#THIS COMBINED WITH MIDDLE CHILDREN IS BREAKING ME APART

[emergingghost]

I WATCHED YOU FALL FROM GRACE YOU WERE GRACEFUL. AFTER ALL ITS A SMALL WORLD. YOU MAY NOT BE AN ANGEL BUT YOU ARE MY GIRL. YOU ARE MY PACK A DAY YOU ARE MY FAVOURITE PLACE YOU WERE MY BEST FRIEND BEFORE YOU WERE MY BEST GUESS AT THE FUTURE

[literaila]

Besides stealing a car (😭) are there any other shenanigans reader and satoru get involved with at tech?

mostly just the typical ruining of all of the vibes with their constant bantering. like… if suguru and satoru are a bad (chaotic) combination—satoru and you???

it doesn’t matter where either of you are. satoru will inevitably find a way to get you involved, and you will put a hex on him for it.

he finds a flower (weed) in the courtyard? it’s basically a bouquet he’s going to shove in your face during the middle of sparing. you intentionally choose the opposite end of the couch in haibara’s room? satoru is throwing a temper tantrum and you’re both being kicked out.

you’ll stand outside the door, arms already crossed.

defensiveness is your most natural state. around satoru, at least. “you’re going to get us alienated from all of our friends.”

“human words, please.”

you scoff, kicking his leg, and then moving a foot away when he stands next to you. “i can’t believe you got me kicked out of another movie night.”

“you’re the one who was talking.”

“because you kept poking me in the side with your foot!”

“sorry some of us aren’t two inches tall.”

“you’re a giant. you need to learn to respect other people’s space, gojo. isn’t that like your whole thing?”

satoru only moves closer again, infinity be damned.

your first interaction was filled with the eons of space between the two of you, the invisible barrier that separated satoru from everyone else.

but after that? it was only atoms apart.

satoru seems inclined to break psychics, as long as he can irritate you by standing so close.

how do you know this? because he’s still wearing that devilish smile that brings you incapable of movement.

“i like being close to you,” he’ll whisper, and what’s the point of arguing any more?

so you stand there right next to him. movie night sucks anyway.

and eventually it gets to the point where all of their friends are constantly ignoring every interaction you have.

except for poor nanami, who doesn’t understand why he has to deal with idiots all of the time. like, seriously. what did he do to deserve it?

as the (self proclaimed) mature one, nanami is in constant dismay over the lack of emotional intelligence and communication between the two of you.

(even at twenty. when you and him reconnect after his defection, nanami is fully expecting to have missed the wedding. he’s going to pay the price for running away, after all.

what he’s not expecting is truckloads of denial and the fact that the two of you are living together, raising children together, and still feigning friendship.

as if the two of you know the first thing about being a worthwhile friend.

it’s a good thing shoko can hold her liquor—because nanami kento has worked too goddamn hard to deal with it alone).

there’s sneaking out late at night, being the errand runners for everyone else, staying in each others rooms even when you’re not allowed.

yaga has aged several years during the first six months that you’re at jujutsu high. and he thought satoru alone was bad enough.

but by far the most annoying thing that occurs when you’re together is satoru’s version of a game.

he learned early on just how jumpy you were. satoru accidentally leans in a little bit too close? you’re flinching until you’re an arms length away. suguru simply walks into a room—with his quiet, catlike movements—you’re gasping when you hear this voice.

but the most amusing part to gojo, of course, is what happens that only he can see.

everyone else assumes that you’re simply startled. and you are, but to a certain degree no one would guess unless they were standing too close.

your cursed technique is inherently defensive, and after a childhood of cowering away from mere specks of dust, it’s not your fault that you instinctively protect yourself from disguised threats.

and it’s not your fault that when someone accidentally scares you, there’s an immediate wall between you and the rest of the world.

a wall that no one, except for one person, can see.

until you meet satoru that is.

and once he realizes what it is, what the cause is—oh boy, he’s running with it.

you’re walking next to shoko? satoru is tiptoeing to your side, and he only whispers a soft “boo,” in your ear.

but it’s enough that when you take a step forward, shoko is running into something that wasn’t there a moment ago.

she groans, and you look around—confused and concerned—and satoru runs away before either of you can manage to catch him.

it’s definitely funnier when he does it and nanami is standing too close to you, though.

it’s a mere game, a little entertainment for the honored one.

and then it turns into something more.

satoru is wrapping an arm around your waist in public—to get a cute little jump out of you, sure—but also so that no one can walk too close to you. no one but him, because infinity cancels out your technique, and satoru never lets you get far.

you’re sitting next to him during a movie night you haven’t been exiled from, and when the dumb horror movie someone (haibara) put on manages to scare you, satoru is blinking at the almost translucent guard your mind puts up.

you can’t relax after that, but he sure as hell can. satoru wraps an arm around you, pulling you even closer—and you can’t even argue (because you’re not standing outside with him again).

and maybe it takes a minute, but your technique is relinquished within eighty seconds of him moving over.

satoru basks in it.

he’s always loved being special—but he loves it even more when it’s applied to you. there’s a exponential growth to the pride he takes in soothing you.

but that’s not important. it means nothing, really.

and don’t worry, because it doesn’t end when both you and satoru have graduated.

sure, nanami and shoko and suguru aren’t there to witness (groan) at your bantering, your scheming, your constant running around each other—a stupid little game of cat and mouse.

but they’ve got some welcome replacements.

after a month megumi would rather die than listen to gojo try and be nice to you while you scowl at him. after a year, megumi is trying to get in the middle of it—mostly because he likes how freaky gojo looks when he’s annoyed.

tsumiki thinks it’s cute, though. for the first two years, that is.

[vacantgodling]

1 & 5 for the character asks - for whoever you'd like! @viscerawrites

thanks for asking! gonna do a curveball and talk about hwsts because i haven't in a bit!

1. What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?

khizzy honestly came about when i was thinking about how much beef i have with the attempts and modernizing the myth of hades and persephone. that train of thought then led to me thinking "what if persephone (who becomes hades's wife) and kore (the girl who was kidnapped) were two different people." so then the placeholder characters for khizzy and his sister pinyiko were created--but then i realized i wanted to talk about the struggles of older siblinghood and transgenderisms (and i wanted a masc mc) so then khizzy became trans and an older sibling to who would eventually become pinyiko and then things started snowballing from there.

5. How did you choose their name and why? Was it simply based on vibes or is there any specific meaning behind the name? Are the reasons behind their name different in- and out of universe?

huehuheuehue the entire naming system is completely created by me using the conlang i made for this wip dzonime'si. which is a combination of mongolian and japanese, idk if i ever said that before lol.

but khizzy's full name is kori-tsokhizhemasonen (which is pronounced, roughly without me recording myself saying it: CORE (rolled r)+EE+TSOH (ts is pronounced like in japanese TSunami)+KEY+ZEH+MAH+SOH+NEN) -- which literally translates to "she who smites the sun"; in wip all names are decided by parents either correlating their children's name with a hope or trait they want their child to be, or by a defining event in their lifetime. in khizzy's case its the latter: he was born during an eclipse in the middle of the dying season (winter) and that's considered a bad omen. so even though the name sounds cool its basically the equivalent of naming your kid "devil" OSJCL. that's the tsokhizhemasonen part. to break down each part individually:

TSOKHIZHE = smite

MA = particule word that basically means to enact your will upon something

SONEN = sun

kori is the interesting part because it is apart of one of the 4 genders in their society. higher feminine, higher masculine (kori and dori respectively that will appear at the beginning of names to denote Higher status) then lower feminine and lower masculine (these are denoted by the suffix -ko and -do respectively at the end of names. these can also be used to make nicknames: (ie) when i talked about khizzy's sister, pinyiko earlier, the reason -ko is at the end of her name is to denote that she's considered feminine. it should be noted that only higher genders should nickname one another in this manner unless given explicit permission to a lower gender to call them in that familiar manner. a good example, is khizzy's only friend at the beginning of the story, yanyado, calls khizzy 'sonenko' as an affectionate nickname.

the reason for this entire gender and naming system however was so that i could insert my hashtag transgender agenda into the wip. how? well simple: gender in hwsts doesn't work off of biology. it's based on what time of year you were born + what class you were born into.

march through august = masculine (the growing season)

september through febraury = feminine (the dying season)

and it literally doesn't matter ur genital situation. to extrapolate: khizzy and pinyiko's father, the chief of the clan, in our world would be considered a trans man. he has he parts to give birth to a baby and gave birth to both of them. However, because he was born during the growing season and in the chief class, he's considered dori or higher masculine. subsequently, when he had pinyiko and khizzy, both of them were born during the dying season and are considered higher feminine.

and i basically did all this to subvert expectations about gender. when describing khizzy and my goal as i further flesh out this wip, is to give no physical indication of what biological "gender" khizzy is. and honestly, i have no clue what's in his pants either. because his biology isn't important and this has everything to do with how he doesn't feel feminine. it also kind of mimics my own journey with transgenderisms but whatever lol.

the other thing as well, is gender is extremely rigid in khizzy's neck of the woods and to deny or change your gender is to make you a heretic worthy of banishment. because we need suspense and drama. gender fuckery overall is associated with being able to use magic as well and that's a whole thing :)

so i'll cap my rambling there before i get even further into the implications of this and everything but the very tldr of this is ren isn't normal about names and so i made a whole wip where i could be abnormal about names :)))

[xdeepinyoux]

US ELECTION Breakdown and the American Neo Nazi flood.

As of 5:34 this morning on November 6th, the 2024 candidate for the next president was announced. While many are celebrating, there are many like myself who are terrified. I am fortunate enough to live in a Blue state (Democrat) but many are not. There will be many people who claim it’s because of the economy that they voted for Trump, unfortunately this is not true. It saddens me to say that as Americans, understanding different aspects of the candidates main running points can be misunderstood and or entirely wrong. Let’s correct and breakdown these misconceptions.

Understanding Trumps Economic Plan:

Trumps plan will endanger, if not entirely bankrupt the American economy. His plan is to raise the taxes of lower class (low income) and middle class taxes while giving a massive tax breaks to those in the 2-1% (those who make a minimum of $900,000 annually).

Nobel prize winners, people who are awarded the Nobel prize for their incredible contributions to humanity:

More than half of the living economist Nobel prize winners (all with different backgrounds and political beliefs) voiced support for Kamala’s plan and labeled it as superior to Trumps. Trump added over 8 trillion dollars worth of debt to the US during his first term in office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/science/kamala-harris-nobel-winners.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/science/kamala-harris-nobel-winners.html

Tariff’s:

Definition- a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country to influence it, raise revenues, or protect competitive advantages

Trump plans to impose Tariff’s which would be paid for by the American people, not the country whose goods are being imported. Adding this tax on imported goods will raise our country’s inflation higher. The purpose of this is to create market distortions that can actually harm domestic consumers over time.

The American Economy is Built on Immigrants:

Immigration, specifically undocumented immigrants, are constant talking points in which Trump uses to manipulate and induce fear into MAGA and other voters. By using derogatory language and racial stereotypes, he has created a harmful, dangerous and false narrative of undocumented people. Where Trump claims they are “taking American jobs”, the truth behind the matter is that undocumented migrants are working jobs that Americans do not want and will not work for the pay that is given. This was reconfirmed when Florida Govern, Ron Desantis, exiled and deported thousands of undocumented immigrants in Florida which left American citizens to complain and refuse to work those labor intensive jobs even after food shortages occurred in 2023.

Mass Deportation and what it means for the American Economy:

Mass deportation and demonization of immigrant people will lead to the downfall of the American Economy. Adding to his economic plan, the topic of deporting over a million migrants back to there birth countries would not only cost hundreds of billions of dollars but also cause labor and food shortages that have only been seen in the years 1929 – 1939 (The Great Depression).

What does this mean overall for the American People?

With a deadly combination of mass deportation, higher taxes and tariff’s the American economy will crash. Along with targeting minority groups, inflation will also bring us back to the philosophical question; would you steal bread to feed your family? The question at hand seems simple, yet statistics show the correlation between high crime rates and poverty levels time and time again. As American citizens we will see the rise of Trumps violence for a second term in office. Violent crimes against women and children, hate crimes and other violence against minorities and those who are apart of the LGBT+ community.

Trump has also spoken openly about his desire to rid Americans of their right to choose ranging from topics of abortion to voting. He has recently stated that when he wins American citizens won’t have to vote again after four years. While some may interpret this as it being his second term and therefore no longer being eligible to run again, it may have a much darker meaning. Trump has shown in the past that he has no issues with disregarding the American constitution and overturning democracy. If he were to succeed in overturning future election and voting laws then he would become Americas first Dictator. Furthermore, Trump is a convicted felon with 34 counts including but not limited to: Rape, selling national security secrets to enemy nations, staging a coup to overturn the 2020 election, election interference and voter fraud. Though we have a glimpse of what the next four years will look like it is unsure as Trump is dangerous and unpredictable. Voting for Trump in 2024 is Voting against America.

Final Note:

To anyone living in a red state where you are not safe please see the resources below:

LGBTQ+ INCLUSIVE CRISIS LINES:

Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386

or text START to 678-678 or online chat

Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860

Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988

[zoniteillusion-pyritedreams]

So, I basically asked Aphrodite & Nyx, “Hey, is it cool if I just speak my desires into the universe, trust you two badasses to handle it, and then just relax?” And they were like, “Hmm… yes, but also no.”

They love that I know my worth and I’m not out here begging or micromanaging the universe. Very main character energy, boss bitch vibes. That part? Approved. They’re like, “Yes, love, speak it, own it, and let it come to you divine delegation is sexy.”

BUT. They also said I need to stop spiraling or second-guessing the moment things go quiet. Like, just because it's not happening RIGHT NOW doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Breathe. Stop overthinking and stalking the manifestation like it's your ex's socials. That’s giving desperate, not divine.

Also, they’re side-eyeing me for sitting in limbo when I could be aligning better. They’re like, “Baby, you can’t just manifest and then emotionally check out or avoid the work. You’re magic, but you’re also human. Balance it. Do your part and then let us work.”

Basically: they love the vibe, the confidence, and the trust—but if I want to manifest like a goddess, I better act like one. That means being clear, being calm, letting go of control WITHOUT falling into chaos, and knowing that even if it all falls apart first which could happen, it's making room for something bigger & better.

They’re not saying “stop,” they’re saying “refine.” Manifest like the ethereal little powerhouse I am relaxed and calm, not like a stressed-out squirrel with a Pinterest board & to much caffeine.

So like this is the other way I could possibly end up doing readings but I feel like it would be very short I'd have no excuse to sit there and save pictures to put on the post and I feel like a lot of people would not understand exactly what cards I ended up pulling to get to this answer.

( I also wonder if it's just because of the way that I word things? But I feel like that also makes sense like fun fact random wardrobe I learned English from watching 2000s movies literally. Like late 90s early 2000 movies I was obsessed with movies like clueless, the Scooby-Doo live action movies Etc that's where I started picking up and learning English my mom doesn't speak English she speaks Spanish and fun fact Thai fluently because while she is fully afro-colombian she was actually raised in Thailand for a good 10 years of her life as a child. My dad does speak English and Mandarin but he was more inclined to make sure that his children spoke Mandarin fluently rather than making sure that we spoke English fluently. On top of that as I stated before I grew up in Asia as a child back and forth between my parents as they had joint custody so I spent like several years in Korea with my mom and my stepdad and several years in both China and Japan with my dad and my stepmom so I primarily spoke Asian languages. My English was quite literally learned from '90s and 2000s movies alongside Middle School I started going to an International School. But by then I have basically already picked up a weird combination of the New York and Valley Girl accent or so I've been told by other native English speakers. Also the way that I speak can sound slightly weird and slightly dated because I don't keep up with current flying I don't see a reason to unless I think the word sounds really cool then I'll keep up with it but outside of that I'm not using it. So maybe that's why I sound like a robot to tell me y'all and then also the fact that I use terms like y'all but that's just because I have family members that live in the south and again it's one of those words where it's like I like the way it sounds. I don't know I'm trying to figure this shit out so let me know which way do you guys like three days when I'm breaking it down or when it's like this?)

Also isn't it cute how Leehan is always eating fruit after they do like sand meats and stuff like someone pointed this out on Twitter and then have this picture with it and I was like oh my God that's actually kind of adorable. Like absolute adorable nerdy baby boy can sit there and talk about fishes for hours no way more about aquatic life than you would assume a 21 year old would and also has that habit of replenishing after schedule with eating fruits it's kind of adorable. How can a human be this cute and real?

[little-bunny-in-space]

I think it's also important in the midst of all this to know that most the supporters of these monstrous people... are just scared and desperate. The thought that "humanizing them makes you just as bad" shows so little understanding of humanity and of history as well.

The ones who supported Hitler for example- Which many did not actually "support" him, his ideals or what he was doing- were:

Just as terrified as their "enemies."

Full of state produced propaganda, so much so that they don't know the truth- the truth that has been fed to them is what they believe.

A combination of both.

I can already tell you as a queer person (and a Christian) that lives in a red state amongst 100% conservative views around me- the very ones who hate gay and trans people- have their algorithms so fucked up that it overemphasizes what "the other side" believes in. Based off of what the social media algorithms pick up on their phones, by their location, by their age, and a few follows- our devices are 100% propaganda machines. Just as the Nazi party took over and started putting up posters and using sophisticated adverts and subliminal messaging showing their people that their "enemies" were horrible, terrible and out to get them, that their party wanted to help them and their families. They attacked weak spots that appeal to everyday people, like their work, their families and the livelihoods of their children. Then, for the ones who did not blindly follow- they would be not only ostracized but murdered and tortured, as well as their families and children.

...Sound familiar?

Although those things are not the truth- their "enemies" were not enemies at all for example- these people are being fed the same thing. Over half of my conservative fathers reels are Andrew Tate, those falling gay and trans people pedos, and blowing up the "great" things our current administration and politics are doing. As a queer person I know that a trans woman is not trying to diddle kids by getting HRT. Not one bit of it is true. But they don't care. They never will.

This is the exact same for us here in red states. Unfortunately, the older generations (looking at mainly Baby Boomers, Gen X, and some Millennials) did not take their history lessons seriously. If they were born American, most are middle class and never had to face the realities of brainwashing propaganda, war, or torture of their people. That is specifically why these people are the very worst ones that blindly believe the lies we are being fed on a daily basis. I can 100% tell you that these kinds of people are perfectly comfy in their homes and apartments scrolling their phones- kids are in college, they have food on the table, they aren't being genocided. Why would they look for the truth, when they are the ones that are comfortable? They aren't in pain. Why would they change?

Their social media is the very same propaganda machines that were used by the Nazi party, except worse. It's constant instant gratification. And if one of them does break free- and notices something isn't right- they are ostracized, and for queer people like me, hate crimed, sometimes worse.

For people like me- it's forced compliance. It's so easy to say "if you have any empathy for these people ur literally compliant in what they’re doing" when you aren't one of these people backed into a corner. When you aren't in danger of being hate crimed it is so easy to say to "not comply."

The truth is: These people in the red states don't necessarily believe these things or support these people that would take advantage of us in a minute. If we have a zero-tolerance policy, we are homeless, we are raped, we are dead. If you don't atleast "pretend" to go with the crowd you are done for. And for most of us that are yknow, POOR, just moving away is not an option.

We are in need of a revolution. To go against social media and corporations that control us and go back to basics. Destroy every algorithm, every AI. Realize that every single person around us are deserving of rights. No matter their actions or place in life. Not sure what that revolution would look like- but looking and realizing that we are literally living in a world where our devices make us constantly tracked, listened to, watched by the very powers oppressing us is a start. We have seen in the past few months how easily the owners of social media are swayed by the almighty dollar and line up right behind those who are creating the propaganda themselves.

But- at the end of the day, even the evilest person was once a child. Some starving for love and attention. A safe place to not be hurt. Some are compliant in the evils only for their own safety. Not one person on this earth deserves to be judged at all by another. Justice must be served for the evils they have done- I'm not excusing that. And abuse does not at all justify any sort of evil. But the very thought that a person's single action or belief reflects on the rest of their community and people like them is the exact same thought process that leads to racism and genocide.

I thought it was fairly normal to feel empathy for bad people.

I thought it was common, even.

But after my Elon/Grimes post... now I'm wondering if I was mistaken about that.

I wrote a post about Trump being traumatized after his assassination attempt and a post about his poor adaptation to aging. I expressed sympathy for him in both cases. But I still maintain my white hot hatred of him and wish for him to face consequences.

Elon was abused by his father. Some of the stories are incredibly tragic. Hearing those stories triggers an involuntary response in my emotional systems that I can't stop no matter how much I despise present-day Elon. I also wonder if that abuse never occurred maybe we wouldn't be dealing with this current clusterfuck.

I have never held so much anger towards a single person as I do my brother. But I also see him as a victim of abuse. I know he was once a really good person and he was slowly corrupted. I feel sorry for him. I mourn the amazing person he used to be. And I still love him.

But that doesn't make me any less angry.

[bracketsoffear]

Some very Desolation-y Tyler Durden quotes:

"Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart"

“I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. and we're very very pissed off.”

"Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

“This was the goal of Project Mayhem, Tyler said, the complete and right-away destruction of civilization.”

"The first soap was made from heroes' ashes, like the first monkey shot into space. Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space."

[while the narrator is on the phone with the police] "Tell him. Tell him, The liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perceptions."

"It's getting exciting now, two and one-half. Think of everything we've accomplished, man. Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history. One step closer to economic equilibrium."

And here are exchanges between him and the Narrator, and some of the Narrator's thoughts:

[while burning the Narrator's hand with lye]

Tyler Durden: "Shut up! Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?"

Narrator: "No, no, I... don't..."

Tyler Durden: "Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen."

Narrator: "It isn't?"

Tyler Durden: "We don't need him!"

Narrator: [Talking slowly] "And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you."

Narrator: [Voice-over] "Tyler's words coming out of my mouth."

Tyler Durden: "Where'd you go, psycho boy?"

Narrator: "I felt like destroying something beautiful."

Tyler Durden: "Did you know that if you mix equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate you can make napalm?"

Narrator: "No, I did not know that; is that true?"

Tyler Durden: "That's right... One could make all kinds of explosives, using simple household items."

Narrator: "Really...?"

Tyler Durden: "If one were so inclined."

Tyler Durden: "Now, ancient people found their clothes got cleaner if they washed them at a certain spot in the river. You know why?"

Narrator: "No."

Tyler Durden: "Human sacrifices were once made on the hills above this river. Bodies burnt, water speeded through the wood ashes to create lye."

[holds up a bottle]

Tyler Durden: "This is lye - the crucial ingredient. The lye combined with the melted fat of the bodies, till a thick white soapy discharge crept into the river. May I see your hand, please?"

[Tyler licks his lips until they're gleaming wet - he takes the Narrator's hand and kisses the back of it]

Narrator: "What is this?"

Tyler Durden: "This..."

[pours the lye on the Narrator's hand]

Tyler Durden: "... is chemical burn."

A lot of these quotes are what Tyler use to break then motivate the Fight Club (including the Narrator). This (using emotions against them and to align with their values) is a common tactic in cults to make followers more suggestible, and the Desolation has a cult of its own, making a sort of parallel. His worldview is based on seeing the utter destruction of the modern world and its values for things he feel are right. He believes everyone has to suffer greatly in a way to truly be human. The entire movie (and book) happens because the guy is pissed as all hell, and he wants other to be just as much pissed as he is.

Vote for Tyler and help him move to semis

.

[fullfiresiren]

beauty of the dawn

jujutsu kaisen

fushiguro toji x reader

The notion of a loving family was something foreign to Fushiguro Toji. Family, to him, was a bitter word -- full of hate and abhorrence. Abandonment and fear were a commonality in his own childhood. But in you, he finds a warmth he didn’t think he deserved – a home he craved, a love that makes him feel safe; full of gentle touches and soft kisses. But he’s scared. He's broken, and angry, and he knows the threat of his family is always lurking close, snapping at his heels, ready to devour. You bring the notion of family to his doorstep, and he spooks. He panics. He can’t let them find you, he can’t and he has to give up the only feeling of warmth he has ever known to do so.

It haunts him forever – leaving behind the only woman he ever loved, and a child he will never know.

word count: 3.8k.

notes: *inhales* ANGST— lmao but really, I live for it. Toji may be a bad person, but I suck dick, not morals, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ bro I fr don’t even know what came over me. This has been like the smallest headcannon for me and somehow it turned into this horribly sad piece, and although Toji is a dick, I also think he is an incredibly complex character that, at the end of it all, was just a desperate father trying to look out for his child. I think he deserves much more than he got, and he kinda gets shat on in this fic lmao I'm so fuCKING SORRY FOR THAT--

warnings: nsfw/18+, angst, hurt no comfort, abandonment, unplanned pregnancy, pregnant reader

“Take me,” he prays, panting secrets that fall from his lips onto your soft skin; promises of pleasure as he breeds you deep. “Take all of me.”

And you do – over, and over, and over again.

Hilting him to the deepest part of yourself, and holding him close, so close, his breath a hot ghost across your face as he leans his forehead against yours. You keep him there until he is finished, taking his seed like it was sacrament. He gives you everything he has to offer, and only when you have slipped into a light slumber does he pull away.

He never strays far, though, and he cannot stay away for long. You are like sweet honey and warm sunsets; the breathing embodiment of a life he was never before privy to – the promise of something better; a miracle. Far from the cold depravity and sharp pain of his own family, in you, he found only warm touches, and words of tender affection. Toji feels so overwhelmed by the amount of love he has for you, that sometimes it’s unbearable. He feels so happy he could die.

He is not an honest man, by any means. He kills for a vocation -- and enjoys it, too. It’s something he’s good at. It’s an easy way to make money, and it helps him pay for his half of the rent on the meagre apartment you share. It also lets him keep the fridge full, make sure you’re always warm, and that you’re never without. He doesn’t really care about himself or what he has to do – so long as you’re happy.

The weight of his body is always heavy between your thighs, his chest solid, thrusts slow and deep, stretching you, making a perfect fit for himself inside you. He likes drawing it out – each time he takes you. He enjoys seeing you beg for release, relishes the way your tears slide down your flushed cheeks, because he likes being the one to kiss them away, knowing he is the only one who ever makes you feel this good. His name sounds so perfect when it falls from your lips at your height of ecstasy, and the way you take him in has him swearing he can see heaven.

You see a side of him that no one else does, but he’s dark, he’s toxic. The amount of sadness in his soul is challenged only by the sheer force of his anger. He's sure that he wasn’t always like this, but... he can’t really remember a time when he wasn’t. Everyone and everything was his enemy. He’s never really told you much about his family, or his past. His childhood had been dark, you assumed, based on the way he flinched around children, and steered clear of any conversational topics that included them or parental figures.

Toji Fushiguro was untouchable to everyone, and only just tangible to you.

He wants to be able to give you everything. He wants to lay his head on your chest in the depths of the night when he’s feeling lost, listening to the steady rhythm of your heartbeat to guide him home. He wants to come home every night, no matter what happens to him throughout the day, and be able to feel the brush of your soft lips; to taste your tongue with his – god – he wants to. But he’s afraid. He’s scared. If he gives you everything... if he shows you who he really is... what happens if you see something you don’t like? Will you pull away from him? Will you cast him out and abandon him – just like his family did? Toji isn’t feeble by any sense of the word, but he thinks that would be the one thing that would break him.

That’s why he’s only let you see glimpses... and only every now and then.

He’s just so miserable when he’s alone. He’s angry at the world, and you’re the only thing that soothes him. The only thing he has ever loved.

You’re staring at yourself in the mirror when he comes home, locked away in the too-small bathroom. You hear the keys turning in the lock; a signal of his arrival, and the door to your apartment opens, bringing with it sounds of paper bags crinkling, keys being tossed into their bowl, and huffing exhales as he struggles to kick his heavy boots off.

“Toji?”

“I’m home!” he calls, his voice a deep timbre in his chest, smooth like rich oak.

You follow it, leaving the safe space of your bathroom to find him, and when you pass the threshold into your small kitchen, he’s lifting bags of fresh groceries onto what little counter space you have. The movement carries with it droplets from an October rain that had caught him by surprise on his walk home, ones that hang from the edges of his black hair and drip down onto his damp black shirt.

“Toji,” you repeat, beaming as you bound into your small kitchen. “I have wonderful news!”

He spares you a glance between unpacking vegetables, dark eyes tracing the curve of your face, hands grasping at packets of food that need to be tossed in the fridge, and cans to be stacked in the shelves.

“Hmm?”

He offers you his face, leaning in close, pausing in his task to receive a small blessing of affection from you — a soft kiss against the scar on his lip that has his eyelashes fluttering closed, and then one more fully against yours – always greedy for any love you bestow, always chasing just one more, just once more, just another, my love, just one more...

He continues with his chore, but only when you giggle at the fluttering of kisses he peppers across your face, your jaw, suckling at your neck, your hands against his chest pushing him gently, urging him to finish his task – but not before you give him another deep kiss, all giddiness and mirth swimming in your gaze. He can’t help the deep chuckle that spills from his lips at seeing you so happy.

“Toji,” you begin, and he’s rummaging in the paper bags, brows furrowed because he could have sworn that he bought three carrots, and not two -- “I’m pregnant!”

He stills.

He can sense your beaming smile, almost feels the warmth of it on his cold skin, and it only makes him shiver.

The seconds tick by without any form of reaction, and the atmosphere grows horribly tense. Toji doesn’t look at you, but he can see from his peripheral vision that your smile slips at the same time that your shoulders round and you make yourself smaller, unconsciously closing off. You’re twisting something in your hands, suddenly nervous, and he has a nauseating feeling that settles in his gut, because he knows exactly what it is that you’re holding.

It’s proof.

“Are you... happy?” you ask, and you hate that you have to. It’s like a punch in the gut, and you’re afraid. This was not the reaction you were expecting at all.

“Are you sure?” he doesn’t know why he asks that.

He isn’t looking at you, and he isn’t moving – he’s not even blinking. You feel your hands becoming sweaty as you clutch the positive pregnancy test, mouth dry. A quickly increasing panic creeps over your skin, gripping you by the throat, and you honestly have no idea how to traverse this kind of response to your news. In the bathroom you only practiced scenarios in relation to a beaming, positive reaction.

Which room should we make into the baby’s room? Our baby can always sleep with us, though, and I know they’re definitely going to prefer you – I'm hopeless with kids... but I hope they look like you, Toji – a perfect combination of everything I love about you!

Do you want to pick names out? I hope it’s a girl... but a boy would be wonderful, too! I know the baby will adore you, no matter what! Do you have any names you like? We can name them after someone you love? If it’s a boy, I want to make his middle name yours...

Why didn’t you think he was going to show apprehension or reluctance? Why were you so idiotic to assume this is something he desired when he’s never given you any signs of wanting to start a family? He’s probably feeling entirely overwhelmed – and no wonder – you have no tact about this. Fuck, you’re stupid. You fucking idiot. Pathetic, dumb, worthless--

“Y-yes,” you reply, and your voice is a shadow of its former self. “I took three tests. I have one here--”

“How.”

You flinch a little under the curtness of his words.

“W-what—?”

“How did this happen?”

“Uhm...” your voice sounds so frail when you speak, and you can't help it. He’s making you feel like you’ve committed a horrendous sin. You’ve managed to combine the epitome of affection between the two of you into the creation of what will become a child – a perfect mix of the two of you, and yet, you’re beginning to hate yourself for doing so. You didn’t mean to... it was an accident... “We don’t... you know... use protection... and we... have sex... a lot...”

“I thought you were taking the pill.”

You feel like you want to throw up.

His entire body is unnaturally still, and he’s not looked at you once since you’ve told him. You are pretty sure that the can in his right hand is warping under the violent pressure of his grasp, and you wring your hands around the test nervously, the weight of it somehow heavy against your palms.

“I... don’t take the pill...” you remind, and then as an afterthought, you add, “I’m sorry.”

Words you never thought you would say in relation to this. You never though you would have to apologize in this kind of situation. You exhale a shaky breath, and it seems to bring him back to reality. He sets the can down on the countertop with more force than needed, and you try your best to blink back tears as you ask, “You’re... not happy... are you...?”

It’s more of a statement than a question, and it hurts to say – god, it hurts. The words sting when they leave your mouth, like a hard slap against your face, but the ache is not nearly as bad as the way his silence is wounding you. You feel like you’re about to collapse from the amount of pain you have in your heart.

“I need to go somewhere,” is the most he offers you, before he’s turning on his heels and striding past you, leaving the apartment you share.

The noise of the front door slamming shut echoes in your mind long after the sound itself has gone.

He never did come back.

  — — — 5 years later — — —

 In the end, you were blessed with a baby girl, all chubby with round, rosy cheeks. Dark hair and eyes like her father, but soft and gentle like her mother. She was an almost perfect child. She never cried, and she never fussed, content in just being close to her mother. She listened when you spoke, and learned fast, growing just as quick, and you would die for her. She was your blessing; Akemi – the beauty of a new dawn.

You’re sure that he would have loved her more than life itself, but you try not to spare any thoughts his way anymore.

Toji gambles his life away, blowing through anything he earns as quickly as he makes it, drowning himself night after night in heavy alcohol to dampen his senses until they are nothing more than a faint hum in the back of his brain.

With any luck, those things will kill him long before the guilt does.

He fucks faceless women, drunk beyond sense, and when he finishes, he leaves before they sleep.

“Hate me, (y/n),” he sneers, turning sharply to vomit up onto the wet asphalt, breath a shaky exhale as he stumbles into the cold night, thoughts only on you – only ever on you – unaware that he’s crying. “Hate me. I fucking deserve it.”

His face is smeared with bile and tears, and he is so fucking angry -- so desperately sad, and he cries, and cries. He wants to go home. He just wants to go home. He wants to meet her – his darling daughter – he wants to hold her, and kiss her forehead, and tuck her into bed. Fuck everything that he thought – he would have been a great father, he knows it – and you knew it, too. He’s so lost without you, and he wants to lay his head on your chest in the safety of your bedroom, listening to the steady rhythm of your heartbeat to guide him home. He wants to feel the brush of your soft lips again; to taste your tongue with his, moan your name into your parted sigh, make you feel him again.

He screams, but it catches in his throat before he can, and he splits his knuckles open when he sends a furious punch against a brick wall.

He can protect you from a lot of things – but not the power of his family. Not that. He’s just one man, and they’re so many. He has a heavenly restriction, and they are all blessed with both innate and inherited techniques, passed down through eons. He knows what they’ll do if they ever found out about you – about the child, and Toji swears on everything he has, that he won’t let them touch you – or her. Even if he won’t be able to. Even if he’ll never be able to hold his daughter, to thank her for being born, to cradle her against his chest and feel her wrap her small fingers against his – he won’t let the Zen’in have her. He won’t.

But that doesn’t mean that he deprives himself from watching over her – or you. Eyes follow the two of you home from her pre-school, singing nursery rhymes to your hearts content, watching as she orders “up, up, mommy!”, squealing happily when you lift her onto your shoulders. He imagines himself in your place; lifting her to higher heights, hearing her giggle a chorus of happy songs as your hand finds his, lips on his scar as you tell him how much you love him.

But he always keeps his distance, dark baseball cap shielding his features, and leaves before you feel someone following you.

It becomes increasingly hard to keep it at that. He starts pushing the boundaries, testing how close he can get. He knows he shouldn’t -- he has no right to – but when she dropped her stuffed toy one time in the supermarket, and you were oblivious to it, he finds himself bending down to grasp the too-soft toy in his calloused hands, dropping it in your basket when your back is turned, and your brows are furrowed as you regard the price difference between her favorite flavor of juice compared to the off-brand ones.

The thrill of being so close, of doing something, anything fatherly, was like a fix – a short relief from the aching despair and loneliness constantly plaguing him, and he finds himself doing it more and more – always pushing, always testing the waters. He even smiled at her once when she caught him staring, and she sent her own toothy grin back at him. His heart soared.

His daughter’s name was Akemi, and he first heard it when it fell from your lips one warm afternoon. He wants to write her name on his heart – right beside yours.

He wants to give her something – a pretty gift, but he doesn’t know what. He was never good at buying presents, and would only ever bring you flowers, since it seemed like something that could never go wrong, and would always bring a bright smile to your face. Flowers would be strange for a child, though. He twists the dainty silver bracelet between his large fingers, thinking bitterly that this was the same way you held the pregnancy test all those years ago. He didn’t really care how much it cost him. He’s sure that the salesman added unnecessary tax and extras to the price just to give himself more commission, but Toji doesn’t care – he just wanted something pretty to give to his daughter.

When he finally sees her enter the park, small hand tugging yours happily, his mind goes empty, and he can’t stop staring. You are as beautiful as ever, and it’s no wonder his daughter is so ethereal when she has you for a mother.

She is perfect, he thinks -- too good for this life -- and even though it’s the worst thing he has ever done, he is reminded that pulling away from you was the only way to save her from his family. It looks like she escaped the curse of inheriting any of his bloodline's techniques, and what’s more so – it seems like she, too, is oblivious to curses; skipping past them as she chases leaves that skit about the dirt path of the park, her teddy in her arms. Toji dips his head down when she draws near the bench he’s sitting on, the brim of his baseball cap keeps his face hidden, and his sadness known only to himself.

“Excuse me?”

He bristles when her voice floats past his ears, so gentle and sweet.

“Hey, mister,” she pokes his knee with her slim finger, so tiny compared to the size of his body, and he jerks at the contact. “Is this yours?”

She’s holding the bracelet in her small hand, the silver glinting in the morning sun, offering it up to him with large eyes, so close to him. At this distance, he can see the true color of her eyes – exactly like his own – and the small freckles that dot her skin. The longer he stares, the more his chest constricts painfully, tightly – he’s finding it hard to breathe, and he exhales suddenly, sharply snatching it away from her.

The force of the movement causes her to stumble a little, tripping over her feet, and before she knows it, the man who was once sitting before her has entirely caught her in his large arms, scooping her up before the ground has a chance to harm her.

She blinks once... twice... swaddled in his arms, sitting against his broad chest, and Toji frantically looks for you, finding you caught up in talking to another mother, too busy to notice. He knows he would scold you for it if he was still in your life, but when his daughter laughs, he snaps his head back to look at her, forgetting what thoughts he had in his mind at the glinting sound of her happiness.

“Whoa!” she exclaims, “You’re fast! Thanks for catching me!”

He doesn’t know what to say – if he should say anything at all. His plan was to give her the bracelet, telling her that it was a late birthday gift from someone that loves her very much, and walking off before she (or you) has the chance to catch on or respond. But now that he’s inches away from her, holding her close as she peers up at him, he’s lost again. He’s lost, and he can’t breathe. He needs you to steady him, but you aren’t here, and he doesn’t know what to do, what should he do, what should he--?

“Where did you get that scar from?” she asks innocently, her large eyes suddenly trained on the mark beside his lips.

“F-from an accident,” he mumbles, “a long time ago.”

“Oh,” she hums, hands splayed against his broad chest, looking around her, swaying her legs absentmindedly. “Wow, you’re really tall! I can see everything from up here!” she exclaims happily, “My mommy’s not as tall as this, so when I sit on her shoulders, I can’t see nearly as much as I can now!”

“Oh,” he mutters, not really knowing what to say, “is that so?”

“Mhm,” she nods, “Mommy’s not as big as you are either.”

At this, he gives a genuine laugh – a sound he hasn’t heard fall from his lips in a long, long time, looking at her with quiet adoration.

“She’s not as fast as you either,” she continues, “you were super-fast!”

“She’s strong in her own ways, though,” he mutters, offering her a soft smile.

“Do you know my mommy?”

He bristles, actively avoiding her gaze. His heart is racing from this much interaction with his daughter, and he’s sure she can feel it under her small palm. It beats for her – if only she knew, and Toji contemplates, for the briefest of seconds, just telling her. The thought leaves his mind as soon as it enters. He doesn’t have that choice, and he doesn’t deserve it.

“Not really,” he mutters, dipping down slowly to set her footing on solid ground once more.

“She’s really pretty,” the little girl continues, playing with the soft fabric of his t-shirt in a small moment of fondness and familiarity, “and nice – and she makes great food!”

Toji realises only after the fact that his hand had settled on top of her head, and he’s stroking her hair softly, thumb caressing her cheek when he moves to cup her face. She doesn’t seem to mind at all, and Toji is overwhelmed with a plethora of emotions. Pride in you for doing all this by yourself and raising such a wonderful child, shame for abandoning you and his daughter, mirth, anger, warmth, sadness, love--

“Akemi!” you call, seeing her lift her head at the sound of your voice. “This way, honey!”

“Oh, I have to go now! My mommy is calling me!” she perks up, gripping her teddy a little tighter and offering the man a smile. “Bye-bye!”

“W-wait!” he calls, thrusting the gift into her small hands. “This is for you, uh... f-from me...”

She looks down at it, before her whole face lights up, and Toji is suddenly breathless – she looks so much like you when she’s surprised, happiness blossoming over her face the same way it would on yours.

Toji feels a deep-rooted emptiness inside his body when he watches his daughter retreat away from him; a living embodiment of all his failures to you, and yet, as he sees her long, black hair whip out behind her, he realizes something else — she was your promise delivered; a combination of everything good between the two of you, in itself a miracle. He might not be in her life, but he was also partly responsible for creating something so beautiful, so ethereal.

He knows he doesn’t deserve it, but if he was ever fortunate enough to be granted a second, it would be a miracle; a holy gift.

A blessing that would accompany the beauty of dawn.

[ifmywishescametrue]

omg now im jealous about all of the breaking up and making up stories!!! they're all so wonderful but is it okay to ask for a steve/tony one? i know you've made one inspired by ts (amazing) and this time, maybe they meet/bump in a coffee shop? idk angst potential but also hopeful/happy ending aahhh. your stories are amazing esp ivy!!! thank you! <3

thank you so much!! it ended up being more cute than angsty, but I hope you like it!

Steve's pencil drifts idly across the page of his sketchbook with no end vision in mind. He's killing time until Nat shows up, which could be anywhere between the next five minutes and the next two hours with her vague text that simply said running late. When he looks up to reach for his near empty coffee cup, he freezes with his hand in the middle of the air.

At first he thinks it might not even actually be him. Tony's hair was never quite this well styled before, always a tangled mop on his head that sometimes fell into his eyes. Steve used to spend hours sometimes running his fingers through those wild curls while Tony slept on his chest. It's been tamed since then, cut shorter and held into place by some type of product. The facial hair is new, too. He remembers a time when it would always come in patchy and uneven, and Tony would pout as he shaved away the latest attempt at looking older than he was. The eighteen year old boy in oversized hoodies and stained jeans he met years ago has been replaced by a man in a well-pressed, expensive looking suit with a leather briefcase, like he just stepped out of a boardroom a minute ago. From what Steve has read about his life since they broke up, he probably did.

Steve stares without fully meaning to and for much longer than he would have if it was intentional. He watches him order his drink and smiles when the barista’s eyes widen at what he knows is an overly complicated order, wondering if Tony ever did finish his quest to find that perfect combination of syrup flavors, sugar, and cream that only he would ever like.

He catches the double take when Tony notices him there, right as he’s taking his first sip of the iced drink, and the cough when he chokes on it is anything but subtle. Steve looks away with red cheeks and tries to pretend he wasn’t staring, but it’s a futile effort. He can’t say he minds, though. Not when it means Tony walks over to him and unceremoniously drops himself into the chair across from him.

His mouth forms a familiar smirk, and he says, “You seem to have a staring problem, Rogers.”

Suddenly, Steve is nineteen again, falling hopelessly in love with the boy in his introductory chemistry class. It felt sort of like fate at first when they were paired together for the final project, and Steve remembers thinking that his chances were shot to hell when Tony sat down next to him and said those exact words. He never was any good at being discreet.

Back then, for that first time, all he could manage was a stuttered apology in response. But eventually it became their thing. Something just for them that no one else could ever understand. When Steve would watch him from across the room at parties, because he knew how much Tony loved having his eyes on him, and Tony would saunter over with that same smirk and those same words, there was only ever one reply.

“Guess I just really like what I see,” Steve says, and Tony’s face splits into a grin that matches Steve’s own. He’s still beautiful, even if it’s different now. Less softness to his appearance and more defined edges and sharp lines, but heart stoppingly beautiful nonetheless. He doesn’t quite say as much, but he does comment, “You do look good, by the way. Different, but good.”

Tony’s smile softens into another familiar one. It’s his smile for compliments, when he’s thinking self-deprecating thoughts that he won’t voice. Instead he’ll turn the attention back around, shifting the spotlight.

“So do you. The good part, but not really the different part.”

Steve runs a hand through his hair, contemplating if not looking different contributes to the good or not. He should look different somehow, shouldn’t he? After two and a half years not seeing each other in person and what feels like a lifetime’s worth of heartbreak in between then and now, he should look as changed as he feels. As changed as Tony looks now, like he’s someone new entirely. He’s pretty sure the t-shirt he’s wearing now is one he owned back then.

“Thanks,” Steve says anyway, for lack of anything better.

Just before it has the chance to fall into awkward silence, Tony says, “I didn’t know you were in New York these days. I would’ve called or something if I’d known.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Would you have?”

“I don’t know, maybe. I would’ve thought about it, at least. You know, stalked you online, found your number, dialed and hung up a few times.”

Steve laughs, fiddling with the straw wrapper from earlier to give himself something to look at other than Tony. “I moved back last year. Thought about calling, but I figured you were busy. Didn’t want to waste your time.”

It’s only a partial truth. He did think about calling when he came to Brooklyn after his year-long internship in London ended, but he didn’t want to know what Tony would say if he did. If he would have some sort of transparent excuse to avoid seeing him or if it would be an outright rejection.

“I would’ve made time for you,” Tony says, so painfully sincere that Steve has to look up again to meet his eyes.

He wonders if Tony is thinking of that last fight, if it’s a purposeful or coincidental reference to some of what Steve said. It was by far the worst fight they’d ever had, all over the phone with an ocean between them and so many things that Steve still wishes he could take back. Accusations flew on both sides until the entire thing was blown so completely out of proportion, yet impossible to reel back in. He should have just hung up the phone before it went that far. Before he could tell Tony that he always felt unimportant compared to everything else in his life, which was sometimes true but entirely unfair. Before Tony could say that Steve talked about Peggy in the same way he used to talk about him, and he didn’t have to finish the thought for Steve to understand the implication.

“Are we talking about it?” Steve asks.

Tony shrugs, feigning casual, but just the corner of his lip is between his teeth in that way that means he’s nervous and trying to hide it. “I guess that depends on what this is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we said back then that maybe it was just bad timing. You were in London, and I was in Boston until graduation, and it was always going to be a bit of a mess, but there was always that someday chance, right? So maybe this is someday, and we talk about it, and try to get it right this time,” Tony says. “Or maybe that was just something we said and didn’t mean, and I ask you about your life, and you ask about mine, and we talk and laugh and pretend that we’re friends again for the next half hour or so before we go our separate ways.”

It’s an easy choice, really. If there’s one thing that Steve’s sure of, it’s that it’s always been him and always will be.

“I don’t want to go separate ways,” Steve says. “The first time was hard enough, and I never really moved on. I got better, but I don’t think I’ve been more than just fine in a long time.”

Tony nods slowly, “I kept thinking you would call, you know. Back then. I thought you would call and tell me that it was a mistake and it would be okay again, but you never did. Although, I guess I could’ve called, too.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“For the same reason as you, probably. I couldn’t risk it if you didn’t want me again. Couldn’t risk getting back together just to break up again, either. We weren’t exactly the poster children for making long distance work.”

“We were terrible at it, weren’t we?”

Tony’s smile is tinged with the pain of the past. “It’s kind of funny because I remember thinking that it might be a good thing for us when you told me about London. Can’t get sick of somebody if they’re not always around.”

“You thought I would get sick of you? You never told me that.”

“Why would I?” Tony laughs. “Just put all my insecurities on display like that? Come on, Steve, that doesn’t sound like me, does it?”

Steve laughs with him briefly, “No, but I could’ve told you back then that it wasn’t possible. Told you that I wanted you around all the time and I missed you every second you were gone. I might’ve even stayed if you had told me. I was thinking about it, you know? I almost turned the internship down. Probably would’ve if you’d asked even once for me not to go.”

“It was your career. I never would’ve asked you to give that up for me.”

“There would have been something else. Another job somewhere closer to you.”

“I still wouldn’t have asked,” Tony says. “And I would have told you to go if you’d said you were staying.”

Steve knows that, which is why they never talked about it much before he left. Tony pretended to be happy for him, and Steve pretended to be happy for himself, when really it already felt like the beginning of the end. A year apart is longer than it seems, and it didn’t take more than a few months to realize it.

“I never…” Steve starts, trailing off when he doesn’t quite know how to finish the sentence. “There was never anyone else. Not while we were together, and never with Peggy.”

“I know. I knew back then, too, that you were never that kind of person. Jealousy’s just a real bitch sometimes.”

“There’s really not been anyone since, either,” Steve adds, and Tony’s mouth quirks into a half smile. “I mean, a couple of people here and there, but nothing like what we were.”

“There’s not a whole lot out there like what we were, is there?”

Steve smiles, leaning back in his chair, “No, there’s really not. But I do remember reading a rumor that you got engaged.”

Tony groans, and it’s so much like he used to sound when he was nine pages deep into a ten page essay at three in the morning that Steve has to laugh.

“Don’t you dare laugh. That rumor haunts me, Steven,” Tony says, belied by a grin that he seemingly can’t control. “Do you know how I found out about my supposed engagement? When my mother called and asked why I hadn’t told her I was planning on proposing.”

“So I’m still the only person you’ve ever proposed to,” Steve teases, just for the way he knows Tony will get indignant about it.

“How many times do I have to tell you that one didn’t count?”

“You were on one knee, you asked a question, and you had a ring. All the boxes are checked, sweetheart.”

“It was a blue raspberry ring pop, and you ate it,” Tony argues. “Not to mention that I actually asked you to marry me someday in the distant future. That’s not a proposal.”

Steve laughs again, thinking about that day in the middle of their living room, just a few weeks before Steve got the call that would take him to London and change everything. It was almost like a joke, and for anyone else it would have been. Not for them, though, because Steve remembers the look in Tony’s eyes when he dropped down in front of him, spur of the moment and impulsive like almost everything was back then. He remembers how it still felt like a promise, even if it wasn’t the real thing.

“But I said yes, which I think technically means we’re still engaged.”

“Absolutely not,” Tony scoffs. “It’s going to be a production when we get engaged. Elaborate and planned and romantic as hell.”

“When, huh?” Steve grins.

Tony’s cheeks pinken a touch, but he doesn’t take it back. He reaches for Steve’s hand on the table. “Yeah, when. Is that alright with you?”

Steve threads their fingers together, holding on tight. “That’s alright with me.”

[clementinecoastline]

still thinking abt iwaoi... (honorary part 3)

thinking about timeskip iwaoi in uci and san juan but they haven't gotten together yet. what then?

home is where the heart is and your heart's with someone else and they don't even know. oikawa goes through his entire day with iwaizumi's heart beating in his chest and he doesn't even notice. they don't realize it, don't see it. they know they're in love but they don't see it in the other and it's so, so obvious.

in the smiles and the staying up late and the incessant worried texting.

(tooru: hope you haven't been staying up too late studying

tooru: or not taking breaks

and oikawa hesitates before continuing

tooru: and that you've been getting enough to eat!!! after all the lecturing you've given me about eating junk food!!!!

tooru: i know you can do it! so you don't need to worry!!!)

(hajime: make sure not to overdo it

hajime: don't practice too hard

hajime: you're the best anyways, get it in your thick skull

hajime: just make sure to be careful

hajime: don't eat too much junk food. and make sure to be careful with your knee)

('it's just iwa-chan texting me again,' oikawa clarifies to his teammates when they ask about the silly smile that had overtaken his face, 'he's just nagging. honestly, is he my mom?')

(no, they think, but he does love you)

oikawa visits irvine one time, and iwaizumi has spent so much time insisting that no, oikawa doesn't love me like that, and convincing his friends that it's one-sided. and then oikawa shows up and the pure adoration in his eyes is overwhelming. they wonder how iwaizumi doesn't see it.

maybe it's because when something is a constant, you never realize it's different.

have they ever not looked at each other like they hung the stars in the sky? have they ever doubted that they'd spend their lives together? (ironic, considering how far apart they are now) has iwaizumi ever seen a different look on oikawa's face?

they were children and iwaizumi was brave and caught bugs and 'saved' oikawa from the grosser ones. they were in middle school and iwaizumi 'saved' oikawa from the depths of his own mind. they were in high school and iwaizumi was his ace and his partner and his most ardent believer.

they are here now and they have never known anything else. their love has grown and matured but it has always been there and they've never known a world without it. it is hard to recognize what's always been there.

oikawa introduces iwaizumi to his teammates on a video call one night. 'we want to meet this iwa-chan of yours!' they cry, 'he sounds so exciting!' and so oikawa calls him up, giving in after so much time spent going 'no, i can't have him corrupting you all so you can work against me!!!' and iwaizumi is there and one of them goes 'oh my god, this is the iwa-chancito?'

and oikawa doesn't have the presence of mind to point out that that's two diminutives combined. he's too focused on iwaizumi himself. and iwaizumi hajime apologizes about how insufferable oikawa must possibly be, simultaneously praising him at times because 'he might be annoying, but he's still the best teammate you can ask for'

i think their love shows in the way iwaizumi picks up no matter how early or late oikawa might call, and vice versa. oikawa is tired and lying in bed, wondering if he made the right calls, if he's actually any good for anything, and iwaizumi will sacrifice his rest just to tell what he sees as immutable truth.

the sun rises in the east, the earth spins on its axis, and oikawa tooru is remarkable and unforgettable. the earth orbits the sun and oikawa tooru could hold it all in the palm of his hand and iwaizumi has never doubted that for a second. (and oikawa has never doubted that about iwaizumi either.)

but no yeah it’s totally unrequited.

[bellarkeselection]

Ice Wife - part 5

Gif by @teamfreewilllover

Part 4

@deepprincesstraveler Years have passed since the burning of Kings Landing. Killing of Dany and the destruction of the Iron Throne. Now Jaime, Y/n and their twin children live happily in the rebuilt six kingdoms.

@deepprincesstraveler Thank you for requesting this idea. I had fun writing this series and so far it's the longest request I have ever gotten 🤗

Jaime's scruff tickles my neck feeling him kiss me to wake up. I shift sleepily giggling at his attempts. "Jaime!" His left arm draped over my middle silk covers lazily hanging over us. The warm summer sun poured into our chambers. "Y/n, my love. It's time to wake up your husband wants to see you." Slowly opening my eyes, rolling over to face my smiling husband. He's always been a morning person compared to me wanting to sleep late after being up all night. Gently running my hand through his locks I smile. He grew his original golden lion locks back but kept a little bit of his beard that I liked when we were reunited. It's not easy to forget what happened. The mother of dragons burned the city like father. Jon is actually a Targaryen. Tyrion is Hand of the King once again. Bran Stark is the new king of the six kingdoms and Sansa is Queen in the North. And there's one other thing...two actually.

"Mommy, daddy!" Two little squealing children burst into our room, jumping into bed with us. Like I said two other things. Jaime grins lovingly at his children, twins like him and Cersei who was crushed by falling rubble. Both our little boy and girl have their fathers eyes. The Lannister's blonde combined with the Stark brown. Alexander and Julianna the heirs to Casterly Rock. The sweetest six year olds you'll ever meet. "Mommy can you make us a ice rink in our room?" Julianna the oldest asks using the puppy eyes. Alexander lays on his father's chest trying to act all cool but his eyes say he wants it as bad as she does.

Climbing out of bed feeling the warm air hit my bare legs under my nightgown I toss her over my shoulder, carrying her to their shared rooms. "As princess Julia requests." I curtsey playfully sitting her on her feet. Jaime walks in with Alexander just seconds before I lightly tap my right foot on the floor turning it an icy floor like my ice castle in the North once was. Jaime had thrown on a light brown tunic and black pants with his boots. Alexander slides over to me talking my hands into his starting to spin us around. Jaime gets pulled onto the ice by his daughter who's a daddy's girl wanting to be a knight like her aunt Ayra.

A few more rounds of twirling somehow I spun into a comfortable chest I know quite well. Jaime. "Hello my icy wolf." He mumbles into my braided hair, twirling me around so my arms go around his neck. "Hi, my Lannister lion." His left hand resting to my cheek with his right arm on my hip. He'd stopped wearing the golden hand thinking we should embrace who we truly are. He leans down gently kissing me and I resipicate hearing our children giggling in the background. "Can somebody please tell Snowy to stop drinking my wine." Tyrion's voice makes us break apart seeing him and Snowy enter the room. Since Kings Landing is so hot I made a snow cloud to keep my snowman alive.

"Snowy!" Julianna squeals when the snowman comes to skate with her. Alexander grins brightly at his uncle. "Uncle Tyrion come play with us?" He's always looked up to him for the way his mind works. Tyrion drinks the last of the wine in his cup getting behind his nehphew sliding down a snow slide, both boys laughing when they land in some snow piles. Looking up at Jaime I playfully smirk and he sees whispering in my ear. "What's that look for, my love?" Flicking my right wrist I conjure up a snowball. "Oh I get ya now." He takes it in his left hand lightly throwing it at Alex, knowing he'll react before anyone else. "Huh...oh it's on!" He declared grabbing some snow with Tyrion and Snowy.

Julianna throws one that turns Tyrion's hair white. I throw one at Snowy who dodges it with a roll. Alexander smacks me with one as Jaime gets hit by one from his younger brother. Laughter fills the hallway as we all throw a couple more snowballs. My brother Bran, the king of the six kingdoms is perfectly fine with our loud giggling. Sansa loves when we travel to the North at the beginning and end of every month. She enjoys seeing her niece and nephew that she spoils like they're her own children. Jon writes letters from beyond the wall while Ayra is off exploring the world.

I sigh in relief feeling Jaime rest his chin ontop my head as I lay my head in the crock of his neck. "You know darling. I've been thinking..." He trails off watching Julianna pretending to stab Tyrion with a toy sword. He dropped to his knees begging before Alexander raised his right hand declaring as if he where a king. "I, prince Alexander Lion Lannister spare ye. Tyrion Lannister, Hand of king Brandon." Julianna helped her uncle off the icy floor placing her sword on the ground. "And I, princess Julianna Cat Lannister am in your service, my lord. What would you have me do?" Tyrion taps his chin seeing Snowy reaching to drink some wine from his bottle, making him aim his finger at him. "I, Tyrion Lannister. Hand of the king declare to...get the snowman!"

The twins cheered chasing after the snowman who just laughs with them. Tyrion picks up his cup pouring himself another drink still smiling. "No one steals my wine." Jaime and I both can't not start cracking up at the scene before us. "What we're you thinking earlier, Jaime?" I question going back to his earlier thought. He gently squeezes me as I look up into his green eyes. "I was saying my darling wife that...lets have another." He plants a kiss to my forehead smiling brightly.

"You'd really want to have a bunch of kids like my mother and father?" I raised my brows remembering the Stark family line had six children in total. He nods lovingly brushing his thumb over my cheek. "Yes I do. You are the love of my life. I want to have as many kids as you want. It's you and me, Tyrion and however many children we want. Baby all I know is that I've got all I need." Leaning up on my tippy toes I crash my lips onto his hungrily and he immediately responds. My hands tangled themselves in his long golden locks feeling his left hand pull me against his chest to deepen the kiss until we need air.

Resting my hands on his chest I grin up at my husband. "It's you and me, forever Jaime. I'll always be ready to have another child with you." I pull his lips down to mine but it's a short kiss when Snowy cries pointing out the window having all of us go to where he points. "My sister's!" Eddarion, Saphiar and Frostine land on the clearing by the docks under the Red Keep. Alexander tugs on his father's right arm. "Daddy, can we go ride the dragons?" He looks down to me slightly worried we'd get hurt or worse.

When they were little babies Jaime loved to hold them but since they've been getting to be the size of Daenerys he's been getting worried for his family's safety. "Of course son." He picks him up in his arms following me outside once I'd changed into a horse riding tunic and trousers. Climbing onto Eddarion with Alexander and Julianna in front of me I see Jaime shifting from foot to foot in nervousness. "Touch me, Jaime." I blurted out to my husband.

"What. Y/n, we could get hurt-" I cut off his worries reaching down for his hand a little closer. "Touch me. I took a leap of faith with you. Now I want you to do it with me." Jaime and I lock eyes both filled with love for our partner. Touch me. Those two words changed everything for the both of us. We'd both broken down the walls we built around ourselves. Tyrion watches on the sidelines with Snowy hoping his older brother will actually ride the dragons.

Jaime slowly places his hand in mine allowing me to help him get on Eddarion and sit behind me. Turning my head to him I rest a hand to his cheek smiling as I kissed him lovingly. "I love you, Jaime Lannister." He kisses back smiling into the kiss as well. "I love you, Y/n Lannister." Placing my hands on the reigns Eddarion slowly soars up into the bright blue skies of Kings Landing.

Tyrion watches from the ground below smiling as King Bran approaches him in his wheelchair. "My sister turned out to be the best thing for him, didn't she Lord Tyrion?" Tyrion looks to his king while hearing his family laughing and cheering from the sky above his head. "Indeed your grace. "Y/n Stark, the Icy Wolf and Jaime Lannister, the Golden Lion. Are perfect for each other."

A Lannister Lion married a Icy Wife.

[autumnalwalker]

So, the above statement that was False about Ashan Glassheart was:

"His isekai wizard adventure was prefaced by being told he was the Chosen One™."

And now time for excerpts to go with each of these:

From Chapter 14 regarding Ashan's language processing issues:

And now it was late at night and Eris and Ashan finally had another private moment to talk.

“So,” Eris says as she sits down at the kitchen table and slides Ashan a microwaved mug of tea, “that translation charm.”

“Still no beating around the bush, I see.  Very well then.  To put it plainly, I am dependent on this trinket for linguistic communication of any kind.  Without it, even the two languages of my childhood sound like gibberish to me and my own thoughts become tangled and difficult to parse.  It is a disquieting experience to say the least.”

Eris swallows her decaf and lets out a low whistle.  “Not gonna lie, that sounds terrifying.  If I’d realized I wouldn’t have asked you to loan it to me.”

“It is fine.  Better that I occasionally try to get used to the sensation in a controlled circumstance of my own volition than to be thrust into it unprepared.  Knowing that I was doing it to help a friend eased the feelings as well.”

“So, how’d it happen?  Adventuring accident?  Pitched wizard duel?”  Eris asks before remembering to hastily add an “If you’re okay with talking about if of course.”

Ashan gently shakes his head.  “Nothing as exciting as that.  I spent seven years, from the age of nine to sixteen, in a foreign world relying entirely on a flawed translation charm for communication instead of truly learning anything of the local languages.  To my mentor’s credit she did make some attempts to teach me early on, but since she had no grasp of English or Spanish we both soon agreed to abandon that in favor of the easy route.

“Long term reliance on translation magic without any breaks to speak one’s own language naturally can have detrimental effects even on adults, much less children whose brains are still going through important developmental stages.  Combine that with the defect in the charm I was using at the time and, well, I think you can see where this is going.  We were not entirely unaware of the problem; even early on there were occasional minor glitches, but they were mild enough and far enough between that we underestimated their seriousness and every time we were about to look into finding me a new charm something would come up.”  Ashan laughs bitterly.  “One time I actually had a new charm in my hands and was about to try it on when an irate dragon landed in the middle of the bazaar.  The merchant we were trying to buy from fled, my mentor ran off to go deal with the dragon, and I left the new charm back in the merchant’s stall because I did not want to steal and my mentor had our money.  One thing led to another and we forgot about replacing the charm again until the glitches got bad enough and frequent enough that we could not ignore them anymore.”

“And that’s when you got this new one.”

“Eventually.  There are seven main different methods of translation magic common in this cluster of worlds and it took some time to find the one that would work best to mitigate my condition and longer still to commission a custom charm that would do more than simply mitigate.  All that time I was barely able to comprehend what was happening to me, only that my mentor was increasingly worried about me and tearing herself apart over it when she thought I was not watching.  Those were a bad few weeks.”

“I can only imagine.  I’m impressed you can talk about it so calmly.  Normally with Lacuna…  Well, that’s her privacy that I shouldn’t be spilling.”

“I can imagine.  She does seem to be a nervous individual.  As for me, this was all long enough ago that the sting is gone and I have made my peace with it.  If anything, I would say this conversation has been something of a relief.  You are the first person I have spoken to about this besides my mentor and my relationship with her is complicated these days.”

“I can imagine.”

Silence stretches.  Drinks cool, one of them still untouched.

From Chapter 17 (not yet posted at time of reblog) regarding what Ashan's mentor told him in order to get him to leave (the context is that everyone is speculating on how to find out who marked Ashan in a way that he 1) would have an artificial limit on how strong his magic can be and what types he can do, 2) couldn't remember receiving that mark, and 3) couldn't perceive the mark once it was on him):

“No need,” Glassheart interrupts.  “It is Aliana Glassgaze.”

“Your mentor?”  Eris asks.

“One and the same.” Glassheart sighs and shakes his head with a bitter smile.  “As I said before, our relationship is complicated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Road says.  “I can’t imagine this sort of betrayal of trust is easy to take.”

 “This is just one more knot in the tangle.”  Glassheart replies.  “If anything, the timeline and effects that Lacuna just described make a number of things make more sense in hindsight.  When my ment- when Aliana first found me she was rescuing me from a monster that had slipped into this world.  Afterwards, when she was examining me for wounds and lingering influence from the creature, she told me that it looked to her like that was the seventh time this had happened to me, judging by residual amnestic magic from other mages.  She followed that up by telling me I had great potential for being a wizard, but that same potential made me - as she put it - ‘a veritable monster magnet’ such that I would be constantly putting myself and those around me in danger without proper guidance and training.  A dampening seal would explain why I did not continue to attract danger on a world with even more magically-sensitive creatures even in the early days of my training.”

And then later on in Chapter 17 regarding faking his death (the exact age he left was both speculated and confirmed in other places as nine):

“No offense,” Eris says, “but don’t you think you’re being a little quick to defend someone who screwed you over like that?”

“Perhaps,” Ashan concedes.  “Yet still, I find it difficult to truly be angry with her.  She was - is - like a second mother to me.  Apart from her initial sin when she first took me I cannot say that she ever mistreated me.  If anything, she coddled me compared to how most wizards treat their apprentices.  She was clever, kind, and strong.  I wanted to be just like her.  Even now that things are… complicated… between us I still find myself imitating her style and technique.  I still wear the robe patterned after hers, wield the wand carved from the same tree as her staff, and paint my face the same way she does.  The name she gave me feels more true than the one I was born with.   At this point, autogenesis has even molded me until I resemble her at least as much as I do my blood parents.  While she has done things to me that I cannot bring myself to forgive, this is not one of them.”

The lab falls silent save for the hum and respiration of server racks.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Lacuna hesitantly speaks up, “but, ‘initial sin’?”

“When she was first convincing me to come with her, she talked me into faking my death and then helped me do it once I readily agreed.  She said it was the best way to cover up my disappearance and save my parents the pain of trying to look for me.  I was naïve and excited to go on a grand and magical adventure.  Child that I was, the full ramifications of that never occurred to me.  Not until too much time had passed to undo the damage.  If I thought about it at all, it was as a passing daydream about how surprised and happy my parents would be when I returned alive one day, and now a wizard.  Afterall, the stories always end with the hero returning home to the ‘real world.’”

“I’m not gonna lie,” Eris says, “that’s kinda fucked up.  What Aliana did, I mean, not you.”

“It is the root of our falling out.  In retrospect, that may have been the reason she doted on me the way that she did, especially in those early days.  A way to assuage the guilt.  She knew what she had done was wrong, but at the time it seemed like the least bad option given the circumstances.  So she said at any rate when I finally confronted her about it.”

Tagging @cljordan-imperium, @ahordeofwasps, @oh-no-another-idea, and @blind-the-winds since you all previously commented with speculation about the answer.

Two Truths and a Lie

Thank you for the tag, @ceph-the-ghost-writer.

Passing the tag to @on-noon, @blind-the-winds, @lycaens, @emeraldmew, @oh-no-another-idea, and an open tag to anyone else who wants to play.

[fridayfirefly]

The Power of Luck [Chapter One]

Read The Power of Luck on AO3

Masterlist [All Works]

Masterlist [The Power of Luck Series]

Written for Maribat March Day 6 - Miraculous Side Effects

The Ladybug Miraculous had quite a few side effects. Marinette was able to think quick on her feet, she was a skilled tactician in battle, and her reaction time was half that of a normal human. Most notably, the Ladybug Miraculous granted its user the force known as Miraculous Luck, which, depending on the situation, was sometimes more of a curse than a blessing. Marinette didn't get to choose how that good luck manifested. For instance, when she needed an extra day to finish a history project, her school closed down due to a gas leak. Or when she wished for a fresh start after the defeat of Hawkmoth, her parents were offered a deal to grow their bakery business in America.

Marinette assured her parents that she didn't mind moving. After all, most of her class had already moved on. Lila had been deported to Italy, narrowly avoiding jail time. Chloé (much to her dismay) was sent by her father to an all-girls boarding school in England. Adrien was taken in by his Aunt Amelie (as Gabriel was in jail and Emilie was declared brain-dead) and moved to England as well.

No one else from Marinette's class left the country, but many of them moved out of Paris. Nathanial was accepted to an elite art school in Marseille. Max was accepted to a gifted program at an elite school in Bordeaux. Officer Raincomprix was transferred to Toulouse and took Sabrina with him. Juleka and Luka both started homeschooling after their mother sailed the houseboat down the Seine to the city of Rouen.

Worst of all was the loss of Alya. Her parents were horrified that the son of Hawkmoth was in the same class as their daughter, and promptly pulled Alya out of class and decided to move out of the city. Alya begged them for weeks but nothing came of her protests. In the end, Alya left too.

The Miraculous Luck could do a lot of things, but it couldn't keep her friends together. Those who remained at François Dupont filled holes in other classes. Marinette tried to make the best of her new class, but she felt no real connection to them. When her parents proposed the move, Marinette jumped on the opportunity. In Gotham, she wouldn't be haunted by the ghost of her old life.

Marinette cut her hair, leaving it choppy and just above the shoulders. She donated all of her brightly colored clothes to the thrift store down the street and created a new wardrobe for herself. It was toned down and mature, much more fitting for Gotham.

Marinette left Paris a much different girl than the naive fourteen-year-old who thought she could save the world. She was ready for a city like Gotham, a city that didn't make any promises, a city where Marinette could set down some new roots.

-----

At first, it was easy to fly under the radar at Gotham Academy. It was a school filled with the self-absorbed children of millionaires and billionaires, after all. Marinette was there on scholarship - her good grades, leadership experience, and working-class parents combined to cut her tuition down by 75%. Marinette quickly learned that scholarship students were at best ignored, and at worst mercilessly bullied. So Marinette kept her head down and vowed that she would get through the year unscathed.

There was one variable, however, that the Miraculous Luck wasn't able to account for. Marinette's entire plan fell apart thanks to one boy: Damian Wayne.

Marinette became acquainted with Damian Wayne through the school's rumor mill. She learned that he was one of the most wealthy and most attractive people in the school, but he was thought himself too good to spend time with any of his fellow classmates (Marinette couldn't fault him on the last bit; she also found the students at Gotham Academy to be difficult, to say the least). Marinette also learned through the school's rumor mill that Damian spent quite a lot of time staring at her. Given that Damian had never paid the slightest amount of attention to a Gotham Academy girl before, this was a big deal. Suddenly Marinette was the farthest thing from under the radar. Everyone who used to look down on her wanted to be her friend. It was exhausting.

Marinette resolved to ignore Damian Wayne - an easy task, given that she still didn't even know what he looked like. Now that everyone was staring at her, it was hard to

"Why?" grumbled Marinette. "Why couldn't my so-called Miraculous Luck help me get through one normal year of school?"

Tikki shrugged from her spot inside of Marinette's backpack. "Maybe all of this attention will turn out to be a good thing?"

"I doubt that." Marinette glanced around, checking that no one had spotted her talking to her backpack. There was one spot in the cafeteria that was hidden from view, a window-sill nestled behind a pillar, bordered by a wall on one side and an out of order vending machine on the other. Marinette sat on the window-sill every day to eat lunch, with Tikki as her companion for the meal.

"I think your problem is that you're overthinking this. Miraculous Luck always works out in the end, even if there are some obstacles in the middle."

"I just want this horrible school year to be over," sighed Marinette, setting her head down in her arms.

"Don't give up yet, Marinette. I have high hopes for this school year," said Tikki.

Marinette had some serious doubts but picked her head up anyway. Maybe this year wouldn't turn out the way she expected. Marinette defeated Hawkmoth, the greatest villain Paris ever faced. She could survive a year of high school.

-----

Marinette was going to survive her senior year of high school. Damian Wayne on the other hand... Marinette still wasn't sure if she was going to let him survive the year, after everything he put her through.

"Excuse me?" a sickeningly sweet voice piped up from behind Marinette.

Marinette put on her best disinterested-face, took out one headphone, and turned around. "Yes?"

There were three girls standing behind her: a blonde, flanked on both sides by a brunette and a red-head. The blonde girl had a smile on her face but a devious look in her eyes. Marinette had long ago learned to spot manipulators, and this girl had it written all over her. "Are you Marinette Dupain-Cheng?"

"Yes."

"My name is Julie Cooper. I was just wondering... Are you dating Damian Wayne?"

Marinette huffed in exasperation. "What do you think?"

Julie's eyes narrowed. "I just wanted to warn you. I mean, did you really think that Damian Wayne would seriously date a girl here on scholarship? You should break up with him before you get hurt."

"It was a rhetorical question. I'm not dating Damian Wayne. It's just a rumor."

Julie instantly perked up. "Oh, good! I was beginning to think that Damian had lost his mind. I mean, I'm sure you would be a nine or a ten at a public school, but at Gotham Academy, you're like a seven, maybe an eight on a good day. Most of the girls who go here are actually hot, not just," the girl waved her hand towards Marinette. "Above average."

Marinette wasn't sure if Julie meant for her to feel flattered or offended, but her words had the strange effect of making Marinette feel both all at once. "Um, thanks? I'm going to go now."

Julie's brunette friend suddenly paled as the girl started to tug on Julie's sleeve. "Um, Julie?" she whispered.

"What, Nora?" Julie's eyes widened as they fixed on something behind Marinette.

Marinette turned around to see what the cause of their concern was. Or rather, to see who the cause of their concern was. It was a boy, tall and scowling. "Are you done here, Cooper?"

Julia nodded, a nervous edge to her voice, "Bye, Marinette." She and her two friends hurried off, exchanging frantic whispers.

"What do you want?" asked Marinette with a sigh. She was tired of dealing with boys who were only interested in her because Damian Wayne was interested in her.

"I wished to apologize."

"For Julie? Did you put her up to this?"

The boy looked confused. "No, of course not. I meant that I wanted to apologize for everything, not just Julie Cooper."

"For everything?" The truth suddenly dawned on Marinette. "You're Damian Wayne! I didn't think that you would be so tall."

"You didn't know what I looked like?" There was real shock in his voice.

"Well, by the time I learned that you had been staring at me everyone was staring at me, so that wasn't much help in figuring out who you were."

"You could have googled me."

Marinette shrugged. "I could have, but it felt weird to google one of my classmates. I pretty much just resigned myself to never figuring out who you were."

"I should have approached you sooner. I've wanted to apologize for a while, but every time I've caught you alone you've looked like you wanted to be left that way."

"I'm not a fan of most of the students here."

"The students here can be..." Damian searched for the appropriate word. "Tiresome. I resigned myself to a dull four years of high school in their company. That is, until I saw you."

Marinette cocked her head. "Why me, though? I'm nothing special."

"You're different than everyone else here."

Marinette stiffened. "I know. I've been told. I'm here on a scholarship which means I don't belong," she snapped

Damian shook his head. "No, that's not what I meant. You move through life differently than all of the other students here. You don't care about the gossip or drama - at least, not until you were right at the center of it all. You've seen the real world, so you float above the high school drama. You're just so... so..."

"So what?" Marinette's tone softened.

Damian ran his hand through his hair, ruffling it. The addition of the messy hair added a certain charm to his otherwise polished exterior. "I've been brainstorming for the right word for weeks. The best I can come up with is pure. You don't let yourself become affected by anything in this school."

It was a very flattering description of her. It was also very on the nose. "I'll forgive you, Damian Wayne, but only on one condition."

"What?"

"I want to get to know you, and I have a feeling that you feel the same way."

Damian nodded. "It's a deal."

Maybe her Miraculous Luck wasn't so useless after all. Marinette had expected to go the whole year without making a single friend. Now, it seemed that she might make one after all.

@maribatmarch-2k21

[fanmoose12]

after death do us apart

Summary: Levi thinks his house is haunted.

Levi is in his kitchen, busy with a very important task of measuring leaves for the tea when he hears a loud, obnoxious thud, coming from his living room.

He softly curses, grabs his cane and rushes, as fast as he can with his body not as strong as it was before, there.

When he arrives, he sees that everything else is in order, except a picture frame that is now lying on a floor.

Levi's blood boils, an annoyance bordering on anger rushing through him. This picture - that one that now lies on the floor like some kind of useless shit - is his most priced possession. It is the only thing that keeps the memory of them alive, the one thing that reminds him during cold and dark nights that he might be alone right now, but there was a time where he wasn't.

It's a picture of him, Hange, Erwin and Mike all standing together with their arms around each other. He doesn't remember if that had ever happened, but that's what he had found in one of Moblit's notebook and after he made that discovery, he just couldn't leave it behind.

No picture of them exists - Mike and Erwin were gone even before they found out what a photo camera was, and in her last years, Hange was always too busy to take a single photo.

He regrets it now, not pushing her to take it, but Moblit's picture is vibrant enough. He doubts a photo could capture their essence quite like his sharp eyes and skilfful hands could.

Onyakopon tells him there are more pictures of Hange now. There are portraits made by talented artists that paint Hange as the last Commander of Survey Corps or during her last moments on Earth.

They're hanged in museums and various memorials but Levi doesn't wish to see any of them. He doesn't care about them, those pictures - they were drawn by talented artists, and Levi doesn't doubt that.

But they never knew Hange, not like he did. So how could they come up with something worthy of the light she bestowed on this world? How they could ever hope to put it on paper?

Levi crouches down, his bones and protesting, and picks up the picture frame.

Thankfully, it is still intact.

But just as his old, broken heart swells with relief, there is another thud. This time, the book falls down, nearly missing Levi's head.

He curses again, loud and vulgar, letting out the best of profanities the Underground taught him.

He whirls around, his eye searching for the offender. The room is empty, though. It's mostly silent too, the only sounds flowing around are those from outside his window. But then he hears it, a faint, feeble murmur that sounds almost like "sorry".

His heart clenches, his hand gripping the cane to keep himself grounded.

He knows that particular sorry. Heard many times many years ago - ehen he stumbled over the barely conscious, sleep deprived body, when his shirt got soaked in tea, soup or some kind of possibly dangerous chemicals, heard it repeating over and over as gentle, trembling hands inspected his injuries and wiped away the blood.

It was sometimes accompanied by cheerful, loud laughter, other times - with quiet, broken sobs.

He couldn't hear that sorry. He couldn't.

It was just a trick of imagination, nothing more, nothing less.

I am not old enough to go senile yet, he thinks as he puts the picture where it belongs to.

It was just a trick of imagination, he repeats and leaves the room.

He goes back to the kitchen and resumes his task. The skin on the back of his neck is prickling, like someone stares intently at it, but Levi chases that feeling away, convincing himself that he's simply being paranoid.

He pointedly ignores the quiet sound, the one that resembles a sigh of disappointment and the one he heard too many times too, during long nights at the lab and inside Commander's office, as well.

***

It's not the first weird (unexplained, she would say) thing that happened in his house. There are instances happening all over the place, each of them brings a different degree of strangeness

Windows and doors - close and open on their own volition, lights turn on and off, books, his clothes, kitchen ware - disappear for hours only to appear in the most random of places, bangs and knocks sound at all times of the day, merciless to his sleeping pattern.

Logically, he knows that it isn't normal. He also knows that he probably should talk about it with someone. But he was never good with that thing - talking. All the people he was somewhat comfortable sharing his troubles are now dead and gone.

He theoretically can discuss it with Gabi and Falco, but he doesn't want to, because, well, no matter how big they think they are, they're still children. Onyakopon is out of question too, because he might just get too worried and then send him into that building on the edge of the town - mental institution, he calls it.

And Levi might be old, but he's not senile. Yet.

Probably. He hopes so at least.

His mind is still his own, broken but not shattered. He knows right from wrong, sees the difference between reality and a dream.

He still functions properly, and yet those instances don't back away.

He'd ignore it, write it off as a product of imagination or strange coincidence. If only it happened once. Or twice. Three times even. Three weird happenings in a row is hard, but possible to ignore. But when it happens every damn day, for almost dozen times, it's not just hard to ignore. It's fucking annoying too.

He knows a name he can put to describe it all, of course. Born and raised in the depth of Underground, how can he not? Stories like this were well known and greatly appreciated down there. They were children of the dark, after all, friends with shadows. Everything dark and scary, anything feared above their little world was welcomed and encouraged.

Isabel used to warn him about enraged, vengeful spirits that hunt those who wronged them or those who disturbed their resting place. Kenny - when he was in a less shitty, kinder mood - used to tell him about souls that die without fulfilling their purpose and were destined to roam through the land of the living for all eternity, unable to sleep with their business unfinished.

Before putting him to bed or whenever she felt especially sentimental, his mother used to speak of those unlucky ones who died before their loved ones did.

"They cannot find peace even in death," she said. "And so they come back to our world and stay close to the ones they still cannot let go, watching them until they are able to reunite."

He never believed in those stories, though. Perhaps, he was born and raised in the Underground, but he got out of it, lived his best years with the sun shining on his face and wind blowing through his hair.

He thought ghosts doesn't exist.

But now that his best years are behind him, now that he has seen enough shit to know that anything is possible, now that some days he himself feels like a ghost, he starts thinking of them more and more.

Hange is gone, he reminds himself, she's gone and even though you miss her like crazy, it won't bring her back.

Hange is gone, and none of it is real.

But, god, does he really wishes that it was. *** It is the middle of the night, and Levi feels a presence behind him. It's not ominous like in that book about ghosts he recently found. It's quite soothing, actually. It makes him almost content.

It's not looming or hoovering over his form either. It's right next to him, as though this something - or someone - lays on a bed close to him.

It doesn't bother him anymore, nearly not as much as it did before. It brings him comfort, in some sort. It reminds him of-

No. It doesn't.

The presence behind him shifts and Levi feels the blanket slip from his legs.

No, that won't do.

He tugs the blanket back, but either he's getting too weak with age or that presence, ghost or whatever is so much stronger than him, but he can't get it back. They fight for it for a while, each struggling to get the upper hand. Levi yanks it back, applying all the force that's still left in him, but bears no result. He grits his teeth, sweat gathering on his temples as he pulls the blanket.

"Give it back, you little sh-"

He doesn't get to finish.

The loud, snapping sound of ripping cloth cuts him off.

"Fuck!" Levi yells, frustrated. It was his favorite blanket. "Is this so funny to you, you piece of shit? Why do you keep tormenting me?"

There is a bit of silence, and then lights in his room turn on. With wide eyes, Levi watches the paper levitate from a small pile on his desk. Pen appears next, and it hovers above the paper, the sounds of furious scribbling filling the dark room.

Before he can say anything else, shout more profanities or threaten the invisible fucker to get out (he may not be as strong as he was before, but he has a cane and he still knows how to use it effectively), the paper starts flying, catching him right in the face.

Levi takes it in his hands, squinting his good eye to see what's written there.

It IS funny, but i didn't wish to torment you. You know that, right?

Something resembling a sob escapes from his lips. Levi fists his hands into sheets below him, but eight fingers is apparently not enough to ground him and keep him from falling.

"Who are you?" he asks shakily, his voice breaking.

The pen starts moving again, flying over another paper. This one isn't thrown in his face. It's gently laid next to his thigh. Levi takes it, and his hands shake so much it gets hard to read. Words swim between his eyes, but Levi persists, laying the note on his lap and bending over to see better.

His whole world shakes when he finally deciphers the words.

Haven't you guessed already?

He closes his eyes and some sound escapes past his lips, he's not sure if that can be called a sob or a chuckle, or a combination of both, but his whole body is trembling as he tries to fight strength to whisper,

"Hange?"

From somewhere close to him, on his left side where she always used to be, he hears a delighted, happy laughter.

He looks around the room, his eye shifting, desperate to find her, but he sees nothing.

Fear grips at his heart.

So just a hallucination then? Simple wishful thinking?

"Where are you?" he murmurs, giving it all another chance. "Hange-"

"I'm here," a warm sensation travels up his forearm. It doesn't exactly feel like an ordinary touch would, but it's there, it seems real and it fills his chest with hope. "Right here, a little to your left," she continues. "Just look at me, Levi."

He does, immediately he does. But there is no one next to him. The gentle sensation doesn't fade, gets more persistent if anything, but Levi still can't see her.

"You need to look a little bit harder," Hange murmurs. "If you can hear me, I'm sure you can see me."

Levi stares, his eye focused on the empty place next to him. He strains his vision, moves his gaze up and down, huffs in frustration and then finally, finally, he sees something.

It's vague, indistinct, barely visible in the dark, but he makes out the outline of the body. He can see the mop of brown hair, and they're messy as always, can see strong arms and wide shoulders, that long, prominent nose, that rosy, soft lips that are stretched out in a hopeful smile, those brown, sparkly he missed so much.

"Hange," he breathes out, his voice barely above whisper.

He wants to touch her, god, he wants to touch her so much, but when he puts his hand above hers, it goes right through her.

"The situation is not exactly perfect," Hange laughs. "I don't think you can touch me, and I can't exactly touch you as well."

"I don't care," he shakes his head and moves his fingers, until his and Hange's are close. He doesn't feel much, but something warm is still there and it still makes his breath stumble.

Hange is here, she's not gone, not completely, she's here, with him. It is more than enough.

*** They fall into a sort of routine after that. It's easy with Hange, as it always was.

She disappears for short periods of time, refusing to tell Levi where she goes.

"They asked me not to tell you," she says enigmatically, and doesn't ever elaborate, no matter how many Levi asks.

At first, he still worries he's going crazy, but then Falco, Gabi and Onyakopon show up. They all sit down around the small coffee table in Levi's living room, chatting amongst themselves and sharing the last news and gossips.

"You look healthier," Falco remarks, as Levi brings the tea from the kitchen.

As soon as he puts the cups down, the chaos begins.

The door shuts with a loud bang, the windows rattle and chandelier above them starts to dangerously tremble.

Levi also notes that Hange is careful not to make any mess, but she still acts so damn loud. And dramatic. He hides a sigh as he continues to sip on his tea and watch Onyakopon, Gabi and Falco lose their shit in front of him.

Gabi ducks behind an armchair, Falco close on her heels, curling around her. Onyakopon keeps frantically looking around, his breath quick and shallow. Levi can almost hear the sound of his panicked heartbeat.

"Stop it, four-eyes," he murmurs, too softly to everyone else to hear (not that they could pay attention to him amidst all that clutter anyway).

Everything stills immediately. Silence washes over his apartment, interrupted only by Onyakopon's gasps.

Hange snickers beside him, but Levi is the only who can hear her.

"This was fun," she giggles, running a hand over his shoulder.

Levi can't disagree with her on that one.

"What was that?" Onyakopon exclaims, clutching his heart. "Was it-"

"A ghost?" Gabi cries out, looking both horrified and excited.

Levi glances at Hange, silently telling her 'she looks just like you'. She waves him off and turns back to Gabi.

"Is is the first time it happens?" Falco asks.

"No," Levi answers, shrugging. A week ago, he'd be as disturbed as his friends are, but now he moved past disturbance to acceptance to delight. "It's been happening for weeks now."

"You aren't safe here," Falco, bless his young soul, looks genuinely worried, down to the deep crease on his forehead. "We should look for another apartment."

"Don't bother. I'm quite comfortable here."

Of course, he's comfortable. Hange is here with him, after all.

"But!" Gabi tries to protest, but Levi silences her with a raised palm.

"I'm not injured or unwell," he gestures on himself, as if to illustrate his point. "And, besides, it gives house some character, don't you think?"

"A very scary character," Onyakopon notes.

"Well," Levi almost smiles, hearing Hange's laughter behind his back. "The house is not very different from its master then."

His guests leave soon after, but not before Gabi and Falco make him swear to call them if anything 'more dangerous and scarier' happens.

As soon as they're out, Levi sits down in his favorite armchair. Hange flies over to him.

"So," she looks up at him, and the bright sparkle in her eyes, even though it is still a bit indistinct, sets his heart racing. "Have I convinced you that you're not going crazy?"

He wants to ask how, opens his mouth even, but then promptly shuts it closed. Of course, it is Hange. She knows his thoughts better than he does.

And if he had any doubts about her realness, they've disappeared right in that moment.

*** Hange is almost always next to him, hovering over his shoulder and constantly chatting into his ear. It almost feels like the good old days.

Although now he can't kick her leg whenever she starts teasing or rambling too much. His trademark glare has to be good enough, though.

He brings Hange books and introduces her to all kinds of new technology. She is beaming like a child at every new thing he shows her, and Levi's heart is so full of love for that weirdo, he's afraid it's going to burst.

Hange accompanies him on his strolls too, and his poker face has never put to trial more than during those moments, when Hange starts joking or fooling around, making him almost lose all of his composure.

He can't laugh or even berate her in public, and she knows it, goddamn. And uses it for her advantage, the asshole.

Levi gets his revenge when they're back at his house, refusing to give her new books until she swears to behave.

She swears every time, hand on her chest and all that. And she breaks that promise the very same day. Levi can't stay mad at her, though. He never could.

*** "You know, I thought you were a vengeful spirit at first," he shares with her one evening.

He sits in front of the fire, his legs outstretched to the source of warmth. Hange is laying on the floor, book hovering above her. She closes and turns to Levi.

"I could be," she says. "But, unfortunately, the people I'd like to haunt are long dead as well. Floch is gone, Eren is too..." Hange scoffs, shaking her head. "And I can't very well haunt every bloodthirsty soldier back in Paradise. Too much work for the old, frail me."

Levi lifts an eyebrow. "You don't look that old to me. Especially, when compering with me..."

"Oh, Levi," Hange rises and gets closer to him. She sits down on his lap, and Levi feels warmth spread through the skin of his cheek as Hange puts her hand on it. There is a smile on her lips, the one that Levi knows too well. The one that means that Hange is going to say something very, very stupid. She opens her mouth and proves him right once again. "I was always more attractive than you," Hange murmurs. "Nothing changed since my death."

He rolls his eye and laments that he can't flick her nose.

Hange is still smiling, and when she leans in, he can almost feel a ghost of a kiss on his lips. *** "Don't you ever feel regret?" Levi asks one day.

He is sitting in his wheelchair, looking at the bright setting sun from the small garden near his house.

Hange is on top of him, her long legs dangling from the wheelchair. As he speaks up, she turns to him, and the happy expression turns into something more thoughtful.

"Regret?" she repeats, frowning. "What can I ever regret?"

"This?" Levi gestures around. "I know, you're still here, but don't..." he frowns, struggling to find the right words. "Don't you wish for something more? For us to have a proper chance?"

Hange looks up at the sky, and for a moment she's quiet. Levi thinks if he should take his words back, change the subject completely but it's something that's been bugging him for a long time. He's happy, so happy, that Hange can still be with him. But there are moments when he wishes for... more. To be able to hold her hand and share meals with her, to walk with her through the streets without worrying that someone might think he's some drunkard or lunatic who talks to himself.

He knows it's selfish to even think about it, he already received so much more than he deserved, but isn't selfishness an inherent part of a human?

Sometimes, he just can't help but long for something more.

"I'm sure you know what a method of trial and error means," Hange begins, looking back at him. Her words confuse him, but before he can open his mouth, Hange shushes him and continues. "Remember those days at my lab? Nothing ever worked out, every experiment turned into an ever bigger disaster than the previous one, and I was so frustrated I wanted to crawl up the wall. But there was a certain beauty in it all - I tried, I failed, I tried again. Over and over, until something good came out. And, boy," she chuckles. "When something worked, it worked perfectly. And, maybe, all of this, all of us," she swiftly runs her fingertips through his brow and Levi shivers at the warm, gentle feeling that spreads down to his soul. "As a failed attempt. We tried, it didn't work," she pauses, and her eyes are bright, much brighter than the sun behind her. "We can try again."

Her words stir something inside, a long forgotten feeling of hope. But he still can't accept it so easily, the cynic in him fights to make himself known.

"But you're already dead," he protests.

"And that means this attempt has failed. Not as spectacularly as that time when my experiment blew up and burned Moblit's eyebrows, but... not a perfect success either. We can try again, though. We can say goodbye, walk from each other and then meet again, in some other place and time."

"And what if we fail again?"

"Then we try again. And again, and again, until we can get it right. And when we finally do, oh boy!" she exclaims, flailing her arms into the air. "Wouldn't that be spectacular?"

She laughs, so happy and free, and Levi wishes to gather her in his arms and never let go. All he can do right now, though, is circle his hands around her waist, imagining that he's holding her.

Just like always, he trusts Hange.

They will meet again, and, maybe, it will all fall apart in a disaster worse than this one. But they can try again. They can keep trying, until... forever.

And, perhaps, that's the true beauty of life.

[tennessoui]

when is anakin going to get his revenge and kiss divorced obi-wan back

yes hello this got out of hand and the best moment would be in the hypothetical part two but here is a KUWSK directly post kiss from Anakin's pov. For context, this snippet and this snippet probablllyyyy should be read?

(2.8k, ffs @ kit)

“He was thinking about Satine,” Anakin tells himself after he drops the kids off at school and starts making the drive back home. His hands are tight on the wheel. He’s been trying to think about something else--anything else ever since it happened, but his mind refuses to let go of that moment.

He’s replayed it so many times in the last hour and a half that it doesn’t even feel like an actual memory anymore, just a combination of sensations.

The chill of the almost winter morning that made the hair on his arms stick up. The tacky feeling in his mouth because he had slept a bit later than he had wanted to and didn’t have time to brush his teeth if he wanted to make breakfast before the kids and Obi-Wan left.

The woodsy-spiced smell of Obi-Wan’s cologne, stronger than normal. They’d been standing closer together than normal too, but it had been so early and Obi-Wan’s mind had obviously been miles away.

Anakin had been saying something stupid, something that didn’t mean anything, and Obi-Wan had replied and then Obi-Wan had leaned in and kissed him, full on the mouth. His beard had felt so soft against Anakin’s skin, his lips even softer, if a bit chapped.

Had they been chapped? Now Anakin can’t remember, he’s turned this memory over in his head so often. It had been for less than a handful of seconds. A quick brush of lips, a taste of a life Anakin has dreamt about for well over a year now. And Obi-Wan had just turned and left, as if he hadn’t done anything extraordinary. As if he hadn’t just kissed Anakin on the porch for everyone to see.

Obi-Wan would never be that cruel on purpose. Perhaps to that one profesor who always tries to refute Obi-Wan’s papers, but not to Anakin.

Which means Obi-Wan hadn’t been thinking. He had been perhaps caught up in the domesticity of it all, of having someone wish him luck and see him off. And maybe Anakin has been doing something like that for the last two years, but there’s a person who did that for Obi-Wan for much longer. A person they ran into at the park just two days ago.

“He was thinking about Satine,” Anakin tells himself as he gets out of the car and unlocks the house. He tries desperately to keep the despair and jealousy out of his voice, but at least no one’s around. It’s not that he hates the woman or anything. Really, he doesn’t. He doesn’t understand her, but that’s a given.

He’d never have Obi-Wan’s heart and soul and throw it away. He’d never get tired of fighting with Obi-Wan if he was fighting to stay with the man. He’d never be able to run into him at a park and then just leave again as if seeing him stirred up nothing inside of him.

Seeing Obi-Wan always stirs things up inside of Anakin. It makes no sense that Satine, who had had Obi-Wan’s love--knew all those things about the man that Anakin did not and could not know as just his housemate--had just been satisfied with saying hello and then just as quickly goodbye.

The same cold sinking feeling that Anakin’s been trying to shake off for the last two and a half days returns, and he has to lean against the countertop in the kitchen for a second to ground himself.

They’re going to get back together. They will.

At the park, they had seemed so in their own world, as if everything else had disappeared except for them. Anakin had had to send Luke over, couldn’t stand watching that reconnection happen without at least trying to remind Obi-Wan that he has a family now, that he’s not alone anymore, that there are people who love him.

Obi-Wan had glared at him for his meddling, which hadn’t admittedly done wonders to his confidence. And when Obi-Wan had deposited Luke--Luke--on the ground to chase after Satine, when he had hugged her, Anakin knew for sure.

They were going to lose him.

Anakin had had his set of chances and had taken none of them, and now Obi-Wan’s going to re-fall in love with his ex-wife and Anakin’s going to have to be the supportive best friend who has to figure out how to tell his children that due to unforeseen and tragic circumstances, their Obi is probably going to elope to Paris and maybe send a postcard once or twice a year addressed solely to the children and Anakin will grow old and die alone and the name Obi-Wan Kenobi will be banned from his small, shadowy apartment, and all Anakin will have is a few memories of the two most important and heart wrenching kisses he’s ever been a part of in his entire life.

“He was thinking about Satine,” he tells himself. “He kissed me but it wasn’t about me. It hasn’t ever been about me.”

There’s no denying that Obi-Wan loves Anakin’s children and also no denying that his children love Obi-Wan. Anakin thinks he wouldn’t love Obi-Wan half as much if he hadn’t absolutely been charmed by the kids and vice versa. But he had been. They had been. Those few weeks when Anakin had thought about leaving a year ago had been absolutely awful because he knew he would be breaking his twins’ hearts, not just his. He’d be hurting Obi-Wan too, he had known that.

But he had had to try. Because he knew that if he didn’t try to leave then he’d have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of Obi-Wan’s life when it came time for the man to grow tired of his presence.

It had been a last ditch attempt at saving his dignity. And it hadn’t taken much argument from everyone else to get him to abandon the idea completely.

Now he can’t help but to think he should have put his foot down, gotten some distance. Because now he’s entrenched in Obi-Wan’s world, the same way Obi-Wan is entrenched in his and the twins’ world. Leaving now will feel like ripping himself in two. He’ll probably wake up in the middle of the night five years from now and wonder about the academic response to Obi-Wan’s most recent publication.

He’ll probably have read it. He’ll probably still be fielding questions from his kids’ friends’ parents about whatever happened to that handsome man that used to come in to help during Show-And-Tell Day? Do you remember who I’m talking about, Anakin?

If he had left then, the idea of leaving now wouldn’t hurt so much. But there’s a ticking clock in his head.

Obi-Wan kissed him.

But he was thinking about Satine.

He calls Padme, because that’s sort of what he does when he doesn’t know what to do. She’s never turned him away--with the rejected marriage proposal being the one glaring exception, of course.

Thankfully, she doesn’t start now, though she does sound a little stressed when she picks up.

“Hey,” he says trying to sound normal and as if he isn’t a few minutes alone with his thoughts away from crying like a baby.

“Ani?”

“Are you--are you busy? Something sort of happened.”

“My flight is boarding,” Padme admits, but there’s a rustle on the other end of the line like she’s just sat down. “But it’s not like I’m not assigned a seat. They won’t leave without me. What happened?”

Anakin smiles in spite of himself. She’s really just such an angel of a person.

“Are the children alright?” she asks, sounding worried the longer it takes for Anakin to respond. “Ani?”

“No, yeah, the children are fine. I dropped them off at school this morning. But. Um.” He takes a deep breath. “Obi-Wankissedme.”

“I’m sorry?” Padme asks.

“Obi-Wan kissed me.”

The other end of the line is silent. “And we’re calling this a problem now?” she asks faintly. “Is he a bad kisser?”

“He’s a great kisser,” Anakin defends, shifting awkwardly on his feet, catching sight of the fridge door and quickly turning away.

“Then I don’t…?” Padme trails off uncertainly. Anakin can understand this confusion. Padme has only had to hear about how much Anakin wants Obi-Wan to kiss him for about two years now.

“I don’t think he realized he did it,” Anakin confesses. “He just did it as he was leaving. Because I said goodbye. It--I don’t think he realized who he was kissing.”

Now Padme sounds a distinct mix of skeptical and sympathetic, a tone Anakin’s only ever heard her use with him. “What makes you say that?”

“Because--because we went to the park the other day and he ran into his ex-wife and they were together for, for years so--so obviously he just--he wasn’t--it wasn’t me he was kissing. He was thinking about Satine.”

The words sound dull and practiced and lifeless.

“Oh, Anakin,” Padme says.

“And they’re probably gonna get back together, and we’re going to have to leave, and he’ll never know that I--” Anakin cuts himself off and thunks his head on the countertop with a groan.

Padme hums disbelievingly. “Anakin, I know you’ve never believed me when I say this, but that man is gone over you. And I think if he kissed you long enough for you to tell me for certain that he’s a good kisser, then he definitely knew he was kissing you.”

Anakin bites his lip and debates the pros and cons of being completely truthful. But he had called Padme for help, and she can’t provide the best advice if she doesn’t know the full story.

“That’s not the first time he’s kissed me,” Anakin finally admits, rubbing bashfully at the back of his neck.

“What?” Padme exclaims, probably much louder than appropriate for a public space. “Anakin Skywalker, explain yourself right now.”

He exhales forcefully. “Last New Year’s Eve party.”

“That was almost a year ago! And nothing else ever happened between you two? What? We always thought that once the first kiss was out of the way we’d need to beat you both with sticks to keep you off each other.”

“Well--wait, who’s we?”

Padme tsks. “Myself and Obi-Wan’s coworker.”

“You’ve been gossiping about me?” Anakin asks, torn between being flabbergasted and offended.

“That’s not important right now,” Padme says airily. “What’s important here is the fact that you apparently kissed Obi-Wan Kenobi and never told me?”

“He doesn’t remember, okay?” Anakin snaps. “He. We’d been drinking. A lot. It was after everyone left. And. I was in the kitchen and he was in the kitchen and he--”

--had pinned him to the front of the fridge and just looked at Anakin for a few seconds like he was the most precious, important thing in the entire world, and Anakin had opened his mouth to say something and Obi-Wan had--

“--kissed me,” Anakin says out loud. “And then he--”

He had pressed impossibly closer to Anakin, one hand wrapped around his hip, caressing the thin skin there while his other hand ghosted down Anakin’s hair and back as if he couldn’t decide where he wanted to touch, as his tongue mapped out Anakin’s mouth for what could have been seconds or minutes, and Anakin could have stayed there forever, but his own hands had grabbed too tightly onto Obi-Wan’s shoulders, must have jerked him forward too roughly, because he had been pushed away and--

“--threw up in the kitchen sink,” he finishes.

There’s dead silence on the other end of the line before Padme bursts out laughing. “Okay, okay,” she says once she’s calmed down. “But how do you know for sure he forgot about that? Sounds like something he might just never want to talk about if it ended up with him vomiting in the kitchen.”

“I just know,” Anakin promises. And he does. Obi-Wan had no idea about that kiss. It was a secret Anakin thought about too often, but one he had kept to himself for nearly a year, too afraid to reveal it to Obi-Wan only for the man to say he hadn’t meant to, it hadn’t meant anything, he’d been much too drunk.

Even the idea of Obi-Wan apologizing for one of the hottest kisses Anakin’s ever experienced in his life has been enough to keep Anakin silent on the matter.

But now he’s been kissed again, this time by a sober Obi-Wan, and it still--it still doesn’t mean anything.

“It didn’t mean anything to him then, or he would have remembered,” Anakin tells Padme. “And this one doesn’t mean anything either. The timing is just...it can’t be a coincidence, Padme. He’s never once thought about kissing me, about...about coming home to me like that, and now, a few days after he runs into his ex-wife he’s suddenly planting one on me as he walks out the door? I know--I know you think he...he might...he might have liked me, or...or wanted me, but. There’s no way I can hold a candle to a decades long marriage. I just. I can’t compete with that. He doesn’t want me to.”

Padme’s Anakin is cut off on her end by what sounds like a flight attendant. “Yes, I’m coming,” Padme tells the person, and there’s shuffling and then the distinct sound of the harsh beep of the ticket scanner, before Padme’s heels are clicking on the flight tunnel. “Do not rush me,” Padme tells someone. “What are you going to do, close this thing while I’m in it?”

Anakin has to hide his only sort of watery smile in his hand as he listens quietly on his end.

“Anakin?” Padme asks, and she must be on the plane because there’s a buzz of other people’s noises around her. “Anakin, I know you won’t believe me, and maybe--maybe you’re right and they’ll get back together, maybe you’re going to lose him.” Anakin’s heart hurts quite painfully at these words. “But do you remember what you did the first time you proposed to me and I said no?”

Great, yeah. Just bring up all his biggest failures in love. Sure, why start with Padme? When Anakin had been five he had tried to kiss a boy and been shoved into the mud for his efforts. That’s a fine place to begin, really. Just drag up all the old hurts. He sighs. “I went and got you a bigger ring.”

“And do you remember what you did when I told you that I couldn’t raise the children, but my parents wanted to?”

“I threatened to take them to court if they didn’t let me have them,” Anakin says. It hadn’t been his proudest moment, of course, but Padme’s parents had never really liked him. They still don’t.

Someone’s trying to talk to Padme on the other end of the line. “Yes, fine,” she snaps. “Anakin. Anakin, what I’m trying to say is I’ve never seen you give up on anything without at least trying to fight for it. And I don’t know why this should be different. You won’t be able to live with yourself if you have to watch him get back together with his ex-wife and know you never even tried to tell him he had other options.”

Anakin opens and closes his mouth, speechless. “Then what--”

“So go,” Padme cuts him off. “Go tell him he has other options! For fuck’s sake, yes, alright I’m getting off the phone. Anakin, when I land I expect to have a very detailed account of events waiting for me on my email. Goodbye.”

She hangs up. Anakin stares at the phone in his hand for a handful of seconds, thinking over what she’s said. What she’s implied.

She’s right, of course. Anakin never gives in this easily. He doesn’t fully understand why he’s so ready to capitulate now. Maybe he knows full-well he can’t compete with whatever Obi-Wan had with his ex-wife. They have history. They grew up together, became adults together. Anakin’s just this weird twenty-eight year old man with a pair of kids too old for his age who crashed at Obi-Wan’s house during the lowest moment of his life. Of maybe both of their lives.

Love can’t bloom from that. Not really. Not...not the sort of love that turns into a lifelong marriage.

But. Padme’s right. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he doesn’t try. If he doesn’t know for sure.

So either he could putter around the house all day waiting for Obi-Wan to text or call or come home, talking himself into and out of confessing every emotion he’s harbored for the man for the past two years, or….or he could drive to his campus and confront him in his office, put himself on the execution block and hand Obi-Wan the axe. At least it would be a quick death.

He glances at the digital clock on the oven. 9:38. The idea of waiting ten hours for a resolution makes his skin crawl.

And besides. 

Obi-Wan hadn’t packed a lunch.

[drosera-nepenthes]

A Royal Recluse: Princess Clotilde

Just at the time when, in consequence of the weakness and folly of the republican government, certain French Monarchists are looking to Prince Victor Napoleon Bonaparte as the possible savior of their country, the Prince, whose marriage to Princess Clementina of Belgium recently brought him before the public, was watching by the deathbed of his mother, Princess Clotilde of Savoy, who breathed her last on June 25. The story of this royal lady is a pathetic one and, apart from the interest that is attached to her as the mother of the imperial candidate to the French throne, her personal character was one of rare beauty.

She was the daughter of Victor Emmanuel II, first King of Italy, and of Adelaide, Archduchess of Austria, and was born at Turin on March 2, 1843. Her mother died in 1855, leaving five young children, of whom Clotilde was the eldest, the others being Humbert, the future King of Italy ; Amadeo, Duke of Aosta ; Maria Pia, the queen dowager of Portugal, and a son who died in childhood. The Queen of Sardinia (Victor Emmanuel had not at that time laid violent hands on the independent states of Italy) was an exemplary wife and mother, and her orphan daughters were carefully educated by the attendants whom she had placed about them.

Never was a princess more ruthlessly sacrificed to political interests than the eldest princess of Savoy. When a mere child of sixteen, Clotilde was chosen to cement the alliance between France and Sardinia, and was promised in marriage to Prince Napoleon Jerome, nephew of Napoleon I and first cousin Napoleon III, the reigning sovereign. Princess Clotilde was connected with the Bourbons, her very name was French and was given to her in memory of the French Princess Marie Clotilde, sister of Louis XVI, who married a King of Sardinia ; but allied as she was by close ties of blood to the Bourbons, she had nothing in common with the Bonapartes who occupied their place, and a more ill-assorted couple never existed than the middle-aged, violent, cynical and free-thinking Prince Napoleon and the daughter of the most ancient royal house in Europe, who traditions and surroundings were strictly conservative and religious. Their marriage took place at Turin on January 30, 1859. The bride was sixteen and the bridegroom thirty-seven. He had a handsome presence and was intelligent and well informed and well informed, but neither his private life nor his freely expressed opinions on public matters made him estimable or lovable. His attitude with regard to his cousin, the Emperor, was one of constant opposition, and it was reported that his anti-religious views led him to take part in the banquets organized by a group of free thinkers on Good Friday. Under the Second Empire the French Government was officially Catholic, and Prince Napoleon's hostile and aggressive attitude was pronounced ill-bred, if not worse. Throughout France he was distinctly unpopular.

The young bride, married to this unsympathetic nephew of the great Napoleon, probably had few illusions as to the sum of happiness that awaited her in her new home. There are still some old men living who remember her when she took possession of the Palais Royal, Prince Napoleon's Paris house.: a slight, pale girl, with fluffy, fair hair and bright eyes, not pretty but singularly attractive. Her high breeding stood her in good stead in the somewhat parvenu atmosphere of the Court of the Tuileries, she had a royal dignity all her own, and her simplicity of heart was combined with much quiet firmness. From the first she ordered her life according to the principles in which she had been educated. An early riser, even at the Palais Royal, she gave much time to prayer and to works of mercy, but her piety, says M. Emile Ollivier, a former minister of Napoleon II, “never made her tiresome or intolerant. She believed that the most useful sermon was the practice of the virtues that are taught by faith.” Her husband, although so widely apart from her, acknowledged her goodness. “Clotilde is a saint,” he sometimes said ; “if there were many like her, I believe I myself should end by becoming devout.”

When the disastrous war of 1870 brought terror and shame upon France, the Princess was in Paris. During that fatal month of August every day came news of a fresh defeat, and the revolution that was to break out on the 4th of September was already distinctly perceptible; the infuriated and terrified people made the imperial government responsible for the reverses that so keenly wounded their patriotic pride.

Princess Clotilde was alone at the Palais Royal ; her husband was with the army, her three children she sent to Switzerland, where Prince Napoleon had an estate; but she steadily refused to leave Paris while the Empress Eugénie remained at the Tuileries. There was not much personal sympathy between the two; it was Princess Clotilde's feeling of loyalty that chained her to the post danger as long as there was a semblance of imperial government in Paris.

In vain her husband wrote imperious messages bidding her join her children at Prangins; in vain her father sent the Marquis Spinela to Paris to escort her ; the Princess so yielding in everyday life, was unbending in her decision to remain at the palace as long as the lonely woman at the Tuileries was the nominal ruler of France ; she had shared the splendors of the Empire, and it went against her noble spirit to desert the Empress.

The letter this young woman, a stranger in a strange land, wrote to her father on August 25, 1870, has been quoted by the French papers. It is a right royal letter worthy of the daughter of kings:

“I am a French woman,” she says. “I cannot desert my country. When I married although so young, I knew what I was doing and if I did it, it was because I wished to do so. The interest of my husband, of my children and of my country require that I should remain here. The honor of my name, your honor, my dear father, and that of my country also demand it. Nothing will make me fail in what I believe to be my duty to the end... You know that the house of Savoy and fear have never gone together, and you would not wish that they should meet in my person.”

At last, when the Empress was driven from her palace by the mob, the Princess considered that she was free to follow, but how different was the departure of the two women!

The brilliant and beautiful sovereign, closely disguised, was only able to leave Paris owing to the assistance of her American dentist, Dr. Evans; her young cousin made her exit as a princess. In an open carriage, accompanied by her lady in waiting, she drove to the railway station in broad daylight. The excited people, awed by her courage and dignity, saluted her as she passed out of their sight, a truly royal and saintly figure.

Princess Clotilde lived for some years at Prangins, near Geneva, where she devoted herself to the education of her three children; then, when her husband was allowed to return to France, the difficulties of her married life were such that by mutual consent she retired to the Castle of Moncalieri, near Turin, with her young daughter. Here, in the home of her childhood, she spent nearly forty years. They were years of peace, largely marked by sorrow. Four times only did she emerge from her retreat, once in January 1878, when she heard that her father lay dangerously ill in Rome. She had suffered cruelly from the spoliation of the Holy See by the house of Savoy, and the remembrance of her father's part in the matter prompted her to fly to his bedside. On the way she heard that he was dead, and she sadly returned to Moncalieri. In 1891, she again started for Rome, this time to visit her husband, who lay dying at the Hotel de Russie. Those who saw the Princess during those solemn days can never forget her sweetness, earnestness and gentle patience. What passed between her and Prince Napoleon none can tell, but Cardinal Mermillod a frequent visitor to the sick room, professed himself satisfied, after two private interviews, that the dying man was fully conscious. The Princess, whose married life, it is well known, had been a via crucis, remained near him to the end, praying incessantly for the soul that probably owes its salvation to her intercession. Again in 1903 and in 1904, she left Moncalieri to visit her sister-in-law, Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, whose deathbed she attended.

Her life, as it neared the end became more and more that of a recluse. Her sons lived their own lives in Brussels and in Russia; her daughter, having married a Prince of Savoy, was near to her, and their visits, occasionally brought an element of joy into the silent castle. Last autumn, Prince Victor Napoleon's marriage to the Princess Clémentine of Belgium gladdened his mother's heart. It was celebrated at Moncalieri, and to those who attended the ceremony the most striking figure present was the slight, gray-haired lady, plainly dressed in black, whose eyes had the far-away look of those who are nearing the eternal shore. Even in the days of her youth Princess Clotilde's spirituality struck M. Emile Ollivier. It gave her, he says a singular insight into all questions that touch on right and wrong; she possessed the gifts of the true mystics, “who judge human affairs with a clearness and rectitude born of detachment.” Her chief link with the outer world during the long, silent years of old age was her love for the poor, to whom she gave royally, with a loving kindness that made her gifts more precious. Their grief was great when they heard of her death, and their prayers will follow her remains to the royal mausoleum of La Superga, near Turin, where the daughter of the Sardinian Kings sleeps with her ancestors.

America. United States, America Press, 1911.