#OLI Sound Labs

[kingluffy5]

Psychic Kids and Otherworldly Monsters Pt. 1 (Stranger Things OCs)

Several children and teenagers try to experience the best their adolescence in the 1980s but mysterious events follow causing them to deal with a ton of bullshit.

November 6th, 1983

— — —

No One P.O.V.

In the laboratory alarms were going off and the dim lights were flashing, a man in a lab coat burst through the door panicked by whatever it was that he saw in there he rushed to the elevator and pressed the button so many times that it’s a shock that he didn’t break it. When the doors finally opened he ran in and once again quickly pressed the close door button. He looked out into the hallway in fear, fear that whatever he saw was in there, fear that he wouldn’t escape it. When hungry snarling sounds came from above he slowly looked up before screaming as he was dragged up by whatever it was that was in the elevator.

— — —

Oliver Reed’s P.O.V.

“Something’s coming, something hungry for blood. A shadow grows on the wall behind you, swallowing you in darkness. It is almost here.” Mike Wheeler narrated. He’s the DM for our current D&D campaign, so he had to narrate what is going on to us as we play and determine how our actions affect what is going, he also played every character other than ours so it’s always funny when he has to play a girl. I played as a chaotic good barbarian half orc who uses a war hammer and a double bladed axe named Warrok the Accused, because he was once accused of a crime he didn’t commit and was banished from his home.

“What is it.” Will Byers asked

“What if it’s the Demogorgon, oh Jesus, we’re so screwed if it’s the Demogorgon.” Dustin Henderson worried.

“Oh, please don’t be a Demogorgon.” I crossed my fingers.

“It’s not the Demogorgon.” Lucas Sinclair comforted.

“An army of troglodytes charges into the room.” Mike revealed.

“Troglodytes?” Dustin laughed at the weaker monsters than the one he expected.

“Told ya.” Lucas taunted making both him and Dustin laugh.

“Wait a minute, do you here that? That sound, boom, boom, boom, BOOM! That didn’t come from a troglodyte no that came from something else. The Demogorgon.” Mike slammed the Demogorgon miniature down onto the board. We all complained, as Dustin so eloquently put it ‘We’re in deep shit’. “Will, you’re action?”

“I don’t know.” Will replied.

“Fireball him.” Lucas said.

“But I have to roll a thirteen or higher.” Will reminded him.

“Too risky, cast a protection spell.” Dustin suggested.

“Don’t be a pussy fireball him.” Lucas argued.

“I don’t care what you do but just do something.” I told him.

“Cast protection.” Dustin insisted.

“The Demogorgon is tired of your silly human bickering, it stomps towards you, boom!” Mike narrated.

We all ended up yelling at each other, Mike yelled the Demogorgon footsteps, Dustin and Lucas shouted what they thought that Will should do, I yelled at him to make up his own mind.

“Fireball.” Will chose as tossed the dice, but the dice ended up rolling off the table.

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it a thirteen?”

“I don’t know.”

We all searched through the basement trying to find the dice to see whether or not Will’s fireball hit. Eventually Mike’s mom opened the door to the basement and told Mike that we all needed to go home, he tried to tell her we’re only in the middle of the campaign and that ending now would ruin the flow. We found the dice but it was only a seven but Lucas said that since Mike didn’t see it it didn’t count. Dustin asked if any of us wanted to have the last of the pizza but we all said no. We got to our bikes and started leaving, I live closest to Mike so I didn’t have to ride long and said goodnight to everyone. I made it home, parked my bike in the garage and went inside. My dad, Anthony Reed, sat on the recliner watching TV, he works as a deputy at the police department.

“Hey Oli, how was uh the game you guys uh play where you roll the dice and you make your own characters?” He greets me.

“It went well, we had to cut it short though because Mrs. Wheeler said we had to.” I reply.

“Oh, that sucks, I’m sure you’ll be able to finish it next weekend though.”

“Yeah, I guess. Where are Sarah and Sasha?” I ask.

“They should be back soon, they went over to the Sinclair’s house.”

— — —

Judith Byers’ P.O.V.

We all sat in Ava’s room, me, Sarah Reed, Sasha Reed, and Ava Sinclair. Ava passes me the joint and I take a long drag of it before blowing out the smoke and giggling. We all sat on her floor listening to heavy metal.

“We should totally do this someday.” I giggled.

“What, make music?” Sarah asks.

“Yeah, we should all start a band.” Ava agrees.

“Yeah, yeah, give me that.” Sasha demands. I oblige and give her the dope.

“It’s amazing how you’re a twin and we’re twins and we’re in the same friend group.” Sarah points out. We’re all pretty clearly stoned.

“Hey, we twins gotta look out for each other.” I say. “If only Jonathan would start hanging out with more people, he’s always either alone or with me and Will.”

“All right, back to this band, what music would we play?” Ava asks, clearly entranced by the idea of all of us in a band.

“Easy, rock.” Sasha says.

We all agree while each taking another hit of weed.

“AVA SINCLAIR, YOU BETTER NOT BE DOING POT WITH THOSE FRIENDS OF YOURS!!!” Mrs. Sinclair shouts up to us from downstairs, now you see I am not usually afraid of most things, I could watch any horror movie, I can go on any roller coaster, but any time that I have to look Mrs. Sinclair in the eye when she’s angry and I immediately break.

“Shit, shit, shit.” I say panicked immediately throwing the joint out of Ava’s window.

“What are you doing?” Sarah and Sasha ask at the same time.

“I don’t know.” I answer.

“OF COURSE WE’RE NOT MOM!” Ava shouts back, man that girl has a pair of lungs on her.

“What are we going to do?” I ask.

“Here’s what you’re going to do, we’re going to go downstairs, you’ll let me do the talking, just whatever you do get out of the front door.” Ava explained calmly and cooly. She could lead us to rob a bank, she’d be the leader, I’d be the safe cracker, Sasha would be the muscle, and Sarah would be the one who makes sure that none of the people in the bank gets smart and tries to be a hero. I thought about us robbing a bank way too much.

We all head down stares where Lucas and Erica, Ava’s younger brother and sister, are sitting on the couch. “Hey nerd, Erica.” Ava greets her younger siblings, her nickname for Lucas causes Erica and the rest of us to laugh.

“Ava, what did you guys do up there?” Lucas asks in an insinuating tone, shit does he know.

“We listened to music and talked about boys, what do you even think would’ve happened?” Ava replies.

“You got high.” He says nonchalantly.

“Well you girls have a safe trip home.” Mrs. Sinclair says to us as a goodbye.

“Thanks Mrs. Sinclair.” I thank. Ava glares at me from straying from the plan. “I mean, nothing.”

Mrs. Sinclair gives me a weird look before turning back to watching TV with her kids.

We all get outside. “So any of you need a ride home?” Ava asks.

“No we’ll give Judith a ride.” Sarah says.

“Yeah, see you tomorrow Ava.” I bid her farewell.

Sarah and Sasha also say goodbye before we all get into the car that they share, the 1970 Chevrolet Camaro. They dropped me off at home. It looks like I’m the only one home right now, I guess Will stayed over at the Wheelers’ house, Jonathan’s probably working, mom too. Well guess I should go to bed. I wonder why the dog’s barking though, that’s going to be annoying while I go to sleep.

— — —

The next day.

Judith Byers P.O.V.

I’m woken up by my alarm clock. I get up and put on a pair of jeans and a graphic t-shirt with the band Iron Maiden on it, I then put on my grey trench coat and the hiking boots that I wear whenever I’m not hiking. I step outside and see my mom, Joyce, looking for her keys and my brother, Jonathan, making breakfast.

“Okay sweetie I will see you tonight.” She says to Jonathan.

“Yeah I’ll see you tonight.” He replies.

“Good morning sweetie.” She greets me and kisses me on my cheek.

“Oh where’s Will?” She asks.

“Oh I didn’t get him up yet, he’s probably still sleeping.” Jonathan answers.

“Jonathan, Judith, you guys have to make sure he’s up.”

“Mom I’m making breakfast.”

“I was sleeping.” My excuse is a lot worse, but hey, it’s true.

“I told you this a thousand times. Will, honey, come on, it’s time to get up.” She tells him going to Will’s room. After a few seconds she comes back. “He came home last night right?”

“He’s not in his room?” Jonathan asks.

“Did he come home or not?”

“I don’t know.” He says.

“You don’t know?” She asks getting annoyed.

“No, I was home late, I was working.”

“You’re working?”

“Yeah, Eric asked if I could cover, I said yeah, I just thought we could use the extra cash.”

“Jonathan we talked about this, you can’t take shifts when I’m working.” She sighs.

“Mom it’s not a big deal, he was at the Wheeler’s all day, I’m sure he just stayed over.” I defend my brother.

Mom goes over to the phone to call Mrs. Wheeler to see if Will is over there. If he’s not then he probably went to the Henderson’s.

“Hi Karen, it’s Joyce, hi. Is that Will I heard back there? Will didn’t spend the night? Uh, you know I think he just left early for school. Thank you so much. Bye.

Well shit, he’s not at the Wheeler’s, but like mom said, he’s just probably at school. Right?

— — —

Oliver Reed P.O.V.

I finish biking over to school and I meet Mike, Dustin and Lucas by the entrance.

“That’s weird, I don’t see him.” Mike says, referencing Will who’ mom says wasn’t there when they all woke up this morning.

“I’m telling you, his mom’s right. Probably just went to class early again.” Lucas reassures him.

“Yeah, he’s always paranoid Gursky’s gonna give him another pop quiz.” Dustin laughs.

“Step right up ladies and gentlemen. Step right up and get your tickets for the freak show. Who do you think would make more money in a freak show, midnight, frog face, toothless, or the autistic kid.” Some asshole bullies come up to us, okay so I have high functioning autism, it’s only Asperger’s.

“I’d go with toothless.” The other one says mocking Dustin’s lisp.

“I told you a million times, my teeth are coming in. It’s called cleidocranial dysplasia.” Dustin tells them.

“I told you a million times.” He says, again mocking Dustin.

“Do the arm thing.” The first one orders referencing Dustin’s condition involving his bones. I don’t really understand it. “Do it, freak!”

Dustin makes his bones crack making the bullies grossed out, they leave but not before shoving us a little.

“Assholes.” Lucas complains.

“I think it’s kind of cool, it’s like you have superpowers or something. Like Mr. Fantastic.” Mike comforts him.

“Yeah only I can’t fight evil with it.”

— — —

Sarah Reed’s P.O.V.

I walk through the halls with Nancy Wheeler and Barb Holland, some of our other friends, Nancy is also the older sister of Oliver’s friend Mike.

“So did he call?” Barb asks, referring to Nancy’s new boyfriend, Steve Harrington.

“I told you, it’s not like that. Okay, I mean, yes, he likes me, but not like that. We just made out a couple times.” Nancy answers, like making out is not an indication of liking someone.

“We just made out a couple times.” Ava says mockingly, now joining us by our lockers.

“Nance, seriously, you’re gonna be so cool now it’s ridiculous.” Barb tells her.

“No, I’m not.” She insists.

“Remember us while you’re off hanging out with the popular kids.” I joke

“Yeah you better still hang out with us, that’s all we’re saying.” Barb says. Sasha and Judith walk up now joining us, Judith actually looks a little panicked, I wonder if she’s all right.”

“If you become friends with Tommy H. or Carol-” Sasha says before being interrupted by Nancy.

“Oh, that’s gross. Okay, I’m telling you guys it was a one time, two time thing.” She says making us all laugh a little. She then pulls out a note from Steve saying to meet him in the bathroom.

“You were saying.” Barb quipped. Nancy then ran off to go find Steve, presumably to make out with him, again.

“Hey Judith I my mom told me about your brother, that he wasn’t home when you guys got up this morning, is he alright?” Ava asks Judith.

Wait, what? Will wasn’t home, is that what she’s worried about? I wonder where he went.

“Uh, we think he just went to class early, he does that sometimes.” Judith says playing it off, but we can all tell that she’s worried.

“Hey, if you need anything, we’re here for you.” Barb comforts her. We all nod along and pat her on the shoulder. Before leaving to go to class.

— — —

Anthony Reed’s P.O.V.

I’m sitting at my desk at the station, the chief, Jim Hopper, finally shows up from work, clearly having had a little too much to drink last night.

“Good of you to finally show.” Flo, the receptionist greets him.

“Oh, morning Flo, good morning everybody.” He says.

“Hey chief.”

“Damn, you look like hell chief.”

“Morning chief.” We all greet him.

“Oh really? Well I looked better than your wife when I left her this morning.” He says to one of the other deputies.

“While you were drinking or sleeping or whatever it is you deemed so necessary on Monday morning Phil Larson called, said some kids are stealing the gnomes out of his garden again.” Flo tells him.

“Oh those garden gnomes again. Well I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna get right on that.” He replies sarcastically.

“On a more pressing matter, Joyce Byers can’t find her son this morning.”

“Okay, I’m gonna get on that. Just give me a minute.”

“Joyce is very upset.”

“Well, Flo, we’ve discussed this, mornings are for coffee and contemplation.”

“Chief, she’s already in your-”

“Coffee and contemplation, Flo.” He insists, not realizing that Joyce is already in the office.

Hopper starts to file out the reports required while suggesting the Will is just playing hooky. I’ve met the kid and I doubt that he would do that and Joyce insists that he wouldn’t. Hopper kept a cool head during the conversation while Joyce worried. He asked about her ex husband saying that most of the time that a missing kid is with a parent or relative. She begged him to find her son before leaving. Before she left I let her know that Will’s a good boy, so I’ll make sure that Hopper takes this case seriously.

— — —

Oliver Reed’s P.O.V.

The bell rang in our science class letting most of the other kids out to leave while Mr. Clarke was still talking. “Remember, finish chapter 12 and answer 12.3 on the difference between experiment and other forms of science investigation. This will be no the test, which will cover chapters 10 through 12. It will be multiple choice with an essay section.” He dies off around the end since everybody already left by that point, everyone except for us.

“So, did it come?” Mike asks him.

“Sorry boys, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… it came.” He fakes us out as we rush into the AV club room to see the new radio that he got for the club, which consists of Me, Mike, Will, Lucas, and Dustin.

“Yes!” We all say seeing it.

“The Heathkit ham shack. Ain’t she a beaut.” Mr. Clarke says.

“I bet you could talk to New York on this thing.” Dusting says excitedly.

“Think bigger.” Mr. Clarke hints.

“California?” Lucas asks.

“Bigger.”

“Australia?” I ask, to which he nods.

“When Will sees this he’s totally gonna blow his shit.” Lucas exclaims.

“Lucas.” Mr. Clarke reprimands, he might be a cool teacher but he still keeps us from breaking any rules.

“Sorry.”

We tune the radio before Mike starts speaking into the microphone. “Hello, this is Mike Wheeler, president of Hawkins Middle AV Club.” He says in a fake Australian accent.

“Hello, this is Dustin, and this is the secretary and treasurer of Hawkins Middle AV Club.” He greets also in a accent. “Do you eat kangaroos for breakfast?”

“Hi, this is Oliver, vice president of the Hawkins Middle AV Club. If you do eat kangaroos for breakfast then when do you eat koalas?” I ask as we all start laughing.

We hear a knock on the door and the principal walks in followed by the chief, Jim Hopper, two of his deputies and my dad. “Sorry to interrupt, but, uh, may I borrow Micheal, Lucas, Dustin, and Oliver?”

We’re lead to the principal office where we’re asked about how Will get’s home. We all start talking over one another trying to explain the road that he takes, Mirkwood, which isn’t really the name of the road but we call it that because the name is from the Hobbit.

“Okay, okay, okay, one at a time, all right? You.” The Chief says pointing to Mike. “You said he takes what?”

“Mirkwood.”

“Mirkwood?”

“Yeah.

“Have you ever heard of Mirkwood?” He asks one of the deputies.

“I have not. That sounds made up to me.”

“No, it’s form the Lord of the Rings.” Lucas explains.

“Well, the Hobbit.” Dustin corrects.

“It doesn’t matter.” Lucas says annoyed.

“He asked.”

“He asked.” Lucas mocks.

“Hey, hey hey, what’d I just say? One at a damn time.” Hopper says sternly, stopping Lucas and Dustin from bickering. “You.” He says to Mike.

“Mirkwood, it’s a real road it’s just the name that’s made up. It’s where Cornwallis and Kerley meet.”

“Yeah all right, I think I know that.”

“We can show you if you want.”

“I said that I know it.”

“We can help you look.” We all insist and agree.

“No.” Hopper which makes all of us argue with him. “No. After school you are all to go home. Immediately. That means no biking around looking for your friend, no investigating, no nonsense, this isn’t some Lord of the Rings book.”

“The Hobbit.” Dustin corrects making Hopper look at him angrily.

“Shut up.” Lucas hits him making them fight.

“Do I make myself clear?” He asks stepping up in front of us. “Do I make myself…clear.?”

“Yes sir.” We all say.”

— — —

Judith Byers’ P.O.V.

Me, Jonathan, and mom are out in the woods around our house and Will’s personal fort, Castle Byers, to look for him shouting out his name.

“WILL!” We all shout out for him.

“WHERE ARE YOU!” Mom yells.

“WILL, COME BACK!” I shouted out for him, cupping my hands around my mouth to project my voice out farther.

— — —

Anthony Reed’s P.O.V.

Me, Deputy Powell, Deputy Callahan, and Hopper are out on ‘Mirkwood’ looking for Will.

“Come on kid!”

“Will Byers!”

“Come on out Will!” We all shout for him.

“Hey, I got something.” Hopper yells back to us from further up the road. We all run up to him and see a bike on a little bit off the side of the road, down a small hill.

“That his bike?” Callahan asks.

“Yeah, he must have crashed.” I answer, recognizing the bike from the times it was parked in my driveway.

“You think that he got hurt in the fall?” Callahan again asks.

“Not so hurt he couldn’t walk away. Bike like this is like a Cadillac to these kids, he would’ve walked it home.” Hopper responds before picking the bike back up and we get back to the cars.

— — —

Judith Byers’ P.O.V.

We got back home and mom tried calling our dad, Lonnie, again. This time someone picked up but it’s actually his new girlfriend, Cynthia, who’s probably only been able to legally drink since a week ago. The stupid bitch hangs up before she can explain why she needs to talk to Lonnie.

“Bitch!” Mom yells.

Jonathan, who’s making missing posters for Will, goes to comfort her, saying that we have to stay calm. She calls again getting the answering machine asking for him to answer. Before slamming the phone back down, shouting damn it.

“Mom, Judith.” Jonathan calls to us.

“What?”

“Cops.” He answers as we rush outside seeing the cop cars pull up.

We see Chief Hopper step out with Will’s bike, being followed by some of his deputies, including Anthony Reed, the father of Sasha, Sarah, and Will’s friend Oliver, he’s a really nice guy.

He tells us about where he found the bike.

“It was just lying there?” Mom asks, knowing how important that bike is to Will. “Did it have any blood on it?

“No.” The Chief answers.

“If you found the bike out there why are you here?” Jonathan asks.

“Well, he had a key to the house, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, maybe he came home.”

“What, you think I didn’t check my own house?” Mom gets angry with him.

“I’m not saying that. Has this always been here?” He asks referring to a dent in the wall.

“What? I don’t know. Probably, I mean, I have three kids, look at this place.” She answers.

“I’ve never seen it before.” I point out.

“You sure?” He asks me, he then opens the door and it is perfectly in line with the dent.

We then hear our dog, Chester, barking at the shed outback so we go outside to check on him.

“Hey, what’s up with this guy?” Hopper asks, crouching down to pet Chester.

“Nothing, he’s probably just hungry, come on.” Mom says leading the dog away.

Hopper then looks at the shed he was barking at. “What do you guys keep in there?” He asks.

“Uh mostly gardening supplies, uh, Lonnie had some guns in there that he didn’t take with him when he left.” I answer.

He goes inside and I follow him. He picks up an open case of rifle bullets checking them. “Did you guys go hunting recently.”

“No, it was mostly Lonnie taking Jonathan and Will out hunting, never bothered to get any licenses of course. He said I shouldn’t go because it isn’t a girl’s place to go hunting, he made Will go even though he didn’t want to.”

“You really don’t like your old man don’t you?”

“He’s an asshole.”

Hopper chuckles a little bit at that. He then walks over to the where the rifle should’ve been. Suddenly the lights go out.

“That’s weird.” I say.

Then there’s a weird sound, a squelching sound. We all over to look at where it’s coming from. Then the lights come back on.

“Hey.” Callahan calls out to us.

“Jesus.” Hopper says annoyed.

“What, are you guys deaf?” We’ve been calling for you. “What’s going on.” Hopper then walks out of the shed with me and Callahan following him. “Hello, are you okay Chief?”

“Listen, I want you to call Flo. I want to get a search party together, all the volunteers she can muster, bring flashlights too.”

“Hey you think we got a problem here?”

We then go back in the house. Whatever it was that happened in the shed, it made Hopper start taking this like a big case. But I don’t think that a search party’s going to help find Will.

— — —

Anthony Reed’s P.O.V.

It’s night now and we’re all in the search party in the woods around the Byers’ house. Everyone’s shouting for Will. I’m close by the Chief and the boys’ science teacher.

“He’s a good student.” Mr. Clarke says to Hopper.

“What?”

“Will. He’s a good student. Great one, actually. I don’t think we met, Mr. Clarke, teacher, Hawkins Middle, earth and biology.” Mr. Clarke introduces himself to the Chief.

“I always had a distaste for science.”

“Well, maybe you had a bad teacher.”

“Yeah, Ms. Ratliff was a piece of work.”

“Ratliff? You bet. She’s still kicking around believe it or not.”

“Oh, I believe it, mummies never die, so they tell me. Sarah, my daughter, galaxies, the universe, whatnot, she always understood that stuff. I always figured there was enough going on down here, I never needed to look elsewhere.”

“Your daughter, what grade is she in? Maybe I’ll get her in my class.”

“No, she, uh, she lives with her mom in the city. Thanks for coming out, Teach, we really appreciate it.” Hopper says before walking farther off.

“She died a few years back.” I tell him.

“I’m sorry?”

“His kid.”

I then walk forward with Hopper. He’s a good man, he didn’t deserve what happened to him and his family. He’s who I would consider my best friend.

— — —

Oliver Reed’s P.O.V.

“Lucas, Oliver, do you guys copy. It’s Mike.” Mike said over our radio.

“Hey, it’s Lucas.” Lucas answers.

“I know it’s you, and say over when your done talking, over.”

“I’m done, over.” Lucas says annoyed.

“I’m here too, over.” I respond.

“I’m worried about Will, over.” Mike says.

“Yeah, this is crazy, over.” Lucas replies.

“Same. Out of all of us, I think he’d handle being lost out in the woods the worst, other than Dustin. Over.” I tell them.

“I was thinking. Will could’ve cast protection last night, but he cast fireball. Over.” Mike points out.

“What’s your point? Over.” Lucas asks.

“My point is, he could’ve played it safe but he didn’t. He put himself in danger to help the party. Over.”

“Meet me in ten. Over and out.” Lucas says turning off his radio, Mike does the same, and then so do I.

I go and grab my bike and I sneak out of my house.

— — —

Ava Sinclair’s P.O.V.

I sit in my room listening to some music and strumming on my electric guitar. Mom hates it. I stare out my window for a second and I see my brother taking out his bike even though the Sheriff said to stay inside. We make eye contact and he looks like a deer in headlights. I shake my head.

“Dumbass.” I comment. I turn back to my guitar and play some more music.

— — —

Oliver Reed’s P.O.V.

No one sees me as I ride over to meet the rest of the guys. We then bike down to Mirkwood and where the search party started. Thunder starts and I feel a bit of rain on my face.

“Hey you guys, I think maybe we should go back.” Dustin suggests.

“No.” Mike insists. “We’re not going back, just stay close, come on.”

“Just stay on channel six and don’t do anything stupid.” I tell him.

The thunder rumbles again before Dustin runs after us.

— — —

Judith Byers’ P.O.V.

Me, mom, and Jonathan are sitting on the couch.

“Jonathan, wow. You took these?” Mom says proudly looking through some of the pictures of Will that he took over the past few years. He always had a knack for photography. “These are great. Wow they really are. I know I haven’t been there for you guys. I’ve been working so hard, and I just feel so bad, I barely know what’s going on with you. All right? I’m sorry about that.” She says tearing up a little. It is true, after Lonnie left mom had to pick up a lot of extra slack, me and Jonathan helped when we could, him mostly, but it was always her that got food on the table and made sure that rain never leaked through the roof.

Jonathan starts crying.

“Hey, what is it? What is it? Honey.”

“Nothing”

“Tell me. Tell me. Come on, you can tell me.”

“I should’ve been there for him.” And with that I started crying too, maybe if I was home, instead of getting high with my friends, I could’ve helped him, or at least seen something that would’ve been useful.

“No, on no, you can’t do that to yourself, it is not your fault. He is close, I know it, I feel it in my heart. You two just have to trust me on this all right.” She tries to comfort us.

“Okay.” I choke out.

She picks up a picture of Will. “Look at this one. Look at this one. I mean that’s it right.” She says making us laugh a little. “That’s it. That’s the one.”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” I agree.

The phone starts ringing startling all of us. Mom runs to the phone. “Hello? Hello? Lonnie? Hopper? Who is this? Will? Will?!”

Me and Jonathan rush over to the phone. “That’s Will?” I ask, panicked, concerned, I can’t even tell what I’m feeling right now. I just want to find Will.

“Mom, it’s Will?” Jonathan asks as mom starts breaking down crying.

“What have you done to my boy?” What the hell.

“What? What?” Jonathan starts panicking.

“Give me back my son!” Mom shouts through the phone.

Then, all of a sudden, electricity began to run through the phone shocking mom making her drop the phone.

“Hello? Hello, who is this.” Jonathan asks picking up the fried phone.

“Mom, who was it?” I ask while she starts crying.

“Look at me mom, was it Will?” Jonathan asks.

“Yes!” She sobs.

“What was it? What did he say.”

“He just breathed. He just breathed.”

“And was someone else there?”

We all then descend into crying as mom repeatedly says that it was Will, and that she heard his breathing. We’re all hugging each other.

— — —

Oliver Reed’s P.O.V.

We spend a while looking maybe half an hour or so. The rain starts coming down more and more, it’s pouring now. We’re all in our rain coats shouting for Will.

“I’ve got your X-Men 174.” Dustin yells out. Shit that’s a good issue. “Guys, I really think we should turn back.”

“You wanna be a baby, then go home already.” Lucas tells him.

“I’m just being realistic, Lucas.”

“No you’re just being a big sissy.”

“Did you ever think Will went missing because he ran into something bad? And we’re going to the exact same spot where he was last seen. And we have no weapons or anything?” Dustin asks.

“Dustin, shut up.” I tell him.

“I’m just saying does that seem smart to you.”

“No, he’s right, Dustin, shut up, shut up. Did you guys hear that?” Mike asks.

We then hear rustling so we turn around and shine our flashlights at the sound. We see nothing. Then more rustling so we turn back forward. And there’s a girl, standing there, in a Benny’s Burger’s shirt, with a buzz cut, staring right back at us.

A/N: All right Pt. 1 is done of what will likely be a long series. I’m excited to see how the events are affected by the new characters. We didn’t get to see a lot of Ava, Sasha, and Sarah, so I’m hoping that I get to show them more throughout the series, I’m definitely planning on having them involved in the endgame of the first season. I’m enjoying rewatching season one, the fall setting of the first two settings was honestly such a vibe. If you enjoyed this then check out my series that I did for Wednesday, it’s a little different from this one because it’s a character x reader, but I think that it’s fun to read. Pt. 2 will hopefully be out soon. So far Judith and Oliver are my favorite characters. See you in Pt. 2.

[choco-bloop]

CW for Blood, Violence and (kinda) Temporary Character Death

The first thing that came to False’s mind when she was told the rift was open was that she could return back to Hermitcraft. 

Back home. 

And not locked up in her own twin’s lab.

And so there she was, with all the other rulers (excluding Pixlriffs, Jimmy, Oli and Fwhip), standing on the stone bridge that was lined by their shops; all waiting for the call of the horn to fly in and stop the hermits.

The sound of Fwhip’s horn echoed in the area. Everyone there took off quickly in a flash of fireworks and smoke. 

False paused for a moment, should she just blow everyone up and assume the identity of “Hermit False”? 

Or should she have a bit more fun toying around with her own twin as revenge?

“False? Are you coming? Everyone else is probably already at the rift,” Gem’s voice cut her out of her thoughts. 

She paused for a few moments. Thinking about what would be the best response to it without raising any suspicions. “Don’t worry about me, I just need to do some final checks on my items,”

Gem gave her an unconvinced glance before flying off towards Fort Riff-less. 

False clutched her head, more memories of her time being stuck in a lab under her own base returning.

‘She’s going to pay for everything.’

-

Gem was beginning to wonder if she should have stayed with Empires False for longer. 

She assumed that the Hermits would be easily able to break through the defences and enter the rift; but another look at her communicator said that no one so far had gotten past.

Which wasn’t good as she had been expecting a fast escape before Empires False snapped and tried to chase down… well the other False.

Gem looked at the mess of the bridge, hermits and rulers scrambling back and forth trying to stop the other group; it would be impossible to safely bring False to safety without either of them getting hurt in the process.

She remembered the conversation she had with False a while after she had tagged Oli. Where False had explained to her that she and the False from “Cogsmead” were not the same False. 

And that Hermit False had erased Empires False’s memories in a moment of desperation, which was why she seemed so lost.

And that if Empires False were to ever regain certain parts of her memories, Hermit False would be in danger.

Basically the main takeaway from that conversation was that the two Falses should never meet under any circumstances.

Gem had a feeling that Empires False had those specific parts of her memories recently - it would explain why there was a sudden chain of deaths for the hermits with no explanation and no link to the game of tag going on.

Of course there were some hermits who did not die during that period of time but it was more likely because either 1) they weren’t with the initial group of hermits or 2) attacking them would cause major upset from other rulers

The sounds of distant fireworks going off snapped Gem out of her thoughts - Empires False was closing in. She spread her wings, diving down towards False, who had still yet to realise what was going to happen.

A force shoved her to one side - sending her flying into the nearby hill.

A few voices called out to her, not before being quickly drowned out by an even bigger commotion. Despite her blurry vision, Gem still knew what had gone down 

Empires False had arrived.

-

False had been on edge since she saw some of the rulers guarding the rift, trying to prevent the hermits from entering. The longer they dwelled in Empires, the higher the chance that she and her would bump into each other. 

And given her returning memories, that would not end well for False herself.

So far, everything seemed alright - it was just Pixl, Oli, Jimmy and Fwhip. None of the other rulers.

And then Fwhip blew his horn and the rulers all came flying in, causing the bridge to become one huge mess. 

Despite the mess, the only two rulers who had yet to appear were Gem and her.

False hoped that either Gem was keeping her twin occupied or that she was just not notified by the other rulers that they were planning to stop the hermits.

She pulled her bowstring, letting an arrow fly and hit Shelby before bringing up her shield to block a shot from Fwhip.

With both hands on her sword, False leapt up, preparing to slam it down on Katherine.

She could barely register others’ exclamations before she felt a sword in her stomach.

False coughed out a mouthful of blood as the sword was quickly removed, causing her to fall down towards the river. She tossed her sword to her left hand, using her right to grab onto the bridge.

A boot stomped down onto her right hand, causing her to let out another shout of pain.

“Look what we have here,” she taunted, crouching down to look at her. “I finally found you,” her lips contorted into a cruel smirk. 

The last time False had seen that smirk was moments before she destroyed the lab; which had almost killed her and revealed their identities as twins to the entire server. 

That also meant that she had to find a way out of her current situation quickly before she got killed and everyone would get their memories of the incident wiped.

She could let herself drop, giving herself an opportunity to use her elytra and fly just a bit away from the bridge. But False didn’t know how much her stab wound would affect her flight - for all she knew she could end up crashing straight into fort riff-less. Or she would be able to easily catch up with her and finish her off.

Or False could attack her to get her off her right hand, giving herself the chance to hop back onto the bridge. And at least then she might have a semblance of a fighting chance.

Of course False was going to take her chances with the second option. Making sure she wasn’t looking, she put away her sword before taking out one of her arrows. With her hand close to the tip, she lifted her left hand up and plunged the arrow into her foot. She grimaced internally - she did not want to do this to her own twin.

She stumbled back from the pain, giving False the chance to swing herself onto the bridge. She put a hand over her wound, watching the blood quickly stain her glove; she was on a race against time to kill her before she gave out to her injury.

False gave a look to the hermits who still hadn’t crossed the rift, trying to tell them, “Get to the rift. Now.” Thankfully they seemed to understand her quick message and ran behind her - now swarming Fort Riff-less in one last ditch effort.

“Oh you bastard,” she spat, standing up from her earlier injury. False took out her sword, preparing herself for one last fight to stop her. She looked at the rift - most of the Hermits had gone through, with the rulers following after either in curiosity or fear of what would happen should they stay.

False sighed. She didn’t want to hurt her own twin. They had spent so long pretending to just be “FalseSymmetry”. Not as twins. Just as a single player on the Hermitcraft server. 

But she couldn’t let what her own twin did to the other hermits slide. False knew that she messed up when she forgot to remind Xisuma not to chase after her - resulting in him forgetting everything he was told.

False raised her shield to block a swing from her twin. Between the two of them, she indeed was the better fighter. But her twin’s face read only one thing - bloodlust. 

Her desire to kill her seemed to be the only thing keeping her twin going. False knew that in any other circumstances her twin would’ve moved away to create some distance between the two of them.

Another slash on her chest sent blood splattering all over the bridge and False stumbling backwards. She ducked down to avoid a slash aimed at her neck before returning the attack with a slash that left a similar gash along her twin’s chest.

“Deciding to be selfless today huh? You’re not scared of what could happen?” Her twin taunted, slowly backing up towards the rift. 

“Stop stalling. I know you want to go back into Hermitcraft,” False spat as she drew her bowstring again, landing an arrow into her shoulder. She ran past her twin, blocking her path to the Rift. “But I’m not going to let you go through,” 

She sure hoped that the rift would close on its own. Otherwise she would have to do it herself.

Her twin didn’t verbally reply, only smirking in response. False stood there waiting, her vision beginning to blur from the blood loss - but she couldn’t rest, she couldn’t risk all the hermits again.

Her twin readied her sword, False did the same.

This was going to be her last chance. 

Her twin swung first, barely missing her eye and instead leaving a bloody streak along her cheek. Using the opening from her swing, False plunged her sword into her twin’s chest, watching blood splatter all over both of them.

“I’m sorry.” False wasn’t the emotional type; but having to kill her own sister with her bare hands was something she never wanted to do.

False removed the sword, about to walk away when something smashed into her head, causing her vision to blur significantly. She looked down at her twin’s hand, only shards of glass remaining in it.

‘Shit… the amnesia potions…’ the world began to spin for False, her grip on her sword loosening.

With her last few breaths before she had to respawn, False watched her twin collapse to the ground from her wounds.

Then she fell and began to forget

[tiredassmage]

What gifts do they Love? Like? What would they say when you gave them a gift?

Oooohh, let's talk about smuggy!comp au for this one. Tyr's preferences don't change a lot when I plug him into the Smuggler crew, but his life as Oliver is definitely a different path, so we've got some different preferences!

Weapons remain a sound bet with Oli for your highest influence gains with Technology and Military Gear sort of jostling for that last spot in favorites - or maybe they share, who are we to make a man choose, right? xD

I think my only other alteration from Tyr's levels is I'd swap Republic Memorabilia and Maintenance goods to put Maintenance in Likes and Republic items in Loves. You'll also get a higher bonus on Courting items if you follow his romance. ;) [He'd just melt for swapping small items with his Captain.]

And you'll probably just about always kind of surprise him with it. Your higher influence items probably trigger something like, "You don't have to... Thanks, Captain." / "This is... great! Where'd you get this?"

I don't make the rules but I do, but... picking up Oli on your crew is basically adopting a touch-starved Lab puppy from the shelter. He wants to make the most of working with you. He appreciates you thinking of him! Even if you give him something he's not particularly interested in, the worst you'd be given is a mild "You're the boss." / "I suppose I might find some use for this, if you're sure."

[alwaysthesitter]

Steve couldn't help but to laugh at the enthusiasm, though he still shook his head, a hand moving to Oliver's shoulder and giving it a squeeze. "You don't need to do that. You don't need to be my superhero, Oli. I just feel safer around you, that's all. Powers or no powers." He wanted to stress that, almost like he was reading the other's mind. Though having powers was nice, it wasn't necessary. They had fought Vecna while El had been in another state, and sure he had later learned that she had gotten into the monster's head and helped but....not the point.

"Sometimes it's just nice to travel in pairs, or....I mean, okay, that sounds a bit weird but. It's just nice to not feel so alone. I'm sure you understand that." He smiled warmly. Though he didn't fully know what Oliver had gone through in the lab, never asking questions, he knew it couldn't have been easy. He had seen plenty of times how El had felt about it all, and imagined that the male had gone through something similar. It wasn't about Oliver having super powers, but more the power of companionship.

"I really don't know if I can thank you enough, man."

❝ i know when you’re here, the real monsters can’t touch me. ❞ (Oliver)

Oliver smiled brightly at the other, like a kid who just got everything he wanted for Christmas. After stumbling through the woods on his own for so long, hiding there until Steve happened across him one fateful day, the idea of being needed again filled his chest with warmth. While he was just coming to terms with the fact that Hawkins Lab wasn't the benevolent place he'd though it was, Steve had become a lifeline for him as he struggled to find a place in this world. It was more than nice to know that he was needed, too, even if it might only be for his powers. He would keep his friend safe no matter what happened.

"Good, because I'd save you over and over again if I needed to," he said, his voice just a little louder than necessary with his excitement, "nothin's hurting my Steve!"

[lou-is-lurking]

Unpopular opinion, but I believe not reinstating Kamila's suspension is the right call under these circumstances.

I'm not surprised by the decision, I kind of expected it. Because the timing of this made things infinitely more complicated than many people seem to realize.

I get that people have had emotional reactions to this entire mess - because Kamila is just a kid, But also because for many of us this comes after years of having to helplessly watch Eteri do what she does and being rewarded for her abusive system over and over again.

But these emotional reactions have lead to some rather irrational takes and uninformed expectations, and many people acted like this was a clear-cut situation, a no-brainer, when it really isn't. The media oversimplifying the case didn't help either.

So many people kept yelling BuT ShE's A cHiLd, asking for compassion for Kamila – but the same people are calling for her to have her right to have this resolved properly revoked? Protecting the rights of this underage athlete is also important for the integrity of this sport, no?

I'm particularly baffled by how many (former) athletes criticize the decision. Shouldn't they be aware that if someone's A sample comes back positive, they can demand to have the B sample analyzed to potentially clear their name? Doesn't sound like that happened yet.

And if I'm not mistaken, usually an athlete even has the right to be present when that B sample is unsealed? Considering the tight time frame and assuming that sample is still sitting in that lab in Sweden, that's a logistic nightmare.

Under these circumstances there was just no time to resolve all of this in time before the Women's competition. Are people really demanding Kamila be stripped of her legal right to go through the proper process of trying to clear her name?

The timing of this was really, really fucking bad. Yes, it FINALLY brought the world's attention to Eteri and her camp of rampant abuse. But unfortunately it also created an impossible situation that could not be resolved without a shit storm, no matter the decision.

Had this come out just a bit sooner, things could have been resolved in time. Kamila would've been able to go through the proper process, without all this media attention and public interest, since her name would not have been published because of her status as Protected Person.

No matter how likely or unlikely it is that the B sample comes back negative – it IS possible, and why would Kamila be denied the same right as any other athlete? If they suspend her now and later her name is cleared – that would be a disaster and also hurt the sport's integrity.

If they allow her to compete and it is later confirmed she was doped, they have at least put everything in place to erase her name and placement from the competition.

Still a fucking mess, but imo the fairer solution considering the circumstances.

Don't get me wrong, even if I think this is the better call, it's still a shit show and a nightmare and I'd rather there would have been a way to resolve this properly without making this sport, the Olys, and basically everyone involved look bad. But alas.

One thing I'm hoping for is that the attention on Eteri and her abusive methods will cause change, but if I'm honest, I'm afraid that the ISU won't do jack shit about anything once the big media attention goes away after the Olympics.

Time will tell, I guess.

(cross-posted from Twitter)

[antimony-medusa]

I swear Oli Orionsound’s streams sound like they were designed in a lab to be intolerable to me, but for baffling and unknown reasons my brain is like “okay sure, this guy who uses an air horn and laugh tracks and crowd noise? A-okay for background noise!”

[sexycraisinthanos]

I’m gonna infodump about my favorite movie

Rise of the Guardians

It’ll be under the readmore, but TL;DR: Watch Rise of the Guardians and read the books

Rise of the Guardians is a 2012 animated film released by Dreamworks. The story is childhood figures (Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Sandman, and Jack Frost) trying to defend the children of earth against Pitch Black, (The Boogeyman) 

It’s based on a book series called Guardians of Childhood, written by William Joyce. Who, if you don’t know, writes children’s book. Guardians of Childhood is more of a “Young Adult” series compared to his other Guardians books (The Man in the Moon, Sandman: The Story of Sanderson Mansnoozie, and Jack Frost are all part of the series, but they are picture books.)

He’s also written other books you may be familiar with.

The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs and A Day with Wilbur Robinson 

Sound familiar?

Maybe you’d recognize them as their movie counterparts, Epic (animated by Blue Sky Studios) and Meet the Robinsons (animated of course by Disney)

Also Rolie Polie Olie, which was a favorite Disney Jr cartoon growing up for me, and was also a book series. 

I could honestly go on and on about William Joyce, his work was a part of my childhood a LOT (even credited for working on some of my favorite films like Buddy, Robots, Toy Story, and A Bug’s Life) and that’s probably why I love ROTG so much.

I read all of the Guardians books and own all of them save for Jack Frost and The Art of Rise of the Guardians and the books are not cheap, but what books are? I have HARD COVER BITCHES. Half of them were gifts and I also own the ROTG DVD.

The art in the books (all drawn by William Joyce himself) is really good (this is my favorite art from the books)

And the animation in the movie, as expected from Dreamworks, is beautiful. 

You get to see all their unique homes and they’re such varying types of environments. Of course, you have the North Pole, where it’s chaotic and wonderful. Just look at this concept art 

And then you have the Tooth Palace, where the Tooth Fairy does her work

It’s very obvious that there are some Indian inspirations in the design because Tooth herself is actually Middle-Eastern (in the books it’s explained in depth more and one of my complaints about the movie is that they whitewashed her even though her concept art in the ending credits shows her with brown skin)

The Warren, where the Easter Bunny paints his eggs

Which is something you never really think about because people only focus on the North pole so seeing so much thought put into it is really nice

We never see where Sandy works/lives (in the MOVIE. But the GAME on the other hand lets you explore EVERYONE’S homes and that’s a whole nother story)

We DO however see Pitch’s lair and

it’s rightfully spooky. When you actually see the scene play out in the lair, you get all confused and don’t know which way is which and it always unsettles me which is GOOD because that’s what it’s SUPPOSED to do

What’s really unique about ROTG is that there’s a source material (and as of now there are eight books (five novels, three picture books) and the series isn’t DONE yet) and instead of turning the books into a movie even though the plot is literally RIGHT THERE, they took the source material and turned it into a prologue. The movie takes place about 300 years after the books do and since the books are supposedly still ongoing, and William Joyce was CONTINUING to write the series while the movie was in production. (Three books have come out since the movie came out.)

I love how challenging that must have been for William to try to include stuff from his previous books in the movie AND to try and link the movie to his newer books despite some continuity errors (also worth noting that he has written a book about Santa and his wife, but Mrs. Claus is YET to be seen or even mentioned in the movie) but I appreciate the effort he put into it and I can’t wait to see what else he’ll come up with.

The characters look a BIT different from their book counterparts

Jack is voiced by Chris Pine and his voice is WAY TOO DEEP and the creators can’t agree on an age for him (book age is 14, but he can age himself up and down to a certain point and some producers said they imagined him 17 or 18) and (imo) I think Jack’s design was pretty lazy (a blue jacket with brown pants) compared to everyone else’s. I mean you have North, who is 

BIG

His design is based more on the worldly Father Christmas than the Saint Nick/Santa that we know. 

When he’s not in the Pole he’s wearing his big red fur coat and a cossack hat

Because he’s Russian

I’m pretty sure he canonically was raised by bears but that may have just been me imagining it. His book appearance is way different because when we meet him, he’s not Santa yet. So he’s still young

Of course, as the books go on, he looks like Santa

Bunny has the most drastic character change from his book design, as depicted by this fanart (which i couldn’t find a credit for that wasn’t pinterest so if anyone knows please tell me)

And there’s a CANONICAL reason why he looks so different (two actually)

Once they put Hugh Jackman in the role, they wanted a more dry Australian ranger-type design for him, and then the robes got in the way because of how he was moving, even when they changed him to just a lab coat, so they decided to forgo clothes altogether

Fun fact about Bunny. He’s a Pooka, a shapeshifting folklore creature that can turn into either a rabbit, goat, cat, dog, or horse. (or even a human with animal like features) Which actually gives a lot of people the headcanon that Pitch uses the souls of all Bunny’s dead people (yep he’s a sole survivor) as Nightmares

But he’s a different kind of Pooka. He’s an alien technically. And this breed of Pooka CANNOT eat chocolate because it does things to their body. Like giving him six arms. Or making his ears into helicopter propellers. 

This is relevant because he uses chocolate in battle multiple times. So the canonical explanation for why Bunny looks so different is that he ate too much chocolate and it permanently changed his body.

Which I love. I could go on about him but all the characters are interesting

Tooth has probably the second most confusing design

She’s based off a hummingbird with dragonfly wings, which aesthetically makes so much sense, but in the books she has regular feather wings. I also don’t like how weird her proportions are. Her feet are tiny nubs, her head is too big for her body (her body is actually pretty nicely designed it’s just every other part of it that bothers me) and I already mentioned the whitewashing

PITCH on the other hand had the biggest glow down compared to the books

He’s just wearing a black robe and, apparently, he doesn’t even have sleeves, which you can’t even really tell because it’s just all smudgy and shit

I mean I guess that’s the point, that he looks like he’s clothed in shadow, but it’s frustrating to look at especially compared to his book design where he’s wearing a FABULOUS coat

Meanwhile Sandy has the PERFECT character design

He’s just ROUND and wears a bathrobe made of sand. Like it’s not even that different from his book design (his hair has more frills than the book version) because it’s such a perfect design and I love how he’s animated. You can’t see it that well because the gif quality, but the sand also sparkles and it just makes it so fun to watch on screen 

The movie itself has its share of flaws. (the movie likes to pick and choose the rules it wants to follow about its universe, a huge plothole, and some cheaply constructed arguments between characters that really just make me annoyed because I don’t want to see the easter bunny making a child cry I want to see him get into a fist fight with Santa it’s like you don’t even KNOW your demographic) But I love it and there’s SO MUCH I could talk about. There are characters in the books that weren’t in the movie and there were characters in the movie that weren’t in the books (because they weren’t born yet but IRRELEVANT) 

It was a HUGE flop despite critics praising it. Like 8,000 people lost their jobs over it that’s how big a flop it was. But it’s such a dear movie to me and it’s clear that William Joyce holds this series close to his heart (dedicating it and the movie to his late daughter) which makes sense because it’s based on stories he told her when she was young and I’m so honored that he chose to share these stories with us. I just love the series and I should do a re-read at some point

[highhopeslowrolls]

please tell me that phil is voicing those background characters (BECAUSE HE IS DOING AN AMAZING JOB)

Credit for them goes to Olie. I was only voicing Nagar in this one.

That’s not strictly true, but at somepoint we’re going to post a break down of our sound effects work, where we’ll discuss Phil’s voice work in the background of the episodes that are out now.

Otherwise, the background VO in Chapter 2 is Olie (see the marketplace in Imereloth) me and Amy (goons laughing in the lab) and a mix of stuff we’ve got on tape from previous recordings. Either way Phil is great!

[lilac-den]

My Guardian Stalker

My Guardian Stalker

Wynn [M!MC] x M!Dionysus

Warning: Contains a bit of drugging, yandere-personality and a bit of a dark ending?

A/N: I would have posted it up yesterday but got caught with a massive headache and fever - sorry if there are some of you waiting for this! Enjoy!

There’s been something off lately.

There’s been a notable increase of tourists disappearing, some of which I have had the pleasure of greeting in the library or café.

It doesn’t help that Oli has been going offline a lot more – something about loose fuses or glitches. I had offered to crack open his system, see what’s up, but Oli simply brushes that off, telling me that I should be more worried about my lack of personal care due to my attempts of performing all-night research on this…‘Red Lens Murderer’.

Oli doesn’t leave me much room to protest either, considering he went offline in an attempt to rest longer just a couple hours ago.

“Wynner!”

The cheery tone catches me off guard, up to where I yelp from a sudden body colliding behind me. But while the voice is distorted, I can recognize the owner from the delightful tone and the all-too-familiar nickname.

“Dio!” I exclaim and turn my head to see the familiar rabbit mask, the visor on it staring back at me.

“In a flash!” The charm in his voice is light and open. In his gloved hands are a shot glass and a bottle of some alcoholic beverage. My eyes widen.

“Is that whiskey?”

“Only the best one!” Dionysus pipes, “I figured you’d like a little drink.”

As he answers, he’s already pouring me a cup. I let out a laugh.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is a way for you to get me to bed.”

A light scoff escapes Dio. “Please, if I want to do that, I would have pulled out something more sensible. At least you listen to reason.”

I roll my eyes at that, smiling before turning back to the folder I had extracted from one of the cameras down the alleyway of where the latest victim was taken away.

Dio peeks in from my shoulder. “So, what’s keeping you up this time?”

I increase the distance between us, mainly to stop this sensation in the depths of my chest. It’s only been a few months, but I still can’t get the hang of this…constant factor of his presence in my vicinity, especially this close. “I’m looking up on the disappearing tourists.”

“Ah,” Dionysus nods, “you’re talking about the Red Lens Murderer, aren’t you?”

I groan. “They should have picked a better name than that.”

“It’s pretty fitting, considering his M.O. Covering the camera lens in the blood of the victims.” A note of disgust occurs in their tone. “Pretty gruesome, if you ask me.

“Thank God you brought in whiskey then,” I mutter, already pouring myself a shot before downing it. The liquid burns, but fuck do I need it real bad.

“When was the last time you slept, Wynn?”

“I’m doing alright, Dio.” I make an attempt to smile at him. But I can feel a judgemental stare.

“Wynn-”

“Oh shoot!” I stand up, feigning a voice of shock; when Dio’s voice turn parental, it’s going to be a near tyrannic lecture. “I forgot some files are in need of my attention.”

“Wynn!”

I resist the urge to laugh; I can picture an almost pouty expression on his face. But I wasn’t entirely wrong; the files on my other desk aren’t something to discredit.

Maybe it’ll give me insight on what in the world is going on with this murderer…and why their most recent attacks are with the tourists I have a brief conversation with.

Fuck, I need another shot.

:)

Dionysus watches Wynn carefully, from the way the latter frowns at the files to pinching the bridge of his nose with his tanned hand, the dim light of the lab glistening down on his freckles. Pouring another glass, Wynn is already downing his second shot of whiskey. A smile forms underneath his mask.

Standing by the chair, front facing Wynn’s back, Dionysus creeps a gloved hand over to one of the pictures on the desk, silently shifting some of the pictures away until his eyes gleam at one photo, hidden among the pictures the librarian have deemed important.

One picture showed the thick, red stain to obscure the vision of the alley. But there was a small part that dripped off, revealing a glimpse of what was happening behind the crimson liquid. A tourist was being dragged; their shirt tugged by a dark orange-gloved hand.

It’s not hard for Dionysus to sneak it into the hidden pocket of his coat, what with Wynn entirely focused on the documents lying before him.

Dionysus had to admit, he wasn’t the sort to commit such misdeeds. What Wynn doesn’t know is the fact that the Red Lens Murderer is now caught and serving their sentence. At this point, it is simply their title being put onto the blame of the latest kidnappings.

Which, funny enough, are committed by Dionysus himself. It was a little hard, getting their blood to coat the camera lens and shut them up from screaming to high heavens. And yes, Dionysus isn’t one to commit such heinous, hedonistic acts.

But the tourists Dionysus kidnapped and hidden away shouldn’t have approached his beloved with such impure thoughts.

No…they shouldn’t have. It was only fair he hid them away, since murder was beneath him. No matter how much they begged for death after what he did to them.

A yawn catches his attention and Dionysus turns to Wynn, slipping his hand out of the pocket that keeps the link between him and the crime. He walks to Wynn, wrapping his arm around the lean-bodied male. “You sound exhausted, Wynn,” he mentions gently, “maybe it’s time you hit the hay.”

“Noh…” Wynn blinks tiredly, his light green irises wet in sleepy tears. As if drawn by the warmth, the shorter male leans his head into Dionysus’s shoulder.

The simple action sets a warmth the taller male craves for. He strokes the messy blonde hair, shushing in a soft, cooing tone.

“Sleep, Wynn,” his voice pleasantly says, “you can’t find new clues with a drowsy mind.”

“Mn…Buh…” Wynn tries to protest but a yawn simply escapes him. Dionysus lets one of Wynn’s arms rest around his shoulders, carrying him as one would carry their drunk buddy after a night’s out.

“No buts, Wynn.” Dionysus chides in an almost parental tone. “After all,” a smile curls in his lips and he whispers towards the sleeping Wynn, “It’s a waste of good sleeping drugs if you don’t.”

He watches the blond turn his head, confusion swimming in those bright green eyes. Those round, beautiful orbs, drowsy in the effects of the sleeping drug, start to show glimmer of realization.

And just as quickly as the glimmer appears, Wynn’s eyes close shut, and his head slumps back, passing out in Dionysus’s arms.

The rabbit’s contorted voice hums a tune, upbeat and cheery. But in the darkness of the lab, skimming his fingers along the edge of his librarian’s face…

The tune is simply halted by the giggle of joyful insanity.

[engineering]

How Reblogs Work

The reblog is a beautiful thing unique to Tumblr -- often imitated, but never successfully reproduced elsewhere. The reblog puts someone else's post on your own Tumblr blog, acting as a kind of signal boost, and also giving you the ability to add your own comment to it, which your followers and anyone looking at the post's notes will see. Reblogs can also be reblogged themselves, creating awesome evolving reblog trails that are the source of so many memes we love. But what is a reblog trail versus a reblog tree, and how does it all work under the hood?

A "reblog tree" starts at the original post (we call it the "root post" internally at Tumblr) and extends outwards to each of its reblogs, and then each reblog of those reblogs, forming a tree-like structure with branches of "reblog trails". As an example, you can imagine @staff​ making a post, and then someone reblogging it, and then others reblogging those reblogs. I can even come through and reblog one of the reblogs:

A "reblog trail" is one of those branches, starting at the original post and extending one at a time down to another post. In the reblog trail, there may actually be some reblogs that added their own content and some that didn't -- reblogs that added content are visible in the trail, while the intermediate ones that didn't may not be visible.

You'll notice that the reblog trail you're viewing somewhere (like on your dashboard) doesn't show all of this reblog tree -- only part of it. If you open up the notes on any wildly popular post, you'll probably see lots of reblogs in there that you aren't seeing in your current view of the post's reblog trail. The above diagram shows the whole reblog tree (which you don't see) and the current reblog trail you're actually viewing (in orange). If you want to visualize a post's entire reblog tree, the reblog graphs Tumblr Labs experiment shows off these reblog trees and trails as kind of big floppy organisms. They're a useful visualization of how content percolates around Tumblr via reblogs. You can turn on the experiment and see it on web only right now, but here's an example:

The tiny orange dot is the post we're viewing, and the green line is a reblog trail showing how the post got reblogged along many blogs. And there are tons of other branches/trails from the original post, making dozens of different reblog trails. This is a much larger, more realistic example than my simplified diagrams above. You can imagine that my diagram above is just the start of one of these huge reblog trees, after more and more people have reblogged parts of the existing tree.

Storing Reblog Trail Information

The way we actually store the information about a reblog and its trail has changed significantly over the last year. For all posts made before this year, all of a post's content was stored as a combination of HTML and properties specific on our Post data model. A specific reblog also stored all of the contents of its entire reblog trail (but not the whole reblog tree). If you have ever built a theme on Tumblr or otherwise dug around the code on a reblog, you'll be familiar with this classic blockquote structure:

<p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="http://maria.tumblr.com/post/5678">maria</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="http://cyle.tumblr.com/post/1234">cyle</a>:</p> <blockquote> <!-- original post content --> <p>look at my awesome original content</p> </blockquote> <!-- the reblog of the original post's content --> <p>well, it's just okay original content</p> </blockquote> <!-- this is the new content, added in our reblog of the reblog --> <p>jeez. thanks a lot.</p>

This HTML represents a (fake) old text post. The original post is the blockquote most deeply nested in the HTML: "look at my awesome original content" and it was created by cyle. There's a reference to the original post's URL in the anchor tag above its blockquote tag. Moving out one level to the next blockquote is a reblog of that original post, made by maria, which itself adds some of its own commentary to the reblog trail. Moving out furthest, to the bottom of the HTML, is the latest reblog content being added in the post we're viewing. With this structure, we have everything we need to show the post and its reblog trail without having to load those posts in between the original and this reblog.

If this looks and sounds confusing, that's because it is quite complex. We're right there with you, but the reasons behind using this structure were sound at the time. In a normal, traditional relational database, you'd expect something like the reblog trail to be represented as a series of references: a reblog post references its parent post, root post, and any intermediate posts, and we'd load those posts' contents at runtime with a JOIN query or something very normalized and relational like that, making sure we don't copy any data around, only reference it.

However, the major drawback of that traditional approach, especially at Tumblr's scale, is that loading a reblog could go from just one query to several queries, depending on how many posts are in the reblog trail. Some of the reblog trails on Tumblr are thousands of posts long. Having to load a thousand other posts to load one reblog would be devastating. Instead, by actually copying the reblog trail content every time a reblog is made, we keep the number of queries needed constant: just one per post! A dashboard of 20 reblogs loads those 20 posts, not a variable amount based on how many reblogs are in each post's trail. This is still an oversimplification of what Tumblr is really doing under the hood, but this core strategy is real.

Broken Reblog Trails

There is another obvious problem with the above blockquote/HTML strategy, one that you may have not realized you were seeing but you've probably experienced it before. If the only reference we have in the reblog trail above is a trail post's permalink URL, what happens if that blog changes its name? Tumblr does not go through all posts and update that name in every copy of every reblog that blog has ever been involved in. Instead, it gracefully fails, and you may see a default avatar there as a placeholder. We literally don't have any other choice, since no other useful information is stored with the old post content.

At worst, someone else takes the name of a blog used in the trail. Imagine if, in the above example, oli changed his blog name to british-oli and someone else snagged the name oli afterwards. Thankfully in that case, the post URL still does not work, as the post ID is tied to the old oli blog. The end result is that it looks like there's a "broken" item in the reblog trail, usually manifesting as the blog looking deactivated or otherwise not accessible. This isn't great.

As a part of the rollout of the Neue Post Format (NPF), we changed how we store the reblog trail on each post. For fully NPF reblog trails, we actually do store an immutable reference to each blog and post in the trail, instead of just the unreliable post URL. This allows us to have a much lower failure rate when someone changes their blog name or otherwise becomes unavailable. We keep the same beneficial strategy of usually having all the information we need so we don't need to load any of those posts along the trail, but the option to load the individual post or blog is there if we absolutely need it, especially in cases like if one of those blogs is somebody you're blocking.

If you've played around with reblog trails in NPF, you'll see the result of this change. The reblog trail is no longer a messy nested blockquote chain, but instead a friendly and easy to parse JSON array, always starting with the original post and working down the trail. This includes a special case when an item in the trail is broken in a way we can't recover from, which happens sometimes with very old posts.

The same reblog trail and new content as seen above, but in the Neue Post Format:

{ "trail": [ { "post": { "id": "1234", }, "blog": { "name": "cyle" }, "content": [ { "type": "text", "text": "look at my awesome original content" } ], "layout": [] }, { "post": { "id": "3456", }, "blog": { "name": "maria" }, "content": [ { "type": "text", "text": "well, it's just okay original content" } ], "layout": [] } ], "content": [ { "type": "text", "text": "jeez. thanks a lot." } ] }

Got questions?

If you've ever wondered how something works on Tumblr behind the scenes, feel free to send us an ask!

- @cyle 

[justaghostingon]

Pygmalion

Read on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25962064

Once there was a man, who could not find love among the women he knew, so he decided to make his own.

“Oli, come with me. I’ve got a new project for you.” Gyrus’ smile was stilted as he beckoned Oli down the corridor. Oli followed, a bounce in his step as anticipation welled up inside him. The projects Gyrus had him help with were always interesting, even if they didn’t always work.

They entered the lab, and Oli froze. A woman hung suspended from the wires and machines. Her ethereal blue hair glowed in the dim light of the machine. It fell perfectly around her asymmetrical face, one half covered in soft skin, the other open and gapping to reveal a skull made of metal. She was barely more than a torso and upper arms, metal and wiring sticking out like some half finished machine, waiting for a mechanic to bring it back to life.

“Oli, meet Maria,” Gyrus said as Oli approached the remains of the woman. “She’s a robot from the last realm that I thought we could fix up and try and use on missions.”

He babbled on, talking about the advantages that a nie indestructible robot could have, but Oli wasn’t listening. Carefully he brought his hands up to encompass the woman’s face. Her single eyelid fluttered open, as delicate as the real one her long ago designer had tried to copy, and looked Oli in the eye.

“Hello Maria,” Oli whispered, for only a whisper seemed appropriate in this fragile moment.

“Hello.” She smiled, and Oli felt the whirl of machinery beneath his fingers humming like a pulse. The left side of her face was soft and warm against his skin, the right cool and smooth as steel, but Oli knew as he cradled her in that moment that all of her was undeniably human.

Many days and many nights did he labor over her, sculpting the perfect woman out of stone. And when he finished, he named her Galatea, for the white of her marble skin.

Fixing Maria was the hardest thing Oli had ever done. Her body was more complex than any project he’d ever worked on, and Oli found a new respect for the physicians who tended to the human body, their task was truly daunting if it was anything like the one of metal he and Gyrus labored over.

Every twist of wires, every slight calibration, every metal frame, all required the most delicate touch, lest they damage her beyond repair. She was magnificent though, a true masterpiece. As they inched their way along her body, rebuilding her from the ground up, Oli couldn’t help but wonder if the gods knew him in such intimate detail or if they did not care for the long labor his mother had needed to bring him to life.

Through it all Maria kept up her spirits, laughing and joking about the fine mess she had been reduced to. Oli admired her bravery, because even though she tried to grit her teeth, he knew their every motion caused her pain. She couldn’t hide it from him, even if she wanted to. Oli could see inside her every corner, and he knew when she bit her lip like that the reconnected wire beneath his fingers had burned her.

Gyrus seemed to notice too, and it made him sad, shoulders hanging with the weight of the world. But Maria did not like to see him so morose, and so would laugh or joke to try and lift his spirits.

“How’s your boyfriend?” she asked after a particularly hard operation. Oli blinked, confused. As far as he knew, Gyrus had no interest in anyone, to the great disappointment of many. But to his shock, Gyrus didn’t laugh it off like he usually did. Instead a cherry red blush crept across his face, until even his ears burned a brilliant red.

Oli started, but Maria laughed, throwing her head back in an echoing howl. Gyrus’ ears turned, if it were possible, even redder. “He is not my boyfriend,” he hissed, shooting Oli an alarmed look. Maria laughed again.

“Right, right,” she said, amusement obvious in her voice. “You just hold hands, have sleepovers, spend every waking moment you can together, and talk constantly about him when you can’t. Completely platonic, my bad.”

Up until today Oli hadn’t been certain Gyrus could have those types of feelings, but when Maria put it like that it seemed obvious. There was only one person who Gyrus spent so much time with, one name he slipped into nearly every conversation.

“Are you, talking about Kodya?” he asked, feeling slightly light headed. Gyrus’ eyes widened in alarm.

“There is n-nothing between me and Kodya!” Gyrus shook his head, waving his hands in the air in denial. But Oli noticed the red did not fade.

“Uh, yeah,” Maria rolled her eyes, “because someone’s to cowardly to confess.”   Gyrus hid his face in his hands. Oli felt a bit bad for him.

“I’m sure Kodya wouldn’t say no,” he offered, because everyone knew Kodya was in love with Gyrus, and because Oli knew all too well the way insecurity could whisper and ruin someone’s will to ask.

“Really?” Gyrus peaked between his fingers at Oli who tried to smile encouragingly. Maria tried to help, but her clear amusement had the opposite effect. “Gahhh,” Gyrus buried his head back in his hands as he stood up. “I’m going to get more metal!” He squeaked, running from the door before Oli could remind him that he could create anything and they had plenty of ingredients.

“Looks like it's just you and me now,” Maria chuckled, and as Oli turned to her, he realized that they had never been alone before.

The man would talk to his Galatea as if she were a real person.

The silence stretched out far too long as Oli struggled to come up with a topic of conversation. Maria raised an eyebrow, and Oli felt his stomach drop. “Come on, I don’t bite,” she said, and Oli looked down.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered but Maria shook her head, loose hair flopping against skin and metal alike.

“No, no! Don’t apologize! Ask me something! Go ahead, I know you want to!” She smiled at him, and for the first time, Oli wondered if she paid as much attention to them as they did to her. The revelation was disconcerting, but there was something he had been dying to ask.

He cleared his throat nervously and went for it. “What’s it like being a robot?” he said and then flinched at his own daring.

“Yeah I figured that would be the first thing you’d ask.” Maria’s voice caused him to look up. “First thing everyone does,” she added, sounding rueful. Oli clenched the front of his robe, feeling horrible.

“If I had to put it into words, I’d say it's a lot like being human most of the time,” Maria tried to shrug, but the wires holding her steady didn’t let her. She gave a half wince, and Oli stepped forward, hand instinctively raised to stop her.

Maria smiled, a small, sad smile that didn’t fit her usual chipper personality. “There is one difference though. I can survive with a whole lot less than a human can.” Oli’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. Was she talking about food?

Maria saw his confusion and elaborated. “Like blood,” she said. “You need blood to survive. But I don’t. It keeps me warm, but if I were to lose it, I’d still function.”

“That’s horrible,” Oli murmured, trying to imagine living life devoid of warmth, and feeling nothing but cold and hollow.

“Yeah it kind of is,” Maria replied, and Oli snapped his hands over his mouth, realizing how insensitive his words had been. Maria’s gaze softened. “Thanks,” she said. Oli lowered his hands, confused. “Not a lot of people notice that. But hey,-” she shot him a wide smile, more in line with her usual personality, “if I were half as squishy as you, I wouldn’t be here now would I?”

That was true, Oli felt a bit of guilt leave his shoulders. But still. “Maria?” he asked, and the woman turned her blue eyes on him. “What’s your favorite food?”

Maria blinked at him, and Oli felt his lips twitch into a smile.

He would make meals and present a portion to her cold body.

Oli hurried to the lab, a small bag in one hand and a plastic cup in the other. Gyrus wouldn’t be there right now. Oli had asked Kodya to ensure that he stayed that way, citing his worry over Gyrus overworking to ensure Kodya would not let him within ten feet of it. Oli felt a little guilty about using Kodya against Gyrus like that but he shrugged it off. He was going to do this, and he didn’t want Gyrus to stop him.

“Maria!” he called as he pushed his way into the lab. “I brought the food!” He held the little bundle aloft.

“Oh yeah! Bring in the goods!” Maria yelled, face split into a wide grin as her eyes never left the bundle in Oli’s hands. She sucked in a deep breath through her half finished nose as Oli came closer and licked her lips. “Oh man I can smell it, my mouth is watering already.”

“Just a minute,” Oli cautioned as he opened the bundle to reveal the strange wrapped bread and meat sandwich and the slices of deep fried potatoes Maria had painstakingly instructed him how to make. Maria gave a little whimper, and Oli smiled.

Oli took the sandwich first, lifting it with one hand to her face, while the other held the cup up to the bottom of her torso, to the little tube that led directly to her throat. Maria bit into the sandwich eagerly, sharp teeth nearly missing Oli’s fingers. He yelped a bit, but Maria didn’t seem to notice, to wrapped up in chewing to pay attention to Oli.

“Oh man,” she swallowed, and Oli held the cup close to the tube as the mashed up food slipped out. “It has been so long since I ate a burger.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Oli smiled. “I hope it tasted like it's supposed to.”

“Like it's supposed to?” Maria echoed, shooting him an incredulous stare. “It tasted fantastic! Oli you’ve got to be the best chef in the world!” She beamed at him, bits of sauce still stuck to her cheeks, and Oli felt like he was on top of the world.

“Now a fry,” Maria demanded, and Oli obligingly brought one up for her to bite. She took from his fingers, holding it in her mouth by the end, before gulping it down. “Mmmmm,” she groaned as she swallowed, licking the edges of her mouth. “That’s good.”

Oli blushed from the compliment as the remains of the fry slipped into the cup. “If you like it so much, I could always bring you more.”

“It would have to be soon,” Maria frowned. “You and Gyrus are gonna hook up my esophagus soon, and then the only way out will be through my stomach and the intestines.”

“Then I’ll just have to get a bigger cup,” Oli shrugged. He was a mechanic, he could figure something out. But Maria had looked so happy, and he wasn’t going to deny her something that made her feel more human.

“Alright!” Maria cheered, “Now I’ll take another bite of that burger baby! I’m feeling hungry tonight!”

And he would dress her in the finest clothes he could buy.

From then on, Oli would visit Maria whenever he could get away, bringing her food or just keeping her company. He found she was a wonderful companion, whose brash personality and boundless optimism always managed to put life in perspective. Oli couldn’t wait until the project was completed, so he could introduce her to everyone else. He was certain a warm personality like hers would get along with everyone.

He wouldn’t have to wait for much longer though, as he and Gyrus were almost finished. There were just a few final touch ups, and they would be able to take her to meet everyone. Every day Oli was able to remove one of the wires tying her to the machine, and everyday she looked more and more human.

Oli was just unwiring one of the no longer necessary wires, Gyrus left after being radioed by Don for some sort of emergency meeting, when he noticed a shiver run across Maria’s skin.

“You’re cold!” he said, hand hovering over the spot, unsure what to do. Maria gave him a slight smile.

“Yeah well. After you guys added my blood I’ve been able to notice how breezy it can get in here.” She gave a half shrug. “But it's fine. I can handle it.”

“No, no.” Oli shook his head, looking around the room. His eyes landed on a sheet in the corner where it still covered some old inventions in an attempt protect them from dust. He grabbed it and brought it back to Maria. “If you’re cold, we can fix that.”

Maria stared at the sheet with slight apprehension. “I don’t know if that’s going to work, since my arms are all spread out thanks to these wires. the air will just get underneath, not to mention my legs.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” Oli smiled, and began to twist the fabric in his hands. Every child in all of Hellas knew how to make a tunic. He carefully wrapped it around her body, mindful of the parts still attached to the wires, and fastened them at her shoulders with rubber bands. For the final touch, he took off his own belt, and slipped it around her waist, tying it so that it would hang down in the fashion his mother had so enjoyed.

“There,” he said, stepping back to admire his handy work, “now you look like a proper Hellenes lady.”

“Wow!” Maria looked down at herself, twisting a leg to brush against the white fabric, causing it to ripple. “I’m not normally a girl that looks good in white, but this is something else Oli!”

“I’m glad you like it,” Oli smiled. “When your final repairs are done, we can get you proper clothes, a whole wardrobe if you want it!”

Maria bit her lip, her exuberant excitement dimming as she was reminded of her immediate future. “When the repairs are done, yeah.”

“Hey,” Oli placed a hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eyes. “Everyone’s going to love you ok? You don’t have anything to worry about.”

Maria smiled at him, warm and kind as the sun. “Yeah,” she said, but Oli got the feeling she didn’t quite agree. No matter. Come tomorrow, she would see it for herself. “Oli?” she added, and for the first time Oli heard a bit of hesitance in her voice.

“Yes?” he smiled.

“Thank you,” she said, blue eyes boring into his. “For everything.”

“Of course,” Oli said. Feeling like something important was being said, but not quite sure what. “What are friends for?”

But no matter what he did, she did not move, speak, or eat. She had no consciousness of what he had done for her. She could not love him, and so he despaired.

Oli knew something was wrong the moment he stepped into the lab. The room was darker because the dim light of the machine had been fully switched off. To the side Gyrus sat, shoulders slumped, when he should have been excited at the project’s near completion. Worst of all, Maria was missing from the center of the room, and in her place was a blackened husk of metal and junk.

Oli felt his heart stop. He took one shaking step towards the pile in the center of the room before collapsing on his knees in front of it. Gyrus started talking in that gentle way of his, about how there had been an accident, an electrical surge that had accidentally fried Maria, and how he was shutting down the project. But Oli wasn’t listening.

He brushed a trembling hand against the dark metal. A part of him expected to feel the electric hum beneath his fingertips. But there was nothing but cold, empty steel. A drop of water landed beside his hand, then another, and Oli gave into his tears as great, ugly sobs racked his body.

Gyrus came to sit beside him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. Oli allowed him to lead him to the bench and rub soothing circles in his back. “There was nothing you could have done Oli,” he said softly.

His words only served to heighten Oli’s despair. “Poor Maria,” he sobbed into his hands as his mind began to torture him with possibilities, “Maybe it was a flaw in my design!”

“Of course not,” Gyrus moved to grip his shoulder. “If you need to blame someone, blame me. But don’t blame yourself. You did everything you could for Maria.”

Oli wished with all his heart he could believe him.

One day the man brought his pleas to the gods, begging them to bring the woman he loved to life. Aphrodite heard him, and moved by his tale, she waved a hand and brought the statue to life.

Oli hurried down the corridor, head spinning. Nephthys was missing, Don was too, and his wheelchair was alone in the infirmary under a pile of rubble. The others were saying Gyrus was to blame, but Oli wasn’t so certain.

He remembered the last thing Nephthys had told him, about how the seven boss swords had been replaced, and how she needed to check on Kodya before getting to the bottom of it all. Now she was gone, and the last place she had been clearly contained signs of a struggle. Awfully convenient that the last person who had known something was amiss happened to die at the hands of madman, even when said madman was monitored so constantly there was no way he could access to the swords to make the switch.

No, something else was going on here, and he was the only one who knew. Which also meant he would be the attacker’s next target. He gulped, and prayed to every god he could think of that his friend would return.

The least he could do he supposed, was fix the infirmary wall. Maybe if he preserved the evidence he could look through for clues. Or at least have somewhere to hide. He stopped in front of it.

The act itself was easy enough, there were plenty of parts lying around in the rubble. In all honesty it took him maybe a minute. There. He turned to walk away, only to hear a vaguely familiar voice coming from behind him.

“... Who could have fixed it already?” the voice cried, sounding frustrated.

“I-I did!” Oli stuttered as he turned, afraid of the danger this strangely familiar voice could offer.

“Huh?” the voice said, and Oli flinched, but raised his eyes to meet the strangers. Her blue hair was swept up in a messy ponytail, her clothes were red and black in a foreign style Oli had never seen before, and she had a white stick of something in her mouth that reminded Oli vaguely of a fry. But there was no mistaking her face, the face Oli had labored painstakingly to fix.

“Maria?!” He exclaimed, hardly believing his own eyes.

“Oli!” she cried, expression brightening with a painfully familiar smile.

A sound came from behind her and her eyes widened, a note of fear in them as her companions glanced backwards. Oli wasted no time. He thrust a hand on the wall and forced the solid rock to give way, allowing her and her companions to flee inside. Then he stepped in himself, closing the wall behind him.

He knew he should turn the intruders over, but he didn’t care. Something was horribly wrong in the Room of Swords, enough so that he would take his chances.

Besides, he thought as he could hear the sounds of confusion coming from the other side. He had lost Maria once. He would not lose her again.

Gatalea threw her arms around the man and embraced him for the first time, and the man, Pgymalion, finally found joy.

[leonidas-banana-phone]

A New Batch of Shinies

Spooks, Ven and Sage travel to Kamino to gather the rest of Sage’s squad. 

Words: 2996

No warnings for this one :)

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

She tugs on the stiff uniform as she runs across the wet landing platform, the cold air whips around them. A Kaminoan waits just inside the door of the facility, their hands clasped gently in front of them. They're graceful in a terrifyingly cold way. She bows, "You must be Lieutenant Cerez. Welcome to our facility." 

"Thank you, ma'am. Glad to be here." Spooks put on her best officer smile. Ven and Sage grumble into their comms. She tries her best to shake them off, it can't be easy coming back here after all this time. She's heard what happens to clones when they're sent back to Kamino, decommissioning, or reconditioning, there are even rumors of them being killed, horrible, terrible things.

The Kaminoan looks over at her clone escort, Sage and Ven, as well as the rest of Sage's squad, Oli, Worm, Clocks, and Enlo. They wanted to be front and center when they met the rest of their squad. She almost sneers at them, it puts her on edge. "Let's get started, shall we? I'll give you a tour of our facility while your men meet the new squad."

"Of course, ma'am, lead the way." She takes the offered position as she walks next to her.

She looks over to see Ven and Sage being led away by two troopers, their armor decorated in black and white.

"I feel this squad will be satisfactory for what your division needs." The Kaminoan tells her. The lieutenant just nods along. "What exactly does your division do, Lieutenant?"

"Reconnaissance," Axta replies bluntly.

The Kaminoan hums in what she hopes is an approving tone. They walk through a set of blast doors and her breath all but wheezes out of her, the room is basked in a soothing blue glow, medical officers wander around with datapads peering into the cribs and tanks. "This is where we decant the clones." The Kaminoan leans down and gently picks up the baby.

Axta stands frozen, staring at a baby in a tank. She's read the mechanics on the gestation of babies without an actual womb but to see it is something else completely. It's so sterile and cold.

The Kaminoan offers her the child, who is bundled up in a white blanket when she is called by one of the officers. She gently takes the bundle and cradles it close to her chest. Axta didn't have a mothering bone in her body, she was awkward, stiff, her movements jerky and unsure. The baby has brown eyes and brown skin, just like the rest of the clones. He reaches out for a strand of her hair that has fallen from its pinned spot. "No, no, no. You can't have that." She lets him grab onto her finger instead, his skin contrasts hers, the light in the room makes her skin almost glow.  

An alarm goes off on one of the nearby monitors and a clone medic rushes towards her, his own bundle in his arms, "Hold him for me?" He hands the baby off to her with a single-minded focus. She situates the second baby in her arms and he coos at her.

She bounces both boys, "I can do this. It's just a baby." She murmurs to them.

"Hey LT! Where did the longnecks drag you off to?" Sage's voice comes from her wrist comm.

She tries her best to raise it to her face, one of the boys tries to grab at the flashing light, "Not exactly sure, she disappeared after handing me a baby. And then a medic handed me another one."

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

Sage leans over to Ven, "They took her to the decanting lab." He tries to keep the grin out of his voice.

Ven rolled his eyes, "Of course they did," He pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Oh thank the gods, someone took them, I'm going to come find you." Her voice cuts through the comm.

Ven grabs Sage's arm, "I'm coming to get you, stay where you are."

"Uh, yeah. Sure." She sounds like she isn't paying attention to what he's actually saying.

Ven sighs, "She's going to kill me way before this war does." He turns to Sage and his squad, "I'll be back in a bit." He turns on his heel and moves down the hall.

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

She wanders through the white halls, clones look her over but don't stop her as she tries to take everything in. She turns down another hallway, this one with significantly less foot traffic, she breaks out of her haze when she hears hushed giggling and whispers. "Shh, we have to be quiet."

She pads silently to the dark alcove where the noise is coming from.

"What if Commander Blitz finds us? We'll be in so much trouble!" Another voice says.

"You're just embarrassed cause you got us lost!"

When she peeks around the corner she sees three cadets arguing in the shadows. One of them looks at her, "Oh no." His brown eyes are wide.

"Are you guys lost?" She asks.

One of them steps forward, clearing his throat and standing straight, "No sir, we're not." He tells her.

"I heard you whispering, Small Fry. You should work on that." She tells him.

He deflates, his shoulders slumping, "She knows." He groans.

"That's alright, I'm lost too. We can be lost together. I won't let you guys get in trouble." She crouches so that she's eye level with them, "I've got an ARC trooper looking for me right now."

One of the other two pushes his brother to the side, he has blonde hair, "An ARC trooper?!" He asks excitedly.

"ARC-4753. We call him Lieutenant Ven." She tells him.

The third cadet stays silent, his arms crossed over his chest as he stares at the ground, he fiddles nervously with his shirt, worrying the fabric between his fingers, when he meets her eye she can see a scar on his cheek, "I got us lost, sir." He looks so serious for someone so young, they couldn't have been more than six, which means they would only be three standard years old.

"What's your names?" She asks softly.

The excitable one speaks first, almost bouncing on his feet, "I'm five-two!"

"CT-4567, sir." The serious one tells her.

She waits for the third one's name, "That's Shy. He's the only in our squad with a name so far," Five-Two tells her.

Shy looks up at her for a brief moment before his eyes are back to looking at his boots. "Alright," She stands and points to Five-Two, "Five-Two, Forty-seven sixty-seven," She points to the next cadet, and then she points to Shy, "And Shy. I think I can remember that. I'm Spooks, let's go find us an ARC trooper, shall we?"

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

When Ven turns the corner he finally spots her, her pink hair standing out in the vast amount of white. When the troopers blocking his line of sight finally moves he sees that a cadet is clinging to her back and another one is holding her hand, a third circles around her babbling on and on. She smiles and nods along.

Ven stops in his tracks, the sight makes his heart flutter. She's treating his younger brothers like they're actual people, not just future cannon fodder, she treats them like they actually matter.

The cadet on her back whispers something in her ear and her laugh rings out in the cold hall, it's a sound that takes his breath away, he blinks, reigning himself back in before he continues down the hall, "Lieutenant!" He calls out.

She whips towards him almost throwing the cadet off, he clutches her neck tighter. She looks down at the cadet still clutching her hand and says something to him with a small smile, pointing to Ven. The boy's eyes go wide, the one on her back slides to the floor and straightens his fatigues, the others fix their posture.

"I thought I told you to stay where you were." Ven crosses his arms over his chest plate, leveling a glare at Cerez.

"These cadets decided to show me around instead." She smiles.

"And are these three cadets happen to be the same ones that Commander Blitz reported missing and unaccounted for?" Ven looks down at one of them, he has blonde hair, a harmless mutation.

She shrugs, "They aren't exactly missing, they didn't leave the facility." She's one of the ones that know the regs just enough to find loopholes in them.

His glare intensifies.

"They were misplaced, not lost." She shies away a bit.

He motions over a clone dressed in black and white, "I think these are your missing cadets. Luckily, they asked Spooks for help."

"Oh good. We were getting worried, I'll get them back to where they need to be." The clone places a gloved hand on the shoulders of the two boys who step forward, the third still clutches at Cerez's hand.

She crouches down in front of him, "It's alright. This trooper will take you back to the rest of your squad. No reason to be scared." She explains, laying a hand on his shoulder and giving him a soft smile.

The cadet's eyes flit between her and the trooper before he steps in line with his brothers. She gives the trooper a nod before he leads the three away.

"Can we go get the new squad now?" Ven's voice is harsher than he wanted it to be.

She looks down at her boots, "My apologies, Lieutenant. Won't happen again." A piece of her hair falls onto her forehead, he wants to brush it aside but he restrains himself, his fingertips itching.

He sighs, "We're behind schedule, lets get moving."

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

Pep stands rigid, watching the controlled chaos of the hangar from under the safety of his visor. He's supposed to be excited about this, getting his assignment shouldn't make him feel this unsure. He takes a quick glance at Card, he's standing tall with his shoulders pulled back, his posture loose and easy.

He runs through what he knows about his assignment: 694th Reconnaissance Battalion, his platoon is led by ARC-4753 and an officer, Lt. Axta Cerez, he sounds like a decent guy. His squad leader is CT-4644.

"Get out of your head, Pep." Smidge cuts through the nervous ramblings of his mind, "Just relax. Everything will be fine."

Pep squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath, willing away the nerves. They're lucky, their squad wasn't split up, the platoon needed five more men, it's easier to send a training squad than it is to shuffle around troopers already out in the field.

A gasp comes from Smidge's vocoder, "Is that them?" He asks nodding towards the group of men in battered armor. An ARC trooper and an officer lead the group. The ARC's face is set in a stern expression, a scar cuts across his left cheek. He can't take his eyes off of the officer, her skin is a mix of grey and a light purple, her hair a pink that can only compare to the pictures of contraband candy they were shown, it curls and twists, pinned back. What surprises him most is the scarring across her eyes and the bridge of her nose, the cybernetics seems to look past his visor into his own mismatched eyes.

When the ARC steps in front of them, the squad snaps to attention. "I am ARC-4753, or as you will address me, Lt. Ven. This is Lt. Cerez." She takes a step back and a trooper steps forward, his hair is longer, unkempt with a green stripe, a small tattoo of a plant decorates his right temple, "This is CT-4644. Sargent Sage. He is your squad leader." Sage is trying to keep the smile off his lips but is failing miserably. He's clearly excited to have new recruits.

The woman steps up beside him, "Welcome to the 694th. We're glad to have you." Her smile is meant to comfort them but with her eyes, it just looks eerie, she looks almost like a ghost. "At ease."

Pep relaxes minutely. The four men behind Lt. Cerez move forward, one of them slings an arm around her shoulders, she smiles up at him, "What do you think, LT?" His hair is cut into a mohawk and a crooked grin covers his face.

"I think they'll do just fine." She says.

"We're needed back at Triple Zero, we should get moving." The ARC says coldly.

She nods, "Of course, lead the way."

Pep looks to Card and then to Flap and Flutter, none of them have taken off their helmets yet, not wanting to leave the safety of their visors quite yet. Compared to the seven of them they look like chumps, their armor spotless and buffed while the other plates are painted a lighter green the paint covering scratches and dings sustained in battle, with the scars on their skin to match. They're real soldiers.

Card bumps him with his shoulder when he walks by, "I said out of your head." He grumbles.

"Yeah, sorry." Pep looks at his boots before he follows.

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

They're quiet in the gunship, Oli and Enlo argue about the best way to calibrate the gyro-stabilizers on a JT-12 jetpack when one of them finally speaks up, "Why not calibrate during test flights? The user can calibrate it to their exact needs and specifications. It's unorthodox and can be a bit dangerous but it's more accurate."

Worm steps forward, "Not bad, kid. What's your name?"

"CT-7938, sir." The trooper replies.

"Your name, not your designation, Rookie." Sage buts in.

"Oh, uh. Flap, sir." The trooper reaches up to pull off his helmet. Axta finds herself staring, holding her breath. She shouldn't be nervous, she has a rough idea of what he looks like, she's in a gunship full of clones. She's excited to see what is different about him, what his personality has done to his facial structure, what his eyes look like and what color his hair is.

When he finally breaks the seal on his helmet the first thing she sees is a white stripe in his hair, it's small, just a patch with the regulation cut but it's definitely there.

Enlo grins, "You gotta spot there, kid."

Flap reaches up and tugs at the tuft, "It's just a mutation, Flutter has the same one." Flutter silently takes off his helmet as well, a small smile on his face as he too pulls at the white tuft.

Oli laughs, "You two twins?"

"We were grown in the same growth jar. It happens sometimes." Flutter is soft-spoken, everything about him has a soft quality, his eyes, his smile.

"What's your number?" Clocks speaks up.

"CT-7939," Flutter responds.

"Heh, cute." Oli giggles. "Flap and Flutter."

Worm elbows Oli, "Don't be mean. Do we need a reminder of how you got your name?"

Oli's face goes serious, "You wouldn't dare." His voice drops an octave.

Axta's eyes go wide.

Worm smirks, "Olee-oop."

Oli launches himself at Worm, "You bastard!"

Ven rolls his eyes, "Sage, control your idiots before they break something."

"Ey! Come on, not in front of the shinies!" Sage separates them.

"So why are we headed to Coruscant instead of out in the field? The rest of the battalion there? Ct-8721 by the way, you can call me Card." The trooper has a half-smile on his face, his stance easy and relaxed.

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

Pep notices a change in the group right away, the troopers drop their eyes to the floor and they draw closer to each other. Lieutenant Cerez has a neutral face when she steps forward, "The 694th Recon Batallion consists of one platoon at the moment. A surprise attack on their base took almost everyone out. Lt. Ven's platoon was on a scouting mission, Sage's squad was the closest so they ran back to help, he lost five men." Her tone is grim.

"There were no survivors?" Smidge asks.

She shakes her head, "No, there weren't any, that includes both The General and her padawan."

"Wait, so who's in charge then?" Flap asks.

"Spooks and I have been handling everything." Lt. Ven says.

"Will those men be replaced at all?" Card asks.

"At the moment, no. For now, we run specialized missions. Hopefully, we will have one soon to get you out into the field. For now we wait until we're needed." Lt. Cerez explains.

Pep finds himself nodding along with her words. They were made to adapt to anything so this shouldn't hard to adjust to. The woman smiles at him, the same haunting smile as before. "What's your name, trooper?" She asks.

Pep reaches up to pop the seals on his helmet, Card nudges him, "He's a little shy." He laughs.

He removes his helmet, "CT-8417, ma'am. Um, Pep."

She smiles, "I look forward to working with you, Pep."

"Last two, come on. We're almost back to the cruiser." Sage is glaring at Oli still.

Card speaks up first, "8721, sir. They call me Card."

Smidge adjusts the medpack on his back, "CT-7996. Squad medic. Smidge." Smidge's introduction is clinical and to the point.

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

A feeling of warmth sluggishly worms its way to her, she barely feels anything anymore after years of neglecting her Force training, after giving up that life, but every now and again she gets a wave of what those around her are feeling. Sometimes it's overwhelming happiness, joy, belonging, love, hope. Other times its profound sadness, grief and loss, anxiety, and fear. She's glad that her men have found a way to start healing after what happened.

She knows it will take a while for them to come to terms with the loss of everything they had known but at least this is a start.

[nyarisu]

‘96 Bizzare Festival liveblogging?

Ok let’s do this (is it even called liveblogging if I just post it all at once I want one single clean post I like writing things in a doc beforehand and preferabbly without too many spelling mistakes my hands stopped cooperating a year or so ago). I tryed liveblogging only once before (Paris) but somewhere in the middle I started paying more attention to the live and less to the writing? XD

Rammstein

Paul with sunglases looks badass

I kind of forgot how cool this song is?

Asdfghjkl Till’s duck face after the first „Rammstein” was like „we’re cool and we know it” (I find myself doing some of his faces while listening to certain songs, this is one of them)

Everyone wears glasses but Schneider, you’re breaking the combo (Flake has glasses cause he blind so it counts)

Still... what is with RZK and that wierd skirt?

Lol Paul trying to be serious

Like really what can be more cool than a man on fire? They really nailed it with that effect (though I preffer the other coat)

Yes, of course, Richard’s leg

Schneider’s pants were Reise Reise inspired. Trully a man ahead of his time

Ugh Schneider’s posture is so bad I don’t even care if that’s correct for drumming or not someone not staying with their back straight is one pet peeve of mine

Der Meister~

„and the crowd goes cRAZY!!”

(do people really want to hear me fangirl over Till now that he’s removed his glasses? ’96 is not ’98 but he’s still damn hot)

Nice gestures tho

Yes this is a really nice and energetic song

And of course Till has to ruin something poor micstand and Paul running out of the way XD

DON’T HIT YOUR HEAD YOU DUMB BABY

Oh~ now I noticed his... tank top? Whatever he’s wearing has the sides held by strings or something hmmmm some scissors could come in handy rn ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Lauft lauft LAUFT  L A U F T

„euch zerbrechen~”

I like when Schneider does this thing when he’s using only his legs but he’s hitting the air with his arms on rhythm

What is under that thing Reesh? XD

He ran away

Weisses Fleish

Everytime I hear the intro I can’t but think of that gif/tags

Really weird angle for Schneider?

Even low res you can see the Kruspe Tiddies XD

THE BOOTS! I love the sparkling boots so much too bad they didn’t film his entry he probably jumped from a speaker or rolled or something

I love how Till’s so expresive with his hands you can see he’s feeling the song

Naww Paul and Reesh going in a circle<3 two circles

And then of course, Flake’s spazzing dance (wierd cyptid vibes)

The till hammer doesn’t have nowdays the same energy it used to have (understandably so)

Oli looks so cool. Also baby

Ache zu Ache

I love the till hammer during „Auf dem Kreuze lieg' ich jetzt” why didn’t the film that (ok but Flake was dramtic enough during that to excuse it XD)

And everyone’s favourite part<3 „Ich komm wieder” and mine especially „In zehn Tagen” which usually has Till counting on his fingers to ten and that’s cute

Where did he disappear? Oh there he is

The whole little play/act before the last chorus was cute

„Ich komm wieeeeedeeeeeer”

Seeman

*doll on stage* that’s Seeman right? („it’s a titties out kind of song” XD)

Oli’s intro is always so nice<3

Poor doll

I’m curious what was the general reaction when they heard Till’s melodic voice on Seeman (tho I guess they’d already knew so the shock wasn’t probably that big)

Yes Till I know you have nice muscles you don’t need to rub that in my face

*tries not to comment on the Kruspe Tiddies again*

Is it just me or Till’s general size is a little smaller that let’s say even LAB?

(god I hate the crotch thing on those pants)

The way he mimics with „kalt” breaks my heart a little bit

DRSG

The intro<3

Flake is spazzing again XD and Paul and Oli cool as always~ The whole live seemed a lot more serious than what we’re used to

This song has such a uinque energy about it

What are Paul and Richard giggling about? Anyway, cute

Flake and Schneider have totall opposite energies

Of course something HAD to blew up

It’s funny when he goes into till hammer only to stop after 2.5 seconds XD

Is so wierd to hear this song live without that pause in the middle I just expect some sort of dramatic break XD

„hinterheeeeeeerrrrrrrRRRR”

Laichzeit

AND NOW MY BABY

The intro! The keyboards! The fucking lyrics!

A real handbanger and one of the few songs that make me stand and actually want to dance

It’s cute how he gestures on „au dem boden” like he’s actually trying to convince you they fell on the ground

Till your slut is showing again XD

„AUGEN”

And that shot of people dancing! I’m not saying that’s one of the reasons this live recording (of the song) is one of my favourites but it probably is (this, and the clearly 90’s... well, everything XD)

DON’T rip your hair out. Bitch.

„laichzeeeeeit. es ist laich.zeit”

Wow Paul and Schneider have such energy you’re filled with it just by watching them but I’m still going to sleep after this

Honestly the best way to listen to this song is either with your eyes closed or dancing like mad (preferably while high? Will have to test that sometime)

Also the lyrics! They are the best thing to exist I want to know exactly what the fuck went through Till’s head when he wrote this (do I really want tho?) and what the general R+ reaction was

I love the keyboards on this song so much

„uberall fischmilch” lol ok :))

Those fire alarms are fantastic because they are so loud here but I think you can barely hear them on the album version?

The last verse sounds so good it’s so melodic compared to the rest of the song and also in general. Till’s voice conveys the sadness so well here

And that little dance<3

I like when someone goes to play their instrument beside the drummer like „I’m here bby you’re not alone”

 I went to watch Laichzeit again because *chef fingers kiss*

(@theelliottsmiths  did I do it right? XD)

[thesilvermoonregistry]

A Letter from Oli

Olivyn’s eyes darted across the empty office in suspicion as he sat at his desk. He wrung his hands in slight nervousness before drawing a quill and dropping it a pool of ink. In the distance, somewhere far away yet close by, a low guttural moan could be heard, muffled through the layers of stone and wood beneath the young elf’s feet.

“ Dear Lady Amariesse The letters I have been sending to you have clearly not reached their desired destination. Presumptions that my observations at the lab, as well as here at the Registry, would lead to attempts to keep the trail cold were only confirmed when you informed me of this. What’s worse, I found my most recent letter torn in pieces and scattered across my own office this morning. A clear sign that I’m correct in my suspicions.

 I, like many of our kind, have come face to face with the Legion and their ilk. The horrific sounds many demons tend to make are unmistakable. I hear those very sounds echoing from the basement of the lab every night. To make matters far, far worse, I have been hearing those same horrific noises beneath the floors of our very own Registry as well. I hear them as I write this.

 I am confident in saying someone is harboring demons in the very place we call home. Every finger points to certain members of our ranks. I dare not mention them in this letter. It’s too much of a risk.

 Tasty and I would like to meet with you to discuss this matter further. Meet us at the farm in two days time. It’s imperative we find out what exactly is happening and how we can put a stop to it.

 Hafh ya fm'latgh 

 Olivyn”

 With a quick scrawl of his own name dashed across the bottom of the parchment, Oli hastily tossed his quill aside and rose to his feet, letter in hand, moving fast for the door to make his way to Riesse ‘s room. There he quietly slid the letter under the door and walked off. There was much to do... it would be another late night for the young researcher.

[smkkbert]

Time for a story - Stomachache

Author’s note: This is one of my favorite chapters I have written in a while, especially because it is very deep-layered. It shows that even after all the years, Oliver and Felicity still make mistakes. Also, the life they lead doesn't go by without affecting their kids.

That being said, there are some details in here that will continue on through the rest of the chapters up until the very end of this Family AU.

Enjoy!

Chewing on the end of her pen, Felicity ogled Oliver from her spot behind the computers. She couldn’t help but feel perfectly turned on by the view he offered in his Green Arrow suit. The tight leather accentuated all the right parts of his body which was every part to be honest. It showed how broad his chest was, his tight the muscles in his shoulders and arms were. It made his legs look even more muscular and it did kind of show how well-stocked he was.

In addition to all of that and most importantly, it just screamed with everything it was that he was a hero. What was not to love about that?

“Do we have to expect anything extraordinary?”

At Tommy’s questions, Oliver shot a brief glance towards Felicity. Only when she shook her head, he answered, “No, I don’t think so. Everything should be quiet today. It’s just the usual patrolling to make sure it stays that way and to keep the usual criminals on the tips of their toes. I suggest that you keep an eye on the Northwest of the city. Laurel, you cover the south. I take the Glades and everything northern from it, so-”

Before he could finish his sentence, the alarm of Felicity’s computers interrupted him. Turning in her chair, Felicity hurried to call up all the information she needed.

“Someone broke into InnoTech.”

“InnoTech?”

“A startup that has just now bought a small building in North District,” Felicity explained, and she didn’t even have to call up information on that because she knew their CEO, and it hadn’t been that long ago that she had met him the last time. “Their CEO, Ruben Midas, is a bioengineer. He applied at Queen Inc, but I didn’t have a job for him. Only a couple of months later, he built his own company. He is working on developing high-functioning, lifelike robots. They are supposed to be as real as possible, going as far as having their own personality. The last time I read about the project, they have just discovered to use something close to real skin on those robots. That way, they even feel like human beings.”

“Really?” Tommy asked. “Science Fiction is really becoming real now?”

Felicity shot him a brief glance over his shoulder. “Science Fiction invented mobile phones before they became real. The same applies for helicopters or even tasers. They appeared in science fiction literature before they became real.”

Tommy puckered his lips, and Felicity could almost see the cogs working in his head as he considered asking her if this was true. Although he was relatively new to the Arrow family, at least compared to the other team members, he seemed to know by now that it was never a good idea to ask Felicity if she was real. She always knew what she was saying because she was incredibly smart and had the whole online world to gather knowledge from.

“These robots they are developing,” Felicity directed the conversation back to the subject, “are supposed to serve us housemaids in the near future, but the ultimate destination is to design them, so they can replace people in every area of life. If that happens, they will be able to take on every job we know of so far and make decisions based on the criteria they are programmed to. They won’t necessarily know much leeway, but-“

Felicity shrugged her shoulders, unsure what else to say about this. She couldn’t say that she herself supported this direction of technology. If it was up to her, technology was there to serve people. It shouldn’t replace them, and it shouldn’t be able to develop any kind of personality that would eventually progress to have a life on its own. Technology like that was way too dangerous to call into life.

“Gross,” Laurel agreed with Felicity’s thoughts, crossing her arms in front of her chest and stepping behind Felicity’s chair to look at the monitors of the computers. “What else do we know about the burglary?”

“Three guys broke in. They are still there,” Felicity explained. “According to the footage of the security cameras, they are trying to steal the current robots. They are trying to program them from the lab, I guess. I am watching the real-time protocol of their work. Those are not amateurs working on that. They do know what they are doing.”

“We should go there,” Oliver said firmly. “Now.”

Quickly, Felicity grabbed her tablet, got up from the chair and already headed towards the back of the bunker where their black van was parked. “I am coming with you.”

“Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.”

Before Felicity could walk past Oliver, he wrapped an arm around her stomach and held her back from continuing her way towards the van, making Felicity bite down on her tongue. She had hoped that she could spare herself to discuss this decision with Oliver first. She knew too well that he didn’t like her to be anywhere near any real danger. Apparently, she had been wrong though.

She saw Laurel nodding towards the van, giving Tommy a firm sign to leave the two alone. Their steps echoed against the naked concrete walls of their hideout as they distanced themselves from their friends. Felicity waited until those sounds had drowned out before she turned towards Oliver.

“Look, there is a lot of technology involved there, and I am pretty sure that InnoTech does have a really good security that can probably just be hacked if I am anywhere close, so I can find a secret door to get into their net before I find access to their main servers. That is why it’s the best if I join you there.”

To Felicity’s surprise, Oliver didn’t look as opposed to the idea as she thought he would. Usually, he would find a hundred reasons why she shouldn’t join them in the field within three seconds. Even if reason was on her sight, he would find excuses to ask her to stay back.

Putting his hands to his hips, he let that idea go through his head though. He frowned deeply, and Felicity could almost see him jumping over his own shadow to make this work. He nodded his head slowly.

“What about our agreement?” he asked after a moment, cocking his head. “We said we wouldn’t go into the field together anymore. Thea and Roy are still on vacation, and John is accompanying Lyla to some ARGUS-related event. We can’t call in either of them, and I wouldn’t like for Tommy and Laurel to go in there alone since they would be outnumbered. Should I call Barry and ask if he can join us?”

“That’s not going to be necessary because we won’t go into the field together,” Felicity replied firmly, straightening the posture of her body to show that she was firm on her stance in this. She doubted that Laurel and Tommy would have trouble defeating three guys together as Oliver had single-handedly taken out two dozen well-trained fighters more than once already, but she accepted his concerns. “I will wait in the van, while you catch those three guys. I will just try to make sure all doors will open for you and those robots don’t get in your way.”

Oliver sucked in a deep breath, and the muscles in his chest tensed. She knew that this decision wasn’t easy on him. She could almost see that he wanted to agree with her decision, but had trouble to do so. After all those years that keeping her safe was his most important goal, it was not easy to deviate from that and try something else.

“Promise me you will stay in the van,” Oliver asked, narrowing his eyes on her slightly. “Whatever happens, you will stay in the van.”

“When there is no immediate danger that I can help with,” Felicity restricted Oliver’s demand because she wanted to be honest with him, “I will stay in the van. I promise.”

She knew that Oliver wanted and probably needed more. He needed her to stay safe no matter what would happen. It was just a promise that she knew she couldn’t give him, not without fearing that she might break it. If Oliver or anyone else on the team was in danger, she couldn’t sit back and just do nothing. She never would.

Oliver sucked in a deep breath, nodding his head once more. His jaws were clenched, telling her that this wasn’t an easy decision for him to make. He probably knew as well as she knew that she couldn’t just sit back and do nothing if any family member was in danger though. After all, they were quite similar to each other, and Oliver wouldn’t be able to sit back in a situation like that either.

“Alright,” he said eventually. Despite everything. “Let’s go.”

→ → → → →

Cowering on some free-floating ceiling beam, Oliver watched the group of criminals heading towards the back exit where Felicity had found their van. Instead of those three guys they had seen on the surveillance footage, there was a group of around fifteen people though. All of them were completely dressed in black, and they moved through the hallways of the building like a shoal of fishes on their way to the warmth.

Well, Oliver wasn’t really sure if fishes wanted to get to where it was warm. He was just thinking about that shoal of fishes in Finding Nemo. That was what this group of criminals looked like.

Oliver exchanged a brief glance with Tommy, who was leaning against a pillar in the gallery and watching the criminals from there. Tommy shrugged his shoulders too, so he guessed that Tommy couldn’t explain the increased number of criminals down there either. Glancing towards the ceiling where Laurel was watching the scene from outside the glass roof, Oliver guessed that they needed the smartest person on this team to tell them what was happening here.

Touching the suit right over his heart to activate the comms, he asked with an almost growling whisper, “Overwatch, what’s going on there?”

He could hear Felicity typing on her keyboard furiously. Oliver had no idea if she was trying to run her facial recognition project on these guys or if she wanted to hack the security cameras in here. He couldn’t say that he exactly cared either.

“Wow!”

Felicity’s exclaim made Oliver frown. “Overwatch?”

“We have really reached the highest level of science fiction now,” Felicity explained, “because they even fooled me which we all know isn’t easy and-“

“Overwatch,” Oliver interrupted her gently, “we need you to focus.”

“Right.” Felicity cleared her throat. “According to the footage of the infrared camera, those are robots. Hence, that have to be the twelve robots InnoTech has designed so far. According to the interview Midas gave last week, those robots have different personalities and were designed for different jobs. They are all supposed to work in small service jobs.”

“They are carrying weapons,” Oliver whispered.

“Maybe that’s supposed to make them look like one of them,” Felicity suggested. “If the police caught them, they could use the robots as a distraction.”

“Do we have to expect the robots to fight us?” Tommy asked. “Three against fifteen is quite the fight, especially given those weapons and the fact that we don’t know how capable those robots are.”

“Maybe my Canary Cry can-“

“No, the risk of components of the robots flying around and hurting you is too high,” Felicity explained. “It might cause explosions or anything like that. We don’t know how many high-functioning things are working together there to make this happen.”

“Do we other options?” Oliver asked.

“You can just ignore them,” Felicity explained. “For those robots to move, every single move hast to be installed by a written code in their software. I doubt that robots designed to do the dishes or work as a concierge have been programmed to shoot weapons. They can carry them, but I highly doubt that they can take an aim or even pull the trigger, and those three criminals aren’t bright enough to write those codes within the few minutes they had had. They didn’t even manage to switch off the security completely.”

“That’s a good point,” Laurel said. “Green Arrow?”

Oliver trusted Felicity more than he trusted anyone, so he agreed with Laurel. “We go down.”

As soon as he had said it, he and Tommy jumped down from their positions. Laurel used her Canary Cry to break the glass of the rooftop and followed right after them. They were so in synch in the field that they didn’t have to talk about it. Automatically, each one of them was taking on one of the criminals, trying to disarm them.

It wasn’t long until Oliver noticed that they had been wrong though. Those robots, despite all the good reasons against it, were pretty good at fighting. Their movements and quick and fluent. Their punches were strong and precise. Whenever Oliver thought that he had found a weak spot, something that made them vulnerable, they were increasing their effort. They seemed to learn their opponents’ tactics and developed a fitting strategy to defend themselves and attack harder.

Oliver knew that Felicity wasn’t wrong when it came to technology. When she said that robots like these needed differentiated orders, Oliver believed her. Apparently, these robots had been developed a lot better than InnoTech had made it out to be. He guessed keeping an innovation like this secret meant that there was something illegal about it. Since this were battle robots much more than service robots, there was probably a lot illegal about this.

“Our guys are escaping,” Felicity told them eventually as Oliver, Tommy and Laurel were too busy keeping the robots in check to have eyes for the guys escaping them right now. “They are heading south.”

“Neither of us can leave here.”

Oliver managed to throw the robot that had tried to attack him with a dagger against the other six robots he had been fighting. He knew that it wouldn’t get him a lot of time, but at least he could take a short breath and think. There had to be some way that they could take these down.

“These guys are heading towards the lab,” Felicity told him just when the robots pulled themselves together and attacked him once more. “If they steal the plans-“

“Overwatch, we have to find a way to get rid of these robots here before we can save the plans,” Oliver told her. “If we manage to fight these off, we will try to save the plans. Any ideas?”

“Try to outsmart them. Those robots are always adapting to your level of fighting. If you pretend not to be that good of a fighter, they will probably phase down their effort, and you should be able to take them out,” Felicity replied hurriedly. “In the meantime, I will stop these guys from taking the plans for these monsters with them.”

Oliver tried to tune down his acts, but it was anything but easy. All those years, he had always given his best because it was a life-or-death situation every time that he was facing a criminal in this suit. He never knew if he was going to make it out of that fight alive and well. Not giving his best was the opposite of everything he believed in.

He trusted Felicity enough to be willing to give it a try if his muscles decided to obey to it anytime soon. To his relief, he could see Tommy and Laurel having the same kind of trouble to just decrease the effort.

“Can you stop the guys from the van?” Oliver asked, figuring that maybe talking to Felicity would allow him to be distracted and make him seem like less of a fighter indeed. “Can you hack the lab and block it or delete the plans from the servers before-“

“No, the lab is secured really well. I don’t get into the servers.”

Finally, Oliver managed to slow down his movements, reacting less quickly to the robots attempts to hurt him. His punches became less hard and less precise. He even missed his target once or twice and let the robots hit him instead.

It took a moment, but he realized that Felicity’s plan was working. The slower he moved, the slower the robots moved. The more punches he failed to land, the more punches the robots missed too. The later he reacted to the robots’ movements, the later they reacted to them too.

Apparently, those robots still had some potential for optimization. It certainly was a good feature that they adapted to the opponent’s training level if they were designed as training dummies. Oliver was almost sure that this wasn’t the real reason they had been designed.

“Okay, I am in now.”

“I knew you could hack those servers,” Oliver said, pride audible in his voice. “Your plan is working by the way. The robots are slowing down. I just need to find a way to take them out now.”

“Good,” Felicity replied. “I didn’t manage to hack those robots though which is why I am inside of InnoTech and on the way to the Labs. I hacked into the electricity network and made sure our three guys get stuck in the elevator. They are currently climbing through the elevator shaft to get to the labs, but I will be faster. Focus on getting rid of the robots and then come to the lab to take down these three.”

“Overwatch, you go back to the van.”

Oliver’s voice was firm from tension. He felt his will to slow down his fighting fading. The fear for Felicity’s life caused every single muscle in his body to tense. There was nothing he wanted more than to get to Felicity, lift her over his shoulder and carry her back to the van where she was safe.

“That’s crap. I am almost there and-“

Felicity stopped abruptly, and Oliver felt his heart going out. His need to be where she was and make sure she got out of this safe was everything he could think about. If something had happened to her-

“Okay, these guys are on the other end of the hallway now, so I gotta shut up to focus on distracting them before they realize I am here,” she whispered, her voice so low that he could barely hear it over the loud noises of the fight he and the rest of the team was involved in. “Just trust me on this please. I know what I am doing.”

With that, Oliver heard the low sounds that told him that Felicity had logged herself out of the comms. His heart tightened in his chest even more.

Felicity had been in the field quite some times over the years. There were times that Oliver could deal better with it than others. Tonight, he hated the idea that Felicity was out in the field because it was against what they had discussed before. It was against their rule, and he couldn’t get rid of these robots easily to go help her either.

Oliver wished Hermione Granger was here to use that spell she had used on Ron at the end of the first movie to make him relax while he was held captive by those vines. Oliver hardly remembered that movie although he had seen it so many times already. Felicity had always been there with him and she had talked Nerdish with one of the kids while they had been watching the movie and that had been so much more interesting to be honest.

Thinking about the danger Felicity could possibly be in right now, Oliver had trouble to relax again. As much as he told himself that it was the key to get to her, he couldn’t do it.

All those times she had been in danger and he had nearly lost her flashed up in front of his eyes. He remembered how Cupid had tried to abduct her the night Felicity had been giving birth to Emmy, and how that crazy lady had planned on cutting Emmy out of Felicity’s body and leaving her there to die. He remembered almost losing her to Foster, her stalker from high school, when he had been working with Cupid to tear them and their family apart. He remembered how she had been attacked in the underground parking of QI when she had been pregnant with Millie.

And Oliver doubted that he would ever forget the call he had received just a couple of weeks ago when Felicity had been attacked in Gotham City. She had been at the other end of the US, far away from where he could protect her. She had almost ended up with a bullet in his head, and he wouldn’t have been there.

Oliver knew that nothing would have changed if he had been there with Felicity. The meta-human, who had attacked her, had wanted to make her suffer to make her half-brother suffer.

Oliver had talked about all of this with Dr. Rosario. He had told her how he had felt when Bruce had called him to tell him what had happened and all the time it had taken to go to Gotham. They had also talked about the unsafe feeling that had taken over when he had watched the video of the attack.

Finally, Oliver managed to calm down enough to slow down his fighting once more. It didn’t take long for the robots to adapt to what he was offering. As soon as their fighting was slowed down enough, he urged them into a corner of the hallway. Within less than three seconds, he took them out one by one then. They ended up with an arrow shot into the center of their hardware, right where the human heart would be.

“Black Bow, Black Canary,” he said and shot a brief glance in their directions. “I am heading out to check on Overwatch. Do as she has suggested. It works.”

Although Laurel and Tommy were still having trouble fighting these robots, Oliver let their sides. Laurel and Tommy were armed, and they did have quite some training in hand-to-hand combat. Felicity did not have any weapons with her, and Oliver wasn’t even sure she could or would use them if she did. Pulling the trigger of a gun was not something that was easy to come back from after all.

Oliver ran down the hallway towards the stairwell. He shot a grappling arrow to the ceiling and roped down the eight floors to the basement where the high-tech lab was located. Even through the leather gloves he could feel the burning sting in his palms, but he didn’t care. He just continued running.

The sounds of shots being fired made his heartbeat quicken even more. The sounds of blood rushing in his ears almost drowned out the noises of the shots and everything around him. His muscles were aching, telling him that he would have trouble moving tomorrow, but he still put a lot of effort into running even faster. If he didn’t make it in time, he wouldn’t get up ever again. One day without being able to move was nothing compared to that.

As soon as he had turned the corner towards the hallway that turned right towards the lab, bullets were fired at him. His fear for Felicity had made him blind for the dangers that he could run into. He moved back behind the wall, but a bullet hit his shoulder before he managed to do so. He didn’t even care enough to look at the blood that was probably running over his shoulder.

Clenching his teeth, Oliver grabbed an arrow from his quiver and stepped back around the corner. While he was sure that everything went impossibly fast, it felt like he was living through it in slow-motion.

Still turning towards the guy at the end of the hallway, Oliver noticed the two dead bodies behind him. The two had probably decided to run away as the situation was just getting out of hand. This one guy here hadn’t wanted to give up this easily, but he couldn’t have any accessories that could turn him in or blackmail him either.

He was now aiming his machinegun at the glass walls that separated the hallway from the lab. Oliver followed the aim of the machinegun, seeing that Felicity was the target. The same unsettling feeling that had taken hold of him when he had watched the video of a bullet being shot at Felicity and almost ending up in her head washed over him again.

He focused on the aim of his arrow, aiming for the guy’s eye. The break of a second before he shot, he corrected the aim. A second later, the guy was screaming as the arrow ran through his wrist and nailed it to the wall next to him. His gun dropped from his hand, slithering over the marble floor.

As Oliver’s fear disappeared now that the criminal was disarmed and captivated, his anger returned. He felt it forming a tight knot in the pit of his stomach. Once more, Felicity had been close to getting shot. This time, it wouldn’t have been a thoroughly planned attack that neither of them had seen coming. This time, it would have been on Felicity herself as she had just jumped into this danger headfirst to save some stupid plans that they would have certainly been able to find even if they had been stolen. These criminals had proved to be amateurs from the very start after all.

He turned his head to see that Felicity, probably alarmed by the criminal’s screams, was already looking in their direction. He looked at her angrily, unable not to after the fear she had just made him go through. To his surprise, Felicity was looking back at him just as angrily though.

What reason could she possibly have to be mad with him? He hadn’t gone into the field without backout and, with that, gone against the agreement they had had.

→ → → → →

Usually, when Oliver and Felicity returned home, he always did his best to be the perfect gentleman. He unlocked the door and reached into the entry room to switch on the light. Then he stepped back and held the door open for Felicity to go in first. It was the polite attitude his mother had raised him to and allowed him to flash around a quick glance around to make sure that their environment was safe.

Tonight, once he had unlocked the door, Oliver just headed right for the kitchen. He didn’t switch on the light as he didn’t need it anyway. He didn’t hold the door open for Felicity either. He didn’t even make sure that nobody was around to watch them.

Felicity slammed the door shut behind her. Without looking at her, because he simply couldn’t bear to look at her right now, he listened how she locked the front door again and went right upstairs. Her stumping steps told him that she was still angry.

Oliver went to the fridge, got out a bottle of water and drank it in one go. The cold liquid was running down his throat, cooling him from the inside out. It did nothing to calm the rage inside of him though.

They hadn’t said a single word to each other since their conversation on the comms when Felicity had told him that she was already inside of InnoTech. He knew that she had found the plans on the servers and destroyed them, so nobody else would find them as long as there were no copies of them. He only knew that because Felicity had told Laurel and Tommy about it when they had arrived.

While Laurel had offered to wait around until the police had arrived, so she could tell them about what had happened and what InnoTech had been working on these last months, Tommy had driven him and Felicity back to the bunker. Oliver had sewed his bullet wound there and changed back into his normal clothes. Then he and Felicity had left.

There were a thousand things that he wanted to say to her, but he wasn’t ready to talk to her yet. It had been a long time since they had fought the last time. He couldn’t even remember when they had had the last real fight that was about more than what they wanted for dinner or which movie they wanted to watch. His marriage with Felicity was incredibly harmonious, so he had never gotten used to fighting with her. The bare thought of seeing her and feeling the irresistible urge to yell at her made his stomach clench painfully.

After what had almost happened at InnoTech tonight, there were things that just had to be said. If there was one thing that was even more important in his marriage with Felicity than harmony was, it was honesty. Even if he wanted to, he knew he shouldn’t keep what he was thinking and feeling because it wasn’t who he and Felicity were. He needed to say them or he’d choke on them.

Setting the empty bottle aside, Oliver followed Felicity up the stairs. He could hear her walking around in their bedroom its door she had left ajar for him. When he stepped in, he noticed that she had already changed into one of the large shirts she was wearing for sleep. She had taken off her glasses and undone her ponytail. She had also tried to wipe away her make-up, but she had done it so poorly that she looked like he did after taking off his mask when all the grease was still around his eyes. Every other night, he would probably make fun about it.

Felicity went over to the small dresser and took out her ear rings. She only noticed him when he closed the door behind himself. Turning her head back over her shoulder, she glared at him angrily. The sight made him scoff.

“What reason could you possibly have to be mad at me right now?”

“Do you seriously have to ask that?” Felicity asked back, turning around towards him and grabbing the edge of the dresser like she desperately needed something to hold onto right now. “After all these years, you still don’t trust me.”

Her words didn’t sit well with him. Instead of being hurt, he only felt angrier though.

“Oh, no,” Oliver said, his lowered voice sounding more dangerous than any yell could. “You will not make this my fault. You will not make this about the trust issues we both know I had and probably still have because we both know that I trust you more than I ever trusted anyone else. Nothing has or ever will change that.”

It was no exaggeration to say it because it was true. Oliver had trusted Felicity with every single story about the island. She was the only one who knew everything he had been through while he had been there. She was also the only one who knew everything that had happened to him since he had returned. She knew about every single terribly bad choice he had made in the name of his father’s mission.

Oliver knew that he had made a lot of mistakes because he hadn’t trusted people around him and, most importantly, because he hadn’t trusted himself. This was none of those situations though. This was completely different because this wasn’t about trust.

He trusted each of his children because he knew they were wonderful little human-beings and had proved time and time again to be just great. Still, when they went into the pool together, he made sure that they were all okay and he checked that Millie and Addie were wearing their floaties. He also stayed close to hurry to the rescue if something happened. He trusted them to remember the rules they had laid down for pool time, but those rules didn’t protect them from every danger. There was always the possibility of something unexpected happening.

“You went into a building full of criminals and robots that you knew were out of control,” he reminded her with growly voice. “You promised me that you wouldn’t leave the van, but you did and-“

“I promised not to leave the van if there weren’t any immediate dangers, but-“

“That they wanted to steal the plans is no excuse. That was not immediate. We could have still handled it later, but you just jumped into it headfirst although you had no idea what danger you were getting yourself in.”

“I had no idea what danger I was getting myself in?” Felicity asked, her voice jumping at least an octave higher although she was speaking so very quietly. “Maybe you forgot that I am the one who is talking you through these missions. I am the one telling you how many criminals there are. I am the one telling you where it’s safe and where it’s not. I am the one who is opening every door you need to be opened and locks the ones that better stay closed. Don’t you dare downplaying my role in this.”

“I would never downplay your role in our mission.” Oliver took a step towards her. “You are a founding member of our team. John, you and I are the core of this team, the ones it all started with. That doesn’t change the fact that you took an unnecessary risk today, and it could have caused all of us to get severely injured.”

“I didn’t take any unnecessary risk which you’d know if you really trusted me.” The words came out almost like a hiss. “The glass walls in the lab were bullet-proof, something I checked on that to make sure it was true. I had reliable information on this. I knew what I was doing, or did you really think that I was going in there blind?”

For the break of a second, Oliver faltered. He hadn’t known about this although he was sure that he should have known about this. Felicity did know more about the locating they were going into than anyone on the team did usually after all. Thanks to her hacking, she had access to all the knowledge in the world.

“Still, you didn’t know what could have happened to you on the way there,” he reminded her because it was part of the danger that she had gotten herself in. “Laurel, Tommy and I were busy with the robots. You knew that, so you knew that neither of us could have come for you. You didn’t carry a weapon. You were just going by your instinct which isn’t something bad itself, but, in this case, it could have cost you your life. Adding to that, you endangered all of us too because I wasn’t able to focus anymore once I know that you were barging into this danger without any backup. You were reckless.”

Reckless. It was a word he had never associated with Felicity. It had always seemed more fitting to describe himself. Tonight, that was not true though. Tonight, Felicity had been the reckless one of them.

“I wasn’t more reckless than you are every time you go out in the field. I took a calculated risk, something that you should know very well as you have proved doing the same thing time and time again. You just didn’t trust my opinion on how dangerous these plans were and on how I could handle myself. You were just overprotective, trying to control everything and everyone around you, like you always are. You want to go out and risk your life happily to be the big hero your father told you to be, while you are making sure that everybody else stays in their lanes, just so you feel safe.”

Oliver stepped even closer to her. By now, he was so close that his chest brushed against her breasts whenever one of them was taking in a breath. Felicity had to angle her head far back to look at his face. Her eyes were still sparkling with anger, but so were his.

There was something intimidating about the way he was crowding her, almost encaging her between his body and the dresser. Subconsciously, he might have approached her to intimidate her because that was what the Green Arrow would do. Now that he realized it, he felt tempted to take a step back and give her the space he should give her, but he knew that it would underestimate Felicity’s strength and their relationship. Felicity knew that she had nothing to fear from him, so there was no way she could be intimidated by how close to her he was.

He wouldn’t step back.

“You almost got yourself killed tonight,” Oliver whispered, his voice so quiet now that it was barely audible over the sounds of their erratic breathing. “What do you think I would have been supposed to tell the kids? ‘Sorry, guys, mommy died because she wanted to save some stupid papers’?”

“Now you’re being unfair,” Felicity said, her voice a lot louder than it had been before, telling him that he had hit a nerve there. “How many times do you think I sat behind my monitors and wondered if I had to go home and tell the kids that you died? Oh, wait, I had to talk to William about it once after your good friend Malcolm Merlyn faked your death.”

“And this is fairer?” Oliver asked, speaking louder now too. “You know that Malcolm didn’t get a chance to take me out because I was reckless in the field. I wasn’t even in the field.”

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s in the field or not! Wherever you are, you are in more danger than I was in tonight because you could be attacked at any second because you are a billionaire and the mayor and the Green Arrow! Still, what I am doing is reckless, but you-“

“You cannot just go into a building full of armed criminals and compare it to anything else!” Oliver yelled now as Felicity had shouted at him before that too. “I-“

Oliver stopped, holding his breath. He felt a prickling in the back of his neck, something that made his heckles rise.

“You-?” Felicity asked loudly and frowned at him angrily. “You what?”

Instead of answering, Oliver turned around abruptly. He didn’t doubt that his eyes were still sparkling with anger because Millie, who was standing in the door with her stuffed elephant clutched to her chest, flinched as his gaze met hers. She tightened her arms around her elephant, lowering her face into the plush to press it into the toy and be comforted like that.

Flashing a look back over his shoulder to see Felicity rubbing her chest uncomfortably, Oliver crouched down. He smiled softly when he turned back to Millie and reached out his hands for her. Millie didn’t hesitate despite the angry glare she had just received and ran right into his arms. Oliver hugged her tightly and kissed her temple, hoping that she hadn’t heard too much of the fight he had had with Felicity.

“What’s going on, Sweetie?” he asked. “Can’t you sleep?”

“No.” Millie snuggled her face into the crook of her neck. “Can’t sleep.”

“Hm, what could we do there?” Oliver asked and pulled back slightly to look at Millie’s face. “Maybe we can tickle you to sleep.”

That being said, he started tickling her. Millie squirmed in his arms, kicking her feet and slapping her hands around. No matter how much she tried to defend herself against her daddy’s tickling, she was still giggling happily though.

Eventually, Oliver just wrapped his arms around Millie once more and got up. He peppered some kisses to her cheek and asked, “Who should put you back to bed? Mommy or daddy?”

Millie puckered her lips, thinking about it for a moment. She reached her hands out for Felicity then, smiling at her mommy widely.

“Mama!”

“Well, come here, Honey,” Felicity prompted and lifted Millie out of Oliver’s arms. “Mommy is going to put you back to bed.”

“Goodnight, Sweetie,” Oliver said and leaned over to brush another kiss against her temple. “Sleep tight.”

“Night, Dada,” Millie said with a tired yawn and already snuggled her head against Felicity’s shoulder as she carried her back to her room. “Night, night, night.”

Oliver smiled until the door was closed behind his wife and daughter. Then his smile faded from his lips quickly, and the easy feeling of tickling his daughter in the middle of the night wore off quickly. Millie might have interrupted this fight before it could have escalated even more, but Oliver knew that it wasn’t over. He and Felicity were both stubborn, and neither of them would give in easily.

Getting out of his clothes, Oliver walked into the en-suite bathroom. He brushed his teeth, trying to calm his anger, but he already knew that he wouldn’t be successful tonight. Maybe if he got a good night of sleep, he’d be able to see things differently tomorrow. That way, he might be able to take a step towards Felicity. He doubted it, but hope always was the last to die.

When Oliver got into bed, he glanced at Felicity’s side of the mattress. Except from some exceptions, he always slept on top of Felicity. Tonight, he really didn’t feel like doing so though. Instead, he turned his back towards her side of the bed and closed his eyes with a sigh.

It didn’t take long until Felicity came back. He could hear her faltering briefly, and he guessed it was a reaction to seeing him rolled up on his side of the bed that had barely ever been used. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he believed that he could hear her releasing a low breath of relief before she crossed the distance and got in on her side of the bed.

“Did Millie fall asleep?” Oliver asked quietly.

“As soon as her head hit the pillow.”

That was all that was being said before Felicity switched off the light on her nightstand, dipping the room into darkness. There was something incredibly oppressive to this silence which wasn’t something he was used to. It was unsettling and annoying, and it would certainly keep him awake all night.

Carefully, Oliver moved back a little in bed until his butt rested against Felicity’s. He could feel her tensing for a moment until she relaxed. With a low sigh, she scooted back a little too, making herself comfortable.

Neither of them was ready to talk or to take a step towards the other. Still, they both needed this contact. They might be angry with each other, but they still loved each other and needed each other. No fight could possibly change that.

→ → → → →

There was nothing that could possibly cover the dark shadows under her eyes, so Felicity decided to just give up. She closed her compact and put it back into the mirror cabinet.

As her eyes met her reflection in the mirror once more, she grabbed the edge of the sink and shook her head. She looked terrible which was fitting as she was feeling terrible too. She hadn’t caught any sleep last night, and the fight with Oliver was hard on her heart too. Both of it seemed to show on her face.

Almost every cell in her body screamed for her to just talk things out with Oliver. The sooner they solved this disagreement, the better for both of them. After all, neither of them was really able to function when they were fighting. Even before they had been together, it had been hard to just go on when they had been fighting. Now it was almost impossible.

Felicity sighed. If she was less angry with Oliver, she might actually reach out to him and suggest talking it out. Since she still was incredibly angry with him, she couldn’t do that though. She just wasn’t ready.

With an angry groan, Felicity turned away from the mirror and headed over to the bedroom. She sat down on the edge of the mattress to put on her shoes.

She loved Oliver, and she knew that there was a huge difference between the man she was married to and the man under that hood. They might be the same person, but they were two very different sides of the same man. Although she knew that, it still angered her that he hadn’t been able to trust her when she had asked him to.

Felicity put her elbows to her knees and let her head hang between her shoulders, shaking her head slightly. Unable to sleep last night, she had recalled the entire situation at InnoTech again and again. She had tried to find a different solution that would have prevented a fight like this, but she didn’t see how that would have been possible. She had told Oliver she was going in, and she had asked him to trust her. She-

When the door opened slightly, Felicity lifted her gaze to see that Hawk was standing in the door, waggling his tail. She smiled at the dog and beckoned him to come closer with a simple move of her finger. Hawk complied happily and pressed his head against her stomach, letting Felicity pet him.

“Why can’t he trust me when we are out there?” Felicity asked Hawk like he could actually answer her. “All these years that we have been working on this mission together, I was offering ways in and ways out of buildings. I was the one telling them where the bad guys are, how many of them there were and what armor they were carrying if I got eyes on them which I always do thanks to the increased surveillance technology these days. Still, he thinks I am just running into a building blindly.”

Hawk made that noises that she always called his dinosaur-noises because that was exactly what it sounded like. It was like he was trying to be the best dinosaur-impersonator. Felicity had barely ever heard anything sweeter.

“That man is just driving me insane.”

With that, Felicity kissed Hawk’s nose and got up. He followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen. The kids were already gathered around the table, enjoying the breakfast Oliver had prepared for them. Like always, it was a good mixture of healthy ingredients. The same applied to the lunchboxes he was just getting ready for them.

“Mama,” Addie called out and held out some of her apple slices for Felicity, willing to share her breakfast with her mother. “Take it.”

Humming, Felicity took a bite from the apple. “Yummy.”

“Yummy, yummy,” Addie agreed.

Felicity smiled. “Did you sleep well?”

When Addie just smiled at her happily and offered the rest of the apple slice to her too, Felicity kissed her cheek.

“Nope, that one if for you,” she told her. “You still gotta grow big and strong.”

At that, Addie pushed the rest of the slice into her mouth and chewed happily. Felicity pecked her cheek once more before she straightened up and looked at the breakfast of the rest of the family. Like always, William and Emmy were eating cereals with fruits. Tommy was eating some toast with eggs and avocado. All of them were eating happily. Just Millie was sitting in her chair and picking in her fruit salad.

Walking around the table, Felicity placed a kiss on the top of each child’s head. Since Hawk was sitting right between Millie and Felicity’s chair, she placed a kiss into his fur too. He lifted his nose and licked her chin, waggling his tail.

“Mom?”

Sitting next to Millie, Felicity looked at Emmy. “Yes?”

“Do you know what happened to dad’s face?”

Felicity frowned, shooting a look back over her shoulder to where Oliver was standing at the kitchen counter. She hadn’t yet seen him this morning, so she wasn’t sure what Emmy was referring to. Since he had his back turned towards her, she still couldn’t say it.

“What did dad say happened?”

Emmy looked back and forth between her parents and frowned. Felicity guessed that Emmy didn’t miss that her parents weren’t talking to each other. Felicity had only been in the kitchen for like three minutes, but it was already unusual for them. Oliver liked to put on a show about how much he loved her and how much he loved to spoil her. He was regularly making the kids giggle until one of them fell off the chair.

“Nothing,” Emmy replied, pulling Felicity back from her thoughts, and stared at her father’s back for a long moment. “He didn’t say anything.”

“We had some Green Arrow business to take care of last night,” Felicity explained, assuming that his face showed some bruises as the robots had put on a good fight. “It was a little tougher than we thought it would be.”

“That’s not necessarily the reason.”

The words came from Oliver in a growly grumble, just loud enough to be audible for anyone around. When he turned to face them, Felicity almost assumed that he was looking at her with his angry face. Instead, he was smiling softly as he was balancing the lunch boxes in his hands and pushing them into the kids’ backpacks.

Looking at his face intensely now, she saw the bruise at his jaw. She guessed it had indeed been a robot that had landed the first punch on him in quite some time. The bruise – a mixture of dark red, violet and brown color – reached from the edge of his jaw down to the middle of his neck and up into his stubble. It did look quite bad.

Felicity also didn’t miss that he was moving his shoulder almost robotlike – pun not intended. She could barely remember when he had been shot the last time. Oliver wasn’t an easy target after all.

The fact how badly the robots had hurt him told Felicity that she had made the right choice. Those plans had needed to be destroyed before they could have gotten into the wrong hands. Oliver would probably see that differently, but she wouldn’t change her mind. She had made the right decision, no matter what Oliver believed.

Almost instinctively, Felicity reached out to grab her mug of coffee that was always placed in front of her on the table when she came downstairs. This morning, it wasn’t there though. Her fingers just grabbed the empty air instead.

Frowning slightly, Felicity glanced at Oliver. She guessed that she wasn’t the only one who was still angry. Luckily, she didn’t exactly need him to fetch her coffee. She was a grown, independent woman after all.

Felicity lifted her gaze to get herself some coffee from the coffee machine. Her eyes met William’s briefly, and she could see in his eyes that he had seen what had just happened. His gaze flashed towards Oliver like he wanted to check if he might have just forgotten to fetch her a mug of coffee. There was no guilt and no sudden remembrance in his eyes though.

Smiling at William soothingly, Felicity got up. She did her best not to touch Oliver, who was leaning over Addie’s head and brushing a kiss to her hair. Since Raisa had her day off, Addie and Millie were going to daycare today. For them, it was always a highlight to get a lunchbox of their own.

While Felicity was pouring herself a mug of coffee, she took some deep breaths. If she could, she would just go to work already. Feeling this tension in her home that was usually filled with love bothered her. It wasn’t something she was used to, and it wasn’t something she wanted to get used to either. She wanted her lovely family idyll back.

She just didn’t want to take a step towards Oliver either.

“Okay, what is going on here?”

William’s voice sounded surprisingly adult. He was almost eighteen years old now, so it shouldn’t surprise Felicity that he was sounding this adult. It still did because she refused to get used to how quickly her kids were growing up. In her mind, they were all still wrapped into diapers. Even William, who had been long out of his diapers when she had first met him, was still a baby in her mind. At least sometimes.

“Nothing,” Felicity said quickly and turned around to them. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she sipped at her coffee. Babies didn’t need to know that their parents were fighting. “Everything’s fine.”

“You’re lying.” Emmy put her spoon down and looked back and forth between her parents once more. Although she was almost a decade younger than her older brother, but she did sound quiet adult right now too. “Why are you lying?”

All kids were staring at them, wordlessly demanding an explanation for what was going on. From the corner of her eye, she could see that Oliver had his jaw clenched and his head lowered. Just like she herself, he didn’t know how to deal with this. Fighting with each other was one thing, talking with their kids about the fact that they were fighting was something completely different.

Felicity already took in a deep breath to say some vacuous words that would hopefully satisfy the children until she and Oliver had found a moment to talk about how they wanted to deal with this. Before a single sound fell from her lips, Millie sniffled though. As Felicity looked at her, she saw her sitting in front of her full plate. She was crying, holding her stomach.

“Mama.”

“Hey, what’s wrong, Honey?”

“Stomachache.”

Quickly, Felicity put her mug down and hurried over to Millie. She lifted her from the chair and into her arm, holding her to her body tightly. Swaying her from side to side, she tried to hush her a little bit. Seeing Millie cry was another thing Felicity wasn’t exactly used to as Millie was mostly keeping those things to herself instead of sharing them.

Oliver was at Millie’s side too, brushing his fingers through her hair and placing a kiss to the back of her head. Felicity could see that he was worried because, just like she herself, Oliver knew that Millie didn’t cry easily. She had to be in real pain if she was crying now.

“Okay, I will put you back to bed, okay?” Felicity suggested, rubbing her hand up and down Millie’s back. “I’ll put you back to bed, and then we’ll see.”

“Should I call the office?” Oliver asked. “I have no important appointments today. They can all be delayed and-“

“Not necessary,” Felicity replied, shaking her head. “I don’t have any appointments today. I can just work from home. It’s not a problem. I will call Emily after I have put Millie to bed. Can you prepare a heating pad for her?”

“Of course.” Oliver kissed the back of Millie’s head once more. “Everything’s going to be okay soon, Sweetie.”

They shared a long look, and there was the silent agreement that their fight had to be put on hold for a moment. They might have a disagreement as spouses and as partners, but they were still absolutely in tune as parents. No fight would ever get in between that. As children of parents who had rarely or in Felicity’s case never agreed on matters of parenting, they knew that they always had be cohere when it came to parenting.

While he turned to get the heating pad, Felicity carried Millie upstairs and into her room. She took off the jeans she was wearing and changed her back into her pajama pants, knowing they would be so much comfier for her. Putting her in the bed, she pulled the blanket over her despite the warmth in the room. Millie grabbed it and even tugged it up to right under her chin.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Felicity put her hand to Millie’s forehead. She might be running a little fever, but it wasn’t too bad. She checked her daughter’s temperature with her lips too, but she just came to the same conclusion. Maybe Millie had caught some infection when she had been on a friend’s birthday earlier this week. Wherever a lot of toddlers were gathering together, infections were destined to spread.

“What do you need?” Felicity asked her, glad that her daughter was old enough to voice herself. “What can I get you?”

Back when the kids had been too young to speak, Felicity had found herself trying to guess what they needed more often than not. The older the kids had grown and the more kids she had had, the easier it had become for her to know what the kids needed. Looking at a crying kid and not being sure what they needed had always been the worst part of being a mother for her.

“Heating pad,” Millie said. “And cuddles.”

Felicity pushed her arms beneath Millie’s small body and hugged her tightly. Millie was almost clinging to Felicity’s neck. She really had to be in pain, and Felicity felt her heart breaking a little bit for the little girl. When her kids suffered, so did she.

“Mommy is getting you the heating pad now,” Felicity suggested with lowered voice, “and then I come back and we cuddle, okay?”

“And you read me a story?”

“And I will read you a story.” Smiling, Felicity brushed her fingertips through Millie’s dark hair before she kissed her forehead once more. “I’ll be back in a second.”

With that, Felicity got up and hurried back downstairs. William, Emmy and Tommy were already on their way to the car as Oliver would drop them at school before he headed to City Hall. Hawk was accompanying them, running around them like he was trying to herd them. Oliver, on the other hand, was waiting at the foot of the stairs, Addie sitting on his hip and the heating pad resting in his hands.

“How is she doing?” Oliver asked and handed Felicity the heating pad. “Do you think she’s sick?”

“Maybe a little infection, I’m not sure,” Felicity replied, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe it’s better to take Addie to Tommy and Laurel instead of dropping her at daycare though. If Millie’s really sick, Addie might be infected already, and she shouldn’t infect the entire group.”

“I’ll take her.” Oliver nodded his head. “Will you take Millie to the doctor?”

“I think for now we can just wait and see. I will take her if it gets better or if it’s still lasting until tomorrow.”

“Okay, just call me if she’s getting worse or if there is anything I can do,” Oliver asked of her. “I can come back home spontaneously.”

Felicity nodded her head. “Okay. “

There was a long moment of silence as they just looked at each other. Most of the time, the silence spreading between them was a comfortable one. They had been married for so long and they knew each other so well that silence couldn’t possibly feel awkward between them anymore.

Until this morning it seemed. As much as Felicity tried to deny it, the silence was awkward because there were too many unsaid words that needed to get out. Right now and right here, it was just wasn’t the right time and place. They needed to find that tonight.

“I gotta go now,” Oliver said with a low sigh that told Felicity that he didn’t like the way they were parting today either. “The kids will be late for school.”

Felicity put on a half-hearted smile. “It’s okay. I promised Millie to read her a story, so I will just go back upstairs. I’ll text you how she’s doing.”

“Thanks.”

Oliver hesitated for a moment before he leaned forward and brushed a kiss against the corner of her lips. Felicity closed her eyes, enjoying the way his lips touched her skin ever so lightly and the delicious feeling of his stubble tickling her.

Oliver lingered there for a long moment, and Felicity was sure that he was remembering the same conversation that she remembered right now. He remembered that she had once asked him that they never left each other in anger anymore. For a long time, she hadn’t even dared to be angry at Oliver, thinking it could be the last feeling she had for him before he was taken from her.

Felicity’s stomach tightened painfully at the thought of how traumatized she had been, thinking the last words she would have said to her husband were that she wanted to hit him on the head with a shovel. Back when Malcolm had abducted Oliver and faked his death, Christopher Chance had impersonated Oliver, and Chance, pretending to be Oliver, had called her to tell her that he wouldn’t make it home in time for the conversation about his nightmares they had planned. Felicity had been incredibly angry and hung up the phone. If Oliver had really died that day, the last words she had said to him would have been something along the line of, “I love you, Oliver, but right now I really want to take a shovel and hit you on the head with it”.

When Oliver pulled back, their eyes locked instantly. The silent promise that they would talk to each other as soon as possible was graspable between them. While they were still angry, the blind rage had calmed down. They were ready to talk as soon as they found the right moment.

“I love you,” Oliver whispered. “Always.”

Felicity smiled and squeezed Oliver’s hand. “I love you too. Always.”

They continued looking at each other for a moment longer before Oliver turned around and headed towards the dog. He called for Hawk, who ran back into the house and right up the stairs immediately. Shooting a brief look back over his shoulder, he closed the door behind himself then and left.

Sucking in a deep breath, Felicity massaged the top of her chest. Despite their I love yous and despite the kiss, she wasn’t comfortable about the way they had parted. There had been no angry words and no angry looks, but there had been angry feelings, and if Oliver died before she spoke to him again, she would forever regret not making up with him. It was undeniable.

With a long sigh, Felicity pulled her hair tie from her hair and kicked her shoes off her feet. She couldn’t think about this possibility right now, or she wouldn’t make it through the day without breaking down. She couldn’t have that. She had a sick child to take care of after all.

→ → → → →

FQ: Millie’s asleep now. She’s still got stomachache, but it hasn’t gotten worse. After her nap, I will try if she eats something. Otherwise, I will call the doctor.

Felicity sent the text to Oliver before she grabbed her mug of coffee. She held it between both of her hands and breathed in the delicious steam that came from the mug. The few sips she had had this morning hadn’t been enough to satisfy her need for coffee. She felt like an addict that had tried to resist the urge to use for two days and was no longer able to withstand her need.

The mug was already lifted to her lips. Before the first drop of her personal drug touched her lips, the doorbell rang. She didn’t even get the time to decide if she should just ignore it because Hawk was already barking, probably waiting in front of the door to protect his family in case the person at the other side of the door meant harm to them. If he continued like that, he’d wake up Millie, and Felicity really couldn’t have that.

Getting up, Felicity quickly put her mug of coffee to the couch table and hurried towards the door. Just like she had expected, Hawk was sitting in front of the door already.

“Hawk, pssst,” she hushed him as she grabbed the door handle. “Millie’s sleeping.”

Hawk fell silent immediately though Felicity couldn’t say if it was because she was here to open the door now or because he remembered the sleeping toddler upstairs too. She shot him a brief look, but he was still completely focused on the door.

When Felicity opened, revealing that Tommy was standing in front of the door, Hawk got up and jumped up on him. Just like the kids, Hawk just loved all of the family’s friends. Tommy was definitely one of his favorites as he spoilt him a lot.

“Hawk,” Felicity rebuked him. “Don’t.”

She knew it was hopeless. Tommy, like most people, was just utterly doting when it came to Hawk. He cuddled him, telling him it was all okay. That really didn’t make it easy to educate that playful puppy inside of Hawk’s giant teddy bear body.

Once Hawk finally let go of Tommy, Felicity nodded her head to let him in. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looked up the stairs.

“How’s Millie?”

“She’s sleeping now.” Felicity sighed. “Luckily.”

“It’s not bad?”

“No, I don’t think so. The kids often catch some kind of infection. Usually, it only takes a couple of hours for them to get better though. I hope it will be the same for Millie.”

“Addie can stay as long as she wants to,” Tommy assured her. “I guess nobody wants her to infect herself.”

“Luckily, the times the kids are infecting each other are mostly over now. I remember a time that Emmy and I continued to infect each other with the most terrible cold I ever had. I remember that Emmy stayed at Thea’s for a while, so Oliver could take care of me. I was crying in his arms because I had such a terribly earache. It was a nightmare.”

Tommy chuckled. “Oliver wasn’t infected?”

“No, that man has an immunity system that’s surreal,” Felicity explained and rolled her eyes. She quickly shook her head though. “What are you doing here by the way?”

“Addie needs some toys. Oliver dropped her off without anything, but you live next door anyway, so I thought I could just step by.”

“Of course.” Felicity headed to the living room and beckoned for him to follow her. “Addie dropped all of her favorite toys in the living room last night. She threw a temper tantrum when Raisa put her to bed.”

“Addie is a little wildflower.” Tommy smiled. “I wouldn’t want to be at the receiving end of her temper tantrums.

A wildflower. Felicity smiled at the words. When Oliver had furnished and designed Addie’s nursery, he had bought the photo of a wildflower. The words In a field full of roses, she’s a wildflower were printed next to it. The framed picture was still in Addie’s room now.

Kneeling down on the floor to grab some of Addie’s favorite toys, Felicity lowered her eyes. For most of the morning, she had been too distracted by taking care of Millie to think about her disagreement with Oliver for too long. Reminded of it now, she felt a little stitch in her heart. It really didn’t sit well with her that they were fighting.

“Everything alright?” Tommy asked, clearing his throat. “Between you and Ollie I mean?”

Felicity lifted her gaze, her eyebrows perked up. She considered lying and saying that everything was fine. Looking in Tommy’s eyes, she was she that he knew better though. He had been there with them last night after all.

“We… are going to be alright,” Felicity just replied, smiling half-heartedly. “We just gotta find some time to talk to each other about it.”

“If you need to drop all the kids-“ Hawk barked, scratching his paw along Tommy’s thigh, “and Hawk at my place, always feel free to do so. Laurel and I won’t mind.”

Felicity smiled. “Thank you, but I don’t think that will be necessary. Once the kids are in bed tonight, Oliver and I will talk, and everything is going to be okay again.”

“I hope so.” Tommy grinned. “You two are my marriage fix.”

“Marriage fix?” Felicity cocked her head. “You aren’t married yet, and you are already in need for a fix?”

Tommy chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. He moved his fingers through his hair, explaining, “I didn’t have a good example of married people growing up. I mean my parents were very much in love, but I was still so very young when my mom died. He jumped into bed with Moira as soon as her body was buried. I am not sure that he was grieving her, but the path he took after her death doesn’t exactly make it sound like my parents’ marriage was exactly healthy.”

Felicity released a low sound, a mixture of a sigh and a hum. “I am not sure what I would do if Oliver died.”

“You would carry on his legacy instead of shitting on everything he did out of revenge.”

As much as Felicity liked to think that Tommy’s words were true, she wasn’t sure of it. Back when she had believed that Oliver was dead, she had felt incredibly numb. When that numbness had passed, she had just felt angry. Blind rage had taken hold of her, and she would have done anything to find the person responsible for his death.

“Don’t worry. Oliver and I will make it out of this without any bad damage. We rarely ever fight, but, when we do, we do it big time.”

With that, she got up and put the toys she had gathered into Tommy’s arms. He took all of them, using his chin to make sure nothing would fall down onto the ground on his short way home.

“Okay,” he said with a low chuckle. “I am going to hold you to that. If you and Oliver don’t make it, I will believe that love is dead.”

Felicity smiled about his belief in their love while she was leading him back to the door. She hadn’t grown up with a role model of what real love looked like either. Since she had gotten married, she had taken John and Lyla as a role model for what real love looked like. They were here marriage fix.

“My offer still holds,” Tommy called when he stepped outside. “Just tell everyone to come over, and I will take care of them.”

“Thank you, Tommy,” Felicity replied, leaning into the door. “And give Addie a kiss from me.”

“I will.”

Watching him leave to his house, Felicity enjoyed the fresh air outside. It was warm today, but the cool breeze made it much more bearable than it had been these last couple of days. Maybe Millie would like to go outside and lie down on one of the beach chairs at the pool later today.

“Mommy?”

Surprised at the voice, Felicity turned around. Millie was standing at the head of the stairs, holding her elephant dangling from her hand. Immediately, Hawk ran up the stairs towards her and licked he face. Millie giggled, pushing him away. Felicity doubted that the toddler would be strong enough to push Hawk away, but he took a step back willingly.

If there was one thing that they had taught Hawk well, it was to respect the kids. Admittedly, there hadn’t been a lot they had had to teach him though. Hawk had been amazing with the kids from the first day on.

“Hey,” Felicity said softly and closed the door. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“I am hungry,” Millie explained and put an arm over Hawk’s back. “My stomach’s growling.”

“Well, I couldn’t sleep with that either.” Felicity smiled and held out a hand for Millie. “Come on, Sweetie. We see what the fridge holds.”

“Can I have chocolate?”

“Chocolate?” Felicity perked up her eyebrows. “Do you think that is the right thing to try eating when you have stomachache?”

Millie shrugged her shoulder and lifted her elephant in her arms. She clutched it to her chest, holding onto it tightly, while she was looking at her mother with her big, blue eyes. She snuggled her cheek against the elephant’s head and turned from side to side slowly. She looked at Felicity almost the same way she had looked at her last night when Millie had caught her and Oliver fighting.

If Millie wanted chocolate, Felicity guessed that it was worth a try. As long as she was eating anything, it had to mean that she was getting a little better.

“Come on,” Felicity prompted her once more. “I am sure we have some chocolate in the fridge.”

Millie hurried down the stairs and took Felicity’s hand. Hawk never left the little girl’s side either. He probably hoped that he would get some of the chocolate, but the kids new that Hawk didn’t get chocolate. Ever.

While Felicity was checking the fridge for some chocolate, she Millie stayed next to the kitchen island. She was humming the melody of some Disney song, but Felicity couldn’t say which one it was.

“Is daddy coming home?” Millie asked eventually.

“I think at around five,” Felicity replied and smiled with relief when she finally found the chocolate bar. “He’s got come appointments, but he comes home as soon as he can. He can read you your bedtime story tonight.”

Handing her daughter the chocolate bar, Felicity frowned slightly and thought about the question her daughter had actually asked her. She had thought that she had asked her when daddy was coming home because that the usual question she was asked when she was home before Oliver. Replaying the question over in her head right now, she realized that Millie’s question had been a little different.

Felicity watched her daughter unwrapping the chocolate bar and taking a huge bite. She chewed and smiled at her mother, obviously enjoying the chocolate.

It suddenly hit Felicity with force. She knew now what was going on with Millie, and she guessed that she had been blind not to know it before.

“Hey, Millie,” she asked and crouched down in front of her daughter. Putting her hands to her hips, she pulled her closer. “Do you want to play that game with the mice on the tablet with me?”

Millie nodded her head excitedly. Lately, it had grown into Millie’s and Addie’s favorite game. They always begged their parents and their siblings to play it with them although they usually lost against them. Their reaction just wasn’t as quick as the one of their other family members since they were the youngest. They were lucky that Oliver always let them win.

“Just go upstairs already,” Felicity suggested. “I’ll follow in a minute, okay?”

Again, Millie nodded. She placed a chocolatey kiss on Felicity’s lips before she turned around and ran upstairs. Felicity watched after her, feeling relieved and worried at the same time. She knew now that Millie wasn’t really sick which was a good thing. She just wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t have been easier to heal a little infection than a cracked heart.

Straightening back up, Felicity headed towards the living room where she had left her phone. It was resting right next to the now cold mug of coffee. Felicity grabbed it, seeing that Oliver hadn’t yet replied to her text although he had already read it. She guessed that he was caught in some meeting.

With that thought on her mind, she dialed the call-through to Oliver’s anteroom. She didn’t want to unsettle him by calling him on his phone where he would be available for her no matter where he was.

“City Hall, Mayor Queen’s office,” Becky took the call. “You talk to Rebecca Amell.”

“Hi, Becky,” Felicity replied and couldn’t help but smile because she was still proud of herself for finding Becky because that girl had been a lucky find for the position of Oliver’s EA. “It’s Felicity.”

“Felicity, hi.” Immediately, Becky’s voice softened. She knew that she didn’t have to be a hundred percent focused here for a second because Felicity wasn’t going to rip her head off. “Is everything alright with Millie? Oliver mentioned that she was sick.”

“It’s not that bad. She’s getting better,” Felicity replied honestly and cleared her throat briefly. “Oliver told me that he doesn’t have any important appointments today?”

“No, he doesn’t.” Becky didn’t even hesitate to give her this information. “I can tell him to come home immediately if you need him.”

“Just ask him to come home after the meeting he’s in right now, okay?” Felicity asked. “And please tell him that it’s not something too bad.”

“I will do so.”

“Thank you, Becky.”

“Of course,” Becky replied. “See you, Felicity.”

“See you.”

With that, Felicity hung up the phone. She sucked in a deep breath, holding it in her lungs for a moment, before she released it with a deep sigh. It was time to fix the mess she and Oliver had created last night.

→ → → → →

Tightening his fingers around his keys, Oliver took in a deep breath and closed his eyes. He needed to do that to gather himself. All of those emotions that were still pooling in the pit of his stomach and mixing with each other to an indescribable and uncontrollable entity needed to be tamed before he went inside.

When his alarm had rung this morning, he had still been so very angry. All night, he had been lying in bed and trying to find something in Felicity’s behavior that would allow him to take a step towards her. In his mind, no matter how different her perspective on this was, she had taken unnecessary risks to save those plans. They could have still saved them later on. They would have still saved them later on, but Felicity had just jumped headfirst into the danger for reasons he would probably never understand.

He had hoped that preparing breakfast for his family would calm him down. Cooking always coming down. This morning, it hadn’t changed how angry he had been. No matter how hard he had tried, he had even been unable to make sure Felicity got her usual mug of coffee she always drank before heading to work. He hadn’t been able to.

Only when Millie had started crying, his anger had turned into worry. Millie hardly ever cried. If she did, it was a sure thing to say that she really was in pain, and he hated to see any of his kids in pain. It was not something he would ever get used to it, or at least something he never wanted to get used to.

While he had been going through one meeting after the other at City Hall, he had almost felt numbed by all the emotions flooding him. He had still been angry about Felicity’s behavior. He had been worried about Millie. He had been mad that he and Felicity hadn’t been able to hide their disagreement from the kids. He had been nervous about what talking this out with Felicity would bring. Most of all, he had been missing his picture-perfect family life though.

Oliver released a low sigh at that though. For the last years, he had been spoilt with living this perfect dream. He and Felicity had always been perfectly in synch with each other. The few times that they had been disagreeing on something, they had worked it out quickly. Whenever one of the kids had been not okay, it had always been a situation that could have been handled quickly.

Fighting with Felicity the same day Millie was falling sick was a lot to take after all that perfect happiness he had experienced lately.

Taking in another deep breath, Oliver finally unlocked the front door. Even before he had taken a foot over the doorstep, he saw Felicity. She was sitting on the foot of the stairs, holding a mug of coffee in her hands. From the lack of steam, Oliver assumed that the coffee was already cold. Still, the mug was still full. She probably hadn’t taken a single sip of it.

Their gazes met, and Oliver could see that Felicity was as conflicted about the different emotions she had probably been put through today as he was. Neither of them got to say anything though because Hawk came running from upstairs and basically threw himself at Oliver. He wrapped an arm around their dog, holding him against his body and slightly above the floor, and let him lick his face.

“Hi, Buddy.” He bent down enough for Hawk’s hind paws to touch the floor. The dog’s forepaws were still resting on Oliver’s shoulders though, and Oliver moved his fingers through Hawk’s full fur. “Did you take good care of our sick girl?”

“He was great,” Felicity replied since Hawk couldn’t speak for himself. “He cuddled with her all day. She enjoyed it very much.”

“I guess we have a winner for the steak in the freezer. I will defrost it for you for dinner, Buddy.”

With that, he kisses Hawk’s nose and gently pushed him down. Hawk snuggled to Oliver’s legs like a cat for a moment longer. It wasn’t long before he finally stopped and turned his ears forward. He must have heard something, probably Millie, because he was quickly running upstairs.

Oliver watched after Hawk, smiling to himself. Agreeing to have a dog was the best decision he had ever made. Hawk had enriched their lives more than Oliver had ever though was possible. The kids love him. Felicity loved him. Oliver loved him. Hawk was a family member like everyone else in this family.

Without Hawk being there to focus on, Oliver looked at Felicity. She had gotten up on her feet and was leaning against the newel of the handrail. She looked tired and exhausted which didn’t surprise Oliver because he knew that she hadn’t caught any sleep tonight either. Taking care of Millie had probably robbed her of the little energy she had had left.

“Hey,” he said softly. He lowered his eyes, watching his fingers dropping his keys into the bowl on the small table next to the door. “So, Becky told me you called.”

It was a stupid thing to say because he already knew that Felicity knew that Becky had told him. If she hadn’t told him, he would have stayed at City Hall for two hours more. Instead, he had left the office early and trusted Becky with the task of delaying the two appointments he still would have had today.

“Yeah.” Felicity released a deep sigh, making it sound like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. “We need to talk.”

Oliver nodded his head, more to himself than to Felicity. Taking off the jacket of his suit and dropping it to the floor like only Felicity did with her jackets, her purses and her shoes most of the times, he crossed the distance towards her. He put his hands to hers that were resting on the newel because thinking about it now it really didn’t matter who took the first step as long as one of them did.

“I know,” Oliver agreed with firm voice. “What I said last night-“

“What happened last night is something we have to talk about,” Felicity interrupted him quickly and pulled one of her hands away from under his fingers to rest it on top of his hands instead. “We will talk about that. I promise. Millie is just so much more important than we are right now.”

Oliver frowned. Becky had sworn to him that Millie was okay. When she had told him that Felicity had asked for him to come home, he had thought that something was wrong with their little girl. Becky had made him believe that Millie was okay though, and he had believed her because Becky had never lied to him before.

“Did you take her to the doctor?”

Even if he had tried to, Oliver knew that he couldn’t have stopped his voice from sounding strangled. He really didn’t like the thought of thinking that one of the kids was sick. He always felt so helpless when they did.

“No,” Felicity replied firmly and took in a deep breath, “because she doesn’t need a doctor. She needs her parents.”

Oliver’s frown deepened, not understanding what Felicity was trying to tell him. Of course Millie needed her parents when she was sick. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t need a doctor though.

“Millie’s not really sick.” Felicity sighed, moving her hand over the back of his slowly. “She’s just scared because of our fight.”

Oliver felt his stomach drop at Felicity’s words. The thought that it was their fault that Millie had cried this morning and had felt sick made him feel sick now. He knew what it felt like to watch your parents fighting, and he knew what it was like to see your parents acting weirdly because they wanted to hide that they were fighting. He had experienced it when he had been a kid too. He had experienced it way too often, and he had never felt comfortable about it.

His parents had made a lot of mistakes. When he had been a kid, he hadn’t seen all of them. Growing up, it had become clearer to him though. He had ignored it and distracted himself with parties because he hadn’t felt like it had been his task to talk to his parents about their mistakes.

He had ignored it until he had been caught on a rescue boat on the North China Sea, and his father had shot himself, asking him to right his wrongs. He hadn’t been able to close his eyes from their failures anymore, and he hadn’t been able to keep silent about it once he had returned from the island.

When he had become a father, he had made a promise to himself. He had promised himself to be better than his parents. He wanted to be honest with his kids. He wanted to be a good role model for them. He wanted to give them the freedom to find out who they were and still set rules to make sure they wouldn’t get lose on the way. He also wanted to make the world around them better the right way. He was still thinking back on that problem regularly, and he hoped he was living up to them.

There were still things that he was sure he didn’t know about his parents and probably didn’t want to know either. He had been so angry at them for so many things they had done already. He wasn’t sure he could take more.

“Why do you think that?”

Oliver knew that, if Felicity was saying their fight was the reason for Millie’s stomachache, she was right. He didn’t doubt her. He just needed more information to understand.

“She came downstairs an hour ago and asked for chocolate,” Felicity replied. “Then she asked if you were coming home today. Not when, if.”

Sucking in a deep breath to ease the tightness in his chest, Oliver nodded his head. He guessed he and Felicity had screwed up badly.

“We need to talk to her,” he stated, nodding his head once more. “Now.”

Felicity nodded her head in agreement and shot him a halfhearted smile. With surprise, he noticed that Felicity was lacing her fingers with his before she turned to head upstairs. He held onto her hand while they were walking to Millie’s bedroom where she was playing that weird game with the mice that she had gotten to know through one of her friends. Oliver could hear it from the sounds that came from her room.

“Hey,” Felicity said softly when she stepped into the room to get Millie’s attention. “guess who got home early.”

Millie lifted her gaze from the tablet. As soon as she saw Oliver stepping in, she dropped the tech device, got up on her feet and threw herself at Oliver. Her arms wrapped around his neck tightly, and her legs tried to wrap around his torso, but they weren’t long enough to encompass it. Hawk, who was lying at the foot of her bed, lifted his head and waggled his tail at the action.

Oliver chuckled, happy about the enthusiastic welcome. It had been a while since he had been greeted home like this the last time, and he couldn’t deny that he had missed it.

While he was happy that Millie seemed to be so much better, he also figured that her behavior confirmed what Felicity had suggested. Millie really wasn’t sick. She was just scared and maybe a little bit heartbroken.

Stroking his hand up and down Millie’s back, he shot Felicity a look. She had sat down on the edge of the mattress, switched off the tablet and put it to Millie’s nightstand. When her gaze met his now, she scooted over to the side of the bed that was placed against the wall. She lay down there and patted the empty space next to her.

“Millie,” Oliver said softly and kissed her cheek. “Mommy and I gotta talk to you.”

Millie pulled back to look at him. “Because I’m sick?”

“Yes.” Oliver nodded his head and lay Millie down on the bed next to Felicity. “That is what we have to talk about.”

Watching Felicity while she was moving Millie’s elephant over the toddler’s face until she finally started smiling, Oliver loosened his tie and unbuttoned the first two buttons of his shirt. With a long sigh, he lay down in bed next to Millie. He didn’t have much room to lie comfortable, but he didn’t mind. This conversation was going to be comfortable either way.

“Millie, mommy and I know that you have seen us fighting last night.”

He shot Felicity a brief glance, and she smiled softly. With a nod of her head, she prompted him to go on. Her fingers were rubbing over Millie’s stomach, the way Felicity always stroked the kids’ stomach when they were really suffering from stomachache. He rested his hand on top of hers there and smiled at the smile that spread on her lips in reaction.

“Mommy and I are a really good team,” he said gently. “We agree on a lot of things, because mommy and I are like this.”

He used his free hand to lift it in front of her eyes and cross his fingers. Millie smiled, mimicking him by crossing her fingers too.

“Like this.”

“And closer,” Felicity whispered, winking at Millie. “Daddy and I are so close, it’s almost like we are one person.”

“Right.” Oliver smiled at her briefly before he focused back on Millie. “Mommy and I agree on so many things, but there are a few things that we don’t agree on.”

“You know that, don’t you?” Felicity asked. “Sometimes, you don’t agree with you siblings either.”

Millie nodded her head. She wrapped her arms around her elephant tightly, clutching it to her chest. Although she looked a little nervous, Oliver could see that she was listening closely and trying to really understand what was happening.

“Sometimes,” Oliver continued, “mommies and daddies fight. It doesn’t mean that they don’t love each other though. It just means that, although it seems like they are the same person sometimes, they aren’t. They are two different people with different opinion. That’s not something bad.”

“Nobody leaves?”

“Of course not,” Felicity assured her. “Nobody will ever leave. Even if mommy and daddy fall out of love and we didn’t want to live together anymore, we would always be here for you and your siblings. Nobody will ever really leave.“

“Which won’t happen either,” Oliver whispered under his breath. “I’d tie mommy to the heating in the basement.”

Millie looked at Oliver for a long moment, and he could almost feel her gaze crawling under his skin and right into his soul. He got the impression that Millie wanted to make sure there was absolutely no doubt in his eyes. Eventually, she seemed to be satisfied though. She turned her head to look at Felicity and looked at her for just as long.

Just like with Oliver, it seemed like she found that there was no doubt in Felicity’s eyes eventually. She took in a deep breath and nodded her head.

“Okay.”

“You’re sure it’s okay?” Felicity asked, tapping her fingers against Millie’s stomach playfully. “Daddy and I want to be sure that you really understand. If you need some more time or daddy and I should tell you more, we can do that. We really want you to understand.”

“It’s okay.”

“Okay,” Felicity said. “That being said, daddy and I are very sorry that you saw us fighting. You shouldn’t have gotten into our fight. We promise that we will be better the next time.”

“There have to be a next time?”

Oliver smiled at Millie’s words. She shot him a brief glance. As much as he didn’t want to, he had to nod his head with a sigh. He wanted to be honest with his kids after all.

“It’s okay,” Millie repeated with a deep sigh. “But, Mama?”

Felicity perked up her eyebrows. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m hungry.”

Oliver and Felicity both chuckled at that. They leaned down at the same time and placed a kiss on Millie’s temple. She giggled happily.

“Okay, I suggest you and Hawk go downstairs and plunder the fridge,” Felicity told her. “I am pretty sure that I saw more chocolate there.”

“Cool!”

All stomachache forgotten, Millie jumped up on her feet. She climbed over Oliver and jumped down onto the floor. Without losing any time, she ran out of the room and down the hallway. Hawk only followed her when she called for him, probably already halfway down the stairs.

One he and Felicity were alone in the room, Oliver scooted more into the middle of the bed. He lay down with his back resting in the soft mattress and his head resting in the pillow. His feet were dangling over the foot of the bed as it was way too small for him.

Looking at the ceiling, Oliver released another sigh. It had been a crazily exhausting day, and there were still so many hours to go through. He guessed he would distract himself by cooking for the family later. All this trouble really screamed for a happy family dinner tonight.

“I guess we have to fight more often for the kids to get used to it. They shouldn’t suffer from stomachache whenever we fight because they think this family could break apart.”

“Really?” Felicity asked. “That is what you take away from this?”

Chuckling, she rested her elbow next to his head and rested her face on her hand. She was leaning over him, watching his face intensely. Lifting her fingers to his face, she brushed her fingertips through his stubble. Although she grazed the wound the robots had left on his jaw, he didn’t complain. Her touch was as soft as the brush of a feather.

With a sigh, Oliver turned his head to look at Felicity more. He could see that her anger had passed as much as his. Their worry about Millie and their shame for how their fight had affected them had washed away all anger.

“I am sorry.” Although his voice was lowered to a whisper, there was no doubt that he meant what he said. “There were things I said last night that I shouldn’t have said. I should have never let it escalate the way that it did.”

Oliver barely remembered the things he had said last night. He had been too blinded by his rage to really realize what he had said, but he knew that some hurtful things had been said.

“I am sorry too,” Felicity replied and snuggled up to his side, resting her head against his unbruised shoulder. “I know I have said some hurtful things too.”

Weirdly, Oliver didn’t remember what Felicity had said either. They had just tried to vent their anger. Last night, that had been what they had both needed.

“Do you think it was wrong to go into InnoTech?”

“Nope,” Felicity replied without hesitation before she turned her head against his shoulder to look at his face. “Do you think it was wrong to come save me although you should have known that I wouldn’t go in there blind?”

“No,” Oliver replied, not faltering either.

He lowered his gaze to lock eyes with Felicity. She didn’t look like she wanted to start fighting about this again. Neither did he. He believed in what they had said Millie. The fact that they were fighting was not something bad. They were two individual people after all.

“Can we compromise?” Oliver asked, taking Felicity’s hand and holding it to her heart. “I’d like to find a compromise, or we will run into this very same argument again and again in the next forty years, and I am not sure I can take it.”

“Okay,” Felicity said, nodding her head. “What do you suggest?”

“The next time something like this happens,” Oliver said slowly, “you will tell me what exactly you are doing and how you are secured, and I will trust that you can handle yourself. I will secure the situation I am in before I go to find you.”

Felicity perked up an eyebrow. “You really think that you can do that?”

“Maybe not at the first try,” Oliver replied honestly, clearing his throat, “or the second. Fact is that we have spent the last years talking about how I couldn’t do things alone because I am part of a family and part of a team. It’s hard to see the difference between me doing things alone and your solo adventure last night.”

“It wasn’t exactly a solo adventure,” Felicity whispered, frowning slightly. “Not really.”

Oliver agreed to some extent, but he couldn’t agree with this completely. Felicity had made the decision to go inside on her own, and she hadn’t had any backup because the rest of the team had been busy fighting those robots.

“I know that you think that you had to save those plans. I might not agree with that, but I understand that you really thought that was necessary.” Oliver sighed. “I just hope that you can understand where I was coming from too. I-“

“You were worried because you didn’t know that I was safe,” Felicity interrupted him, proving that she understood him just as well as he understood her. “You know that it’s never really safe in the field, but backup at least makes it safer.”

Oliver nodded his head, smiling quietly. “Exactly.”

There was something incredibly comfortable about having someone in your life that knew you so well. Oliver was very certain that one reason why his marriage with Felicity was so harmonic most of the time was the mutual understanding. They didn’t always agree with each other, but they always understood each other. Understanding was their key to forgiveness and making up.

“There will never be a time that you are in the field and I won’t be nervous,” Oliver told her, “but I can work on accepting that there will always be situation that you feel that you have to go into the field although you cannot wait for backup. If you feel you need to do that to maintain your peace of mind, I have to accept that.”

“I mean it’s not like I really enjoy going out in the field,” Felicity explained. “I do feel a lot safer behind my computers. Sometimes, I just have to leave my comfort zone to stop criminals from taking over this city and ruining all our success of the last years.”

“We all have to do that sometimes,” Oliver agreed with a sigh, “so we will just make sure you get a bulletproof vest and some other things that will protect you in those cases, and then I just pray you won’t ever have to use them.”

The corners of Felicity’s lips twitched in amusement for a moment before she couldn’t bite back her chuckle anymore. Oliver joined into it, tightening his arms around Felicity’s waist and pulling her on top of his body.

“I have missed you,” he told her, brushing his fingers through her hair. “I don’t even know how to function anymore when we aren’t in synch.”

“I hade it when we fight,” Felicity agreed, nodding her head. “Making up is nice though.”

Humming softly, Oliver traced the length of her spine with his fingers. Felicity put her hand against the top of his head and leaned down. She captured her lips in a gentle kiss and moved her tongue against his bottom lip until he opened his lips to her. Their tongue met in a slow dance, moving together softly.

Only now Oliver realized how heavy the fight with Felicity had been on his heart all day. Taking in a breath now, he felt like he could breathe so much more easily. The oxygen spread in every cell of his body, making at least some of the tiredness he had felt all day fade away.

“Making up sounds great,” Oliver mumbled against her lips. “How long do you think we can leave Millie and Hawk alone downstairs.”

“Not much longer unless we want Hawk to turn into a pot-bellied pig with all the food Millie is probably feeding him right now.”

“I always wanted to have a pig as a pet.” Oliver chuckled against her lips. “So that won’t convince me.”

He stroked his tongue deeper into Felicity’s mouth and let his hands travel down her body. Grabbing her butt, he pulled her hips down onto his.

“We have more time tonight,” she told him, the struggle audible in her voice as she really wanted to make up with him too. “So much more time for all of this.”

She deepened the kiss for a moment, sparking his imagination. When their lips parted, Felicity propped herself up onto her forearms and looked at Oliver with slightly narrowed eyes though.

“What?” he asked.

“If I get all those things to protect me,” she asked slowly, “does that mean I will get my own suit?”

Oliver chuckled, unsure if he was amused by the idea because he knew that Felicity really didn’t want a suit and a mask or because the bare idea made him nervous.

Either way, he fell silent again quickly and looked at Felicity seriously.

“No way.”

* * *

@fannaz @promiseyoullbepatientwithme @bytemegeekette @felicity-said-just-in-case @phanseptiic @orangeisorange @mspotatohead14 @whentheheavenfades @emmaamelia95 @smoakingskye @seaolicity @ourwritinginvein @1022bridgetp @felicityqueenforever @leagueofolicity17 @yryssss @myhauntedblacksoul @sherlock44 @sinceriouslybea @arrowsalways @olivyflavescentdeer @olicitys-castle @ofnothingcharming @vaelisamaza @oswinelevenforever @alexisa1206 @mysaudadespt2 @florence-bubbles @addictiontelly @queens-of-arrows @memcjo @hysterical-for-joshifer @oswinelevenforever @olicitylovemaking @bandanab310 @mymusiclove101 @lynslogic @scarletqueen23 @olicityshipper19 @alex-wesley @arrows-4ever @unabashedlynerdypatrol @louehmysoul @ligiapimenta @chattyyana @charlie-leau @coal000 @samcrowleys @ishippolivia @julianegomesqueen @malafle @miriam1779 @charlinert @melaux @ontheolicityship @myshipperlife @wrightainsley @lexi9515 @ladygreenwood @multi-fandom-crazy-fangirl @morinamel @mje-thomas @kebarry @canadianheartgirl @nannett2307 @almondblossomme @paarti12 @kathrynelizabeth89 @imdfabulous @cutearrowgirl @mrt2501 @mecha1330 @arsipaci14 @mzminx @salasvia @brandis91 @cainc3 @morganmiguess @pr0fessi0nal-fangurl @iamisalima @nessafrancis-blog @jonhdiggle @niki-is-amazing @universed-posts @hopeful-warrior @senoritaswiftie @bellemmie @green-arrows-of-karamel @iheartarrow @olicityovereverything @oliverfel4 @navyaarsha @fandoms-breathe-life @simone4mcswarek @olicity-in-the-heart @fullychippedcreation @geemarie @everything-but-normal-cat @myarroworld @tjmartinez @pleasantfanandstudent @itsmagnoliagirl @j69confessional2 @scentedcolorpirate @icanica74 @javinancupil @tjmartinez98 @certainmentalityface @tatianadamaceno @ryelew @wildwillowzepplin @missafairy @letsplaymurde-r @lipizette @positivepiper @nuttymilkshakehologram @laksagirl @turnupthemusicandscream @pumpernickle93 @onceuponanolicity @1106angel @jaspertown @fadinglands @morganashimi83 @mochababychristy @omglovechrissie @mariejr88-blog @thetaufactor @onceuponanolicity @speakandseethetruth @bri206 @aglasgo @thats0klaroline @geemarie @pineprincess @nerdgirljen @peterpanslostgirl666 @eternal-olicity14 @allyouhadtodowas-stay-stay-stay @lovelycssefan @tsseract @flowerandsunshine @dcnmarvelgamergeek @blondeeoneexox @monetsmark @soaring-cities @bb-olicity @mashamarty @rulerofsilence @erika-amber @felicity087 @i-claim-only-emily @pattid1 @westallenandolicityshipper @babyolicityandwestallen @nothingmorethanmyotps @kayleenyc @tonto16 @olicityfluv @olicitea1990 @olicity5ever @haahaaa2408 @pattid1 @faegal04 @24karatgem @wrldtravler @readerkas @valery6488 @lemmyeatspeaches @olicity-beliver @greencoffeecups

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[petercushing]

Rammstein Family Game: Get to know me!

created by: @vapor-stein | tagged by @babypaulchen and @heavygloomxx Thank you both!

1. I’m curious: when did you discover Rammstein?

Can’t really tell WHEN I discovered them tbh. I remember situations when people were mentioning the band or I listened to a bit of Du Hast or Amerika, so I’d say I've been aware of their existence since?? 2008 or so. But I really got into them pretty lately, so like, in late 2018, I think.

2. Tell me your story. How did you discover them?

So yeah I discovered them because people around me were occasionally playin some of their songs and I REALLY got into them when I listened to all of their albums properly for the first time.

3. Favorite song?

There are so many but my ultimate fave has to be Sonne. Apart from that I also have a weak spot for: Weisses Fleisch, DRSG, Deutschland, Mann Gegen Mann, Reise Reise, Ausländer, Rosenrot, Morgenstern, Ich WIll and Donaukinder (I could literally go for hours, so many of their songs hold a special place in my heart)

4. Least favorite song? Come on. I know you have one.

Gotta be Stirb nicht vor mir. I have some strong feelings against this song for some reason and I really hate that they put it on Rosenrot and not as a bonus track for the Raritäten album or something.

5. Favorite album?

This one is always hard because it depends! But right now it’s either Herzeleid or Reise, Reise.

6. Least favorite album?

THIS ONE i hate as well sfhbsdf I feel like saying that one album is my least fave one would make me sound like I don’t really love it but I swear I do, in fact, love all of them. Tho if I really have to choose I’d say it has to be either the Untitled one or Rosenrot (IT EVEN HURTS TO TYPE)

7. Something that speaks to you in the deepest sense of the word: a lyric? A specific song?

Even if I consider this song to be one of my least favorites (musically speaking), I have to say I really, really, REALLY love the lyrics of Frühling in Paris (and the fact that Till fought for it to be on the actual album and not as a bonus track). I’m also forever greatful for the lyrics of Mann Gegen Mann and how beautiful and relatable they are and just.. everything about them. Aaaand I have a weak spot for Wilder Wein (especially the LAB version, oh god).

8. Unpopular opinion: about a member? A scandal? Anything?

I.. have a lot of those. But let’s just go with my two main ones, I guess. I think this whole Platz Eins/TTE drama showed how little people actually understand Till and his approach to art and just.. the way he sees the world and writes lyrics/his poems. Which also means people don’t really get the essence of Rammstein and are unable to really tell the difference between art and reality, which is something I found to be pretty shocking. The other thing is not serious at all but I don’t really understand why Richard is considered to be the hottest member tbh. I have nothing against people who think that way, obviously, but personally I never really found him that attractive and if I weren’t present in the fandom I’d swear people are into Schneider or Oli way more.

9. Have you ever seen them live? Tell me what you felt.

Yes! I saw them in Poland last year and it was so magical. The thing they did with those lgbt flags will stay with me til I die and I’m forever thankful for that 😭

10. Do you play any instruments? If you do, can you play any song by them?

Sadly no :<

I tag @tillisgod @thecultoftill and @till-hammer because everybody else seems to have done it already hah