that he didn’t kill anyone at all, saying they stopped him in the nick of time and things like that, even though we watch him raze the city. If they ever want to bring him back post-time skip, I can see them twisting it so that the mobile fortress cutscene wasn’t a linear sequence of events, but instead a compilation of scenes over the course of hours so that London neighborhoods around him could be evacuated and have it make sense. Knowing Level-5, it’s more likely that they wouldn’t think this deep and do something more lazy, though.

Memes and references

Post-time skip Flora is real references the famous L is real theory from Super Mario 64. Like Luigi in SM64, Flora was also a highly anticipated character who didn’t appear in a new game, in this case LMJ or LMDA. In the end, Luigi did become real in the DS port so hopefully Flora is real will be realized as well.

Hershel can’t read is a veteran fandom meme referring to how in the first few games, especially Curious Village, Layton asks Luke to read every document out loud for him. Perhaps this was an exercise to improve Luke’s reading skills and independent thinking, or perhaps he was just too lazy or preoccupied to do it himself, but this grew into the joke that our genius Professor was actually illiterate this whole time.

Layton’s smash invitation is hidden in PLvsAA. It’s no secret that the fandom would kill a man to get the Professor into the smash brothers franchise. In PLvsAA one of the puzzle artworks features a goat eating a familiar white envelope with a red stamp, sparking the joke that either Layton or Wright got the invitation their respective fans desired, but it got lost along the way.

The science board is the mysteriously vague organization Don Paolo got kicked out of for the crime of being evil. It’s the epitome of liberal arts majors and art school graduates trying to bs their way around not knowing any science and failing miserably. “He was very good at all the sciences, but then the CEO of science told him to stop because he was using the power of science for evil science”. They do this again when “Dr. Stahngun” describes his time machine what with the soolha coils and whatnot.

Hoogland is death cult initiation is a parody of “Mario 64 is Freemason initiation” which is ridiculous, just like the creepy human sacrifice subplot of AL.

You can see the reflection of someone watching you in Aurora’s eye references the famous, creepy Talking Angela theory. In retrospect it would’ve been funnier if I said Angela instead of Aurora.

Every copy of Professor Layton is personalized references the famous “every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized”

Clive’s fat ass in HD is a meme that originated from the announcement of UFHD, saying that half of the excited fans wanted to cry again while the other half were simply attracted to Clive. If we want to enter real bottom-section-of-the-iceberg-chart territory then let’s say Clive’s character has some sort of psychological siren properties that draw people to him like a magnet and/or Harry Styles.

Things I pulled out of my ass for shits and giggles

Infinite hint coin hack: I’m sure a tech savvy cheater could hack the game for infinite hint coins, but there’s no easy or interesting way. I don’t know why someone would do that though, considering a lot of the hints suck and there are puzzle guides on the internet.

Cringy, unused Randall villain monologue. This joke is derived from the actual scrapped MM content as well as deleted content being a popular element of iceberg charts, but it’s sadly not real. Would’ve been hilarious, though.

Last Specter Puzzle 031: Light Height tracks and records children’s intelligence level. It doesn’t, but it’s always fun to make fun of arguably THE most ridiculously difficult puzzle in the franchise. (Seriously, do they expect 7+ year olds to know trigonometry???)

Hershel struggles with tea addiction. Hershel from the games drinks tea in moderation, but the manga begs to differ. He has a tea set in the Laytonmobile, and an attempt at teatime while driving causes him to crash.

Folsense is a metaphor for Alzheimer’s. This is inspired by those edgy kids’ show theories where everyone’s in hell or something, but nobody has ever said this.

London Life is reality and the plot of the games is all in Luke’s head. That’s one way to fill every plot hole. How funny would it be if Luke made up crazy characters and stories based off his fellow townspeople Sharkboy and Lavagirl style. “This dude who lives in a castle and asks people to give him all their money for nothing in return is a vampire from 50 years ago involved in a tragic love story”.

Secret ending encoded into Tago’s Head Gymnastics. It’d be crazy if there was, and Dimitri would hound Tago for the secret to time travel. If you didn’t know, the Layton games started as an adaption of Akira Tago’s puzzle series, except they decided to add a story to make it more interesting and marketable.

Daily puzzles datamine your DS. I’m bad with technology but is it even possible to datamine a DS??? Idk, but I think my DS lite from 2008 is safe.

[percabeth4life]

Sorry to just jump in here and drop this on you, but i saw a blog once call percabeth an abusive relationship???? and i was like ?????? but none of my friends read pjo so i cant ask them for thoughts, how about you?

Oh boy anon so this is a thing.

Percabeth is abusive is a common thing those that hate percabeth or ship something else and want to validate it say, and why I have the “anti-percabeth” tag blocked.

I’ve seen people say Annabeth just giving him a dirty look was abuse, people will reach for anything done between them that isn’t perfect, usually to justify why their ship is better.

Honestly, I’m open to most ships. Percabeth is my main but if you ship things that’s totally fine, even if I don’t like it I won’t say you shouldn’t ship it. I read non-Percabeth ships, but a lot of people feel a strong need to insist a ship is abusive if they don’t like it.

It’s fine to just not like a ship.

First off lets preface all of this with a warning that I’ll be discussing abuse here so if that’s upsetting skip it.

It got long, like very long (word count is nearly 3k), so it’s all under the Read More, there’s a TLDR at the very bottom.

Now then, what is abuse?

There are two definitions that pop up with a quick google search

Use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse. 

Treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.

If you look up the legal definition (law.cornell) used to define abuse there are more options, but I’m leaving out 2, 3, and 4 cause 3 and 4 def have nothing to do with this and definition 2 is in regards to child abuse.

Abuse, generally: physically, sexually, or mentally injuring a person.

Now if we want to go deeper in lets define physical and mental abuse. I’ll be leaving out sexual as that has no bearing on this particular situation.

Physical abuse is defined by healthyplace.com as

Non-accidental use of force that results in bodily injury, pain, or impairment. This includes, but is not limited to, being slapped, burned, cut, bruised or improperly physically restrained.

Now lets expand on this.

Something that is pointed to specifically is the mentioned intent. “Non-accidental”. It must be purposeful harm.

Now, I will also point out that Physical abuse doesn’t necessarily say the intent needs to be abuse, but as my lawyer parents state it simply needs to be “intent to harm” and it gets labeled abuse. The legal definition (given above) agrees, it is simply that it needs to be purposeful harm. But then we need to define this harm, especially the bodily injury, pain, or impairment.

Bodily injury is defined by Merriam Webster as

any damage to a person's physical condition including pain or illness

Now what is damage?

loss or harm resulting from injury to person, property, or reputation

So then harm is defined as... damage, so the definition I prescribe to (and I asked my lawyer parents to confirm, unfortunately I have no link for that).

Causes pain (pain defined as suffering)

Pain is defined by Merriam Webster as

a localized or generalized unpleasant bodily sensation or complex of sensations that causes mild to severe physical discomfort and emotional distress and typically results from bodily disorder (such as injury or disease)

a basic bodily sensation that is induced by a noxious stimulus, is received by naked nerve endings, is associated with actual or potential tissue damage, is characterized by physical discomfort (such as pricking, throbbing, or aching), and typically leads to evasive action

mental or emotional distress or suffering

Finally impairment is

diminishment or loss of function or ability

(all of the above definitions except harm are pulled from Merriam Webster linked with Bodily Injury)

Okay, so now lets consider it, physical abuse needs to cause damage to someone, it must be purposeful damage though the intent to abuse does not necessarily need to be the intent. So if your actions do not intend physical harm then it is not physical abuse.

So then, do Percy and Annabeth have a physically abusive relationship?

Lets start with the classic one that everyone likes to bring up, the Judo Flip.

First off, do Judo Flips hurt? [sourcing (1) (2) (3)]

They CAN hurt if done with that intent, but if your intent is to not harm and you are trained properly, No Judo should not hurt. Anyone properly trained in Judo should know how to prevent harm. (1, 2)

On top of that, the first thing anyone learning Judo is taught is how to fall.

All judoka learn to fall safely, by rolling and breaking their fall with Ukemi. This breakfall absorbs the impact of the throw. (3)

Percy should have the basics of this down seeing how he was already in matches (mentioned in book one prior him being claimed) in his first summer at camp, after four years he’s definitely got the basics down.

Therefore, the Judo flip did not intend to cause harm, nor did it appear to. Despite that it was on stone, and Annabeth had him pinned, Percy didn’t even show discomfort. He laughed.

On top of that, when Annabeth last saw Percy he had the Curse of Achilles. As far as she was aware, he still had it. A requirement of Physical Abuse is the intent to cause harm, every factor here shows that there was no intent to cause harm.

This scene was not physical abuse, it was just bad writing.

I can think of other scenes, only a few, before they were actually in a relationship. In book three Annabeth punched Percy in the stomach when he didn’t catch her hint that he should ask her to dance

She punched me in the gut. ‘Me, Seaweed Brain.’

‘Oh. Oh, right.’ (TTC, chapter 1, page 8 of book on my copy)

There doesn’t seem to have been any harm done as he doesn’t even mention it hurting, not even a pause, just went “oh yeah her”. So it was likely a light punch, the kind friends do that don’t hurt just catch attention. Annabeth has been trained since she was 7, she should know how to throw a punch without actually causing harm.

If anyone wants to bring up other examples, feel free, I’m not combing the books right now for examples but I will reply to them (preferably in asks so this post doesn’t get super long...)

I cannot think of any examples of Percy hitting/punching Annabeth nor any other kind of physical interaction, if someone wishes to bring one of those up feel free.

Does this mean that I think they should be hitting each other despite the fact that it’s clear there is no intent to harm?

No, I don’t really think they should be hitting each other.

But! An important thing there is their own boundaries, not mine. I would not be up for being hit but I do share friendly punches with my friends, which is similar in intent. It’s simply that they’ve been trained to fight and have to a lot to survive so their boundaries for what is “harmful” are different.

But that’s a whole different issue and a different academic essay :)

I don’t believe there is any physical abuse in Percabeth.

Moving on, Emotional abuse (which Psychological and Verbal added as they all connect).

Emotional abuse is defined by helathyplace.com as

Any act including confinement, isolation, verbal assault, humiliation, intimidation, infantilization, or any other treatment which may diminish the sense of identity, dignity, and self-worth.

It also covers Psychological abuse and verbal abuse. Psychological abuse does not have a definition available on the site I’m using but it does have a description. If you’d like to read the description go (here). I will add a detail of how it works though

Psychological abuse signs and symptoms may start small at first as the abuser "tests the waters" to see what the other person will accept, but before long the psychological abuse builds into something that can be frightening and threatening.

Verbal abuse definition defined by healthyplace.com is

Any language or behavior that seeks to coerce its victim to doubt their perceptions or their abilities and subjugate themselves to the abuser.

So considering that, we note another important factor here, they also have intent involved. “Test the waters” and “seek to coerce” for Psychological and Verbal abuse.

Emotional abuse is different in that it does not specify intent, except every item mentioned is purposeful. If you’re confining someone then you’re doing that on purpose, you cannot easily accidentally do most of that. Those actions carry intent, even if the intent is not abuse.

Now then, is percabeth emotionally abusive?

Once again I’ll start with the big thing people point out, the Judo Flip.

I’ve seen it point out that it could be seen as humiliation.

Annabeth grabbed his wrist and flipped him over her shoulder. He slammed into the stone pavement. Romans cried out. Some surged forward, but Reyna shouted, “Hold! Stand down!”

Annabeth put her knee on Percy’s chest. She pushed her forearm against his throat. She didn’t care what the Romans thought. A white-hot lump of anger expanded in her chest—a tumor of worry and bitterness that she’d been carrying around since last autumn.

“If you ever leave me again,” she said, her eyes stinging, “I swear to all the gods—”

Percy had the nerve to laugh. Suddenly the lump of heated emotions melted inside Annabeth.

“Consider me warned,” Percy said. “I missed you, too.” (MOA, chapter 2, page 19 of my copy)

If you look at the scene itself you’ll see that Annabeth is very emotional right then, she just got her boyfriend back, she’s exhausted from months of worrying, she’s emotionally very strained, and she judo flips him as all her pain just fills her.

A lot of people with anxiety or high stress or similar issues have times when the anxiety doesn’t affect them during the time they’re stressed, but right after the stressors are gone.

It’s clear that’s what happened here, all her feelings that she’d been burying to work just filled her.

And Percy smiles up at her and says he missed her.

It’s clear from her own comment that she didn’t care what the Romans thought (said right after they almost attacked her) that her thoughts were not on how this looked for Percy, but for her. She knew it looked bad for her to attack him.

She wasn’t trying to embarrass or humiliate Percy, she was trying to get all that pain and stress and anger out. I don’t like how it was done, but it did not physically harm him (nor did she expect it to) and it clearly did not humiliate him.

He smiled and said he missed her.

He understood what she was going through, and made it clear he loved her.

I still think it was bad writing, but it’s not humiliation, nor is it emotional abuse.

Another thing I’ve seen pointed out is Annabeth’s nickname for Percy.

Seaweed Brain.

I will start this with a reminder that both of their nicknames for each other were originally meant as insults.

Wise Girl was first used by Clarisse and it clearly upset Annabeth, it is used twice by Clarisse actually.

Once in TLT, when she and Percy first meet, and once in SOM when they’re attacking Charybdis.

Percy in comparison uses Wise Girl twice as well, both in TLT, once when he was mocking her at her coming along on the quest and once when they were saying goodbye. It’s also used once in HOO, in BOO.

Honestly it’s not much a nickname... only used by Percy 3 times in all the (main) books. There are like 3 other cases in all the side stories and MCGA combined.

Annabeth uses seaweed brain a total of 41 times in all the books combined, in PJO it’s used 25 times, 22 by Annabeth, and HOO it’s used outloud 9 times, all by Annabeth. On top of this, while the PJO cases were all outloud, the HOO cases were not, with 2 (making the total 11) used only in Annabeth’s thoughts.

Seaweed brain is used in TLT 6 times, 5 times by Annabeth.

The first time is when Annabeth is joining the quest, then when he says things are going fine so far when they start the quest, then when at the Ride of Love, then when Annabeth calls him her friend, then when they’re saying goodbye.

If you watch the progression of it it’s the same as with Wise Girl, though used more often. It starts as an insult, and then becomes fond and a term for her friend by the end of it.

I don’t particularly want to label every single instance, but a quick overview of all the PJO books is that it’s used by Annabeth in annoyance a total of 4 times, in fondness/exasperation/worry 18 times. Those times of annoyance were all in books 1 and 2, the time of exasperation (1 of the 18) was in book 2.

The vast majority were done out of worry, and the rest when she was being soft.

It’s not meant to diminish his intelligence, nor is intended as an insult beyond book 1 and 1 instance of book 2. It is rarely used because he’s being ignorant either. You can make an argument for the first case in book 3 being done because he wasn’t catching her hint to dance and thus was mocking his inability to catch a hint, but it was mixed with fondness from my read.

Overall the nickname is not intended as an insult anymore, it has become a friendly name for Percy that shows how fond Annabeth is of him. She does not have nicknames for anyone else.

In HOO all the cases were relatively fond, with one that she didn’t say outloud being used when she was cheering Hazel up by telling stories about Percy (ah the benefits of long time friendships, you get to tell all the good stories).

In the end I think that it’s cute that they have a nickname for each other, and though there could be more flattering ones, the intent that Percy understands from it and the intent Annabeth uses it with clearly show that it is meant in fondness and was a gradual change from a name that was meant to poke at him. It’s meaning is is fond and loving and it was only used 3 times prior with any other (negative) intent.

Also friends give each other nicknames, and commonly they are meant to be teasing.

There is one other thing I’ve seen brought up, being Annabeth thinking that she needs to keep Percy on his toes (specifically about Rachel in this case) when they’re in Tartarus.

‘Rachel?’ Percy asked. ‘You mean our Rachel? Oracle of Delphi Rachel?’

‘That’s the one.’ Annabeth suppressed a smile.

Whenever she brought up Rachel’s name, Percy got nervous. At one point, Rachel had been interested in dating Percy. That was ancient history. Rachel and Annabeth were good friends now. But Annabeth didn’t mind making Percy a little uneasy. You had to keep your boyfriend on his toes. (HOH, didn’t bother to check chapter number, page 109 of my copy)

So here we see that Annabeth is “keeping him on his toes” but in context, they’re sending a note to Rachel through the Hermes temple in Tartarus. It was not Annabeth bringing it up to mess with him, it was her smiling at the little moment where he was thrown off about Rachel.

Frankly, in general Annabeth doesn’t do anything like that. She occasionally teases Percy but he always teases back. After the Rachel stuff in book 5 things were chill with all of them. We’ve seen no evidence of Percy being uncomfortable with Rachel being brought up, nor Annabeth thinking that it should be brought up for that purpose.

If anything Annabeth has shown some serious abandonment issues in fearing that Percy would leave her over other girls (she needs some therapy after that mess of a childhood but Khiron apparenlty doesn’t think so).

I see this as a case of bad writing with nothing else supporting it, including the scene it happens in.

Even had it actually been something supported by other instances, in the context she says it in it seems more like teasing over an ex where the break was amicable and everyone is still friends, which isn’t abusive or manipulative.

It’s just that Rick is tasteless.

So is Percabeth emotionally/psychologically/verbally abusive? No.

If someone wishes to bring up other instances shoot me an ask.

So in conclusion,

I do not see how it is abusive. There are elements I do not like, and some parts that in my own relationship I wouldn’t be okay with. But in Percy and Annabeth’s relationship they have clear boundaries, they are both more than capable of stopping the other if they do something that upsets them. They have both shown fondness towards the others actions even if it is something that we don’t approve of in our relationships.

If Percy showed upset at her actions that would be different. But we literally see into his mind and he shows no upset at her words or actions. He is fond, he is understanding, and he responds to each instance of teasing with teasing of his own.

Notably I never see people saying Percy is abusive, only Annabeth.

I get a feel that people ask for flawed characters then crucify them if they’re not flawed in easily likeable ways. Annabeth is not a perfect character, I don’t like everything she does, but she is a realistic character and should not be demonized.

TDLR: Annabeth has never purposefully harmed Percy, and Percy has never purposefully harmed her. Neither have verbally/emotionally/psychological taken actions with the intent of harming the other when in their relationship or since becoming friends. There have been instances of upsetting the other but they talked and it clearly was not meant to hurt the other but because they themselves were hurting

Percabeth is not abusive

[fangirlingtodeath513]

The Cockles Breakup Theory - Jensen

So I’ve previously posted here about the Cockles Breakup Theory, but that focused more on Misha’s side of it since Misha’s side was a bit more obvious. I’ve gotten a few requests to do one specifically focusing on Jensen, so here we are. 

First of all, under no circumstances is this to be brought up with any of the cast or crew. Discussions like this are born in the fandom space and they’re meant to stay there. Please do not use these posts, or posts similar to this, to push an agenda with the actors, their families, or anyone else. This is purely speculative and purely for fun.

Throwing this under a cut because it’s gonna get long.

I’m gonna start out by giving a rough overview for those of you that don’t remember. We’re hovering between October of 2011 and somewhere around August of 2012. So we’re in season 7, where it looks like Cas has been removed from the show permanently. 

Misha shows up drunk and ornery all through Asylum 7, which was the following weekend. Jensen looks relatively unfazed. We don’t see much from him until well after fans were made aware of Misha’s return around December of 2011. 

The whole thing starts with this tweet from Misha:

[A screenshot of a tweet from Misha Collins on October 21, 2011. It reads: “I’m not normally one to talk coworkers, but Jensen jus let me take this picture of him shirtless.” This is followed by a link that leads to a very close-up picture of the left side of Jensen Ackles’ face, from his forehead to the bottom of his nose.]

This is pretty on-the-nose (pardon the pun) even for Misha, who’s typically very flirty and jokey with his friends. I’ve seen people theorize that this particular post is what spurred their breakup, in addition to the other factors of Misha being let go from the show and not being on set in Vancouver with Jensen anymore. My personal theory is that their relationship, whatever it was at the beginning, was as much of a comfort thing as it was a relationship. They were there for weeks at a time, away from their families, and I don’t doubt that they took comfort in each other. When that factor was removed, that relationship basically fell apart. I’m sure Misha being so jokingly open about their relationship didn’t strike Jensen in the best way either. He’s always been an intensely private person, though he has opened up to fans more recently, and I’m sure any insinuation that he’s living anything other than the life of the normal American male makes him nervous.

The Jensen side of this is generally thought of like this: from mid-October 2011 (the time of Misha’s tweet, which is thought to have started the breakup) to roughly February 2012, Jensen was super tight-lipped about Misha and Cas. He hardly says anything, which some people write off because Misha and Cas weren’t on the show. However, the fans knew Misha would be back in December of 2011, so J2M probably knew before that and Jensen was still tight-lipped about Misha and Cas. 

Somewhere around February, though, something happened. Jensen’s a lot more open with talking about Cas and whenever he brings up Misha, he always mentions how much he helps to carry the show and how great he is, almost like he’s trying to praise him at every opportunity. Throughout panels between February and August 2012, he does just about everything he can to get Misha’s attention. He flirts with him, pulls him into the conversation as often as he can, and brings up Misha/Cas even when he’s not around.

There’s this set of gifs regarding Jensen speaking about Cas and the loss of Cas during season 7. He’s overly nice in them and gushes about Cas, leading some people to believe he was trying to get Misha’s attention and show him that he really did care. 

In this set of gifs from February-ish 2012, you’ve got him saying he’ll take Misha back on the show with a pleased smile.

At Nashcon in February, Jensen is asked what it’s like to have Misha back on set and he says “It’s very refreshing, you know, he’s one of the family.”

And of course, there are the various statements about Dean taking Cas’s trenchcoat from the water, which wasn’t scripted. Misha said at an earlier con that he thought Dean was overly obsessed with Cas and that it was super creepy which, if you pay any attention to Misha at all, is super out of character for him. As far as I’m aware, he’s always been super supportive of Deana and Cas’s relationship (romantic or not). Also at Nashcon, Jensen says he discussed the move with the director, Guy Bee, and “if [Cas] ever comes back, he’s gonna need the trenchcoat.”

And then we’re onto JIB3 in April 2012. This one’s… rough, to say the least. For anyone who watches the Cockles panels at JIB, you know what they’re usually like: fun, flirty, usually with drunk Jensen and Misha. Misha almost always takes the lead in their panels because he’s always been the one more comfortable in front of fans, but this time he just sits back and watches. It’s the panel Cockles fans look forward to all year, but this one was… well, see for yourself.

Jensen kinda carries the whole thing. It’s pretty clear Misha’s not at all into being there.

And then there’s this exchange, which just speaks for itself:

[A set of gifs from Jus In Bello Convention in Rome. The exchange is as follows: Jensen: I-I had a great time. I really did. It wasn’t you, it was me. Misha: It’s funny, I just thought that, for me it was really special, so. Jensen: That’s, um… that’s too bad. That’s too bad. But maybe we can give it another shot! See if the creative juices get flowing. No? Okay. During this exchange, Jensen is very animated, moving his hands to punctuate his points and tilting his body toward Misha at times. At the end of that exchange, Jensen turns in his seat so Misha is slightly behind him. Misha, throughout this exchange, is incredibly reserved. He only moves to bring his microphone to his mouth and he turns his head to look at Jensen, but his body stays facing the crowd.]

I mean like what... how are you even supposed to interpret that any other way than a breakup? Look at Misha’s face, he looks devastated. His head is down, he doesn’t move at all while they’re talking, and he’s facing the crowd the entire time. His legs are straight out in front of him, unlike Jensen’s relaxed sitting posture.

Then there’s this whole thing, where Misha is so obviously trying to make Jensen jealous. It’s not until Misha sees Jensen looking over that he really goes for it, groping Sebastian and pretty much dry humping him on stage. Jensen just looks around awkwardly during this encounter, like he’s not really sure what to do with himself.

There’s also this debacle, which was also at JIB3. I’m not sure whose duck it was (I think Cliff’s, J2’s bodyguard) but Misha had autographed it with “Cliff, I want to give you my big d*ck”. The entire cast had been messing around with it all day, then Jensen walks on stage, sees Misha’s autograph, and almost immediately takes a sharp object to the duck to ruin it. I don’t want to assume this is because of Misha but like…………… I have eyes and a brain. 

As far as how it was resolved? We don’t really know. I doubt we’ll ever really know, to be honest with you. Around the time of filming 8x05, they had VanCon, where they were both visibly in much, much better spirits. Misha kissed a poster of Jensen, Jensen was so much more open that even at the time, some fans who attended the con remarked on it. This brings us to August of 2012, where it appears they mended whatever went wrong. Was it that Misha wasn’t on the show? Was it something more, like Jensen thinking they were becoming a little bit too public? We’ll probably never know.

I’m not going to tack my thoughts on the end here since I want this to primarily be an informational post, so if you’d like me to go in-depth with my own theory of what happened and what went down, I’ll certainly do that in a different post :) These are some other really great resources for the breakup theory that cover things way more in-depth than I have, especially with the conventions. There’s this one, which is basically the Cockles bible, most (if not all) of the pertinent info about the breakup is listed there. Here’s a youtube playlist of all the key moments we’ve discussed here as well as some others. You can also check out my cockles tag or my cockles breakup theory tag for more delightful cockles info.

[glitterytidalwavedragon]

Expanding into my other Fandoms (I’m gonna have to take a stance) Read the whole thing please.

One of my oldest and most beloved anime is Inuyasha. As of late I have been binged watching the hell out of it as I am getting my BFF into different anime shows. We are really close to entering the Yashahime part of the series, and she asked if I planned to write fanfiction involving the one character which made me even watch the show as a 10-year-old.

Sesshomaru

The first episode I ever watched involved this aloof, entitled dog fighting his brother over the sword in their father’s grave. Specifically, it was part 3 of that whole episode series were Kagome pulled out the sword. I at the time had 3 dogs of German Sheppard/wolf hybrid, they were MASSIVE dogs, fell in love with the big white fluff that was Sesshomaru’s demon form. I use to sneak staying up and watch the show faithfully to see the goodest boy as it was only on at 11pm EST on adult swim. Which meant it was bad and I was breaking the rules, I felt like a rebel.

Now I hesitated answering that question. She has no idea of what is in Yashahime, she is being careful not to spoil it so I told her I didn’t know. Recently, to find out what the feel is for Sesshomaru content, I looked into the tag on tumblr…

OH MY GOD.

Sesshomaru’s tag is FLOODED with hate. Like every four post, there is hate, distain, and attacking happening. As someone who watches Yashahime, I quickly knew why.

Sessrin.

Even now I sigh. And I sigh HARD. I am not for, nor am I against the Sessrin train. Same for the Sesskagu train. I think both sides need to look at things on a logical prospective. I plan to do just that. I know I will get hate from the either side and maybe some support as well. But if I am going to do anything in this fandom (as I like doing ships and reader inserts) it will come up.

So, like my Kaiba post, and my Sebastian Heel post, I will use my research skills as well as my COLLEGE DEGREE WHICH HAS BOTH ART AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY labelled on it to explain why this progression in the story is normal to anti-Sessrin fans and why this isn’t a crime by story standards nor should we look at it as a crime.

AS WELL

Explain to Sessrin fans why it is so weird for non-shippers to see it play out and why so much hate formed.

As I let out another sigh, we shall begin. Let’s start at an historical prospective. (Links at the bottom).

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING! I’LL BE ABLE TO TELL!

~~

I will start with the information I can access right away.

While finding charts on the life-span of common folk in 1590’s Feudal Japan is rather difficult, Ancient.edu states that the average lifespan was about 50. To put this in perspective, the average lifespan of Europeans at the time was somewhere between 40-45 with the latter being rare. Since most of us reading are not from Japanese descent, I will through Europe in this first.

If we look at the same time frame of 1590, we are looking at most of Western Europe had now entered the age of Renaissance. According to sources from Learning Resources in association with the National Gallery of Art, marriage was not what TV drama’s from HBO or Hulu depicted. By today standards they would be a crime, as the average age for marriage of an adult female was age 14…

The reasoning behind the young marriage age had multiple factors. First being, females were considered an adult once they were menstruating. Birthing also proved to be fatal, and since the lifespan was at best 40 and 45 if they were lucky, there was really no room to wait. Also Europe at the time had became hugely focused on making sure blood lines were legitimate, meaning to ensure the girl was a virgin, the moment she was able to reproduced she was married off. Those they married were not young teenagers either. Most marriages, a man would be in their thirties, and had probably multiple wives as women died more than men when not counting the battle field.

To make matters worse for the Renaissance Lady, these marriages would leave many young males unable to marry and if their husband died in battle, well, unfortunately they were not seen as desirable. This was due to the idea of a ‘free woman’. Should the girl not have a father, brother or uncle to return to as they too died, a widow had her freedom. But that freedom came at a cost. She would be assumed to have slept around, and in many writings, such as the Canterbury Tales, where Geoffrey Chaucer writes about a Window on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land survived her five husbands and the men in her family. In short, she was made to be a slut and to be looked down upon as no man controlled her.

The point of talking about Europe is because that is something most of us Non-Asian or Japanese people consume and like to paint in large romantic brush strokes of knights and magic. Honestly, reading G.R.R.Martin Song of Ice and Fire, he uses this model as we see the Queen of Dragons, Danny start off at age thirteen shortly after she had her first menstruation.  

Now let’s look at Feudal Japan.

As stated before, the lifespan was around 50 years. In some populations, this was even shorter. Nagaoka, Hirata, Yokota and Matsu’ura’s on demographic data at the Yuigahama-minami area in Kamakura, Japan and found both male and female remains that suggested life expectancy to have ended around age 24-25. This was largely due to living conditions and public health. In areas like these, it would make the most sense to marry and repopulate quickly as the expectancy of life was half the national average at the time.

To my frustration, I could not find a clear marriage age for Japanese women at the time of the edo period. HOWEVER, where there is a will there is a way. I took a look at famous Lords or Daimyo’s of the time. The average age of marriage of their wives was between 12-14. Much younger than I expected, but it made sense considering this is a time where war ran the show and marriage was strictly about political gain. One of these Daimyo’s was Masamune Date, who was also 13, but then as he got older took concubines who became considerably younger than him as he became older. The goal was to have as many children as possible for hires and for political marriages to gain power.

Now lets look at Inuyasha the MANGA

Lets get the manga timeline proper here. The whole adventure took place in 11 months, a month shy of Kagome’s 16th birthday. Doing a few estimations, Rin would have travelled with Sesshomaru about 8-9 of those months. But before we get into the relationship, lets look at something the ANIME made a huge mistake with in the beginning and tried to fix as the story went on.

For some reason I could only fine gifs for the Early appearances of Sesshomaru so bear with me.

Early appearances in the manga

 ^ He was so fickle and a trickster then...

Now early apperances in the anime.

Later appearance in the manga

Laster appearance in the anime

Notice the issue here? 

Sesshomaru was CONSIDERABLY younger looking in the start of the manga. In the anime, he started off looking like an fully adult male. But as the anime went on, they tried to make Sesshomaru look younger with subtle changes to his jaw line, eye size, and his height. Yeah, his height had changed. They made him shorter.

While in the manga, we see this young-teen looking demon, slowly mature over 11 months to look like he is in his later teens and by series end, closer to being in his late teens or twenty. Yes, art changes over time, but the anime went a reverse route. I can only guess they spoke to the author of Inuyasha about her ships, as they did Drama CDs, and realized the mistake that was made in making him more mature than he was.

You can’t tell me he doesn’t look closer to his manga self in the final act, because he does.

Since we are on the topic of the anime, lets be clear. The anime timeline and manga timeline are very different. The story in the anime (in the English) suggests that OVER a year has past since Kagome started her journey. They try to fix this in the final act, but it was still so muddled as previous seasons are to be taken as cannon. This could have been due to an translation error in the early production when the anime no longer had anymore manga material to reference. But whatever the case, for English viewers the time the group spent together felt much longer.

So now we come to the heart of the issue.

Because of the mistakes of the anime, a lot of anti-sessrin see the relationship as father daughter. I’ll be honest, watching the anime and solely the anime as a teenager and as an adult (as the manga was on hold for a very long time due to author’s health. I was in college when it finished.), I too thought it was just a father-daughter relationship and Jaken the nanny who got punched all the time. In fact, the English took hard liberties with Kagura, as the English dubs often do with characters, and made it very clear her feelings for the demon lord and Sesshomaru very much recognized them (though he never responded). Even in her death scene, it felt as if he was saying good bye to a friend more than love interest. But who really knows, as there are things that point otherwise.  When another demon mock’s Kagura’s death, Sesshomaru gets super pissy.

The manga did also play with this fact when it came out in English, idk if the wording or message is different in the Japanese. Translation errors happen a lot even in todays releases, look at Kuroshitsuji.  So of course most anti-sessrin’s did not see this coming in Yashahime when Rin was named mother. In fact it felt like a betrayal as we were sure Sesshomaru had no romantic feelings.

Then there was the Kohaku/Rin mashup that was hinted left and right. The English anime, with its overly dramatic and blunt emotions made it appear one way. That in the end the two kids would probably be married. Then the anime as a whole made Sesshomaru older than intended. I can see why and understand how this became a problem.

On the other side of that coin.

If you followed the dub, seen ‘Swords of an Honorable Ruler’ and read the manga… Sesshomaru was not fatherly to Rin at all. In fact, Jaken picked up all of that leg work. Rin worried for Kohaku, but clearly loved Lord Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru cared about Kagura but he almost CRIED when he lost Rin.

We have to remember that Sesshomaru and Rin’s relationship must have been very hard for the demon. While we never see his mental process expect for a few rare times, we have to remember he hated humans. In the movie, he blamed a human for the early death of his father, Sesshomaru killed without mercy. It made sense that he wouldn’t be fatherly to Rin as her just being there should have caused countless inner conflicts. Hell, he even says his father’s weakness was humans, and look who picked up that trait.

Sesshomaru was designed to, someday, walk in his father’s footsteps. So sess/rin, not a surprise. Also when you see it in a historical perspective, Rin having kids around age 15-16, makes sense. In fact you could argue he waited too long for the time period.

We also need to look more at the manga when concerned with Yashahime. 8-9 months is all Rin travelled with him and he was like hold up, and left her at the village because he KNEW she needed to come to her own conclusion. That no matter what she picked he would live with and protect her. Unconditional love on his end. She cannon wise spent YEARS living with humans and MONTHS with Sesshomaru. Again, by manga standards of cannon.

Now I can already hear the screaming about age and what not. Some sources say Sesshomaru is over 900, by the rule of thumb, if we look at anime and movie releases, we have Sesshomaru being over 500 with no define age and Inuyasha around 270 years old being more pinpointed due to the movie. Just by going by ANIME CANNON. Kagome and Inuyasha, you have a 15 year old with a 270 year old man. If you say being pinned to the tree doesn’t count, then you have 220.

Also, here is something very interesting. In the episode where Inuyasha meets the unmother, he tells her, thinking it was his mom, she died when he was very small and we have flash backs later in the series of him being small running from demons. Demons clearly age much slower than humans, even half-demons. Inuyasha can be 270 but mentally and physically be 15, the same logic works for Sesshomaru, who in the manga is not much older than Inuyasha.

In the manga, there wasn’t any grooming, in the anime, there was a ton of mess-ups but no grooming.

Would this fly in todays world? HELL NO! NO, its gross, she’s a kid. Stop.

I know any fanfic I write will lean heavily on the side of father/daughter because that is what I grew up seeing on the screen. I can’t think of Rin as an adult because years of seeing her as a cheerful little girl. It’s like seeing G.O.T Arya about to have sex for the first time in season 8… I remember when she was a kid on the show. It was way to weird and I had to look away until it ended. But that’s my 2021 mentality.

But Inuyasha is not taking place in 2021. Feudal Japan is a whole other era with its own beliefs, morals and way of life. Those who understand this have nothing wrong with them. They just understand history.

Also, just to bang some nails in…

Anyone remember Bleach? Remember the MOST accepted couple was Ichigo and Rukia…. Rukia who was hundreds of years old and Ichigo who was 15… or Ichigo’s mom who was a teenager and his dad also hundreds of years old.

Most of this also boils down to Sesshomaru being a dude. As in reverse roles in animes its accepted and they don’t have the same historical context. Inuyasha is based off of historical context of Feudal Japan.

We need to stop spreading hate. We can’t accept some forms of literature because its European fantasy but bash other fantasy based literature for doing the same thing.

Sure, its weird for those who were use to seeing the father/daughter dynamic. Yes, there are extreme sessrin fans who post really questionable illegal content when they decide to leave Rin as an 8-year-old…

But this wasn’t ever meant to be perverted. The story was meant to make sense on a logical and historical base.

I hope everyone takes the time to read this. I love Inuyasha, I love Sesshomaru. I am just sick of seeing so many people fighting over what should be the revival of a beloved series. While yes, there is still room for sess/rin not being a thing, until it is stated otherwise, why hate each other? This fandom will only lose people by doing this. Calling people names or accusing them of illegal endorsement can hurt someone these days over social media.

Tumblr allows you to block tags. You don’t have to read anything or watch anything you don’t like. We gain nothing from attacking each other but can lose so much by doing so. Fanart, really good fan fiction, friends, ideas, sharing fond memories. Both sides have the right to feel as they feel, but no right in hurting each other.

A fandom is meant to bring people together. Not start a war…

Thank you.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.20402

http://www.italianrenaissanceresources.com/units/unit-2/essays/husbands-and-wives/#:~:text=Marriage%20not%20only%20reflected%20order,to%20ensure%20the%20bride's%20virginity.

https://www.ancient.eu/Canterbury_Tales/

https://www.ancient.eu/article/1424/daily-life-in-medieval-japan/#:~:text=Just%20as%20Japanese%20people%20today,in%20Western%20Europe%2C%20for%20example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_Masamune

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megohime

[bnhayyy]

The Call (6)

Chapter Title: Heartache

Wordcount: 2.8k

Fic Tag: Click

Ao3 Link: Click

Chapter Summary: Mikasa tells Annie about her past.

Notes: Alright! So this chapter is a little on the short side. The next two chapters will be as well, having originally been one super long chapter that I cut into three for the sake of themes and pacing. But on the bright side, yesterday I posted a Yumihisu one-shot that takes place between the second and third scene of chapter three, so be sure to check that out if you haven't seen it already. Once again, thank you to Celadon for betaing this chapter! And if you’re enjoying this fic, please consider joining my writing discord or buying me a ko-fi! You know, ko-fi. The thing that exists so monetized tumblr doesn't have to.

The week following the visit to the club passed by in a blur. Annie watched as Mikasa doubled down on trying to hunt Ymir, only for none of her efforts to bear fruit. For good reason. The whole time Mikasa hunted, Annie carefully walked the line of looking helpful while contributing nothing. 

Her faked efforts and need to preserve the scapegoat for as long as possible canceled out Mikasa's genuine zeal.

Or maybe Ymir was just better at this than they were. The results were the same either way. It looked like they weren't going to see Ymir again until she was ready to be seen.

Krista had proven herself to be both a help and a hindrance.

Annie hadn't seen the girl since that night at the club. Art was the only class she shared with her, but a little snooping had revealed that she hadn't been to any of her other classes either. Apparently, she had been calling in sick. Although they had been able to find the apartment building she lived in, they hadn't been able to get her exact address, and Mikasa wasn't quite ready to break into every single apartment in her quest to find Ymir.

Or confirm that Krista was still alive.

Annie noticed that Mikasa's anxiety had subtly grown with every day that they didn't see Krista… just not enough to make her break the law. For her part, Annie didn't press the matter. Seeming too willing to break into someone's apartment could set off all kinds of alarms. Besides, it was good that Krista was making herself scarce. If she had decided to stick around and give Mikasa ideas about Ymir's innocence, Annie really might have had to act.

That didn't mean that she was in the clear. Even if she was staying away for the time being, the fact remained that Krista Lenz was an unknown factor in a carefully calculated equation. Ymir too, for all that her little group had been using her presence to their favor so far. They had the potential to throw everything off balance if they decided to get involved. For that reason, they had decided to crack down on as much as they could.

Getting phone taps set up was a risky, tedious, and nerve-wracking process. However, by the end of the week, the phone in Smith's office, Smith's landline, Smith's cellphone, Mikasa's phone, and even Jean, Connie, Sasha, and Armin's phones were all bugged. Annie still had to find an opportunity to get Smith's friend's phones, but she planned on taking care of it soon.

Annie didn't know what to make of those two. An overly energetic watcher and a grouchy little demon hunter, the meeting Smith called to introduce them to everyone had been dominated by the former rambling while the latter glared at anyone who dared to look at him for more than three seconds. She didn't understand how Smith would mesh with personalities like theirs. Yet watching them for a little while had made it clear that the three of them were close. Genuinely close, not like the act that she, Reiner, and Bertolt put on.

Or the lie that she was building with Mikasa.

***

Annie: Patrolling tonight?

Mikasa: Of course

Mikasa: I'll be at your place at 7

***

It was 7:15 when Mikasa arrived. Annie may not claim to know her well, but she had gotten to know the last slayer well enough over the past few weeks to know that being late was unusual for her. She raised an eyebrow when she opened the door for her, allowing it to ask her unspoken question.

"Armin was over," Mikasa said as she stepped inside.

"I see," Annie said, closing the door. "You seem... close."

No. That wasn't right. One of the first things she had learned about Mikasa was that she wasn't truly close to anyone, Armin included. Annie leaned against the door as she reconsidered her phrasing. "You seem like you could be close," she settled on.

Mikasa stiffened. She turned to face Annie, but instead of making eye contact with her, she looked down at the bag that held her slaying supplies. "Yeah," she said, voice soft, but too vague to make out any specific emotion. She clutched her bag to her chest, probably unthinkingly. If she knew that she was holding onto it like a comfort and a shield, god knew that she probably wouldn't let herself. "If things were different, we probably could be."

Annie frowned. So that was the problem, the mindset that she and Reiner had been working so hard to cure her of. (Just in time to snatch her life away from her.) "You keep him at a distance because you're the slayer," she surmised.

"No," Mikasa said, causing Annie to blink in surprise. "It's because of..."

Mikasa hesitated. At least, that was what Annie thought was happening at first. As the seconds dragged on, she saw that whatever she was thinking about seemed to be actively causing her pain.

Annie frowned and stepped away from the door. She wanted to know about Mikasa, but not if it forced the other girl to dredge up painful thoughts. Annie was already going to be enough of a shadow on her existence. If it eased her suffering a little, she was okay with the other slayer dying a mystery. "Hey," she said, "you don't have to-"

"No," Mikasa cut her off. "You deserve to know this." A shadow of resolve fell over her expression as she spoke. She clearly wasn't happy about whatever she was going to say, but that wasn't going to stop her from saying it.

Annie felt something warm flicker in her chest. Maybe it was respect. Maybe it was admiration. Whatever it was, it was helpless to change the course of events. She still acknowledged it, because there was something to be said for someone who was willing to face things that they knew would hurt them. 

This feeling was probably the closest that Annie would ever come to self-sacrifice, the selfish, cowardly person that she was. But she could still allow herself to look at that light.

For as long as it was allowed to burn.

"Do you want to talk in my room?" Annie asked. If Mikasa really was about to spill her guts, then a degree of privacy was the least she could offer her. It was the only thing she could offer her.

Mikasa swallowed heavily and nodded. "Yes please."

Annie nodded and turned to lead her down the hall. The room at the very end was hers. It was small - all of their rooms were. Their organization had paid for them to rent a small house so that they didn't have to take the additional risk that would have been killing someone and occupying theirs, but they hadn't been willing to spring for anything extravagant. At least it wasn't hard to make people believe that a trio of college students could afford to rent it.

If Mikasa had any thoughts on how sparsely decorated the room was, she didn't voice them. Annie lead her over to the bed, where she sat down on one end while Annie took the other. There they sat, Annie trying not to stare too intensely at the other slayer as she waited for her to start. For her part, Mikasa was clearly trying to gather herself. She stared distantly up at the ceiling as she ran through whatever thoughts might be racing through her mind.

Finally, Mikasa shifted her gaze to Annie. "I met Armin through his best friend," she said. "A boy named Eren Yaeger."

Annie frowned. Barely anything had been said, yet she already got the sense that it was more complicated than that. The look on Mikasa's face made it impossible for her not to. 

"There was a home invasion when I was fourteen," Mikasa continued. Her voice was gaining a distant quality, like she was trying not to get caught up in the memory. Based on what she was saying, Annie was all but certain that really was the case. "My parents were killed and I was abducted. Eren ran into us when they were forcing me into the car."

Mikasa paused. Her attempt to distance herself from her emotions must not have been working, because something in her gaze fractured.

Suddenly, Annie had a horrible feeling about how this story ended for Eren. 

"Eren saved me," Mikasa managed. "He killed two of my abductors, and when the third arrived, he gave me the strength to kill him myself."

Mikasa had killed someone? A human being? Annie tried to keep her surprise from showing too readily. She must have failed, because Mikasa paused, fresh hesitation written across her features. 

Annie gave a tiny nod. "It was understandable, given the circumstances."

"That's…" Mikasa faltered. "Eren said that they didn't count as human beings."

"I suppose he might be right." Of course, by that logic, she probably didn't either. 

Mikasa nodded. Whether she was agreeing with Annie or simply recalibrating herself, she did not know. The slayer pulled herself together and continued before she had a chance to make a definitive guess either way.

"After that, it looked like things might be... Eren wrapped his scarf around me and said I could come home with him." Mikasa's expression was blank in a way that could only be forced. However, something in her eyes said that she was struggling to breathe. "That was when the vampire showed up. I didn't know that I was the slayer yet or understand what that meant. But I think he knew, somehow, and wanted to kill me before I could become a problem. It was me he was after. But he was harder to fight than a human, and I was scared, and Eren... he wouldn't let him take me without a fight."

For half a second, Mikasa zoned off, her gaze focusing on some point over Annie's shoulder. She snapped back to herself before Annie could figure out if she should say something. It made her wonder if she didn't want any interruptions.

No. It was more likely that she just wanted to be done with this story as soon as possible.

Annie understood the feeling.

"The vampire knocked both of us unconscious," Mikasa continued. "He must have taken the car keys off one of the dead men's corpses, because when we woke up, we were in the trunk. We tried to get out, but it was no use.

"He took us out by a cliff looking over the sea. He went for me first. Eren didn't like that. I tried to fight the vampire off and told Eren to run, but I couldn't... It wasn't..."

Mikasa started blinking as she fell silent. Annie would have been horrified to see the normally stoic slayer struggling to hold back tears if she weren't surprised that she hadn't started crying sooner.

"You were fourteen," Annie whispered. "You didn't have any training or know what you were dealing with."

Even fourteen-year-olds with years of training and who knew what they were dealing with would have a hard time against a vampire. How much had she struggled against Bertolt and Reiner when she was that age? She had been one of the best human cadets in the organization and Bertolt was far too prone to trying to go easy on her, but it was still hard. It might have been easier if she had already been called back then, but even that wouldn't have been enough to make up for the fear and ignorance if she hadn't been aware of the supernatural.

It seemed that Mikasa didn't see it that way. She shook her head and murmured, "I still had the strength of the slayer."

"Raw strength isn't everything," Annie insisted.

"Maybe not," Mikasa said. "But it should have been enough.

Her gaze drifted back to that spot over Annie's shoulder for a moment. Annie couldn't begin to try to gauge the look in her eyes, especially since it was only visible for a short moment. Her eyes switched to something far more shuttered and closed off in an instant.

"I was thrown over the cliff and into the ocean," Mikasa continued. "I thought I was going to die. And for a moment, I did."

The slayer's eyes closed as she remembered the moment, and Annie was foolishly tempted to do the same, just to acknowledge the event that allowed her to come into being.

Even if Annie herself had only become a slayer two years after Mikasa's death. She wondered, did Mikasa realize that some poor, unknown, short-lived slayer had come between them? She must have. Annie had already said that she was called in 2016 back at the meeting. The lost slayer was probably going to be one of those things that no one talked about, for those who realized that she'd even existed.

Just like Eren Yaeger.

Mikasa opened her eyes. "The cliff was by a park," she said. "Someone must have heard the commotion, because emergency services arrived and resuscitated me. But it was too late for Eren.

"Armin and I met at his funeral."

Annie felt her mouth go dry. What could she possibly say to that?

Perhaps it was a good thing that Mikasa wasn't done talking yet.

"There were holes in my story. Most of the adults brushed it off as trauma, but not him. He asked what really happened, and I was still weak and scared. I told him everything, and he... he offered to help me. I said no, but I did reach out to tell him when I killed my first vampire, because it was... it was the one that killed Eren.

"I thought that would be it for us, but he kept reaching out. Kept trying... to be my friend." Mikasa paused, the fragile expression of someone caught between hope and longing fluttering across her face before she remembered to shut it down. "And I want to. He's... Armin is good. But that's exactly why I can't let him get close. Erwin may have had a point about him knowing how to defend himself from the Supernatural, but I want him to stay as far away from this as possible. And..."

You can't see him without thinking about Eren, Annie thought.

She understood. That was exactly how she had felt about Porco in the months after Marcel died. That was how she felt when she looked at the vampires she'd been abandoned with for a while after Porco and Pieck disappeared. Armin may have been a good person, but he had also been Eren's best friend, whereas it sounded like Mikasa hadn't even known him for a day. If being around Armin was painful for Mikasa, then she could only imagine how it felt for him.

How difficult must it be to build a genuine friendship around a barrier like that?

Impossible, if you weren't even willing to try.

"...It's complicated," Mikasa finished.

"Sounds like it," Annie murmured. "But... it also sounds lonely."

This, she also understood. That understanding did not make her any less of a vile thing. It did not stop her from taking advantage of a moment of vulnerability and loneliness to draw the other slayer closer to her. Closer to her eventual doom.

"It is," Mikasa admitted. Her words were slow and measured, holding all the weight of an unbelievable, life-changing confession. "But it's... less with you around, I think."

Annie's heart did a funny thing as it tried to stop and speed up at the same time. "Is it?" she asked. The dryness in her mouth was back. She wanted to move closer to Mikasa, even though there were a million reasons why she shouldn't.

"Yeah," Mikasa said. "It's... it's nice having someone around who understands what it's like to be the slayer." Her lips twitched into a small, bittersweet, but genuine smile. Annie's eyes lingered on them. "I'm glad that I met you, Annie."

Annie swallowed heavily. "Me too," she lied. In that moment, she wished that she had never met Mikasa Ackerman. She wished that she'd never even heard of her, that she and her companions had continued with their lives utterly unaware of her existence.

She wished that she didn't have to kill her.

She wished that she didn't want to kiss her so much.

Annie shifted back, only then realizing just how close she had gotten to the other slayer, and stood up. "It's getting late," she said. "We should get patrolling, if you're still interested."

Mikasa nodded, snapping out of whatever trance had fallen between the two of them. "I am," she said.

And that was that.

Or so Annie told herself. Because although she wanted to believe that it was a fluke, that she had caught herself and would be able to continue walking her predetermined path, unwavering and unstoppable...

...In her heart of hearts, she could not deny the tension, that there was tension between them for the rest of the night.

She couldn't quite convince herself that it was gone come morning.

[hilarychuff]

2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (ish) favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

tagged by @chdarling my marauders era multichap queen!! last year i only did asoiaf content for public consumption and only like two fics (although CH is inspiring me to get back on my marauders bullshit in earnest) but i DID do a decent amount of ~things~ when you factor in graphics so here are my top 5 (also yes i took the opportunity to plug just about everything a week ago but i am taking it AGAIN get over it)

1. i carry it in mine - this is my jonsa soulmate au and i love it but also feel obligated to put it first regardless bc never in my life did i think i would start and then actually stick to a multichap that i updated consistently? so far i have updated every week although that is bound to die soon, very possibly tomorrow since i think i need to rewrite my chapter and i haven’t done it yet and it’s now sunday night oops. but regardless i feel like i am having fun here adapting the book canon to the show and blending them together in a way where i have a roadmap for what happens but also get to fix some of the things i didn’t like/felt were left out but also without getting too deep into the weeds of a lot of it bc it’s written in kind of an overview style 

2. howl - this is my sansa-centric scream au that i will never shut up about for the rest of my life possibly!! i love spooky movies and i love sansa and i love coming up with movie-hopping aus (or whatever) and once i hit on the right idea/casting for this one i was like.... ok yes. this slaps. i also have ideas for scream 2 and scream 3 (and maybe even scream 4 but we’ll see) and hopefully will one day actually write those but for now this is a stand alone

3. things we lost in the flames, things we found in the ashes - wait i actually forgot that for one minute i almost full-blown fell back into my agents of shield obsession. i was first and foremost a jemma stan and not exactly a fitzsimmons shipper so i was never going to fully get back into the show but there was a period of time in the early pandemic days when @hurricane and i were talking about/rewatching agents of shield a little bit and i fell alllllll into my jemma feels and while i love mack i felt the show never satisfactorily addressed mack being like “stay away from fitz” to jemma and then later on being her friend and so i was like.... fine i will write these missing scenes myself!!!!!!!!! in which they find common ground and mack develops a grudging respect for her!!!!! mack’s feelings were valid but he didn’t have the full story and i was like with god as my witness i will GIVE IT TO HIM

4. asoiaf jonsa overboard au graphic - i think of all my au graphics this is maybe my favorite so far? not bc the graphics themselves slap that hard although i do really like parts of it but bc i have always been like “how do you make an overboard plot that is not as fucked up as the actual overboard plot” and i really like what i came up with for the characters even though yeah it’s still fucked up lmfao. hoping to one day actually write this but who can say when idk

5. i carry it in mine graphics - cheating here a lil bc i can’t pick just one of the graphics i made for my fic above but i love these three and feel they are all Different and don’t have titles but i will tentatively call them by the first lines which are the old gods let me return to you which i like for purely aesthetic purposes? it is the most abstract i think of the graphics i did and the only one where i felt the color scheme was strong enough to (gasp!) also change the text font. and then this one my sister — what of sansa? i felt like i struck gold when i found that top photo of the redhead in the snow and then i also feel like the bottom one of “jon” is so good too and it is so hard to find people to put in these without them looking too modern but i felt like i pulled it off well on this one. and then if you left me here alone which actually features the actors/shots from the show in a way that i really like and is also a moment that i thought about A Lot while writing towards it and so i was really glad to find a good way to highlight it

i am not sure who did this already and also who doesn’t want to do it but for kicks going to tag mog (above) @renaissance-goth @grrmartin @chispas-and-broken-bindings @offbeatorbit @julvett idk how much some of you have produced this year but you are all wonderful and if you posted anything i want to praise it ok love you bye

[riotwritesthings]

Ok I was actually tagged in a bunch of these year-end-writing-things, so I’m just gonna combine them all haha thank you @crownofstardustandbone​ and @thursday-knight​!!!

Total Completed Stories:

53(?!?!?)

Total words:

On AO3: 416,521

Total including WIPS and unposted things: 588,500

Fandoms written in:

.... Just MCU ahaha

Top 5 By Word Count:

Road Hazards

It Lingers Too

I Feel It Too

A Work in Progress: You and I

The Taste of You

Top 5 By Kudos:

Melt into Me (Your Words Are My Own)

Tony Learns Something New

Morning People

Baby Crazy

Emerald Ivy (Wrapped Around My Skin)

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected?

Definitely more, and yet almost none of them were the fics I expected to work on haha

Did you take any writing risks this year?

Yes definitely, I was really nervous to post the MCD fic, obviously, (until I come back), but I feel like the biggest ‘risk’ was stretching out of my comfort zone for the Bound to You series with @crownofstardustandbone​, it’s definitely the most emotional and REAL fic, I feel, for whatever real means in this context haha.

Do you have any fanfic goals for the new year?

Maybe actually write that Stripper Tony story? Or any of my other many many WIPs and ideas?! IDK don’t look at me!!

For real though look forward to some more skinny!steve coming up in the nearish future 👀

Most popular story of the year?

Oooohh That’s a tough one to judge, but I would have to say Melt Into Me, which makes me so so happy because I worked really hard on that one, put a lot of thought into basically every part of it, and I’m so happy with how it came out

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

Road Hazards. It’s just still one of my favorites, if you like classic road trip tropes and banter and “awkward silence to bantering friends to mutual pining morons to lovers” vibes, all fluff all the time, then give it a try maybe! It’s also the longest stand alone fic I’ve written, and I’m still like damn how’d I do that

Most fun story to write?

Baby Crazy! I will shamelessly admit that I cracked MYSELF up writing that fic

With a very close runner up of Bound to You, because working out the details and planning and just talking about this verse is a constant joy and I’m so happy Stella dragged me into this! ❤️ (by suggesting it, that’s basically all it takes haha)

Most unintentionally telling story:

...... definitely Melt into Me ahaha my praise kink and acts-of-service-love-language popped out HARD in this fic, and that’s probably one of the reasons it’s in my top favorites. But I mean for real, my husband regularly pats my head and tells me I’m doing a good job and I go melty  everytime ahaha

Biggest disappointment?

Probably just all the ideas that I haven’t had time to get to yet, but hey I’ll get to it all eventually! Maybe!

Biggest surprise?

Probably how big of a hit the Bound to You series has been, I really expected it to be a kind of niche interest thing, and I’ve been just overwhelmed by the amount of people who liked it, and by the amazing people I’ve met because of that verse 🥰

rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (ish) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Oh Jeez ok I’m going to do my best here but WOW I wrote a lot this year ahaha

Melt Into Me (Your Words Are My Own) - WinterIron, E, aka the praise kink fic

Bucky has a new strategy for getting Tony to take proper human care of himself. Tony has never been so well fed, hydrated, thoroughly rested, and confused in all his life.

That doesn’t mean he wants it to stop, and it’s amazing how many boring adult things Bucky can get him to do just by patting his head and calling him ‘good boy’. Right up until Tony possibly ruins everything.

This fic just holds a very special place in my heart, I swear I put more thought into this than any other fic, the gradual build up and framing it just the way I wanted and making sure every scene was absolutely SOAKED in pining. As I like to say, it is Softe, but in a Very Intense way.

Bound to You - WinterIron BDSMverse, E, aka my current obsession

Look. I just love this series. I love everything about it, I love that it lets me dive a little deeper into emotions and such than I maybe normally do, in my usual cracky-porn style. This is definitely the slowest burn I’ve ever written, and I am loving every second of it and really REALLY looking forward to what we have coming up next! And of course, a big part of that love is just from how much fun I have working on it with @crownofstardustandbone, bounding ideas back and forth and brainstorming and making joking what-ifs that we end up falling in love with.

Baby Crazy - WinterIron, E, aka is it egotistical to laugh at my own jokes?

For some reason, the children of New York love Bucky Barnes. It’s heartwarming to witness, and it’s making it really hard for Tony to ignore his gigantic crush on the man.

Especially because Tony can’t stop suggesting they maybe have a baby together. The rest of the Avengers just want a vacation.

My favorite part of this fic is just how many people told me it made them actually laugh out loud, that’s basically my favorite thing to hear. All the friendships and team dynamics were so much fun in this one, and I will admit that I regularly reread it for a giggle

A Series of Learning Experiences - SteveTony, E, aka smol Steve with the big ol’ monster cock

Look. This series isn’t my fault. Stella put the idea of Skinny Toppy Steve in my head and now the little bastard lives there making filthy demands. This series is a totally different type of challenge too, in that I try to make it as Absolutely Filthy as possible. I regularly poke my friends like “hey is this filthy enough? SHOULD I UP THE FILTH FACTOR?!” It is my ode to smut with feelings, and I have so much fun with it haha

until I come back (from the dead for you) - WinterIron, E, aka the choose your own ending fic

Bucky meets Tony at a dive bar. He can’t deny that there’s something between them, but Bucky is also leaving soon, and he doesn’t know when he’ll be back. He only knows that he’ll think about Tony the entire time he’s gone, that as soon as he’s stateside again he’s going to take Tony on an actual date.

(Except he doesn’t come back.)

(But coming back takes a little longer than he expected, and he comes back a little more broken.)

Mostly I’m super proud of myself for actually managing to write the super sad MCD ending that I set out to, even if I did have to write the happy ending at the same time to get through it hahaha. I do love that people can choose the sad or happy ending without missing anything, but I do have to admit there are some parallels I’m really proud of that only show up if you read both versions

[curious-menace]

Rogues age headcanons?

so  i was scrolling the riddler headcanons tag and a post by @canadian-riddler inspired me to make this.  i cant find my bradly games guide with the info in it but i did go and get the arkham timeline from the wiki for reference

https://arkhamcity.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline

i also remembered that batman is stated to be 32 in one of the games. but i cant for the life of me remember which one. i have a suspicion that its Origins which would make him roughly 44 by arkham knight, so im going to try and use that as a measuring post for the other rogues. if i can find the source ill link it in the replies

Also before y'all yell at me for ruining your Headcanons, none of this is confirmed. I just worked them out based on the in game evidence but that doesn't make it canon. It's up to interpretation.

Also also this is just for the Arkham series. Idk about the rest of the canons out there. Gotham Riddler is much older than batman, Gotham scarecrow starts the show as a child. It's confusing.

Penguin

He’s obviously the oldest of the rogues currently active. He has a terrible grudge against the wayne family, bruce and thomas included. im going to say hes in his 50-60s because that would put him just a bit older than Thomas wayne, giving them time to be active and at eachothers throats before batman was a thing. its difficult to tell with him because hes a smoker in canon, obviously that ages people. he also seemed to get much older overnight between city and knight which are only 9 months apart. the voice modulator he has also doesnt help, so i dont feel confident saying more than 50-60 by the time of AK. i guess you could look back and say he appears to be in his late 40′s in origins. slap on 10-12 years and it would be something like this: AO= 46-49  AA=55-58 AC= 56-59 and AK=57-60

Two-face 

He’s a little bit easier.  we know he and bruce were friends (ignoring his connection with batman )at one point so they have to be roughly the same age. i cant find any concrete evidence  for when  harvey became twoface, only that it happened after arkham origins and before assult on arkham. ive also been informed by wikipedia that to be elected DA you generally have to be around 30. because of that, i think two face’s age plays out like this : AO=30-32 AA=39-41 AC=40-42 and AK= 41-43 

Poison ivy 

another slightly easier one. although ill admit there isnt much evidence, what we have is pretty solid. In the cold cold heart dlc its possible her visitors badge in the lobby reading “pamela isley- visitor ”  this tells us shes not yet a doctor, because we know she goes on to work for gothcorp under Dr woodrue. why would she only have a visitors pass if she worked there in origins? presumably she has already graduated from university, otherwise she couldnt be an intern. so that would make her timeline something like this : AO=22-24 AA=31-33 AC=32-34 and AK 33-35

Riddler

Riddler and scarecrow were probably the hardest ones for me to do. when i replied on indys riddler post  is said he had a degree in criminology but now i cant find the evidence for that. i know he has some sort of degree , he’s the head of the GCPD’s cyber crimes unit they wouldn't give that out to anyone ( although the possibility does exist that he faked the qualification to get the job but im not using that as a factor in my sums) 

Given that he is a genius, we could maybe put his graduation age at 18-22 rather than the normal 22-24. Im going to assume that he’s been working for the GCPD for a few years so that he could build up his network to the size we see in ao. that would leave us with a timeline like this : AO=20-26 AA=29-35 AC=30-36 and AK=31-37. 

im aware much of the fandom thinks he is much older than this, putting him in his 40s but i think his lack of selfcare, obvious heavy smoking habit (given the cigarettes in his hideout in ak) and overall poor health both mental and physical have made him age beyond his years. for me, personally, i canon him to be 22-24 in AO and 32-35 in AK 

Scarecrow

honestly given how little we see of him physically and due to the fact we cant eve see his face, scarecrow was the hardest to place. An easter egg in Origins :Blackgate referes to him as Dr crane , revealing he is already a doctor so he’s got to be at least mid 30s by then (given the average age for a doctorate and professorship is 33-37) Ive scoured the internet looking for answers but this is the best i can come up with: AO=33-37 AA=42-48 AC=43-49 and AK 44-50 

Harley Quinn

Simlarly with Ivy, shes working towards her doctorate in the time of Origins. given that she was in blackgate its likelys he knew Dr Crane before he became scarecrow, perhaps even worked under him. she appears young in origins but shes not a teenager. id have to put her at 20-24 given shes already got some sort of degree. We know she goes on to become a doctor by the doctorate certificate in the steel mill in arkham city so she must have achieved it before becoming harley quin in roughly year 6 of the time line ( origins being year 2 and knight being year 11-12)  with all this in mind i think her timeline must look a little like this: AO= 20-24 AA=29-33 AC= 30-34 and AK=31-35 

Well that's all my thoughts for now. If you have any other ideas, questions or want to add to my post feel free to HMU 💜💙💚💛🧡❤️