#Jimmy and him just had a blow out fight like the next time we assume they talk is during the crash sequence cause he honestly hangs

[dykedvonte]

I think the most baffling thing about the Tulpar as a vessel to me is the fact that the ship really did only have a one way communication system.

I know it was cheap but even the most basic of vessels regarding major transport would have some way, shape or form for outside communication. Not only that but there was absolutely no form of innate emergency signal to show they may have been offline or in trouble despite clearly having a system to dock credits if they went off course. It's another factor that really shows that bad situations are made to get worse by design. One person who is required to relay all information to the crew and make all the choices without feedback. No way to update or call for help in case of a dire situation. No way to inform of inner personal conflicts and acquire procedures accordingly.

It really is like they are all in some sort of fucked up solitary confinement. They have their own world with strict roles that are meaningless in the end, as long as the cargo makes it, it doesn't matter what happens on that ship to the company. They don't want to hear anything and will come to conclusions on what happened based on how much pay they can withhold from the workers. Even what they do send is short, sterile and corporate to the extent it was likely written and sent out with a command by some random unmanned computer in an office.

There's something to be said about how unfair it is to force absolute power and control onto one person when you as an entity could do so much more to offload it but I've said it many times before so I won't again.

[amwritingmeta]

15x20: New Beginnings

I’d like to speak of the cause and effect of the ending.

I agree that the execution could’ve been skewered just a tiny bit and it would’ve made the overall impression more palatable, but assuming production was at the very least hampered by COVID restrictions, we know that this wasn’t actually Dabb’s final vision. It’s what we’ve got, though, and it still leaves us with a lot of tying up of narrative threads. 

How?

We have a final image of Dean and Sam together and I understand why this is irksome and why it feels regressive. Here’s why I think it actually isn’t:

Dark Side of the Moon tells us that Dean and Sam are most definitely not soulmates meant to share a Heaven. Dean’s memories are focused on Sam while Sam’s memories are completely devoid of Dean. Dean also needs to find Sam (and is helped to do so by Cas). Ie. they brothers are not in a shared Heaven, the way Jimmy and Amelia and Mary and John are highlighted to be.

We also know that Heaven’s system is basically a prison for the mind of the souls of those who have died, right? You get stuck in your best memories. This is simply Heaven’s idea of benevolence, because Heaven, and the angels, have never understood how much choice and free will matter to humanity.

So. No matter how much Dean and Sam succeeded in saving the world throughout our narrative, they were still always headed for forced separation and this prison for their minds and being filed away behind one of those white doors, in essence ceasing to exist, and the point of all their trials and tribulations would have been what? Living a long and happy life, only to die and go to what Dean wouldn’t have chosen for himself with a gun to his head? Eternally brainwashed into thinking he’s content? 

Can you think of anything more horrible to be waiting at the end of their road?

So the point to this ending we got is, to me, gloriously clear and it’s this:

The journeys of these men, throughout this entire narrative, made the new Heaven possible. 

This new Heaven, where there’s freedom of choice and endless possibility for exploration. Where human souls are now granted an afterlife worth actually living, where everyone can reconnect with the people they’ve cared about, the people they’ve loved. 

(Buddhists have six Heavens and believe life exists on multiple planes meaning when you die you simply transcend to the next plane where there’s more living to be done) (Swedish children’s author Astrid Lindgren explored the death of two brothers through sacrifice and illness in her novel The Brothers Lionheart and in the mythology of this book the first Heaven one enters just after death is called Nangijala, and once you die in Nangijala you move onto Nangilima and so on) (etc.) 

What we get in the Supernatural mythos is that there’s no more prison for the mind. No more only soulmates get a shared Heaven: ie. family genuinely doesn’t end in blood.

So look at what this means for the entire structure of our narrative and our character journeys -->

The Road 

If Dean and Sam hadn’t been codependent, they wouldn’t have made those bad choices that brought Cas into the narrative. 

If Cas hadn’t been influenced by Dean to rebel and start making bad choices of his own, he never would’ve made Heaven fall apart by trying to stitch it together and teach angels free will and stepping into a leader role he wasn’t quite ready for, and he wouldn’t have begun on the journey that brought him right to the moment when he expressed his need of bringing back a win for Dean, and for himself.

That win, turns out, was Jack. 

Cas’ faith in Jack, Cas fighting for Jack, Cas feeling responsible and stepping into the Good Father Figure in order to keep his promise to Kelly and protect Jack was what led to Cas making a bad deal with the Empty, but that bad deal also left Cas with the opportunity to save Dean’s life when death was threatening to break down that door and kill them both.

The remarkable truth that’s added to this moment is that Cas’ journey has brought him to a place in his progression where he’s no longer afraid of his feelings, he’s no longer questioning them or thinking they mean a weakness he shouldn’t let define him, because he realises that what he needs isn’t Dean to love him back for that love to be real, to be valuable and valid. His fear of alienating Dean through loving him is the lie. That’s where his happiness stems from, him recognising and finally embracing this truth. 

Because the love he feels isn’t a weakness. It never was: it’s his strength. It’s always guided him, even when he didn’t realise it.

And the strength of it lets him tell Dean exactly how he sees him and that he loves him, and opening up to and being honest with himself is what allows Cas to integrate with his shadow. The Empty takes him, but Cas is at peace, because he no longer fears and avoids his unconscious, he no longer needs to engage in suppression and repression of his emotions, and so his shadow no longer holds any sway over him, which is a fact given to us by how Cas’ ending in this narrative means him being free of the Empty. 

A freedom that never would have been granted, never would have been possible, without his faith in, his fighting for and his protection of Jack.

Cas’ words to Dean makes Dean begin his final steps into integration as well, meaning Cas’ declaration of love directly affects the outcome of the fight against Chuck, because Dean wants Cas back, but it’s not everything he’s focused on, since it shouldn’t be everything he’s focused on. 

It can’t be, since there are bigger fish to fry, and because of Cas’ view of him, Dean is opening up to his true self, to trust, to having faith in himself, which allows for a letting go of the need for control and thinking it’s all on him and everything is his responsibility or everyone dies. 

Thanks to this, we get Dean in teamwork mode with Sam and Jack, the three of them together figuring out how to manipulate Michael into bringing Chuck to them in order for Jack to de-power him. 

Dean’s integration is complete, and given to us through the symbology of his inner child (Jack) sucking the power out of his shadow (Chuck) and is then underlined by the ego (Dean) telling his de-powered shadow that it’s to be forgotten. Dean’s shadow, which has fed on and also fuelled the need in Dean for repression and suppression, no longer holds any sway over him. 

And Dean’s understanding and embracing of his true identity is highlighted by how he refuses to kill Chuck. 

Because that’s not who Dean is: he’s not a killer. He’s internalised Cas’ view of him. Cas’ truth making way for Dean’s own truth to shine a light. 

Dean is done with self-denial. And self-destruction. 

Which is what 15x20 is all about: that lack of self-destruction and the finality of goodbye.

Because Dean being shown to accept the finality of the loss of Cas has such direct bearing on Dean’s ability to accept the finality of saying goodbye to his brother.

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

All of this, all of it, is because of and thanks to Cas’ LOVE for Dean. 

Thanks to the moment that allowed Cas to express it and to SEE Dean for who he truly is. 

Thanks to the moment of Cas’ integration we get Dean integrating.

And it’s so beautiful that it’s the loss of Cas this time that allows for Dean to do this, because he’s always plummeted into despair without Cas. His progression has slowed to a crawl without Cas in the narrative. His entire sense of self, his entire source of faith in anything, being drained out of him. 

This has been romantic and lovely and fabulous, but it’s also so unhealthy. 

Dean being shown to mourn, to want Cas back, to expect Cas at the end of that phone call, only for him to move away from the need and want to have Cas back, recognising that it’s possible Cas’ return is now an improbability and choosing to look to the future, because now he’s feeling worthy of a future, this is such an important detail for the love story to move from profound bond territory...

(where Cas used the bond forged by Heaven as an excuse for why he kept hanging around Dean) (Dean was his charge, his mission, he was meant to protect him) (a view shattered by Hester in S8) (and properly dismantled by the human!Cas arc) (at least the way I see it because that’s where Cas got that love he feels brought into actual stark relay like oh fuck I’m in love with him)

...to the healthy, selfless, loving side to that bond, which isn’t about self-deception, miscommunication and fear, but about blowing all of that apart, letting feelings flow freely, opening up to the truth of them, the strength of them, and these two men being able to finally free themselves of all those past doubts by embracing their true identities.

I realise there’s frustration that we only got part-textual Destiel. I felt it too. But I never expected canon Destiel. I hoped and wished, but up until Cas’ declaration of love, I questioned whether the studio would be onboard, and it turns out they weren’t okay with making SPN an overtly queer narrative. Was Cas’ declaration of love baiting or BYG? I hope my meta reading in this post will tell you how little I feel it was.

So then. Letting go of the initial shock of it all, I’m leaning on what I did expect: the love story so strongly highlighted in the subtext that we were all left with zero doubt that we’d been seeing it there for a reason.

Subtext is part of the text. For any writer worth their salt, subtext is more important than the surface text. Text without subtext is flat and dull. The text we’ve been dealing with for fifteen years has always had layers upon layers.

These final three episodes, as I’ve already pulled on above, brings it in spades and our subtext tells us plainly:

Dean Winchester is in love with Castiel, just as much as Castiel is in love with him. 

How does it tell us this plainly?

Cas is finally able to integrate because he opens up to the truth he’s carried with him for so long: his love for Dean. Unconditional. He no longer needs Dean to say it back, to validate the emotion, Cas is realising that happiness in the feeling itself, in acknowledging it and allowing it free rein. Cas moves into making peace with himself, for himself.

Now, we know Cas loves Dean because, well, declared, but why is it plain that Dean loves Cas back?

Firstly, because of the episode being entirely structured around people in love losing one half. That’s as much of an in-our-faces use of mirroring as underlining of the subtextual love story that we’ve ever gotten from Berens. 

Even stronger than the mirroring, for me, is the fact that Cas’ love for Dean allows Dean to finally move into integration. 

Cas’ words infuse Dean with a sense of self-worth that immediately paves way for him beginning to have all that faith in himself that Cas has always represented to him. The build from 15x18 through to 15x20 is like a gentle moving away from Cas being the external source of Dean’s faith, to Cas’ love and expressed faith revealing Dean’s internal source of faith in himself.

A source which has been suppressed and repressed out of a whole layer of different fears, which have in turn brought on the belief that a toxic masculinity armour was necessary for survival and that all feelings are weaknesses, but because of Cas’ faith in him, because of Cas’ expressed love, Dean is able to no longer need an external source of faith, because he’s now internalised and embraced the truth of what makes him who he is.

Just like Cas is shown to do, we’re given Dean recognising that the love he feels isn’t a weakness, but a strength, because Cas’ words is about Dean’s capacity for LOVE. It’s this love that takes away Chuck’s ability to tell Dean who he is. 

No one can tell you who you are -- you choose who to be. 

For his entire life, right up until that moment in that room with Cas, facing death (literally) all Dean can see himself as is someone who can do nothing and who knows nothing except how to give into his anger (he’s never been able to control it because he’s never recognised the source of it) and find something to kill.

This view of himself has been constantly whispered to him and reinforced by his unconscious, his Shadow-side, who’s kept Dean thinking that he doesn’t have good things last for him, ever, so he can’t have love in his life or a future to look forward to, because he doesn’t deserve it. A perpetual emotional roundabout where his Shadow-side has stayed in complete control.

One might argue this has always been the source of Dean’s anger: his inability to dare open up to his true identity that has kept the toxic masculinity armour in place, kept the performance up, kept him more often than not lying even to himself of who he is and who he wants to be, because he never felt there was a choice in the matter. 

Truly allowing himself to recognise and feel all that longing for love that’s been like a tight ball in his chest always, meant giving into weakness meant getting Sammy killed or himself or both of them meant failure.

But the only way to beat back and conquer our Shadow-side is by recognising and accepting our flaws and no longer feeling unworthy because of them.

That’s what Cas’ words and his love does for Dean. 

That’s right there in the subtext: Dean, even in the moments before certain death, being unable to open up to the truth of who he is and what really drives him; Dean needing his external source of faith, this man that he’s loved for a long time, to tell him that how he sees himself is wrong, to afford him a different view of himself, to bring the truth to light so that Dean can finally feel worthy it, because Dean couldn’t beat his Shadow back on his own, his dark view of himself was much too ingrained for that.

It had to be Cas. The narrative tells us it always had to be Cas. And so it is Cas who saves Dean from himself. And saves Dean’s life. And saves Dean from having to spend his afterlife in a prison of the mind.

Love wins.

And Cas only ever entered the narrative due to Dean’s need to Protect Sammy at all costs, because that has always been such a huge identity marker for Dean, his entire self-understanding and sense of self tied to whether he can keep his brother alive and out of harms way, which, as he grows up, then translates itself into Dean’s enormous capacity for selflessness and caring about others. 

His core trait was never weapon, it was shield. It was protector. Stemming directly from all that love he carries around and can’t allow himself to feel because it means weakness and that means death and that means he’s failed and is worthless and around it has always gone.

And would always have gone, too. If not for Cas.

Love fucking WINS.

I mean. DAMN! It’s so gorgeous.

(this angle still holds even if Dean in any way was ever meant to actually reciprocate in that scene, because it’s made so clear to us how Cas never expects Dean to say it back) (if Dean is meant to say it back and the love story is meant to be textual that would be mind-blowing head-exploding joyful news) (but it doesn’t change the subtextual move away from unhealthy holding on to healthy letting go) (the textual would only ever strengthen the fact that we have subtextual confirmation) 

But what about...?

Yeah, but what about that ending then? What about the last twenty minutes? What about all the focus on the brothers? 

Was the execution of the finale perfect? No, I wouldn’t say it was, but I could see, when I watched the finale again on the 21st, that there was efforts made to make something good enough. Something geared toward tying our narrative up as best as possible with the means presented to Dabb. 

I understand why people feel stuff is missing.

Because stuff is missing. Dabb told us they had to change the ending, that they were supposed to have a whole lot of people back to populate Dean’s Heaven. Found family galore. Misha said the same thing. They couldn’t (I’m not going to speculate on why, it’s just clear that they couldn’t) and so the ending had to be modified. To me that’s fairly plain in how it’s structured.

Did they have to focus so hard on the brothers?

Well... given the restrictions, I think this was the only way to end this narrative, because the story has always been centred on these two brothers and the bad choices and sacrifices they’ve made, and the blood, sweat and tears they’ve shed in order to remain together.

Their absolute inability to let the other go actually kick-started their onscreen journey.

Because this is a story about dependency, and letting go of that dependency to make way for a healthy, equal coexisting; which is what, to me, that final shot is all about.

Should Cas and Jack have been there? Sure! There will always be stuff missing from the final two eps that I’ll wonder about. Like, if Cas was never meant to be in the story (as per Misha he was but let’s say for argument’s sake) then why didn’t Dean just ask, very calmly, in 15x19 of Jack our New God: “What about Cas?” and then Jack our New God could’ve answered gently, but plainly: “He’s at peace.” Simple. Why didn’t we get an establishing of Eileen as Sam’s wife? And it would’ve helped so much to have Charlie and Stevie reestablished in the visual narrative as alive, however plain it is to me that Jack will have brought them back with everyone else who were away-ed by Chuck.

Sure, there could’ve been more.

But what I love about that final shot of the brothers is this canonical fact:

It would not have been possible without Cas. 

Cas learning and growing and integrating to the point that he knows exactly how to fix the home he’s broken more than once, and how to bring free will, at long last, to Heaven, to the benefit of humanity.

And Dean’s little sideways smile (his “I want this smile”) when Cas is mentioned, when he realises that Heaven is different thanks to Cas, well, isn’t that just the darnedest thing? 

*forever headcanon that Dean was expecting to see Cas again somewhere somehow he just didn’t know when and now... here Cas is* 

When Cas went, it took a little time to adjust, but Dean let go of Cas and didn’t make a deal and didn’t go crazy or self-destructive, there was no nosediving into depression, because Cas’ words made those types of coping mechanisms no longer necessary. 

Dean drinks and indulges at the start of 15x19 because he’s still processing, but by 15x20 Cas’ words have been fully internalised, Dean has integrated, and he’s looking to the future. Set on living, because otherwise he’d render Cas’ sacrifice meaningless.

Dean’s death has zero blaze and glory to it. He didn’t expect this day to be the day. But it is. And he accepts it. And because he does, because he’s open and honest with his brother, because he tells Sam all the words he needs Sam to carry with him, gives Sam all the faith in himself that Cas left Dean with, he’s brought to a Heaven that has been readied for him by the love of his life. 

Cas is right there. And he’s been waiting. And he’s used his time well, because Heaven is now the afterlife that Dean deserves. The ultimate salvation. Love and happiness and companionship and LOVE LOVE LOVE. Forever.

If that isn’t the biggest reward for the both of them after everything they’ve been through, I don’t even know what is!

Sam arriving is a given, but I have to say I genuinely do not see Sam as living his life in pain and grief. He’s happy. He loves his kid. He’s a good father. Just like Dean was, and Bobby, and Cas. All the Good Father figures threaded through 15x20. And this narrative has been about these two brothers. It ending on them together, at peace, feels fitting. 

Yeah, but shouldn’t Dean have gotten to live his life?

Sure, this is my interpretation 100%, but Dean’s death feels softly ironic and fitting because it is unexpected. 

I can’t hit on this enough: there’s no blaze and glory.

Dean was ready to make the most of life, but through accepting death and accepting separation from Sam, Dean is brought into the same moment Cas was brought into, a moment of recognising what’s important, where Dean opens up fully to vulnerability and hands over his trust and faith in that Sam will be fine without him, which pushes Sam into the same integration that Cas’ words afforded Dean. Voicing trust and faith will do that for a person.

And Sam’s arc was always dependent, narratively, on the progression of Dean’s arc, so it makes a lot of narrative sense that this needed to happen for Sam to get pushed out of the nest and forced into having proper faith in himself. Because there’s no other choice. 

He’s left doing what he has to and it results in a balance between that family life he’s always wanted (foreshadowed in 15x01) and staying aware of and raising his son to be aware of the reality of their world, given to us via the tattoo on Dean Jr.’s wrist. (oofta I wish he’d had a different name but since everything had to be done in the visual narrative it’s the easiest way to connect us with Dean still being present in Sam’s life so I get it)

There’s also that romantic in me that feels as though Dean is greatly rewarded for all his suffering and struggles, for all those years of living his life in fear and feeling as though he doesn’t matter by not only bringing him into a Heaven he made possible, but by reuniting him with the love of his life and this time they’re equally immortal, equally made of light, equally eternal, equally integrated and balanced and ready to accept all that love and happiness.

That just makes me fucking happy. For them both.

Bring on the New Beginnings

The fact that the narrative has opened itself up to being interpreted as somehow glorifying death or saying that happiness can only be found in death is distressing, but I hope that the threads I’ve pulled on here gives enough of a basis for me to say how I truly feel like this is simplifying why the choice was made for Dean to die.

It’s not about happiness only being found in death. 

It’s not about devaluing living your life, it’s about the idea, the soft hope, even the narrative promise that death, for our characters, not for humanity as a whole, but for these specific men, who have always avoided it and made bad deals and feared separation and been brought into a crisis of identity (Dean because he doesn’t know who he is without Protect Sammy as purpose and Sam because he genuinely and continuously seem convinced that he can’t hunt without Dean to lead the way) whenever death has touched them have now reached a point where the separation is an accepted part of life.

And this acceptance is rewarded: because the separation isn’t forever.

Death is not the end. It makes way for new beginnings. For all three of TFW. Actually all four, because of course Jack is included in this endgame.

There’s a transformation that takes place, thanks to them integrating. They get to transcend what’s come before and move onto the next plane of existence together. 

Together.

TFW 3.0!

Death on this show has always been about a moment of rebirth, of entering a different leg of their journeys.  

I don’t find it out of place at all that the ultimate moment of death for our characters mean just that. 

Not an ending, but a new beginning.

In conclusion

Could there have been more? As said, yes. Absolutely yes. But I doubt Dabb isn’t aware of that. I don’t think this is the ending he originally intended. It might have been a brothers focused ending, because I think Dean was always meant to die and go to Heaven, but Dean’s Heaven was meant to be a celebration of found family. 

The subtext of this narrative is what I’ve been reading and what I’ve been hooked on for four years, and what I’ll continue to be hooked on for the rest of my life, I’m fairly sure. I wish it could be celebrated, the way it always has been, the way we’ve always known to look deeper.

I hoped Supernatural would turn out to be a vehicle for overt representation. I always hoped that, and believe that was what the writers wanted. The fact that we didn’t get overt bisexual Dean and Destiel as unquestionable canon was distressing to me too and I’ll always think of this ending as a missed opportunity and I wish the CW would learn and fucking do better already. 

I understand the frustration, I understand the anger, I just wish we could all look at the richness of this ending and everything it says about the narrative, about our subtext, about our love story, about our character journeys, and lean into the treasury of it.

And omfg we got Cas as canonically queer. 

We got a main character on our show that is overt representation, on a journey towards a moment where he gets to express love and hope and clarity and this in turn moving through and enabling the integration of Dean and ultimately of Sam as well.

Truth begetting truth. Happiness begetting happiness. And love saving the day.

So, my friends, I will say this: saying that all the writing is bad, or claiming that there’s no depth, nothing to pull on, that it all just plain sucked, that doesn’t quite cut it. These three final episodes, just as any episode ever of this goddamn show, contain all of those layers and layers, especially when looked at together and certainly when taken into the context of the show as a whole.

And yes, you are, of course, more than welcome to your own interpretation! 

To finish I’ll quote Bruce Almighty: 

Lovelovelovelovelovelovelove!! 

[duchessnibenhu-ofpyromania]

Puppy Adoption

Warnings: Slight blood mention, a few swear words. I don’t think there is anything else, but feel free to tell me if there is.

This is an OC, but can be read as a reader fic as Puppy is just a nickname. Not beta read. I haven’t seen series 7 of Agents of Shield yet so forgive any errors. I hope this ok, this is my first fanfic in a long time and of all time for writing for the Marvel universe.

Inspired by this post. Thanks to @gerardpitts for the inspo on the allergy and lactose intolrance, I hope you don’t mind me using the ideas.

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

Peter paced the corridors of the hospital, everytime a doctor or nurse walked by he would look up, hoping they had some news to give them. Bucky and Sam were sitting nearby, watching him a little warily.

It had been about a month or two until the Hex incident and Peter had been coming to terms with the fact that he was in another reality. Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeau  had both helped him to get back on his feet, though at first he had felt a little bounced around.

Monica had handed him over to Jimmy, who had then handed him over to some sort of organisation known as S.H.I.E.L.D. Peter had guessed by the name, that it was a partner of sorts to Monica’s S.W.O.R.D and he had been right.

The person he had been introduced to was someone they had referred to as Puppy. He had raised an eyebrow at that, and wasn’t quite sure what to make of her before he met her, but when he did. Puppy had grinned at him, ok first she had practically jumped Jimmy when she saw him, giving him a big hug and saying how good it was to see him again. Peter had given a little snort at the look on Jimmy’s face when this happened, causing Puppy and Jimmy to turn towards him.

“Is this he?” Puppy had asked, with a friendly smile and looking Peter up and down, who did the same to her, taking in her ginger hair that was dyed red at the tips and hung in a ponytail. Nothing about her suggested she might be some sort of werewolf, which Peter had assumed the reason why she had that nickname. At her hip she seemed to have some sort of short staff dangling off a belt, and a long black coat, which Peter had to admit looked pretty cool.

“It is,” Jimmy answered, handing her over a tablet, Puppy took it and looked at it, bouncing on the balls of her feet a little. Peter watched on, a little nervous.

“Okies.” She turned to the agent behind her who had been watching the whole scene unfold with a slight smile on her lips. “You should probably send that to Mack while I talk with our new friend here.” The agent, an asian woman who looked like she took no shit from anyone, nodded and took the tablet.

Puppy went closer to Peter, looking him over. “So, Jimmy told me you’re from an alternate reality” She started, tilting her head a little, the smile never seeming to leave her lips.

“Uh, yeah.” Peter said warily.

“He also told me you have super speed?” PEter nodded and went to say something and was slightly surprised when Puppy cut in, Peter being interrupted so quickly was a rare occurrence. “You should meet our own super speedy,” Peter’s eyes went a little wide at that. “We call her Yo-Yo” Puppy explained further, her smile going fond and giving a little chuckle, which Peter couldn’t help but repeat.

“Yo-Yo? Cool.” He chuckled.

“What do they call you?” Puppy asked. “Like, what’s your codename, I guess you could call it?”

“Quicksilver.” Peter answered.

Puppy grinned. “That’s a great name, I love it. What do you think, May?”  She turned to look over at the other agent that had come with her, who was handing Jimmy back his tablet. She didn’t look very amused, her face not giving anything away on whether she liked it or not. Peter started to feel a bit nervous.

“Sounds good.” May answered, crossing her arms and turning to look at them both, her voice also not giving anything away about her thoughts. Peter swallowed slightly, feeling like she was already judging him.

Puppy turned back to Peter. “May is sometimes called the Cavalry, but she doesn’t really like that name so we don’t use it often. Ok, we’re going to need to know if you have any dietary requirements, if you’re allergic to something, if there’s foods you don’t like, if you need anything at all just ask and we’ll see what we can do, the worse is we can say no.”

Peter nodded, letting the woman talk, vaguely starting to wonder if she had super speed with the speed she was talking.

“So?” Puppy tilted her head again. “Is there anything you're allergic to? I know we’ll probably need to order in more food, because of your’s and Yo-yo’s heightened metabolisms, so if you crave something I would speak up now, or soon.” Puppy made a small gesture, shrugging her shoulders lightly.

Peter gave a small shrug himself. “Um, only allergic to tomatoes, do like my twinkies though. They still do those, right?” Peter also had a lactose intolerance, but he had a feeling if he mentioned that, then he probably wouldn’t get his twinkies. Besides, it hadn’t really done him any real harm before, and he was able to get it out of his system pretty quickly.

“Well,” Puppy drew out, “They did stop doing them a while ago, but started doing them again.” Puppy quickly added when she saw Peter slump a little. “So, long story short, yes there are still twinkies, we can make a quick stop to get you some if you like.”

“No we can’t.” May spoke up from behind Puppy.

“No we can’t, sorry.” Puppy repeated. Peter wondered if he would get in trouble for going to get some now, but decided against it, he was pretty sure it would piss May off, even if he was super quick about it.

“And you could have just said yes.” May pointed out. Puppy did a little shrug. “We should really get going, you can talk to him more on the jet.”

Puppy nodded and turned to go. “Come on, Pete.” She said gesturing for him to follow, only for Jimmy to stop them, a grin starting to cross his features, like he was a little excited about something.

“Wait, have you bonded yet.” Jimmy asked, pointing between Puppy and Peter, the latter of which scrunched up his face a little in disgust.

“What?”

“No, not yet,” Puppy said, causing the smile to fall from Jimmy’s face in disappointment. “But that’s alright, I don’t think he trusts me yet.” she turned back to Peter. “I make bonds with people, they are invisible, but can be extremely useful at times.”

“So, you’re a mutant too?” Peter cut in quickly.

Puppy grinned and nodded. “In a way. You’ll learn more about  that later, for now, let’s get you to your temporary home.”

Peter couldn’t help but feel even more deflated at the words ‘temporary home’, but he followed Puppy and May to their jet.

On the way to S.H.I.E.L.D Headquarters Puppy and Peter had talked a little more, Puppy had asked if Peter had any hobbies and when he had mentioned video games, Puppy had lit up and started telling him about the games they played back at the compound, telling her about the racing games, laughing as she told him about the crashes, which Peter found to be a bit infectious, and about co-oping in shoot ‘em ups and going against her friends. Puppy even showed him Among Us on her phone, which he found interesting.

This all helped Peter relax a little. And over the next few days he came to know more about Puppy and the other Shield agents, but of most all Puppy, and why she was actually nicknamed Puppy. It was because she kinda acted like one. The little head tilts, the excitement at seeing her friends, even if they had only been gone a day, actually she was generally excitable, and, which Peter found a little odd at first, she liked to be stroked. He would sometimes see some of the agents give her little pats on the head, or even absentmindedly stroke her hair. It was never anything sexually, but Peter found it rather odd.

One day Peter had been in the kitchen, grabbing something to eat, Puppy was in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar, sipping her tea. Peter had also felt a strange sensation the past few days, but had brushed it off to his training regime that Mack had insisted he start if he wanted to become a Shield agent and help them out.

“Hey Pete.” Puppy had called out, not sure if she had said it in time as Peter was using his super speed. Peter came back in a split second and stared at Puppy.

“How did you know it was me?” Peter had asked in a rush.

Puppy grinned at him. “We bonded a couple of days ago, you might have felt it.”

Peter quirked an eyebrow. Then realisation came over him. “The strange tingling sensation I’ve been feeling, I thought it was because of training, I mean it doesn’t hurt, it’s just weird.”

Puppy gave a little chuckle. “You’ll get used to it, it’s a little different for everyone. But I know how each one feels to me, so I sensed you, rather than saw you.”

Peter grinned back at her. “Guess that means we’re friends, right?”

“Right!” Puppy’s eyes sparkled in delight and crinkled in the corners, as Peter chuckled, patted her on the head and then zoomed out of there.

A few days after that exchange and Peter had gone on his first assignment, some terrorist organisation had made themselves known and had threatened to blow up an Underground Train Station, Peter and Yo-Yo had managed to get the people out quickly while Puppy and Daisy had tried to find the bomb and disarm it.

A few weeks after that Peter and Puppy had gone on an assignment with Bucky and Sam who had been following leads about the same Organisation. This time they managed to get there before the bomb could be set. Or so they thought. That was why they were now in the hospital, with Peter pacing, blaming himself for not being quick enough.

“Will you relax, none of us knew that bomb was going to go off.” Bucky said, his voice a mixture of stern but also kind. He was holding onto Puppy’s staff, which Peter glanced at, he still wasn’t sure exactly how the thing worked, just that, Puppy could extend it and fight pretty good with it, and that she could also fire out some sort of energy field or beam with it, which knocked out those around her. She had dropped it in the explosion and Bucky had picked it up, while Peter and Falcon had raced to her side.

Peter had picked Puppy up, brought her to the hospital, he had felt the sensation of the bond lessen slightly and it worried him. What would happen if she died? Would everyone she was bonded to feel it? Peter’s thoughts momentarily went to Wanda, wherever she was right now, knowing she had a bond with Puppy too. Puppy had been so upset that she hadn’t been able to be there for Wanda and possibly help her. Would Wanda feel the bond break, realise she had lost yet another friend? Would Wanda blame him for it?

Peter sighed and ran hand through his hair looking down. That’s when he realised he was still in uniform and that uniform was stained with blood. Puppy’s blood. Peter let out a shaky breath. Walking backwards until he hit the wall, he slid down and covered his face with his hands. “What if she doesn’t make it?” He muttered, not sure if he wanted to know the answer to that question.

Bucky looked down at Peter, who looked up, tears in his eyes. Bucky sighed. “You know how the bond works. It helps her to heal, quicker than normal.” Bucky swallowed, it didn’t stop the uneasy feeling of the bond itself wavering.

Peter nodded, he knew that, like he knew it would also help him to heal quicker than was normal, which was already pretty quick for him. “But what if the bonds aren’t enough?” He whispered. A question no one wanted to ever find out the answer to. All of them had already lost too many friends.

A doctor approached them in the hall. Peter was slightly surprised to see it was Jemma Simmons. She smiled at Same, Bucky and Peter. “Puppy’s stable now, there was a lot of shrapnel in her body, and she lost quite a bit of blood, but we’ve managed to stabilise her.” All three of them let out a sigh of relief.

Bucky handed Peter Puppy’s staff, who took it with a quizzical look. “We’re headed back out there, we need to stop these people, do a bit of avenging.” Bucky answered the unasked question, with a small smirk. Peter nodded. “Good luck.”

Peter turned to Jemma. “Can I go in and see her?” Jemma nodded in response and indicated the way, giving Peter the signal to follow her. “Of course.”

[asherlockstudy]

I get that interview was HBO forced but it sounds insane when last season, he was saying Jaime needed to get away from her for good. I mean no nice post about Gwen after the last ep. I dont believe it was about not wanting to stir the hornet's nest if him and B didnt get together as he posted a huge loving one about Lena and that was a very controversial part of the plot. If hed know posted a gwen one saying"sorry JB didnt get a happy ending but here's me and Gwen in happier times" i dont get it

I think it’s very weird too…Imma analyze it. Not that I’m gonna reach any solid conclusion but I will just lay out all my thoughts.

Whatever the reason Nik doesn’t post or reply publicly to Gwen is, it has nothing to do with his personal preference for Braime or Jaime x Cersei. Even if we make the insane assumption that Nik appreciated that Jaime dumped Brienne to return to murderous Cersei and die with her without serving any purpose in the main plot (what lead actor of 8+ years would ever like being unimportant in the ending plot) and saw “pOeTRy” in it, it still doesn’t explain why he should prefer posting about Lena over Gwen. We would be naive to think he made a post about Lena and not Gwen because he prefers Cersei to Brienne. So, we still have no clear evidence of what Nik’s private thoughts and feelings are for his character after the ending. 

Here’s what we have: 

We have two interviews: one with HBO rofl and one with that journalist who collaborates with HBO and was an insider (I’m not gonna search his name) in which he stans Jaime’s choices, his love for Cersei and the tragic poetry in it all. Then we have him promoting the episodes and the documentary in his instagram and twitter, however he is entirely emotionally detached from his character and his fate. I would say he lowkey looks entertained in his weird af episode promo videos and secretly amused while filming the “thank you” video after the last episode where he says “Come on, it was great” and suggests a petition for an Arya (huh?) sequel.

We have two videos uploaded on yt with him: one is a video of a stalker in which Nik looks uncomfortable and passes the question to the random guy next to him who apparently happens to be a GOT fan, have an elaborate opinion on the last season, hate D&D and think they threw away Jaime’s beautiful character arc. What are the odds…The second is a skit in Jimmy Kimmel in which Nik drags his own character by making him stupid and clumsy, a sad little being because of his maiming and, most importantly, an unrepentant sister fucker. All of Jaime’s worst qualities displayed for laughs, plus that he’s actually a likeable but very stupid person. The skit ends with a dragon randomly burning him and his family alive and those credits

So, we have straightforward criticism towards D&D by Kimmel and NCW actually participates in it. This is what this skit means - that this level of writing, this kind of lame character and that ludicrous death is something that only Benioff and Weiss would like to produce. And, well, the Olsen sisters (although I think they’re cleverer than that). 

So, we have two videos where NCW’s intentions are dubious AT BEST. 

Then we have all the promos. When left to speak on his own, Nikolaj would say how the ending was beautiful and made sense and he once mentioned he sent a letter to thank them for this genius plot…Right. But then when asked or caught off guard (1:04): 

Nobody tries to sugarcoat it, look at the title of the video: … NCW is ‘happy’.  Then of course we have our Lady and Saviour Gwen who tries not to laugh as Nik struggles to find what to say and not just stand up and flee.

Also, this one. The best one: 

I could make a thousand gifs for this but just watch again the entire video:

0:07 - Gwen’s face when Nik says he thought the script was fantastic

1:13 - “N-no..NO!!!” when asked if he would change something in the ending and Gwen’s reaction to that. Then, our leader Gwen proceeds to mock him: “So, it’s an immaculate- It’s immaculate?” to which Nik impulsively replies: “NO!” and goes on “do you ever read a book and think you want to rewrite this?” which implies, that yes he would want to rewrite it but knows he can’t. 

(3:03 - 3:06) - VERY IMPORTANT ONE. When Gwen wondered who was closer to predicting the actual ending, Nik says “I was, yeah” and OMG look at Gwen’s face. It’s very subtle but she’s trying to communicate with her eyes a “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT” to him without being seen by the interviewer. It’s kind of a wife done with her husband’s shit look tbh, that level of subtlety. And Nik answers back with his eyes in equal subtlety and it’s like he says a “What? I truly was right lol….”. To me, this seems to mean that Nik always knew or feared that D&D would eventually destroy all his work and was eventually proven right. Unless this all is about Dany being killed by Jon but I doubt at this point Nik and Gwen cared enough to go all cryptic and eye communicating for this. No, it was about them. 

3:09 - Nik is surprised and then clearly amused at the information by the interviewer that Kit was the one who came closer with his prediction. He can’t hide his smile and says an ironic “good for him” while looking knowingly at Gwen who then says this must be a lie. This shows that it is known amongst the actors that most of them are disappointed and Kit was one of them. Both Nik and Gwen apparently knew Kit hated his ending too and would never expect this to be how the show would wrap up. BTW that writing and that backlash really got to Kit, I hope he recovers soon. But think about this, Kit went into rehab for stress and alcohol, Emilia was devastated and gave a somewhat concerning interview and Nik’s public behaviour regarding GOT is inconsistent and unpredictable. I am thus assuming the writing of the final season and the backlash fucked them up way more than they let on. 

This interview is a gem but here’s the most important part, perhaps the core of what baffles us: 

1:32 - After all the miserable no-nos poor Nik mumbles, Gwen tells Nik what we all think: “I think it’s just a question, you know? Maybe you want to answer it?”

Of course he’s in a total loss for words. Literally, he doesn’t make any sense. Some incoherent sounds come out of his mouth and that’s it. This can mean two things: either he truly thinks the ending is perfect or the ending made him such a mess that he can’t even process it verbally two years later. 

Either Gwen is much braver and Nik is extemely paranoid or Nik actually has many more restrictions in what he is allowed to say. I believe Gwen wanted Nikolaj to be as open as her about it and she still tries to make him open up but he doesn’t. In all the promos without exception, Gwen looks as if she knows Nik is full of shit and secretly agrees with her. If Gwen knows that for a fact, then we can’t argue and it’s actually what makes sense anyway. Nikolaj agrees with Gwen but is not eager to discuss it openly yet, or ever. This could be because he is very professional or because he doesn’t want to get a bad name as a “backstabber” of his projects or it might be a situation of a more sensitive nature. 

If those rumours that the S8 script was changed are true, then Nik and Lena might have had a serious breakdown with D&D and a negotiation might have taken place. For instance, Nik and Lena were really unnecessary in E6, Nik’s scene in E1 could have been eliminated as well and Lena does not appear in E3. Yes, they are big actors but paying them 1,2 million for every episode seems a tad excessive when Emilia and Kit are now famous too and have like 300% times more screentime. All this is wild speculation but maybe they stretched their appearance in the episodes as much as possible and gave them a good amount of money to agree on the butchering of their characters and their importance as former lead actors. I mean, especially Lena was downgraded to a secondary character in this season. Lena had to really fight to see her salary rise in the previous seasons. And now it’s a million for every episode? Wow. How many minutes was she staring out of the window in S8? Maybe they were silenced and payed a shitload of money to stop complaining and promote the show and praise the writing as what it was supposed to be. Maybe they payed them in order to promote Peter, Kit and Emilia for the Emmys instead, who knows. When so much money is involved, things can get frustrating in ways we don’t even fathom. This is wild and rough speculation but all I’m saying is there may be reasons Nik avoids talking freely about his character that we can’t know. 

Besides, it’s not just a Gwen problem. It is not a Gwen problem. Gwen revealed she sent a “Jaime is a fuckboi” meme to Nik privately and he answered playfully as ever (but again as if he’s in denial). They posted a story together a couple of weeks ago. Nik did not just ignore Gwen’s instagram post. Daniel Portman posted the photo and tagged Nikolaj too. Nik ignored him as well. Bryan Cogman, who Nik and Gwen owe a lot to, commented under the photo in a very sweet and emotional way. Guess what, Nik ignored him too! It’s ridiculous to think Nikolaj has stopped communicating and caring about Gwen AND Daniel AND Bryan just because his character returned to Cersei. Furthermore, the fact that they all keep tagging him shows they don’t think their relationships with him have become tense. 

That’s not it. It’s not about Gwen. The only way that Gwen is involved in all this is that she wants Nikolaj to open up so that he would give a little acknowledgement to her character and the relationship with Jaime because she feels very much for Brienne. I’m sad to say, however, that it seems to me that Nik did not take that blow more lightly than Gwen. In fact, his behaviour is more inconsistent and troubling whereas Gwen’s openness about it made her confront that sore subject more healthily after all. I start believing Nik was actually way more devastated than Gwen. At least Brienne remained a decent character, ever faithful to her ideals, ever innerly strong. Jaime was entirely trashed, let alone that he was supposed to be a main character. If Nik can’t even handle a photo that reminds him of his destroyed character arc, I wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe Gwen wants Nik to open up so much for his benefit as well - he keeps it bottled up and she might know first hand how that affects him.

Long story short, the reasons Nik doesn’t post anything about his feelings for Jaime’s character arc, his relationship with Brienne and his collaboration with Gwen probably are both professional, after begrudging deals and agreements and restrictions from HBO, and very personal, inner and private, as he’s still trying to cope with a disappointment that crushed down on him from what used to be his dream job and a role he hoped would be a (or the) peak of his career. I bet all these years Nik was hopeful Jaime would be extremely important and fully redeemed in the end but also extremely scared and anxious that the writers won’t give him what he hoped for and what made sense. Would I exaggerate if I said this should be the biggest professional disappointment he ever experienced, provided that he didn’t like the character’s ending? 

From everything Gwen has said about him, I have surmised that Nik is very emotional and anxious but with a very blasé and superficially amiable attitude. He avoids expessing emotion in real life which is why he might be dissociating a lot lately. He tries to distance himself from that part of Jaime’s character that involved Bryan and Gwen because this is the part that he loved and lost. Honestly, I can’t think of any other logical reason he ignored Gwen, Dan and Bryan one after the other and never made a post about his own character specifically or his good times with Gwen. It’s obviously not that he suddenly hates all of them to the point of not even replying. Even if HBO restricts him on what he can say in interviews for a while, there is no other explanation for this other than that D&D’s genius writing fucked him up emotionally as much as Emilia and Kit and he does not want to deal with it even though Gwen probably thinks it would be for the best if he did. 

Now after I wrote all this, imagine if Nikolaj actually doesn’t give a shit and is just happy going on with his life while I am here wasting time. But… I don’t think so. I will never not believe Nik didn’t love Jaime to pieces. He had big dreams for this role, I am sure of it. 

[canyonmoonlily]

| mixtape |

side 1, track 3:

Layla | Derek & The Dominoes

Miranda was drunk. Absolutely, out of her mind drunk. The bar around her seemed to move as if it was under water, and she begins wondering why she thought that many shots was a good idea.

“Ma’am?” an odd accent called her out her drunken daze and she’s faced with a rather good looking, oddly familiar man.

“Mhhphg?” she responds eloquently.

“Have you seen my mate Richard here anywhere? Richard Madden?” He asks. “I know you were filming the Jimmy Fallon Show with him tonight, with your band.” At this Miranda’s look of drunken confusion shifts.

“Yes! I saw him earlier with my friend, my bandmate Y/N,” she slurred at the pretty man with the funny accent. “Wait.” Her eyebrows pulled together. “Is your name Aaron by any chance?”

The pretty man laughs.

“No actually, but close.” He has a nice smile, Miranda thinks.

“T-Taron? Is that it? I know you from those strange movies with all the British men in suits.”

The pretty man laughs harder at this, leaning into her slightly as he does. She’s seated on a high chair in the “VIP” section of the bar, him leaning against the table only a few inches away from her wearing some coat that just looks so ridiculously soft.

“You have a nice laugh,” she sighs, unable to help herself.

“You have a gorgeous smile, love.” he beams at her compliment. She’s far too drunk to know what she’s saying but it doesn’t distract from how stunning she was. Taron can’t help but find he’s quite flattered with her openly flirting with him. “But I really need to find my mate, Richard. The last I talked to him he sounded a bit drunk, I don’t want him getting himself into any trouble.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s been like an hour...I dunno maybe not I don’t understand time right now..” Miranda trailed off drunkenly, head falling in her hands.

“Oh god Miranda, not again,” came the voice of a tall brunette appearing behind Taron. She cradles her face in her hands, Miranda just smiling up at her goofily.

“I assume you’re here looking for Richard?” The brunette chirped, looking at Taron. “I’m Victoria, Miranda and y/n’s bandmate and caretaker, it seems.” She grins shaking his hand.

“I’m Taron, Taron Egerton.” He smiles.

“Miranda!” Miranda happily cheers her own name causing Taron to grin and Victoria to groan.

“Oh God, okay um the last I saw was Richard leaving with Y/N about 45 minutes ago or so? You can follow me if you want to check in and make sure he made it somewhere safe,” Victoria smiles at Taron before attempting to lift Miranda’s limp and giggling form from her chair.

“I can get her if you want,” Taron offered. Victoria eyed him somewhat warily before shrugging, deciding he probably wasn’t a threat.

“Sure, that would be a huge help actually,” she sighed, grabbing her and Miranda’s purses before clearing a path to the outside. Taron reaches for Miranda and she launches to her feet, clinging to his side with a lazy smile, hiccuping the whole way to the door.

By the time they reach the apartment, Miranda is completely out, her tiny frame cradled in Taron’s arms. Taron doesn’t seem to mind.

He follows Victoria to her bedroom and lays her down, smiling at her peaceful slumber.

“Thank you so much for all your help with her, Taron,” Victoria smiles and then grimaces. “And again, I’m really sorry about her very loud rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody on the way back. I swear she’s not usually this obnoxious.” Taron just shakes his head and chuckles.

“Really don’t worry about it, even drunk she’s a right cutie,” his eyes move back to Miranda’s form.

“I could give you her number if you’d like?” Victoria trailed off with a hopeful smile. She loved playing matchmaker.

“Actually, yeah, I would love that,” Taron finds himself beaming at the prospect of seeing Miranda again—hopefully sober the next time.

After adding her contact into his phone Victoria and Taron creep over to Y/N’s room.

“So you three are 22 year old multi millionaires who choose to live together?” He whispered to her.

“Yeah, we’re like sisters. None of us like being away from each other for too long.” Victoria smiles inwardly at the thought. The bond between the three women was strong.

As they open a crack into y/n’s door, they do their best to be discreet and not chuckle or die at the sight before them.

Both Y/N and Richard are clearly very naked and very comfortable with one another under the thin white sheets of y/n’s bed. He’s asleep on her chest, his arms tightly wound around her little waist. Her hands are in his hair and both of them have hints of bliss on their faces. At least someone had a good night, Taron scoffs at the sight.

......

The next morning is an early one for our friend, Richard. He awakes to his phone ringing obnoxiously, hurrying to click his power before it wakes the sleeping form beneath him.

It’s 7 am. Christ. 4 missed calls.

Richard is alarmed to see his agent had been blowing up his phone before he remembered his GMA interview. Good god he was going to get it for this one. As quickly as he can, he unravels himself from the beauty beneath him, her naked form giving him flashbacks of the night before. As he slips his discarded clothing back on he feels a grin fighting it’s way onto his lips as he looks at y/n’s peaceful state.

He felt like he was already practically in love with her. Completely enamored by and taken with every little scrunch of her nose, the rise and the fall of her breathing. He almost can’t leave, the longer he looks at her the more his legs seem to grow imaginary roots that hold him hostage in her bedroom. He reconciles to leave her a note—on the wall calendar to the right of the bed.

“Had to go to do a GMA interview at 9:00 am. I would like to discuss with you some things about last night, my number is xxx xxx xxxx. Richard.”

He wanted to know if the night they’d spent together meant as much to her as it did to him. Maybe he was idealizing her and setting himself up for heartbreak but he was willing to take that risk—even if it only meant seeing her again.

eight months later

Y/N was completely zoned in. Her ADHD meds had kicked in and she was finally finishing up her packing for this god forsaken trip—her first vacation in what felt like decades.

It had been 8 months of songwriting, performing, and distracting herself from the little ache in her heart. Y/N had even taken up going to the gym. And working out. On purpose.

As she threw her last few things into the bag, hips swaying to the beat of John Lennon’s raspy vocals on Yer Blues, she found herself in one of those brief little moments where she almost enjoyed being sad. Yes, life was all peaches and cream for a woman as wealthy and successful as Y/N, but like every human, she liked to revel in her pain from time to time—even if she’s the cause of it. Moment’s like these disgusted her, so she usually crammed the feeling down.

Y/N had read Richard’s note the next morning with shaky legs and blurry vision. She knew what things he wanted to discuss.

The blood on the sheets. The stain of your lies.

He had to have figured it out. He had to have noticed she didn’t feel quite right. Y/N had really done it this time—she’d given her virginity to a man she hardly knew. And without telling him.

She had been so caught up in the blue of Richard’s eyes and his elderberry wine stained lips that she’d not thought of what she was doing before it was too late. She violated his trust by withholding that information and she was so embarrassed she swore she could never face him again. Could never call him. Could never think about him for longer than a few minutes unless she was joking around with the girls about how dumb she was for thinking it meant anything to him.

She tried very hard to find the humor in the situation but it never really worked. The laughter never really masked the sting of his name. She didn’t want Miranda or Victoria to worry about her so she nursed her wounds in private and stopped mentioning that night altogether after the 3rd month.

Now 8 months later, sometimes she could stand in her room without her mind immediately going back to that night. It had taken her a long time to rid herself of the lingering sexual frustration. She had to get rid of his note to keep herself from calling him desperately in the middle of the night.

“Hey Y/N, darling, you almost ready?” Came a pretty welsh accent from the hall. Taron popped his head into her door, a goofy and excited grin on his face.

“Yep, whenever you guys are!” She chirped back cheerfully. And for the first time in a long time, it was genuine. It wasn’t easy watching Miranda and Taron fall in love while she was trying to squash her feelings for a Richard. It was quite painful, honestly.

But y/n never said anything. Of course she didn’t. Y/N wouldn’t rain on Miranda’s parade just because of how she’d ruined whatever was between her and Richard by lying to him.

“You guys,” came a loud wailing noise from further up the hallway. “Will just found out he can’t come, he got asked to stay another week even though the show’s already opened.” Victoria looked distraught as she explained her fiance, a broadway choreographer, couldn’t join their beach trip.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry Vic,” Y/N smiled sympathetically and embraced her distraught bandmate. “At least now we have room for Taron to invite a friend.”

“Really? Y/N are you sure?” Taron tried to mask his excitement. “It is your birthday trip after all.”

Y/n smiled and waved him off with a warm assurance that she didn’t really care. She’d have all the company she’d need with Miranda, Vic, and the many of their other friends who would be meeting them there to celebrate.

—

“Hey! What are you up to this week, mate?” Taron chieoed excitedly over the phone. His grin growing mischievous when the voice on the other end responded with a “nothing.”

Taron couldn’t help himself. “How would you feel about a week trip to Cancun?”

“What am I supposed to do? Say no?” Richard chuckled on the other end, he really needed a vacation now that he thought about it. “I’ll hop on the next flight out. What’s the occasion?”

“Ah, just a birthday party. Nothing major, mate.”

Kind of short and crappy but I promise the next chapter will make up for it tenfold. So much planned. *chaotic laughter*

[hazyheel]

WWE Monday Night Raw 7/15/19 Review

We opened things up with Brock Lesnar coming out, with his newly won Universal Championship and Paul Heyman in tow. Heyman cut the same promo that he has been cutting for a couple years now. He said that he told everyone what would happen, but they refused to believe him. Heyman then announced a Battle Royal, with the top ten wrestlers on both brands, with the winner getting a shot at Brock’s belt. The men were Seth Rollins, Randy Orton, Big E, Cesaro, Braun Strowman, Rey Mysterio, Baron Corbin, Sami Zayn, Bobby Lashley, and Roman Reigns. He said that although any of them could be champion one day, none of them will beat Brock.

Grade: B. Decent promo, we hear it all the time. I was interested in that match a bit though. A smaller battle royal would be very fun, especially with the talent that was involved. 

Next up was Ricochet and the Usos vs. Robert Roode and The Revival in a 2 out of 3 falls match. Right when they started, on of the Usos nailed Dawson with a superkick, and then tagged in Ricochet who immediately followed up with the codebreaker, which has been renamed recoil, for the first fall. The heels then got the advantage, working over Jey for just a bit before getting the hot tag to Jimmy. Dawson then got the win back with a flapjack of all things, bringing the score to one apiece. When we came back from commercial, the match was not gonna last much longer, with the Usos taking out the Revival with suicide dives, and then Ricochet hitting Roode with recoil and the 630 Senton for the win. 

After the match, The Club all came out to mock him, and Ricochet was having none of it. He just suicide dove onto Styles and layed into him. The heels fought off the babyfaces, beat them down a bit. The Usos gave all of the tag teams superkicks, only for Robert Roode to throw Jimmy out of the ring, and then feed Jay to a shatter machine. They were going to continue the attack, but Ricochet nailed all three with a flying crossbody, but then was taken out with a phenomenal forearm, and then a magic killer from the Good Brothers. 

Grade: B-. A high energy match to open the show. Lots of action, with Ricochet continuing to look strong. The post match stuff set up a rematch for Ricochet with Styles, which I definitely want, and it also set up Usos vs. The Revival, which I do not need to see again. Hopefully these feuds develop more soon, especially the Raw Tag team championship feud, because that is so goddamn dull. 

Then we had a Viking Raiders match, after so long. They fought some local talent, and utterly murdered them. They did the classic “pulling the shoulders up” move. They won with “the viking experience.”

Grade: B-. Inoffensive squash. 

After they recapped the Taker and Roman vs. Shane and McIntyre match, we saw McIntyre challenge Cedric Alexander to a match, and as threatening as he was, Alexander was not having it. He wasn’t scared, and that is a match I need to see. 

That match was next, and McIntyre started by lighting his chest up with chops, only for Alexander to quickly heighten the pace. That back and fourth did not last long though, as he started just chucking Alexander around. Alexander was only really getting flurries of offense here and there. However, as McIntyre was about to hit a reverse alabama slam, Cedric locked him in a pinning combination for the shock win. 

Grade: C+. Huh, okay then. I’m glad Cedric is getting something here, he is an awesome wrestler, and hopefully they get to actually have a match, but this is probably a placeholder while they decide what to do with McIntyre for Summeslam. But if we get a great match out of it, then I will be happy. 

Backstage, Finn Balor and Samoa Joe cut individual promos about their match for later in the night. They mostly said that they would win to get back in the winning conversation. 

Roman Reigns had an interview backstage, talking about how he needs to get this win to complete on of the best weeks of his life. I’d actually be fine with this.

And then we had the aforementioned match, Finn Balor vs. Samoa Joe. This match had next to no time to get going before Joe won with a crucifix, and then attacked after the match. He tried to get the Coquina clutch, but Balor fought back, hitting the Coup de Gras.

After the match, Balor’s music was hit, but it suddenly cut out. And the lights started to dim, until they went out. When strobe lights came back on, Bray Wyatt had Balor in a sister Abigail, and drilled him with it. Bray was wearing the fiend mask, and looked great. 

Grade: C. This was going to be a D until that post match stuff happened. Joe looked kinda weak but got a win, while Balor was strong but lost. Neither was particularly benefitted. But none of that mattered, because the debut was really cool. I loved the lighting, I loved the mask, I loved all of it. Bray Wyatt is back. Hopefully his match with Balor will be better than their matches a few years ago, because if they are good, then this should be an awesome feud. 

Then we had Drake Maverick and his wife, checking into a hotel under the name “Mr. and Mrs. 24/7 champion.” They went off to their room after a brief argument about registering their name as that. R-Truth then showed up to ask the front desk if someone named Hornswoggle came in, with a lower case H. But the guy didn’t know who that was.

Then the street profits yelled about how Maverick is a virgin. Then they talked about the women’s elimination match, and Dawkins mentioned how he is in love with Nikki Cross, which was funny. They then made predictions for the battle royal. Okay then, high energy and kinda funny, but ultimately not really worth anything. 

Then we had Zack Ryder vs. Mike Kanellis. Before the match, Maria made fun of Mike for being a loser, and she said that she would beat Ryder. He was able to talk her down, and then entered the match himself. Ryder hit the Rough Ryder right away. The announcer even said that he won in under a minute. Maria then insulted Mike for losing, saying that her, not theirs, her unborn child had a better chance than Mike did. 

Grade: F. Is it really worth Punishing mike and maria like this? They didn’t know they were pregnant when they signed the contracts, so they are burying them on raw, while they are doing fine on 205 Live.  This is just awful.

Next up was another 6-man tag. The Lucha House Party vs. The Club. Styles and Gran Metalik started the match, and the heels just destroyed him to start things off. Metalik and Luke Gallows squared off for a little while, just exchanging huge blows. After a nice little tag combination, they Club all too sweeted, only for Ricochet to run out and attack AJ. There was a wild brawl, and they went to commercial, saying that they would restart the match. When we came back, Lince Durado was in the ring, but he was still on the defensive. He was able to hit a springboard stunner, and get the hot tag to Kalisto. He had a great hot tag, flying around at a million miles an hour. Eventually, all three members of the Lucha House Party hit suicide dives. Kalisto was about to springboard in on Anderson, but Styles distracted him, allowing Gallows and Anderson to hit the boot of doom. They then tagged in Styles for the calf crusher.

He kept the submission on after the match for a little bit, and the heels stood tall.

Grade: B. This was the best thing on the show up until this point. It was a good match with some really fun action. The winners made sense and they showed that the Club are still a very effective team. I have no doubt that Ricochet will fight Styles at Summerslam, but I am uncertain what the Good Brothers will do. Going into the Raw Tag Team title scene would probably be the best use of them going forward. Match of the night

Backstage, Seth Rollins was interviewed about losing the title last night. He said that he has to keep focusing on the future, and it kills him that he isn’t able to hold his belt right now. He briefly mentioned that Becky was not in the building, he said that she would be okay. He said that he would absolutely destroy anyone who is in his way. It was a good promo, he sounded desperate yet badass. Still though, Becky shouldn’t be that injured from the end of days, it is one finishing move. She is a tough girl, she should be fine. Other than that I really liked this. 

Then we had a fatal 4-way elimination match for #1 contendership to the Raw Women’s Championship. It was Natalya vs. Naomi vs. Carmella vs. Alexa Bliss. Nikki Cross was at ringside, as was Becky Lynch. She came out limping, so I guess that finisher is much stronger than we realize. Early on in the actual match, Carmella continuously tried to eliminate Natalya and Naomi. She just kept trying to pin each of them a couple times in a row, to no avail. Bliss hid on the outside for the first few minutes of this match, running in to roll up Carmella for the first elimination. There was an actual commercial break during this match, so I assume everyone just lied around for a few minutes while they were showing commercials. Even after we came back, most of the match was Naomi vs. Natalya, as Bliss was still hiding. Naomi and Natalya had a really good little contest, that was constantly being interrupted by Bliss trying to score a pin. At one point, Naomi went for a split leg moonsault, but Bliss grabbed her leg, allowing Natalya to hit a huge powerbomb, but only a near fall. Nikki was also being funny on the outside, like when Bliss would yell “I know!” at the ref, Nikki would scream at the ref too, in support of her friend. However, despite having some nice action, the crowd chanted “this is awful,” and randomly booed. Natalya then rolled up Naomi for the elimination, leaving just Bliss and Natalya. Just then, Cross grabbed a mic and yelled at the crowd. She told them to cheer for Bliss, which prompted a lot of boos. In the finish, Natalya actually took out Nikki at ringside, and then ran into the ring to lock the sharpshooter in on Alexa for the win.

After the match, Natalya was interviewed in the ring. She tried to give an inspirational speech, but the crowd just wasn’t having it. Becky then got on the mic. Becky told her that there is no way that Natalya could beat her. She said that she has no problem wiping the floor with her. Becky had a weird line saying that she was better in war than love. Natalya then said that she must be a bad lover then, bitch. Natalya then kept up the tough talk, and they had to be separated.

Grade: B. This was a C+ without that promo, but I really liked the promo. Natalya is a new and interesting choice for the spot, its a fresh match that should be good. And Nattie’s mic work here was great. She really held her own against one of the best talkers in the company, which was exciting to see. 

Then we had Dolph Ziggler as a guest on Miz TV. Ziggler implied that there were rumors about Miz right away, saying that he is a corporate puppet. Miz took offense to it, but Ziggler continued to push. He said that Miz is no longer trying to be the best, and he also said that Miz became everything he hates. He then said that all he cared about was fortune and fame, just like his wife. So Miz then attacked him.

Grade: D+. If they are setting up a feud between these two, it was a clumsy way to do it. Ziggler basically said that the only reason he came to be on the show was to cause a problem, which is just dumb. Could be a good feud though, their last one was great. Also, Ziggler said that his match with Kevin Owens was “Goldberg Bad” which was funny but also insulting. I guess we have a new feud then. 

Then we saw Drake Maverick throwing rose pedals on the bed, while Graves said that he normally needed to pay for stuff like this. Drake said that he was ready for love, stripping off his bathrobe with his 24/7 championship around his waist to block is dick. Suddenly, room service came by, and dropped off champaign while Drake desperately tried to maintain an erection. He then realized that the man dropping off the champaign was the ref, and began looking around for Truth. Truth jumped out from underneath the cart, and try to roll up Maverick, but only for a two count. Then Truth gave him a splash onto the bed and won the belt back. Maverick then chased him away, leaving his wife in bed alone. The segment ended with Graves saying that he would have used the small package.

Grade: B+. This was the highlight of an otherwise boring and monotonous show. This was funny, Maverick was funny, Graves was funny, this belt is really fun. Bummed to see Maverick lose it though. It’s also tougher and tougher to separate him from his 205 Live character. 

And in the main event, we had the 10 man battle royal. Big E vs. Sami Zayn vs. Seth Rollins vs. Bobby Lashley vs. Baron Corbin vs. Roman Reigns vs. Cesaro vs. Randy Orton vs. Braun Strowman vs. Rey Mysterio. Brock Lesnar came out to watch from the stage. Strowman and Lashley started to fight right at the bell, and Corbin nearly eliminated Rollins right away as well. Cesaro ran around the ring for a while and gave just just about everyone a european uppercut. As Cesaro was about to give Big E the big swing, Lashley tackled him and gorilla pressed him out of the ring. Soon after, Strowman eliminated Lashley, and then faced off with Big E. Big E was able to hit Strowman with the big ending, only for Orton to give him an RKO, and then get eliminated by Zayn. Zayn celebrated a little too hard, and ate an RKO then a 619 and an elimination. Reigns then tried to take on Orton, only to eat an RKO and a 619 of his own. Soon after, Corbin elminated Mysterio. At one point, Orton was lying on the outside, leaving Rollins, Strowman and Reigns in the ring with Corbin. So naturally, he got some comeuppance. He ate a huge right from Strowman, a drive by and a superkick before being elminated. Strowman then took on both Reigns and Rollins, and dodged a spear from Reigns, sending him into Rollins. Reigns then desperately tried to pull Strowman out of the ring, so Rollins bodyslammed both of them, leaving just Rollins and Orton. Orton had control here, giving Rollins a rope hung DDT when Rollins refused to be eliminated. However, when we went for the RKO, Rollins was able to hit the curb stomp, and then won the battle royal by eliminating him. 

After the match, Paul Heyman mockingly introduced Rollins as the #1 contender. Rollins grabbed a mic of his own, and said that he was only talking to Brock here. He said that he is a man possessed, and he promised that he would beat Brock by stomping his head into the mat. Rollins even challenged Lesnar to a fight right now, which only amounted to Lesnar throwing a chair in the ring.

Grade: B. A fun main event, but not the greatest match. Everyone did their greatest hits and then Rollins won. He was really the best choice, other than maybe Reigns. But at least they didn’t just give Rollins the rematch, he had to earn it. This story is very similar to Rollin’s title chase earlier in the year, so I think they are just trying to recreate that magic. Hopefully we actually get a match out of this though, instead of a low blow at the beginning of Wrestlemania. If it is a match, then I will look forward to it. I’m sure they can put on something good. 

Overall Grade: C+

Pros: Heyman Promo; Lucha House Party vs. Club; women’s 4-way; wyatt debut; 24/7 stuff; main event

Cons: Mike Kanellis stuff; miz tv; just generally boring episode. 

[thatssonanii]

Fight

Bloodline Family Series / Parental Paragraphs

"Aye, Milo."

Taking his head out of his locker for a moment, Milo looked at his classmate with his brow raised. He was trying to switch his math book for his Spanish one while he waited for his cousins to meet him. They always walked to their third period class together.

"Your mama comin' to the game Friday?"

Milo rolled his eyes as he continued with what he was doing. "She's always at my games, VJ. Everybody knows that."

Milo watched VJ's two friends laugh and whispered behind him. His patience was starting to wear thin. Milo and his cousins never messed with VJ or his friends. Not their type of people.

"So, shit," he shrugged, "That mean your fine ass aunties comin' too then?"

"And so are my uncle's and my dad. You wanna say that shit to them? Cause I'm sure they'd love to hear it."

"Stop being so hostile, man. Just put in a good word for me and my boys. We know they fine asses get real lonely when they men ain't here."

Milo slammed his locker, cradling his Spanish book on his other hand. He glared at the three boys, he could feel his face start to heat up. "And what the hell would they want with y'all?"

"They look like they could use some dick," VJ said grabbing onto his dick. "Especially ya moms. Her face always tore up, ya pops must not know what he doin."

"Get outta here talkin about my mama. Don't get messed up."

VJ and his friends laughed as other students started to notice the tension. "Stop bein like that, Milo. I'm tryna help. Ya moms is just my type too. Small waist, nice titties and a fat ass. Shit, aunties got ass too."

As VJ threw his head back to laugh, Milo dropped his book and swung. His fist connecting with VJ's jaw. The hit knocked VJ off his feet. His friends that were once laughing now stood silently, watching their friend for his next move. None of them expected that from Milo. Just as VJ picked himself up a small crowd started to form around the boys, VJ's friends faded back into it.

"Your soft ass hit me in my fuckin' mouth. Ya ass can't take a joke?" VJ complained holding his jaw.

Milo huffed ignoring the pain in his hand. "Don't talk about my mama or my aunties. I told you that."

"I say whatever the fuck I wanna say. You got lucky that time, next time you better hope you don't miss."

"Whatever, bruh. Keep them out ya mouth."

"How bout this? You tell them to keep my dick outta they mouths then withcha bitch ass."

Milo attacked VJ's face and upper body with repeated blows. VJ was able to get two hits in before Milo tackled him to the ground. Those punches only pissed Milo off even more.

While Milo was beating VJ up, Eli and Koda were coming out of the stairwell. They were held up by their literature teacher. Koda saw the crowd and pointed it out to his cousin.

"Bet it's some hoes fightin'," Eli joked.

Koda laughed as they approached the cirlcle. "Let Auntie hear ya ass say that shit."

They boys bowed their way through the fight. They laughed at their peers who were screaming for someone to break it up and at the ones recording the fight. But when they got to the middle, their smiles were gone. Milo was still on top of VJ, VJ was attempting to fight back but it wasn't working. Milo was beating his ass. Both boys cursed to themselves before pulling Milo off of the boy. As they were pulling Milo back, the assistant principal and the principal came barreling through the tight circle with school security in tow. School security and principal grabbed the cousins up, escorting them to the office while the assistant cleared the other students and checked on VJ. The cousin got thrown inside the principal's office. The security left them with the principal.

"I expect this kind of behavior out of you two," Principal Brown said looking at Koda and Eli. "But you, Mr. Fatu. I'm shocked that you allowed your cousins pull you into this mess."

Eli sucked his teeth and threw his hands up. "I'm real offended that you think that low of me, Mr. Brown. It wasn't even me, I was the peace maker. Koda too."

"Peace maker my foot. You just close your mouth until your parents get here."

"Forreal," Koda stressed. "The fight had started before we even got there. We broke it up, Milo was beatin' VJ ass."

"Watch your mouth, Mr. Reigns. Is that true, Mr. Fatu?" He asked with the phone to his ear.

Milo said nothing, he stared straight ahead. Opening and closing his fists.

"It's true," Eli answered loudly, "I ain't get nan lick in. Cuzzo ain't let us get a two piece, nothin. Straight dogged VJ ass."

"I was talking to that Mr. Fatu. Not you, Eli." Mr. Brown said dialing the first number. "And watch your mouth."

"I just got a question. Why they get 'Mr." and I'm just Eli. That's messed up, Mr. Brown. Thought we were better than that."

All three sets of parents pulled up at the same time. The men allowed their wives to go in front of them. Jimmy and Trinity were pissed, they didn't have time to deal with Eli and his attitude. Kandice and Roman were annoyed, Koda was always following up Eli. They were sure whatever happened could have been avoided. Apryl and Jey were upset that Eli no good ass couldn't stay his ass out of trouble therefore Milo couldn't stay his ass out of trouble. Simba was just happy to be out of the house and able to go to Milo's school. He skipped in between the group of parents. The secretary allowed them into the conference room where the principal had moved the boys. Jimmy and Trinity went straight to Eli, both of them slapping him in the back of his head.

"Yoooo," he sung out holding his had, "Yall wild. That wasn't even me! It was Creed over there."

Kandice twisted Koda's ear. "What did you do?"

"Me? Im the most innocent thing sittin' in here. Mike Tyson over there knocking people out and that one said hoes again. It's them Fatu boys, Mama. I'm an angel."

Roman smacked the back Koda's neck, glaring down at him.

"I'm just sayin', Pop."

"How about you don't say anything?" Roman warned.

Simba climbed into his brother's lap, the parents sat on either side of their children waiting for the principal to tell them what happen.

"Seems that you sons were involved in a fight with another boy. The boy is bruised up pretty bad, there's an ambulance on the way for him."

"Ambulance? What did y'all do?" Trinity asked glaring at her son. "Yall jumped that boy? For what?"

"What? No! We," Eli stressed pointing to himself and Koda, "didn't get nan lick in, Ma. Milo fought that boy."

"Stop lyin," Jimmy spat.

Mr. Brown cleared his throat. "If I may. Eli is telling the truth. I viewed the cameras, it was a one on one fight. Mr. Fatu fought the other boy. Eli and Mr. Reigns here we're trying to break it up. But Eli, you did, in fact, get a hit in. I saw that much. Mr. Reigns did also but it was after Mr. Fatu hit him on accident and Mr. Reigns assumed the other boy hit him though."

"See. Here we go with this Eli stuff. I wanna be 'Mr. Fatu', call fight night over there Milo."

"Shut your ass up, Elijan."

"Yes, Mama." Eli sat back in his chair pouting. Even when he wasn't in trouble, he was in trouble.

"So what you're saying is my son did this," Apryl asked with a smirk. "Can we see this footage? Cause I don't know if I believe that my goofy baby did that. Especially for the boy to need an ambulance."

Mr. Brown went to stand but Eli held his hand up making every adult in the room suck their teeth. "Koda got the video, Auntie. Shorty from first period sent it to him." Eli smirked.

"Why that lil heffa got your number?" Kandice whispered.

"Not the time, Kandi," Roman chastised, "Give me your phone, Koda."

Koda unlocked his phone and went to the message thread before handing the phone over. "Aight. Pops don't scroll left or right and as soon as the video is over look away."

Roman glared at his son as he snatched the phone out of his hands. The twins, Trinity and Apryl got up to get a closer look at the phone. They gasped and cussed to themselves as they watched the beat down Milo gave. Once the video was over, Apryl couldn't help but smile. She was proud. Patting her son on the back when she got back to her seat.

"I'm just still confused. My son is goofy as shit, he don't do stuff like that." Jey argued.

"I mean, he is my kid, Jey. I taught him something. Bedside that goofy shit he got from you."

"Look at his hands, Apryl. His knuckles are bruised and bleeding."

"That's cause he beat his ass, Jey."

Jey waved her off turning his attention back to the principal. "Why were they fighting?"

"Apparently the boy made some unsavory comments about both Mrs. Fatus and Mrs. Reigns. Mr. Fatu attempted to settle the issue verbally but the boy kept talking."

Trinity looked around her brother in law to Milo, a small smile on her face. "I appreciate you standing up for us, Lo. But you didn't have to do all that."

"We're grown, baby. Whatever he said doesn't matter, you know it wasn't true."

"With all due respect, Mama," Koda added. "VJ mouth is reckless. If it's anything like what he said to me and Eli the other day then ion blame Milo for gettin his ass."

"Yeah. Me and Koda got his ass though. He tried Milo cause he thought my boy wasn't bout shit." Eli shrugged. Trinity turned slowly to look at her son. She wanted to tell him to be quiet but she knew all he was trying to do was help.

"What did he say to y'all, Ko?" Roman asked now starting to calm his nerves.

Koda looked at his dad then at his mama and shook his head. "I can't say."

"Tell me, Koda."

"I'd like to, Pops but I can't repeat what he said. There's women in the room," He sighed, "One of which will beat me if I tried."

Every adult in the room then turned their attention to Eli, who sat playing with his fingers oblivious to their watching. Jimmy smacked his chest lightly gaining his attention. "What's up, Dad?"

"Tell us what he said to y'all."

"But there's women and a child in the room," he smirked.

"And your ass don't care any other time. Start talking, Elijan."

"Aight, aight. Don't hit me," he demanded pointing his finger at his mama. She pushed it away and told him to talk. "He asked me and Koda if we thought our Mamas would fuck him, course we said fuck no and he got all pissy. So then he was like Mama, Auntie A and TK got dick sucking lips so I punched his ass in the stomach. He kept talking shit though. He was like 'ima fuck ya mamas and be ya step daddy' or some stupid as shit like that so Koda slapped fire from his ass. He said something else so we caught him after school and beat his ass."

"Koda Makai," Kandice sneered pinching his arm.

"What, Mama? We wasn't letting nobody talk about y'all like that. Fuck we look like? I'm glad Milo beat VJ ass. He need to learn to keep his mouth shut."

"That's enough, Koda," Roman said squeezing his shoulder. Koda sucked his teeth and sat back in his chair.

"He lucky we wasn't there or it would've been worse," Eli added with a nod.

Apryl rubbed the side of Milo's face still wearing her proud smile. Simba laid against his brother's chest, playing with the buttons on Milo's shirt. "I'm proud of you for standing up for us, baby. But maybe next time you hold back a lil bit."

"Apryl," Kandice and Trinity called.

"What? I'm just saying. I'm not condoning fighting but it was for a good reason."

"Stop talkin, A." Apryl rolled her eyes at her husband, she went back to rubbing her baby's face. They didn't have to be proud of him, she was.

The principal stood to leave the room. "I'm gonna go get their paperwork. Mr. Reigns and Mr. Eli will be suspended for eight days per policy. Even though they were helping, it's against policy and they both threw punches." Their parents nodded, they understood. "And Mr. Fatu would be suspended for ten days as well as the other young man. They will not be able to play in the game this Friday, either."

As soon as the door closed behind the principal, Eli started laughing. "Ayyye. He gave me respect. I knew we were cool."

"You shut your ass up," Jimmy chastised. "You just happy you ain't in trouble this time."

"Damn right. We bout to enjoy these days," he laughed holding his hand out to Koda. Koda went to slap his cousin's hand but he could feel both parents staring holes in the sides of his head. "Come on TK and Unc. We ain't do shit this time. We not in trouble."

"Didn't your daddy tell you to hush?" Kandice asked sternly.

"He actually told me to shut my ass up, TK. There's a difference." Eli sassed then put his hands up to block the hits he knew was coming.

"Lo, you good? You hurt?"Jey asked examining his hands.

"No, he not hurt. My baby don't have a scratch on him. That's my baby."

"He's your baby but you ain't realized his ass ain't said shit the whole time we been here, Apryl."

Apryl's smile turned into a frown. She was so happy to hear Milo finally got into a fight and won that she didn't realize he was still upset. "What's wrong, baby?" She asked softly. Milo pushed away from the table, he sat Simba in his Mama's lap before getting up. Jey asked what was wrong but Milo ignored him, making a b line for the door. His father, uncles and cousins trying to stop him as his mama, brother and aunties watched in confusion. They held him back but that didn't stop him from trying to get out the door.

"Where you tryna go, son?" Jey asked now standing in front of Milo. "Where you goin, baby?"

"To get VJ. I wasn't finished."

"You got em, cuz. I'm sure his ass regret all the shit he been sayin." Eli assured patting his back.

The men held Milo back until he stopped fighting them and laid all his weight on his father. Jey held him tightly, whispering a few things to his first born. He kept talking until Milo's breathing became regular again. Apryl watched them starting to feel bad. She had no idea he was that upset. The principal came back in with their papers. He had questions but decided against asking and just gave their papers out letting them know they could leave. Jey held onto his son as they walked through the office in front of the rest of the family. They passed VJ on their way out, all of them shocked at the damage Milo had done. All of them except Simba. Simba wiggled out of his Mama's arms to run over to VJ. He screamed then started attacking the young man. "Don't touch my brodder! My brodder!" Apryl and Trinity pulled him off, trying not to laugh. Kandice got him from them, holding Simba tightly under her arm as he kicked and screamed out the office.

[cassether]

Chocolate Sauce and Candy Canes

Pairing: Darvey

Category: Romance/Fluff/Christmas

Summary: Donna gets into a predicament trying to remove some unwanted mistletoe from the bullpen and Harvey shows up to rescue her.

AN: My Darvey Christmas contribution :D

Harvey enters the bullpen eyes skimming the overzealous festive decorations in search of Donna. It's past nine and everyone's gone home, save for the named partners upstairs, and his brows furrow unable to spot her amidst the array of colorful lights. The text she sent him was ambiguous at best and he checks it again making sure he didn't miss anything.

Downstairs, need help - D

Not a lot there he can read into and he calls out her name hearing a sound (squeak?) from above him. Turning, he runs his gaze up to where she's sat perched on top of a metal shelving unit. He's assuming it used to house the mess spilling out at his feet and he steps over the folders and papers rounding the clutter to stand beside her dangling legs. She's at least six or seven feet up, head just about skimming the ceiling, and he shoots her a bewildered look. "You want to explain this one to me?"

There's a note of intrigue beneath the question and heat crawls along the back of her neck as she innocently holds out a sprig of mistletoe.

He spots it and raises an eyebrow blowing air into his cheeks. "Please tell me you weren't-"

"I wasn't hanging it." She defends, though in hindsight the reason behind the ridiculous predicament isn't much better. "Someone put it up here and one of the associates complained. I was trying to get it down when..." she swings her hand motioning to the broken shelves below. Thanks to her yoga sessions she was able to pull herself up in time but getting down turned out to be more of a challenge.

He glances at the metal heaped on the floor and worry drives his gaze back to her. "Are you okay?" She nods but the reassurance doesn't quite settle the unease rolling through him and he exhales slowly. She was lucky. If the thing had toppled she could have been seriously hurt. Fortunately she wasn't and he uses sarcasm to try and deflect from the concern. "You know there's this ingenious invention called a ladder."

She flips her hair to the side rolling her eyes at him. "Are you going to help me down or not?"

The height isn't a problem. He can reach the top of her legs without any issue but the stability is more worrying and he pushes the side of the unit testing its foundations. The things seems sturdy enough and he stretches up motioning to her cell. "Pass me your phone." It'll be easier for her to slide down without holding it and he takes the device placing it safely in his pocket, pointing to her seven-inch stilettos next.

"You want me to take off my shoes?" She asks incredulously, feigning offense at the suggestion.

"Donna..." there's a note of warning to his tone, "I'd like to avoid a trip to the emergency department wherever possible."

She concedes with a reluctant 'go ahead' and he slides off the first shoe tossing it to the ground, wincing at the glare she shoots. He doesn't apologize but is more careful with the next one placing it down by his feet. After today he's seriously going to consider buying her a functional pair of flats for Christmas. "How did you climb up in the damn things anyway?'

"I could go into battle with those shoes on." She insists, folding her arms across her chest with a huff. They're her most comfortable pair of Jimmy Choo's and there was logic behind her reasoning. The extra height would have been the boost she'd needed if the stupid shelves hadn't careened down with a domino-like effect.

"And who exactly do you think is coming up there to fight you?" He asks with a smirk, starting to see the humorous side of things. He's still not pleased she attempted the feat on her own but the situation is kind of funny or at least he's starting to think so.

The amusement in his expression becomes apparent and despite her embarrassment she relaxes under the warmth of his gaze. "You should be thanking me from stopping a sexual harassment suit." She waves the sprig of mistletoe with a teasing smile, "and don't even think about copping a feel on the way down."

A laugh builds in his throat and he puffs it out with a wink, "you and I both know that wouldn't be harassment."

She blushes at the insinuation but doesn't fluster.

Much, anyway.

"You're an idiot."

He grins at the insult lifting his hands in mock defense. "Hey, if you don't want my help I can always go find Louis." It's an empty threat and they both know it. He wouldn't dare rope Louis in scared she would actually break something and he concedes to the fact, shrugging out of his suit jacket and hanging it over the nearest petition.

She wiggles herself closer to the edge taking a deep breath as he crosses back rolling up his sleeves. It looks higher than it probably is but she's still nervous and tries to cover the anxiety with a playful warning. "No sneaking a look up my dress mister."

There's a smart retort on his lips but he swallows it not trusting his body will identify it as a joke. After all, he's about to have his hands full of her and attempts to clear the less than appropriate thought from his mind. "Don't worry..." his lips turn up innocently, "I'll be a complete gentleman. You ready?"

She hesitates with a decided 'no' poised on the tip of her tongue. Although his hands reach almost to her thighs they don't seen close enough to take her weight and she panics darting her gaze around the room. "Maybe we should try to find a ladder?"

The doubt expands uncomfortably in his chest and he lowers his arms regarding her seriously. "Donna, I'm not going to drop you."

There's a trace of hurt beneath the assurance, unreadable in his expression but she knows it's there. Only it isn't Harvey she doesn't trust, it's gravity, and she ducks her head sheepishly. "It's not you, I just... what if I'm too heavy?"

He isn't worried in the slightest and offers her a confident smile. "You won't be."

She thinks it over, her gaze trailing down to the muscles caged beneath his fitted shirt. She knows he goes running daily and boxes but her height is above average and she's still not convinced by the math. "You don't even know how much I weigh."

Warning bells sound off at the comment and he knows better than to encourage the conversation. A women's age and weight are an inevitable minefield and he leans against the unit with a smirk, "that's a trap and I'm not falling for it." She rolls her eyes turning her head away and he lets out a loose sigh, lifting his fingers to brush the inside of her calf. When she glances at the contact he softens his expression holding her gaze. "Donna I won't let you get hurt, I promise."

There's nothing but assurance in his voice and she bites the inside of her cheek swallowing her nerves. "Okay."

Relieved by the response he lets go and angles his body to the side, stretching until his fingertips press against her thigh. "Just reach for my shoulder and I'll take care of the rest. All right, on three."

She exhales slowly, waiting for the count, and pushes off the edge letting out a gasp when he sweeps up her knees catching her around the waist with a jolt. She flings her arm around his neck to keep from falling but his hold is effortless and she meets his gaze feeling heat burn her cheeks.

"You okay?" He checks to make sure she isn't hurt and is relieved by her quick nod. "Good-" he readjusts her weight but doesn't let go, "because I'm not putting you down until you swear to me you won't do anything that stupid again."

She pouts, fairly certain the threat isn't real but there's no doubt in her mind the concern is genuine and her embarrassment gives way to a light smirk. "Unless mistletoe becomes a monthly tradition I can safely say that was a once off."

He shakes his head with only a trace amount of amusement in his tone. "Nope not good enough." She fixes him with a look but he doesn't care. He isn't going to relent not until he hears her say it. "I'm serious Donna, that whole thing could have collapsed."

There's worry beneath the light warning and it stirs through her chest prompting a genuine response. "No more climbing on furniture... I promise."

Technically the agreement means he should put her down but having her in his arms feels long overdue and he hesitates trying to formulate some sort of reasoning when Louis' voice rings out across the bullpen.

"Harvey! Donna? Are you guys down-"

He stops dead his eyes widening at the sight of the firm's COO in the named partner's arms. A sprig of mistletoe thrown haphazardly over the the lawyer's shoulder.

"Louis-"

"This isn't what it looks like."

They both simultaneously try to defend their innocence but he just stares with semi-excited shock. Not what it looks like his ass. Do they think he was born yesterday? "I knew it! I mean I didn't know know it, but I knew it!"

Harvey inwardly groans feeling Donna stifle a giggle at the reaction. Screw it. The easiest way out of the awkward confrontation is to wear it and he does, plastering on a confident smirk. "Louis you're right. It's exactly what it looks like and we're kinda in the middle of it, so..."

Louis' face turns about six shades of red as the insinuation drills though him. He does not need a visual and shields his gaze stumbling back awkwardly. "Yeah sure... I'll just, you two keep-" he shakes his head trying to clear a parade of unwanted images, "you know what... I need a day."

Donna buries a laugh into Harvey's shoulder as Louis barrels out and she admonishes him with a light slap. "That was mean."

He hikes up an eyebrow, half-way between flirting and serious. "Who said I was joking?"

She holds his gaze suddenly heightened to the feel of his body pressed against hers and the 'sure of himself' smug look threatening to disarm her. "Harvey," the soft caution spills out and her heart skips when it doesn't seem to deter him.

"Donna." He parrots back, side-eyeing the object bunched around his neck. "You are holding mistletoe and it is Christmas."

The smirk on his lips makes her almost forgot about the building tension and she breaths out an indignant huff, "since when do you believe in festive traditions?"

"Since beautiful women stared dropping into my arms with them." He grins broadly, pleased with himself and enamored by the pink flush that speckles across her cheeks.

She lets the boyish amusement wash over her but the harmless flirting is tipping into something more dangerous and she resolves to steer them away from it. "You need to stop it."

It's hardly a forceful command and he ignores it curling his fingers ever so slightly around her rib cage. "Why?"

"You know why." A shiver runs through her body as she mirrors his words from what feels like a lifetime ago and a brief flicker of doubt seems to knock him down a peg. She could leave it at that. Work her way down from his arms and shrug it off but instead she sighs, doing what he couldn't and giving him an actual answer. "Because it's never just a kiss between us Harvey."

He gives the comment honest thought. She's right but that's sort of the point and he relaxes his jaw masking the need to dive into the push and pull going on between them. He wants to, is ready to, and he leans in closer teasing her lips with his breath. "Maybe that should tell us something."

Her pulse drums loudly in her ears as he hovers just shy of kissing her, his hoarse whisper making her feel dizzy with anticipation. "You're still holding it." It takes her a moment to realize he means the mistletoe, that if she wants out the sprig is her chance to do so, but she doesn't let go bunching it more tightly against his neck instead.

His mouth is on hers in an instant the kiss gentle but demanding and she rakes her hand along his stubble encouraging the tentative exploration. It isn't like the last time or even the other time. It's new, full of craving and fascinating leaving her wanting more when he breaks it with a smug smile. She swallows, the need to be on an even playing field washing over her and she finds his gaze with forced composure. "You going to put me down now, hero?"

His lips wind into a lopsided grin as he obliges letting her slide to the ground, pressing his hand to the small of her back to keep her steady. "Told you I wouldn't drop you."

There's a hint of egotism to the claim and she exhales slowly, testing the boundaries between them. "You also said I wouldn't get hurt." It's a question and a statement in one, the need to understand his intentions drumming through her, and she stills as his fingers slide up to push back her hair.

"I'm not about to break that promise either." His mouth spreads assuringly, hand dropping to edge of her waist. This is who they are; they're friends who flirt and drink, call each other up at all hours and the 'more' is just an extension waiting finally to be explored. "I think it's about time we started a new tradition, don't you?"

He pulls her closer and a flutter of excitement builds in her stomach, her eyes gleaming curiously. "Mistletoe and whipped cream?" It doesn't sound as sexy as strawberries and she cringes trying to come up with another suggestion when his breath blows hotly against her ear.

"How about chocolate sauce and candy canes?" He sucks lightly on her neck, the demonstration rewarded with a shiver and he moves to the other side nipping her skin and lavishing it with the same treatment.

"I might need you to draw that for me."

She teases it with a content sigh, prompting him to draw back and let out a low chuckle. "It's a little complicated..." he insists expression lit with amusement, "how about we go back to mine and I show you?"

She grins broadly, her hands working down to tug the edge of his tie. "I'll get the candy canes."

.🅜Ⓔ🅡Ⓡ🅨 Ⓒ🅗Ⓡ🅘Ⓢ🅣ⓜ🅐ⓢ.

[jarmes]

JJBA Twisted Destiny Chapter 4 - Nero Zeppeli’s Viva La Vida, Part 3

Masterpost - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter

Light from the setting sun shines on Viva La Vida’s crown. The Stand’s tattered red cape waves back in forth in the breeze as it stands behind Nero, ready to fight. “My Viva La Vida has a single, deadly ability. Anything its fists strike decays, including your webs.”

“This can’t be happening,” Rabbit Jimmy mutters. “My abilities are supposed to be unique. I can’t believe you have the same type of abilities as me.”

“What’s more, Johana over here also has a Stand,” Nero says.

“I don’t have a Stand,” Johana says.

Nero raises his eyebrows. “You don’t?” he says.

“No. When have I ever said that I did?”

“I just assumed. I mean, everyone in our family has Stands!”

“I’m not part of our family anymore.”

“You can see Viva La Vida though, right? And Jimmy’s weird spider Stand, you pointed it out earlier.”

Johana sighs. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she says. “I have the potential to unlock one, I suppose, but I’ve never had the need nor the desire to try and summon one.”

Nero places his arm in front of Johana. “In that case, let me handle this,” he says. “Stand battles can be dangerous for regular people.”

Nero and Johana turn back to Rabbit Jimmy and notice that Wrap God has left his shoulder. “The spider’s gone,” Johana whispers.

“I noticed. Fortunately, I can get rid of it if I knock its user out,” Nero says.

Nero charges at Rabbit Jimmy. Viva La Vida bursts out from behind Nero and strikes Jimmy in the stomach, knocking him on his ass. Wrap God crawls out of the ground holding a cord made of silk in its teeth. Rabbit Jimmy grabs the cord and leaps to his feet.

Jimmy turns his head to the side and dodges a punch from Viva La Vida. Jimmy uppercuts the Stand. His fist, instead of doing any damage, simply bounces off. Viva La Vida kicks Jimmy, knocking him away.

“Word from the wise, James. Stands can only be hurt by other Stands,” Nero says.

“Good to know,” Jimmy snaps.

The spider crawls out of the ground once more, bringing Rabbit Jimmy a new silk cable. Jimmy grabs the cable and smiles. His muscles grow as he stands back up. “What’s the deal with the cables?” Nero asks.

“Wrap God’s strings bring me energy to increase my strength and healing,” Jimmy says. “Earlier, while Johana was trying to remember my name, I had him tie up some new victims for me to drain.”

Nero frowns and Viva La Vida punches the ground a few times, trying to find where the cables are located. Rabbit Jimmy laughs. “Good luck finding my cables,” he says. “They’re buried far too deep for you to dig them up while fighting me.”

Wrap God climbs down onto Jimmy’s hand and attaches a long string to his fist. Jimmy spins his Stand around his head like a ball and chain. He approaches Nero in an attempt to strike Nero with his Stand.

Viva La Vida crouches down and punches the wire connecting Jimmy and Wrap God, severing it and sending Wrap God flying away from its user. As it flies through the air, Wrap God spits a glob of silk at Nero, hitting him in the back of the head.

Nero closes his eyes and yawns. “Nero, you have to rip the silk of!” Johana shouts.

Nero’s eyes shoot open. In an instant, rips Viva La Vida off the silk. “That was close,” Johana says.

“I don’t understand, I just felt really sleepy all of a sudden,” Nero says.

“It’s that silk, it sedates people so the spider can tie them up. Remember when we were in the basement? We both fell asleep when the silk touched us.”

Nero turns back to Rabbit Jimmy. “I guess I’ll have to keep my guard up then,” he says.

Wrap God crawls around the battlefield in a circle, covering the grass in string. “That’s the beauty of my Wrap God,” Jimmy says as Wrap God finishes the web and burrows underground. “When I create webs like this, all I need to do is knock you over once and I win.”

Nero charges at Jimmy, being careful to avoid stepping on the web. Viva La Vida launches forward to strike Jimmy. Wrap God climbs out from underground once more, bringing with it the silk cable. Rabbit Jimmy grabs the cord and the Stand. He punches Viva La Vida using Wrap God as a brass knuckle.

The blow knocks Nero over onto the string covered grass. At first, Nero tries to strike the grass with his Stand. But, before long, he falls asleep. Wrap God crawls over and ties its latest victim up in a white cocoon.

“Nero!” Johana shouts.

“One down,” Rabbit Jimmy says while putting his mask back on. “Now for you, Johana.”

“Let Nero go before I break your neck,” Johana says.

Rabbit Jimmy laughs. “What are you going to do?” he asks. “Even if you could defeat my Stand, which you can’t, the energy Wrap God brought me makes me strong enough to win any battle.”

“You’re a monster.”

“You don’t even know the start of it, dear archenemy. Where do you think I’m getting this energy from?”

At that moment, Johana realizes that she hasn’t heard the concert since the fight began. “No,” she whispers.

“That’s right! I ensnared an entire concert full of people, including your friend Kan Nijimura, to increase my strength.”

Johana closes her eyes. “I’m going to start beating the shit out of you, and I don’t know when I’m going to stop,” she says.

Johana takes a deep breath. Energy from her lungs spreads through her body, filling her muscles with strength. Power ripples through her fists as she charges at Jimmy. “Wait a minute, something’s different!” Jimmy shouts. “You’ve changed!”

Johana punches Jimmy in the stomach. “It’s called Hamon,” she whispers. “It works kind of like your string energy, allowing me to punch harder and heal injuries.”

Johana kicks Rabbit Jimmy in the stomach, knocking him away. Wrap God climbs up Jimmy’s leg. He swings his Stand around by a string once more, releasing it and throwing it at Johana.

Johana ducks to avoid being hit in the head by Wrap God. She grabs the string hanging from the Stand and uses it to fling the Stand dozens of meters away. Johana approaches Jimmy as he draws his knife.

Jimmy lunges at Johana, knife aimed for her throat. Johana grabs his wrist and squeezes, forcing Jimmy to drop the knife. Johana kicks the knife as it falls, sending it flying into Jimmy’s throat.

“Right now, that knife is lodged in an artery. If you pull it out or even move to quickly, it’ll fall out and you’ll bleed to death. If you let Nero, Kan, and the rest of your victims go, I’ll heal your wounds and let you live.”

Jimmy rips the knife out, swinging it at Johana’s throat. Johana sighs and kicks the knife out of his hand. “What did that accomplish?” she says as he grabs Jimmy by the throat.

“A distraction,” he whispers.

Johana turns around just in time to see Wrap God shoot a pile of string at her face, hitting her in the glasses. Johana rips the glasses off, throwing them away before they knock her out.

She turns back to Jimmy as he grabs the silk cord leading to the concert cocoons. He absorbs the energy and the hole in his throat closes up. “I don’t need your mercy, dear archenemy,” he says. “Any injury you give me I can heal from.”

Wrap God fires a glob of web at Johana. She jumps to the side to dodge it as Jimmy charges at her with the knife. She pulls her arm back and it rockets forward, dislocating itself from her shoulder and striking Jimmy in the nose.

Jimmy smiles. “You’ve fallen for my trip, dear archenemy!” he shouts. “My mask is made of Wrap God’s silk! By punching me in the face, you’ve exposed yourself to my sedative silk! Soon, you’ll-”

Johana’s fist engulfs in flames, setting Jimmy’s mask on fire. Jimmy screams and rips the mask off. “What the shit?” he screams.

“Scarlet Overdrive,” Johana says as she ignites her other fist. “It’s a Hamon technique that allows me to set myself on fire. I wasn’t going to use it because of the damage to my body, but then you reminded me that I can heal.”

Johana unleashes a rush of punches on Jimmy, beating him to a pulp and knocking him out of the web. Wrap God lunges at Johana and she grabs Jimmy by the shoulder, using him to block his own Stand. Jimmy wrestles himself free and slaps Johana, knocking her away.

Jimmy and Johana both fall to their knees. The fires on Johana’s arms and Rabbit Jimmy’s clothes peter out. Johana looks at her burn covered arms, one dislocated. Jimmy looks at his burn covered body, filled with broken bones. Wrap God brings Jimmy the cable, Johana takes a deep breath, and both fighters begin to heal. “We’re almost evenly matched,” Rabbit Jimmy says. “We can both heal any damage the other deals. The difference is, if I can knock you on that web, I win. This fight can go on for hours, but inevitably, I’ll win.”

“You’re right that one of us has a slight advantage, but you’re wrong about which one,” Johana says. “That web you made? Take a closer look.”

Rabbit Jimmy looks at the web and gasps. Fire, lit by the sparks falling from Johana’s arms, has engulfed the web. “I never intended to defeat you using my fire,” Johana says. “The true reason I set my fists ablaze was to destroy your net.”

“That’s okay, I can just make another-”

“You don’t realize, do you? If the web is burning, so is the cocoon connected to it. Nero’s free.”

The cable in Jimmy’s hand whithers away and turns to dust. “Nero’s started freeing the people you wrapped up in cocoons,” Johana says. “You know what that means, don’t you? Your strength is gone!”

Rabbit Jimmy runs away from Johana, making his way towards the stage. “If I can’t kill you, I can at least kill your friend!” Jimmy shouts.

Kan and her band lie unconscious in the center of the stage. Nero stands in front of them, arms crossed, Viva La Vida at his side. “It’s over, Jimmy,” Nero says.

“My name is James!” Jimmy shouts.

He throws Wrap God at Nero. Viva La Vida punches Wrap God, sending it and Jimmy flying back into one of the support beams for the rafters. “This can’t be happening,” Rabbit Jimmy yells.

Viva La Vida flies forward and punches Rabbit Jimmy through the chest. “I’m supposed to be invincible,” Rabbit Jimmy says as he dies.

Rabbit Jimmy - Age 20 - Deceased

Johana climbs up onto the stage. “Did you take out Jimmy?” she asks.

“He won’t be a problem for anyone else going forward,” Nero says while gesturing to Jimmy’s corpse.

Johana gags. “Thank you for assisting me in defeating him, JoJo,” Nero says. “Your friend and the people at this concert are unconscious, but they will live because of your help.”

“How are we going to explain all of these people falling unconscious? And what about the bodies?”

“Don’t worry about that. The Speedwagon Foundation specializes in this kind of thing,” Nero says. “Speaking of the Foundation, they could use someone like you. You did an excellent job defeating the enemy Stand user.”

Johana glances at Jimmy’s body and sighs. “I hate fighting, Nero, and I hate watching people die,” she says.

“I understand. After I clean this mess up, I’ll let you enjoy the rest of your life far away from me.”

Suddenly, Johana hears a creaking noise coming from the rafters. “Oh no,” Nero says.

“What?”

“I may have, completely by accident, of course, decayed the support pillar for the rafters when I killed Rabbit James.”

The metal rafters begin to collapse. “Kan!” Johana shouts as she runs for her friend.

As the rafters fall onto the unconscious band, Johana reaches for Kan. As she reaches for Kan a blue arm appears in front of her and strikes the metal rafters. The rafters fly off the stage and twist together into a large ball.

“That’s new,” Johana says.

TO BE CONTINUED IN:

Chapter 5: Coldplay, Part 1

STAND STATS

Name: Viva La Vida

Dub Name: Long Live Life

User: Nero Zeppeli

Namesake: “Viva La Vida” (Coldplay Song)

Appearance: Takes the form of a large, muscular man made out of salt crystals. Lacks a mouth, a nose, ears. Has yellow eyes without pupils. Wears a rusty metal belt with a “V” shaped buckle, a rusty crown, and a tattered red cape. Has the letter “V” printed on the backs of each of its fists.

Abilities: Viva La Vida has the ability to “decay” or age objects by punching them. Using this ability, Nero can rust metal, rot wood, melt ice, and turn stone into sand. This ability doesn’t work on living beings.

Stats: Power-A, Speed-B, Range-D, Durability-B, Precision-D, Potential-D

[hello-justawriterofthings]

Art and Music Part 2 [ Second Chances ] - Steve Harrington

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

Hey guys, this is Part 2. I hope you enjoy, thank you so much for Reading <3 [ Warnings. Language, angst ] Y/N = Your name, Y/L/N = Your Last Name.

Part 1 - https://hello-justawriterofthings.tumblr.com/post/178489819325/art-and-music-steve-harrington

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

My eyes opened slowly as they were met with a bright light, I looked around at the ugly cream / yellow walls, ignoring the pain in my body. " Y/N, oh my God. Girl, you scared the shit out of me! " Lily exclaimed loudly, but she was to afraid to hug me. " What happened? " I asked quietly, Lily sighed deeply as she sat down in a chair next to the hospital bed " You got into a car accident, well... You ran a stop sign, hit a hole in the road and ran straight into a pole ". I nodded, I couldn't remember why I had done that. I remembered the fight with Steve and all the harsh words, but I was a super safe driver, how did this happen. " When did it happen? " I then asked, " Yesterday, you've been out ever since... Hit your head pretty hard " she sighed. I nodded, " Your parents would be here, but they couldn't get out of work. Told me to tell you, to call then when you feel up to it " she stated with a smile as she placed my cell phone on the hospital bed. I glanced at it, but didn't touch it. " Steve's called a few times... I heard you didn't want him called, even though he's #1 on your emergency contact sheet... Wanna tell me why you don't want him to know? " Lily questioned, I shrugged slightly " We broke up, he doesn't need to know anything anymore.... Anyway's, how long do I have to stay and what's the diagnosis? ". She sighed deeply, knowing I was avoiding something. I wasn't telling her the whole truth, but she let it go for the time being. " well, you hit your head but no concussion, surprisingly. Sprained your left foot and broke your wrist and hand... Thank god it wasn't worse " she state, " And, I don't know when you can leave I doubt you'll have to stay long. I sighed deeply noticing my wrist bandaged in a cast, it was the hand and wrist I depended on with painting. What was I supposed to do now, how would I paint, I couldn't just use my other hand. I sighed deeply as tears began to fall, I then tried to left my arm up, but was met with pain. " Be careful Y/N, you don't want to make it worse! " Lily exclaimed, " How am I supposed to paint?! What if I can't ever paint or draw again! What am I meant to do with my life now?? " I cried. " Don't be so negative, you have to rest up do you can heal and get back to your painting " she stated seriously, but I couldn't listen, what if Steve was right, What if I was going to be a failed artist?.

I only spent one more night in the hospital, just for observations. Then, I went back to Lily's place. She didn't feel comfortable with me sleeping in the guest house alone, so she put me on the pull out couch in the den. I think she was afraid I was going to do something drastic, because I was so sad with not being able to paint. The first week of being home was the hardest, I didn't attend my classes, instead did them online. lily had arranged with all my teachers, to let me do all the school work at home, at least until I finished healing. Hell, I couldn't even write, so me being in class would've been useless. I was thankful the teachers went along with it, because even though Steve was busy with his music, he would still be attending classes and I had a few with him, so I didn't want to run into him yet. I let out a deep sigh as I cuddled with Gem on the sofa bed, " I'm ordering pizza tonight, do you want anything special? " Lily asked from the kitchen, " No " I muttered. I wasn't hungry, haven't been hungry since the fight with Steve and the accident. I heard Lily's phone ring, but payed o mind, she had her own life. " Hello... " she asked unimpressed, I just continued to watch the horrible reality tv show, playing on the television in front of me. " No Steve... She doesn't want to see you... I don't know, maybe because you two broke up! " she stated in an aggravated tone, as soon as I heard him name, that's when I started listening to what she was saying. " No! I will not tell you why she isn't in school, I'm sure someone else has already told you " she exclaimed, I was happy she had my back. " You'd better not just show up here, I have four dogs and a cat who thinks he's a dog, I'd be careful.... Ugh, Hold on " she stated as she walked into the den, " Talk to this kid, he's crying and is clearly intoxicated ". I shook my head wildly, I couldn't speak to him yet, I wasn't ready. Lily could tell by the serious look on my face, that I wasn't telling her something, she then knew something else happened then just a breakup. " Steve, she's asleep. Call back when you've got your life together! " she stated as she hung up, I sighed deeply. " Okay, if you're going to stay here, you have to tell me the truth. Everything, because I wanna know why you looked terrified to talk to your ex " she seriously stated, causing me to nod, it was finally time to come clean.

Lily and I spent over an hour talking. Actually, I talked and she listened. Many tears were shed again, I explained all the things Steve had said to me, how I got in the car and thought it was a good idea to drive, even though I was upset. I told her everything, didn't leave anything out. Did Steve ever hit you? " she asked, " Hell No! That was the angriest I'd ever seen him that night. He's not that kind of person, he'd never hit anyone, we barely ever fought... " I sighed deeply. She nodded, finally understanding. The she got up and grabbed the pizza place menu, and her phone. " We're going to eat our feelings tonight, I wasn't even in the damn relationship and I feel broken " she sighed deeply, making me smile slightly. " Everything is going to be alright Y/N, your going to get over Steve. Your wrist will heal and you'll be back to painting in no time " Lily then stated with a smile, I nodded also letting out a sigh. I just hope she was right.

[ 3 Weeks Later ]

Things were still a bit rough on my end, my wrist was still in a small cast, but I was no longer in pain. I had tried to paint, but it wasn't the same. I had no inspiration anymore, I felt like there was a gaping black hole in my chest. I felt alone, even though I wasn't. I was planning to return to my classes the week, I needed something to do, instead of sitting in the guest house, doing nothing but feeling sorry for myself. The first week back in school was stressful and everyone seemed to get on my nerves, they would whisper behind my back, so I assumed they were either talking about the accident i was in or the breakup with Steve. Because, even though this collage was pretty big, everyone knew everyone and they knew everything. I ditched my two art classes, because I was afraid to find out that my painting wasn't as good as it used to be. I still hadn't seen Steve, maybe he had dropped out and was on his way to California to become this big musician. He was however, still blowing up my phone daily. Things nowadays had me confused, at least I had Lily by my side. She allowed me to permanently move into the guest house, so I was thankful for her.

" Lil... " I sighed as I walked into her room, she was sitting at her desk, studying. " Hm... " she groaned, " Can you do me a favor? " I asked timidly. She sighed deeply while looking at me " What? ", " I think it's time to get the rest of my stuff from Steve's, now that I'm staying here... I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't already gotten rid of it " I muttered loud enough for her to hear. She sighed deeply " You know I would go if I could, but this week is crazy busy for me... You might have to go alone ", I dramatically fell backwards onto the bed while groaning loudly. " Steve told me not to come, because he never wanted to see my pathetic face ever again " I sighed as Gem joined me on the bed, cuddling up against my side. Lily smiled " I swear she likes you more than me... ", I smirked back at her " Everyone likes me more than you ". She chuckled while tossing a pillow at me, " Seriously Y/N, just text him, tell him you have no one to pick up your stuff, so you have to come. If he doesn't want to see you, he won't be there.... I know you're still dealing with the breakup and accident, but if he is there, maybe it's time to talk to him. Get some closure, be able to move on. Maybe that's why you can't paint " Lily stated seriously. And possibly she was right, I kept blaming my wrist and hand for the reason my painting wasn't the same. Maybe I missed Steve and our relationship, I had no inspiration right now and maybe closure is what I needed.

Around 2pm, I sent Steve a text reading - I'm coming to get the rest of my things, I have no one else to come, so if you don't want to see me. Don't be there -. I didn't wait for a reply, before turning off my phone. Then I used Lily's phone to call a moving company, because I needed a bigger truck for all the larger furniture I had. I just asked if they could meet me at Steve's place, but they told me that they were busy and wouldn't be able to make it today, so I decided not to use them. Instead, I borrowed the biggest truck Lily owned ( And she had a few, that were passed down from her grandparents ). I'd pack the most important things in it and then Steve could just throw away whatever was left. Around 2:45 pm, I headed over to Steve and Jimmy's house. I knew this wasn't going to be easy as soon as I noticed that Steve's car was in the driveway, so either he didn't get my text for some reason , or he wanted to talk. I pulled the key to the house out of my pocket, placing it in the keyhole and unlocking the door. I didn't see Steve in the living room or kitchen, so I walked in quietly, placing the key on the kitchen counter... It didn't belong to me anymore. I then carried the boxes I had brought with to the office, putting my books and art supplies into them first. I'd get the rest of my clothes last. Surprisingly, things hadn't changed much in this place. It looks the same as when I left, like nothing was touched. As I was packing my stuff up, there was a quiet knock on the door, I knew who it was obviously and I was ready to take whatever he was going to bring. I hadn't closed the door when I entered, so Steve just had to walk in, but his footsteps were quiet. He stayed silent, before clearing his throat to speak. " Hi Y/n... How are you? " he stated quietly, but loud enough for me to hear. " Fine " I hummed as I continued packing, not looking at him, I just couldn't ( Because I knew I may cry ). " I heard about the... um... Accident " he sighed, " Jimmy found out... I guess everyone on campus was talking about it ". I nodded, because I had no idea what to say to him, it was awkward. " It was my fault wasn't it, I treated you like shit that day when I didn't have to and I made you upset... " Steve sighed sadly, I hummed once more again, not knowing what to say. I didn't want to fight anymore, my heart still yearned for Steve. so I didn't want to argue with him again. " Y/N, please talk to me! " he exclaimed as he was tired of the silence, I sighed deeply " What do you want me to say? ". " Anything, yell at me, punch me. Just show me some kind of emotion " he stated, " I don't really know what to say to you anymore, I'm afraid your gonna bite my head off... " I sighed deeply. " I'm so sorry Y/N, I never meant for that to happen " he stated sadly, " Let's just say, the accident wasn't fully your fault. I was very upset ans should've known better not to drive... I should've called Lily. Not excusing your actions, because you cut me deep, but we played equal parts in this " I sighed. Steve sighed again deeply " Is there anyway I can change this?? Can I fix us, I don't want to lose you. I know I made a lot of mistakes, I said a lot of things. I hurt you, when that was the last thing I ever wanted to do... I screwed up the best thing I had going for me, I know that, but I also don't want to lose you... I love you Y/N ", I bit my lip as I finally looked at him. He defiantly looked like shit, his hair was all over the place, dark circles had take place under his eyes. He looked like he hadn't showered in weeks. " Listen, I get that you fucked up, we both made some horrible choices in our relationship, but I can't just forgive you and things go back to the way they were. I'm not that easy, I won't be one of those girls " I stated sternly, " But, I care about you a lot... So, we can't go back to being in a relationship, but we can be friends if you're up for that ". Steve sighed deeply, but a soft smile formed on his face. " I mean, I did want to be something more, but as long as I get to keep you in my life, I can handle being friends... Do you think we could ever have what we had before? " Steve then asked, I thought for a second before answering. " Maybe... We'll have to wait and see how a friendship works out first " I stated sending him a small smile, maybe things would be okay after all. 

And friends we were. We talked, but not like before. Things were still a bit tense between us, but we tried to ignore it when we hung out together. I attended Steve's gigs again, which were starting to get bigger because they now had an offical manager and was working with a music producer on recording an album. Something was still off in me though. I still had no inspiration to paint, I felt like maybe it was because I didn't have a deeper connection with Steve, that's what my heart wanted, it wanted him back. Why couldn't I figure out how to do this on my own, why couldn't I be the source of my own inspiration. I had a hard time sleeping and most nights, I stayed awake, trying to sketch, before crumpling the paper and throwing it across the room. As Steve went on with his life, I was stuck in the past. Dark circles started appearing under my eyes now, I wasn't eating as much, because I wasn't hungry ( Ever ). Before the breakup and harsh words, I wasn't afraid of how I dresses. Lots of dresses, shorts, skirts, tank tops, I wasn't afraid of showing some skin. But now, all I ever did was cover up. It was like my confidence had deflated, I wasn't comfortable in my own skin anymore. I hoped when arranging things with Steve to stay Friends, I would be able to get better. If anything, things were worse now and I was regretting everything.

10 am, I received a text from Steve. I was awake of course, so I immediately checked it. It read - Wanna grab lunch this afternoon, just you and I? : Steve -, I smiled slightly ( Maybe this was a sign, should I tell him about my feelings, it had been a few months since the breakup ). - Sure, what time and where? - I sent back. I received a message quickly after, - 12:30pm, at Jazz's place: Steve -. I smiled, sending a quick text back - Okay, 12:30. See you then -. When it started getting closer to the time I was planning to leave, I got ready. Nothing to fancy, I tried to cover the dark circles under my eyes, I couldn't do it though, I was no makeup artist and the cheep makeup I did use couldn't get the job done. So, I guess I was meeting Steve, looking like a girl who hasn't slept in week and didn't care much about my appearance. I decided to take a cab to Jazz's place, figuring if things went well, maybe Steve could drive me home. The closer I got to the cafe, the more nervous I was becoming. I decided to tell Steve how I was feeling, maybe I was ready to try being in a relationship again...

That thought was quickly  changed when I noticed Steve sitting on a bench outside of Jazz's place, arm around a beautiful redhead. The genuine smile plastered on his face, he had moved on and was happy. Even with my feelings, I wanted to see him happy. And he looked happy, I wasn't going to ruin that for him. So, like always, I ran. I told the taxi driver to just keep going and take me back home, then I sent Steve a text saying I couldn't make it. Things had been rough recently and maybe being friends with Steve was a mistake.  He had moved on and maybe, I needed to do the same, but for me to do that, I needed some space from Steve.

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

Hey guys, here's part 2. Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed and you're all amazing. Let me know if you want another Part <3<3

[ayearofpike]

Remember Me 3: The Last Story

Pocket Books, 1995 244 pages, 20 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-87267-2 LOC: PZ7.P626 Rg 1995 OCLC: 31863011 Released February 1, 1995 (per B&N)

In her second go at life, Shari Cooper has become a best-selling young adult author, and her success is confusing her mission to help make things better. They're about to start shooting the movie of her first novel, and as involved as she is in picking the actors she starts to get too involved with her male lead. This starts to drive a wedge between Shari and her life/afterlife partner, who wants her to listen to the words of a wise teacher and how they might resonate with the teacher they had between lives. By the time she finally starts to listen, will it be too late?

Huh, my blurb makes this book seem readable. In real life, it's more of a patchwork crazy quilt of ideas (and whole scenes!) we've already seen, which doesn't take long to get frustrating. This is even worse in retrospect, with the knowledge that Pike never really wanted to write this book and mostly did it out of obligation to his publisher. It's pretty slapdash and sort of lazy, and even where it wants to be deep it's more like stomping in the kiddie pool than diving in (certainly compared to these other stories he's already done).

Remember my white-savior complaint about Remember Me 2? It's back here, and worse because Shari, in the beginning, seems to have totally abandoned her mission to help. Like ... a year of learning from a master in the afterlife, and your strategy for bettering Jean's home culture and community is to write teen thriller novels? And also to adopt as your pen name "Shari Cooper," the most saltine cracker of names, thus totally obscuring your assumed ethnicity when a best-seller by a visible Latina could raise the water level for all of us? When we start, she’s signing her most recent book, the story about herself that she ghost-wrote inside her brother Jimmy's body, which she submitted (against his wishes) because she "needed another best-seller." Again, this is printed under her pen name. Which is SHARI COOPER. Do you really not foresee any problem with this?

Let's be real: there is nothing here that is remotely in service of leveling the playing field or raising up the inner-city Latinx community that Jean Rodrigues came from. In fact, Shari has totally distanced herself from being Jean, aside from using the name when it's convenient. She barely mentions Jean's mother, she doesn’t even think about her siblings at home, she briefly talks about her old friend Carol who is sick in the hospital, and don't even get me started on how Lenny is not Lenny even a little bit anymore, but now totally Peter. He even goes by Peter now; I think they only identify him as Lenny once, again for convenience's sake. (To his credit, Peter appears to have taken on the service bit of his return to a body much more readily: he coaches disabled baseball teams, and later invites one of his homeless blind players to live with them.)

Shari pisses me off so much that I almost quit reading this book twice. But I'd be annoyed with myself if this blog was "reading all of Pike's books except one," so I finished it. Still, I'm going to skip ahead on the summary and probably leave a lot of things out.

The movie they're making is a sinking-boat thriller, where a nerdy kid invites seven bullies out on a pleasure cruise and then sinks it in shark-infested waters, leaving only one lifeboat. The star they've got lined up is a drug addict, but the producer has found someone else who knows all Shari's work and blew him away on a chance audition, so even though they're going to start shooting in just a few days he wants to switch actors. And sure enough, this guy makes Shari feel like he belongs in the role, even though he's cocky enough to suggest script changes before he has it and to kiss her during the reading. Or maybe it's because of that last part. She's very confused.

So Shari gets in a fight with her nerd villain actor not long after, and this dude both stands up for her and takes her away, out for a romantic dinner. Did I mention that Shari lives with a dude that she's been in love with across TWO lifespans? But she still goes with this guy, and he kisses her again, but she does have the good grace to back away and go inside, where Peter tells her all about a meeting she missed with a yogi who teaches meditation for unity.

They fall asleep, and Shari wakes up outside her body, feeling just like she did in the first book when she died only she knows she's not dead yet. She jumps into Peter's dreams, where the yogi is hanging out, and they talk about their feelings and their actions and Shari's headaches, which she still gets, naturally, because Jean fell on her head off a balcony. Then Shari suddenly appears in her brother's bedroom, where he's naked in bed with her best friend. Not Carol — the half-sister from her previous life. It doesn't matter, because even this friend isn't that important in this story. Shari's suddenly whisked to her mom's bedside — but not her birth mom, her switched-at-birth mom, her brother's mom, her murderer's mom — who is crying herself to sleep next to a copy of Remember Me by Shari Cooper. (This doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. Wasn’t this the lady who suddenly jumped to Amanda’s side and hired her a lawyer when she realized she was her birth child? Maybe I'm making this more confusing than it needs to be, but after all, Pike put all the strings into this crazy quilt. I'm just unraveling them.)

Then she hops to the fancy hotel room where her star is sleeping, and she jumps into his dream and sees a creepy space battle where purple ships are blowing up white ones. What does it mean? Shari isn't sure, but she wakes up (confusing her dreams and jumbling them together) and is inspired to start a new story: “The Starlight Crystal,” about a fleet of white ships returning to Earth after centuries of travel, having found golden enlightenment and been told to bring it home, only to be driven away by a vicious attack from a fleet of purple ships. As far as I can tell, this Starlight Crystal has nothing in common with the computer game from See You Later except the name and the fact that there is interstellar travel, and likewise with the novel that'll show up later.

(And let me just take a second to be annoyed that she remembered the dream sequence enough to write it all down for THIS fuckin’ book but acts like it was slipping away from her as she’s writing “The Starlight Crystal.” Like Pike forgot how to acknowledge the present-tense narrator describing the past between the first book and now. It really doesn’t hold up by comparison.)

In the morning, Shari goes to the set they’re constructing for the exterior boat scenes. They’re excavating a pit somewhere in the desert, which they’re going to fill with water and surround with matte paintings of the Caribbean and deposit their rental sharks. Yeah, rental sharks, four of them, and apparently it’s OK to just stick them in a dredged hole with trucked-in pumped water without raising any eyebrows. The new star shows up and asks to take her to lunch, which, sure, he’s supposed to be rehearsing a movie and she’s supposed to be finalizing the script and also she’s WITH SOMEONE, but they can go have a two-hour lunch in a fancy restaurant in Beverly Hills. He tells her that he’s read all her books, including Magic Fire, a shoutout to a Pike novel that hasn’t come out yet. While they’re flirting, he reads her palm and is taken aback by the break in the lifeline that indicates she should have died three years ago. He also calls her both Jean and Shari, which ... fuckin’ sloppy, Pike.

I didn’t mention that Lenny’s body is impotent, right? He’s paralyzed from the waist down, and so Peter can’t get up to much in the bedroom. Plus he couldn’t help fucking around with the chest-burster alien thing in the afterlife when all Shari wanted was to get laid after the prom in their imaginations. Like the one thing she’s constantly wanted is to have sex with Peter, and all she has are memories of the premature ejaculator of her Shari life and of Jean getting pregnant. She’s been celibate for four years, even while she’s been with the one dude she constantly dreamed about. So I get why she’s horny for New Star, even if I still reserve the right to be a little judgemental. It isn’t helping Shari that he has some kind of undefineable it-factor that at least she’s learned to attune to in her afterlife training.

But now Shari wants to know just who this dude is and why he has these compelling effects on her. So naturally she decides to hire a private detective. Specifically, she goes to the detective that solved her murder. She’s pretty vague about why she wants New Star checked out, which makes the detective uneasy, but when she offers to double his rate he takes the case. Then they all go to the yogi’s lecture. Well, not the detective, but New Star tags along with Shari and Peter and her brother, and he’s pretty much a total asshole while the yogi is explaining how to share and communicate and love and help and find unity. Also, the lecture starts and ends with unguided meditation, and Shari finds that her headache is gone without drugs for the first time in months. Basically, it’s the same scene from Sati, except Peter and Shari and New Star don’t let anyone else talk.

She wakes up again in the middle of the night to write, this time adding a description of the pursuit by the purple ship and attempted escape of the white ship. She stops when she runs out of words, and finds that she has startled awake the blind baseball player sleeping on her couch. He tells her all about what a great guy Peter is and how he hopes that Peter’s spine will heal someday so he can walk with her on the beach like he’s always wanted. Shari never knew this was something Peter wanted to do, because she’s a self-centered asshole.

The movie starts shooting early the next day, and Shari and her producer have to immediately fire one of the actors because she can’t handle being in water over her knees. This is a movie about a SINKING BOAT and nobody thought to make sure the actors could deal with water. New Star has a ballsy solution: have Shari play the role. She’s not an actor! The villain points this out! She flubs half the takes! But it’s a low-budget picture, apparently, despite being based on a New York Times best-seller, so they have to go with it.

Afterwards he takes her out to dinner again, while Peter’s at the yogi’s meditation class. Then they go back to her place so he can give her a full-body massage. Then they get naked and make out. (Shades of Chain Letter 2!)  But before his ... uh ... purple spaceship can enter the wormhole to hyperspace, the blind baseball player comes home and walks in on them. He’s blind, so he assumes he’s caught Shari with Peter, and he’s contrite and apologetic and hides in the bathroom. So Shari sneaks New Star out of her house and then asks if the kid wants to go to Disneyland so he doesn’t hear when Peter actually comes in. After nine at night. Yeah, nothing weird about that. But he’s a kid, so he’s excited, and when they get home he asks Peter why he didn’t get out of bed and go with them if he’s awake now. So Shari confesses, and Peter cries, and Shari leaves.

She goes to the same hotel where New Star is staying, but doesn’t seek him out. I guess that’s one good thing I can give Shari: given enough guilt, she won’t immediately go climb on some dude’s jock. Instead, she writes more, about how the white ship jumps through hyperspace but the purple ship follows, and their ship is crippled from the pursuit so all they can do is send the crew off on the emergency escape pods and hope for the best while the captain and first mate hang behind to be boarded by the purple invaders and hopefully set off one last bomb and ruin the attackers’ plans.

During a break in shooting the next day, Shari goes to the detective, who has turned up some information on New Star. Specifically, he is a creep and an abuser who has beaten up his last two co-stars but because they didn’t press charges he’s walked. Shari doesn’t want to believe it, and the detective quickly susses out that she’s got more involvement with New Star than just being his boss. You came to a detective with good instincts, you idiot, what did you expect? At the end of the day, she calls Peter and apologizes again and says that there’s something she has to face, but that she loves him and hopes he’ll forgive her. And then in the middle of the night, her phone rings and it’s the movie’s villain, saying that someone is planning to feed someone to the sharks during the next day’s shoot and that she needs to meet him on the set to talk about it.

So who does Shari call to help her out with this situation, given what she just learned about New Star from the detective that day? That’s right — she’s a stupid idiot! They drive out to the set and find the villain waiting for them with a gun in his hand. He says that a real murderer’s only motivation is wanting to kill, and now he wants to kill. But first they’re going to rehearse. Shari and New Star must each paddle a lifeboat across the shark pond and back, and if they can both make it and come back and neither one bolts, they’ll both live. So Shari gets in the boat, which feels like it’s leaking, and quickly (through/around the panic) does her lap. But New Star refuses, and instead throws the villain to the sharks directly. Uh, no shit.

So the police come, and after hours in the clink Shari finally thinks to call the producer, who comes and gets her out immediately. She goes back to the hotel and sleeps for a whole day, dreaming about a golden being floating to Earth and living a life and dying and being reincarnated, each time hoping to impart a little more knowledge and love into humanity. When she wakes up, she remembers that Peter had wanted her to see the yogi one last time, but by the time she gets there he’s already left for the airport. She and Peter reconcile, but on the way home she gets a call from the detective, who must talk urgently. They pick him up, and he directs them to a certain address. A certain condo near the beach, where on the ground outside there’s a faint bloodstain that has never washed out.

It seems that the detective has read Remember Me by Shari Cooper. Also, he’s a GODDAMN DETECTIVE who was ON THE CASE it was about. Also, his daughter read it, the only one who would actually remember an angel and a devil showing up to scare her straight. He’s pretty freaked out at how this Latina from the barrio could possibly know what happened with saltine-cracker Shari in Huntington Beach, but she’s able to calm him down without actually answering his questions. I guess we have to accept that there are more than just knowable facts in this story, because the detective does and remembers that he’s called Shari because he learned some gruesome details about New Star. Which, so has Shari, first-hand. And they’re about to get some more, because New Star is at the door with a gun.

He pushes the detective off the balcony, I guess because nobody had gone off a balcony in this book yet. Then they drive to Shari’s grave, which he’s already dug up and is going to bury her alive with her old body. He throws her in the hole, and as she tries to climb out he nails her in the head with the shovel right where her headaches start. Like he knew. It seems that New Star is from the other side too, but his mission is to thwart the drive toward peace and unity. You know that dream he was having, the one that inspired Shari’s story? It’s all true, three hundred thousand years in the past, and Roger is one of the purple-ship aliens in a human body. And their grand mission is to ... kill a YA thriller writer because she’s getting too close to home. I don’t know why she has to be buried with her previous body, other than it happened in “Collect Call.”

So Shari looks to Peter for enlightenment and love to be the last thing she sees as she’s buried alive. Only he’s not in his wheelchair. The pain of his love being buried has magically healed his spine, and now he’s behind New Star with the shovel. Obviously they kill him, and then whisk Shari to a hospital, where she knows her brain only has limited time left but wants to get out to finish her story. Which she does: the captain blows up her ship and the aliens’, but only after remembering a fable her grandmother used to tell about a dragon stealing a heart and then being tormented to kill itself because the heart retained the love and desires of its body and wouldn’t stop beating. I don’t know, this seems like a pretty shitty story to kill someone over.

But then she realizes she has to apologize to someone. No, not Peter; that’s done and he’s still walking. No, not Carol, still sick in the hospital as far as we know — why would we be concerned with a bisexual Latina drug addict just because she’s Jean’s best friend and Jean’s body is dying? It’s her mom. NO, not her birth mom. NO, not her Latina mom. Switched-at-Birth Mom. Jimmy’s mom. The one who raised her. Which, OK, that counts for something. But anyway, she drives to her house and tells her that the story is true and that she can’t say why. Then she’s obviously in pain, so Switched-at-Birth Mom invites her to lie down in ... Shari’s bed. Where she dies.

The epilogue is literally Peter handing Jimmy the floppy disk that this story is written on and Jimmy finishing it. Which is maybe why the last little bit is about his mommy. But then again, Shari forced his body to write the first one, so maybe she guided him here too.

This shit is a hot mess, you guys. Let’s leave aside the fact that Pike didn’t really want to write it, and let’s leave aside the fact that all these pieces BARELY line up to form a coherent story, and let’s leave aside how the problems mentioned in the second book TOTALLY WENT AWAY for this one. Let’s even jump over how my Latino heart was stepped on and kicked aside along with the roots of these characters for the ENTIRE BOOK. Here’s the big issue: Christopher Pike wrote a story about an angel (I guess) returning to human form, with a mission to make humanity better ... and the BEST THING he could come up with, the DEEPEST POSSIBLE SOLUTION to our woes that crossed his sexy lizard brain, was that she needed to be a best-selling YA thriller author. Talk about an inflated sense of self-importance.

And with that, I am finally done with Remember Me 3: The Last Story. Which I am not ashamed to admit that I did NOT remember. Hopefully I will remember to NOT read it again.

[yasbxxgie]

A trip to the late Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. is always a little like time traveling; at least for any jazz fan, knowing the hundreds of classic records that were first heard inside the vaulted, wood-paneled space makes stepping inside all the more transporting. But when a group of press and industry figures gathered there earlier this month, they may as well have been visiting in the midst of the studio’s heyday -- albeit after fighting through significantly worse traffic.

The occasion? The release of a new album from jazz legend John Coltrane, recorded in that same hallowed room in 1963. Never mind that 55 years have passed, the material is brand-new -- not a reissue, not a live release, not a collection of B-sides and rarities -- and includes two never-before-heard compositions. Titled In Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album, the 14-track, two-disc album (out June 29 on Impulse!) consists of remastered session tapes long assumed to be lost. They were discovered in the possession of Coltrane’s family, specifically descendants of him and his first wife Naima. (For a more in-depth exploration of the session’s genesis and discovery, see WBGO’s recent piece on the topic by Coltrane scholar Lewis Porter.)

“We were all over the moon listening to the music we found,” said Ravi Coltrane, John’s son and a fellow jazz musician, just after the listening session at the studio. The album features what’s considered to be John Coltrane’s classic quartet: McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The following year that same ensemble would record the Coltrane album most familiar to those who aren’t jazz aficionados, A Love Supreme, in the same room where the listening took place. As guests heard Both Directions, they sat facing the piano Tyner played on both recordings, drinking in the combination of familiar swing and unfamiliar solos and sounds. “We spend our lives following these players, recording, studying them, transcribing them -- you go at the new material like it's sustenance,” Ravi said.

The album finds the band in the middle of a two-week stint at Birdland, which spotlights them at their most experimental for the period: testing the limits of standards like “Nature Boy,” but still not quite at the total departures from conventional structure and harmony that Coltrane would arrive at within a few years. The only similar incidence of this kind of untapped well of material being recorded, according to the younger Coltrane, came with the 1995 album Stellar Regions, which was recorded just a few months before his father died in July 1967.

“This is a much more accessible group in many ways,” Ravi says of the Both Directions record. “The band was clearly just in a groove. It's almost a document of what they would do within a club performance during that period.”

Adding a chapter to Ravi’s encyclopedic knowledge of his father’s work via this album will eventually mean gaining new insights -- musical and otherwise -- from it. But right now, he’s still mostly just in awe of its existence. “These guys were just burning all the time,” he says. “There was just a real power in their conviction that comes through both on a recording that was lost and put on the shelf, or on A Love Supreme, which was very deliberate statement. Here the guys are kind of stretching out and getting loose and blowing, having a good time in the studio. There's a lot to be said for both approaches, I suppose.”

McCoy Tyner, the only musician on the record still alive today (now 79, he was just 24 at the time of the Both Directions session), happened to be playing in a club the same night as the listening: New York’s Blue Note, which was packed to the brim to see the legend in action. Tyner has, naturally, heard and endorsed the new release, though he didn’t mention it that night. Instead he attempted, just like at the listening, to make the phrase "jazz history" an oxymoron -- to show the vibrancy and life still evident in a music that just celebrated its recorded centennial. Though he was barely strong enough to lift himself off the piano bench, Tyner still gave his all to classics like “Evidence” and “Contemplation,” flashing the occasional grin when he heard something he liked.

Though performances from giants like Tyner are few and far between in 2018, the new album is being released to an audience that -- somewhat paradoxically -- might be more excited about it than they would have been had it been released five or 10 years ago. Jazz is having a moment in the critical mainstream, but not because of the persistence of its golden age heroes.

“Jazz is something that's way out there on the fringes, until there's a gateway performer or band,” says Ravi Coltrane. “My cousin Steven Ellison, Flying Lotus, has been incorporating a lot of music inspired by people like Pharoah Sanders and my mother [Alice Coltrane] as have Kamasi [Washington] and Kendrick [Lamar]. That helps get the music into the zeitgeist, into the ears of younger audiences.”

Another facet of the new album’s improbable timeliness comes from the unprecedented access to all music of the past -- but especially jazz, given its enormous recorded catalog -- that has come with the proliferation of streaming services. It can be a double-edged sword, however: contemporary jazz artists have long battled the records of the genre’s legends for sales and attention. Now, it’s even easier to remain enveloped in jazz’s past: anyone looking to familiarize themselves with John Coltrane’s oeuvre need only open an app on their phone; live video is easily surfaced on YouTube.

Spotify was betting on that connection with its first-ever jazz event, a listening party for Both Directions that the company hosted at New York’s The Django. The club, explicitly designed to recreate the kind of basements where John Coltrane and his peers would have spent most nights, hosted two representatives of the Onyx Collective who preceded the album with a sparse, edgy saxophone and drum duet still staunchly rooted in jazz’s history. Like the visit to Van Gelder’s studio, it was transporting; instead of confronting ghosts, however, attendees saw the fruits of John Coltrane’s labor in the artists still trying to digest and continue his work.

“From the 1940s to the 1960s, these were some of the most modern creators that had ever appeared: rock musicians, jazz musicians, funk musicians,” Ravi Coltrane says. “There was a lot there to compel the next couple generations. I think we're still feeling that, and we're still reacting to it as artists and creative people. We're still informed by it.”

That is part of what drives the continued search for more albums to release, a process that the younger Coltrane acknowledges is fraught given the desire to not tarnish his father’s legacy, while also ensuring that records with historical significance are accessible. (He jokes about the profits, which will almost certainly be a boon for the Coltrane estate and the label.) “We still have some tapes and I'm sure his first wife's family still has tapes,” he says, unwilling to totally rule out the possibility that some other previously-lost album lies in the vault. “It was very, very special to have one standalone session. There are tapes with one or two outtakes of things that have never been heard, but this is an entire album. That's pretty rare. I hope another lost album appears.”

Whether this is the last album or not, Ravi Coltrane still hopes that, even all these years later, it might bring some new fans to his father’s music, and to jazz. “John Coltrane is a name that people do recognize, even if they haven't heard his music before,” he says. “They associate that name with something that's elevated or grand or important. So if a record comes along to put a sonic stamp on that name, hopefully it's something they can recognize and embrace in some ways -- because they have been hearing music influenced by these guys for their whole lives.”

[orionsangel86]

re: the last two episodes - that's how we know destiel wasn't an unintended by-product of cockles. when they don't want the ust, they act without it. like, I'm losing hope Saz - I've never seen them so flat around each other. it's like they don't even know each other. remember that comic on how Dean wouldn't let Cas go to the bathroom alone after he got him back? yeah, apparently that's not happening. they're going nowhere with this.

Oh nonny, I am so sorry you feel this way but I am really struggling to see what you mean? When were they flat around each other? 

I think you need to be careful about looking at the destiel content on tumblr and then expecting it in the episode. Whilst I can understand that you feel disappointment that Dean didn’t fight for Cas to stay a bit more, because the comic and all of fandom was poking fun at Dean’s mother hen routine and speculating him being really clingy with Cas following his death and resurrection, I actually really liked that Dean trusted him to go and do what he had to do. It’s a sign that they are in a relatively healthy place.

In fact it was really interesting seeing Dean actually use the right freaking pronouns for the first time ever. Not once in that scene did we get Sam’s view. Nor did Sam even get invited along. It was literally all about Dean and Cas:

Dean: Alright, well let’s go

Cas: Dean you can’t accompany me. My contact is already anxious about meeting and won’t speak in the presence of a stranger.

Dean: So introduce me, then I’m not a stranger. I’ll bring a six pack.

Now aside from the fact that Cas’s next sentence is kind of irrelevant and nonsensical to this argument (how does swearing to protect Jack have anything to do with not bringing Dean along? Thanks Bucklemming for that nonsense) this is the first time that Dean and Cas use pronouns correctly. Sam is sitting RIGHT there and there isn’t a single “we” or “us”, in sight and Cas uses the singular “stranger” as well. They NEVER do this because we have been consistently frustrated over their use of the plural pronouns when we KNOW they MEAN the singular form.

Like Sam assumed Dean would want to team up with Cas alone in 13x06, here both Dean and Cas assume that Sam isn’t part of this discussion and don’t even consider if he would come along or not. (poor Sam - He would hate the UST anyway).

I will agree that Cas was kind of cold here. I thought he was kind of cold in 13x06 as well. There is fond exasperation and then there is a lack of care and Cas seems very focused in on Jack right now which is why I am side eyeing him at the moment - but I don’t want to get into the why’s and what’s of that because any meta about Cas on tumblr right now will just blow up in my face cos everyone has been super sensitive about Cas since the season 12 finale so sod that. Pfft.

Dean however is still acting perfectly in character and I thought his acceptance of Cas asking him to let him go was excellent character growth. Dean trusts Cas completely, and honestly it is a massive indicator of his love for the guy when really, Cas hasn’t been a very trustworthy husband recently (though I blame first his depression and secondly Jack for that).

I am in no way worried that this scene some how disproves destiel. Just because Dean wasn’t fighting Cas more or acting more worried about him going off on his own again. I thought it was an excellent moment for them and honestly nonny, its rare that they have moments of full on UST nowadays. I recently re-watched season 4 and holy smokes every single deancas scene oozes sexual tension and makes me squirm from the intimacy. It was all eye sex back then, but nowadays they have settled down, they are an old married couple after all. They don’t have eye sex anymore they have tender eye love making I mean did you SEE the end of 13x05?!?

Also this:

“that's how we know destiel wasn't an unintended by-product of cockles. when they don't want the ust, they act without it.”

is a GOOD thing. We don’t WANT destiel to be an unintended by-product of cockles. We want destiel to be a conscious thing that they act out purposely because it is written into the script and the direction they are given is to act like lovers/husbands etc. They have proven this point though for years. Dean had no sexual tension with Jimmy Novak for instance. He didn’t have any sexual tension with Casifer either, and I can guarantee that when Asmodeus takes Cas’s form, there will be no tender eye love making between them and Dean will figure out straight away that this is not his husband. Destiel is not created by Misha and Jensen having some major attraction to each other. Whether or not that is true, they are both professional actors who are able to keep it in their pants until the camera stopped rolling. 

I’m sorry that you are losing hope hun, but look usually we all feel a little bit down after a Bucklemming episode (and confused and exasperated and annoyed and sometimes furious), but I don’t see anything that is a concern for destiel here. In fact I am almost certain that come the second half of the season we will all be screaming about something or another that they did. In season 12 we got an “I love you” AND a mixtape.

I can’t ever say for certain that they are gonna go there. I can only analyse the scenes I’ve been given and come to a conclusion which is my own interpretation, and we all see things differently, but right now I am so not worried. IMO Destiel is endgame, and I happen to think that we are still right on track.

[bughead-fic-request]

Werewolves of Riverdale: Chapter 2

Words: 8,759

Warnings: Violence, drinking, swearing, sex and MAJOR CHARACTER DEATHS!! 

A/N: Thank you to the incredible @rileybabe for making this aesthetic above to go with this chapter. And a thanks to @raptorlily for convincing me to write it even if it took like 6 months. 

Most of you aren’t going to like this. 

I edited this myself so I apologize for the errors. 

Part 1 can be found here and AO3. 

Betty drove her beat up Ford Aspire towards Jughead Jones’ trailer. It was the farthest lot in the trailer park and she was immediately regretting her decision to go there. She stuck out like a sore thumb and the glares she was receiving made her shift uncomfortably.

She parked in front of his trailer which was kept in better shape than she was expecting. There was even a flower garden by the front steps.

She made her way to the front door, took a deep breath and knocked three times. This was the right thing to do she kept telling herself. She would explain that he was right and she had been lied to by her mother for most of her life. This would be okay, everything was going to be fine.

The door flew up and a shirtless, muscular Jughead stood on the other side. His hair was wet and his skin glistened, still not fully dry. He was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans that hung off his hips and he was barefoot.

A look of shock swept his face for a moment before he regained control and his expression smoothed. He stared at her before his eyes darted to something by the door frame that Betty couldn’t see.

She took another deep breath and began to speak. “Jughead, I just want to say-”

She was cut off when he grabbed her by the throat and threw her into his home, slamming the door behind him. Betty gathered herself just in time to see Jughead coming at her with a baseball bat. She raised her arm to block the blow and her bone broke on impact. She screamed in agony and punched him in the side where she had stabbed him the day before. He stumbled away from her and she took the time to quickly maneuver her jacket into a sling. She knew her arm would be healed in 20 minutes but she didn’t have 20 minutes.

She rushed at him ducking past the bat and stepping on his bare foot with her hard boots. He growled in pain and lifted the bat to bring it down on her again.

Betty rolled her eyes that he wasn’t changing his pattern and dodged the assault that was meant for her and instead punched him in the balls and then in the throat. He dropped the weapon as one hand clutched his testicles and the other his neck.

She grabbed the bat and moved into the living room rolling it under the couch. She focused on her sling to make it more secure so her bone would set correctly and she wouldn't have to re-break it later. She watched as he stood, breathing heavily, leering at her as he went over his options.

“I didn’t come here to fight, Jughead. I have no ill will today. Promise.” Betty said waiting for him to make his move. She knew the fight wasn’t over, he had too much anger for it to be over. He charged at her again.

Betty fumbled to grab Shadowmoon and it fell to the floor when he tackled her to the ground, splintering his coffee table in the process. He straddled her, pushing all his weight on her body as he wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed as hard as he could.

Betty’s eyes widened while her body was deprived of air and she began attacking him as well as she could. She started looking around her and saw her gun but it was just out of her reach.

Her body was starting to convulse and the edges of her vision blackened as she managed to wrap her fingers around the grip and move it in Jughead’s direction. She placed it right by his ear and pulled the trigger.

He let go of her and pressed his palm over his ear. “Mother fucker!” He screamed standing up, Betty followed.

“Jesus Jughead, can you please stop! My mom told me, she confirmed what you said.” Betty rubbed her neck as she gasped for air while Jughead tried to control his breathing, wiping away the blood trickling from his ear. “Everything I was taught was a lie and I know it doesn’t justify anything I did and I can’t take it back but I’m so sorry about your dad.” She looked up at him as she put Shadowmoon away and plopped down on the couch.

His jaw was clenched and he had tears in his eyes as he left the room. She could hear him in the kitchen and she braced herself for a new assault, possibly with a kitchen knife. Instead he came back with two beers and handed her one. He sat down in a chair adjacent from her.

They sat in silence while they finished their beers. “So I’m assuming you came here for a reason or did you just come to say you were sorry?”

“We still have a problem.” Betty stated plainly.

“And what’s that?” Jughead cocked an eyebrow.

“We still have a rouge werewolf on the loose killing citizens of this town and I think we should team up and stop it.” Betty looked away from him suddenly feeling self-conscious.

“For the last time we’re lycans, not werewolves.” Jughead put his bottle down on an end table and angled his body towards her. “And what makes you think I would want or need your help?” He asked.

“Because if I haven’t caught him and you haven’t caught him that means he’s a crafty little fucker. He knows how your pack thinks, how you move and how to avoid you. Maybe a little hunter know how is exactly what you need.” She grinned.

Jughead was silent for a long time before he took a deep breath in and stood. “Fine, under two conditions.”

“Which are?” Betty stood and moaned in pain knowing she was going to have to get Dr. Brown to re-break her arm later.

“We don’t talk about anything other than putting him down and you buy me a new coffee table.”

“Well, in all fairness you pushed me into the coffee table.” Betty shrugged.

“You killed my father last night.” His voice was dead pan.

“So do you like something sturdy like oak, you got a lot of oak in here or is Ikea shit cool cause I work at Piggly Wiggly and I’m poor as fuck.” Betty’s eyes widened and she grinned awkwardly.

Jughead rolled his eyes. “Meet me here tomorrow at 7 with some sort of strategy. Until then get the fuck out of my trailer.”

“Cool beans.” She hurried out and got into her car feeling good about the whole interaction.

Betty went to see Dr. Brown while simultaniously getting drunk to dull the pain of him professionally re-breaking her arm. After that she went to Kevin’s with Cheryl and played video games until Betty was drunk enough that the pain in her arm was gone and she no longer cared about how tomorrow was going to go.

She walked herself home, stumbling as she went, dreaming of her soft, never made bed. She walked the three flights it took to get to her apartment and clumsily got the keys into the lock. She kicked off her shoes and went to her kitchen while checking her bank balance with the hopes that she had enough to order a pizza.

“Where were you?” Alice’s voice rang out.

Betty jumped, surprised for the first time in a long time, her senses dulled by 62oz of rum. “Fuck me!” Betty clutched her chest. “What are you doing here?”

“You were going to the Southside today, I wanted to make sure you were okay.” Alice stood on her knock off Jimmy Choo’s and sauntered towards her daughter with a self satisfied smile on her face.

“I’m fine.” Betty shrugged. “Do you have like forty bucks? I want to order pizza.” Betty burped talking off her jacket.

Alice rolled her eyes and fished her wallet out of her purse. “Betty whatever you are doing with this boy is going to get you killed.” She warned.

“Well, at least I won’t have to have these conversations with you anymore.” Betty spat.

“Betty!” Alice exclaimed taking two crisp one hundred dollar bills out of her wallet.

“You made me believe something that wasn’t true and now I have blood on my hands, innocent blood.” She sneered and took a step towards her mother snatching the bills from her hand. “Now get the fuck out of my apartment.”

Alice nodded curtly and gathered her things, heading for the door. She stopped for a moment and opened her mouth to say something but didn’t and instead left quietly.

Betty drove to the Southside the next evening with a knot in her stomach. She knew this could be a trap, that Jughead just planned to kill her. She had to believe he wanted this murderer brought to justice just as much as she did.

She parked outside of his trailer and retrieved the coffee table she acquired for him from her car. She knocked on his door which he answered promptly.

“You brought me a table.” He said with a tone of shock.

“It was a part of the deal.” She stated as she slipped past him and placed it where his old one used to be.

“Where did you get it?” He asked.

“I might have stolen it from Veronica Lodge’s house but they’ll never be able to prove it.” She smirked.

“Betty!” He reprimanded. “What if they come here looking for it?” He asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Please, they’ll take a statement and then the sheriff will throw it out cause my family and their family are tight.” She raised her eyebrows.

“Is that why you can kill innocent people and get away with it?” He crossed his arms.

Betty’s cheeks flushed. “I can just take it back if you’re that opposed to it.”

“Naw, it’s a nice table.” A grin crossed his face for a second before he moved over to his kitchen table. “I order pizza for dinner.” He told her sitting down.

“I had pizza last night.” She said taking a seat opposite him.

“We’re having pizza.” Jughead finalized rolling a map of Riverdale over his table and they got to work.

“We tracked his scent to Sweetwater River and then it disappears.” Jughead said finishing his third beer.

“He’s crossing it.” Betty said firmly. “Which means he’s living on the island.”

“I’ve been over there so many times and waited for him but he’s not coming.” Jughead rubbed his face.

“Do you recognize his scent?” She asked

Confusion swept his face. “I feel like I do, like I smelled it when I was much younger but not for some time.”

“Can you think of anyone who left the pack?” She asked.

“We’ve had about a dozen families come and go. I mean I could make a list but I don’t know how much help it would be. There was this one kid, I can’t remember his name but it was unusual and he was weird. I don’t know if it would make a difference if I did remember him. He probably looks different now.” He tongue poked out and ran along his top lip as he thought. “What can we do to draw him out?”

Betty bit her fingernail as her mind raced. “We can throw a party there.” She mumbled.

“What?” Jughead rubbed his eyes before looking at her.

“People in this town think that island is haunted. We can throw some sort of themed part. Halloween is like three weeks away.”

“Okay but why three weeks.”

“Because it’s gonna take you at least three weeks to weasel your way into Veronica Lodge’s inner circle and persuade her to throw this party.”

“Why a party?”

“Imagine putting every person in Riverdale so close to where he’s hiding out? All those people would muffle our scent. He won’t be able to resist if I think he’s as crazy as he is.” Betty smiled and bit her lip. “It’ll smoke him out.”

“Why do I need to make nice with Veronica Lodge? Can’t we just throw our own party?” He asked.

“No one knows who you are and everyone hates me.” Betty reasoned. “Everyone and I mean everyone will come to a Veronica Lodge party if they think it’ll be legendary enough. This town has serious case of FOMO even with a murderer on the loose.”

“Okay, I can do this. We’ll be having a having this party in about a week and a half.” He stood confidently, clearing the table.

“What makes you think you can do this in week and a half?” Betty questioned turning to look at him.

Jughead put the dishes in the sink and turned, lifting his shirt exposing an exquisite six pack. “I figure that’ll do it, girls seem to like that.” He stated smugly.

Betty stifled a laugh and finished her beer. “Yep, that’ll do it.” She stood and grabbed her jacket. “Give me your phone.”

He took his phone out of his back pocket and tossed it to her. “This is my number, text me if you need anything.” She moved towards his door and opened it. “I’ll see you in a week and a half Jones, good luck.” She saluted and stepped out into the cool night air.

She walked to her car and drove all the way home gripping the steering wheel tightly. Betty parked in front of her apartment and let out a shaky breath. She thought about Jughead’s laugh, the way he stuck out his tongue when he concentrated, the way his body looked under his henley. She brought a hand up to her mouth and could still feel the ghost of his lips on hers.

She shook her head. “Get yourself together Cooper.” She exited her car and went upstairs.

Over the next couple of days Betty saw Jughead all over town with Veronica. She wasn’t sure what kind of charm he unleashed to get her to get her to giggle so often. She tried to ignore the feelings of jealously that seemed to consume her every time she saw them together and went about her business.

Exactly a week after she and Jughead had come up with their plan, Betty arrived home from a stressful shift at the Piggly Wiggly. Even before she reached her floor she knew something was wrong.

She cautiously ascended the stairs as her phone started to buzz. It was Jughead and she placed the device to her ear. “Hello.” She nearly whispered.

“Did you get a delivery?” He asked without any pleasantries.

Betty reached her floor and saw a square package sitting in front of her apartment door. “It would appear that I did.”

“It smells like-”

Betty cut him off. “Death.” She stood in front of the box and asked herself if she should open it or call the sheriff so she would have a witness. Curiosity got the better of her. “Have you opened yours?” She asked him picking up the box and going inside.

“No, I don’t know what to do.” He admitted. She could hear his heavy boots pacing the unstable flooring in his trailer.

Betty placed the package on her dining room table and headed to her kitchen to retrieve a knife. “I’m going to open mine.”

“We’ll do it together then.” He said.

Betty could hear him place his phone down and put it on speaker, she did the same. She took the knife in hand and realized only then that she was shaking. She put the knife down, threw some ice into a glass and filled it with vodka, chugging it.

“Are you ready?” He asked.

“Yeah.” She croaked out.

She slowly ran the edge of the knife along the heavy packing tape that sealed the box. When the lid popped open she nearly gagged at the smell. She was thankful that whatever was in the box was freshly dead.

She pushed the lid open and untied the twist tie that sealed the plastic bag shut. There was blood all over it. Betty didn’t need to fully open the bag to know what was inside. She gasped bringing her hand to her mouth, tuffs of red hair sticking up in every direction while Archie’s dead eyes stared without focus in her direction.

“It’s a head.” She managed to say. “Jughead, what are you looking at?” She said when he hadn’t said anything.

“She’s…” He stuttered. “I saw her last night.”

“What was she to you?” Betty asked.

“Toni and I dated for years when we were teenagers.” Jughead was breathing heavily. “We were just friends now but…”

“Archie was my…” Fuck buddy? It seemed inappropriate to say considering whatever head Jughead was looking at belonged to someone he used to love.

“This means he knows we’re coming for him.” Jughead stated and he paused for a long time. “What should I do?” He asked her.

“I’m gonna call the sheriff, wait till he’s there and then come to my place when he comes to investigate Archie.” Betty instructed. “We’ll discuss next steps.”

Jughead hung up without agreeing and Betty called Sheirff Keller right away. She spent three hours in her apartment trying to do anything but think about the severed head of her former crush and lover sitting on her table.

She drank, watched whatever was on TV and forced herself to focus on it. Eventually she sat in the hallway to get away from the smell. When everyone arrived it took two hours to properly photograph the scene, take in all the information Betty had to give and leave her apartment, taking Archie with them.

“What are we going to do?” Jughead asked sitting on her couch, his knee bouncing.

“Should we change the plan? I mean, he is a psychopath, will he be able to resist even if he knows we’re baiting him?” Betty asked walking to her kitchen grabbing another glass. “Are you a bourbon or vodka person?” She asked.

“Bourbon.” He said. “I’ll make sure we get the word out and Veronica has this party in two days because it seems like he is just going to get worse.”

She handed him the glass and sighed. “I wondered if he even tried to go after Kevin.” Betty said.

“What?” His brow furrowed.

“Why go after Archie? I mean, I cared about him, we slept together, we liked each other but…” Betty bit her lip. “Kevin is the only person I love. Isn’t that fucked up? That he grasped at straws looking for anyone to hurt me with.”

Jughead nodded slowly. “Hunters naturally don’t have close relationships.”

“But what if I want close relationships? What if I want to kiss a boy and not worry about his fucking head ending up in a box outside my door? What if I want to have friends and not worry about them being killed by a deranged wolf who wants to kill the people I love? What if I want to love more than one person?”

Jughead shrugged. “It’s the plight of the hunter. A plight I never much thought about till tonight.”

Betty sighed. “Whatever, I’m getting drunk. You’re welcome to stay if you’d like.” She passed him and flopped down on her couch.

Jughead looked down at his bourbon and watched the ice melt leaving swirls in the brown liquid. He thought about his empty trailer and couldn’t think of a single reason to go home.

After many drinks they found themselves in deep conversation.

“That was the first night you’ve ever fought?” Jughead asked. Betty figured he’d be more impressed if the night didn’t end in the death of his father.

She nodded finishing her drink. “Yep. There has never been a reason for me to fight until the ripper emerged.” She saw his drink was running low and picked it up running to the kitchen to refill it.

“Your mother taught you well I suppose.” Jughead said as she returned with two full glasses and two fresh bottles.

“She taught me how to weld my body but she failed me in a lot of ways as well.” She shook her head and took another drink.

Jughead took a deep breath in and sighed. “I want to blame you for his death and I do but people do crazy things when they are fed a lie. History is packed with cases like that.”

“But it doesn’t change the fact that I did it. Nothing ever will.” She rubbed her face and deflated into the couch. Betty stared at a knot in the wood of her floor as she relived all the things that happened that night, her hair falling in front of her face.

When she came out of her distraction Jughead was looking at her. His lips parted and his eyes searching her face. Betty only had a second to assume what he was thinking before he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers.

It was light at first before he deepened it, placing his hand on the back of her neck.

She broke the kiss. “What are you doing?” She asked out of breath.

Jughead leaned forward. “I don’t know.” He moved so most of his body was over hers and he looked down at her. “Do you want me to leave?”

She stared up into his blue eyes feeling the attraction she had to him the night they met. “This can’t mean anything. We won’t work. We can’t work.” She warned.

“I know but can’t we pretend like it could just for tonight?” He proposed as he lowered his lips to hers and continued the kiss. It deepened instantly as Betty wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his body flush against hers.

Their mouths moved frantically against each other like they were worried they would be caught, like they knew they were doing something they shouldn’t have been doing. They both needed this, like if they slept together whatever sadness that was in them would disappear. 

Jughead wrapped one arm around her waist and used the other to push them upright and standing. He moved them into her bedroom.

Their clothes were discarded quickly and they crawled onto her small double bed.

He knelt in front of her, his large erection bobbing in front of him. “I need to take the lead on this one. It’s the alpha in me. I have to.” He growled the last part and for a moment his eyes flashed yellow.

Betty’s heart started to race and every instinct in her body told her not to do this but the idea of letting go excited her.

So she let go.

“Okay.” She agreed beginning to squirm on the bed in anticipation of his touch.

Jughead leaned forward his hands skimming her thighs, hips and waist before one hand moved up to her chest and between her breasts finally gripping her throat.

“Is this okay?” He asked her.

She had never had sex like this before. No one had ever asked her what she wanted, she always just got whatever she wanted from her partners and bailed. She had always been in control and Jughead’s confident authority made her wetter then she ever had been.

She nodded.

“Can you reach my thighs?” He inquired.

She reached out and when she could she nodded again.

“Punch me there if it becomes too much for you.” He told her before grabbing a pillow near her head and putting it under her hips before elongating his arm and applying pressure around her neck.

Betty could still breathe but struggled for each breath as a slight pressure built behind her eyes. It was nothing she couldn’t handle and when he thrusted into her she let out a strangled cry as he filled her, like they were made for each other.

Jughead rolled his hips pulling in and out of her slowly, the rhythm teasing but so satisfying she didn’t want to tell him to go faster. He created his own tempo, slowly increasing his speed causing her lower abdomen to contract as he placed more pressure on her neck.

The alarms went off in her head. “He’s trying to kill you!” Her instincts screamed over and over. She ignored them as a heat as strong as fire spread through her body as he thrusted faster and squeezed her throat harder.

Just as she was about to punch him, darkness tugging at the corners of her vision he let go and she sucked in a lung full of fresh air as her orgasm overtook her at the same time. The sensations together was nothing like she had ever felt and her mind went blank as she experienced the most intense orgasm she had ever had, her body trembling.

When reality settled back in, Jughead was still inside her, on all fours, nail marks cut deep into her mattress. They locked eyes and Betty laughed. “Jesus, Jones.” She complimented as he rolled off of her. “That was crazy.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” He looked over and smirked. “It’s not so bad to give up control every once in a while is it?” He asked her.

“Speak for yourself Mr. I’m the Alpha.” She teased.

They were both silent for a few moments. “Are you going to stay?” Betty asked turning over on her side.

“I can if you want me to.” He said softly with a yawn.

“I want you to.” She whispered back as she maneuvered herself under the blankets and closed her eyes, sleep taking her instantly.

Jughead was gone when she woke up.

Two days later she found a pamphlet on her car for a Halloween party to honour Archie Andrews on Riverdale Island thrown by Veronica Lodge. It would be that Friday and it was BYOB.

Betty received a text two days later from Jughead telling her to bring camping gear, food and whatever else she needed to the party. She assumed he meant weapons, she would only bring her knife and Shadowmoon, she knew she needed nothing else.

She trekked out to Riverdale Island and took the boat that was waiting for her there. It was curtesy of Veronica Lodge to ensure all of her guests had a wonderful time.

Betty made her way to the camp site and saw a small gathering of people just as the sun started to go down. She walked closer only seeing Jughead when he turned and obstructed the sun, his features just visible. He saw her and did something that Betty didn’t expect, he smiled and made his way over to her.

“You made it!” He grinned before taking in what she had with her. “And you brought a sleeping bag and 24 case of beer.” He said through gritted teeth.

“There is a knife in my boot and my gun is in the back of my pants, the barrel is right down my butt crack. Its super uncomfortable.” She informed cracking open a beer.

“This is supposed to be a stake out. Our goal is to kill someone tonight and all you brought was a sleeping bag, beer, a knife and a gun. Haven’t you ever read Nancy Drew?” He asked.

She burped. “What the fuck is Nancy Drew?” She shrugged. “And if you plan on sleeping tonight you clearly aren’t interested in getting this guy as much as I am. Beer keeps me awake.”

“You are impossible.” He said with a smile.

Neither of the mentioned the night they spent together. Betty figured they could discuss their relationship once all of this was over.

“Well, go off and party with Veronica, she looks like a great time.” Betty said sarcastically.

He looked back at the brunette surrounded by her mindless army. “I can’t, she’s the worst.”

Betty smiled. “Come and pull up a chair and hang out with me, Cheryl and Kevin.” She offered. “You know what I always say? If you have nothing nice to say come sit near me.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

“That’s a Steel Magnolias quote.” Jughead said going to grab his things.

Betty laughed at his knowledge of Steel Magnolias and took a seat waiting for the sun to go down and the hunt to start.

“We probably shouldn’t be drinking.” Jughead stated as he tried to smack Betty open hands but was too slow. Her reflexes just as fast as his.

“You know we need to drink much more than this to get even remotely tipsy.” Betty said putting her seventh beer bottle back into the box.

“You know you get those reflexes from my kind right?” He said grabbing a beer.

“What?” She asked.

“Your mother didn’t tell you?” He inquired.

Betty shook her head.

“One of my kind decided whatever we were, werewolves, lycans were was an abomination and needed to wiped out. He started The Circle of Hunters and that’s where you get all your fancy healing and fighting powers from.” He finished half the beer.

“I didn’t know that. Does that mean we’re related?” She asked with a grimace.

“I really hope not.” He teased.

Shortly after that Cheryl and Kevin showed up and the four of them started playing twenty questions.

“Okay it’s my turn. Betty, what’s your favorite color?” Kevin asked.

“Faded denim.” She answered.

“Jughead, what’s your favorite song?” She asked him.

He rubbed his eyebrow. “Probably “Oh-La-La” by The Faces.”

“Really? I thought for sure it would be “Werewolves of London.” She giggled.

“Do you have to ruin every moment?” He chided. “Kevin, if you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?” He asked.

“Chicken parm.” He turned to Cheryl. “If you could change anything about yourself what would be?”

Cheryl’s eyes went dark. She hadn’t stopped leering at Jughead since they sat down. They were all trying to ignore it but there was tension in the air.

“I wish I would have known I was a hunter sooner, so I could have been able to protect my brother and kill the monster that took his life.” Her jaw clenched and they sat in silence.

“Cheryl, it’s your turn to ask a question.” Kevin reminded her.

“Betty, boxers or briefs?”

“Boxer briefs.” She said quickly.

“Ah, you’re a boxer briefs kind of girl, make sense why you wanted to get me naked the night we met.” Jughead wiggled his eyebrows.

“Do you have to ruin every moment?” Betty teased. “And I did get you naked.” She smirked and cocked an eyebrow while Kevin choked on his beer.

Before he could ask her what happened Veronica skipped over to them.

“Oh Juggie!” Veronica sang. “Lets go dance!”

“I can’t.” Jughead said with a panicked look on his face.

“Why not?” She questioned with her hands on her hips.

“Uh, because my legs are broken.”

“You’re legs broken? I watched walk to where you’re sitting right now.”

“No, Betty carried me.” He lied.

Veronica looked over at Betty with what could only be described as stank face. “You carried him here?”

Betty nodded slowly. “Yep, I do that P90X shit. I thought it was an airplane, but nope, exercise.”

“Whatever.” Veronica turned, stomping back to the party.

Betty looked over at Jughead. “Juggie?” She questioned with a grin.

“It turns out she’s a nickname kind of girl.” He shrugged and finished his beer.

“How did you earn yourself that one?” Betty nudged him with her shoulder.

“You don't want to know.” He shuddered slightly and started peeling off the label from the bottle.

“I really do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Tell me.” She prodded.

“No.”

“Jughead!” She exclaimed in disbelief. “Just tell me.”

“I gave her a pedicure with no shirt on.” He blurted out.

A huge smile spread across her face before she rolled over and started laughing uncontrollably.

“Can you not laugh at me please?” Jughead shook his head annoyed.

“I’m sorry. I just never…” She trailed off giggling again. “I mean I know you’re good with your hands but I never expected in that way.”

“Please stop.” He said standing.

“My toes are looking a little rough, you think you can help me out?” Her laughter died down a bit as she wiped a tear from her eye.

“Let’s go out and patrol.” He said holding out his hand to her.

She took it and stood, the humour leaving her eyes as she stared at him. “Are you ready to do what we need to do if we find him?” She asked.

He nodded. “More than ready. I want this bloodshed to stop.”

“Alright,” Betty looked over at Kevin and Cheryl. “If this goes tits up I’ll text you.” Her two friends nodded while she turned back to Jughead. “Lets go.” She stated.

They stalked through the woods together, staying light on their feet and staying alert for any movement that wasn’t their own.

“Are you getting anything?” Jughead asked her.

“No, you?”

He shook his head. “We are moving down wind which means he’ll smell us coming and why we can’t smell him.”

“Let’s move faster then.” Betty suggested breaking into a jog. They ran until they found a clearing. She stopped and looked up towards the moon that illuminated her face. She breathed in deep. “I smell fire.” She stated looking over at Jughead.

He was staring at her, his lips slightly agape as he moved toward her. “I do wish that things could be different.” He told her, stoping just in front of her, towering over her small frame.

“Is this the time to be discussing this?” She asked trying to break eye contact with him but couldn’t.

“Remember how easy it was the night that we met?” He brushed a stray hair away from her face. “I had never seen a girl quite like you before, the blood on your knuckles, the flush in your cheeks from the fight, you were so beautiful.”

“Why are you doing this?” She asked.

“I’ve had so little of the things that I want and in a few moments everything is going to change. Can we just pretend?”

“Jug?” She whispered, her fingers delicately running up and down his muscular arm.

“Do you realize we could die tonight?” He said moving her backwards, falling into shadows.

“We can die at anytime, tonight’s no different.” She whispered as her back hit a tree. “There is no guarantee we’ll find him.”

He cupped her jaw. “I know you can smell him just as much as I can, we are going to fight him and soon so let’s give in even if it’s just for a moment.”

His lips pushed into hers roughly, the bark of the tree cutting into her skin as she wrapped her arms around his neck. He still smelt like soap, the forest and what he was, the thing Betty couldn’t place the first time they meet. He smelled like a Lycan, like something other worldly.

Her heart was racing now. The jog got it pumping and the idea of a fight excited her but she felt electric pressed up against him, his hands cradling her face.

“God, I wish things could be different.” He breathed running his thumb along her bottom lip.

“I guess we are a little like Romeo and Juliet.” She chuckled softly as her hands cupped his.

“But we all know how that story ends.” He said.

There was a sadness in his eyes she hadn’t expected to see and it scared her. “What is that supposed mean?” Her brow furrowed.

The snap of a branch to her right brought them both of their moment. Betty reached down to get her knife and Jughead’s eyes started to glow.

Betty saw the glowing eyes of the other lycan in the shadows as she and Jughead backed into the clearing, moonlight behind her. Shadowmoon burning at her back.

Jughead stood straight, his eyes squinting to make out the figure approaching them. “Joaquin?”

“You remember me brother?” The man said emerging from the shadows. He had dark hair, sharp bone structure and shallow cheeks. He was tall, lean and ropey, the type of person who only ate to stay alive. 

“Yeah, I remember you. Setting fires, killing animals just for fun.” Jughead was starting to crouch again, preparing for a fight. “Why did you come back here, Joaquin?”

“To have a little fun in my home town.” He smirked and started to circle the clearing. “They call me the Vampire of Boston back in the city but I gotta say I like the Riverdale Ripper much better.”

“Why are you killing people?” Betty asked.

“She speaks!” He exclaimed clasping his hands together in delight. “You’re so much more fun to kill when I can hear the pain I’m causing. The silent ones are such a bore.”

“You didn’t answer her question.” Jughead spat.

“I never liked your father’s ‘keep the peace’ type of leadership.” He paused. “My condolences by the way.” He swallowed and continued. “We are better than humans and we should do with them as we please.”

“We are just another species, no better, no worse.” Jughead said.

“Have you ever fought a human before?” Joaquin asked.

Jughead looked over at Betty for a moment and then back to the man before them.

“No, no, the hunter line isn’t human. They are watered down hybrids, I mean a real human. How weak they are? Like rag dolls under our force, their bones break like thin ice.” He closed his eyes and breathed in like he was reliving the murders and revelling in them. “Its close to godliness and in comparison to them that’s exactly what we are. Their lives mean nothing. They are mine to take.”

“Okay, enough of this manifesto bullshit.” Betty stated twirling the knife around in her hands. “We’re here to kill you dude, there’s a party going on and I still have like seven beers to drink so let’s get this over with.” She moved into an attack stance. Out of her periphery she could see Jughead starting to remove his clothes preparing for the change.

Joaquin shucked off his jacket. “I love how you two think that you’ll be different from any other person I’ve killed.” He took off his shirt displaying a sickly muscular body. “I’m gonna rip your spine right out of your body and drink your bone marrow.” He spat at her.

Betty’s eyes went wide and he looked over at Jughead who was in mid transformation. “Jesus, hashtag goals, am I right?” She grinned.

Even as he was changing she could see his eyes roll as she charged at her enemy. She ran at full speed as Joaquin changed rapidly ready for her attack and he swiped at where her head should have been but Betty dropped to her knees and skid along side him, sinking her knife deep into his leg dragging it along with her as she moved.  

He roared in agony and was distracted long enough for Jughead, now full lycan, to dig his teeth into Joaquin’s neck. Betty stood up as fast as she could and turned to assess the situation. Joaquin had dug his nails into Jughead’s side as they growled as each other and rolled around like dogs on the ground.

She watched the two of them, Jughead was dark black and had a soft looking fur that shined in the moonlight. Joaquin on the other hand had coarse, dull, grey fur that made him look like the menacing murderer he was.

Betty gripped her knife and ran towards the two of them pulling her arm back. Jughead saw her coming and flipped Joaquin to meet her knife. She lodged it between to ribs and twisted the knife, wiggling it around as much as she could while Jughead attacked the neck again.

Joaquin reached back and knocked Betty away, leaving deep gashes against her stomach and sending her flying a few feet, knocking the wind out of her.

He got his teeth into Jughead’s side while they swiped at each other with their claws. Betty stood, wincing at her wounds but ignoring them as she headed back towards the two animals. She jumped and grabbed on to Joaquin’s coarse fur and held on for dear life as she pulled her knife out of him and sunk it into his back between two lower vertebras. He dropped to the ground and reached for the knife, pulling it out and discarding it while Betty scrambled away from them. She reached behind her and gripped Shadowmoon pointing it in Joaquin’s direction.

Jughead had grabbed Joaquin by the scruff of his neck, his legs dangling uselessly beneath him, she had severed his spinal cord. Jughead nails were digging into the other lycans flesh, a sickly gargling sound was a result of the action. Shadowmoon began to glow and Betty fired, the bullet lodging in between his eyes as Jughead’s claw wrapped around his spine and ripped it right out of his body.

Jughead let go and Joaquin hit the ground with a nauseating splat.

Betty fell back on the ground and took some deep breaths in, the adrenaline wearing off and pain starting to take over. She looked down at her stomach which was already starting to heal and stood up. She looked over at Jughead who had changed back and was now naked. His wounds were healing too and she looked away to give him privacy as he dressed.

“So that was pretty awesome!” Betty said looking at the ground for her knife. “I mean we make a good team. Do you think vampires are real? Like do you think they have renegade vamps? Or even good vegetarian vampires like that coiffed haired pretty boy from those Twilight flicks.” She looked under a bush for her knife but it wasn’t there. “Like we could rent out our services, Jones and Cooper: Monster Hunters. They would make a movie about us. I’d be played by Jennifer Lawrence and a Hemsworth brother could play you. What do you say?” She asked turning to look at him with a smile assuming he would be dressed by now.

But Jughead wasn’t in a joking mood. 

He was rushing toward her, his arm was all the way back before thrusting it forward, her knife in hand, driving it into her heart. He was moving too fast for her too do anything, to stop him. He hit her with such force her arms flew forward and the gun exited her hand landing somewhere behind him. He had hit her so hard the knife was in her deeper than the hilt and her skin stretched and popped painfully when he took it out. He stabbed her again in the lung so deep  he was cutting his fingers on the tip of the knife that stuck out of her back while he tried to support her weight.

“I’m sorry Betty.” He lamented as his eyes went wide watching the life drain from hers. She was grabbing at his arms when he pulled out the knife and slid it into the side of her neck. Blood began gushing from the wound. “I was wrong about you. You weren’t your name or your hunters blood, you’re the scrappy blonde smoking a cigarette at a party where she doesn’t belong. In another life we could have been something but I can’t have you alive.”

Blood began streaming out her mouth, choking her.

“I forgive you for everything you did but you are a risk to everything me and my people are. You know we can’t be together and you will find another mate and you will have children and they may not understand things quite the way you do.” Jughead justified his actions as he lowered himself to the ground cradling her in his arms. “I have to do this.” His words caught in his throat.

Betty could heal but when the damage was this substantial she would die if she didn’t get to the hospital.

She was going to die.

“Romeo and Juliet ended in tragedy and so does our story.” Jughead pushed the hair from her face that was now coated in red as she gurgled blood.

“As much as I wish it wasn’t so, I have to end your line, I have to.” Jughead said as he leaned down to push a kiss against her forehead, trying to comfort her in the last moment of her life. “I’m so sorry, Betty.”

Jughead straightened when he heard the ground crunch behind him and turned to see Cheryl Blossom standing behind him.

Her hair was wild, her eyes were wide and in her hand was a glowing Shadowmoon. “Then you probably you’ve should have killed me first.” Cheryl spat before raising the gun and shooting Jughead right between the eyes.

“Cheryl, no!” Kevin ran towards the three of them as Jughead fell to the ground with a loud thud, his hand still under Betty’s back.

Kevin scooped Betty up, holding her head, trying to make her wandering eyes connect with his. “Bets! Betty!” He was shaking her slightly like that would stop the blood from pouring out of her. “Betty look at me, okay? Everything is going to be fine.” Kevin lied as a tear rolled down the bridge of his nose.

Her eyes finally fixed on him. “Kev?” She managed to said.

“Yeah, Bets?” He said hopefully, holding her close to his ear.

“I can see everything.” She gurgled, her last words before she took her last breath and went limp in her best friends arms.

“Betty?” He shook her again. “Bets!” He said louder bringing her up to him, burying his head in her neck sobbing.

Kevin cried for a long time as Cheryl stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder. “Why did you kill him, Cheryl?” He asked.

“He slaughtered Betty.” She said frankly. “No matter how many rounds of twenty questions we play, he’s still an animal, a monster and he proved me right tonight.”

Kevin said nothing, not sure if she was right or if Jughead was just trying to protect his people. He supposed it didn’t matter now.

“Are you going to take her place?” Kevin asked lowering Betty to the ground, taking his cellphone out to call his dad.

Cheryl looked down at the gun at her head and shook her head. “I don’t know. The killer is dead, Jughead’s crime has been paid for with his life, there is no need for more death.” She said. “I’ll return Shadowmoon to Betty’s mother and hope I never have to see it again.” She sat on the ground and waited for help to arrive.

Jughead was placed upon a pyre the night of his death and burned just like his father before him. Sheriff Keller and Kevin went to the Southside to explain what had happened and tried to keep the peace. The new hunter had no want or reason to fight and neither should they. An agreement was made and the Lycans agreed to stay off the Northside if the hunter and her blood lines stayed off the South.

Betty was buried four days later in a mausoleum the Cooper family had had for over a century.

Alice Cooper sat in front of her daughters resting place long after the her service was over and let her eyes trace the raised letters of her name.

“Again, I’m really sorry for your loss, Mrs. Cooper. I wish I could have been there sooner.” Cheryl said as she and Kevin approached the blonde woman who looked so much like her daughter.

“We fought the last time I saw her. She told me she would be happy to be dead so she wouldn’t have to see me anymore.” Her voice quivered but she remained stoic.

“We all say things we don’t mean when we’re upset, you know she didn’t mean it.” Kevin tried to console.

Alice shook her head. “No, she meant it. I always wanted her to be the perfect balance of a lady and a warrior and that’s not who she was. Instead of accepting it, I pushed and yelled and demeaned until she left. She was gone on her eighteenth birthday. She had an apartment already, she couldn’t wait to leave.” He jaw clenched.

“I’m so sorry.” Cheryl said again not knowing what else to say.

“If you have children just let them be who they are. It was the biggest mistake I have ever made.” She turned to look at them. “Are you coming to the house? There will be food and drinks.”

“Yeah, of course, Mrs. Cooper.” Kevin smiled.

“You go ahead, I’ll meet you there.” She gave them a half smile.

Alice didn’t return that night, instead she cried herself to sleep in the mausoleum. It had been the first time in five years she had slept under the same roof as her daughter.

Six months later the entire pack disappeared and moved to a new town.

“They’ll be back.”  Alice Cooper told Cheryl one. “They’ll wait for you to grow old, for your children to have children and then they will come back and this will happen all over again.”

“Will you train me? So I can pass the knowledge down if nothing else.” Cheryl had a pleading look in her eye. “Just the basics, until I’m strong like Betty was, so we aren’t defenceless when this happens again.”

Alice started at Cheryl for a long time. “Okay Cheryl, I’ll train you.” She said cautiously knowing it was the right thing to do.

It was what this town needed because no matter what, werewolves and lycans alike would always come back to Riverdale.

[apvxoxo]

Apple Girl Pt.1

I randomly thought this up, and I actually like where this is headed more than my other story lol. Hope you guys enjoy <3

The store clerk was giving Paula a hard time again. Every time we ever went into the record store he would badger us without fail. Trying to push us to buy more than we could afford. "Sir," I shot my eyes to her in fear . She has the worst temper for a 16 year old girl. I can only imagine what she'll conjure up. "Could you please give us some space. We know what were looking for and we don't need any assistance." He eyed both of us head to toe. Putting both hands in the air in surrender, "Well I'm over here if you can't find your way"

 "Oh we will, thank you." She pushed a caustic smile at him rolled her eyes and went back to shuffling through the records.Her finger nails filed through the bin so fast her nail polish started to chip right on the edges.  

"Paula you don't think there all gone do you? I will be so devastated I just need this album I just.."

"Renee, enough. Look at me," she grabbed both of my shoulders positioning me in front of her,

"We will get it I promise. If i have to go to Jimmy Page himself. Were going to get this album." I only let out a small laugh, I felt defeated. All I wanted was the album, and I knew it would be gone by the time school was out.

" Paula what about the store on main st.? Could it be there?" She kept flicking through the music without hesitation of my inquiry.

"Renee, why don't you start looking through that box over there. Take a deep breath, and look." I scuffed my shoes on the floor slinging my arms at my side making my way over to the box. I knew it wouldn't be in there.I lazily flopped my hand onto the first record flicking it back with only one finger, nope. nope.. nope... This is hopeless.

"Paula lets just go home. I don't even want to look anymore it's just a waste of time." She sighed and rubbed her eyes with her thumb pinching the bridge of her nose in defeat.

"I can't believe you want to give up. This isn't just another album Renee this is Houses of the Holy were talking about. This is definitive of our music experience that we get this and you just want to give up?"

"Do you think I want to stop! I told you it would be sold out, I'm just as mad as you. And for the record, I'm the one who even got you into zep. So don't take this into your own hands as if you were the one who discovered them. You wouldn't even know jack shit about them if it wasn't for me."

She narrowed her eyes at me while sucking her lips in. I was defeated what can I say. It had been a long day and at the rate we were going I didn't even want to look at another bin of records ever again.

" Alright Renee. Have it your way. And next time I happen to discover something I'll be keeping it all to myself."

Not like you'll ever find something as incredible as led zeppelin.. moron

"Then you can just walk home alone! Fuck this!" She stormed out of the store pushing past customers, the old bell on the door almost fell clean off. I'm surprised the handle didn't bust. The kids stared back at me for some sort of apology, as if I was responsible for her actions. I just gave them that fake smile and slung my bag over my shoulder.

Fuck this is right.I made my way down the sidewalk avoiding all eye contact with the women who always fed the birds right on the bench near my apartment. I usually always strike conversation with her, she gives the best advice. But today, I was in no mood. It must have been at least 6:00 and I hadn't eaten since lunch, I pulled out the apple my mom insisted that I bring with me, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.I hate green apples and there was little bruises on it. I opened my mouth wide to take a bite, fuck being lady like. But my foot skid along the uneven grooves in the pavement and the toe of my shoe caught the divet where the sidewalk ends.I lunged forward just enough to toss my apple about a foot away.

"You have got to be kidding me " I leaned down to scoop the apple, I always avoided bending over on the street. You know how men can be. So I squatted down level to the apple it had rolled under the bus stop bench,

"That's weird" A snake-skin boot stood at the exact same spot ,and it was a huge boot at that. I'm not talking size 9 or 10 I'm talking at least 11..and a 1/2. Reaching my hand mindlessly under the bench a grasped the stupid apple. While sliding my hand out I accidentally swiped the boot

"Oh sorry, I'm just trying to grab something." A soft voice that sounded almost ..familiar replied. Wait, was he was British?

"That's quite alright love, what's got you on all fours down there anyway?"

I finally looked up to see who the hell was wearing snake skin boots in mid June,

"It was just this app.."

The snake skin boots, the British accent, the recognizable softness of his voice.. It can't be.

"An apple? All that for an apple huh? Must be a hungry girl." .. It was "Your.."

I had to stop while I was ahead. I couldn't let him see how starstruck I was. I would look like the million other girls. I had to stand out in some way or another. Paula always told me to act older, I still don't know what that means.

"Um yea, You know no big deal." Maybe act like I don't care? Is that what being older is like? His face grew warm and his smile grew, he patted the spot next to him on the bench.

"Would you like to sit down?"

"Oh sure, " play it cool, play it cool I moved my bag over my lap, neglecting to remember all my Led Zeppelin pins that covered it edge to edge. I scooted a comfortable distance to him as he peered down at my bag. He glared up at me without raising his eyelids.

"Nice pins. I uh, hear their alright."

The underlying tone of humor in his voice relieved some of the tension, of which I created.

"Thanks, Robert. Er..can I call you Robert?". Can I call you Robert? Was I brain dead? I guess it just felt polite.  What a great time to practice my manners. 

His eyes squinted when he laughed, and all his teeth were exposed. Oh how I loved the little chipped tooth.

"Well it is my name, I'd hope you'd call me Robert. But I guess that leaves out my introduction doesn't it? What's your name apple girl?"

"Renee," I could see the wheels turning in his head, how can I mess with her.

"Hmm I much prefer apple girl. Renee is so mundane . Doesn't really fit a girl like you, maybe a 30 year old but not quite you."

"Well, I think my mom assumed I would be 30 at one point so that's probably why she chose that name."

He laughed exposing his teeth again, and a newly discovered dimple. One deeper on the right cheek. Just one more thing to love.

"very true, but your what 18 19?" Oh shit. I can't blow this.. just lie. A little white lie wouldn't hurt, definitely not now.

“Uh yeah, 18. I just turned 18."

"Oh well, happy birthday then Renee. Perfect timing."

Jesus Christ this man had me in a trance. I wasn't even really listening to what he was saying just watching his mouth as he talked. The length of his upper lip would curl every time he spoke. I counted the times he would adjust his hair in between sentences.. 6

"Perfect timing? For what?" "Well to celebrate of course! I'm off to a party tonight and I still need someone to bring. Lucky enough I've run into you. You would like to go, yeah?"

Oh..my.. this couldn't be real. I shook off the excitement/nervousness building in my chest and conjured up an answer. "A party?.." He interrupted me,

"Well to be fair, it's much more of a get together if you like. Only a couple of people nothing crazy like the typical New York parties I'm sure your used to."

What New York parties. Hell, the best party I went to this year was my Nana's birthday and it was only fun because she got tried blowing out the candles and face planted the cake. So I'm not well versed in parties. But I couldn't turn this down. No fucking way. I'm going, Plus I could bring Paula. There is no way she could be mad at me after I tell her this.

"Well, could I bring my friend? I mean it's a bit last minute and I'd like to bring someone just in case."

"But of course, she can accompany our Jimmy over there. Have you met him? Well of course you haven't. Would you like to? Come on. He loves to meet the fans." My face was pale and expressionless, Robert got some sort of kick of seeing me so nervous. It must have been a control thing for him. I was able to hold enough composure around Robert, I can do the same for Jimmy. I hope.

"Jimmy ,c'mere someone you should meet"

 He stood with his back facing us, his black curly hair caught the almost setting sun making it look almost auburn. He was just as tall and long as I'd imagined him. He spun around balancing a cigarette in his mouth, he immediately put it out when he saw us approaching.

"Well hello there, whose this?"

Robert held me around my waist with one arm. He was nudging me forward to shake his hand, I extended it apprehensively god he was beautiful too.

"Hi Jimmy, my name is Renee. It's really nice to meet you, an honor really. I just love your music and...well thank you for everything."

He kept my hand in his and smiled, such a sweet smile. Tilting his head to the side and nodding as I spoke. An unsaid thank you. It's my pleasure darling.

Robert spoke up after the extended exchange between me and Jimmy.

" Well, that's more than I got for an introduction. Wheres my bloody thankyou!"

Jimmy lessened his hold on my hand and looked to Robert impassioned, "Robert would you leave her be. Bloody hell, have you always got to be the center of attention?"

Surprisingly I wasn't shocked by their banter. I grew up with 3 older brothers. I learned to be comfortable around boys fighting. However these weren't exactly boys. I figured I should speak up, cool the air.

"Robert, you didn't let me finish. I was going to say, thank you both for everything. Your music has really changed my life. Goodness, you should really let people finish Robert."

He bit his lower lip and looked down to his shoes. Hands on hips, like a little boy who'd just been scolded. It felt kind of nice talking to him like that. Getting through the elation barrier he created. It was quite funny seeing him flustered actually.One more dig, then I'm done

"Patience is a virtue you know."

He blew air out of his mouth, lower lip covering the top blowing the frizzy curl from his forehead. He cracked a smile and looked to Jimmy,

"So, I've invited Renee here to Richards party. I figured it was perfect since I haven't got someone to bring and she's just had a birthday."

Jimmy looked back to me grabbing my hand once more he kept his eyes closely locked on mine. Lifted my hand to his mouth and placed a soft, kinda wet if I'm honest. Kiss

"Your birthday is it. Well isn't that lovely, how old? 16?" How the fuck did he..Well I can't be too taken back. I didn't exactly pass for 18 or even 16. Hell, I still got the occasional kids menu at restaurants. I just nodded my head in a neutral rotation. But I'm sure my expression read as, of course I'm 16.Robert interrupted looking to me shaking his head brows furrowed,

"No. She's just turned 18 Jimmy. Not as young as the ones you like. And besides she's got a friend for you anyway. What did you say her name was?"

"Her name is Paula, she will be so excited to meet you guys. I should probably go and tell her actually it's getting kind of late."

Jimmy looked to me eyes squinted still smiling, "And is she 16 too then?"

"I'm not 16!" I blurted out with a whine in my voice. These boys just give it right back, they love to tease you. But I know Paula could take it. She had a way with older men. Jimmy just kept that derisive grin on his face.

"Well, it's been a pleasure Renee. Tell Paula I can't wait to meet her, if she's half the lady as you I should be delighted." He walked back to the limo that had been waiting and shimmied his skinny boy inside. Robert took me under his arm again and cleared his throat,

"Sorry about Jimmy, you know boys. Once they've see someone else have it, they've got to have it too."

"Isn't that just all kids though? Not just boys?"

"Alright, you win. All kids do that don't they. Now can we get Paula on the way or she can meet us there?"

He thought I was going with him in the limo. He thought I was 18, he thought I had it under control.

Okay that may be pushing it a little. I had to go home anyway I needed to give my mom some excuse.

"Well do you think I could swing home first I've got to get ready and..You know how us girls are."

"Oh nonsense you look divine! Just come along with us I don't want to be late. We can swing by Paula's and then off we go. See just that simple."

Just that simple.

"But Robert, I don't.. I mean I have to.." He started pulling me along toward the limo urging me to the door, "Not another word. I've had enough, your coming with me and that's that." He shoved me into the back seat with Jimmy and Jonh Bonham. I sat closest to the window dividing the driver from the backseat, what was I doing. Robert shifted his way in close to me, he placed his hand on my leg. Might I add the size of this hand.

"Alright altogether right? Wheres Paula's house we'll get her first."

"She's right off of.."

My mind trailed back into the conscious, Paula's mom would see me get out of the limo. Paula's mom would see Paula get into the limo. Well if she even got that far.

"Well go on spit it out Renee" Jimmy chimed in while lighting another cigarette

"Cat got your tongue darling?"

I got myself this far I can keep going. Just keep cool. I replied to Robert while still looking to Jimmy who was now smiling,

"No, I'm fine. She's right off of porter street I'll tell you when to stop. "

I kept my eyes to Jimmy, Jesus it seemed like some sort of initiation to give the new girl a hard time. It wasn't like I was already a nervous wreck or anything.He put the cigarette in between his lips and crossed his legs. Softly batting his eyes.

Once we pulled up to Paula's apartment I tapped on the drivers glass, It was just transparent enough that I could see the irritated glare he gave me through the rear view mirror.

"It's right here, this tan brick one here." Thank god, her mom wasn't home yet I had just enough time if I scrambled.I touched Roberts hand that was still draped over my upper thigh,

"Okay I'll be back. She might be a minute but just wait okay."

"Not too long now, we don't want to be too late. We are the life of the party you know?" I can only imagine.

I smiled while my cheeks blushed and moved out of the limo. I lightly shut the door behind me and walked steadily to the door. Slowly made my way up the steps, opened the door. And as soon as I shut it behind me, I ran like hell.

I tripped and stumbled up the flight of stairs down the hall and twice to the right. I kicked and pounded my fist onto the door. My breath panting,

"C'mon Paula please.." She opened the mail slot to see who it was, once realizing it was me,

"Go home Renee I don't want to hear it. "

"Paula open up this is an emergency"

"Your definition of emergency isn't exactly accurate Renee. What could it possibly be."

If she makes me ask one more time I'm breaking down this door. "Paula, what does 3 of the four members of Led Zeppelin are downstairs in a limousine waiting for us to go to a party with them define as?"

It was a drawn out silence until I heard the lock switch, she even had the bolt locked. 

She slowly opened the door stood in the doorway, hand on hip.

"Renee, what kind of a story.. I mean really you could just apologize you don't need to make up some lame story searching for my forgiveness."

I had no time to beat the shit out of her, I just pushed past her grabbing her arm and dragging her to the window. Both Jimmy and Robert were standing outside of the limo leaning against it. Jimmy still, cigarette in hand puffing out smoke through pursed lips,

"Look for yourself." Her eyes widened to the max, she put her hand over her mouth to muffle the scream.

"Renee! Tell me how you puled this off. What on earth are they doing here, I'm so proud of you" The rightfully deserved praise put aside, we needed to go.

"Just thank me later. C'mon Jimmy is waiting for you." She smiled and jumped in place squealing out of excitement, I grabbed her hand leading her to the door.

"Wait wait, what about Mom?"

"Forget it I'll just tell her your at my house."

"But didn't you tell the same thing to your mom?" Shit, I had left one component out of the equation. Something came over me, I didn't care, I needed to go to this party. I don't care if I never left the house again after this.It was well worth it.

"We will worry later just come on." We ran down to the lobby and looked in the mirror quickly before leaving. We looked to each other once more grabbing each others hands, lets go have the night of our lives.

We opened the door and looked to the boys still leaned against the limo arms folded.I was more desensitized to seeing them in real life. But Paula was just in the midst of the shock phase. She squeezed my hand all the way down the stairs and until we approached them. Jimmy smiled and stood up straight, Robert looked at me the whole time not taking his eyes away from mine.Jimmy flicked his cigarette and put out his hand palm facing up.

"You must be Paula, well I'm Jimmy." Paula apprehensive, placed her hand in his. Mouth slightly agape nodding her head, "Jimmy Page..Jimmy.."

He laughed a breathy laugh while putting his other hand on her forearm, he seemed to loved the girls who fawned over him. I assumed it just reminded him who he really was and what he really meant to people.

Robert was much more modest. So humble so..

"And I'm Robert, its a pleasure to meet you. And no need to thank me love. Renee has taken the liberty."

So dense.

Robert spoke up again, "Well girls let's get on then, enough of the run around yeah?" Jimmy puffed his cigarette once more before flinging open the door. Extending his arm to invite us in,first Paula then me.Robert followed sitting closest to the window Paula opposite to Jimmy and me in between them. Jimmy leaned into me softly whispering

"She's lovely. But ever so nervous, weird.." I only looked to him confused saying nothing with words, but my expression dumbfounded.I replied,

"What's weird? "You strike me as the nervous one. I guess I shouldn't be so quick to judge huh?"

He smiled again his eyelids heavy and peering down to my legs.I guess he liked more of a challenge. Which oddly, I had no problem giving it right back to him. I hope that Paula will loosen up, I'd like to divert most of my attention to Robert.

"Yeah,you know I thought you would be a lot cuter in person." He stifled his breathy laugh bringing his hand to scratch his chest, he kept his eyes on me while rubbing it

"Your nerves must have clouded your vision then yeah?"

“Maybe so Jimmy.."

Enough of this.I looked back to Robert who was fiddling with his fingernails,

"You know you shouldn't bite at your cuticles. It's really bad for your nails"

He paused to look up at me curling that side grin lips slightly puckered. He adjusted his belt buckle and extended his arm around me,

"I do a lot of things that probably aren't good for me love. I'm a big boy I can take it.But what about you? You must do something bad?"

I tried to think of something sexy to reply to that.. not a shock, I got nothing. I mean don't men like good girls anyway?

"No,nothing really. I'm pretty much a good girl." He bit at his bottom lip again. His eyes had that devious look like he is going to attack,

"A good girl huh? We'll have to fix that."

[shirtlesssammy]

The End: 5x04 Recap

Welcome to the episode that launched a thousand fanworks! There’s so much hinted and untold story between the present and future in this episode. It’s no wonder it’s a favorite for many people to rewatch, and a popular platform from which to launch stories.

Now:

The brothers are still on their own paths towards the apocalypse, and Dean, done with his super platonic buddy time with Cas, pulls up to a motel to crash for the night. A street preacher pesters Dean about God’s plan. Once in his motel room, Dean chats with Cas about the Colt. Cas has a lead on the gun but Dean needs to sleep. Cas is suspicious. God, he’s cute here.

Dean’s phone rings again. This time it’s Sam. Sam is Lucifer’s vessel. Dean acts indifferent and jaded to their current reality. Sam wants back in. Dean gives Sam his sob story of how they don’t work together - they’re weaker when they’re together; they’re better off apart. He says goodbye to his brother, and any hope of stopping the apocalypse.

The next morning, Dean awakens to a spring mattress under him, no cell coverage, and an eerily empty post-apocalyptic world.

Dean wanders the streets which are dirty, derelict, and devoid of humans. In an alleyway, he finds a little girl and asks, “Are you hurt?”

She’s hurt, but more like hurt in the brain hurt, and she lunges at Dean like a rabid zombie. Dean punches the little girl (and we cheered.) It’s only then that he sees the words “Croatoan” spray painted on a wall.

Just then the local Croatoan street gang makes an appearance. Dean takes off with them in hot pursuit. Dean runs into a fence, his fate seemingly sealed, but unknown forces appear and open gunfire, blasting “Do You Love Me”. (I love this moment - it’s disjointed but so perfect. Dean is completely clueless at this point -- we we are as well. The music and bullets set this odd tone of military bravado in a topsy-turvy world.) Dean escapes through the fence and sees a quarantine sign:

It’s so weird to think that this episode is 3 years in the past! This show! May it last forever!

Dean hotwires a car and as he’s traveling down the road, Zachariah joins him for a little tête-à-tête. Zach gives Dean the low down on the state of the world in 2014 (not as bad as 2017, amirite?). He also tells Dean he’s going to make him marinate in this hellish nightmare for 3 days. He’s going to learn why he needs to say ‘yes’ to Michael.

Dean heads to Bobby’s. It’s dark and deserted, and he finds Bobby’s wheelchair with bullet holes. He jimmies open the fireplace safe and finds a picture of a group of men - Bobby and Cas included - at a Camp Chitaqua. Dean makes it to camp in the blink of a commercial break, and quickly sees the rusted shell of the Impala. “Oh, Baby, no.” He walks to the third lead inanimate object that drove him from point A to point B, and is knocked out from behind - by himself! Dun-dun-dun!

Dean comes to, chained to a post, with Future!Dean watching him, gun trained on him.

Future!Dean wants an explanation - Dean tells him that Zachariah sent him 5 years into the future. Future!Dean demands our Dean to tell him something only he would know. Dean confesses his time with Rhonda Hurley and her infamous pink, satiny panties. Like, this is possibly the most intimate thing we will ever know about Dean. Much has been made of this moment from us, but at this time, between the two Deans, Future!Dean now knows he’s dealing with himself, and all that comes with it. He tells Dean about the spread of the Croatoan virus, and how the world fell apart once the virus spread two years prior. And he tells Dean, “Heavyweight showdown in Detroit. From what I understand, Sam didn’t make it.” They hadn’t talked in 5 years.

Future!Dean needs to make a Target run, so Dean is going to stay nice and hidden away from the gen pop at Camp Chitaqua. Future!Dean should know himself better, as Dean works himself free with minimal effort.

As a newly free Dean wanders the camp, Chuck finds who he thinks is the camp leader and informs Dean of the camp’s dwindling toilet paper supply, and ponders what they should do before wondering if Dean is supposed to be on a mission. Dean gets to dodge that tricky question, but doesn’t dodge a blow from Risa. It appears he spent the night with Jane, despite his “connection” with Risa. And apropos of nothing, Dean asks if Cas is around. Interesting segue, Dean. Chuck will never guess your train of thought because they all know of your “connection” with Cas already.

Dean heads to Cas’s cabin and finds End!Cas in all his drug fueled, hippy-dippy, orgy-leading, non-labelled beauty. I’m hard pressed to choose a favorite version of Cas, but this is the version I find most interesting. Dean’s a bit nonplussed.

Cas picks up that Dean isn’t the Dean from his time (How does he do that if he’s human now. Insert <we just don’t know gif>) Dean asks for his angelic help, but Cas laughs. “What are you, stoned?” Dean wonders.

“Generally, yeah.” Oh Endverse!Cas, never change.

Future!Dean and his errand crew make it back to camp. They break open the celebratory brewskies (ok, there’s still beer in End!verse? How bad can it be?) Future!Dean then pops a bullet in his fellow comrade’s head before Dean’s warning can prevent it. The others in the crew now see two Deans and Future!Dean admits, “it’s a pretty messed up situation we got going.” (I love the meta on this statement being about Dean and Cas. I mean, the camera does pan and focus on Cas after all.)

Dean and Future!Dean face off in the privacy of the meeting cabin. Future!Dean reveals that Yeager was infected with the Croatoan virus and he’d just performed a mercy killing. In fact, Future!Dean contends, his men were probably more freaked out by the Dean double than by Yeager’s death.

Dean apologizes for interfering in his leadership of the camp and they share a drink while Future!Dean reveals details about the mission they’d just been on. He pulls out the Colt from his duffel bag. After five years of searching, he’s finally ready to kill the Devil.

In the planning cabin the head honchos (Future!Dean, Risa, and Castiel) confer about the attack plan. They’re going to bust into Lucifer’s compound and kill him. Risa is particularly snippy and Future!Dean asks if everything’s okay. Dean helpfully says, “We were in Jane's cabin last night. And, apparently, we and...Risa have a connection.”

Yeah.

Future!Dean pushes the attack plan because he knows the whereabouts of Lucifer. He tortured it out of a demon just last week.

Classic Dialogue Alert

Cas: Our fearless leader, I'm afraid, is all too well schooled in the art of getting to the truth.

Dean: Torture? Oh, so, we're torturing again. No, that's good. Classy.

Cas: [laughs]

Future!Dean: [bitchface]

Cas: What? I like past you.

Oh, you guys. This. Scene. People have written hundreds of thousands of words about Castiel’s familiar sass, and Future!Dean’s harsh despair. Fans have wallowed in the agony of Dean’s fall into darkness and Castiel following him - always following him. Cas may be bitter and damaged but he’s still loyally fighting, regardless. Excuse me. I need to go lie down.

Risa and Castiel head off to assemble the assault team while Dean stays behind with Future!Dean. Dean wants to know why he’s going on the offensive with the team. What if he’s killed? Won’t that kill future him too? Future!Dean believes Zachariah is going to protect him and, under pressure, tells Dean about Sam.

“Sam? I thought he was dead,” Dean says.

“Sam didn’t die in Detroit. He said yes.” Future!Dean drops the truth bomb with a snarl. “You need to see it. The whole damn thing so you can do it different.” And Future!Dean’s proposal? Say “yes” to Michael as soon as Dean gets home. He didn’t say yes to Michael, confident that he’d find a better way. But once the world started going to shit and he tried to say yes he discovered that the angels had retreated back to Heaven and humanity was on their own. He begs Dean to learn from his mistakes and say yes. “But you won’t,” he concludes in despair. “‘Cause I didn’t.”

(“There is no free will,” I weep from my pool of tears on the floor.)

Cut to Dean heading toward the trucks alongside Chuck. Chuck advises Dean to hoard toilet paper like it’s gold. This is always the part of The End I have trouble with now because with Season 11 canon layered on top of it, we have God just hanging out at Camp Chitaqua. He might as well be propped up on a chair eating out of a bag of popcorn and watching the fireworks at the end of the world. It always makes me hate Chuck a little bit, whereas before the God revelation he was considerably more sympathetic to me. I suppose I rewatch and mourn the loss of that neurotic, mostly innocent pulp writer. I do like to think that Chuck’s presence might be what kept Camp Chitaqua a safe haven for so many years. They assumed they were lucky but Chuck was doing a little under-the-table god magic in order to live a more comfortable life. (Natasha: Kicks Chuck in the shins anyway.)

Dean drives with Cas to Lucifer’s compound. Cas pops amphetamines and offers some to Dean. “It's the perfect antidote to that absinthe,” he says.

Uh...Dean would really like to know why Cas is suddenly a drug-saturated hippy. Cas tells him that he went mortal. When the angels left Earth and sealed themselves into Heaven his mojo just drained away.

Cas: I'm practically human. I mean, Dean, I'm all but useless. Last year, broke my foot, laid up for two months.

Dean: So, you're human. Well, welcome to the club.

Cas: Thanks. Except I used to belong to a much better club. And now I'm powerless. I'm hapless, I'm hopeless. I mean, why the hell not bury myself in women and decadence, right? It's the end, baby. That's what decadence is for. Why not bang a few gongs before the lights go out? But then that's just how I roll.

BRB. Just going to be curled up here on the floor for a while, processing and mentally wrapping Cas in a blanket.

Future!Dean lays out the plan. They’re going to storm the facility and shoot the Devil. So...it’s pretty straightforward.

For science

Dean pulls Future!Dean aside and calls him out on the plan beneath the plan. It turns out that most of the team are heading through the front door to kill demons in a big ambush but Dean and Future!Dean are going to sneak around the back to get the jump on Lucifer. Dean’s horrified at this. Is Future!Dean really going to sacrifice his friends so callously? And CAS? Yes, yes he is. Future!Dean bops Dean unconscious before he can tell everyone they’re signed up to be sacrificial lambs.

Dean wakes to the stutter of distant gunfire in the compound. He runs up and sees muzzle  flashes in the windows. Dean rounds a corner and finds his future self in a rose garden. Future!Dean lies on the ground, the Colt just out of reach, and Lucifer’s foot on his neck. As Dean watches, Lucifer (in Sam’s body) snaps Future!Dean’s neck.

Dean’s defiant.

Dean: Go ahead. Kill me.

Lucifer: Kill you? Don't you think that would be a little...redundant?

Samifer apologizes for skeeving out Dean by speaking to him in Sam’s shape. Dean gives Samifer his best bitchface.

Lucifer seems to take offense at Dean’s low opinion of his devilish plan. He’s got a mission, after all.

Lucifer: You know why God cast me down? Because I loved him. More than anything. And then God created you. The little hairless apes.

Dean: You’re the same brand of cockroach I've been squashing my whole life. An ugly, evil, belly-to-the-ground, supernatural piece of crap. The only difference between them and you is the size of your ego.

Dean tells Samifer that he’d better kill him now, in the future, because if he ever gets back to his own time then he’ll find a way to kill him.

Lucifer is unbothered by Dean’s vow to kill him. “Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up—here.” Dean doesn’t want to believe it but a single man tear is still threatening to slip down his face.

Zachariah zaps Dean back to the past just in time. He corners Dean in his motel room and strongly encourages him to say yes to Michael. When Dean still hesitates, he threatens grave injury to Dean once again.

Dean still says no because he is our precious, sweet, strong bean. He learned a lesson from Zachariah’s little future peek...just not the lesson Zach wanted to impart.

Just when Zachariah is closing in, Cas zaps Dean to meet him by the side of the road. They had an appointment, after all.

Under the shelter of Castiel’s gaze, Dean calls Sam and invites him to meet. At their meeting behind some secluded railroad tracks, Dean offers Sam the demon blade and a spot in the Impala once again. He apologizes and admits that he was wrong to push Sam away. “Maybe we are each other's Achilles heel. Maybe they'll find a way to use us against each other, I don't know. I just know we're all we've got. More than that. We keep each other human.”

Sam thanks him and the brothers vow to deny the dark future Zachariah projected and make their own future.

Natasha: Lifts head from floor and wipes tears from face. “Good episode, guys. Good episode.”

The Quotes

You know, it's kind of funny. Talking to a messenger of God on a cellphone. It's, you know, like watching a Hell's Angel ride a moped.

I thought I smelled your stink on this Back to the Future crap.

Rhonda Hurley. We were, uh, nineteen. She made us try on her panties. They were pink. And satiny. And you know what? We kind of liked it.

I got a camp full of twitchy trauma survivors out there with an apocalypse hanging over their head. The last thing they need to see is a version of The Parent Trap.

Why not go get washed up for the orgy?

I thought you'd gotten over trying to label me.

Not gonna lie to you. Me and him? Pretty messed up situation we got going.

You ever get back there, you hoard toilet paper. You understand me? Hoard it. Hoard it like it's made of gold. 'Cause it is.

Okay, if you don't like, uh, 'reckless', I could use 'insouciant', maybe.