#SHE’S REGAINING CONTROL BY KILLING THIS MAN

[sainteivy]

in terms of creating eden, ivy fits the existence as eve pre-apple. she is queen in her own domain, ruler of the earth + dirt, (half) creator of earth-paradise until it is ripped away from her – by a man (in which adam blamed his deception on eve) no less.

[fallingtowers]

the way buffy the vampire slayer uses guns is really interesting. it's very consistent, and might be divided into three different "tiers" depending on the wielder's role in the story, each of which signifies certain traits:

unnamed background characters, usually police officers, who carry guns as a matter of course. in and of itself i don't think this means much -- it's not much deeper than "cops have guns in the show because cops have guns in real life" -- but because of the way btvs depicts the police, we might call this part and parcel of a symbolic set which marks a character as a "civilian," unaware of the supernatural world and not equipped to deal with it. guns can't kill vampires, so the gun here ironically becomes a symbol of powerlessness.

antagonists. here, the gun signifies callousness, cynicism, and a disregard for life. we see this for example in cain ("phases"), the german commandos ("homecoming"), and patrice ("what's my line"). an interesting case is coach marin ("go fish"), who as far as i can remember never fires his gun but who possesses the traits associated with this tier regardless. note also that characters in this tier are almost universally driven by a desire for money, so that the gun here is also associated with selfishness and greed.

(mostly) major, (mostly) sympathetic characters. here, the gun signifies desperation and psychological anguish on the part of the wielder. the wielder is cracking under some great pressure, and the gun symbolizes a desperate and misguided attempt to reassert control. the standout example here is riley, who does this twice -- once in "goodbye, iowa" and again in "the yoko factor" -- but we might also mention james in "i only have eyes for you" and spike in "fool for love." note also that warren falls into this category, rather than tier 2 (hence why i specified "mostly sympathetic") -- his shooting buffy is a crime of passion, not a dispassionate, cynical act, and crucially he only resorts to using the gun after buffy has bested him at every turn for almost a full season: a last-ditch attempt to regain control. the gun again comes to symbolize helplessness, but here has an added layer in that its use will actively make one's situation worse. james and warren both pulled the trigger, and see where that got them. riley and spike didn't, so they were spared by the narrative.

again and again, we see the show go out of its way to avoid its characters using guns except in these very specific cases. buffy's projectile weapon of choice is a crossbow; the initiative rank-and-file almost exclusively use taser guns. even faith, after her heel turn, doesn't use guns, because her motives don't align with those of tier 2; instead, she uses a bow.

as an aside, it would be inaccurate to say that buffy never uses a gun -- in "i only have eyes for you," when james possesses her, she confronts angel at gunpoint. similarly, willow gets her hands on a gun in "the killer in me." these two cases share an interesting similarity -- in both examples, the character is being compelled to act uncharacteristically by forces outside her control, thus reinforcing the gun as a symbol of powerlessness.

(it's also worth noting that there's a pattern where the gun is associated with specifically gendered violence. the characters in tier 3 are almost universally male, and they almost universally shoot or threaten to shoot women. buffy and willow break the mold, but both of their cases are echoes of earlier events where a man shot a woman. something something phallic imagery.)

this all speaks to a very measured and clear-sighted moral stance. in the world of btvs, guns are bad. at best, if you use one, you are a clueless idiot way out of your depth; at worst, you're going to die badly. or, in buffy's own words (from "flooded"):

[scorpionyx9621]

You know. Dead Space but particularly Isaac Clarke becomes a much more tragic character when you realize with the span of like 6 months time Isaac has a loving girlfriend whom he convinces to serve aboard a favorite spaceship of his, has his father who has been absent for basically the entirety of his life finally decide to retire and come back to Earth. Plus his mother, who has gone through multiple psychotic episodes of falling head first into a religious cult and spending all of hers and Isaac's money trying to gain acclaim in said religious cult.

Right when Isaac thinks his life is on an upswing he loses everything. His mother has another mental breakdown and kills Isaac's father and then herself. The dream ship Isaac convinced Nicole to serve aboard ends up getting co-opted by the same religious cult that drove Isaac's mom mad and unleashed an actual apocalypse on board. Isaac blames his girlfriend for the death of his parents (in a heat of the moment thing frankly) Isaac watches the last transmission sent from Nicole and watches as she kills herself to avoid being turned into an infected monster.

He then, as what I can only assume as an extreme trauma response, forcibly forgets watching his girlfriend end her own life and goes through actual turbo ultra extreme radical mega hell aboard a necromorph infected spaceship the size of a city and sees horrors truly biblical in proportion, and becomes an unwitting victim to the effects of an alien artifact created by an actual eldritch abomination as a means of reproduction and it's means of controlling and assimilating a whole planet and becomes imbued with it's essence. Driving him actually insane and making him a rambling incoherent mess drifting off into deep space.

Isaac then gets discovered and forcefully taken hostage by the government and for three years is given memory suppressant drugs and is forced to rebuild the same eldritch death tool over again. And when Isaac finally regains consciousness it's right in the middle of ANOTHER necromorph infection apocalypse event and Isaac must once again trek through actual real life turbo mega hell and has to save not only himself but other people while constantly being taunted and harassed by the eldritch marker taking the form of his ex Girlfriend and using literally every trick in the toxic lover handbook to ensure Isaac's second outing in the extremely bad place has just enough self-hatred and depression spice.

Oh and while this took place well over three years, Isaac was only lucid for about a little over 6 months of that so I'm not surprised this man is literally the most explicit example of damaged goods in all of fiction. And I love Isaac so much because of it

[putellas11]

A/N:  I’ve had this in my drafts for ages! Since I really haven’t had anytime to write (and probably won’t for a little while longer) I figured I’d release this hot mess in the meantime. I hope I’ll be able to come back in full force soon! Hope you enjoy!

Revenge is Sweet (Alexia Putellas x Reader)

You wake up to ice-cold water being poured all over you.

“What the fuck!?”

Gasping and shivering from the cold, you glare through blurry vision at the woman towering over you with a bucket in her hand.

Alexia.

She’s the last person you wanted to see, and a sense of impending doom begins to creep in at the inevitable lecture that awaits you.

“Seriously? Again?” Her tone, posture, and expression all reflect a deep sense of disappointment and genuine anger. 

Anyone else would cower under her glare, but not you. Alexia implied it with her words— this is not the first time this has happened, so you know what to expect. She’ll lecture you about responsibility and commitment to the team, and you’ll nod your head pretending to listen, but really, you’ll just be focused on not throwing up all over her shoes.

“Hey, at least I’m not late to training this time,” you argue, slowly lifting yourself from the wet floor, droplets of water splashing down with your every movement. 

“On time but you’re fucking drunk!”

Her voice rings out in your ears and you can’t help but flinch. If you lacked any common sense you’d ask her to quiet down, but you know better.

“I’m hungover, actually. There’s a difference.” You point out, but with little to no conviction in your words.

It’s not just that you have no strength to plead your case, you also don’t care enough to do so. It’s always the same argument with Alexia and it never fails to end the same way, so you don’t see the point in engaging in the usual back and forth. The sooner you can get her to go away, the better.

“I’m so sick and tired of covering for you,” she says, hands on her waist and that annoying look of disapproval in her eyes she has reserved just for you.

“Ok, so stop. It’s not like I ever asked you to anyway.” You’re growing more and more frustrated by the minute, feeling suffocated by the wet clothes sticking to your body.

Alexia may be the captain of the team, but her threats matter very little when you have Jona wrapped around your finger. As long as you keep on producing results on the field, he’ll continue to turn a blind eye to whatever you do off it. Alexia, of course, is not happy with this little agreement you have with the manager.

“I’m being serious! What you’re doing is wrong and it’s setting a horrible example for the others. Por dios, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. This behavior is going to bite you in the ass, and when that happens, I won’t stand in the way.”

You try so hard to not roll your eyes but you’re sick and tired of all the lectures and threats. “Oh, that doesn’t surprise me one bit, babe. Let’s not pretend like you haven’t wanted me off this team from the moment I got here.”

Alexia takes a step back, surprised by what you said. “That’s not true.”

“Bullshit,” you counter, not afraid to call her out. “You’ve done nothing but give me a hard time, and for what? Because I like to go out with my friends? Jona doesn’t care and that’s all that matters. So, with all due respect, reina...,” you draw out the title you know she’s not too fond of, “either take it up with the big man or fuck off and leave me alone.”

If looks could kill, you’d be dead right now.

With her hands in tight fists by her side, Alexia takes a deep breath to regain control of her emotions. “Get changed, eat something, and get your act together before everyone else gets here.”  Spoken through clenched teeth, her words are edged with anger.

“Yeah, yeah” you dismiss her, waving her away as she stomps out of the locker room.

The second Alexia is out of sight, you run to the nearest trash can and throw up all the fun you had last night.

“Fuck me, this is not going to be fun.”

Once you take your second shower of the day— thanks to Alexia, and get something in your stomach, you start to feel somewhat human again. There’s still someone inside your head going crazy with a jackhammer, but you’re confident you can push through it. After all, this isn’t your first rodeo.

Every once in a while, you have trouble saying no to a good party. Sometimes the party just so happens to fall on the night before a training session, and it is what it is.

Life is too short to make it all about football.

Alexia, on the other hand, can’t seem to wrap her head around that. The nagging is never-ending, the lectures make you want to slam your head against the wall, and her ‘better than you’ attitude has you wishing you never signed with Barça in the first place. If it was not for the fact that you’re playing the best football of your career, your agent would already be in contact with another club.

Under the blistering Barcelona sun, the team is huddled up in a circle listening to Jona’s instructions on the training session. Unfortunately, the pounding inside your head has only gotten worse which makes it difficult to pay attention to anything that is being said. All you want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for a week and a few days.

“You look like shit,” Mapi whispers in your ear rather matter-of-factly.

“Really? Because I feel fantastic.” Sarcasm drips from your lips and Mapi has to suppress her laughter in order to not draw any attention to the two of you.

Jona blows the whistle and you can only send a little prayer that he’ll take it easy on you today.

Alexia, however, seems to have other plans. Today of all days, she has decided to train with an unusual intensity. Your prayer clearly not answered as Alexia demands that very same intensity from the rest of her teammates, and especially from you. On the surface, it seems that all she wants is for the team to work hard, but deep down, you know this is nothing but a ploy so she can make you suffer.

Despite your current state, you’re determined to refuse her the satisfaction of seeing you on your knees, defeated. When she screams at you to run faster, you run faster. When she tackles you again and again, you make it a point to not stay down for too long. You do all of this through gritted teeth and a body screaming and begging for it all to stop.

The training session ends with free kick practice and your first attempt goes over the crossbar.

This gives Alexia a brilliant idea.

“For every shot missed, you’ll have to run the length of the pitch and back,” she commands, a smug smile on her lips.

You can feel everyone's eyes on you and this only makes your blood boil. It’s clear that you’re on the verge of passing out but no one dares to go up against Alexia and you can’t exactly blame them. She has the respect of everyone in on the team, coaching staff included, of course no one comes to your aid.

So, you have no choice but to run. Something you have done a million times before is now nearly impossible to accomplish. When you make it back, your vision is blurry and it’s a struggle to catch your breath— factors that only make it all that more difficult to get the ball in the net.

It’s no surprise when you miss.

“Again!”

With your hands on your knees, you shoot daggers at Alexia, hoping to convey with your eyes all the words you can’t say out loud. In return, she challenges you to speak up— her expression daring you to admit defeat so your punishment can come to an end and she can claim her victory.

The desire to prove her wrong outweighs your need for rest. Even with your heart aching in your chest, you manage to touch the goal post on the other end of the pitch but this time, barely manage make it back.

Black dots start to infiltrate your vision and you’re not sure you have any fight left in you. A free kick drill has now become a matter of life and death.

“Come on, you got this!”

Surprisingly, Claudia is the one who dares to speak up but she quickly has to hide behind Patri when Alexia shoots a deadly glare in her direction.

Pina’s interruption earns you a few more seconds and that makes it possible for you to get one good breath in. Her words of encouragement settle in your mind and feed your confidence.

You take three steps back and one to the side— as is your custom. A bead of sweat trickles down your forehead and its path leads dangerously close to your eye but you pay it no mind.

The moment you make contact with the ball you know it’s perfect. It’s the right amount of power and curve, making it drop under the crossbar just in time and into the back of the net.

Everyone seems to breathe out a sigh of relief with Alexia being the only exception. There’s so much you want to say but you know it’s not the right time nor place.

One thing is for certain; your revenge will be sweet.

Alexia leads the team to the locker room but you decide it’s best to stay behind. There’s a rage building up inside of you that needs to be controlled. So, you seek out a little bit of shade and take some time to calm yourself down before you do or say something that will surely get you in a lot of trouble, but you certainly won’t regret.

“You look like shit” Jona’s voice disrupts your thoughts. The young manager kneels by your side and offers you a bottle of water.

“So I’ve been told.”

Aware of your difficult relationship with Alexia, Jona has had to assume the role of peacemaker more than once. While he has often come to your defense when you’ve needed him the most, there have been times he has had to take a step back and allow you to feel the full extent of Alexia’s wrath.

“You deserved it this time, you know,” he says, and you have no strength to argue.

“I deserved to be punished yes, but that little stunt was so much more than that.”

It was one thing for Alexia to punish you for showing up hungover to practice, but it was another thing entirely to intentionally embarrass you in front of the entire team.

All you can think about is revenge.

______

A few weeks have passed since your altercation with Alexia and since then, the two of you have not said more than two sentences to each other off the pitch.

On the pitch it’s a slightly different matter. Despite what Alexia might think, you know how to be a professional. When the whistle is blown, you’re able to put all your anger to the side and follow your captain's orders without a second thought. Once the 90 minutes are over, however, you don’t bother to give her a second glance.

Since you haven’t been in the greatest of moods lately, the plan was to stay in and have a quiet night in, but your friends don’t really believe in such a thing. All it took was one text for your night to take a very different turn.

📲: Otto Zutz tonight 😈

A favorite among your friends, Otto Zutz never disappoints. You’re no stranger to the club so you feel right at home surrounded by the steel pillars and cement walls.

One drink turns into two and you don’t bother to keep count after five. Under the influence of alcohol and of your mischievous friends, you ordered a bottle of Cristal only to shake it vigorously and spray it down to everyone on the dance floor. The huge roar that reverberated around the club was music to your ears.

The crowd below demands your attention so you make your way to them. The space is clouded with artificial smoke and fog, strobe lights flashing in sync with the music. You mix into the crowd and become one of many the bodies on the dance floor controlled by the onslaught of drumbeats.

It’s all going to perfection— until you spot her in the crowd. All the alcohol you have consumed has blurred your vision and the lighting in the club certainty doesn’t help, but you’re certain it’s her.

“Alexia,” you say to yourself.

You should turn away from her and ensure your night ends on a high, yet, you can’t fight the urge to talk to her. Somehow you manage to get through the sea of bodies in your way but now with her back to you, Alexia doesn’t see you approach her.

“What are you doing here, Putellas?,” your voice slurred, a hand on her shoulder to get her attention.

When she turns around, you have to take a step back.

“Alba?”

Definitely not Alexia.

The sisters share a few similarities, but you have always been able to tell them apart. It’s a mistake you can only blame on the alcohol coursing through your veins.

“Well, look who we have here,” Alba, who has clearly had just as much to drink as you, pulls you in for a tight embrace and her hands waste no time settling on your lower back.

Unlike Alexia, Alba has always been particularly fond of you. It was innocent at first with just the occasional DM on Instagram, but it eventually progressed to lingering touches and suggestive whispers behind Alexia’s back. You haven’t dared to take it any further, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t entertained the possibility.

Just the idea of you and Alba getting together would be enough to drive Alexia crazy. If that idea were to ever become a reality…

With a hand on Alba’s waist, you lean in so she can hear you over the music, “dance with me.”

Her nails dig in ever so slightly into your back and her lips brush against your ear, giving you all the confirmation you need.

Revenge is sweet. ______

Spirits are high inside the locker room. The team is feeling extremely confident after a streak of great results, so there’s laughter and a lot of teasing as you get ready for training.

It’s the calm before the storm.

There’s a very notable absence in the locker room. Alexia, who is usually one of the very first to arrive, is nowhere to be seen.

Alba texted you last night to give you a heads up that Alexia had somehow found out about the two of you planning on going out on a date, and according to Alba, Alexia was not at all pleased with the idea. This, of course, didn’t surprise you. In fact, it’s what you wanted all along.

There is no doubt in your mind that going on a date with Alba is a horrible idea. You know it can only bring you trouble, but you still haven’t quite gotten over Alexia’s so called punishment. Not only that, it’s how much she seemed to enjoy watching you run back and forth, fighting for your life. For you, that moment was a declaration of war and as they say, all is fair in love and war. 

The impact of the door crashing against the wall startles everyone in the locker room. The door closes itself with force behind Alexia as she zeros in on you. Her face a ferocious red, eyes burning with rage.

You love it.

Alexia marches in your direction, takes the cleats from your hands and throws them against the wall. “Stay the hell away from Alba!”

Everyone around you is frozen in shock at the scene that’s unfolding before their very eyes. It reminds you of the previous clash with Alexia, but this time, you have the upper hand.

“I don’t think Alba would like that very much,” you say, tilting your head slightly to the side with an arrogant smirk.

“My sister is off limits!”

You scoff at her words. “Alba is allowed to date whoever she wants,” you say, keeping your eyes on Alexia, “isn’t that right, Mapi?”

Mapi, completely taken off guard, immediately puts her hands up in defense, “I’m innocent in all of this.”

The fire in Alexia’s eyes continues to burn bright but you refuse to look away and you refuse to back down.

“Everyone out!”

Like loyal soldiers, everyone in the locker room packs up what they need and practically run out of the locker room. You get a few looks from some of your teammates on their way out, almost as they want to get their last look good look of you alive and breathing before Alexia gets her hands on you.

“I don’t think you understand how pissed off I am right now,” she says, her jaw set.

“Oh, believe me, babe. I understand.”

A wave of recognition crashes over her, and Alexia finally understands that all of this is just your way of getting revenge. “You’re doing this on purpose,” she breathes out, and she almost can’t believe her own words. “You’re seriously using my sister to get back at me?”

A shrug of the shoulders is all you give her as a response.

Alexia runs her fingers through her hair in frustration and begins to pace the room. You watch in amusement as she covers her face with her hands and lets out a muffled groan born out of frustration.

“You know training is about to start, right?”

Alexia stops in her tracks and finally looks at you, “what do I have to do?” she asks.

Your eyebrows furrow in confusion, “what the hell are you talking about?”

Alexia takes a step closer and you notice the rage in her eyes has been replaced with icy determination. “Tell me what I have to do for you not to go on that date with Alba,” there’s a slight hesitation before she says, “I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.” Alexia nods once and for a brief moment, her expression falters revealing her fear of you actually taking her up on her offer.

You’re overwhelmed by the possibilities, but one thing is for certain, you want to keep this going for as long as possible.

“Fine,” you say, crossing your arms across your chest. “If I can’t go out with Alba…” you take a pause, building up the anticipation much to Alexia’s displeasure, “...you’ll have to do.”

“What?”

“You heard me. If I can’t go out with Alba, you’ll have to go out with me instead.”

Alexia’s eyes open wide, her lips parted in disbelief. This is the first time you see her truly vulnerable and you have to fight the grin threatening to spread across your face.

“No, no, y-you can’t be serious,” she stutters, forcing herself to take a step back.

“Oh, I’m very serious,” you say, “but, you can always so no and I can just go out with Alba.”

This is a win-win situation for you and Alexia knows it. There’s no getting out of this one, so it’s all a matter of how far she’s willing to go to ensure you stay away from her sister.

“Ok,” she says, “I’ll do it,” her words spoken so softly you can barely hear her.

“I’m gonna need you to speak up.”

Alexia takes in a deep breath, draws her shoulders back, and looks you dead in the eye. “Fine, I will go out with you,” she finally says, and this time you can hear her just fine. “But, Alba can never know about this.”

You expected her to put up more of a fight, but it seems she’s desperate to make sure you stay as far away as possible from Alba. If it were anybody else you’d be offended, but you don’t care much about Alexia’s opinion of you.

Your smile makes her eye twitch, her jaw clenched so tight that it’s a little concerning. Still, Alexia stands her ground and accepts her fate.

“Well, that’s settled then,” you say, closing the distance Alexia created.

There’s a pause. You scan her features, watching the subtle signs of tension around the corners of her mouth. When her tongue darts out to wet her lips, an unexpected shiver runs down your spine.

“You’re all mine.”

—————————

Part 2

[snailsdraw]

[Start ID: 6 pages of HLVRAI narrative doodles about the Science Team's first meeting with the Spore Launcher.

Bubby waves Gordon over to a small lift enthusiastically: "Gordon, come look at what I found! Right this way." Gordon, however, is wary: "I dunno, man. Should I even be trusting you to lead me places? You remember what happened the, uh, buh- the last time, so sue me for having a hard time believing it's safe up there." Bubby gives him a tired look: "Gordon, I've long put that behind me-" "YOU???" Gordon cuts in incredulously, "YOU'VE put-" Bubby ignores him and continues: "And- Yes! I would like if we could get going now."

But they do not get going, because Gordon is now mad. The lift makes its way up without them. "Look, buddy," Gordon starts, trying to keep him volume under control, "I don't know if you think this is some sorts bit? Or me being uncooperative- I am GENUINELY traumatised by what you did. And Benrey. Can't forget him. The fuckin' TWO of you can-" But Bubby isn't having it, and dismissively he says: "Yes, and I apologised. I didn't expect that to happen, you know. I did tell you that." The lift comes back down with a surprised Darnold. "Oh! You guys made it," Darnold says as the lift comes to a halt. Bubby's face brightens as he sees him, and he points out the thing held in Darnold's arms: "Oh good, it's that thing I wanted to show you!" All eyes follow Bubby's finger down the purring lungfish-like alien in Darnold's hands. Gordon is horrified: "What the- what the hell is THAT?? Should we REALLY be touching the weird alien creature- killing machines- in this place- Come on, you guys…"

"Well, y'see, Dr Freeman," Darnold begins matter-of-factly, "those creatures were- y'see, they weren't in tubes. Un-tubed creatures, now they're the ones you gotta look out for. But this one is fine. I should know. I made the potion in the tube I found her in!" Gordons squints at him: "What the hell is he saying?" Bubby's mouth hangs slightly agape. He does not answer. Darnold continues, undeterred: "I recognised it immediately from how I, uh, blacked out for 2 minutes after tasting it." "You WHAT?!!" Gordon yells. Bubby regains his voice. Something Darnold had said about making potions for tubes had left him uneasy. "Darnold, did you aid in my creation?" he asks in a small voice, too quiet to hear over Gordon's volume. "WHY WOULD YOU- You're supposed to-" Gordon stumbles over his words, perplexed by Darnold's actions, "Weren't you, like, terrified of dying just a minute ago- WHY would you drink something you didn't even RECOGNISE??!" "Look-" Darnold tries to interject, but Gordon presses on. "YOU COULD'A DIED, MAN!!" Sensing that Gordon is finally done, Darnold sighs: "Look, I understand your concerns, Dr Freeman, but what IS a scientist if not someone who observes and makes sense of his surroundings?"

Gordon pinches his nosebridge and screws his eyes tight shut: "I dunno…Alive? Usually?" "I do this for a living, you know?" Darnold counters. Bubby folds his arms, unimpressed: "That's no attitude for a scientist, Gordon. How do you think we got so famous as a research facility?" Gordon groans: "From all the shit that's going on now, for sure. The media's gonna run with this for weeks-" He cuts himself off with an exhausted sigh: "I'm done with this conversation." Gordon pulls his hand from his face and gestures to the alien creature in Darnold's arms: "What's, uh, what's that thing you found there, bud? You know it's not dangerous. What else d'you got? Know?" Darnold's eyes wander upwards in thought, stroking the creature absentmindedly: "Well…she didn't try to take my head off when she saw me, that's one. There were two others in the intact tubes nearby. Hers was broken."

As the creature begins to purr under his hand, Darnold smiles slightly: "Oh! And that she seems to enjoy being pet…which was quite surprising." "I couldn't find any written information on their species," he continues, "so I've elected to call them the, uh…Gubbs…after the sound they make." "The Gubbs," Gordon repeats, unsure, "Right, okay-" Bubby raises an accusing eyebrow at Darnold: "That's not what we agreed on." He raises an intelligent finger, recounting: "I remember clearly stating that they looked like mini Hubble Telescopes, and that we named them "Hubbs"." Darnold frowns at him: "I- no, you- I recall no exchange of that nature, Dr Bubby." Overlapping him, but quieter, Gordon mutters: "The Hubb- I mean, I guess? Kinda? But-" Bubby jumps back in to correct Darnold: "Of course, you do! It's much like the James Webb Telescope you kids are more familiar with these days." Gordon freezes.

"Gh- The-" Gordon stutters, and it takes him a moment to find his words, "J-James Webb." Bubby begins to say "Yes", but shuts his mouth right before the word leaves. "James Webb," Gordon continues, shaken, "I'm not trippin', right? He said that. James-" "…yeah, I, uh…" Darnold says, equally at a loss, "…I don't know what that is." Gordon points at Bubby: "How do you know what that is, it's not even-" his voice drops into a harsh whisper, "It doesn't even exist yet??" Gordon sucks in a breath. "Bubby," he tries again, carefully "How do you know what that is?" The old man is silent for a long beat. "Hello, Gordon," Bubby says. The defult NPC dialogue line catches Gordon off guard so hard he wheezes in surprised laughter. "You can't just-" Gordon wheezes for breath. "That's Dr Coomer's line-" As if on cue, the stout elderly scientist appears by Bubby's side. "HELLO, GORDON!" Dr Coomer greets chipperly. Gordon heaves a heavy sigh: "Hello, Dr Coomer…" "Hello, Dr Coomer!" Bubby beams.

End ID.]

Previous parts found here: [Part 1.] [Part 2.]

[persnicketypomelo]

Can you compare and contrast Leroux!Erik and Musical!Eriks responses to reader seeing them without the mask for the first time, but she’s actually not alarmed and is very accepting? Maybe she gives them a lil kiss of her own volition- thank you!!

Leroux's Erik is much more darker, as in self-harm, but also surprisingly sweet. Well, as sweet as someone so obsessive as him can be.

This looks like Rachel Barrell and presumably JOJ? I actually love Rachel Barrell, she's one of my favorites. :)

Musical Erik

Both would react with the same fiery temper towards you if you unmasked them by surprise/against their wishes

Musical Erik needs to be able to hold the strings in how you interact with him and perceive him

He will meticulously plan how the two of you are to meet, how much you know about him, when he plans introduce himself in the corporeal form, and even (unwittingly to you) steer your actions when you’re not with him

All of this is to say that he is a complete control freak

And this is one of the main reasons behind his adverse reaction to you unmasking him, even if you have only kind thoughts of what lies beneath

However, if you manage to gently tell him that you do not fear his face, he will not believe you at first

But looking him unabashedly in his eyes with a demure smile manages to convince him that, perhaps, you are not entirely lying

If you kiss him, say on the cheek or forehead to try and prove your point

Well, it is safe to say that he’s flustered

He would tell you it is time to return the surface world, for he feels quite embarrassed and caught off guard by your unexpected…affection

Erik would need time alone to restore his composure

He reaches for his mask, smoothing it upon his face, and suddenly he regains some of his suave self-assured air

At the end of the day, his trust in keeping you within his grasp strengthens, but he is a man who covets control, and even your unexpected kindness cannot do away with this tendency

I think the only time he would voluntarily allow you to take his mask off, for he would never do it himself, is when he's emotionally vulnerable

It is not so much that he feels insecure about his face around you, but moreso that he feels more powerful with his mask on

Book Erik

This scenario really highlights the difference between the musical and book version

His anger is more explosive and more volatile than in the musical interpretation

He claws his flesh brutally, sobbing and laughing in a kind of hysteria

If you turn your head away from the brutal sight of him tearing at his skin, he will grip you by the hair tightly and turn your head to look at him

"Look at Erik...this hideous monster!...Shunned by society, with a face no mother could love!...You just couldn't bear to contain your curiosity, eh?"

But once he heras your cries and begging, he awakens from his reverie and eases his grip off of you

The poor man has no control over his mood-swings

As soon as he realizes he hurt you, he falls to the ground crying and begging for forgiveness

It is hard to convince him that you derive no horror from his face, for he has gone his whole life thinking himself to be unloveable because of it

But once he is convinced of your honesty, he is completely and utterly yours

And the gentle kiss you press to his head makes him fall to his knees

Erik clutches the fabric of your clothing sobbing, for he never dreamed to receive any compassion in his lifetime

And now that you've offered him a piece of your love?

He would kill another man should you so desire

From then on, he leaves the mask all but forgotten

You will catch him very often vying for your eye, like a child wishing for appraisal

Look him in the face and tell him you love him, and he will follow you to the ends of the earth

[wandering-scavenger]

It's easy enough to reduce Criston Cole's Episode 5 behaviour to being in love with Rhaenyra, but the truth of the matter is that his reaction doesn't revolve around her so much as it revolves around his struggle with honor and purpose.

As he said back in episode 3, Kingsguard is the highest honor that his house has ever had. What he and Rhaenyra initially had was very much reminiscent of the courtly love that was dominant in Arthurian legend, the concept that a knight and lady could have affections for one another while respecting the boundaries of their stations and maintaining a sense of "purity".

It's already been discussed that the episode 4 conflict of to-sleep-with-rhaenyra-or-not-to was not 100% consensual because Criston was in a position of subservience to Rhaenyra and it was very much a "damned if you do, damned if you dont" situation. He risks death either way and ends up breaking his vows to appease her. Of course, it is apparent enough that he harbored feelings for her. But two things can be true at the same time.

We open to episode 5, where Criston proposes that they run away and marry one another, already without his armour and showing his vulnerability to her. When Rhaenyra rejects, he tells her that he broke his vows as Kingsguard and thought that marrying her would relieve him of his guilt. Guilt over what? Breaking his vows, of course. When she suggests that they continue on as lovers while she married Laenor, he reduces it to being her "whore".

In Criston's eyes, the only way he can properly make up for his sin of breaking his Kingsguard vows is by swearing the vows between two people in matrimony, another lifelong commitment. If it was simply about love in his eyes, he might have said "lover/paramour" but he specifically says "whore", someone who trades their body for coin.

Having his proposal be rejected by Rhaenyra was not simply the loss of a romantic future he thought they could have, it was the loss of his chance to redeem himself and regain the honor he lost by sleeping with the woman who gave him his job and whom he was sworn to protect.

It's why he loses all control over himself when Joffrey tries to build a rapport with him and insinuates that they are on the same boat. Criston does not want to be Joffrey's equivalent, a "whore" for their King/Queen to enjoy. To him, there is no honor in that. But the reality of it is staring him so plainly in the face during the feast that he needs to eliminate that reminder by attacking and killing poor Joffrey.

That inability to live with the reality of his situation is further emphasized when he finally tries to kill himself. He's more than a scorned man, he's a man who's lost his purpose and blames himself for it (as seen when he admits to Alicent that he slept with Rhaenyra and accepts the fate of death).

When Alicent stops him from doing the deed, what she is essentially doing is giving him a chance to regain his honour and a new sense of purpose: serving her and her children. It is possible that they will have the courtly love that is more true to Arthurian legend, Criston having such a deep devotion to his Queen and his role as her guard that he pushes the chess pieces to further the Greens' cause. Whether or not there will be a semblance of romance between them in the time jump, there will no doubt be the devotion that renders him one of Alicent's staunchest allies.

[beevean]

Translating Dawn of Sorrow's bios

Soma Cruz

19 years old

The protagonist of this game. He has the ability, called "Power of Dominance", to control the souls of monsters and use their power. In the previous year's battle, he realized that he was the reincarnation of Dracula and awakened as the Dark Lord, but by overcoming the Chaos within himself, he rejected his fate. However, since the enormous power of the Dark Lord still belongs to him, his life was once again targeted.

Mina Hakuba

19 years old

The only girl of Hakuba Shrine and Soma's childhood friend. A year ago, she and Soma were trapped in Dracula's castle in a solar eclipse. She doesn't have any special powers, but she's the girl Soma is most comfortable with, and she's his emotional support throughout the story.

Yoko Belnades

25 years old

A witch who works for the Church. An expert in covertly dealing with malicious entities that harm humans. She's a descendant of Sypha Belnades, who destroyed Dracula in 1476. She has a friendly but nosy personality. She frequently visits Mina's house, and she's like an older sister to her.

Genya Arikado

Age unknown

A person who keeps an eye on Soma. Other than that he belongs to a secret agency of the Japanese government, everything about him is shrouded in mystery, and only a handful of people know his true identity. He is inhumanly beautiful, but also unfriendly and unapproachable, and few people know his true feelings.

Julius Belmont

56 years old

A descendant of the Belmont family, a legitimate family of vampire hunters. He wields the "Vampire Killer", a demon-extinguishing whip that has been handed down in his family. He's the man who defeated Dracula in 1999. He lost his memory in battle at that time, but regained it a year ago, and now helps the Church.

Hammer

35 years old

After the events of last years, he retired from the military and now runs a general store. Although he appears scary and strong-willed, he's actually rather laidback. Expanding connections in the underworld, he also acts as an informant. Rumor has it that he fell in love with Yoko and that's why he expanded his connections.

Celia Fortner

26 years old

Although she is the founder of a cult that worships God, her hidden nature is of a dark priest. With the Dark Lord gone, she feels that the power of the Dark Side is weakening, and is afraid of losing her power. Therefore, she takes action to kill Soma and take away his power as the Dark Lord.

Dario Bossi

37 years old

A Dark Lord candidate who manipulates flames. He has the ability to manipulate flames because he was exposed to Dracula's power when he was destroyed. He's the impulsive type and acts immediately on what he thinks.

Dmitrii Blinov

37 years old

A Dark candidate who copies magic. Like Dario, he was exposed to Dracula's power, so he has the ability to absorb the magical powers he's struck by. He speaks politely, but will go to great lengths to achieve his goals.

[swiftdove]

Home

pairing: wanda/reader

word count: 1071

warnings: dark!wanda, slight MoM spoilers, manipulation, angst (kinda), toxic undertones if you squint

summary: wanda wants you back, and despite your earlier resistance, you soon realize that there's nothing stopping the witch from getting what she wants.

It seemed that the further you ran, the closer she got.

Your hands were on your knees as you tried to regain balance, your breaths coming out in short, rapid puffs. You should've known it would've been impossible to outrun one of the if not most powerful people that inhabited this universe. The only reason you had made it so far was because of Dr Strange, but now, stuck in the vast multiverse along with America Chavez without his sling ring, he was rendered useless. You could only hope that the young Latina would learn how to harness her powers and swoop in to save you from the monster that you used to call your lover.

You were well aware of the lengths that Wanda went to, just to find you. After being struck down by Thanos back in the war, you had been declared dead. Nobody cared enough to actually check if you were alive, with Wanda still grieving the loss of Vision. Vision. The name left a sour taste on your tongue. He was the man who had managed to steal Wanda's heart, the man who had whisked her away from your hands. She had left you in the most cruel way possible, and had left you to collect the remains of your heart that she had so carelessly shattered.

And now she was after you. You weren't sure what she was going to do to you if you fell into the witch's hands, but you were 97% sure that it involved your demise. 

Just as you were about to take off again, you felt a slither of magic crawl up your ankle. You swiveled your head around so fast that you were almost certain that you had cracked it.

And there she stood, in all her glory, slowly descending onto you. You shook your head, refusing to believe that this would be how it ended. 

"I told you not to run." 

Her voice sent shivers down your back. She had completely given up on trying to mask her thick Sokovian accent, and the anger lacing her words was unmistakable.

Regaining control of your breath, you held your stance. "What do you want from me?" you asked, your voice wavering in fear, your words coming out softer than you had intended.

"You."

You were taken aback from her words, trying to decipher whether or not this was a cryptic way of telling you that you were doomed, or that she was...

No, she couldn't be. She didn't love you. You were simply a footnote in her story, nothing else.

Red flashed in your mind, and you grimaced when you realized that the witch had read your mind.

"I'm not going to kill you," she said, her cerulean eyes fixed on yours. "I... I would never hurt you. Never."

You almost chuckled at her words, shaking your head. This was just plain hypocrisy. "You're a fucking liar," you spat harshly, even shocking yourself with the intensity of your words. "You - I - you can't - you -"

You were cut short by the look in her eyes. The red had returned, accompanied a mist of tears. You bit your tongue, fear returning to your body as she stalked towards you. 

You could practically feel her hot breath on your neck. The redhead halted just centimeters in front of you, before gently cupping your chin in her hands. When you tried to jerk your head away, you realized that you couldn't. Memories of your past relationship with Wanda flooded your mind, tears welling in your eyes as you reminisced the happier moments of your life, and you immediately melted into her touch.

A smirk tugged at the Sokovian's lips when she dove into your head once again, filling your head with more memories of your relationship. Her favorite part about this was that it was all real. Every memory, the emotions that came along with it, were all real. 

"I'm sorry, Y/N. I truly am. I never... I never meant to hurt you," she whispered. You looked into her eyes, a tear sliding down your cheek as you searched for any signs of insincerity. 

You took a shaky breath. "I don't want to believe you," you murmured, your pained expression hitting the witch right where it hurt. 

"Please," the witch whispered, her voice hoarse, as she fell to her knees, and this time, you knew that she was being genuine. You felt uneasy looking at her on the ground, practically begging you to take her back. Wanda was usually so dominant and assertive. You were so distracted by the gesture that you hadn't noticed the chaos magic that had infiltrated your mind, or the witch's subtle hand movements.

She loves you.

You felt as though you were going insane, shaking your head desperately as you tried to get the voice out of your head. 

She only wants the best for you. She never meant to hurt you.

The memories started flashing in your head again. You and Wanda, sitting on the sofa, watching movies, the two of you on picnic dates, all the times she had been there for you when nobody else was.

You breath hitched when you comprehended the fact that the witch had once again, permeated your mind.

"Get out of my head," you yelled, panic arising in your throat. The witch only stared, emotionless, tears still falling from her now red eyes. "Get out, please, get out of my -"

Then, suddenly, it all came back to you.

You were now sitting back at the compound, curled up in your bed with a box of tissues next to you. Wanda was next to you, gently coaxing you.

"It's okay, love," she whispered, delicately stroking your hair, handling you as if you were a porcelain doll that could easily break with the wrong choice of words or the slightest touch. "I'll always be here for you."

"I just - I - I'm so - I'm just so sick of myself. How do you even put up with me?" you asked, turning to face the redhead, who looked at you pitifully. 

"Why would you ever ask that?" she said. "You're gorgeous, dear. You always manage to make me laugh, even when I don't feel like it. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."

You only sniffled in response.

"You know that I'll always love you, right, Y/N? You're home now."

Home.

That was the word that finally broke you. In a flash, you returned back to where you were before, Wanda watching you intently as you came back to reality.

"Home," you whispered, and Wanda smiled, knowing that she had won.

Slowly standing up, the witch grabbed your shoulders, looking directly into your eyes. 

"That's right. You're finally home."

With a flick of her hands, your surroundings changed, and you suddenly found yourself in a suburban house, sitting on a juice-stained couch, snuggling against Wanda, two boys on the either side of you, fast asleep. Snow White played on the television screen, her voice drowned out by the thoughts occupying your head.

Home.

You were finally home.

[brendinoj]

Deconstructing Makima

Makima has been a character that I believe the majority of people adored at one point because of her calm demeaner and alluring nature. She has always been shown to be very mysterious and left scenes where it felt like there was always a deeper meaning behind her presence there in the first place. From her interactions with her allies and her enemies; it always felt like something was lurking underneath the facade she put up. We see her and her former allies in plenty of situations where the outcome was always unfavorable but in hindsight it either didn't matter or helped lead to her main goal.

She wanted to control Chainsaw Man. For this to be a possibility she had to build Denji up and break him down.

She had to make Chainsaw Man a hero in order to weaken the fear that humans would have of him, thus weakening Chainsaw Man. As we all should know, devils are only as strong as the fear that comes with their name/concept. In this weakened state she was able to beat chainsaw man down quite easily. She wanted to control him so she could use his power to presumably create a better world. She wanted to get rid of concepts such as Death, War, and Hunger. We know these are 3 of the 4 horseman of the apocalypse and Makima being the control devil was the last member of that group.

This group fought Chainsaw Man before but now she wanted to use Chainsaw man's power to get rid of those concepts, to erase them from existence. Chainsaw man has the unique ability to erase the names and concepts of things from existence when he devours a devil bearing that name and representing that concept. She proved this by asking Kishibe about several things humanity should've never forgotten about and yet he was unable to recall and let alone even believe the things she was listing off ever existed to begin with. He even states a power like that couldn't be possible.

Even though Makima eventually ends up defeating Chainsaw Man, Denji comes back to defeat her. We truly realize the person Makima claimed to be was a lie when Denji ask her if the perfect world she's trying to create would have boring movies and she said a world were boring movies doesn't exist would be a good thing. This was something Denji and Makima supposedly bonded over earlier on in the series and I believe that this was truly the point where Denji knew he had to kill her. Before this scene he actually says he's the worst because he still liked Makima. With how ridiculous it sounds, it truly is the case.

We never got to see the world she truly envisioned due to her being defeated but I wanted to ask do you think she truly would've helped humanity? Do you think Nayuta will regain the memories of Makima in the future? If she does what would a be result of it?

Video underneath that explains it more! Pls reblog!

[bobbyseyesmile]

Pride and Passion | 8

Chapter 8

Warnings: mentioning of eating disorder and depression (if you suffer under an eating disorder or depression, please seek help. you deserve love, food and a healthy mindset. If you need someone to talk, please feel free and don't hesitate to reach out to me. My inbox is always open)

⤝ Previous chapter | Next chapter ⤞ ➻ Pride and Passion masterlist

You tried hard to behave or whatever that meant in Negan's vocabulary- no talking back or making a fuss about small things, listening to him and his allies and most of all you tried hard to befriend his other wives.

The last one wasn't a challenge; they were all nice and kind of glad to see a new face around here. Especially Amber seemed to take a liking to you- she followed you around, talking more to you than the others. You felt bad for her, it was like she never had a real friend before, except the one man she was in love with: Mark.

Mark was a worker before he became one of the "soldiers", mostly to keep watch on the roof with a sniper rifle in his hand. He arrived with Amber and her mother at the Sanctuary, promising he would work for their place and to keep them safe. To his bad luck the leader of the Saviors cast an eye over Amber, wanting her as one of his wives. At first, she declined but soon she realized that her mother would get a better treatment, better medication and clean clothes if she agree to join Negan' side. Mark would get a nicer job and more responsibility among the Saviors, saving him from the humiliation to be a regular worker.

"We talked about it for a few days, deciding what would be the best: Being together but suffering or being separated and getting the chance for a better life." Amber told you when you two walked towards the canteen.

"But you're still suffering." you responded, indicating that she couldn't be with the man she truly loved and her mother. Amber wasn't allowed around Mark and only could see her mother once a week. Negan had strict rules to control his girls.

"Well..." she sighed and pushed open the door when you finally arrived. You watched the spectacle in front of you: lunchtime at the Sanctuary was like a fucking zoo. Saviors and workers were separated, the plates of the Saviors fuller and with better stuff while the workers got the leftovers.

It angered you every time you saw it- slavery all again.

"I hate this." you said and Amber looked at you in confusion. It was normal for her, or whatever normal meant in this madhouse.

The two of you got a plate with food and looked around for a free place to sit. Suddenly Mark looked up and locked eyes with Amber but only for mere seconds before Simon's hand slammed, regaining the attention of Mark. Passionate glances were also forbidden. Amber silently started sobbing and turned around, leaving her food and you behind.

"Asshole." you muttered in Simon's direction and he let out a silent "Bitch". You hated this guy; he was cruel and most of all crazy.

Negan wasn't better but at least you could reason with him, Simon didn't even listen to someone if they made a mistake. He just killed them or put them in a cell, starving them for days.

Your stomach dragged you back to reality, reminding you of the painful hunger you experienced. There was enough food at the Sanctuary but somehow you ate as little as possible, still being accustomed to the way you did it in Alexandria. You realized that you had developed an eating disorder when Amber made a comment about never seeing you eat and it scared her. So, she made you a proposal: to get your eating routine back she would accompany you every day to the canteen. Bless her sweet soul.

You didn't blame her for leaving though, after all she was broken and most of the time depressed. You decided to talk to Negan about her mental state, maybe you could help her. Even though you weren't a trained psychiatrist and didn't finish college you had enough experience from your former major, and also saved some of your old books. The problem was, the books were back in Alexandria...

"You looking for a place to sit?" someone beside you asked and you turned around. It was a young boy, maybe a few years younger than Carl, with a big gap between his front teeth and full of freckles in his face. His fiery hair reminded you of Abraham and you smiled to yourself. You missed the shit out of the red-haired Hulk who saved your life more than once.

"Uhm, yeah. I haven't been that much in here yet..." you admitted.

"You can sit with me and my mom if you want!" he gave you a bright smile and you nodded. "Sure, I would love to. Thanks." The boy introduced himself as Kyle and his mom Peggy. You gave both a smile and shared your name as well.

"So, honey-" Peggy started and you raised your head "When did you join the Sanctuary?"

"I don't know, a few weeks, maybe two months now. What about you and Kyle?"

"For three winters." A few years back, when the world was still normal, this would have been a weird answer but now time was relative. There was only the four seasons as well as day and night.

"Wow... that's a long time." you mumbled and Peggy nodded. She only must have been in her late thirties but she looked a lot older. You asked yourself if it was because of Negan and the Sanctuary or just because of the world as it was.

"What's your job here?" Kyle asked and shoved a potato in his mouth. "I'm a dishwasher and my mom's in the laundry department."

"Oh, uhm... I don't know, to be honest. No one assigned me yet." you shrugged your shoulders and caught Peggy's strange look.

"You've never been assigned? Normally they assign newbies after a few days."

"I see." you answered "Maybe I should ask Negan?"

Kyle's eyes widened. "Woah! You're allowed to talk to him?"

"Uhm... sure. Why wouldn't I?" you let out a nervous laugh, their looks made you shifting uneasy in your seat. "Can't you just talk to him?"

"We, the workers, aren't allowed to address him." Peggy answered. "Only Saviors or his wives."

"What? That's ridiculous! He really isn't that scary without his bat and leather jacket." You mumbled and made Kyle laugh with your statement. The others didn't laugh- Peggy's eyes widened the moment the realization hit her.

"You're a wife!" she yelled and jumped from her seat. You flinched and looked around.

"Uh, yeah. What's the big deal?" you asked sincerely.

"We are workers!" she hastily explained "We are not allowed to eat on the same table, you just jeopardized all of us. We could be punished for this! Kyle, get away from her!"

You shook your head and stood up as well. "I'm sorry, I-I d-didn't know..."

A harsh grip yanked you back and you let out a small "Ouch". Simon held you firmly but stared at the workers before yelling: "Get out. Now!"

The workers immediately left and Kyle turned around for one last time, waving you goodbye.

"What the fuck-" you finally said and tried to free yourself from Simon's grip. "What was that about? We were just talking!"

"Shut up..." he whispered menacingly. "Mark? Get me Negan, right now."

In the meantime, they detained you in the big hall, Simon not answering your questions, didn't matter what you asked. He looked up the railing, waiting for Negan. He arrived after a few minutes, raising his arms in annoyance. To your relief Lucille wasn't with him.

"What the fuck's wrong you had to disturb me during my lunch?"

"I'm sorry boss-" Simon said and gestured in your direction. Negan's angry expression turned into an annoyed one within seconds. He stopped at the top of the stairs and closed his eyes to rub them.

"Kitty Kat, what did ya do?" His voice was low but somehow soft.

"Nothing!" you exclaimed, also annoyed by now "I was just eating my lunch..."

"She sat with the workers." Simon added and by that throwing you under the bus.

"Fucker..." you spat in his direction- Negan's expression suddenly amused as he let out a small chuckle.

"Tsk, tsk... Language, doll face." He continued down the stairs till he was right in front of you, bending down so you would be eye level. "Interactions with the workers aren’t allowed. Didn't I ever tell you that?"

"No." you answered truthfully and he nodded.

"Alright, I'll give ya a pass on this one, especially because you had your shit together in the last weeks. But don't do it again, ya hear me?"

"Yes." you nodded and dared a side glance to Simon "What about Kyle and his mom? It wasn't their fault."

"Who and who?" Negan asked confused, also looking at Simon now.

"A worker boy and his mom. Looks like Y/N made new friends..."

"Hey! They have names you stupid-"

"Woah, calm down Grimes." Negan put a hand on your shoulder giving you a soft nudge. "Don't talk to Simon like that, you're my wife, fucking behave like one."

You gave Negan a dirty look. "You're all disgusting. You can't treat people like slaves! They have names, feelings and they do valuable work to keep this thing here going while you people just sit on your arse, taking credit that doesn't belong to you."

Negan let out an impatient sigh, closing his eyes again, what should he do with you? "Negan-" your voice suddenly soft and it caught his attention "I want to help in here... I don't want to be locked up, wearing pretty dresses all day, let me earn my keep."

"I already told ya-"

"I know! But think about all the things I could do: I majored in psych, I could help a lot of people and increase their mental health. Think about it- healthy mind, happy people."

Even though he could never allow it, Negan was intrigued by your proposal. It amazed him that your heart was so big even though you were so young and probably experienced hell in this world. Damn. He could never show how whipped he was, you had him around your little finger the moment he laid eyes on you.

Why did he had the fucking need to spoil and care for you? You were so different from all the other women, constantly giving him shit and being stubborn as fuck. It made him hot as hell and he started to neglect his other wives because the only person he wanted to push against a wall and fuck their brains out was you.

"We'll talk about this." he lied and gave you his signature smirk. You knew he bullshitted you and crossed arms in front of your chest.

"You're just saying that... you don't mean it."

And you are dangerously close to being bend over that desk and getting your sweet ass spanked, he thought to himself and his dick twitched at that very fantasy.

"I promise." he simply said but didn’t mean your proposal. Oh, he would spank that ass someday…

You gave up, for now, but would talk to him later again. That topic wasn't off the table, a lot of people, including Amber would benefit from the knowledge of your books.

You thought about your deal and the possibility to visit Alexandria and it made your heart jump in excitement. But for that deal to come true you had to back down and let Negan play his little games.

You gave him the sweetest smile you could manage and bat your eyelashes. "Alrighty."

Negan smiled back, the tip of his tongue sticking out of his teeth, ignoring the growing urge inside his pants. "Al-fucking-righty then."

Taglist: @toxic-ink @jaywinchestersalvatore @crosshajr @neganswoman @tone-stark @missmiauz (if you want to be added, pls let me know)

[butterflydm]

origins of the wheel of time

I was originally planning on reading Origins of The Wheel of Time after my reread of the last three books, but it has arrived and also is so much shorter, so I’m going to read it first instead, lol. It’s not a narrative, but I’m intrigued to find out what it has to say about the series. I’m not entirely sure if it’s written more like a sourcebook or whatnot. 

My thoughts contain spoilers through a memory of light

1. Okay, looks like it’s broken into four sections -- first will be a bit of a biography of Jordan, then there’s specifically a whole section about how Tolkien inspired him, then his writing process perhaps (the summary on the inside of the book cover notes that there’s a previously unseen early draft of a cut scene from Eye of the World, so maybe that’s there; and then one about “the real world” comparisons (mythology-related maybe; I know that there’s a lot of mythological connections tied into the imagery, especially with Rand, Mat, & Perrin).

2. The full world map that we get (it says it was adjusted based on things that Jordan had said about the maps that had previously been made) shows how the Westlands/Randland is actually the smallest section of the map -- Shara is bigger, the Mad Lands are bigger, and Seanchan is enormous. lol, yeah, Tuon ain’t gonna be ruling all of that. I don’t care how great a general Mat is. Both of them are gonna die long before that area gets back under her iron grip (especially if she really does manage to keep herself from channeling - man, it would be so funny if she actually does get around to channeling one day but is only as strong as Morgase, literally the weakest channeler possible. I feel like Jordan wouldn’t have been able to resist making her Nynaeve-level strong, because of how much he was contorting and manipulating the story to appease her in the narrative, but her being super-weak would be so much funnier). Nation building is not easy and it’s gonna take time for her to even get over there since she will need to finish ‘settling’ the Seanchan-ruled Westlands first (and she’ll have to worry about Westlands-based rebellions as soon as she leaves for Seanchan proper too - the original plan that the Empress had seemed to be that her daughter would rule over the ~new land~ in her name while she kept a tight grip on the homeland, but now the rest of Tuon’s family is dead, so it’s more likely that she’s gonna have to pick if she wants the Westlands or if she wants Seanchan, because she has no one she can trust to rule either of them in her absence). I wonder if Jordan was planning to handwave her to be the ruler of the disputed lands quickly so that he could tell another story about... Mat being miserable and Perrin needing to kill someone? Or if he was going to take into account how likely it would be that Tuon would NOT be able to actually regain control of the majority of the continent. I mean, since he only left two sentences behind about the outriggers, he probably hadn’t even decided yet.

3. Oh, gosh, the author of this book teaches at The Citadel, where Jordan went to school after he left the military. The Citadel had a pretty heavy hazing/bullying culture, at least back when Jordan attended (from what I’ve read) and some Weird Ideas about men and women, and definitely some “beating students is good for the learning process” vibes. A lot of the odd quirks in Jordan’s worldbuilding seemed to be based in him assuming that his culture’s particular practices and his own personal kinks were just ~human nature~, including some of the stuff that seemed to be essentially ‘taught’ behind-the-scenes at the Citadel. Oh, and this author (who teaches Military History specifically, it sounds like?) was consulted about the writing of The Last Battle in the final book. This book was also written at the same desk where Jordan wrote Wheel of Time. That’s actually quite interesting to me, and I wonder if that contributes to... when Jordan wrote about war, it was very personal, because he’d been in war. But if your main consultant is someone approaching it from an academic PoV rather than a ‘in the trenches’ PoV, that definitely lends a different angle onto the way the battles are written about.

4. Ah, WoT was a formative book series for the author -- he read EotW when he was fifteen. So he is quite a bit younger than Jordan. He even interviewed at the Citadel for his teaching job knowing that it was where Jordan had gone to school. He did know Jordan personally as well (I’m going to be using his pen name for WoT as opposed to his personal name because, well, I never knew him. Though I did meet him at a book signing once.) - it looks like they met when Jordan was already quite ill. And that’s the Foreword.

5. Every time it’s noted that Harriet (Jordan’s widow) was his editor, I feel the urge to wonder why on earth she was asleep at the wheel for Crossroads of Twilight and Knife of Dreams (though, honestly, the books started to lose focus and needed much tighter editing starting in Lord of Chaos). I mean, it’s common in a LOT of series, once they become popular. But wow there’s a lot of needless fluff in the later WoT books.

6. Okay, the biographical section of the book. First thing relevant to the books is that even as a kid, Jordan was exposed to war-related PTSD - his father was in the Pacific during WWII and “For years afterward he would sometimes wake up in the night, sweating, afraid that in his sleep, in his remembered dreams, he might have hurt the wife he loved.” I’m seeing a lot of Rand in what’s written here about Jordan’s father. A gentle man who did his best to be honest and good but was terrified that he might hurt the people he loves.

7. Ah, Jordan ran into a very common trouble of gifted kids once they get into college -- he had always been smart enough to glide through classes, so he had no clue how to study, and floundered once the classes were hard enough to require it. I mean, mood. Been there. 

8. That’s when he enlisted, and he spent two tours in Vietnam. Even before I actually read the section on it, I can say that (much like Jordan was second-hand aware of how rough WWII was on his father), I have seen the effects that going to Vietnam had on my own uncle. Incredibly traumatizing experience for him that he still has after-effects about, even today. It’s affected him his whole life. 

9. Jordan was aware that his own personal experiences had an impact on his writing -- he even pointed out himself that his own personal trauma from instinctively shooting a woman who aimed a gun at him during his Vietnam tour was basically why Rand (& Mat) have issues killing women. So, he was dealing with his own trauma while writing. I think it’s possible, as a reader, to be aware of that personal history but also go “but Rand’s attitude really doesn’t fully make sense with the worldbuilding and can get pretty frustrating, especially to female readers”. Both of those things can exist at the same time, I think. Bringing personal experience to the writing process is a double-edged sword that way. 

To go back to that worldbuilding thought, there are definitely times where it feels like Jordan failed to fully do the mental math on what a world that has the backstory that he has given WoT would look like (and the show actually reflects the book’s reality more in what Liandrin says about how despite the power of the Aes Sedai, there are still many places where powerful men are in a position to hurt little girls). A non-Jordan example of this sort of thing would be Dragon Age: Origins. In the character creation screen, the player is straight-up told that women and men are treated equally in the world setting they’re about to play. In some of the character origin choices, this is disproven within minutes of actual gameplay, with oversexualized female characters and sexual assault threats that are pretty much only directed at women. Because that stuff is subconsciously lurking in the background of the writer’s mind and it just seeps out. While Rand’s sexism is more ‘benign’ in that it stems from him holding women above himself as a category, this still harms the women around him (and harms himself). I do think Jordan was aware of that, because we do see negative results from Rand’s No Woman Must Be Killed stance, but, again... given Rand’s cultural background, him having this stance at all makes very little sense, because he didn’t grow up in a culture where women were treated as fragile flowers that must be sheltered and kept from the dangers of the world (and it makes no sense for that to be LTT’s background either).

10. We also get the note in the middle of all this that Jordan’s mom was “a housewife”... but she worked “in defense” during the war “when everyone worked” and then later in her life, after she had kids, she suffered frequent nervous breakdowns. Which sounds like a very familiar story in terms of some of the history I’ve read on women during/after WWII, where they got a taste of freedom and independence during the war and then were expected to completely give up that part of themselves when the men came back to reclaim their jobs. Just stuff all their feelings inside to be the ~perfect housewives~. And this also makes me think of how Jordan always has a “but you gotta quit your job if you decide to have a husband/family” clause for the ‘working’ women in the series who aren’t nobility/elites (Aiel Maidens & Seanchan to’raken riders).

11. His experience in Vietnam sounds like it definitely also contributed a lot to Mat’s characterization in TSR/TFoH. This whole entire section here on page 14 vibes very Mat (before he got sucked into the Seanchan ‘storyline’, such as it was). “In the end, for most of us, the medals boiled down to managing not to die.” ... “That is why I am not I repeat, not! a hero. I just managed to stay alive.” From reading this, it sounds like Rand was based more on his father’s experiences/PTSD from WWII, and Mat was based more on his own experiences/feelings in Vietnam (or, to put it another way, Rand was based more on an outside view of how PTSD affected someone that he loved, while Mat was based more on his own internal experience of war). Though his descriptions of being ‘in the zone’ (which I’ve definitely heard other people talk about too but have never experienced myself) sound similar to how being a channeler affects people, in terms of time slowing, your senses feeling sharper, etc.

12. Okay, skipping past his early writing career (he first met his future wife Harriet while he was out shopping his first book, in her capacity as an editor), the first books he wrote under the “Robert Jordan” pen-name were some novels in the Conan universe (I’ve never read them; I saw the movie(s)? but never read any of the books) and I am reminded that the first plan for the WoT books was a six-book series. So that was after Eye of the World had already been completed and he was almost finished with The Great Hunt. Plan at the time was six books total but morphed as the books progressed.

13. His illness really was the kind that progressed very rapidly. I never read about all the details back when it happened, but it all happened over the course of about a year and a half before he died, it sounds like here. Maybe two?

14. Harriet, as both his widow and editor, was entrusted with the task of finding someone to complete the books. She first found out about Sanderson based on reading the eulogy written by him on his personal blog post when Jordan died (that a friend had sent to her), and decided on him as the one after reading Mistborn. He was the only name on her list of potential authors who she thought could finish the series, though it sounds like it didn’t hurt that he was already under the Tor umbrella.

15. So, the epilogue that we have in the current series is, basically, the one that was dictated by Jordan once he’d realized that he was most likely not going to recover in order to finish writing the series himself (and recorded by Team Jordan).

16. “All told, there were roughly two hundred manuscript pages of book-specific notes left behind. Some of the pages were outlines for complete scenes - bit and pieces of what became the published prologues for the final three books, for instance, as well as the all-important epilogue of A Memory of Light - but others were only hints of plots and solutions. And then there were the thousands upon thousands of pages of series-related notes, glossaries, lists, and other working materials Jordan had left behind in his personal files. It was all they had, and it left so very much undone. There wasn’t a full outline. There wasn’t a sequenced plot. Most of the puzzles only had pieces of the solution. One of the questions that Maria never got to ask Jordan - the next one on her list that Friday before he passed - was about the final moment in the series: “How did Rand light his pipe?” The answer to this, and everything else, now fell to Brandon and Team Jordan.”

17. What a massive, unbelievably massive undertaking. “Along the way, there was also a keen awareness that Jordan had made and then cast aside many plans throughout the writing of the series. Did they need to use all the hints in the years and years of notes? Surely not, since at times the notes didn’t even agree with each other. Jordan had a habit of stockpiling old files, after all: a boon for the later researcher, but a nightmare for the present writer.” And, for me, whatever you might say about Sanderson as a writer himself, whether you like his writing style or not, or like him as a person or not, you can’t say that he wasn’t sincerely doing his best to live up to the legacy that Harriet handed to him, or that he’s not a genuine fan of the series. Same thing with Rafe Judkins now -- agree or disagree with the changes that have been made, but Rafe is a very sincere fan of the series and is adapting the books with a sincere heart.

18. “Had Jordan lived to complete the work himself, it’s unlikely he would’ve managed to fit all that needed to be done within the single book he’d promised. Light knows, it might well have grown even beyond the fourteen volumes that Brandon and Team Jordan ultimately delivered.” I’ve literally said exactly this same thing, lol. And, with that, we are done with that section of the book.

19. The next section is about Tolkien’s inspiration on Jordan and the series. On why Jordan wanted to write his own fantasy series: “One of my themes is (and it’s one reason I wrote the books as fantasies) there is good, there is evil, there is right, there is wrong - it does exist. If you do that in a mainstream novel you are accused of being judgmental unless you’ve chosen the right political viewpoint.”

20. This section talks about fantasy in general as a genre before noting the specific elements (especially in EotW) that are inspired by Tolkien - the Shire/the Two Rivers; the Fades/the Black Riders -- and all this was very deliberate on Jordan’s part, to evoke a sense of nostalgia before he went beyond those general outlines of what had been inspired by Tolkien. And he also took inspiration from the same places that Tolkien took inspiration -- the myths and legends of our own world.

21. Then he goes on for... a while about language evolution through time, but I’ve read about that before, so I’m kinda skimming this part, ngl. But essentially, he kinda links what Tolkien was doing with language in LotR with what Jordan does with the concept of the Wheel of Time itself.

22. But then he does also go on to point out that having been in the military and going through war is another thing that Tolkien and Jordan had in common, and something that can be seen in their protagonists, that Frodo at the end of LotR also appears to be suffering PTSD/‘shell-shock' and is never the same again.

23. Okay, now in the next section, we dive into the actual creation of the series itself, starting with the first idea of it in the mid-70s, which was the basic notion of ‘what is it REALLY like to be the savior of mankind and what kind of toll might that have on someone’ with the addition of ‘and you’ll go mad and die to save everyone’. So that’s the core of the narrative that Rand believes he’s walking for the majority of the series. But he didn’t actually write anything on the idea until 1983 when the success of his Conan tie-books led them to asking him if he could write a fantasy book or series of his own.

24. lol, first it was gonna be a single book. Then maybe a trilogy. The publisher though “knew how Jim liked to tell a story” so offered him a six-book deal.

25. Yeah. I knew that “Tam” essentially (whatever his original name was) was the original character idea, before Tam became the foster father and Rand became the main character and that makes so much sense after seeing how much Jordan based Rand’s fears and personality on his own father. Of course he thought of the character as an older man, who’d lived a life. That was who he was basing it on. 

26. So some parts of Jordan’s collection are staying sealed until 2037. It doesn’t really say why most of it is already opened to the public but some of it is being unsealed in the future. I wonder if some of his notes have maybe some more personal comparisons not comfortable being made public at the time? But in his earliest notes, three books “dominated his early decisions regarding the scope and course of The Wheel of Time”. Lord of the Rings, Le Morte d’Arthur, and The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. I have not read the last two, so I’ve gotta trust what the author tells me about them, lol. I do roughly know that Le Morte d’Arthur formed the basis for a lot of the current stories about King Arthur, but I’ve never heard of The White Goddess before.

27. Apparently, The White Goddess is not considered... um, particularly accurate as far as the connections that it makes between various myths and legends of different cultures. “It was, at its core, a kind of conspiracy theory. Those sell.” Ah, it’s about the idea that there was an overarching goddess that cultures all worshipped before the current forms of religion existed. Okay, yeah, I’m definitely seeing how this would inform some of his writing ideas as he was pulling the story together.

28. I do like that the author here -- Michael Livingston -- sets out what he believes are Jordan’s INTENTIONS in the text (based on what his various notes said about the story) but says that it’s up to the reader as to whether or not Jordan was successful in translating that to the narrative. Example: he points out that while Jordan’s intention in creating the saidin/saidar binary was to point out the damage that one side unchecked can do and to show a need for balance rather than one half overpowering the other half, this is something that can certainly feel exclusionary to people who don’t fit into that binary. I do appreciate that acknowledgement; that Jordan’s intent in the story isn’t the only thing that matters.

29. But that does get me to thinking about... benefit of the doubt and what we extend to authors. For me personally, CoT/KoD were an overall bad experience and wore away so much of my own pool of belief and so I don’t extend the same benefit of the doubt to Jordan’s writing and intentions that I might have in earlier books. I look at the current ending (confirmed in this book to be dictated by Jordan, with only “a couple” of scenes by Sanderson) and I look at where we left off in KoD and I go, “yeah, I kinda think Jordan would have screwed up in a lot of similar ways to what people who dislike the Sanderson books are unhappy about, because the vast majority of the ‘harvest’ in the Sanderson books comes from narrative seeds that Jordan sowed, and there’s no way to know if he would have solved the narrative problems better than Sanderson did”.

Non-Seanchan example: Jordan clearly didn’t know how he was going to get Rand from “deeply traumatized” to “ready to wander the world carefree” or he would have left notes about it. And it’s easy to say that he would have figured it out as he went along, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that he would have done it in a way any better than what Sanderson ended up doing. There are some specific things that I’m sure that I’ll probably point to and say “eh, I feel like Jordan might have stuck the landing better on that one” but I’m no more guaranteed to be right than anyone else. There’s absolutely no way for any of us to know, you know? I can look at the Seanchan plotline as it stood in KoD, look at Mat’s ending, and say, “yeah, there’s nothing that Jordan could have done to make any of that feel anything less like a shit sandwich” but someone else might look at those two plot points and go, “well, if he did a. b. and c., then it would actually be a great story.” And they might even be absolutely correct that it would be a great story... but there’s still no guarantee it’s the story that Jordan would have written. And that’s not me saying that I think Jordan was... a terrible author at the end... because there still are some great scenes even in CoT & KoD (and New Spring is one of the best books in the series imo), but I do think he lost the thread of his story and wandered off into the weeds. And I don’t think that there was any guarantee that he would ever have picked it up again successfully. We might have had six more meandering books in the vein of CoT/KoD before sputtering to an end. Or he might have looked at how much easier and more crisp New Spring was as a read and reworked his future plans to put out a great banger of an ending. No way to know which direction he might have gone.

30. Tam had already turned into (unnamed as yet) Rand by the time Jordan got to the outlining stage - “Young man (age unspecified, but 18-25) in small village”. Interesting note that at this point in the outline men and women also had some different “abilities” from each other, not just different strengths. Oh. and the Dark One was also an alien at this point in the outline, “Sa’khan” and the Forsaken & Shadowspawn were fellow aliens that he brought with him from his dying world. But he had figured out already that he wanted the person who opposed “Sa’Khan” to be named the Dragon, and the origin of the savior/destroyer viewing of the Dragon was based on Jordan comparing the Western stories of dragons (fairly destructive) to the stories he heard in Vietnam (life-giving, standing for power and prosperity). Plus the various dragons and serpents in other cultural stories as well - the Norse world-serpent and the dragon in the Christian book of Revelation (sounds like Revelation is where he got the “seals on the Dark One’s prison” idea).

31. Looks like Rand’s original name was “Rhys al’Thor”, though Jordan played with the last name for a while. He liked the way “Arthur” and “Thor” had similar sounds and was looking to invoke both at the same time - so combining those two mythical figures is how he started with Rand -- a King Arthur who was also the god Thor. There’s a lot more King Arthur in the early books than the late books -- once we hit around The Fires of Heaven, we really move away from Rand being much involved in Arthurian myth (and that’s left more to Elayne & her family). Interestingly, al’Thor at this time was known as “The Hammer” - that part of what he envisioned for Rand kinda spun off into Perrin’s character, it sounds like.

32. Hmm, the original concept for Warders was a lot more of an equal partnership than it ended up being -- they were originally men “who watch the borders of human lands” and have “some abilities gifted from the Power, but they themselves have no use of the Power”. They’re bonded to a female wielder of the Power but notably “she cannot compel him to obey her” but if he disobeys, it breaks the bond between them. The gifts they were given were a “sense” for the presence of evil, some good self-healing, and slowed aging.

33. Ah, the name Aes Sedai is based on the Irish myths of aos si (faerie from the Otherworld). And he based the White Tower structure on “the pre-modern convents of the Catholic Church”. He was also amassing a list of names yet to be attached to any characters: Lewin, Thom, Emon, Jaim, Elaida, Mina.

34. This is Jordan’s own (very early) list of how the characters he was creating matched up to Arthurian myth:

Merlin: Amyrlen

Igraine: Tigraine

Arthur: Rhys al’Thor

Gwynevere: Gwyn al’Veer

Morgan le Fay: Emorgaine

King Lot: (?) Lor

Margawse: Morgase

Gawain: Gwayne

Gareth: Garth

Interesting to see which names roughly survived and which didn’t. He’d already decided at this point that his “Merlin” figure would be a woman, the “Amrylen” (Amyrlin Seat). He’d already decided that “Gwynevere” would be a ‘village girl’ as well. I wonder if at this point “Gwyn al’Veer” was “Rhys al’Thor’s” only love interest or if he’d thought that far yet. “Sir Gareth” would be ‘one of the village lads’. Lancelot was turned into “Lan, the Warder”. “Sir Galahand” was originally Lan’s son.

35. In 1987, he wrote a new outline for the first book, with Rhys still his hero. At this point, several of the pieces of Winternight are already in place - the yearly festival, “Rhys” lives with his “widowed farmer” father outside the village, an attack by “half-beast” mean and the dad getting injured badly by one of them. The story that Tam tells about finding Rand is somewhat similar, though the Aiel were “savage tribesmen, horse-mounted clans” at this point. Oh! Oh! The change that the show made with Tam and Tigraine came from Jordan’s notes!!!! (either a consultant read the public notes or they were just very in tune with Jordan’s original thoughts): “he found a woman, a warrior of the enemy, on the slopes of Dragonmount, dying of her wounds. She was pregnant, and though it was obviously not time for the baby to be born, her wounds had brought on labor. He helped the woman birth her child, and buried her when she died”. And at this point, he had vaguely thought of a “Green-God” at the end of the book who would help Rhys defeat the forces of “Sa’khan”, a god that would be revealed as a construct of the Power who watched over a magical pool (which is basically the end of the Eye of the World).

36. In June of 1987, Jordan did a second version of his ‘namelist’ for the book. This one was 33 pages long. 33 pages of names for people, places, and things, with handwritten notes to adjust them further. Changes:

Dark One renamed to Sha’tan

The Ogyr are now tall instead of short and are excellent stoneworkers and foresters.

Rhys is now officially Rand

Has already decided that Rand would fake his own death after defeating the Dark One though “Moiraine, Arinel (an early name for Elayne), Equene (the current name for Egwene) are among those who are not fooled and will not let him go alone

Tam gets a name, though it’s short for “Tamtrim” at this time; he based it on Mesopotamian mythology: Tammuz (Dumuzid) who was the god of shepherds & ‘the life-giving growth of plants’

He shorted Tamtrim to “Tam” and gave the second syllable to “Matrim” also known as “Mat”, though it was currently a name without a character

originally there was a complex set of religions in the Westlands, but he dropped that in favor of “cultural mentalities” of groups like the Children of the Light, the Red Ajah, and the Tuatha’an.

sa’angreal were based on the idea of the Sangreal aka the Holy Grail from Arthurian literature; objects imbued with the One Power

Padan Fain was originally named “Eward White” - he died in the attack on the village in the first draft but was mysteriously surviving in future drafts and spotted in the city

“Nyneve Bayal”, based a bit on Nimue from Arthurian legend, was one of his first characters, and was originally meant to have a darker role where she died, was brought back from the dead, and is serving the Dark One, getting Lan to oppose Rand at one point, and also was going to ‘kill’ Moiraine (who had ascended to the Amrylin Seat) but actually trap her “half-way between life and death” to be brought back later. So parts of this role were given over to Lanfear.

Gentling was a much more violent process originally, and there was also originally a testing in place for men once they came of age. Originally, being gentled didn’t cause an intense depression but was “a form of lobotomy performed with the power that makes the victim very passive, incapable of violence, and receptive to being commanded” and he called it being “gelded”. It sounds like it didn’t actually remove the Power from them but instead turned them into tools to be used (which sort of got adjusted and moved to how the Seanchan find and treat the women they turn into damane, it sounds like).

37. The next step was the “Test Manuscript”. Further changes in this:

Peddler now named Mikal Fain.

Rand has friends! Matrim Piket, Dannil Aybara, and Perrin Dael. Dannil actually survived long enough in the drafts that he’s in the original cover art for EotW, I learn. Sadly, I think I no longer have my original battered copy of EotW - I replaced it last year when I decided to do my reread.

Dannil got cut from the book because Harriet pointed out that he was doing absolutely nothing (again, Harriet, where was this energy for CoT & KoD?). The general plot was roughly the same as the finishing product at this point, so I assume Perrin was with Egwene, and Mat had stolen the dagger and was with Rand, so... where was Dannil in all this? lol, Jordan tried to keep him in by arguing “he’ll be important in book 5!” I wonder if he was originally the boy who would go over to the Seanchan and Mat took over that role?

Yeah, the version of the Test Manuscript that has Dannil in it is a lot less focused than the finished version.

38. The next surviving revision is “Revision 23″. Changes of note:

The Ogier “Jak Vladad” become Loial.

Jaren Telamon becomes Lews Therin Telamon.

39. Honestly, given the things that I hated so much about what CoT & KoD gave us, it’s almost sad to read Jordan writing:

The main thrust of the story will not be how fact becomes legend, however. Rather it will explore the nature of good and evil, of free will and the duty owed by the individual to humanity as a whole, of why and how mankind makes the choice to oppose evil, and the harm that can be done in the name of good.

People who do not champion and support good are acquiescing in the press of evil.

Some people who believe they are championing good actually fight [for] the cause of evil, for they would bind the free will given by the Creator.

That is EXACTLY what it feels like the story lost for me in Rand, Perrin, & Mat’s storylines in CoT & KoD. It felt like Jordan got so caught up in the shiny newness of allying with the Seanchan that he overlooked his own themes in the series and how he was undermining them.

40. At this point, Jordan is drafting The Great Hunt and has a somewhat comprehensive summary of the long game of the series as a whole:

Rand tries to flee his destiny but this only brings him into further conflict with the Forsaken

Determined to unite the people to face “Sha’tan’s” minions, by force if necessary

This middle section here I’m not certain about though -- he tries to defeat the Dark One, fails horribly, and must flee to regroup. That doesn’t sound like something that happened during his fights against TDO. That sounds more like when he tried to take back Ebou Dar from the Seanchan. Interesting change.

Rand was supposed to be completely without allies at some point in the story, originally, but that never quite happens in the books. The closest we really get is his flight from the Darkfriend Asha’man who attack him at the end of The Path of Daggers, but even then he flees... to his allies in Caemlyn (picking up Nynaeve, etc) and, of course, Min is surgically attached to him nearly all the time after that point He was supposed to realize that “by attempting to force humankind to oppose evil he was attempting to circumvent the free will that the Creator had made a central part of all humans”.

The ending is essentially what we got -- Rand binds away evil rather than destroying it because it “cannot be destroyed any more than can Good. Evil must be opposed by people who choose to champion Good”.

“Humanity, to be human, must have something to oppose and something to support, and the free choice of which will be which.” I feel like that is essentially exactly what happens in Rand’s confrontation with TDO in Shayol Ghul, yes?

also, no mention of allying with slavers, just pointing that out.

41. lol, damn, in the Test Manuscript, Min bangs Rand in the first book, right after “Eguene” breaks up with him. lol, and, wow this is... not super-great. So Lord of Chaos/A Crown of Swords Min was always in the plans, it seemed. It does seem like Jordan lifted some of the ideas in this scene for the post-Rand/Aviendha sex scene -- Rand talking about how they have to get married now that they’ve had sex and her being like “lol no”. Min also talks here in a way that makes it clear that she already had a viewing about having had sex with Rand, though she’s... happy enough about fulfilling the prophecy in this version.

42. Oh, here we go! First mention of what would become Seanchan in Jordan’s notes. I really am intrigued to see how this idea grew (and eventually took over and swamped) the rest of the series, even if I’m unhappy at the results in the books themselves. So, the first idea for the ~other continent~ was that Rand would be “shipwrecked on the coast of a Blight” and find himself in a land broken into city-states, each ruled by an Aes Sedai. Pretty different from the Seanchan we ended up with. Rand was going to fall in love with the daughter of a general that he was “given” to but then have to leave to avoid being gentled by the Aes Sedai in charge of the city-state, with not!Tuon bringing an army with her to help him take the “Stone of Stair”. Okay, Michael calling Tuon a ~young general who is also a ruler~ is hilarious. Tuon never showed an ounce of tactical knowledge in the entire series. Anyway, changing from Rand shipwrecking in Seanchan to instead having the Seanchan invade was supposed to... tighten the plot. Best laid plans o’ mice and men. Best laid plans. Boy, wow, it did the opposite.

43. Unfortunately, we don’t get a timeline here of when and how Jordan swapped things over from one version to the other. It was mentioned in the start that a lot of Jordan’s notes were not dated, so it can’t be certain exactly when certain things happened. The author notes that Jordan had also wanted to “dive into the complicated politics of a land invaded”. Again, shame that Jordan only really did that in WH and then decided Mat navel-gazing for two books was more interesting (in fairness, he does continue to explore it a bit in the prologues but, yeah, it really feels like he dropped the ball in the main storylines featuring the Seanchan).

44. Oooh, getting into Taimandred. “To imagine that an author never changes their mind about their plots or characters -- especially in a work as massively complex as The Wheel of Time -- would be foolish” .. “Another example of this -- interesting both for the ramifications within the narrative and its importance to fans -- is the shifting identity of the character Demandred. It’s a perfect microcosm of not just Jordan’s ceaseless creative process, but also the kinds of problems it left Brandon and Team Jordan in the wake of his passing.”

45. Interesting! Even after he’d finished The Great Hunt and was working on The Dragon Reborn, Jordan hadn’t finalized all the names of the Forsaken yet. In his notes he had:

Ishamael (check and already in the books)

Lanfear (ditto)

Aginor - already dead

Balthamel - already dead

Sammael

Rahvin

De’ath (...literally just the word death with an apostrophe)

Moloc

Be’aldrid

Maladour

Malifecin

Sha’rein

Savintar

46. “If we rewind back to Jordan’s own notes, however, we can see that at least at the time Jordan was writing Lord of Chaos, Taimandred was absolutely true.” Twice in his private notes for the books, Jordan wrote “Taim/Demandred showed up” at Dumai’s Wells. In his notes where he was summing up the accomplishments of the Forsaken, for Demandred, he wrote: “He will show up claiming to be Mazrim Taim, taking advantage of Rand’s amnesty.” And he was also supposed to originally be the person who’d killed Asmodean (makes sense, since it happens very soon before “Taim” shows up in the story). We know this because he wrote in a note about Nynaeve - “She does not know that Asmodean was a prisoner of Rand, nor, of course, that he was killed by Demandred.” The author says that it’s difficult to tell from Jordan’s notes when and why Taimandred changed into two separate people. “Sadly, we’ll never know. Jordan shared a great deal with Harriet and the other members of Team Jordan, but he hardly told them everything.”

In my own reread, it felt very much like Taim was Taimandred in LoC and very clearly that he was only Taim in WH, but the parts in between are wobbly and uncertain.

47. Honestly, I feel like pivoting away from Taimandred was a mistake on Jordan’s part. Him being the author of the slaughter at Dumai’s Wells and him killing Asmodean just... makes so much more sense than what we ended up with. I’m gonna hope that the tv rule of conservation of characters leads the show back to Taimandred as a reality, lol.

48. It was Brandon who came up with Random Sharan Army to try to explain why the fuck the Dark One was so pleased with Demandred in LoC if he wasn’t Taim and therefore had accomplished absolutely nothing of note on the page. Interesting. I was sure that the Random Sharan Army was connected to Jordan’s pivot to allying with the slavers, because the numbers just didn’t seem justified otherwise, but I guess Jordan was allying with them... for who knows why tbh. The mystery of why Jordan was obsessed with allying with the slavers remains a mystery thus far into this book. It kinda seems like it will be one of those forever questions that is never answered.

Jordan just... he really didn’t successfully sell me on it actually being NECESSARY to ally with the slavers, and I think a lot of that is rooted in his arbitrary withholding of information from Rand? Like, Rand is trying to ally with the slavers because he believes he has no choice, but HIS OWN ALLIES (including his LOVER!!!) are straight-up withholding vital intel from him re: the slaver army’s weaknesses for... absolutely no good reason at all. The deck feels so artificially stacked in the Seanchan’s favor due to Min and Nynaeve undergoing voluntary amnesia rather than any actual narrative reasons for the Seanchan to have the advantage. Again, it’s a place where I feel like I can literally see Jordan’s puppet strings on everyone’s shoulders rather than it making sense that the characters would behave this way.

49. Okay, the summary of what we know about the “outriggers”:

Set 5-10 years after the Last Battle

“focused on Mat, Tuon, and the changes faced by the Seanchan as a result of the events of the Last Battle” lol what changes. that was the whole issue through KOD. That Jordan refused to let Tuon change or grow even the slightest bit. I guess this would have been changes that happen despite Tuon throwing tantrums and kicking and screaming the whole way (and probably murdering and enslaving a LOT more people).

“All that survives, in fact, are two tantalizing sentences. One depicts Mat lying in a cold gutter, the dice having failed him. The other sees Perrin on a boat, sailing to Seanchan to kill an old friend.”

honestly, if it had the same energy as the Mat and Perrin chapters in CoT/KoD, then it’s hard to imagine the outriggers being anything but a boring slog where our main characters constantly think about how they should oppose slavery but then don’t actually do anything useful because slavery is just so gosh-darn helpful and some of the slavers are just so pretty. I’m just... I do wish more notes had survived on this, because Jordan’s pivot towards having all his main male characters working towards allying with and appeasing the slavers has been THE thing about CoT & KoD that really ruined those two books for me, and I just wish I understood WHY he went from his interesting and nuanced storyline that he had all the way through Winter’s Heart and instead changed it to Mat acting like “wanting to brutally torture and enslave people” and “not wanting to be brutally tortured and enslaved” are two equally valid points of view, with the edge being given to whoever has the most mysterious eyes.

50. More interesting to me are that Jordan had been considering writing a prequel about Tam. Basically the story that Jordan had first considered, all those years ago, about a soldier who has finished with his war. The other prequel he’d wanted to write would have been Moiraine and Lan’s lead-up to Winternight -- what led them to Two Rivers just in time. “As with the outrigger novels, however, Jordan’s archived papers contain no complete sequences or outlines”.

51. And the rest of the book is a glossary of the various characters, places, and ideas, with how they connect to mythology or the real world. I might potentially use it in the future during fics maybe but I’m not going to go over it here.

Overall, this was very interesting, even if the questions that I most wish could have been answered still remain mysteries.

[sharingiscaringapparently]

Genuinely think Karai’s story in TMNT 2012 is one of the most tragic I’ve ever watched because the ONE THING Tang Shen didn’t want her to go through before her death, happened, and it still makes me cry.

Tang Shen talks about how she wants Miwa to be raised away from the dojo and instead peacefully in New York? She’s trained by her mother’s murderer in Japan to be a Kunoichi.

Her home is burned down, her mother murdered, her father mutated, she’s kidnapped and raised in a way that’s against her dead mother’s wishes. She moves to an entirely new country, where everyone is suddenly obsessed with April, and she gets jealous. Her one friend in New York Leo betrays her, and tries to kill her “father”, and she’s left to try and deal with the foot clan on her own, and she’s then demoted in favour of Tiger Claw.

And then her life is flipped upside down.

She’s been conditioned to try and kill her one blood relative, Splinter. The man she called her father is actually the reason her mother’s dead, her enemies are her family, and she suddenly has to come to terms with this in a split second, but tries to adjust.

She doesn’t even get a day of her new life, of what she could’ve been, when Shredder’s conditioning leads her to running back for revenge. Her home’s under attack, she’s mutated into a mindless snake, and then left alone in a large city to fend for herself.

But things eventually start looking up. She’s able to control her mutation (only after another kidnap), regains her humanity, reunites with her family, and her old friend from Japan Shinigami helps her rebuild the clan she was brought up in with honour.

…And then Splinter dies.

Her one remaining blood relative is murdered by Shredder, and she’s left with almost nothing.

Again.

———————

I don’t know why I’m getting worked up over a 5 year old cartoon but Karai’s story HURTS ME IT IS 10:30 I SHOULD NOT BE GETTING THIS UPSET OVER A KID’S CARTOON BUT THIS IS MY SPECIAL INTEREST SO FORGIVE ME

[moonykat]

"There has never been another Steve Rogers, has there?"

Well, Zemo. You're wrong.

There is another superhuman who hasn't been corrupted by the serum. In fact, you are looking at him right now. Bucky.

When Zemo said this line I realized this narrative felt off somehow. Because going by what he said before about all superhumans being supremacists and inevitably ending up down that path, it would mean Bucky is like Karli, or like all the other "corrupted enhanced individuals". And there's nothing farther away from the truth. This may get a bit long so bear with me.

After Bucky was first captured and tested on back in Azzano, he already had a version of what would become the super-soldier serum. It was the one thing that allowed him to survive the fall. If we take Zemo's words as true, it means Bucky had to have been already different (personality-wise) ever since then. So, did he become a machine of hatred and jealousy? did he start killing people left and right? No. You know what he did? He followed his best friend and kept fighting alongside him against the nazis. He may have had to kill back then, but it was war so what are we expecting. Until the moment he fell off the train, there was no indication of something "evil" lurking inside him.

I have an issue with the way certain storylines regarding the Winter Soldier have been dealt with. Starting with the "make amends" notebook. You make amends when you've wronged someone. But Bucky's situation is different. Even if it was him physically doing this stuff, it was beyond his control. HYDRA is the one and only responsible for those horrible things, and yet no one so far (not even his therapist) has actually told him that, or at least reminded him of it. The only person who has ever said this to Bucky was Steve, back in Civil War. He even owns the insult "my people" as if he had truly been part of HYDRA willingly, even if he acknowledges he was captured, he still sees himself as a villain. Those killings were forced upon him. And still, we see him making amends for something he had no say on.

The single moment Bucky regained a small piece of his will, he saved someone. He saved Steve. The first moment he was able to be himself again, even if everything was confusing and scary, he still jumped after this man and pulled him from the river. Flashforward two years, in Bucharest. Is Bucky doing something heartless and evil like going on a murder spree? has he joined any fascist group? No. he's buying plums, living in a small apartment room, and writing his memories on tons of notebooks, trying to cling on to the only thing that reminds him he was, he is good.

And now, with Zemo's comments implying Bucky too is corrupted by the serum... it doesn't sit well with me. I don't know if this is Zemo being Zemo, or if this is the actual approach taken by the writers. Although I'm inclined to believe the latter, given that no one has said anything against it nor corrected Bucky or Zemo about it.

Which I find troubling. Because Bucky isn't bad. He wasn't corrupted by the serum. He's still this loyal, nerdy man troubled by his past. He has never done anything evil by his own decision. Hell, the first thing he did after running away from the countries trying to kill him was to ask to be put on cryo again. "I can't trust my own mind. So until they find a way to get this stuff out of my head I think going back under is the best thing. For everybody." And even in this episode, when he asks Ayo if she's sure about this. She replies with "I won't let you hurt anyone." Because that's what he feared the most. Hurting those around him.

So, I honestly hope this was just Zemo messing with his head again. And I hope the writers manage to acknowledge this before the finale. Because no, Steve wasn't the only superhuman who remained true to himself after the serum. Bucky is too.

Update. The writers didn't.

[haitaniapologist]

ALL FOR US. ( favorite crime part 2 )

pairings — hanma shuji x female!reader, mentions of chifuyu x kazutora.

genre — angst, fluff.

warnings — an unhealthy obsession with using dashes instead of commas, sentences with strange structures and grammatical errors because english isn’t my first language, SPOILERS for episodes 21 and 24 of the first season of tokyo revengers, SPOILERS for chapter 74 of tokyo revengers and the black dragons arc, mentions major character death, a pregnancy, depression thoughts, smut, pregnancy kink, fingering, overstimulation, edging, lactating kink, typical violence, kisaki tetta.

word counting — 15.1k

songs — all for us, labrinth ft. zendaya.

tagging — @tooweirdforyou @aetheriaess @etheralyonn @lonnie19 @sincerelyraylene @chronic-claire-universe @harufilms @softbajis @markedsweetly @severellamahottub @sanzu-s

notes — phew, part 2 is here!!! it was a long ride since i first had this idea, and i can't believe i finally finished it. i hope you guys will enjoy it as much as i did!! reblogs, comments and likes are appreciated <3 also, natsuki is the name i choose for chifuyu and y/n's mom so i wouldn't be calling her just mom the entire fic jdaghjjsd

DARK CONTENT AND NSFW THEMES UNDER THE CUT, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT !!!!!!!

“what the fuck are you doing, shuji?”

he blinked his golden eyes slowly, finally regaining control of his senses. the last thing he remembered was seeing you get in your car, and a tormenting feeling inside his heart. what was that? hanma never felt anything like that before — it was like an animal was tearing his heart apart, and he was still alive to feel that. his knuckles were bleeding and his cheeks were warm with tears still freely falling from his eyes.

oh, yes. he lost you.

he lifted his head, meeting tetta's hard glare. what happened? he couldn't remember much more than your crying face and you running away from him.

“did you kill her?” kisaki asked impatiently. he already lost takemichi to kazutora — someone he should have killed when he stepped his foot off jail, but tetta never thought he would be a stone in his way — but managed to kill chifuyu, at least. he let the task of dispose of you to hanma, as he had promised many years ago. but he wasn't expecting to find his second in command on the ground floor, bloody hands and tears on his face. that was a pathetic sight, but he hoped that meant that you received the same fate as your younger brother.

shuji didn't understand what tetta wanted from him. “kill her? did… did you mean y/n?” that couldn't be true. he didn't remember kisaki asking him to do that — and as if hanma would kill you. tetta knew he couldn't do that. he could live with the fact that you hated him and never wanted to see him again, but at least you were alive. he could still see you and know you were okay. but you dying? that was one of his worst nightmares. “why would i need to kill my wife?”

kisaki eyes widened from a fraction of seconds, a realization striking him. he never thought hanma was capable of loving someone, and that's why he gave him the task of winning your heart. but maybe, he hadn't thought about the power you would hold over shuji — power enough to make him change and be capable of thinking about someone else that wasn't him. shuji loved you, and that was something that tetta couldn't predict in his plans.

and he hoped that such a foolish feeling wouldn’t mean his downfall. if kisaki lost what he minutely worked to have because of love, he would make sure to hunt you and shuji to the depths of hell.

“why, shuji?” he asked with venom dripping from his lips. “because your pretty little wife is a fucking traitor, just like her brother. she was helping him to take us down, did you notice?” he spat, observing gladly how hanma's eyes widened with pain. “and she's now probably whoring herself to kazutora as we speak.” kisaki could hear hanma's heart breaking, and that amused him. shuji needed to be the man he was before he met you — and if that meant that kisaki needed to break his heart with his own hands and then mend it as how he liked, he didn't care. “o-oh, you didn't know she's seeing him behind your back?” he asked in faux surprise, watching as his friend's eyes were tearing up again.

kisaki watched as life drained from hanma's eyes, like a bird flying for the warm land in the winter, helping him getting up. his plan was working out. “i'll help you get revenge, my friend.” he murmured, his hand on hanma's shoulders, trying to comfort him. fool.

“those matsunos have nothing but treason running in their blood, and we'll make sure to spill them to the whole world to see what happens when someone tries to stab our backs.”

—

you stopped at your mother's doorstep, not knowing what to do.

the last time you were there was when you married shuji, when you left your mother's home and went to live in a penthouse with your husband. could you still call him that? you didn't know.

after you calmed yourself down inside the car, you thought of what you would say to your mother. it wouldn't be easy to inform a mother of her son's death — and a dark side of you wished she was there to witness what happened. it would be easier for you, at least. what could you say to her? how could you tell that chifuyu, her dearest baby, was now dead? how could you explain that you watched the scene unfolding in front of your eyes but you were a coward, and didn't help your brother? you should be dead in his place. it was the natural course of life — you were older, and you were supposed to die first.

you took a deep breath, your shaky hand pressing the doorbell. it was funny how your mother never wished to move you from the same apartment he first bought with your father, even though you and chifuyu had the money to buy something bigger and in a better neighborhood for her. but she always denied yours and your brother’s words. she couldn’t leave precious memories like that.

and if you tried hard enough, you could hear chifuyu and keisuke laughing in the hallways.

you pressed the doorbell again, panic flooding in your system — but the door opened, and you watched with teary eyes as your mother broke down in front of you.

matsuno natsuki knew what happened the moment her eyes fell on your figure.

your dishevelled hair, teary eyes and bloody hands. that could only mean one thing: chifuyu was dead. she didn't mean to fall down to her knees and cry painful tears — almost tears of blood, as the virgin mary did when she watched what the romans were doing to her son. she needed to be strong to comfort you, chifuyu said. you would be there to watch him die,

“mama.” you whimpered, hugging her. it was the only thing you offered to her. “chifuyu is dead, mama.” you cried on her shoulder, feeling as her shaky hands tried to hug you back. "i'm sorry, i'm so sorry, mama."

you two cried for what seemed hours, until your and your mother's sobs became whimpers, and you managed to get her from the ground. you seated her on the sofa, making cold water with sugar for her.

“i knew he was going to die.” natsuki whispered, her eyes glued on her husband's photo. oh, dear.

you gave her a puzzled look, seating next to her. was she talking about a sixth sense mothers had regarding the safety of their children? you remembered when keisuke died and how his mom knew something happened to him.

you watched as your mother drank the water, and she looked so small — so young. she had always been young, but you never noticed that. too young to lose her husband, too young to raise two children alone, too young to bury a child. “your brother… he came here this morning.” she started, and your eyes widened. “he knew he was being targeted by kisaki.” she put a hand on your shoulder, her touch comforting, but you could see how she was struggling to not cry more. your mother never showed her weak side to you or your brother, ever. she had always been your rock, and your heart ached, seeing how she still tried to stay strong just for you. “he left something for you.”

what?

natsuki walked to where she had put chifuyu's letters — one for her, another for you — your dumbfounded eyes following her every movement. she prayed and prayed that things wouldn't reach the moment she would need to read what her son wrote for her. she handed you the paper, and you took it as it was the most precious jewel you ever saw. “why don't you go to your room, my sweetheart? i’m afraid toman's men will arrive soon to inform me about chifuyu, and i don't know what they could do to you.”

right. you were still a traitor.

you nodded, hugging your mother tightly, hoping that your arms could translate what you wanted to tell her. the hug ended when the doorbell rang again, and you rushed to your old childhood room, trying to ignore all the memories you had in it. it was hard, but you needed to focus on what chifuyu wanted to say to you.

taking another deep breath and seating in your old writing desk, you opened the letter:

y/n/n,

i'm trying to find words to say to you. but nothing comes to my mind — because how can i write a goodbye letter when i'm still here? how i can put into words what i'm feeling now? goodbyes weren't easy for you, for us, and i hope i can make mine more bearable for you with this letter. kind old-fashioned, isn't it? but i can't trust any other way of communication. he can't know that i know what is going to happen.

you have been with me since i was born. i never knew a world where my older sister wasn't with me, guiding me and making sure i didn't trip on my own feet. did you know my oldest memory is with you? i probably never told one about this, but i remember you looking down at me when i was in my crib. you said nothing, but i could see in your eyes how much you loved me. you were always looking out for me, and i knew how much of a troublesome kid i was. and for that, i apologize. but i was nothing but a child, and now, as an adult, i wish i could still give you such kind of troubles. not this one.

but i'm now the one looking out for you. if you're reading this, then i managed to protect you as always did with me.

you know a world without me. even if you don't remember it — you know. and you need to remember it and learn how you used to live back then. in a few days, i'll be nothing but ashes, nothing but ancestors and my memories and dreams will build our family grave, and i hope they'll be carried by you and takemichi. in a few hours, i'll be with dad and keisuke again, and i can't wait to tell them how beautiful you were as a bride. i'm sure they are so, so proud of you. as i am.

don't ever feel guilty about my death. it isn't your fault, even though i know you'll feel it is. you did not fail your job as my sister. i've made peace with it, really. i'm ready to die — but not ready to leave you, mom and kazutora behind. i can't make peace with the fact that you three will cry over my dead body, or i can't make peace with the fact that i'll never see my nephews and nieces. but that's ok. i'll watch over them. that's the least i can do for you.

i can't guarantee to you that your life will be easy now. i can't guarantee that it'll get easier to wake up and remember i'm dead, but i'm sure it'll get steadier. i thought about what i would feel if you died, and it was almost like a part of my soul died too. the world wasn't turning like it did, and the ground was rocking beneath my feet like an unquiet sea. but you are stronger than me, and i know you'll learn to live like that, like the sailors do. i could never. that's why i hope i'll be ashes by the end of the week, instead of you. but, promise me one thing: be happy. that's all i ask of you.

i'm whispering the words i hope will find you when you read this letter. i whisper your name, y/n, and i whisper the most important thing:

i love you, sister. i love you.

i love you.

your forever little brother,

chifuyu.

p.s: i've already forgiven shuji. i can't know if he'll have a role in my death, but it isn't easy to get away from kisaki's manipulation. remember that, please.

p.s 2: if you ever have children, name the girl shinobu and the boy after me. that's my last wish.

ps. 3: i’m just kidding. i just don’t know how to end this. i don’t want to die, but it seems to be my fate. i’m sorry. i love you.

you didn’t know if you should laugh or cry. he was thinking about you, about how you would react and how you could live with him. how much pain chifuyu went through knowing he was going to die? what was he thinking? why didn’t he ran away instead of showing himself at the meeting and accepting his fate? why did he stay and make you and your mother suffer because of him? why? why?

why your brother had to die?

new tears were now streaming down your face, but you didn’t have enough strength to sob or scream. you just wanted to wake up from this nightmare and be able to call your brother to gossip about your friends’ life, or help your husband get ready to work. you just wanted to have your life back the way it was. you cried and cried, and cried. it was the only thing you could do. you didn’t notice when your mother entered your room, only acknowledging her presence when she made you lay down on her lap, her hand stroking your hair. she did the same thing with you when you noticed your father was never going to return home again, and you almost laughed at how miserable your life had been — a dead father, a dead boyfriend and a dead brother. who was going to be the next? a dead mother? a husband?

“mama, am i cursed?” your voice was small, quiet, but filled with sorrow.

natsuki needed to be strong, but seeing you in such a state broke her heart. if she could, she would be the one feeling your pain — you didn’t deserve any of that. “of course not, dear. but we can’t predict what will happen in our lives.” she stroked your hair, hoping that the act would comfort you. it used to do, at least, but you weren’t her baby anymore.

“i should have listened to you, mama.” your thoughts only prompted you to cry harder. “if i… if i had taken care with shuji, i wouldn’t be here today.” crying for both my brother and my failed marriage. was shuji such a heartless man? did your love for him blinded you to all the bad he had done or could do?

natsuki inhaled deeply. she didn’t know what happened between you and your husband, but it was clear that her son-in-law knew something. chifuyu seemed to think that, and being the second in command to kisaki meant that he and toman’s leader shared secrets. “we could never have thought that things would end like this, y/n. you didn’t listen to me, but weren’t you happy?”

you nodded.

“then that’s what mattered to me.” her hand left your hair and she helped you get up. “we don’t know what the future holds for us, but i think you should take a bath. i’ll be there with you.” she smiled at you, and you did what your mother said. the walk to the bathroom was a difficult one. the house was still the same, and you had many memories about running in those halls after chifuyu or peke j, sometimes both, because they were annoying you. it was like chifuyu said — you felt as if the ground beneath your feet was like an unquiet sea, the earth wasn’t turning like it always did. something was missing.

natsuki helped you bathe, cleaning the blood from your hands and washing your hair. you hoped the water would be enough to clean you — both physically and spiritually. would you ever be able to life with the guilt of not being able to help your little brother? you both cried and laughed reminiscing memories with your brother and father, and even keisuke did a cameo in them.

now dressed and seated in front of your father’s altar, you heard your mother speak again. “the funeral will be tomorrow morning. toman will defray all of it.” you only nodded. shuji would probably be there. what would you do? what would you say to him? the ring in your left hand was now heavy. you were the only that left him, after he finally said he loved you, but could you forgive him? did he want to be forgiven? “they said to me that chifuyu died protecting kisaki from takemichi.”

you scoffed. tomorrow would be even harder.

you hugged your mother one last time before going to sleep. it wasn’t the same bed, but you still could see your teenage self wrapped around shuji arms, giggling and squirming in his hold, or even smell the brand of cheap cigarettes he used to smoke at the time. a sigh left your lips, and you noticed your phone on the night stand. your mother probably put it there, and you started to look through your messages. kazutora and naoto were asking how you were, and you answered them with a heavy heart, informing them of the details about the funeral.

putting it back on the furniture, your eyes tearing up again when it buzzed with new messages.

shuji: the bed is cold without you

shuji: come back home please

shuji: i love you

—

the house was cold and empty, but shuji could see you in everything.

at first, he thought he was hallucinating.

he could still smell your rose scented shampoo and your cologne in the whole house. it was like someone had played a prank on him and sprayed it just to see him more miserable — but he could hear you laugh too. he could feel you inside the penthouse, and he cursed himself for letting you do all the decoration. at any corner his eyes laid upon, he could see a part of you. how you cared for your family and friends, how you were passionate about baking, how you loved him.

but the worst was the bedroom.

it was filled with you. your clothes, your jewels, your hair products and makeup, your favorite photos and everything you held dear to your heart. he picked up the photo that was on your night stand, his heart clenching — him, you, your mother and chifuyu in the day you became his wife. he lost all of that, and for what?

the sheets were still warm it seemed, and they and your pillow still smelled like you, hanma noticed when he managed to lay down after a cold shower. if he focused enough, he could feel how warm your skin was beneath his fingertips and feel the outline of your curves pressing against his body, or hear your heartbeat in his ears and feel your butterfly kisses against his jaw.

the bed was cold without you there, and shuji didn’t know what to do. how could he fall asleep without your warmth as his lullaby?

kisaki’s words were resonating in his head. was you really cheating on him with kazutora? it was almost impossible, but tetta was his friend and shuji was sure he would never lie to him. but he trusted you too, and even if you were helping your brother, it didn’t make sense that you would cheat on him. you still treated him the same, albeit being a little distant, and never stopped showing him your love. however, if you really were, you and shuji were even. he helped someone murder your brother, and you cheated on him. he was willing to forgive you, it that was the truth.

turning his head to smell you on your pillow once more, he reached for his phone, texting kisaki. you were in your mother’s house as he had predicted, and unharmed, as he promised too. hanma thanked him, and in return received the details about his brother-in-law’s funeral. he felt as a hypocrite by going, but everyone thought chifuyu died trying to protect kisaki from takemichi, as no one would believe he was the judas. tetta wanted to frame hanagaki as it, and since he was arrested, it was easy to go with that narrative.

before shuji could think better, he was facing your contact photo. it was you two, in pajamas, doing face masks. he smiled fondly at the sight of it, typing what was in his mind.

you: the bed is cold without you

you: come back home please

you: i love you

he didn’t care if you had really cheated on him. he was willing to forgive anything just to have you at his side again.

the screen glowed and shuji watched as how typing appeared and disappeared, his heart racing every time he could see you were formulating an answer for him.

y/n: go to sleep, shuji

y/n: it’s really late

oh, how good it was to see you calling him by his first name.

y/n: we can talk tomorrow after the funeral if you'll be there

y/n: good night

he smiled at the text, texting you a good night and putting his phone again on his night stand. tomorrow, he would gain your forgiveness, even if he needed to beg on his knees and scream to the world how much you meant to him.

—

the ground still felt like an unquiet sea beneath your feet, but you were getting steadier.

it wasn't easy to wake up and remember what happened to your brother, and after crying a little more both in your bed and in the shower, you were ready — as you could be — to attend his funeral. you were wearing your mother's clothes, an old black dress of hers that was the one that fitted you, with your hair styled in a ponytail and the heels you were wearing the night prior, which the men who visited your mom returned for you.

you didn't understand why kisaki was being too kind to you. if he knew you were helping your brother, thus being considered a traitor, why didn't he order the men to kill you yesterday? wasn't it easier to kill two birds with just a stone?

that were the thoughts haunting you during the funeral.

you were on your knees next to your mother, receiving everyone's condolences. it wasn't easy, especially when the old toman boys came. smiley, angry, peh, pah, mucho, and even hakkai — you shared teary eyed smiles with every single one of them, and you were grateful to kisaki, in a twisted way. your brother didn't die as a traitor to the eyes of his friends.

the worst, however, was when it arrived shuji’s time to talk to you both.

his eyes were in you since he arrived, and you tried your best to ignore it. but from time to time you stole a glance at his way, your heart aching to see him in such a state. you never saw your husband looking so miserable, but you needed to remember that he deserved that. did he really think that you would be willing to accept the fact that he helped someone murder your brother? it was strange, what you were feeling. shuji deserved that, yes, but you wanted nothing more than to just kiss his pain away.

you watched as he prayed in front of chifuyu's casket, his smiling photo a bitter reminder that you would never see him looking like that at you. you lowered your eyes as soon as shuji kneeled in front of you and your mother, but you couldn't escape him, as he bent over in a formal apology form, his forehead in the ground. “i'm sorry, mother.” you heard him say before he got away from your line of vision, probably hugging your mom. you didn't tell her what happened. she didn't need to know more details about last night, as you didn't want to suffer more. but she knew. she was your mom, after all.

“thank you, shuji, dear.” you heard her say, and you thought that was it. but you soon felt your husband's hands on your shoulders, and you just rested your face on his chest. you couldn't look at him. “meet me in front of the lake, in five, okay?” he kissed your hair, and you took a deep breath when his warmth left you.

after him, kisaki came.

you wanted to throw up, your fists clenching in anger at your sides. how dare he? tetta was the one who pulled the trigger, the mastermind behind chifuyu’s death, he didn’t have shame to appear in his funeral with a sorrowful look on his face? you felt as if you couldn’t breathe, and when he approached you and your mother, you noticed how your nails managed to draw blood from your hands from how hard you were pressing them to your palms. you had never felt so much anger in your life, and you wanted nothing more than to break his glasses on his face and beat him to death.

his arms were filled with thorns sticking on your skin, and his smile a blade that aimed at your heart, and his words were the most dangerous venom. ��you’re lucky shuji loves you, y/n.” he murmured in your ear while you were in what people would call a friendly embrace, but you felt inside a cage. “or else your mother would be crying over two today. behave, sweetheart.”

you got up as soon as kisaki started to talk with your mother, your legs taking you to any secluded place they could find. you needed to get out of there, you needed to get out of kisaki’s grasp and plans. his warning meant only one thing: if you tried to carry on your brother’s plans, you would meet the same end as him, and neither your husband nor anyone else would be able to stop tetta from killing you. and you couldn’t do that to your mom, no. she already lost chifuyu and your dad, but, at the same time, changing toman was what chifuyu and keisuke wanted.

it was like you were a trapped bird and kisaki was your master.

you noticed you were in the lake when your eyes found shuji’s, dark bags under his golden eyes, which were reflecting pure misery.

“i didn’t think you would come.” shuji started, taking a step closer to you. you saw how his hands were twitching at his sides, as if he was doing anything he could to not touch you. and he was. hanma wanted nothing more than to feel your skin on his fingers and comfort you, as hypocritical as that sounded.

you reverted your eyes to the water, the way his eyes were burning holes in your body was too much to bear. “would you blame me if i did not?” you asked, observing your reflection on the water. shuji soon appeared too, and it was better to look at his reflection than to his face.

“no, but i was hoping you would come.” it was almost like the words were blades that hurt his throat just by saying that, but shuji wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see him again. but your text last night said otherwise, and he hoped he could save the shreds that your once strong marriage was. “forgive me, y/n.” hanma knew that words could mean nothing — his line of work only proved to him that, because lying to him was almost as drinking water — but he wanted you to believe him. he never had been so sincere in his whole life. “believe me when i say that i love you, because i do.”

“shuji, i… i don't know if i can.” you answered, closing your eyes when you saw his face changing from one full of love to one full of despair, the tears streaming down his face visible even in the water. but you needed to support your convictions, even if they would hurt. “not… now, at least.”

shuji’s face disappeared from the water, and your eyes followed his movements. he kneeled in front of you — the same way he did when he asked you to be his wife — and rested his head on your belly, hands on your hips you fought the urge to put your hands on his hair and stroke it, like you used to do when he was too stressed. “y/n, please… i don't know how i'll live without you.” his words were like a million paper cuts on your skin, too agonizing to support. you didn’t even care anymore about the tears.

“i… you will…” you will learn, was what you wanted to say, but the words were stuck to your throat. he needed to learn, as you should too.

but his next words took you by surprise.

“is this because you're cheating on me kazutora?”

“w-what?” was what you managed to say, too shocked to form any other sentence. you and kazutora? shuji was kidding, right? kazutora… kazutora was in love with your brother. you were playing matchmaker before everything happened. it took you a while to forgive kazutora for stabbing baji, but, when you did, he became like a little brother to you too. and when he expressed his feelings towards chifuyu, you were beyond happy. your brother deserved someone that loved and cared for him until the end of the world — as you and shuji had been.

“so it's true.” you were used to that tone of shuji — the toman hanma, the reaper — but he never used it with you. desperation started to bubble in your heart, and you needed to make him believe you were telling the truth. it wasn’t fair — yesterday you were thinking that your marriage had been a lie since day one, and now hanma is thinking you were cheating on him?

you gripped his shoulders when he tried to move away from you. “what the hell are you talking about, shuji? i would never cheat on you!” you almost screamed, seeing how hurt he looked from just that thought. “and tora… he loved my brother.” you didn’t know why you were telling him that. your husband didn't deserve to know anything about kazutora’s life, but that was the only thing you could say for him to believe you.

shuji gulped. he wanted to believe in you, he did. but it was your word against kisaki’s. “tetta, he… he told me you were cheating on me with kazutora.” you realized with horror that what chifuyu said was right. shuji was tied to kisaki’s manipulation like an insect in a spider’s web. “and helping your brother, too.”

“and you believed him?”

your words were harsh and shuji felt as if you slapped him. he… he should believe kisaki. they knew each other since their teenagers dreams, the reaper and the pierrot, and tetta never lied. but by just looking at your expression shuji knew you weren’t lying — he could read you as an open book. maybe kisaki was wrong? maybe he just thought you were cheating on him.

“i was helping my brother, yes, but i would never cheat on you, oh my god.” you added, releasing shuji from your hold and trying to escape him. he didn’t deserve your tears or even your pity, if he thought so low of yourself, his own wife.

but shuji wouldn’t let you go so easily. why were you helping chifuyu? why did you want to take toman down? didn't you love him? if toman ended, he would go to jail for god’s knew how long, away from you. was that what you really wanted? to see your husband behind bars? “... why?”

you understood what he wanted to know, your hands now cupping his face. “because of you.” you answered quietly, hearing the birds singing. “toman… toman became too dangerous.” you explained. you knew what gang life was, but everyday toman started to have more and more shady work, and that wasn’t its purpose. the gang was created to protect people, and not to kill innocents. tachibana hinata’s death had been your last straw. why kisaki needed to kill her? you remembered her as takemichi’s sweet girlfriend from middle school. you were afraid that someday you would be awake at 3am by a text saying your husband had died in a mission. “i did not… i did not want our kids to have the same fate as me.”

“the same fate… as you?” shuji asked with confusion lacing his voice, leaning in your touch.

you took a deep breath, his face becoming blurry by the tears in your eyes. “i didn't want them to wake up one day to their father never coming back home again.” it was hard to speak of the family you two wanted in the past sentence, but you didn’t know if shuji would agree with your thoughts. “i didn't want them to feel the same loneliness i did on father's day, or hearing other people calling their fathers heroes and not knowing what to say when their friends asked about theirs.” you smiled down at him, sadly, remembering moments from your childhood that no child needed to go through. it was painful to watch all the other kids doing drawings and cards, saying how much they loved their father, telling each other how cool they were, while your work would be deposited on a gravestone and your memories of your father were starting to fade away. you couldn’t even recall the exact color of his eyes anymore. “i didn't want to be the one to tell them their father died.” not like your mother did on a saturday morning, you and chifuyu still in your pajamas, hugging each other. “i didn't want them to know you only from my memories, shuji.” like chifuyu did.

“princess…” he got up from his knees, trapping you in his arms. that time, however, you embraced him back, and relief washed over him. you were worried for him, about him — you weren’t cheating on him. you were a traitor because you loved him, because you wanted to have a family with him. tetta would understand that.

you two stayed in each other’s embrace for a few minutes, and hanma was hopeful that things would go back to their normal. but your next words were like a bucket of cold water someone turned on him.

“i think it's better if we don't see each other for a while, shuji.”

it was as if someone ripped a bandage from his skin without warning, the bruise opening up again and dripping blood. “w-what?” he asked, holding you by your shoulders, as if he could shake sense into you. didn't you love him anymore? but your gaze was determined, and shuji knew he wouldn't be able to change your mind. you were too stubborn, he came to learn, and when you had an idea in your mind, you wouldn't back down. but he hoped — no, he dared to plead — that the gods would change your mind. “n-no, i can't. the house, my life is too cold without you with me, y/n. i won't… i won't be able to.” he tried to reason, and you almost have in at the sight of his golden eyes pleading to yours.

you smiled sadly at him, your hand cupping his cheek to wipe the tears falling from his eyes. “didn't you say you would wait for me forever if you needed to?” you remembered that day as if it happened a few hours ago — how shuji cupped your face between his large hands, after you said you wanted to take things slow, to be able to heal properly and because you liked him too, and it wasn’t fair to him if you started a relationship while still grieving over keisuke. the room smelling like his favorite brand of cigarettes, and his eyes hooded with affection, and how tears freely fell down your cheeks after he made you that promise.

he nodded. it was the only promise he was able to fulfill.

you stroked his cheek, and hanma could die from the love dripping from your eyes. he didn't deserve any of that. “i'm not saying i won't ever be able to forgive you, but i need some time. to put my thoughts in place, to mourn my brother and to find myself again.” sometimes, when someone you love hurts you, you should stay some time away from them to heal and be able to forgive and love them again — your mother whispered to you when she thought you were sleeping, and you took her words to heart. this time, you would listen to her.

“please.” you murmured, watching as hanma's shoulders slug down and as his face could cause envy to a puppy trying to have their owner to give them food. but it was for the best, for the both of you.

shuji tightened his grip on your shoulders, but sighed, defeated. “o-okay.” he answered, and you tried to not dwell in the quiver his voice made when he agreed with you. his eyes were glistening with tears of sadness and something you thought was determination. “just promise me that you'll never take the ring off of your finger, princess.” he demanded, and you almost laughed at how imposing he looked. but you nodded, nonetheless, and he gave you a teary smile.

“can i kiss you, one more time?” shuji asked, apprehensive, afraid that you would deny his request. but he needed to feel your lips on his one more time, to have a memory, in future sleepless and cold nights, to remember why he was going through such martyrdom.

you didn't answer him with words, but, with your hand still on his cheek, you brought his head down, connecting your lips. hanma almost moaned at the feeling of your soft skin against his lips, and he caged you inside his arms one more time.

the kiss tasted of tears, which were freely falling from both of your eyes, and shuji held you as if you could break at any moment, his touch on the bare skin of your back was almost like an ember, as if he wanted to bruise you — and, if anyone else dared to touch you, they would know who you belonged to. your touch, however, was gentle and caring, like a summer breeze gracing his cheeks. but, at the same time, shuji felt that you wanted to mark him too.

you reluctantly broke the kiss, the burn on your eyes becoming too much for you to bear. shuji kissed your forehead, one last time, and you watched as he distanced himself from you, walking back to the funeral's salon.

“goodbye, y/n.”

“goodbye, shuji.”

i love you.

—

it wasn't easy in the beginning.

you used to sleep and wake up feeling shuji's warmth, and now, waking up in a cold and small bed, without all the pillows you had in your husband's penthouse, was strange. but you grew used to it — and, as chifuyu said, the ground started to feel steadier. you stopped waking up with sorrow running through your veins, and started to see the beauty in the little things life had to offer. maybe it was the birds singing, or a cat wanting you to scratch their head — you started to smile more and feel like yourself again, even if you felt something missing in your heart and soul.

you also needed to learn how to live without the luxuries shuji's job offered to you, as your mother income was made up of your father's pension and the money you and chifuyu would deposit to her. she now had a part in the income of all of your brother's bars and clubs, but it wasn't like before. you learned again how it was to live without maids and personal chefs, and while you missed the comfort that brought you, it was good to connect yourself with your roots again.

and, when kazutora offered you a job in the pet shop chifuyu was helping him open up, you didn't hesitate to agree.

you hadn't worked in at least seven years, since toman started to make enough money for shuji to sustain you, and you had forgotten how good it was to do something you loved. the look of love on a kid's face when you showed them a kitten, or the grateful words you would receive from elderly people when they came asking for suggestions about how to take better care of their dogs was something that kept you going and waking up everyday. you had found a new purpose in life, and, this time, was solely yours.

you were reminded of shuji in the smallest things. in the smell of coffee in the morning, to a pack of cigarettes someone forgot in the pet shop, to the way the sun shines in the sky — golden exactly like his eyes were. you couldn't watch sitcoms without remembering how he liked to make fun of the characters with you, or you couldn't see a man wearing a suit, or your head would turn so quickly that it would give you a whiplash because you thought it was him. there was now a hole in the place shuji used to be in your world, a hole that you constantly walked around in the daytime, like a moth to a flame, and falling in the night — you missed him like hell, and the ring in your finger was heavy, reminding you that you and hanma once had it all, and now you didn't even know if he was fulfilling his promise. however, you managed to make peace with the longing you had for your husband's presence, and started to live with it as if it was just a friend.

but some days were worse than others.

there were days when you woke up and you wanted nothing more than to just curl yourself under the covers, days when a kid's smile didn't bring a sincere one to your face, and you just wanted to hear hanma shuji's voice and feel his kisses on your face. but you had kazutora, and you both understand each other. you two had lost the same people, and he understood better than anyone what you felt. his company was like the sun rays on a cold winter day, and you and him learned together how to cope with your mourning and sadness. no one could ever replace chifuyu, but kazutora was a warm reminder that you still had sisterly love to give to others.

but did shuji still love you? was he keeping his promise of waiting for you, or when you felt you were ready again to face him, he would dismiss you with a disgusted frown on his handsome face?

—

hanma was miserable.

everywhere he looked, he saw you. either it was in the way the towels were folded in the bathroom, to the lilies resting in a vase inside his office. you were everywhere in his life, haunting and making him remember his sins, and he wondered if you felt the same as he did.

he knew you were faring well. shuji kept his most trusted men to observe you and make sure that nothing bad happened to you, as well to inform him of your well-being. every day one of them returned to tell him that you seemed better, that you smiled more and that you were still wearing your ring, shuji felt as if he was the happiest man alive. if being away from you meant your happiness, he would gladly stay away until you were ready again.

but he missed you. oh, how he missed you.

he missed your sweet smile and your hands caressing his cheeks. he missed the feel of your smaller hands intertwined with his big ones, and he missed how you would trace patterns on his tattoos. but he missed being loved, he missed your eyes shining with love every time he arrived home, and he missed your tight pussy clenching around him. his fist was nothing compared to your cunt.

shuji couldn't go out with the other toman's executives because all the fun was going with you — to see you dancing and having fun, to see you dressed in the finest silks the world has to offer. he didn't need excuses to drink anymore. he already did it, either to forget the pain or to try to remember how it was to hold you, to kiss you, to feel you.

however, you words of wanting to make toman better because of him haunted his thoughts, and, little by little, shuji started some changes inside the organisation. of course, he didn't tell tetta that it was solely because of you — hanma said it would put them in good eyes with the police once more, so they would leave toman to their devices once more — but kisaki knew you had something to do with shuji's change of demeanour. how he started to donate his money to orphanages and shelters, and how he started to finance the building of schools and hospitals. it wasn't much, but his job stopped being just dangerous missions.

shuji also started to donate to kazutora's petshop, and help it as chifuyu was. you didn't know, of course — shuji made kazutora swear he would never tell you.

and he tried to stay away from you, how he tried. but two months after chifuyu's funeral, shuji appeared in the pet shop.

he wasn’t supposed to. he made a promise, but shuji felt as if he was going crazier and crazier each day he wasn’t graced with your smile. he endured sixty days, but he couldn't do more. he texted kazutora — they couldn’t be considered as friends, but they were on better terms since the bloody halloween — to see if you were working that afternoon, because hanma needed to get just a simple glance of your face.

and he did.

you looked up when the bell over the door hung, and a happy smile made its way to your lips before you saw who it was. “hello, and welcome our shop! how can i hel—” you felt your throat dry at the sight of your husband’s golden eyes, and your smile faltered, hands shaking and breath speeding up.

the urge to run up to the bathroom and throw up was huge, but you already had done that today. and in the days prior too, and you wondered if it wasn’t a signal that your world was going to be flipped down again by him.

“y/n.”

his voice was hoarse, but it held so many emotions. you were glowing in hanma's eyes, and he never saw you looking so beautiful. he had seen you with designed dresses made by the finest stylists, but you were something else with your hair in messy pigtails, comfy jeans and a white t-shirt under a green apron. you had bags under your eyes, and shuji hoped he wasn't the cause of that.

“shuji… wha— how can i—” you didn't know what to say, because you want to say it all. you wanted to say how you missed him, how you thought you were getting better, tell him all about the new shows you watched with your mom and every good thing that happened in your life. you wanted to ask him if he still loved you, if he thought of you as much as you thought of him, if you haunted his dreams like he did with yours.

but shuji just smiled at you, and you swore the sight was more beautiful than all the stars in the galaxy.

“i'm here to…” to see you again, because i miss you so much that it makes my heart bleed. “adopt a kitten.” he didn't know where that wish came from, but maybe, with a kitten, he would have an excuse to see you again. “the house has been too lifeless since you left.”

you just nodded, feeling your eyes burn, averting your gaze from him to the counter. he seemed well, but his eyes weren't your husband's eyes anymore. they were emptier, and you knew it was your fault. “tora is the one who helps a person choose a kitten. he'll be back soon, i think.” and you hoped too, because you wouldn't be able to be in shuji's presence for too much time.

“alright.” you heard him answer, your eyes now glued to the computer's bright screen. you suppressed a yawn, too annoyed with the fatigue that was plaguing you these past few weeks. you mother was worried, too, and she thought that maybe it was time to either see a doctor, or talk with your husband. a message popped in your phone from the clinic, and your eyes found shuji's again — his looking a little worried from the notification's sound.

you answered your confirmation, eyes returning to your husband's, who was looking at his hands. “it was just my doctor's clinic to confirm my appointment tomorrow.” you explained, cheeks heating up. “i'm not… seeing anyone else, if that's what you were thinking.”

relieved washed through shuji's body, and, before he could answer — saying that he also wasn't seeing anyone else — kazutora's black and blond hair popped from the back door, and he gave shuji a puzzled look.

“he's here to adopt a kitten!” you answered before shuji could, and he gave kazutora a sheepish smile.

“very well, then. follow me, hanma.” shuji did what he was told, following kazutora to the back room, smiling politely in your direction. the back was full of kittens and puppies, and shuji felt as if he died and was in heaven — the atmosphere was something he never experienced before, and all the attention the little ones were giving him almost made him tear up. he didn’t care if he showed up in that night’s meeting with fur in his suit.

kazutora’s voice took him from his daydreams, and hanma almost chocked on his own spit at this question, a puppy in his hand. “are you here to actually adopt a kitten or just to see y/n?”

“woah man, i didn't remember you being so straightforward.” he answered promptly, feeling his ears heating up. shuji actually didn’t know why he said that — peke j absolutely loathed him when the cat was still around, saving some time when he was sleepy and hanma was smoking on your balcony and peke j asked for some head scratches. he still had some faint scars from the times your brother’s cat caused havoc on his hands.

kazutora chuckled, changing the water of the animals. “well, years in jail can change someone.” hanma knew he was just joking, but he felt guilt creeping his spine hearing that. he was one of the main reasons why kazutora spent so many years there, and he didn’t want to be reminded of his past mistakes — because of you, and how much pain that day brought to you. “but i'm being serious, hanma. a kitten is a being, which needs love and the best things in the world, and i need to know if you'll be a good tutor or not.”

shuji contemplated if he should just tell the truth or if he should tell a little white lie.

“the house is cold and lonely without her.” he decided to be honest with kazutora, and hanma frowned at how his yellow eyes widened. what, he couldn’t believe shuji had feelings and felt more lonely than he ever in his entire life felt without you? “i was already thinking about getting a pet before everything happened.” you were thinking about that, but kazutora didn’t need to know.

he didn’t enjoy the smile kazutora gave him. “do you have any color preferences?”

“black.” was shuji’s answer, while he crossed his arms.

it was because of peke j, and kazutora knew it. but besides that, black cats were always seen as a sign of bad luck, and hanma used to relate to that. “okay.” the pet shop’s owner answered, picking up a small black kitten, and its big green eyes were glued in shuji’s face. “we have this one.” kazutora explained, handling it to him. shuji held the kitten gently, observing how it wanted to play with his earring. “all her siblings were adopted and she's the only one left. y/n likes to play with her a lot.”

he involuntarily smiled, thinking about how you enjoyed playing with your brother’s cat when you were too stressed, or the many old photos he had of you doing that.

“then it'll be her.” shuji decided, holding the little kitten to his chest. “she's cute.” he smiled down at her, already enamoured by her big green eyes and little black nose. it would be a good addition to the family, and she would keep him company while he awaited for you.

“you really loves y/n, don’t you, shuji?” kazutora said out of nowhere, watching as the toman executive got familiarized with the black kitten. but he asked on your behalf — kazutora heard your concerns many times, always wondering if your husband still loved you.

“of course.” shuji answered, sorrow lacing his voice. “we don’t give the power to destroy us to someone you don’t love.”

kazutora smiled sadly, mentioning hanma to handle him the kitten. “i’ll be taking care of the preparations for you to take her home.” he explained, stroking her black fur. “y/n deals with the paperwork, and you should talk to her now. shuji nodded, giving him a small smile and exiting the back room, finding yourself too entertained with what you were doing at the computer. its light reflecting in your face only made you more breathtaking, but shuji cleared his throat to get your attention — he could stay the whole afternoon just looking at your face, but he had a meeting to go to.

“kazutora said you are the one who does the paperwork.” he didn’t know how to approach you without being too forward, and ask if you were ready again and if you still loved him. but he was just there to see you, because you were supposed to be the one who would dictate your own time.

you nodded, and mentioned for him to get closer to the counter. “did you change any of your info?” you asked cautiously, because you still remembered everything about him. a soft smile made its way to your lips when you saw shuji shaking his head negatively, and you started to fill the adoption form. but the silence was too heavy, and you could feel the intensity of his gaze watching you. “what kitten will you adopt?” you asked, both out of curiosity and because of your job.

“the black kitten.” hanma answered, his eyes concentrated on your face. “kazutora said she’s the last one from her siblings.” you hummed, eyes scanning the form. she was so cute, and you were glad shuji was the one adopting her. because if no one did, you were going to — but your mother already had a hard time dealing with peke j, and you were sure she wouldn’t want another black cat in her home.

you send the form to be printed, walking towards the printer to get the sheet. “do you have a name in mind?”

shuji smiled down at you while you handed him the paper, taking his black pen from his suit pocket to sign it. “guinevere.” he watched as you cutely gave him a puzzled look, and how realization struck your face. excalibur. he still remembered peke j’s first and lame name? you probably told him that in the first stages of your relationship, when you used to snuck him in your room without your mother or brother knowing he was there.

“it’s a cute name for a cute kitten.” you acknowledged, your eyes fixed in the paper. “i’ll miss her.”

the words slipped from shuji’s mouth before he could think twice. “you can visit her whenever you want, you know. it’s still your home, too.” it was as if he was a teenager again, waiting for your answer and reactions to his pick-up lines. he saw how your cheeks gained a reddish color, his heart hammering inside his chest. it didn’t matter how many years had passed, he would always be in love with you, as if you two were still sixteen and fifteen.

“shuji, you…” he couldn’t say things like that, without a warning. it was just like when you two were young again, and you wished for that time to come back. you weren’t sure if you would’ve done something different — probably not, your memories with shuji were kept in a dear place in your heart — but things were easier. “you can’t say things like that.”

you felt his hand on your cheek, and you unconsciously leaned into his touch. “if you ever forget how much i love you, remember that i’m willing to give up the stars if it's necessary to have you at my side again.” he stroked your cheek before kazutora made his presence known, handling hanma the kitten’s box and what he would need to take care of her, leaving you missing his warmth once more.

shuji waved at you and kazutora, and you two repaid the gesture, your eyes watching him leaving with longing on them. “wait, isn't shuji going to pay for the things?” you asked, curious eyes now looking at kazutora.

“well.” he started, tidying up some things inside the shop so you two could close it. “he’s donating a good amount of money every month here to the stray puppies and kittens, and i felt bad for charging him, since he’s already donating.” kazutora smiled at how your face lit up at the mention of your husband donating his money for something, and not only using it to buy luxurious things for both him and yourself. “i also heard he’s donating to the building of hospitals and schools, too.”

you tried to hold back your tears, but you couldn’t. you were way more emotional than ever those past few weeks, and kazutora promptly hugged you. “your love made him a better man, y/n.”

—

“what is this?” kisaki asked angrily, watching as his second in command was playing in the ground with a black cat. he knew hanma was a wild card since day one, but tetta never expected that.

shuji frowned at him. “this is what it looks like.” he shrugged, shaking the toy so guinevere could chase it. “i adopt a cat. meet guinevere, tetta. she's like your niece or something.” hanma watched with amusement in his eyes as kisaki sneered at him, but tried to play with the cat nonetheless. “atta girl.” he whispered as guinevere bit tetta's hands — at least something she learned from you.

“fucking brat.” kisaki murmured, sitting on the leather couch of shuji's office.

hanma followed his friend, leaving the kitten to her devices. he hoped he had tired her enough so she could sleep while he talked with tetta, and then the two of them could go home. “what is the matter you want to discuss today?”

kisaki adjusted his glasses. “the police.” he started, an annoyed frown on his face. “that idea of yours, of donating money and try to be a beneficent organization for a few months, was a good one.” an idea that was inspired by what you said to him, actually — but no one knew that. shuji hoped that when he told you what was happening, you would be happy to know that toman was changing. “but they're still nagging us.”

he knew what kisaki wanted. “maybe we could try to protect people instead of just killing them?” shuji offered a piece of his mind. “so we can pose publicly as the good guys for once. it can be just a planned situation, so we'll have control of what will happen and what will not.”

hanma could see the gears working on kisaki's mind, and he felt confident that your — and chifuyu's, too — dream could be a reality without the blood that was spilled.

“i knew that being without y/n would do good for you, shuji.”

“yeah, whatever.” he dismissed tetta's words with a waving hand, already knowing what he was going to say. that you were a distraction, that he shouldn't let love be too important to him, and all of that. just because he preferred you alive, even that meant being away from him, and kisaki preferred the woman of his affections dead, it didn't mean shuji was weaker. “anything else, tetta?”

kisaki narrowed his eyes, eyeing hanma from his head to his toes. “you know that i only didn't kill y/n for your sake.” shuji nodded, remembering how he begged his friend to not lay a hand on his wife — it had a good explanation for what you did, shuji was sure of it, and you had. but kisaki didn't buy it, and shuji needed to beg on his knees so you would be spared from the same fate as your brother. “don't make me regret my decision, hanma.”

he watched as tetta exited his office, running a hand through his face. he needed to have you at his side again, because if he didn’t, any day you would appear dead and shuji would have a little souvenir waiting for him at his door.

—

natsuki watched as you fidgeted with your fingers while waiting for the blood test to come out.

she knew you and hanma were ready to take the next steps and, before everything that happened, she was beyond excited to have her first grandchildren. but now, watching as she was the one accompanying you to the doctors instead of your husband, she wasn’t so sure if a pregnancy was what you’re needing right now. it was supposed to be shuji there, hugging you by the shoulders while you two waited for the results of something that was supposed to be a happy moment. the unshed tears now in your eyes told her otherwise, but it was your decision to distance yourself from shuji for now.

words of comfort weren’t needed at that moment, and when the doctor stepped out you tightened your grip on your mother’s hand.

“congratulations, mrs. hanma.” the doctor smiled warmly, and your heart fell to your belly. “you’re pregnant. the due date is seven months from now.” you shook his hand, a teary smile on your face. you hoped he bought your story — your husband had an emergency at work and you called your mother to accompany you — and that he couldn’t read your tears as tears of sadness, because that was what they were.

the arms around you weren’t the arms you were expecting, but your mother knew how to calm you. “it’ll be alright, dear.” she whispered in your ear, and you tried so hard to not break down in sobs. your relationship with your husband seemed to be on better terms than you thought, but would shuji receive well these news? he already thought you were cheating on him with kazutora, what if kisaki managed to manipulate him enough for him to think the baby wasn’t his?

and, of course, your brother’s words on his letter were a cruel reminder that he would be the best uncle ever, loving and doting your children as if they were his own — but he wasn’t there to share that moment with you.

you drove your mother back home, saying to her that you needed to run some errands for kazutora and would be back soon, but she knew where you were going. you parked in a convenience store, near the cemetery, to buy some peyang yakisoba, as well as some other sweets. the walk there was lonely and sorrowful, your thoughts running a mile per hour in you head, and you would never be used to going to your family's grave because of your brother.

but the first stop wasn't the matsunos' grave.

you looked at the stone as if it was an old friend of yours, and, to some extent, it was. you didn't know how many times you visited it through the twelve years since keisuke died, and you felt as if he needed to be the first one to know. because before he was your boyfriend, he was your friend too, and you thought that if he was alive he would be thriving with the news. you placed the peyang yakisoba at the feet of the grave, lighting an incense and praying.

“i'm pregnant, keisuke.” you whispered, your hand caressing your belly. it was strange to think about it — the words didn’t sit properly on your tongue, and they had a bittersweet taste. it was just like yesterday that you were still a teenager, riding around with the toman boys on keisuke's bike, laughing and your only responsibility being school. now, you were a grown woman, married and carrying another being inside your womb.

would you be a good mother?

you wiped your tears, getting up from the ground, kissing your fingers and pressing them on the stone. it was funny how the distance between the bajis' and your family's grave wasn't long, and you were happy to know that even death couldn't separate your brother from keisuke.

but you stopped in your tracks when you saw a familiar figure seated in the front of the matsunos' grave, your heart hammering in your chest at the sight of your husband. it was just yesterday that you saw him, but it felt too long ago.

the words coming from his mouth were incomprehensible to you, but you understood what feeling was making your heart hammer inside your ribcage. it was love, pure love — the same love that you felt before your brother died, soft as snowflakes falling on your skin in the first snow of the winter, the love that burned your heart with passion and made it anew just to be burned again. not the love that had a tough grip on your heart, that made your heart clench with pain and your throat dry with unsaid words.

you watched as shuji left the grave, slowly walking towards it to tell the news for your brother and father.

you knew what you had to do when you arrived home.

—

going to visit your family grave made shuji think he was being forgiven by his sins.

it was a total lie and he knew that, but doing something he didn’t even do to his dead relatives made him feel like your brother and father were slowly forgiving him. it was good to stay a while in a quiet place, just him and his thoughts, and sometimes a cigarette. shuji didn’t know if your father smoked — because you were too young when he died and didn’t remember — but he hoped he was happy with the brands shuji was gifting him. for chifuyu, though, he remembered what chocolates he used to like, at least.

arriving home had been a torture for him, even with guinevere. the kitten had proved to be a good companion to him, and shuji could speak freely to her — because he knew the cat wouldn’t judge him, because she couldn’t understand what he was saying. guinevere was his own therapist, and she didn’t even know it. but the house was still too cold and lifeless without you, your nonexistent presence like a shadow over his shoulders.

he sighed when he felt his phone vibrating, putting guinevere’s food on her little pot before reading it.

y/n: hi shuji

y/n: we need to talk

y/n: when you are free?

with a hammering heart and trembling fingers, shuji read your message over and over again. it could only mean two things: either you were going back to his arms, or you would ask for a divorce. he hoped it was the first conclusion, but he couldn’t help and be afraid — what if you found that being without him was better? what if you stopped loving him?

you: hi princess

you: im free tonight if you want

you: do you want to have dinner here?

you: we can order italian food from your favorite restaurant

before he could know your answer, hanma started to tidy up the house. the maids always did a wonderful job, but the atmosphere in it was too… strange. he opened the windows, the curtains, putting some music and lit some scented candles you left behind. guinevere looked at him curiously, following her tutor closely, trying to play with the ends of the curtains. shuji checked his phone again, smiling at your response.

y/n: of course! can i arrive in 30?

thirty minutes was what he needed to feel like himself again to meet you.

you: i'll send you a car in 30, then, princess

you: see you soon

—

you were nervous getting ready, but shuji's words from yesterday calmed you. he still loved you, and you hoped he would be thrilled with the news. you grew used to it, especially after your visit to the cemetery. you mother's words soothed you too, and you knew she was excited to be a grandmother.

finishing the last bits of your makeup, you heard your mother calling for you, saying the driver already arrived. you forgot how it was to have such luxuries, such as private drivers and maids, and felt quite overwhelmed with shuji's words. but you hoped he was just looking out for you, and it isn't a trap from kisaki. you trusted your husband, yes, but the fear was always lingering on you.

biding farewell to your mother, you went down the stairs, smiling at the familiar face of the driver. he was the one who drove you on the night chifuyu died, and you were happy he didn't lose his job because of you. the drive to your once penthouse was peaceful, with a little bit of traffic, but not something that would interfere too much. you wished you arrived there quickly, so you could end your suffering.

shuji was waiting for you at the entrance, and you couldn't help but see the parallel between that night and now — this time, shuji was seeing you arriving and not going away.

“hi.” he greeted, almost breathless, and you wished you had worn more fancy clothes. you weren't expecting to see him wearing a designed shirt and trousers — and so you opted for a cotton shirt and a cute skirt, not in the mood to use tight dresses. “you look amazing.”

you laughed at his words, cheeks blushing as if this was your first date, hugging shuji by his waist. the action took him by surprise, but you needed that — needed to feel his warmth and feel his skin, to make sure you aren't dreaming. “if i knew you would be still wearing your work clothes, i would've put more effort in my appearance.”

shuji felt confident enough, because of your actions, to kiss your forehead, his arms around you like you were a prized possession. “stop that, y/n.” he scolded you, leading you to a way you knew like the back of your heart. he was taking you home. “you look breathtaking wearing anything.” and he meant that. the same glow you had in the pet shop you had now, but something was different.

you squeezed the hand that was leading you to your once shared penthouse, and you hoped he couldn't hear your heart beating loudly. you decided to tell shuji about your pregnancy after dinner, because, if he didn't react well, at least you two shared one last fun dinner.

he opened the door to you, and you almost teared up at the sight of your home. everything was like you left, nothing was out of place — as if the penthouse was just waiting for your return. you noticed the table already made, and you smile fondly at shuji's attempt to do something you always did to him. “the table is magnificent.” you murmured, watching as his cheeks gained a reddish color.

shuji scratched his neck in embarrassment at your words, but started to smile seeing you interacting with guinevere. his two favorite girls.

“is she giving you too much trouble?” you asked with the kitten on your lap, pampering her little face with kisses as you used to do in the shop. she reminded you a lot of peke j, and you remembered fondly the day you arrived from school to your brother taking a bath with a cat and using all the hot water.

hanma shook his head. “no. she's an angel, actually, and i'm sure he's happy that her mom is home.” he noticed how your eyes widened at his words, and he cursed himself for being so forward. shuji would just drive you far away from him at the end of the night.

but you smiled, nuzzling your face on guinevere's black fur, and shuji saw the whole world beaming down at him. “yeah? you're happy mommy is home, baby girl?” you kissed her little one last time before she got too annoyed in your lap, blushing under your husband's gaze. “should we eat? the food will get cold.”

dinner went smoothly. you updated shuji in everything that happened in your life since your brother's funeral — how you were working with kazutora, how you found a passion for taking care of animals and in painting and baking, all the shows you watched with your mother that you thought he would like. and thus, he told you about how the gang was going. you were surprised to know that they — not just shuji — were now donating a part of their income to charity, and that hanma didn't kill a man since chifuyu died. it was as if nothing happened between you two, as if you two weren't away from each other for two months. you laughed and chatted as if it was a normal night from shuji coming back from work to the safety of your arms.

“so.” hanma started, curiosity eating him alive. “you wanted to talk?” it was the only thing in his mind the entire night. you two talked about a lot of things, but it seemed that you were hiding something. ever since he referred to you as guinevere’s mom you started to react differently when he touched some subjects.

you took a deep breath, intertwining your hands over your lap. “y-yes.” shuji didn’t like the way you stuttered, and you noticed the worry in his eyes. it’s now or never. “i'm pregnant.” you decided to be short about the announcement, like ripping quickly a bandage from a healed wound, so it could hurt, but it would pass. “and i… i will carry it.” you smiled at you, a hand protectively on your stomach, where your womb was. you wondered how love could be born so fast just from a few words from the doctor. “i know it's selfish of me to ask it because i was the one who decided i wanted to stay away from you, but i want to go through this with you.”

in a swift movement, shuji was kneeling in front of you, hands on your thighs. “are you saying…”

he couldn’t believe it. it was what shuji dreamed every time since you left him becoming reality right in front of his eyes, and he didn’t know how to react. he hoped you could sense the happiness he was feeling irradiating from him, because he thought he never felt such a thing before. and you smiled at him, and hanma could melt under it — you were a goddess offering forgiveness for him, and he would gladly accept it.

“if you want me back, i'm all yours again.” you whispered, hand guiding his sin one to rest on your belly. “i didn't stop being.”

he almost broke down on sobs by hearing such things leaving your mouth and from the feeling of where his child was growing. what did he do to receive such a blessing? “i love you. so, so much.” he whispered it like a prayer, words tasting like honey on his tongue. you would never be used to hearing him saying that. you've waited ten years for shuji to profess his love out loud for you — even though the first time wasn’t in ideal circumstances — and it was worth it. “can’t believe you’ll make me a dad.” shuji thought out loud while lifting your shirt to look at where his child was resting.

you giggled, both from his words and from the kisses he was pampering your belly with. “you are the one who made me a mom in the first place.” your fingers found themselves on his hair, stroking the double coloured locks.

“yeah, you’re a mommy now.” your giggles died at how husky his voice sounded, your grip on his hair tightening.

“shuji.” you whimpered, and your husband took this as his clue to get up and finally kiss you after two months. the feel of your lips on his, now, that you were his wife again, was better than he could ever imagine. your hands gripped his designed shirt while he lifted you up from the chair to kiss you properly.

“fuck, i missed you.” he whispered against your lips, a determined gaze on his golden eyes. you watched breathlessly as your husband took off his glasses aggressively, and you had time to wonder if he didn't break them before shuji's lips found yours again, his kisses desperately and full of longing. “i promise i'll kiss you now for all the kisses you denied me these two months.” he promised before claiming your lips once again, and you could only agree with his words by reciprocating his actions with the same intensity.

soon your legs were wrapped around shuji's middle, and your hands opened the buttons of his shirt while he walked you to your shared bedroom, his lips — and yours, too — red and swollen by the kisses. it was a sight you missed seeing — hanma’s golden eyes widened with lust and love directly to you.

your back hit the mattress with ease, and you helped your husband getting out both yours and his shirt, his punishment hand unclasping your bra. “holy shit.” he whispered, massaging the soft skin of your breasts with both hands. “they’re bigger than i remember.”

“it’s because—” your explanation was cut by the feeling of shuji’s tongue encircling one of your nipples, a gasp leaving your mouth at the contact. “i-i’m pregnant.” and they were sensitive too — you didn’t remember squirming so much in other times hanma did that before. it was good, but you were too impatient to enjoy it properly. “i need you, shuji, please.” you whispered, tugging at his hair to get his attention.

with a plop sound, he stopped his ministrations. “i can’t wait until they’re leaking milk.” his words made you blush, and shuji smiled at your blushing face. he could never grow tired of you and your reactions to his filthy words. “what do you choose today, princess? sin or punishment?”

both offers were tempting, and you couldn’t think straight with the trail of kisses shuji was leaving in your skin. he stopped with his hands on the waistline of your skirt, fingers ghosting the warm skin there. “i asked you a question, y/n.”

“p-punishment.” he drew out of you, and alongside your answer, both your skirt and panties were discarded on the floor.

shuji hummed happily, his fingers running through your folds. “this wet already, princess?” you nodded meekly, whimpering every time his thumb ghosted over your clit but not applying any pressure there. you moaned loudly when a finger from punishment entered your clenching hole, the thumb drawing faint circles over your throbbing bud. shuji’s finger didn’t stop, and he added one more, pumping in and out of you at a merciless pace, smiling growing bigger every time you whimpered at the loss of contact on your clit — he was bringing you to the edge and back, and you couldn’t do anything.

“it’s what you asked for, y/n.” you groaned in annoyance, tears in the corner of your eyes with the fourth ruined orgasm.

you whimpered again, feeling the coil in your stomach growing bigger and bigger, squirming under him. “but i want to cum, shuji. p-please.” you begged, blinking your pretty eyes at him, and he cooed in faux sympathy. “n-no one can make me cum like y-you, please.” you tried again, breathing starting to speed up and hand gripping his arms.

“you want to cum, princess?” you nodded eagerly, a soft smile on your face, which soon became a frown at the loss of his fingers inside. shuji shoved them in your mouth before you could protest, and you licked them obediently, tears now falling from your eyes. “then you’ll cum around my cock, like you always did.” he promised, taking off his trousers and boxers, aligning the tip of it with your entrance.

you were expecting a little tease before shuji’s cock entered your gummy walls, like he always did, but he probably was desperate enough to feel you clenching against him, entering without a warming. he hissed at the sensation of your walls sucking him, and you lowered his head so you could kiss his lips. “fuck, y/n.” he murmured against your lips, not moving yet, adoration shining in his eyes. “you don’t know much i missed it, m-missed us.”

“me too, l-love.” you whimpered, hiding your face in the crook of his neck.

just like when he was using his fingers, shuji’s pace was merciless, but you couldn’t ask for more. both of you were desperate for each other, breathing heavily and moaning each other’s name shamelessly. you almost screamed when your husband’s thumb found your clit again, and your eyes begged for him to let you cum this time.

noticing how your walls were clenching even more around his length, shuji stroked your cheek. “cum for me, princess.”

you came with a cry of his name, and shuji followed you — the way you clenched him was too much to handle. he slid out of you, reaching for a cigarette in the night stand. you scooted closer to his body, mind still a bit foggy, resting your head on his shoulder. “you were so good to me.” shuji pressed a kiss to your forehead before mentioning you to light the cigarette, a peaceful smile on his face. “when i finish this, i’ll run a bath for you, alright?”

you just nodded, too tired to think about something to say, nuzzling back in his body.

“i can’t wait to know the gender of our baby.” you commented after your mind came back to its normal state, shuji hands rubbing circles on her back, you smiled down at the small bump on your belly, imagining what life would be with a little you or a little shuji running down the halls. but you were afraid, too, especially of kisaki’s reaction. he said for you to behave, and you thought you were, but you weren't sure if he would be happy to know you and shuji reconciled.

“neither do i. i hope it’s a girl.” your husband smiled down at you, but it turned on a frown after seeing the worry expression on your face. shuji knew what you were thinking. “y/n, princess, look at me.” you did what you were told, watching as shuji disposed of the cigarette, his attention solely on you. “i will never let something happen to our little family. tetta can cry and throw tantrums as much as he likes, but you are the love of my life and i’ll never do anything to hurt you again, even if it costs my position in toman.” he sealed his promise with a quick kiss, and you sighed happily, your hands resting on your belly.

“but now, let’s take a bath. we have two months worth of sex to replenish.”

you giggled at his words, letting be carried by your husband to the bathroom.

everything would be fine, as long as you had each other.

—

“papa, papa!” you heard a childish voice murmuring, excitement on their voice. “when i’ll be able to wake up mama?” you heard shuji’s laughing quietly and telling the child to shush.

mama? was this child talking about you? it didn’t make sense. yesterday you had dinner with your husband to tell him you were pregnant and… wait. that didn’t make sense, at all. you already had a child, didn't you? hanma shinobu, with black hair just as her father and blue-green eyes she inherited from her uncle. but you were pregnant again, you were sure of that. the soreness in your back told you that.

“it’s almost time, shinobu.” he said, and it took everything in you to not open your eyes. everything was confusing — because you were sure yesterday you and shuji reconciled and you told him you were pregnant — but maybe you just had a really vivid dream of something that happened in the past. you heard the girl laugh, and you bit your lip to not let your giggles out.

“mama!” she exclaimed climbing into your lap, and you opened your eyes, being graced with your daughter’s beautiful eyes and her… black and blonde hair? “did you like it, mama? i made papa dye my hair so i can match him, and match uncle chifuyu when he was younger!” she told you excitedly, bouncing up and down on your lap.

you shot your husband a dirt look. what was he thinking when dyeing a four-year-old’s hair? but you smiled at shinobu, the nostalgia of seeing the same glist of mischief your brother once had in your daughter’s eyes almost making you tear up. “you look beautiful, baby. i'm sure uncle is happy to know you love him enough to want to match with him.” she smiled at your words, and you held her closely to your chest, kissing her hair.

“good morning, princess.” shuji said sheepishly, sitting next to you in bed, one arm encircling your shoulders.

you smiled, feeling his lips pressing against your forehead, and shinobu hugged you tighter, seeing her father displaying affection towards her mother. you giggled at your little girl, giving her a kiss on her forehead. but you weren’t exactly happy — you had a beautiful family and a beautiful house, but you were melancholic. especially when shinobu mentioned her uncle. but you couldn’t remember why.

“shin, my baby.” shuji started, noticing how down you looked. “why don’t you go play with guinevere a little? papa needs to talk to mama.” the little girl whined, but did that her father said, not before receiving kisses on her cheeks from the both of you. your hand rested on your belly, and you sighed.

your husband hugged you once more, his sin hand resting in your growing belly. wasn’t it smaller?

“mikey went to the philippines.”

oh, yes. mikey killed chifuyu and everyone who was in toman. how did you forget about that? that’s why you were so melancholic. your brother’s death was still fresh in your mind, but you were happy he lived enough to meet his niece. but not his nephew, and you suffered for your little boy growing in your womb.

shuji caressed your belly. “i know you’re worried that he’ll come for you, but i’ll kill him before he lays his hands on you, princess.” your heart fluttered inside your chest at your husband’s words, and you nuzzled on his side. you were so lucky to have someone like shuji with you — even though your relationship started rocky, with him tying up your brother on christmas day before meeting you at a church’s stair, you couldn’t see yourself without him now.

“like izana will let you, shuji.” you teased him, and he chuckled.

“hey, i’m your big and strong husband, okay? being married to the reaper has its perks.” he tried to resonate, but shuji knew izana was stronger than him. but he promised him that mikey would never lay a hand on your, and he knew tetta would make sure izana would fulfill his part on the deal — shinobu was his goddaughter, and if anything happened to her, hanma was sure kisaki wouldn’t hesitate to kill izana, mikey and kakucho.

you squinted your eyes. “speaking of being married to the reaper.” you started, and shuji gulped. he knew what would come next. “why the hell did you dye shin’s hair? she’s four!” you knew shuji was wrapped around shinobu’s fingers — and you were too, because she was too adorable to receive a no — dyeing her locks would make your mom go crazy.

“she wanted to look like her uncle.” shuji explained, and your heart clenched inside your ribcage. she was spoiled by all her family and your husband’s friends, but chifuyu always had a special place in her heart. “and i couldn’t say no, not after… you know. but i managed to convince her to make it like mine, because she wanted her hair all blonde.” you and shuji shared sad smiles, and you hugged him tighter, inhaling his scent. “but let’s get breakfast, shall we?” your husband helped you out of the bed, and you smiled at how big you bump was.

the due date would be in two months, and you already knew what name your little boy have — chifuyu, just like his uncle.

if it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be here now, eating breakfast with your husband, while your little girl played with the family’s cat.

you couldn’t be more grateful to your brother.

lil note: if you didn't understand the ending, y/n and hanma are now in the manila timeline due to takemichi's time leap!!

[biisexualemma]

stop. peter parker

word count: 1.3k

warnings: blood, hurt, graphic, needles?

requested: no

plot: you have no control over your actions or your powers and end up hurting peter

a/n: i have so many stories like this just stored away that i have written over the years and not posted. some of them are trash but i found this yesterday and i loved it too much not to share! hope you like it! there will be a part 2 before you ask and yes it is already written so you don't have to wait years to find out what happens!

part 2 / masterlist

"please," your eyes followed the sound of his voice. his mask torn from his head, blood soaking the suit he wore. but still, he watched you, hopelessly, his brown eyes stung with fear. "don't— don't hurt her," he was pleading, desperately. 

you could feel the man's arm suffocating your chest, keeping you still. you also felt the cold pinch of a needle he was holding to your neck, not quite piercing the skin. your hands were scraping and pulling at his arm, trying despairingly to make him let go.

peter was under the weight of a few very large men, all struggling to keep him down so he was forced to watch. you whimpered at the sight of his helpless cries for the man to let you go.

the needle poked through the skin of your neck, your eyes wide and full of fear. "no— no!" peter was screaming for you, tears now welling up in your eyes and falling fast. he struggled harder against the men holding him down, thrashing his injured body around in a desperate attempt to break free. "get—get your hands off her— i swear to god i'll kill you—" he managed to fight out of the grip of one of the men, his hand now loose and shooting his webs around he managed to release himself.

it was too late, the needle pinched uncomfortably in your throat, your mouth falling open as a different kind of pain surged through your body.

peter slung a web at the guys hand, yanking him so hard, he dropped the needle, his face slamming onto the floor. he edged closer to you, ignoring the howl of pain from the man on the floor who held onto his bloody nose.

"y/n— it's ok— mr stark will make you better— i promise. i promise, alright? please, please just be ok—"

your mind fell blank, blinking a few times as the boy with chocolate brown eyes stared at you distraught. your vacant expression set off alarm bells in peters mind. he carefully lifted his hands and placed them on your shoulders. at the first contact, you slapped his hands away, lifting your foot and kicking him hard in the torso. winded, peter hurled over, groaning with a dull pain. you took this opportunity, grabbing his hunched shoulders and lifted your knee to slam it into his nose.

the bloodied boy fell backwards, stumbling and falling to the ground. his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes full of tears, he didn't understand what was happening. the serum must be altering your brain, he couldn't think why else you would turn on him.

the man clutching his nose, slowly regained his composure, clambering back onto his feet. he let out a sickening laugh, blood gushing from his nose and down his face. he took a step closer to you, leaning close into your ear. peter scrambled to shoot his webs once more, finding he was out of web fluid. he let out a cry of frustration.

"kill him," peter heard him loud and clear. "kill the boy.”

peters frown fell from his face, a look of horror replaced it when you nodded obediently, you slowly edged closer to where he was shuffling away on the floor.

in a last attempt to get help faster, he moved to his comms. "mr stark— they injected a serum into her— she's gonna kill me and she's gonna regret it and i can't let her live with that so if you'd kindly— hurry the hell up, that would be great."

there was a pause for a moment before tony responded. "almost there kid, hold her off till we get there."

you continued to walk closer to him, peter shuffling backwards on his hands trying to get further away from you.

"you know i can't do that— i won't hurt her, she doesn't know what she's doing—"

"peter she has no idea who you are, you have to fight back or she will kill you before we get there," nat's voice was desperate on the other end, images flashing in her mind of just how bad this situation was about to become. she couldn't picture you blank, emotionless, void of anything. you were the most feeling, loving person she knew. if you hurt peter, she knew you wouldn't be able to live with yourself or your powers again.

peter shook his head, he couldn't do it. he'd rather take a beating than harm you.

you held out your hand, green sparks flying from your fingertips towards peter. using your powers, you lifted peter from where he was balled up on the floor, watching him squirm trying to resist you. you tilted your head slightly, holding him just off the ground, his feet stretching to try and grip onto the floor.

you felt nothing, you watched him squirm like the spider he was, neither enjoying or hating what you were doing him.

"y/n," his voice strained, causing you to frown. at the sound of your name, you swished your hands to your right, his body following your movements and slamming into a nearby wall. he let out a pained groan, his body slipping down the wall. "s—stop—" he wheezed, holding a hand to his chest where he now felt sharp pains. you were undoubtedly much stronger than him, even if he wanted to fight back, he wouldn't last long. "you don't know what you're doing— please."

anger pulsed through your veins as he plead with you. frustrated you couldn't understand what he meant, you clutched your hand into a fist mid air, peter letting out a gasp for air, feeling his airways constrict. you pulled him up from the ground once more without having to lay a finger on him, holding him out in front of you, choking the life out of him.

peter's eyes were sad and desperate. "you love me— i— i know you do— don't— just— you know me," he choked, his voice coming out hoarse. "peter parker— we're best— best friends and you love me— i love you," your face contorted with fear and confusion listening to him. you shook your head, quickly this shifted back to anger.

you slammed him down onto the floor, a loud crack coming from his ankle as he fell hard against the concrete. you towered over him, hands held out to finish him off when he lifted his hands up in defence.  you faltered, watching him quiver, his hands shaking violently.

"y/n y/l/n— that's you— please remember— just listen— please— i won't hurt you—"

"fight back!" the man shouted at peter, watching frustratedly as peter cowered on the floor below you.

"no!" peter's voice cracked, you knitted your brows. you knelt down, crushing his chest with your knee. your face now hovering over his, eyes darting between his. "i don't want to hurt you," he murmured quietly under the pressure you were applying to his chest. peter could see his vision spotting from what he suspected was a concussion and a lack of oxygen. still he did nothing to stop you.

"stop," you gritted your teeth but made no further move to hurt him. he moved his arm up, trying to touch your face. your hand snapped up, grabbing his wrist to halt him. he watched your eyes move from where your fingertips pressed against his suit, quickly back to his face. "stop," you said weaker.

you didn't fight him when he moved his hand away from yours and up to your face. his clothed fingers touched your cheek before running down your neck and into your hair. you were visibly distressed, trying to unravel your own mind. your eyelashes fluttered, suddenly heavy and wet with tears when you felt him gently squeeze the back of your neck, your breath caught in your throat.

you released some of the pressure from his chest, a sudden wave of reality rushed over you as you stared down at peter, his hand in your hair and his eyes full of tears. a gasp left your lips but was quickly knocked out of you because before you could fully understand the situation, you felt a searing pain and everything went black.