#THIS HEALING PROCESS HAS ME SEEING VISIONS OF GOD HERSELF

[xo8ball]

i was meditating and contemplated life so hard i saw god. shes big and kind and her hair and skin are made of stars and her dress is made of flowers and she took the light out of me and showed it before my own mortal eyes and told me i have to keep loving and i should take my own time and be patient with my healing. my reiki counselor was absolutely floored by how i described these visuals.

[mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune]

Adam Gets World's No.1 Worst Peepaw Shirt (2024)

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[Note: Please Click On The Drawing To Make It Bigger In Order To Read The Purple Words Better On Peepaw Adam's Shirt, and the speech bubbles from those who are speaking.

and incase it might still be a bit hard to read what Peepaw-Adam is saying here is what he is saying in the drawing: "What does this shirt say..? I can't read it Upside-Down. it was a Gift from a "Earth Angel Princess" who calls herself "The Eveningstar Princess" Whatever that means. but she is my Alternate Counterpart's Descendant-Granddaughter, who is also a Descendant of both Cain & Seth, as well as King David and King Solomon as well as King Solomon's Son, Rehoboam. man, sucks to be her, how unlucky is she to be the descendant of King Solomon! but at least she can be thankful to be My descendant! well, that OTHER me's own descendant anyway. man, the words on this shirt is VERY long, it must talk about how AWESOME I am."....despite what he might think, it doesn't talk about how Awesome he is. XD lol ]

Credit for Hazbin Hotel goes to Vivienne "Vivziepop" Medrano & SpindleHorse

Credit for Transformers goes to Hasbro & TakaraTomy

Credit for Transformers: Prime Series goes to Jeff Kline, Alex Kurtzman, Duane Capizzi & Roberto Orci

Credit Transformers Animated Series goes to Sam Register & Matt Youngberg

Credit for Steven Universe Series goes to Rebecca Sugar

Credit for Cuphead goes to Studio-MDHR

Credit for Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt goes to Gainax

Credit for Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts goes to Radford Sechrist & Bill Wolkoff

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I regret nothing...

and I think Ficto-Peepaw Adam deserves that shirt.

Cuphead is trying not to laugh, and Steven knows how bad it will be if Adam finds out what that shirt says, possibly thanks to Garnet's future vision.

also, I like idea of Knockout being Steven's Cybertronian Guardian and Knockout could of started out as Steven's Guardian when Steven was just a baby, and it being Rose who was the first out of the Crystal Gems and Other Humans besides Greg in Beach City that saw the good in Knockout, and Garnet was the second to see the good in him and Amethyst was the third but it took Pearl a lot longer to fully trust Knockout.

also Kipo in this, is a future version who still has part of her new hair style from the epilogue but this version of Kipo grew her hair longer and might be around her mid-20s and is married to a unknown spouse.

Sari in this drawing is 23 years old but close to becoming 24 years.

or she could already be 24 years old.

and yes, I am the "Eveningstar Princess" and "Earth Angel Princess" who gave that Adam the shirt. XD

I am Cain & Seth's Weird Descendant Granddaughter, Long Live The Divine Feminine Revolution and for it's Healing and Recovery!

we should put a protective barrier around the Earth to stop the Negative and Toxic energy from the Toxic-Masculine energy through, and only allow the positive Masculine energy through.

it might be able to help both Omni-Mom and the Divine Feminine heal even more if all Earth Angels worked together to form a protective barrier so that the Feminine part of the Earth can heal properly...and the whole two certain Masculine sides crossing the line with their fight is not helping in the recovery process.

Lucifer and Samael still ain't the boss of me, no matter which one of them is Cain's Dad...

also even if not everyone has to agree to it but respect my new view of belief...

but I'm still going to believe in both God/Heavenly-Father & Goddess/Earthly-Mother...

and I rather not have some Toxic-Religious jerk from before, make me feel really bad and cry and throw those misused words they threw me before...I'm still gonna hope I don't run into that Toxic-Religious Jerk again...that still might count as religious trauma, which could be second to any past life Toxic-Religious Trauma...

I guess it was a little surprised that fans were right about that Adam from Hazbin Hotel, being THE Adam...which means he is like a Alternate Counterpart of the one that was from here...

which still makes that Adam from Hazbin Hotel, "The First Peepaw"

don't know if Cain will appear in that series or what he would be like.

but no matter the Multiverse, he is still Grunkle-Grandpa, along with Seth being Grunkle-Grandpa...at least the descendants they had married each other many generations later...is that correct...?

they don't need to be marrying too close to the tree...

the descendants of the early generations that were descended from Seth and Cain, would have to have different DNA from another Paternal and Maternal source and they would have to still marry into different bloodlines to different humans in order for the descendants of both Seth and Cain back then, were to marry each other...because it would mean they would be hardly be closely related so there will be no possible problems with the future offspring.

which I'm glad to be a "Purple Blood" rather than a "Blue Blood", yeah being a "Blue Blood" is like another word for Royalty but given that is true, but I'm glad that some of my Ancestors are both Royal and Non-Royals, and I don't want to be called a blue blood, but instead a purple blood. :)

also even if ya can look to the situation with Cain and who his bio-dad is, either it be Samael or Lucifer, and it being like the same situation in a Hazbin Hotel AU's Fanon Timeline....with Adam being the Step-Dad of Cain...

it would still make for a good Jerry Springer comedy, but instead of Jerry, it's some guy named Perry who has to talk to both Eve and the possible fathers of Cain, and even have the Step-Dad Adam there as well...

I wouldn't be surprised if Adam and Eve from Hazbin Hotel are divorced, like for all we know, Eve could of left him like around early 202X.

Adam could act like it never happen and could be in denial that both of his two ex-wives Lilith and Eve left him...

which would serve that Peepaw Adam right, that's what you get for being a selfish, egoistical, toxic-masculine jerk.

I think it could be interesting if it turn out Cain and Charlie were half-siblings, which would mean that Lucifer from that series was with Eve first before he and Lilith fell in love...

like Eve and Lucifer had to have a mutual break-up, because they knew they couldn't truly be together because one of the reasons being Adam...and at some point Lucifer meets Lilith, falls in love again, but for all we know Lucifer could still have feelings for Eve as well.

and yeah, like the shirt that Adam is wearing points out...

Abel should not be around Fluffy-Babies, and if ever tried that "offering" stuff with my first or second cats (my first cat is no longer with us and had passed away a few years ago, and I was lucky to get my second cat when they were still a little kitten.) I would go Feral Earth Angel on him.

and like I said before, if those at the vet did anything wrong with my second cat or like if they weren't taken there on time...

if I had the power to, I would start Omnigeddon...

like in theory it is like Armageddon but FAR and way worse...

lucky it might not be thing...but yeah the thoughts of wanting to start Omnigeddon did come to my mind if anything bad happen to my second cat when they had to go to the vet and they had to have surgery.

also there could be better ways to spiritually offer food even if it is meat to like both the Heavenly-Father & Earthly-Mother...

like having to cook it, and serve it with fruits and vegetables and eating it with friends and family...

and also spiritually sharing it with both the Heavenly-Father and Earthly-Mother...

and yeah, I'm still going to view both Abel and Cain being in the wrong, but Cain only got far worse because of bad parenting and his depression getting far worse and reaching a very dangerous breaking point...

and if anyone needs to be redeem at Charlie's Hotel, it's both Cain and Abel.

oh, and yes Steven is holding a cellphone to talk to Knockout and one could view that Steven is whispering so Adam doesn't hear him.

anyway hope some like this Crossover Fanart.

and once again, when it comes to giving Ficto-Peepaw Adam that shirt, I still regret nothing. XD

[witchfall]

down in the dark

confession.

Set post-EW, Izzie and Alphinaud find themselves in incredible trouble. This is what happens when you wait for the perfect moment. You get this, instead: cauterizing wounds and terrors in the dark. Kisses that taste like blood.

(Set in one of Izzie's wolverses, this time as a Viera with another fellow Viera WoL, Noel Kisne. Taken straight from doodle writing with my friend! About six years have passed from the start to ARR to the end of Endwalker, approximately. Izzie is about 2 years older than the twins.)

---

Izzie moves his blood-stained, starlight hair from his forehead and gazes down at him, like she can absorb the very concept of aetheric healing by staring hard enough.

She'd learned the very basics from Raha, but she'd be worthless without a focus, anyway, and Alphinaud's are nowhere to be seen. Not that she could work her mind around those finicky things in a pinch. Not without practice.

She could kill him without meaning to, if she tried.

All because she naively thought...well, he'd always be there anyway, wouldn't he? He or Noel or Raha. She hasn't the patience to be a healer, she always thought. But maybe what she doesn't have is the grit.

"Okay," she says. Her heart is pounding so hard. "Okay. What do we do. We're not supposed to take out stabbed things, I'm pretty sure, but you clearly can't move with it in there." She's rambling aloud. It's the only thing stopping her from lying on the floor and sobbing. "But what if I wrap you tight enough?"

"Might not be enough." He watches the ceiling, though its nothing but murky black beyond their orb of light. "...you're going to have to cauterize it."

Her heart stops beating for a moment. Cauterize. Burn him shut.

She can't. She can't. She can't see him scream in pain because of her. What if it didn't work? What if it was for nothing and her last vision of him was him passing out from pain and then promptly bleeding out? What kind of person would that make her? She might as well just throw herself from the edge of Azys Lla.

"Okay," she says, voice lifeless. "I'll do it."

A bizarre part of her laments that she would be the reason he'd have a scar on his side for the rest of his life.

"Izzie." Her name, just her name, full of questions. His voice reminds her of broken glass and it makes her heart hurt, over and over and over. "You can leave me here and find the way--"

"I'm not godsdamned leaving you, you stupid idiot! I'd rather die!" All of her emotions feel so close to the top.

She doesn't notice his hand make its way to her face, her skin wet and sticky with tears and blood. "Then...it will be alright. Won't it?"

How can he be the healer in this situation, even now? She was supposed to catch him. She promised. She nods into his hand. His fingers are slick with sweat and blood and dirt, leaving streaks on her temple. She knows what he's telling her. This is her choice. She has to make it, and be strong, and move. Always, that is her burden. She wills her hands to stop shaking.

"Tell me what to do," she says.

And so she burns him shut.

It's impossibly risky but they do it in one move. Using a similar aetheric process to how she manages her shots, Izzie heats the shrapnel as she pulls it out.

She is sure she will hear his pained scream in her nightmares. At the very end, he passes out. Her heart stops beating, even as she by rote tears fabric from her fine new skirts and begins wrapping it around his middle, shirt pushed up so she can see.

She ties it off. He still doesn't move. Don't think about it.

She straddles his body, keeping her weight upon her own knees, and she leans over his face, her hands curled into his collar.

"Alphinaud. Please wake up."

A moment passes. Two.

His eyes flutter open, even as his mouth bends into a grimace. Her hands fly to his face again. She leaves more bloodstains.

"Oh, my gods, oh, seven holy hells, Alphinaud, I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry, I--"

"It's alright," he says, impossibly. "I'm here."

And in a flutter of emotions and fears and relief, she leans down and kisses him right on the mouth.

He tastes like blood and sweat, and she pulls away before it can become anything more. But the light in his eyes changes -- brightens from their daze. He searches her face, over and over and over.

Why...did she do that?

"Can you move?" she whispers in the dark.

"I won't be fast," he says. She senses some joke, hiding in the depths of his painful grimace. "Long legs or no."

"That's why I'm here." She tries a bawdy grin, but all she can taste is his blood.

---

They rise together, shaking legs and groans of pain.

Alphinaud's arm around her shoulder tightens so hard she has to bite her cheek to distract from new pain. Her arms circle his chest, doing everything in her power to try and keep some weight off his major injury.

Her aetherotransformer hangs off her hip, casting them in a pool of light.

"Is the silence..."

"Not yet," he says through gritted teeth. "It may not. Until we find the others."

Her head is at his collarbone. She leans into his body, and for a fleeting, stupid moment, she thinks about burying her face in his shoulder and sobbing until she can't breathe anymore. Thinks about absorbing the essence of him like it might also take away his pain.

"I'm sorry," she mutters again. In answer, his hand tightens around her shoulder.

"I will never regret it," he says, unusually short-winded.

Sure. But she might regret the need of it, she thinks to snap. What is she in his life, but a source of pain?

And then, impossibly, the darkness on their skin loosens like sifted dirt. Like rain is falling, and they are cleansed...

She takes in a breath. She hadn't realized how short it had been, until she could finally expand her lungs in full. No corruption left to be found.

"They did it," she whispers. "It's over."

His body sags slightly in relief. Her body screams at her, but she would take all of his weight, should he need it. It was the least she could do. It was the least that she owed.

And so they scan about the room, looking for any possible exit.

They search for long enough that they have to sit in exhaustion, still curled into one another's side, certain that without the other they'd collapse.

They sit facing the one lead they could find in the bizarre, too-smooth room. The closest thing to a closed door: the signs of a failing seal in the wall.

Gods above.

Noel will find me, Izzie wills. I know she will.

They sit in silence for long enough it becomes maddening.

And then Alphinaud decides to break the silence by asking: "Did you mean to...did you...mean to--"

"Kiss you?"

Might as well put it out there. His returning silence is answer enough.

Except its not. He never could leave well enough alone. "Because I simply wish to, ah, follow your lead and I would be fine to...I mean to say that I..."

Some part of her finds it hilarious that this is how they are having this discussion. But it's better than sitting scared and exhausted in the dark -- if only barely.

"You'd forget it if I asked," she says.

"If you asked." His voice is quiet. Unreadable. Diplomatic. "Things...happen in the heat of emotion and battle and I wouldn't hold it against you."

Does she want that? Would it be better for him if he did? Her fingers drift to her lips, even so. How does she feel about it? Why did she do it?

"You're..." Ridiculous, she wants to say. Insane. "I don't kiss people just on a stupid whim." Except she literally just did. So that's a lie. Or. Is it?

Her own reaction, however, is smothered by the way his body almost jolts just a smidgen straighter. His eyes meet hers, shadowed by his matted hair, and the wide openness of her face makes some deep part of her keen.

"Really?" he asks.

She nearly laughs for the foolishness of it. "What is that supposed to mean?"

She's not prepared for him to lean down and kiss her back.

Soft. Blood, still, always there, and her own tears, yes -- but a gentleness that makes her tear up. Fleeting as the connection is. Just their mouths touching, really, is all it is. He knows even less about kissing than she does.

But when he pulls away, she finds herself stunned, anyway. "Why did you--"

"You tend to appreciate evenness in these things."

"...Alphinaud." She turns away and stares at the sliver of light in the wall. She hates how well he knows her. Hates the comfort of it in a moment like this, where she doesn't think she deserves it. She is torn between laughing at him and crying. "I'm...you don't have to...do that."

"I need to tell you something important." No. No. Not in the dark in Azys Lla, no, that is not how this is supposed to go. She stiffens under his arm and in response, he loosens his grip on her. But she returns it ten-fold. No, she thinks. You don't get to leave me like this, either. So he barrels onward. A shield wall running forth. "I understand the pressure this statement will put on you," he says, at least now the shadow of his orator self. "But I would never hold it against you, no matter what, and I will never...I could never..." "Just fucking say it." "It will only ever be you, Izzie. Only you. I am not sure there could ever be anyone else." She closes her eyes, heart in her throat, buoyed by fear and...and... "You don't know that for sure," she says into the dark. "...what?"

Shadows pass behind the door, or is it her imagination?

Is it...could she... An idea forms. A wild, insane, crazy idea. Anything to get out of this discussion, right now.

"Look," she says. "I'd rather die than live in a world where you aren't somehow mine. I mean, with me," she says.

She ignores the way his breath catches in his throat, the way his whole body tenses beneath her, not from pain but from...whatever this is. Ignores it, and presses on.

"So that means I have to get you out of here safely. So we can talk about your future properly."

"...but not also yours?"

"I don't think that far ahead," she lies, brazen. "I have a stupid idea. But I think it will get us out of here."

[ddarker-dreams]

FINALLY SOMEONE SAID THE TRUTH.

I admit that i enjoyed act 3 but it feels like really rushed i have so much complain with that.

The build up until act 2 was so good it give us so much premise but the final blow si meh. Sorry that i want to share thing long rant with you

1. Why the final talk is with yae, no offense to her but we need ei to explain not to mention she witness khaenriah downfall so she can give us more information, i feel like they do it for the plot armor so they can just keep dragging this

2. So many things that quite inconsistant, the shogun is show no mercy to anyone that even did a little thing outside what she think its right, how come she can still have a talk with signora, when sara is falling like that, and also there is no clarification about sara right now.

The traveler was so done at first they refuse to help thoma and ayaka at the beginning. But they seem so happy and forget everything how come they are not RAGE ( okay maybe this is to bias and personal) when this nation provide nothing about our siblings information and also why they are not mention anything about their problem in ei stroy quest. Its nonsense! She is right in front of youu, ask about your siblings, ask about khaenriah, ask about ukmown god!!. How come they can just forget like that. Also mihoyo really waste the potential about twin things i thing ei will give us so much help bcs of the sympathy that we both rn lost our twin but noooo.

3. Kokomi seem lost some brain cell, she make a very succesfull grand intro but she become meh in act 3, how come a great strategist like her let the sus sponsorship slip just bcs they are desperate, not to mention her screen time is really small and her role seem so unsignificant and it feels lile she is a plain npc.

4. The awesome world quest that we have done doesnt get any mention at all! Inazuma owe us so much with cleansing sakura, thunder sakura, tatarigami, obarashi quest. It has so much potential that yae or ei or anyone else aknowledge what traveler has been done but nooo.

cracks knuckles... i suppose it's time for my promised dissertation. interestingly enough, you touched on a lot of the main issues i had with chapter III.

i think that if i had to pin the main issue, it's a lack of overall cohesiveness? we were jumping all over the place without the chance to ever flesh things out. inazuma is a smaller cast, but i feel like we didn't get to see any of them shine. since i'm most interested in the genshin characters, i'll break down my problems by going over everyone and their (lack) of impact on the story.

was ayaka not questioned or placed under suspicion for being close to thoma before his escape? i wanted to see her broken up over her duties as they relate to the yashiro commission, paired with having someone she genuinely cares about in danger. it would've been an interesting struggle if she was forced to choose one or the other. instead she just kinda took a back seat.

speaking of thoma, i don't even have anything to say, because he just... was there? for .0001 seconds. said "lol this sucks ig" and that's about it. i know we're going to get a story for him in the future since he's a 5* but i'm not getting my hopes up 😭 then in the raiden shogun's character story, man is peachy keen! be upset with the raiden shogun! have some inner conflict! even if it's just using loaded language because he's under surveillance for going against the raiden shogun, that'd be so cool. saying something like,

"Traveler, what's with that expression? Oh please, there's nothing to worry about. We're under the Statue of the Omnipresent God's protection. Nothing bad has ever happened here." *wink*

i also don't know what to say about gorou. he was... there....... i think. what is he fighting for? what are the stakes for him? what makes him place so much trust into kokomi? i'm out of things to say about him because i don't remember anything he did or said.

kokomi... oh kokomi... i was so hyped. so excited. i thought that maybe we could see a foil to the raiden shogun. that she'd have a moment where she's forced to realize, just like her opponent, sacrifices must be made that will hurt people who will never understand why she made them. or maybe something to show her military prowess. but instead she just accepts a mysterious patron's help (?), sees her people aging like the grateful dead from JJBA, and goes oh well. that sucks. what can ya do. oh bye traveler i guess, good luck with that. ????????????? HUH... similar case to thoma where she's gonna get a character story but like. she won't be the leader of the resistance anymore. that was her whole shtick. they took her shtick away. also she forced me to interact with more NPCs whose names i've already forgotten so i'm tilted about that still.

KUJOU SARA... AN INJUSTICE. A DISGRACE. a slap to my woman loving face. the build up was there. yae miko's comments about sara probably knowing the tenryou commission is involved in shady dealings, but is choosing not to think about it. sara being forced to confront reality and challenge her adopted father with the truth. being able to blaze a new path for herself in the process. when she started running to the raiden shogun i was ultra hyped up. sara, a devotee to the shogun for so long, was about to see her god interacting with the same people who led inazuma to this awful state. how would she react? would she stay ignorant, like yae miko so coyly said, choosing to look away in favor of following her god's footsteps? or would she be forced to recognize the raiden shogun isn't as divine as she once thought, and challenge her belief system?

we open the door to see the raiden shogun. the loading screen ensues. the camera pans to the ominous room, clouded in darkness, hinting at the ominous confrontation that is to come. the music takes a serious timbre. and then...

well fuck that potential character arc i guess. (we still don't know what sara made of any of this since she poofed out of existence from the story at this point)

kazuha also was handed a similar treatment. we've been with him for a while longer now. he is our introduction into inazuma, the one who first gets us emotionally involved by regaling us with the bittersweet tale of friendship that led him to becoming a wanted criminal. a kind soul who loves nature yet was dealt a cruel hand by fate, forced to watch his home nation turn into a hostile place, where his dear friend ultimately perished as a result. we get the scene with his friend's vision lighting back up. he parries a block from the raiden shogun, in the same area where his friend was killed by her. the parallels. the drama. except this time, he wasn't too late. he protected the traveler where he "failed" to protect his friend in the past. did he feel redemption at this? or was it a bittersweet reminder of what could've been?

WELL i guess we'll never know because we didn't get to talk to him again 😭 idk who got a bait and switch worse, him or sara. jesus christ mihoyo.

then we have signora. why is the raiden shogun talking to her? does she know about the gnosis being taken, and if she doesn't, what was her plan to get it from the archon? what does she think about scaramouche? and oh, okay, we're fighting here now. good fight + god tier music. pog pog. okay, now we've beaten her up, and raiden shogun wyd— wait no not signora her lore is still on CUPS not YET raiden shogun and— ah she's dead. okay. non nerds who didn't read artifact lore are going to know nothing about her. signora has such an interesting story, and yet... well. ok.

then we get raiden shogun redemption (?) arc. i was hype for this as well, though at that point, idk why i bothered being hype. i knew they were gonna do a cute power of friendship something or another, and i'm good with that, so long as it's executed well. what i was envisioning was like seven different buffs to correspond with the seven different visions, the dreams of those whose ambitions were stolen serving as the spear to penetrate the raiden shogun's heart of stone. maybe a hydro vision giving us extra healing for a time, with the voice acting over it being like,

"Even if the rest of the world forgets us, let our will carry you through this one final time. Succeed where we couldn't, Traveler."

so on and so forth.

but instead we got— you get the idea at this point. why bother spelling it out anymore.

at that point i was surprised the raiden shogun didn't go "oopsie woopsie!! we made a fucky wucky!!!" because that was the vibe i was getting. i love ei, don't get me wrong, but i wanted to see her challenged with what she had done to inazuma in the past year. maybe meeting NPC #2345259 who lost her sister to the vision decree or something, reminding ei of the love she held for her sister... being forced to come to terms with the extent of what she's done in pursuit of eternity.

anyway. please for the love of god mihoyo hire better writers for the main story. that is all i ask. thank you.

[whythinktoomuch]

stranded in memory

It’s not clear how Lex has managed to pull it off, but he did; he got into Supergirl’s head, and he did it quite literally so as to achieve it quite figuratively, and now Kara Danvers might be lost forever. 

It’s after the second attack—the second time Supergirl storms into the DEO to demand, where are you keeping them?—when they first notice the ugly scar at the base of her neck. 

Red and angry, poorly healed despite living on Kryptonian skin. 

No one manages to get close enough to examine it though, what with Supergirl tearing through metal walls and burning down entire facilities to conduct her frenzied search. 

But whatever it is, the mechanism embedded in her skull has somehow made it so that Supergirl can look Alex Danvers right in the eye and strike her down with heat vision for masquerading as her sister. 

The resulting burns forcibly put Alex on bed rest despite extensive, swear-riddled protest. 

“It appears that Kara’s retained all her memories, but none of ties to reality that would allow her to recognize you,” Brainy concludes to the comfort of absolutely no one. 

“Well, is she even Kara anymore then? Shouldn’t we approach this like we would any other threat?” asks one lone agent, subjecting himself to Alex’s absolute unmitigated fury in the process. 

Lena keeps her distance at first. She’s seen the damage:  

her penthouse somehow upended, 

countless conference rooms and offices at L-Corp torn apart, 

the entirety of National City scrambling for cover as Supergirl makes reckless use of all her superpowers. 

And she knows that Supergirl must be looking for her too. Lex wouldn’t have done any of it, without the guarantee that Lena would end up coerced into direct involvement. It wouldn’t be worth it otherwise. 

And so, she locks herself away in an underground, lead-lined panic room, built for such an occasion. 

Because... well, if it’s true that Supergirl almost killed her own sister, how could Lena ever hope to survive the encounter? She wasn’t even on good terms with the Supergirl that would remember her in the first place.  

But then, things grow darker and even more dire. No one’s died yet, by some unbelievable stroke of luck, but there have been many close calls. So many that the city has started losing faith in their own Girl of Steel. 

And Supergirl has been winding down, slowly but surely, her physical condition unable to keep pace with her inner drive. It won’t be long before some branch of the government or another successfully shoots her down, but there’s only one that will never go for the kill shot. 

So, Lena finally resurfaces and joins forces with what’s left of the DEO, and gets to work on a kryptonite-powered snare. It almost works. 

Supergirl flies right into the trap, immediately twined by thick cords of sickly bright green wrapping around her body. She starts thrashing against her bonds, growling out warnings in a dead language whenever anyone tries to get close. 

"Okay, this isn’t working, guys,” Dreamer says, after her third attempt and subsequent failure to grab hold of the wrists tied behind Supergirl’s back. “She’s still too strong.” 

But at the sound of Dreamer’s voice, the red disappears from Supergirl’s eyes. She sits up, startled, and calls out, “Nia?” 

They’re all overwhelmed with relief then—Supergirl, and maybe even Kara, included—because at last, Lex’s device seems to have worn off.

But when Supergirl turns around to greet Dreamer, finally face to smiling face, a darkness sweeps back over her features. “You,” she says, her tone strangled with bitterness. “Who the hell are you, and what did you do with Nia?” 

Dreamer frowns, utterly baffled. “Kara, what are you talking about? It’s me... Nia.” But she takes a step too close, and Supergirl headbutts her into the ground. 

A brawl ensues, and Supergirl manages to throw everyone off her and escape by way of ungainly, lumbering flight, still bundled in kryptonite laced restraints against all impossibility. 

They find the mangled contraption some miles away in pieces. 

Nia’s head is very bruised and somewhat concussed, but she thankfully emerges from the medical bay relatively unscathed. 

Ultimately, Lena’s the one who figures it out, by repeatedly asking for the play-by-play of the failed capture and then reviewing the body cam footage for further research. There’s no way to know for sure, of course, but time is definitely running out, with Supergirl now facing an entire fleet of military aircraft armed with kryptonite. So, Lena takes her findings and rushes onto the scene. 

Supergirl is making her last stand, forced into a final corner with her back against the wall, eyes still blazing with heat vision. Until she hears a familiar voice crackling in her ear, the DEO comms whirring back to life. 

“Kara?” calls the voice, and Supergirl becomes a statue, breath stuttering, almost unwilling to believe her own ears. “Kara, can you hear me...?” 

“Lena...” Supergirl says her name like a prayer, a slight tremor starting up in her legs and traveling all over. “You’re okay? Oh god, you’re okay...” 

Everyone starts yelling then—Alex and Brainy and Nia, nameless stiff-lipped military men trying to secure a clear shot at the fallen hero—but Lena heeds none of it as she walks onto the battlefield. Supergirl whips her head around, regarding her approach with suspicion. 

“It’s still me,” Lena says through the earpiece. “Right now, I’m just in the lexo-suit for my own safety.” 

“I... I can’t see your face...” 

“I know, Kara. I know.” 

Lena, now firmly in the way of anyone who plans on taking aim at Supergirl, stops just a few short steps away from her. “Okay, I need you to trust me now, Kara.” 

And Kara, the Girl of Steel now fallen to dust, starts to cry. “Something’s wrong, Lena,” she says. “Something is so terribly wrong with me, and I don’t know what to do...” 

“I know, and it’s going to be okay,” Lena says, her own emotions sealed away behind purpose. “But right now, I just need you to trust me. Do you trust me, Kara?” 

Kara nods right away, one hand roughly swiping at her eyes. 

“Close your eyes.”

Kara draws back, shoulders stiffening, a bright red gathering in her gaze. 

“Kara, it’s still me,” Lena tells her gently. “I can come to you, but you just need to close your eyes first.” 

“Why?” Kara demands. 

“Do you trust me?” 

Kara’s eyes run all over the sleek design of the lexo-suit, swallowing hard when her x-ray vision can’t breach the surface. “It’s you?” 

“It’s me, I promise.” 

Kara shuts her eyes, disappearing the threat of heat vision along with the darkened blue of her sunken gaze. Warnings come flooding through Lena’s earpiece from well-meaning almost friends, but she gets out of the suit anyway. The tell-tale hydraulic hiss of the lexo-suit opening brings a low rumble to Kara’s chest, but her eyes still remain shut tight.   

“All right, Kara. I’m right here, okay?” Lena says, and Kara struggles to keep her eyes closed at the sound of her voice, now unfettered by technology or static. “No, you’re okay, Kara. Everything’s going to be okay. I’m right here.” 

Lena repeats the sentiment a few times as she approaches Kara in a careful stride. The closer she gets, the harder Kara breathes, teeth gritted and grinding in frustration. 

“Hey, I’m here,” Lena says once within reach, and Kara’s hand shoots out, catching Lena around the wrist. It’s a painful grasp, but Lena grimaces her way through it. “It’s me. You can tell... right?” 

“... Yes,” comes the trembling, grateful answer. 

“Your mind’s playing tricks on you,” Lena explains to her, still soft, still gentle. “Lex did something to your brain, and... you’re just having some trouble trusting what you see right now. But we’re going to fix it, okay?” 

“Okay.” Kara squeezes her eyes shut even harder, and finally lets her hand slip off Lena’s tender, bruised wrist. 

As Lena starts unwinding the scarf from her neck, she lets her eyes roam all over Kara’s face; she’s never been quite this close before. It looks a little different at the moment, somewhat worse for the wear. Deep creases in her strong brow, lips worried and worn, ash and blood of innocent bystanders smudged across one cheek, and her eyes... fluttering, but firmly shut. 

All it would take is one blink, Lena realizes. One look, and she could very well lose her life in Kara’s arms. 

Kara’s breath hiccoughs when she feels soft cotton wrapping around her head, smelling of Lena’s sweat and perfume, and covering her eyes. And all at once, she’s surrounded by the people she loves. 

Alex embracing her and tugging her to safety, whispering words of regret and forgiveness into her hair. 

Brainy and Nia patting at her shoulders, squeezing her hands, as they offer all sorts of affirmations. 

But Kara reaches out, blindly and yet somehow all too aware, and manages to snag the hem of Lena’s shirt. She gently, desperately tugs Lena closer. “You’ll stay with me?” 

A warm hand carefully undoes Kara’s grip on the shirt, inviting it instead in a tangled grasp, both firm and comforting. 

“Always,” Lena says. 

(next part here)

[zafirosreverie]

Can I request a Agatha x reader where there in west view and its the final battle (but let’s pretend there having it on the ground) and Agatha gets distracted by something and isn’t ready so human reader stands in front of Agatha and takes the blast so then Agatha goes full on witch and like almost kills Wanda and then goes a takes reader home and heals her. Happy ending please.

Sorry it took me so long dear! But here it is! Hope you like it <3

Harkness or Y/L/N? (Agatha x Fem!reader)

Where the fuck were they?

One second you were having breakfast and the next one hell exploded in front of your face. Agatha and Wanda broke out of the floor and quickly disappeared in the sky. Red and purple magic wrapping them. You blinked and looked at the giant hole in your house. You could see your basement from there. Oh no. Agatha must have revealed herself to Wanda. 

Oh shit.

You ran out of the house, looking at the sky, but you couldn’t see any of them. This was bad, really bad. 

“Y/N!” you turned to see Tommy running to you. 

“Tommy! What happened?” 

“Mom and aunt Agnes are fighting! There are soldiers and dad is fighting another dad but white” he quickly said and you frowned

“What the-”

“Billy said to come for you” he said, taking your hand and not giving you time to process it all. 

A second later you were in the park. You gasped. People were running away, soldiers were entering Westview, Vision flew away with White Vision, Geraldine Monica had Billy against herself, protecting him, and Wanda and Agatha were in the middle of everything, throwing magic balls at each other. 

Chaos.

You ran to Monica, holding Tommy’s hand. She sighed in relief when she saw you. She thought something had happened to you for a moment. 

“What’s going on?” she asked 

“The hell i know?” you said and turned to look at the two witches. “They’re going to destroy everything if we don’t stop them”

“How?” 

“Why is aunt Agnes attacking mom?” Billy asked and you frowned.

“She’s not. Mom’s the one attacking her” Tommy said before you could answer. See? This is why he was your favorite.

“It doesn’t matter” you said “We need to stop them. Now” 

“How?!” Monica asked again. 

You looked around, trying to come up with a plan. You knew that you could calm Agatha, convince her to take this fight to another place, somewhere with no people around. 

“Ok, here’s the plan. Do you think you could stop the soldiers?” They nodded “Good, I’ll try to talk with Agatha, maybe i can make them stop at least for a moment. That should give you enough time to take everyone out of here”

They nodded again and ran to fight. You took a deep breath and turned to the witches. Agatha was powerful, but Wanda was furious. You didn’t know what the hell happened between them in the basement, but it wasn’t good. 

“At least they’re not flying” you thought. It would have been harder to stop them if they were.

One of Wanda’s power balls made a building fall and you gasped. There were people under it! They could die! But a purple smoke stopped the concrete pieces in midair, giving people time to run and escape unscathed. You smiled to yourself. At least your girlfriend wasn't completely evil after all (Not that it mattered, you'd follow her to the end of the world even if she was). 

But it seemed that the other witch didn’t care, using the distraction to attack Agatha.

It all happened too fast. You saw Wanda’s angry expression and the giant ball of red energy forming between her hands. Agatha wasn’t paying attention. You ran to her instinctively, yelling her name. 

You screamed in pain as the red ball mercilessly struck your body, sending a wave of electricity through your veins and raising your body temperature significantly.

In other words, you were burning alive from the inside out. And hell it was painful.

Wanda gasped as you fell unconscious on the floor. Where the hell did you come from?! But she wasn’t the only one staring at you in disbelief. Agatha not only heard you yelling her name, she also felt your pain when you took Wanda’s attack. 

“Y/N!” She ran to you, kneeled beside you and tried to wake you up “Please, love, don’t do this to me” she begged you. 

Wanda was still in shock. She didn't want to hurt you! You weren’t supposed to appear out of nowhere just to help Agatha of all people! She knew you were her girlfriend, but she assumed you would change your mind when you discovered Agatha’s real colors. Little she knew, you were a huge fan of that color palette.  

“Ags” you whispered and the witch sighed in relief, hugging you close to her chest. You felt her heart racing. 

“Why did you do it? You shouldn’t have done it. I could have lost you” she was almost crying.

“Because I love you, silly” you smiled. You were too weak, but you managed to caress her cheek “Aggs..”

“Yes, love?” She asked, confused at the smirk that was slowly appearing on your face.

“Unleash hell” you said before closing your eyes again. 

The witch gasped and you knew she thought you were unconscious again, but you weren’t. You waited until she let you on the floor carefully, and heard her steps getting away from you, to open your eyes again. 

Wanda took a step back when Agatha turned to her. Her eyes weren’t blue anymore, not even purple like the first time she used her magic in front of her. They were completely black. There was no trait of white in her eyes, as if she didn’t have eyeballs at all. And then there was the purple glow again, coming out from the darkness. 

“What-”

“You shouldn’t have done that, little witch” Agatha interumped Wanda “You Really. Shouldn’t. Have.”

Before Wanda could do anything, a purple smoke swallowed her. It was strange, because she didn’t feel much power coming from it, but looking at Agatha’s lifeless eyes, she knew she was in trouble.

Vision, Monica, Billy and Tommy turned to the women when Wanda screamed of pain. Agatha was just standing there, your body lying on the floor behind her. Wanda was trying to attack her, but every time she threw a spell, it would hit the purple dome Agatha put around her and then hit her back with more strength. 

Monica took the twins away while Vision flew to the witches. She knew what was happening. 

Wanda was slowly killing herself.

You smirked. Damn your girl was hot. You felt bad for Wanda for crossing paths with an angry Agatha, but well, she tried to kill her, and that’s something you wouldn’t forgive. Nobody touches your witch.

When the younger witch fell to her knees, too tired and injured from her own spells, Agatha smirked. She felt Vision floating to them, but she didn’t even turn to him while she put a dome around him too. At least the android knew better and didn’t try to attack. He knew it would just come back to him.

“When your little wife wakes up” she said to Vision, but kept staring at Wanda “be sure she understands how lucky she is. Tell her how thankful she must be. Thankful that my precious Y/N has a bigger heart than any of us together and that she loves those children of yours. Because that, dear Vision, is the only reason i won’t kill her.” 

With that, she released the android. He just nodded and watched as Agatha made the dome around Wanda get smaller and smaller until the purple smoke was wrapped around her. She threw one last ball to Wanda’s head and the witch fell unconscious on her husband’s arms.

“If she ever places a single finger on my girlfriend, ever again, i’ll kill her without a second thought” she warned Vision, her eyes still black. The man nodded again and flew away with his wife. 

You smiled as Agatha approached you and took you in her arms. Her eyes slowly turned back to normal when she noticed you were awake. She couldn't believe you. You knew! You knew the power you had over her.

______________

Three days after that, you were still in bed. Agatha had taken you back home, your real home, and quickly healed you. It didn’t take much time and almost all your physical wounds were gone. But your head was still hurting like hell. So, of course you would make a drama out of it. Currently, you both were lying in bed.

“I love you” you whispered and took Agatha’s hand “Please remember that”

The witch smiled and kissed your temple. “I love you too”.

“Please take care of our beloved son. He might be a bunny, but he can take over the world, Aggie. He can”

“I have no doubt of it, Y/N” she giggled and rolled her eyes.

“You know what’s my biggest regret?” you asked, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer to you

“What?” she asked, trying so hard not to laugh.

“that my gravestone is going to say Y/N Y/L/N and that’s unfair” you pouted.

Agatha lost it and laughed. God, you were so cute. 

“That’s your name, love” she chuckled and kissed you softly. You smiled against her lips. 

“Yeah, but it shouldn’t be” you argued. 

“First of all, stop being so dramatic, you’re perfectly fine, you’re not going to die” she said “second, what in the world should your name be then?”

“Y/N Harkness” you answered without hesitation. 

That made her freeze and you laughed as her cheeks slowly turned pink 

“Or maybe yours should be Agatha Y/L/N, haven’t decided yet. It’s hard to take such big decisions on your deathbed”

“S-shut up” she mumbled and you laughed again, kissing her head. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead by now?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be grateful I'm not?” you said, loving her grumpy face “besides, I’m not leaving this world until i make sure my gravestone will say Y/N Harkness” 

“Your name won’t change until i make sure you’ll stay with me forever” she said, taking your head on her hands.

“Deal” you said, kissing her again. 

__________

“Which one do you think he’ll like better? Señor Scratchy Harkness or Señor Scratchy Y/L/N?”

“Y/N, I love you, but it's 2 a.m, go to sleep, I’m begging you”

“Señor Scratchy Y/L/N is it then”

“The hell it is!”

[scapegrace74-blog]

New Ways of Turning Into Stone, Chapter 7

A/N  For anyone waiting patiently for this chapter, I apologize.  Somewhere in the midst of writing this story, I fell out of love with it, making it very hard to find the inspiration to finish. I’m too stubborn to abandon it, though, so here is the final chapter.  The good news is the angst fest is over, for the most part.  Slight reference to child trafficking in the past.  Thanks to everyone who read and interacted with this story!  This final chapter is entitled A Dragonfly in Amber.

The whole story can be found on my A03 page.

Eighteen Months Later

The breeze off the firth was picking up, and Claire wished she’d grabbed a  jumper before leaving her flat.  She spent a lot of time these days looking back at the million decisions that made up a life, aware of their path as though they were footprints visible to the eye.  Where once missteps would have inspired judgement or shame, she could now chart their passage with a certain measure of peace.

A rare free Thursday brought her to a seasonal market in what was otherwise a car park overlooking Edinburgh Castle.  With no specific objective in mind, she wandered the stalls of fresh produce and locally made crafts, meandering but purposeful.  A jar of raw honey and a half-dozen blueberry scones made their way into her tote bag before she stopped at a store selling beautifully woven woolen goods, thinking that she could perhaps invest in a shawl.

Lifting the various offerings from where they were displayed, something caught her eye.  Beneath the many-patterned pile of wool stood a beautiful wooden chest, its heft and patina speaking of its craftsmanship.   It had been painted in a rusted umber, the shape of a dragonfly elegantly carved into its solid lid.

“Tis lovely, is it no’?” a soft lilt startled her from her trance.

“Yes, very.  Is it for sale?”  She had no idea why she’d asked.  Her flat was crowded enough as it was and frivolous purchases no longer within her budget.

“Alas, no.  Twas an anniversary gift from my man.”  Perhaps seeing the disappointment register on her face, the woman added, “I can give ye the card o’ the man who made it, at least.  Ye’re no’ the first tae have admired his work.”

Claire’s hands shook slightly as the shopkeeper sought out the card, an eerie sense of premonition settling over her.  Sure enough, the familiar names leapt into relief as she accepted the woman’s offering:

Lallybroch Furniture Design

James Fraser, Proprietor

***

The afternoon and evening passed in a blur of obligations and routine.  It was only as she settled into the peace of her own bedroom that Claire allowed her thoughts to return to the business card tucked safely into her wallet.  

She’d known Jamie was still in the city.  While she’d resisted the urge to seek him out a thousand times, she couldn’t stop herself from searching his name on the Internet.  A harmless indulgence, she rationalized, and one that assured her that he was well, his business going from strength to strength. Despite the capitol’s tight-knit community, however, their paths had never crossed.  Until now.

Was it a sign?  Long Ago Claire paid no heed to such foolishness, but that was before a chance encounter spun her life one hundred and eighty degrees, sending her down a brand new path.  Now she accepted these memos from the universe with humility.  Tomorrow, she would go looking for Jamie Fraser.

***

Jamie heard the jingle of the bells above the door, even over the mechanical whirr of his sander.  Unbending and blowing a sweaty curl off his forehead, he admired the intricate scrollwork of the custom hutch that was his latest commission.  It still amazed him to watch his visions take shape before his eyes.  If life hadn’t slapped him hard across the face, knocking him far off course, he might have spent the rest of his days unaware of the gift that resided between his hands.

“Took ye long enough, Geordie,” he called out to the footsteps approaching from the door.  “Where’d ye go fer the varnish, Glasgow?”

There was a pause, and an eerie sense of premonition settled over him.  Today was going to be the day.

“It’s not Geordie, it’s me.  Claire.”  He’d thought of her voice each day for the past eighteen months, and yet he hadn’t been able to summon its exact timbre: sonorous, precise, with a smoky finish like well-aged whisky.

“Claire,” he replied to the universe, summoning her by name before he even turned around.

Sawdust motes danced in a sunbeam descending from a clerestory window, illuminating the mahogany in her curls.  She was everything he remembered, and so much more.  The nacre of her skin, now dusted with cinnamon freckles.  The topaz of her eyes less fierce, more open, and overwhelmingly anxious.  The tight line of her jaw was less defined, her once whippet-thin figure filled out into plush curves.  Overall the impression was one of softness, of willing vulnerability.

“The door was open,” she explained needlessly, her eyes drinking him in hungrily.  He wondered what changes she read on his surface.

“It’s... uhhh...” his voice wobbled painfully, “it’s good tae see ye, Sassenach.  How have ye been?”

He hadn’t trusted himself to seek her out since Maggie’s death, understanding that they both needed time to heal.  It didn’t stop him from zeroing in on every glimpse of brown curls, nor from reading wedding announcements with an invisible fist gripping his throat.  If it was meant to be, he counselled himself, they would find one another when the time was right.  And now she was here, standing in his workshop and more lovely than his zealous imaginings.

“Good,” she replied, eyes meeting and then sheering away from his gaze.  “Really good.  Busy.”  She was gripping the strap of her handbag like a parachute cord, and he couldn’t help glancing at her left hand, selfishly relieved to note it was still bare.

“I, ummm, I saw one of your pieces.  At the market yesterday.  Not for sale, of course.  The woman offered me your card, so I thought, you know, that I might...  You’re really very talented, Jamie,” she prattled nervously.

He blushed, delighted by her praise.  “I thank ye, Claire.”  To taste her name in his mouth, so long forbidden, was intoxicating.  He would never tire of saying it.

“And yer work?  Tis Friday.  Are ye taking a well-deserved day off?”

“Oh, no.  I’m not practicing anymore, Jamie.”

He froze, horrified.  Of all the scenarios he’d played out in his mind, he’d never imagined her anything but a doctor. It was too much a part of who she was.  A familiar sense of oppressive responsibility crept over him.  If he’d somehow caused this to happen...

“Sassenach, no...” he whispered.

To his utter confusion, she laughed, merry and bright as the bells that had announced her return to his life.

“It’s alright, truly.  I, well, a lot has changed since last year,” she explained, a glimmer of something coy transforming her face.  His wame sunk into his feet.

“Ye’ve met someone.”   A statement of fact.  Punishment for wishing for something that wasn’t meant to be.

Her spritely laugh rang out again, increasing his pain.  He felt the old, habitual hardening around his heart, and fought to keep his breath steady.  No matter how much it hurt, he owed it to Claire to listen to her joy.

“In a manner of speaking.  His name is Fergus, and he’s eight years old.”

Startled, he stared into her upturned face, trying to read the truth in her features.  A hand, delicate but strong, took his own.  He held onto it like a lifeline as she told her unlikely tale.

Shortly after their last meeting, Claire had been walking through Grassmarket when she’d been jostled by a running figure.  It was only upon righting herself that she realized she was without her phone.   Giving chase, she eventually cornered the thief down a blind alley, only to realize that it was a young boy, unkempt and malnourished.

Rather than turn the pickpocket in, Claire had negotiated an exchange: her phone for a four-course meal and the story of how a boy of his age, with a heavy French accent no less, had come to live on the streets of Edinburgh.

“He was trafficked, Jamie.  A group in Paris were keeping him and other orphans in a brothel.  When they came to transport them, Fergus escaped.  He hid in a lorry, and this is where it brought him.  He had no coat, no money, hardly any English, but he’d been surviving on his wits for six weeks before I found him.  I can’t bear to think what might have happened to him had we not crossed paths that winter’s day.”

“Christ,” he swore, thinking of his own nephew, and what he wouldn’t give to protect the lad’s innocence.

Claire went on to describe the painstaking process of reporting Fergus, whose real name was Claudel, to the authorities without allowing him to be deported back to France and into the waiting hands of the very people he had escaped.

“There was no formal steps to follow, no real resources I could rely on.  I ended up filing for adoption, because it was the only way to keep him safe.  In the beginning, he needed all my attention.  He had no formal schooling and had to learn English in a hurry.  He suffered from terrible nightmares.  I transferred all my patients, shut down the office, but I assumed it was only temporary, until he felt more secure and could go to school with other kids his age.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Fergus isn’t the only trafficked child in Scotland.  I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do whatever I could to protect every one of them.  So I quit.  I’d made some contacts at ECPAT in London, trying to sort out the mess with Fergus’ immigration paperwork.   I called them up and offered my services on a part-time basis.  A former pediatrician with experience in grief counselling.  They couldn’t accept fast enough.  So now, when I’m not busy being Fergus’ mom, I’m the executive director of ECPAT here in Scotland.”

“Christ,” he repeated.  “Sassenach, I’m...  God, ye’re an amazing woman.”

It was her turn to blush, glancing down to notice that their hands were still clasped, fingers woven together like thirsty roots.  They were standing toe to toe, breathing in harmony.  Jamie smelled of pine, a sharp sweetness that seemed to cling to his body.  She dared a look upwards and found his gaze locked on her mouth.  Oceans stormed in the depths of his eyes.

“You’ve got a little...” she reached for his jaw, “...a little something, right here...”  Before she could dislodge the fleck of sawdust trapped in his auburn stubble, Jamie’s whole body surged forward, their noses practically bumping.

“Sassenach...” he beseeched.

“Yes?”  Wispy, fluttering wings of hope surrounded her.

“I’ve bided as long as I can.  May I please, for the love of all tha’s holy, finally kiss ye?”

A tiny nod, a murmured assent, then their lips took up the conversation that had begun so many months before.  There, in a dusty workshop at eleven o’clock on a Friday morning, the last obstacle that stood between them came crashing to the ground.  In its place came warmth and certainty, a candleflame of cherished possibility. 

[sugarcubetikki]

Bitter Beginnings

Summary:  Despite reaching home, the only thing that Anne can seem to think of is Marcy Wu.

Notes: True Colors absolutely destroyed me and I had to write something to pour my emotions into. Besides, I wanted to explore Anne's reaction to this fully. She saw one of her best friends who she’s secretly in love with being STABBED right in front of her eyes. Like, how the hell is she meant to process that? Regardless of her being home or not, that has to have an IMPACT.

AO3

When Anne used to picture returning home, she’d always assume that the first thing she’d do was run straight into her parents’ arms, engulf them in a hug, whisper in between tears how much she missed them, how sorry she was for disappearing like that and with the gentle reassurance that everything was going to be fine.

But nothing was fine.

She was back home. Finally, back home. She’d been picturing this perfect moment for months now. She’d been expecting this wild rush of euphoric frantic emotions when she came back. She’d been expecting to scream out loud in joy and cherish everything around her.

But what she wasn’t expecting was this.

What she wasn’t expecting was this lone feeling of pain that throbbed within her.

What she wasn’t expecting was this disastrous entrance. She knew nothing was close to perfect. But this was even worse than she could’ve ever imagined.

What she wasn’t expecting was this feeling to crash back into Amphibia. And it was for all the wrong reasons. The things she dreaded the most.

What she didn’t expect was sobbing amidst the familiar signs of shops and streets. Things she couldn’t cherish. Things that just hit her with even more nostalgia. Even more grief.

The Plantars held her in their arms steadily, a gesture of comfort, she appreciated it. But it couldn’t heal her pain. And onlookers stared with their phones, snapping pictures at her pain, under the assumption it was all part of a façade, that it was all just an act. A silly little acting gig. With the frogs as people in costumes. And the tears of the girl in pain just being a raw talent for charades.

No. No. It wasn’t a façade. It was all real. God, she wished it were a façade. She wished that all she’d been through was just a terrible nightmare. But she couldn’t refuse to face reality. Refuse to face the truth. And invent her own silly adventure inside her head.

Unlike the girl who’s name she was screaming. Clear in her ears.

“Marcy!” She yelped one more time. She felt Hop Pop squeeze her tighter into the embrace each time she yelled the name. “Marcy!”

Her sobs grew louder and so did the commotion of the onlookers. More and more came to watch, dropping coins, she’d just about had it. And it appeared that Hop Pop could see that.

“Alright! Alright! Gig’s over!” He turned to the onlookers and gathered the money they had thrown into his hands, stuffing them into the pockets of his oversized trench coat. After being blasted onto the car of a nice family, they had given him that coat under the tangle of many excuses they believed.

After the applause and tossing of coins, the crowd began to subside, Hop Pop wrapped the coat around her, it was warm, nice, consoling in a way. It also shielded her agony from pedestrians on the street.

“Do you want to take this somewhere else?” Hop Pop gently whispered into Anne’s ears.

Anne contemplated for a moment, before staring blankly at the ground, the place vivid in her head: quiet, small, and full of nostalgia.

“Yes.”

---

“It’s still strange that you humans don’t eat bugs.” Hop Pop commented as he took bites into his strawberry ice cream with much discomfort.

“Their digestive system is too sensitive.” Polly muttered, pushing her own chocolate ice cream aside in protest.

“Meh.” She blandly replied, taking another long bite into her mint chocolate chip ice cream, lounging her head onto the surface of the table.

Any other time, she’d have complained at Polly’s comment, or cracked a joke about how the roles had been reversed. But she didn’t really feel like it. At all.  

“This was Marcy’s favourite flavour.” She simply stated.

The Plantars froze in dead silence.  

“She wouldn’t eat any other flavour. I mean, she would talk about trying something different each time. Act all indecisive, analysing which choice would be the best.” She chuckled half-heartedly and felt that painful pang in her heart. “But she would always pick this one. Always.”

She gazed fondly at the ice-cream, the overwhelming grief rose to the surface again, and her eyes building up with tears again.

With a slight stifle, she turned to glance at the walls of the ice-cream parlour. Butterfly-patterned walls. Oh no.

“Sh-she loved b-butterflies.” She said shakily, tears rolling down her face. “Th-that’s why I d-designed her a butterfly costume for the battle of the bands…b-because sh-she l-loved them.”

A loud sob escaped her mouth, and she buried her face in her arm.

Hop Pop’s comforting hand once again landed on her head, brushing her hair in an assuring manner.

“Anne.” His voice drooped as he merely said her name. Nothing following it. Neither a ‘it’s all going to be alright’ nor a ‘we can fix this’.

Because it wasn’t alright. They couldn’t fix it.

How the hell could they fix Marcy getting stabbed like that?

Right in front of their eyes. Right in front of her eyes.

“I c-could’ve s-saved her. I COULD’VE SAVED HER.” Anne’s voice went from a frail sense of longing to a shriek in pure anger. Her breaths and sobs grew heavy, she felt herself shivering as Polly and Sprig rushed over to hug her again.

“Anne, please. Don’t put this on yourself. You’ll regret it.” Hop Pop warned.

“No! Hop-Pop! It’s the truth. I couldn’t help her! I had to watch Andrias pierce that sword through her chest without being able to anything! The strength of the portal held me in place. I couldn’t move!” Anne’s voice grew louder. There weren’t any customers at the parlour on a Tuesday morning, and no staff was at the counter as they were having lunch. They were on their own. Alone with their agony. “She knew it! Okay! I saw it in her face! She knew she was a total goner! Yet…y-yet…the o-only words she managed to say in th-that m-moment w-were…I’m sorry for everything…before…b-before…dropping dead to the ground.”

A harsh silence hung thick in the air.

All of them froze at the reminder of the moment. She watched the devastation dawn over the Plantars’ faces, before pulling away from their grasp, straightening up. Her vision blurred with tears as she stared at the melting mint chocolate chip ice-cream.

“Sh-she didn’t deserve th-that.” Sprig meekly said as he blindly fell back into his own chair. “Sh-she was nice, smart, sweet and despite what she did…she was good to you, Anne.”

“I-I know.” Her voice cracked in response.

“She let me into super cool facts and information. That you guys would think I was too young to understand! I liked how she didn’t think like that. When I asked her why she’d tell me all this, she said young was the best age to gather knowledge.” Polly murmured as she squeezed against Hop Pop firmly.

“She w-was very open-minded. Liked a lot of stuff and had an incredible nature to persevere ahead.” Hop Pop added. “She absolutely didn’t deserve that…but…Anne…don’t put it on yourself.”

“I-I s-still c-could’ve s-saved her though.”

“I could’ve saved Sprig and Polly’s parents too!” Hop Pop burst out and the tense cloud in the room grew thicker at the mention of their parents.

“Hop Pop- “Anne began meekly.

“Don’t! Don’t! Anne, we keep tying the grief we face on ourselves, try to go back and see how we could’ve stopped it, but the truth is…w-we d-don’t know what else to do. We don’t know how to get through this. Or how we could’ve.”

Hop Pop’s words broke something out of her chest that she didn’t even know was there, leading her to wail once more.

“I-I d-don’t know what to do, Hop Pop. Things were never meant to be like this. Marcy and Sasha were meant to be with me here today. We were supposed to celebrate our homecoming together. Or at least that’s what I thought we all wanted! But none of us got what we wanted. I’m back without them. Sasha…she’s never going to get back the way things used to be. And Marcy, M-marcy…she won’t get anything back.” Anne acknowledged woefully. The dreadful thoughts in her brain pouring out. “All I know is that I can’t stay here forever. I have to find a way to get back to Amphibia and do something, Hop Pop. I can’t leave things like this. I don’t know what I’m going to tell my parents when we meet them. Or Sasha’s. Or Marcy’s. I don’t know. But I’m not leaving things like this. We need to get back to Amphibia…somehow…”

“I know.” Hop Pop replied. “We do need to get back to Amphibia. We won’t leave things like this.”

“We have your back, Anne. Always.” Sprig added. “The Plantars stick together.”

“We lost Frobo. We lost Marcy. We lost a lot. But we’re not losing anything again. This time, Andrias will be the one who loses.” Polly finished indignantly.

“Thank you, guys.” She wrapped them into a hug, which they greatly reciprocated.

She was going to find Sasha.

Regardless of all complications, she was going to find her.

She was going to find Marcy.

Regardless of whether she was dead or alive, she was going to find her.

And she was going to find King Andrias.

Regardless of how much power and force he had, she was going to find him and stop him.

[alchemania]

Barbara, and Bennett: Toxic Positivity (and how they each exude it)

While it's easy to spot negative toxic behavior, toxic positivity can be harder to recognize and pin down. In this blog, I am going to analyze 2 characters in Genshin and explain just how they show traits of toxic positivity. (I originally was going to include Jean, but I already covered her in an earlier blog so it'd just be redundant)

Barbara Page

Barbara is all smiles and sunshine, trying her best to ensure that everyone is happy. However; she does this to an unhealthy degree and often does not prioritize her emotional wellbeing.

#1: Forcing herself to always be happy.

Barbara's story lines state that she "only allows herself to be depressed for 30 seconds" and that after that, she basically puts on a smile; regardless of what she's actually feeling. She often talks about how good everyone is to her, and I honestly believe that Barbara invalidates her own depression because in her eyes; she has a good life and there's no "reason" for her to be sad, plus if she was sad then everyone else would feel down. She hasn't experienced anything traumatic, so how can she have the right to be depressed? But the thing is, she has: her parents divorced when she was young; and Barbara grew up apart from Jean, leading to a lack of a relationship between the two. While the divorce, based on Jean's story lines, did not seem to have a lot of negativity around it (from what I can tell Simon and Frederica actually split on amiable terms, they just fell out of love with each other), it still affected Barbara in a negative way and no doubt she is hurting from it but she's not acknowledging her pain. All trauma is not the same, this is true. But all trauma IS valid; just because someone is hurting less doesn't mean they're NOT hurting and Barbara needs to understand that her pain is valid and give herself time to process it.

#2: Lack of emotional boundaries

If there's anything that Jean and Barbara have in common besides both being healers, it's that they're absolutely terrible at saying no. In Barbara's hangout, she feels guilty for avoiding Albert and wanting to be left alone despite being emotionally exhausted and even wants to apologise, despite doing nothing wrong. Later on when her fans ask for autographs; she agrees, despite being off the clock and trying to take a break: Aether has to step in personally to get people to go away, and not only that; he has to lie through his teeth in order to do so. If you tell the NPCs the truth ("Barbara is currently on leave, please don't disturb her",) they'll reply "Oh she's on leave? Perfect time to ask for an autograph!" They don't care about her feelings; all they care about is what she can do for them and the worst part is that Barbara lets them treat her like this. It's so bad that the Knights have to constantly step in and rescue her because folks can't get it in their heads that off the clock =/= available; and Barbara feels like if she can help other people that she needs to; to the detriment of her own needs. She seems to think it's selfish to put herself first; but looking out for yourself emotionally is anything but. It's okay to say no, it's okay to tell people you're not available. Just because you're free doesn't mean you're up to engage and there's nothing wrong with that. But like Sister Victoria says herself; Barbara is too nice. She gives and gives and gives and expects nothing in return, and people take advantage of that.

#3: Undermining herself through constant praise of others

In her hangout, she tells you that besides singing and healing, she doesn't have anything worthwhile about her, and then goes on about how amazing you are, Jean as well. Barbara doesn't acknowledge her positive traits, and then when she vents to you she apologizes for doing so, since you were supposed to be hanging out and having fun. She puts a lot of her worth in comparison to what other people can DO, and not actual character. Barbara is a lovely person: she's sweet and kind and loving, but because she doesn't see herself as physically strong or powerful, she doesn't think she's worth a lot.

Bennett

My GOD, Bennett is like the EPITOME of toxic positivity.

1. Allows others to mistreat him and take out their feelings on him because he feels it's his fault they're suffering (essentially, a martyr complex)

Bennett's hangout is a prime example of this where when Royce got angry, Bennett simply let him yell until you step in. Due to his almost perpetual bad luck, he feels that he's responsible for the misfortune of the people around him and since he can't physically do anything about it, he attempts to "atone" by letting himself be emotionally assaulted.

He also puts himself in physical danger to keep other people safe (he figures since he's already unlucky, might as well suffer a little more if it means everybody else is okay, right?), and accepts abandonment as the norm since he's a liability. Bennett does not value his wellbeing whatsoever due to constantly being in danger and he seems to be of the mentality "If I'm going to die, at least let me die protecting everybody" and that immensely upsets me that a KID, who's probably no older than 17, is already considering his mortality.

#2: Not allowing himself to process negative emotion

Just like Barbara, Bennett constantly forces himself to always keep a smile on, only in his case it's more to keep himself from getting overwhelmed about his situation. It's heavily implied in his story that Bennett is afraid that he could die any day (and I don't blame him) and so he lives hard and fast because he feels he doesn't have a lot of time. He's cheated death MULTIPLE times (he almost died as a baby, and he almost died prior to receiving his Vision), and Bennett more than likely feels that one day, he's not going to get lucky enough to escape again; and he'll actually die. His life is an entire string of misfortune and unlike Barbara and her parents divorce, Bennett is aware of this trauma: he simply chooses to take it in stride and forces himself to stay upbeat. Which is just as bad as letting negative emotion completely overwhelm him, it's literally just the other ditch.

Bennett also seems very sad about the fact that his team abandoned him but he doesn't let himself process that either (if you respond angrily to the revelation that his teammates left he'll jump to defend them and insist "they had their reasons"- and that may be true, but that doesn't invalidate the trauma and sadness of being left behind because of something you literally cannot control). Similar to Diluc, Bennett is sort of an Atlas of his own right, but instead of carrying all of Mondstat on his shoulders he's shouldering his emotional wellbeing: he refuses to vent to anyone and bottles everything up because he doesn't want to be a burden; but in doing so he's only hurting himself in the long run.

(Thank God for Razor though it seems like he might be hanging around for the long haul and that makes me immensely happy. I could cry. Please don't let anything bad happen to him and Bennett they deserve friendship)

I'm going to go off the beaten path a bit here but, to all you guys reading this; please remember that:

1. Your trauma is valid, regardless of how "lesser" you think it might be.

2. You are not obligated to give yourself emotionally to other people if you are not up to it. You cannot give what you do not have, and if you're not 100% emotionally wise, you really shouldn't be taking on any more negative energy. It's not selfish to take care of yourself. If people can't respect that then they're not worth your time. Set emotional boundaries and don't budge for anyone. The people who are meant to stay will honor your boundaries.

3. It's okay to be sad! And it's okay to be sad and have no idea why. It doesn't matter if you have a 'good life,' depression doesn't care who you are or where you are on your walk of life and sometimes it hits like a truck. Your sadness is valid and don't be afraid to take the time you need to acknowledge and process your negative emotions.

Please take care of yourselves, friends; and be safe.

Have a good day. 💗

[stephspurs]

ONLY ANGEL - A John Stones Fanfiction

STEPHSPURS. - THE MASTERLIST ONLY ANGEL - FANFICTION MASTERLIST

PART 3.

The sun streamed through the sheer billowing curtains of the Milano Centrale apartment, casting a warm glow onto the bareback of Josephine Anderson that was only partly visible due to the crisp white bed sheet that had slipped down her body to only just cover the dimples in her back at the bottom of her spine. John Stones found himself laying on his back, that same sheet only just covering his modesty, gazing down at the angel that gave herself to him a few hours earlier whilst he found himself at her mercy, begging to any God that would listen to let him experience that slice of paradise that only she could deliver him to.

Josephine and John, John and Josephine. Never one without the other from that fateful London night on. Her friends grew to love him and his friends welcomed her with open arms. Between their hectic schedules they had made sure they set aside time for one another. John had gotten Josephine a family pass for his home matches at the Etihad, Josephine had given John a set of keys to her apartment in Milan - for him to use, to come and go as he pleased.  John found himself putting in the extra effort required to maintain the bond he was nurturing with Josephine. They had both wordlessly decided that whatever it was they were sharing together wasn’t to be labelled, but they both knew exactly what they were to each other. The commitment that came with the relationship tag was something that neither of them were willing to confront, due to the demands that they both experienced within their own professional careers.

And that was how their relationship progressed, giving themselves to each other whenever their careers permitted or whenever their sexual desires took over. Months had passed since their first night shared together and not once had John brought up the idea of becoming more, of becoming each other’s publicly. Of course, they were seen out and about around both Manchester and Milan, as well as both being featured on each other's Instagram pages often enough that people began to associate one with the other. However John could tell that there was more than Josephine was letting on, there was something holding her back from him emotionally and he wouldn’t let himself fall for her until he knew every part of her, even the part she didn't necessarily want to share with him just yet. So for the meanwhile, John was content with their unspoken agreement ...until he wasn't anymore.

“Josie, I’ve been thinking-”

“Oh poor thing! Did it hurt you to use that little brain of yours?” She sassed back with a cheeky smirk, over her cup of coffee.

“Cut it out, you. I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you now” An equally cheeky grin spreading across his face at her poor attempt at insulting his intellectual ability combined with her wicked sense of humour that was beginning to touch the darkest parts of John’s heart.

John crossed the spacious sun-lit kitchen of Josephine’s Milan apartment and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, trapping her between the kitchen counter and his own body. His face found the crook of her neck, while she stood tall and relaxed back into his grip. This was her favourite kind of morning, her body exhausted from the night prior with John, her mind clouded with fluffy thoughts of the fluffy haired man and her soul awake with excitement of having him back within arms reach - for it went dormant when he was away, like he turned the light off every time he left and back on when he returned to her, wherever that may be. The floor length mirror resting on the wall of the living room reflected the vision of the two of them in her kitchen, like two pieces of a puzzle fit together perfectly. This also helped John out tremendously as he was able to see her face as he asked her the question he had been building the courage to ask for a short while now.

“I want to know what I have to do to make you my girl, privately and publicly and everything in between and beyond” John spoke in a low drawl, watching as Josephine’s eyes connected with his own in the mirror. He watched as her coffee cup was brought to her lips and back down again, he felt her back stiffen and could swear he heard the walls around her heart tighten their defences.

“Is this not enough for you? You have my word that there is no other man in my life, I am yours John” Her heart beating in her ears, breaths increasing and shallow at his response. Her whole life thus far she has always felt as though she wasn’t enough, she had to work that bit harder than her model friends to maintain her weight, to keep her skin clear of all blemishes and stretch marks, to book jobs that her heart had yearned for. This, however, was what her heart has been yearning for more than ever before - and that scared her beyond words.

“Josie, you are more than enough. I want everyone to know that I am the one who was fortunate enough to be chosen by you, and to eventually be loved by you” John spoke as his hands strengthened their grip on her hips, cementing her in place so she couldn’t run away from this conversation as he knew she was already planning her escape route.

“I am no good for you in the way you need me to be John. Please trust me on that. I am unlovable as I currently am” She spoke with a cold stoic that had John staring in bewilderment through the mirror, he did not recognise the Josephine that was in his arms. She was a shell of the woman he spent the last six months of his life chasing, the last six months of his life addicted to.

“It has shocked me to the core that you’re deluded enough to adopt the idea that you aren’t loveable exactly the way that you are.” John stated with such certainty that Josephine felt her resolve cracking - she had never been spoken to that way before. He granted her the space she so desperately craved and leant himself back on the bench behind them, arms crossed over his chest and his chin lowered as he watched Josephine gather herself and rush off to the bathroom. As he heard the shower turn on and her music get louder, he understood that she needed some time to process his question and statement in her own way.

The last six months he had noticed very specific qualities about Josephine that he wasn’t sure she was aware of herself. How she carefully assessed every meal as she was about to eat it, and the retrospective glance she would throw over her weekly meals - never one to eat red meat more than twice per week at best, her diet filled with leafy greens, black coffee and not much else. She was thin, it was part of her uniform as a model to be relatively thin but Josephine could not have weighed more than 50kg and with her height of 5’11” without heels it was a concerning number. John knew this of course due to the uncountable number of times he had thrown her around both in bed and out of it.

Most concerning of all, however, was her mental and emotional state. How could this angel think she was unloveable? Was this the doing of another man before him? Is it the side effect of the dangerous drug called the modelling industry? Her soul needed healing. If she's closed off for love, how on earth is she going to understand just how much he was beginning to love her? He knew, of course he knew that he was on track to finding his one great love - in fact he was certain he had already found it in Josephine. It wasn’t in full bloom yet, but it was blossoming. He also knew that he needed to make her fall in love with herself, before she could ever love him or let herself be loved by him. She needed to know that the relationship she has with herself sets the tone for every other relationship she has, and only heaven knows how great her relationship with John could be.

PART 4.

[elleonmybeloved]

Lumine sits at the base of the anemo archon statue, leaning her weight heavily on the cool stone. Two crunchy Mondstadt hash browns and a sunsettia lie on the ground beside her atop a small cloth, but she’s in no state to bring herself to eat just yet.

The flow of healing magic is slow, but dependable, and she knows from experience she won’t have to stay for more than an hour before it heals the wounds on her body. The electro cicin mage had stopped just shy of killing her: She can’t quite see, her fingers involuntarily twitch every few seconds, and there’s a shooting pain that travels from her hip down her left leg. There might be a couple burns here and there too, but her whole body hurts and her vision isn’t healed enough to see them clearly in the steadily dimming light of dusk.

Paimon is absent. Lumine had sent her away. She needed time to think, alone.

Why had the mage spared her? She could think of no shared love between her and the Fatui. Maybe she was imagining it but recently in her encounters with abyss mages, they quickly turned tail and ran away. Ever since... Signora had stolen Venti’s gnosis.

Unable to find a reason for the change, she searched her memories, for what must be the hundredth time.

She and Aether had always traveled from world to world looking for... looking for... something important. Teyvat was dangerous. It didn’t have what they were looking for, so they were leaving. They were passing the... the only beautiful realm, with the clouds, and an unknown god had stepped out of a void of blackness and attacked them with sinister cubes of something that resembled the void the goddess had stepped out of.

Lumine remembers noticing her gaze shift to her and had instively dodged back. Aether had been taken by surprise and engulfed in the cubes. And she’d attacked the goddess with such a ferocity it made a huge explosion, that was engulfed in cubes that surged up her arm. She had used her power to resist as much as she could but it wasn’t enough and she was surrounded by the void as well.

It had taken her a long time to escape. She wasn’t even sure when she’d managed it, because she had used so much power to resist that she had fallen unconscious somewhere along the way. She had awoken powerless, wingless, and alone in a Teyvat that looked nothing like when they first arrived. Of course her first thought had been to search for Aether. But she hadn’t found anything in the area other than slimes, and bipedal beasts that had attacked her on sight.

Paimon says she found her while fishing. Lumine thinks that’s right. Like the monsters, slimes, and ...ghostly cliones, Paimon was the closest thing she had yet to find resembling humanity in the Teyvat she had awoken to. But Paimon is wasn’t human, of course.

And now, she has scoured the face of Mondstadt and Liyue, leaving no cave unexplored, no villager unquestioned, no chest unopened, but somehow there isn’t a single shred of evidence that leads to Aether. She would feel it if he was dead, she’s almost certain. So why hadn’t a soul seen him? Lumine has headaches from the constant use of her elemental sight, hoping to catch a glimpse of the gold she desperately wishes to see again.

Well enough to sit up now, Lumine lifts her meal off the ground and chews monotonously through it.

There’s always been this melody, in the recess of her mind. She’s been trying to remember it, hoping for a clue to break through the amnesia, but only gets snippets at a time, and can’t remember any of the words. Lumine is always quick to sing it when she is alone, unwilling to let it fade from her memory.

In light of finding no answers, maybe working on this will give her enough sense of a victory to hold the encroaching despair at bay. Her fingers are sticky with sunsettia juice as she wipes them on her cloth, and she clears her throat to sing.

The melody is slow in coming, and there are still no words, so she replaces them with an ooh, opening up the sound into an aah when it feels right.

Getting stuck in a few places doesn’t discourage her, and she just starts the part again when it happens. To her surprise, she pushes through into a new part, where the melody swells high and it’s beautiful and eerie, and unmistakably sad. But Lumine is filled with euphoria at the breakthrough and sings louder for once, getting carried away.

Another voice harmonizes with hers in a beautiful duet. Her startled voice falters a little, but she continues, unwilling to squander her newly gained ground against her lost memories. The voice is male, and for a moment her heart does a painful squeeze as hope that it’s Aether soars in her chest. But the hope lasts only for a few seconds, as she listens and hears that the voice is not his. The experience distracts her, and she loses the next part of the song, voice withering out.

Lumine looks around her for the source of the other voice, but the sun has fully set now and despite her restored vision, she can’t see anyone.

“I’m up here.” He calls, and Venti jumps- floats- down from his perch high in the branches of the Symbol of Mondstadts Hero, landing lighter than a feather.

“You? How do you know that song?” She questions in an urgent demand. In the moonlight he looks ethereal, unhuman.

“I was here before you arrived.” He responds defensively in reaction to her tone, but keeps his expression open and inviting as always. “I know I’ve told you I know every song, past, present, or future.”

“I’ve never sang that part before, it’s new even to me.” She refutes. The air is growing tenser.

“... Your voice carries on the wind.” He admits reluctantly. “So I already knew the other parts. It was easy to improvise the new one. Comes naturally to me.” Venti shrugs as if it’s no big deal.

“But I’ve never...” She trails off before saying ‘sang here before’, realizing with great embarrassment that the wind flows everywhere in Mondstadt and there have been several nights she has left Paimon behind to raise her voice in lament to the moon with this melody. “I didn’t realize. You must be accustomed to a lot of noise then.”

“Most of the time I tune it out if it’s not a song.” He admits. “I like to compete with the other bards in the city.”

It sounds to Lumine like an excuse to deflect her attention away from the fact that he has been listening to her voice on the wind with some degree of intentionality.

“Forgive me.” Venti says, “I didn’t want you to have to sing it alone again.”

Lumine’s embarrassed indignation dissipates as she hears what he didn’t say. That she always sounds lonely.

“It’s okay. You’re right. Singing it alone is... it felt better with you.”

Venti surprises her by stepping in close and squeezing her in a hug, just a little too fiercely to be gentle. The way he feels pressed so close against her is like a balm for the ache in her chest and she hugs him back with an almost greedy haste. They are almost the same height, so when he leans back, not breaking the embrace, they are face to face.

He reads the expression there and asks. “What about Paimon? I thought she never leaves your side.”

“I don’t trust Paimon.” It’s the first time she had ever said it aloud, and it feels weird. She doesn’t even know what Paimon is, but for some reason she never thinks of this.

“But you trust me?” He doesn’t say even though he is an archon, but she knows he implies it.

She thinks of how vehemently he fought for Dvalin’s freedom, and what he sacrificed to get his precious friend back. She understands that more than anything. He kept her from plummeting to her death during the storm, and gave her the closest thing to her wings back.

“Yes. I know I don’t want to see...” The sharp gurgled sound of pain he’d made when Signora snatched out his gnosis from within him resonates with the loud crack of the woman’s hand across his face when she had slapped him in her mind. “... Don’t want to see you go through what I did.”

“I’m not powerless. And giving up my gnosis was worth nobody getting hurt.” His blue eyes glow in the night and he presses his cheek to hers with an affectionate nuzzle. “Especially you.”

Lumine processes that for a moment. It’s been so long since she felt so...

Loved.

[leafinthebreeze]

“The road that is recovery from a childhood without a mother’s love, support, and attunement is long and complicated. One aspect of healing that is rarely touched upon is mourning the mother you needed, sought, and — yes — deserved. The word deserved is key to understanding why this remains elusive for many women (and men): They simply don’t see themselves as deserving, because they’ve internalized what their mothers said and did as self-criticism and have wrongly concluded that they’re lacking, worthless, or simply unlovable.

When I learned that my mother was failing 16 years ago, I did not go to see her, even though everyone in my life — including my therapist — thought I should go for “closure.” But I was wise enough to realize that they hadn’t walked my path, and their vision of closure was based on novels and Hollywood movies in which a-ha! moments flourish and mothers always love. In real life, I would ask the question I always wanted to be answered — “Why didn’t you love me?" — and she would refuse to answer, as always, but this time her silence would stretch out into eternity. I didn’t attend her funeral, either. But I did grieve — not for her, but for me and my unmet needs. And the mother I deserved.

"As I started finally to see her for what she was and how she will never be the mother I need and want, I started standing up for myself and setting boundaries, and her anger and insults got worse. Finally, I put my foot down and told her I would no longer tolerate her behavior and stopped all contact. And, NOW, I am really in mourning. I finally acknowledged the truth, and it hurts like hell. And I’m at the age where some of my friends are starting to lose their moms to old age and their stories, of times with their moms, are heartbreaking to me… I guess I just started this mourning process, and I’m still in it." —Annie

Grieving the mother you needed is impeded by both feeling unworthy of love and, more important, what I call the core conflict. This conflict is between the daughter’s growing awareness of how her mother wounded her in childhood and still does, and her continuing need for maternal love and support, even in adulthood. This pits the need to save and protect herself against the continuing hope that, somehow, she can figure out what she can do to get her mother to love her.

This tug-of-war can go on for literally decades, with the daughter retreating and perhaps going no-contact for a period of time and then being pulled back into the maelstrom by the combination of her neediness, hopefulness, and denial. She may paper over her pain and make excuses for her mother’s behavior because her eyes are on the prize: Her mother’s love. She puts herself on an ever-turning Ferris wheel, unable to dismount.

Those who concede the battle — going no contact, or limiting communication with their mothers and usually other family members — experience great loss along with relief. For the daughter to heal, this loss — the death of the hope that this essential relationship can be salvaged — needs to be mourned along with the mother she deserved.

The depth of the core conflict can be glimpsed in the anguish of those daughters who stay in the relationship precisely because they fear they will feel worse when their mothers die.

The stages of grief echo a daughter’s recovery from childhood.

In their book On Grief and Grieving, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler point out that the five stages of loss for which Kübler-Ross is famous — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — aren’t meant “to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages.” They instead emphasize that everyone experiences grief in a unique and individual way. Not everyone will go through each stage, for example, and the stages may not necessarily follow in the expected sequence. That said, the stages are still illuminating, especially when seen in the context of an unloved daughter’s journey out of childhood, and they make it clear why mourning is an essential part of healing.

Denial: As the authors write, “It is nature’s way of letting in as much as we can handle.” With the experience of great loss, denial helps cushion the immediate blow, allowing the person to pace the absorption of the reality. That’s true for death, but it also applies to the daughter’s recognition of her woundedness. That’s why it can take years or decades for the daughter to actually see her mother’s behavior with clarity. Counterintuitively, some women actually only see it in hindsight, after their mothers’ deaths.

Anger: In the wake of death, anger is the most accessible of emotions, directed at targets as various as the deceased for abandoning the loved one, God or the forces of the universe, the unfairness of life, doctors and the healthcare system, and more. Kübler-Ross and Kessler stress that beneath the anger lie other, more complex emotions, especially the raw pain of loss, and that the power of the grieving person’s anger may actually feel overwhelming at times.

Unloved daughters, too, go through a stage or even stages of anger as they work through their emotions toward recovery. Their anger may be directed squarely at their mothers for their treatment, at other family members who stood by and failed to protect them, and also at themselves for not recognizing the toxic treatment sooner.

Anger at the self, alas, can get in the way of the daughter’s ability to feel self-compassion; once again, it is the act of mourning the mother you deserved that permits self-compassion to take root and flower.

Bargaining: This stage has to do with impending death most usually — bargaining with God or making promises to change, thinking that “if only” we’d done x or y, we’d be spared the pain of loss. With death, this is a stage to be passed through toward acceptance of the reality. The unloved daughter’s journey is marked by years of bargaining, spoken or unspoken entreaties in the belief that if some condition is met, her mother will love and support her. She may embark on a course of pleasing and appeasing her mother or make changes to her behavior, looking in vain for the solution that will bring the desired end: Her mother’s love. Just as in the process of grief, it’s only when the daughter ceases to bargain that she can begin to accept the reality that she’s powerless to wrest what she needs from her mother.

Depression: In the context of a major loss, Kübler-Ross and Kessler are quick to point out that we are often impatient with the deep sadness or depression that accompanies it. As a society, we want people to snap out of it, or are quick to insist that if sadness persists, it deserves treatment. They write instead that in grief, “Depression is a way for nature to keep us protected by shutting down the nervous system so that we can adapt to something we feel we cannot handle. They see it as a necessary step in the process of healing.

Acceptance: Most importantly, Kübler-Ross and Kessler are quick to say that acceptance of the reality isn’t a synonym for being all right or even okay with that reality. That’s a key point. It’s about acknowledging the loss, identifying the permanent and even endlessly painful aspects of it, the permanent changes it’s made to your life and you, and learning to live with all of that from this day forward. In their view, acceptance permits us “to withdraw our energy from the loss and begin to invest in life.” Acceptance permits the mourner to forge new relationships and connections as part of their recovery.

What does it mean to mourn the mother you deserved?

Just what it sounds like — to grieve the absence of a mother who listened to you, took pride in you, who needed you to understand her as well as she understood you, a woman willing to own up to her mistakes and not excoriate you for yours, and — yes — someone to laugh and cry with.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/tech-support/201703/daughters-unloving-mothers-mourning-the-mom-you-deserved

[homesteadchronicles]

A Cycle of Seals: Writing Excerpt (Princess of Impotence)

After three months of continual debate on whether or not to post this excerpt, my friends convinced me to submit it on-stream tonight. While it imperfectly handles heavy topics I myself am still working through, I hope you see the heart and healing process behind it - and, most importantly, behind Eirys.

You may remember these three from my recent Character Description Challenge! I can never get enough of writing their dynamic, even as their in-canon scenes continue to dwindle through editing. Whomp.

___

Project: A Cycle of Seals Timeline: Pre-Book One Canonical? No Context:

The House of Salvation has long isolated society’s sick. The Godewine twins - Royan and Eirys - visit every dawn and tend to the condemned. While Royan attracts the masses with the supernatural power of his Timekeeper’s Seal, the powerless Eirys attends to one individual: Oeden Sincairn, locked away even from the other infirm. 

Content Warnings: Illness, Isolation, Mentions of Ableism

___

The Yoreword warns of a wickedness more contagious than any sickness, one bestowed upon the lowest amongst them. Eirys has never - paragons forgive her blasphemy - believed that. Illness did not demean one’s internal divinity. Not when the skin-deep sainthood of her fellow nobles could nauseate an angel. Even still, sacrilege guides her away from those surrounding her blessed sibling to instead seek solace with the kingdom’s most corrupted citizen.

With the crowd thoroughly enthralled by Royan’s abilities, Eirys slips outside their thinning scope of notice and down the western hall. While the main chamber had been filled to overflowing with the infirm, naught but a begrudging servant files through the passage here. Those who notice her appearance regard her with the civil disinterest paid to one of their own. Or had they purposely dismissed their princess? Nonsense, she thinks (but does not believe).

Would such insolence not make sense? She is no Shepherd. She bears no Seal. She does not sway the hearts of nobles like Isolde, does not command the arms of soldiers like Sigrid, does not awe the minds of scholars like Ciaran. She is but another stumbling block to the damned’s salvation, a scourge to kiss their scars.

Why must power inhabit those who refuse to wield it well? That question had no answer, or at least not one the spirits deign to supply.

Yet, despite her inherent impotence, one resident still awaits her entrance.

Eirys shuffles down the corridor, around the corner, and up to a room quartered off from the rest. With a knock for courtesy, she slips in without awaiting permission.

Inside, the chamber holds little else other than Oeden, perched at the edge of a bed as unkempt as he. He is dressed, thankfully - not that a medic cares much for modesty - with a tunic hanging loosely off his wiry form. The tension that inhabits his shoulders evacuates whilst registering his visitor’s identity.

You’re safe, she thinks, willing the assurance to reach him. Safe, but not saved.

A flicker of mischief lifts his lips, too weak to raise the bags beneath his eyes. “Abandoning your brother, are we?”

Eirys huffs, indignant fists finding her hips. Even Oeden thought only of Royan! “I do hope that’s not a disappointment.”

He does not answer, and so Eirys sets to work. Oeden needs attention - medically, at least - every day before sunrise, lest their superiors deny him access to the sanctuary. If coming here every morning means her friend can escape isolation? Well, it made her wartime training worthwhile. Her bag unpacked, the bedside table stands littered with supplies of every shape and size: needles and knives and salves that would unnerve even hardened warriors.

Oeden refuses to flinch.

“You should have seen them,” Eirys says as she rifles through her satchel for a binding beneath the draughts. “All those patients, pawing at his Seal like it might peel off if they rub it right. They were two fools short of a parade!”

Oeden cannot see it, can see little else beside this room, and instead snorts from imagination alone. “With Royan there, they only need one more.”

She swats him with the wad of bandages in hand but cannot hold back her laughter. How tragic that such wit must stay locked away. “At least someone pays him any mind.”

“Ironic, isn’t it? His only admirers come from ones the rest of the world admonishes.” The laugh that follows lacks all humor.

There is a sickness in Norire. One that spares the poor and spoils the pure. One whose unholy hand reaches across the nation, fingers of infirmity digging into every manse and mansion. Even her own. Eirys knows this, intrinsically. Hates it, irrefutably. But, like every other illness, she cannot cure it. Not anymore than she might will away the wickedness of kings who condone quarantining the chronic, the heresy of priests enslaving the impoverished, the sinfulness of princesses submitting to these societal normalities.

Instead, she sits down. Shuts up. Prays behind sealed lips to an imprisoned god for forgiveness, for change.

Oeden never minds the silence. His proclaimed disdain for company disproved itself with every unspoken show of appreciation. This time, it crumbled beneath a subtle repositioning atop the bed: an invitation for intimacy.

Eirys accepts his summons, scooting closer, the equipment her plus one. A once-over of his body shows no sign of his condition having spread, but she can tell little with the glove that disguises his limb. Her hand hovers above, but does not touch. “May I…?”

Oeden nods. Neither required consent – thus why she elicits it. No one asked Oeden permission to burden him with this power, any more than they had asked Eirys to deprive her of it. He deserves this small dignity.

With measured tenderness, Eirys peels back the fabric encasing his left arm. Each inch of cloth stripped away reveals the crystalline protrusions carving through calloused skin in misshapen patches. Flesh split in bloodied fissures, ore corroding the body into its personal deposit. No worse than before, she thinks. The thought does little to placate her concerns because that does not make it better than before either.

Oeden evades her gaze. Witnessing her displeasure would surely confirm a deep-whispered suspicion: that he was, even to her, grotesque. She knows that he spies her reaction when he thinks her attention lies elsewhere, awaits a well-deserved grimace or an artificial grin. Instead, Eirys freezes her face in cold indifference. It comes naturally, she realizes - her family has done the same on the throne for one hundred years, after all, for far less noble a purpose.

She pulls a rag from the pouch at her hip and dips it into one of the pungent balms scattered about the bed top. The whiff of peppermint briefly assaults her before the musty scent of Salvation overpowers it. “Ready?” she asks. His nodded ascent initiates the delicate process of cleaning the crystal. Eirys traces the edges of fractured skin with her cloth as if she painted a masterpiece - with precision, and with respect to the canvas.

Oeden winces with each misplaced press of fabric. He never complains, but none could deny the pain he endures on the nightly. The momentary sting ebbs away at the gritted teeth and tensing posture until relief resumes its rightful mantle upon him. Eirys has never seen such strength from someone so weary. Weary, she realizes, and lonely.

He needs tending to. In his body, yes, but even more so in his soul.

“It’s not, you know,” Oeden says suddenly. He still refuses to meet her eyes, but he picks up on her confusion nonetheless, for he continues, “a disappointment, I mean. That you’re here.”

Had he dwelt on her greeting this whole time?

Eirys slips her free hand into Oeden’s, clasping it with desperate compassion. You deserve deliverance, but I can only give you decency. “I’d sure hope not,” she teases, “but we both know you’d prefer my brother’s company.”

“Royan would have only worsened this,” Oeden reminds her. The Seal of Progression could do little to cease the spread of crystal. It could only comfort those who conformed to its whims - and Oeden had never been one to obey. “Besides, who knows what I would have seen, had anyone else done this…”

Ah, yes. The visions.

Eirys understands next to nothing of them, despite her supposed spirituality, but she does not doubt their existence any more than she doubts that their god remains trapped in some undiscovered vault. One touch of crystallized skin could send Oeden into an unconscious stupor. Foreseeing an unfortunate future from unprompted contact became an all-too-common occurrence.

“And with me?” Eirys entangles their fingers, drawing his hands up. “What do you see?”

Oeden’s breath hitches as she scales the goosebumps raising across his arm, but he does not deny her. His left hand rises to meet her, ore-crusted finger brushing against a freckled forehead. A breath. A moment. A hope.

“…Nothing.”

Oeden exhales like oxygen had always evaded him. His head slumps against hers. “Thank the Seals you’re safe, Eir.”

You’re safe for me, is what he means. She hopes he knows he’s safe with her, too.

They sit there, undone and unsure, in each other’s presence until time unwinds itself around them and Eirys realizes: the military, the clergy, the royalty - none of them need her. None of them need to. Oeden does. And a flustered, wistful part of herself believes she needs him too.

She always loathed her own powerlessness, but this powerlessness to resist him? She could live with that. She might even love it.

[libsterslobsters]

I'm Gonna Crawl: Post 2

Post 1

Summary: Five years. That's how long the reader and Bucky have been apart (although for him, it was only five minutes) Now with Thanos defeated and both of them taking up the mantle of Avengers, can their relationship return to what it was? Or will they have to discover a new normal?

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x fem! enhanced! super-soldier! Reader (Reader can see pieces of the future in visions as well as speak every language)

Warnings: Angst, fluff, language, smut (IF YOU ARE UNDER EIGHTEEN, DON'T READ!!!)

*************************************************

One of the perks of being “enhanced” or in this case, a super soldier, is that you heal quickly. Within seventy-two hours, the bullet wound in his leg (not to mention the cut and black eye he sustained from several sharp blows to the face) and her matching one in the shoulder are almost completely healed, only a vague pink mark to show they were ever injured. The downside is-

“Do you want to punch sandbags until they fly off the hook, or run thirty miles around the compound first? I’ll start with whichever you don’t pick.” -they’re back to training as well.

He almost answers that he really doesn’t want to do either, it’s Sunday morning, for fuck’s sake, but it’s not like this is her first choice for what she could be doing this morning either, so he goes with-

“Punching things first. Think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, so I’d best get it out of my system.” She nods and, squeezing his arm, takes off at a jog.

“See you on the other side.”

His instinct is to tell her to take it easy, she lost a lot of blood the other day and who knows if there’s been some bone or muscular damage that hasn’t quite fixed itself yet, but again, he swallows it down and focuses on the task at hand. Namely, taking out his bad mood on a punching bag.

Usually, when his body is in motion, his mind is at least somewhat at rest, but this time around, the exertion is just adding fuel to the flames. He’s too pissed off to just zone out and concentrate on hitting the target, still too busy trying to process what the hell happened three nights ago.

It was their first mission together. She’s been on a few separate from him, and he and Sam get called out together on the regular. Stupidly, he assumed that, since her specialty is translating or gathering intel, maybe being the little voice in someone’s ear to direct them through a maze of assailants and twisting corridors her visions had allowed her a glimpse of ahead of time, she’d be out of the line of fire. At the very least, most of the attention would be on him and Sam. But no, she was the bogey. She drew fire while he waltzed through a military fortress, recapturing stolen tech. When Rhodey so much as mentioned that possibility, he should’ve told him no, hard no. If anyone’s drawing fire, it’s him. Still, in his arrogance, he assumed it wouldn’t come to that extreme. Sam’s good at his job, and as much as he hates the reason behind it, so is he. They should’ve been able to hold the line without her painting a target on her back.

That, of course leads to yet another issue. He’s also pissed at himself for instinctively seeing her as more fragile, something that needs to be protected. Even before the same chemicals running through his veins infected her, she’d proven that she’s a damn capable person. He knows that she’s smart, both strategically and academically. Add onto that the fact that she’s fast and strong, not to mention she has visions (less than helpful ones most of the time, but they have their moments), and she’s a powerful ally. He certainly wouldn’t want to be on her bad side. And yet, when he saw that she’d been hit, his mind completely emptied. He wouldn’t have been able to remember which end of a gun to use if his life depended on it, because all he could think was, “Oh god. She’s hurt.” It’s old-fashioned, outdated. He should be past this mindset, at least when it comes to work. Out there, she’s his fellow soldier, not the woman he lies awake next to in bed, sometimes for hours, just to listen to her breath and know he’s not alone. Did Steve ever put Peggy in that box, he wonders? No, of course not, because Steve’s a better man than he ever was or will ever be. So yeah, he’s pissed off at himself.

And finally, although he can barely admit it to his own mind, he’s pissed off at her. Logically he knows it’s mostly fear, some primal instinct to protect what’s his, but every time he imagines her being shot, having a bullet pass by her lungs and arteries by a very narrow margin, and then telling Sam not to let him know that she was hit, it irks him. Did she think he’d come unhinged? Screw up? Or is she stuck in the mindset she seems to have adopted as a response to the last five years of “Screw looking after myself. It doesn’t matter.” A small part of him realizes that he didn’t call in either when he took a bullet, but that’s him! And, now he’s circling back to guilt for treating her like she’s weak.

All in all, he’s so damn furious that he doesn’t realize he’s no longer alone until she grabs hold of his arm just as he goes to swing again.

“Jesus, Bucky. I know you’re grouchy, but don’t you think destroying five punching bags in thirty minutes is enough? Save some aggression for the run.”

He looks up to tell her something (I’m sorry? Damn right I’m grouchy? Let me take you home and wrap you in blankets so that nothing will ever hurt you again?) and catches sight of her sweat-soaked face. He hates how far she takes things with the running. It’s like she’s trying to see what the limits are, how much she can punish her body before it gives out and she drops. That’s what it was in the very beginning after the snap. She’s told him that. Now he wonders if she’s really as recovered from everything that’s happened as she claims.

“Have you had anything to drink? Water, or-” She groans and reaches to detach the punching bag (there’s a decent sized rip in it where he was hitting it over and over), making her shirt ride up. Her clothes were already so tight that just seeing her out of the corner of his eye was making it hard to think, but now they’re completely adhered to her in a way that’s nearly obscene thanks to all the sweat. Dammit. Think about something else. He needs to think about something else.

“Yes, I’m on my second water bottle, thank you Barnes. I’m not stupid, you know.”

“Just self-destructive.” It slips out before he can stuff it down. Her mouth falls open in shock momentarily, but then she squares her shoulders and looks him directly in the eyes.

“You’re one to talk. Always running straight towards the fire instead of putting it out first.”

“That’s my job.”

“It’s your hangup.” She laughs bitterly. “Bucky Barnes, the big, bad Winter Soldier. You’ve decided you’re so fucked up that the only way you can make amends is to run headlong towards whatever’s trying to kill you, without backup I might add, and keep to your mission no matter what your personal damage is.”

“Says the woman who took a bullet and stopped Sam from announcing that you’re hit.” They’re teetering closer and closer to a fight with every nearly snarled word, but he’s powerless to stop it. In fact, he’s ready to go. Have it out. But not right now, because-

“Hey.” He catches her arm just as she starts to hoist another punching bag onto the hook. “Be careful! You’re still healing.” -she’s hellbent on hurting herself. Again.

She whirls around as if he’s slapped her.

“Oh my god. You have to stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop treating me like I’m going to break!” Her voice is shrill, rising higher and higher with each syllable. “I love you, but you are driving me insane. I am not your child-”

“No, you’re the person I want to marry!” He takes a deep breath, preparing to follow up with, “-and you keep acting like you have a death wish”, but before he can-

“You won’t even fuck me anymore!” Immediately, her eyes go wide and she slaps a hand over her mouth.

If her declaration surprised her, it absolutely stunned him so, not quite sure what else to do, he takes a few steps back and sits down. A few seconds pass before she approaches and, with a heavy sigh, sinks down next to him.

“Bucky, I am so sorry. I don’t know where any of this is coming from-”

“I think you do, Doll.” Her eyes dart nervously between his face and the floor. On instinct, he reaches over and takes her hand. “And so do I.” He takes a few moments to rearrange his thoughts before pushing ahead. “A lot has changed since-”

“The world ended. We lost. And then we won.” He nods.

“Yeah, and I don’t think either of us have quite wrapped our heads around it. I know I haven’t.”

It’s silent for a moment, and then, voice trembling, she tells him,

“After you went away, I was completely lost. Didn’t know why I had to stay. What kind of cruel trick is it, just when everything was starting to go right-” He finally had the poison of HYDRA sucked out of him, she’d found a safe place where she didn’t have to run and hide because of something she was born with, he’d worked up the nerve to ask her if she’d maybe one day be his wife. “-and then it’s wiped out? You finally went somewhere I couldn’t follow.” He still can’t imagine what those five years must’ve been like, not just for her, but everyone else who survived the snap. “I didn’t want to keep going. But I had to.” She chuckles. “Steve wouldn’t let me throw in the towel.”

A smile forms on his own face. “Yeah, he had a habit of doing that.”

“I guess…” She sighs. “I don’t know. I got harder, rougher around the edges. I thought I could just go back to normal once everyone came back-”

“But old habits die hard.” It’s not a question, but she nods.

“Yeah, and as much as I chip away at it, I’m not sure I’ll ever get back to who I was before.”

“You won’t.” She peers up at him, eyes wide in shock, maybe a hint of sadness. “I can tell you that right now from experience. You won’t go back, but-” He’s had a lot of time to consider this, so he can say it and absolutely believe it. “-I love the girl that’s here now. She’s pretty amazing, rough edges and all.”

She’s sitting so close. He could pull her into his lap, just hold her for a minute. So, that’s what he does, and just like the first time, they fit together perfectly, like she was made to fit in his arms, or maybe he was made to hold her. Either way, it leaves no doubt in his mind that they belong together.

“You changed. Everyone does. You got stronger and tougher, because that’s who you had to be. And I wasn’t there to change with you.” He can feel her shoulders shake, and even though she’s facing away from him, he knows she’s fighting back tears. “But I’m gonna catch up. It’s just taking me a while to get it through my thick skull that my girl’s a badass, and I need to ease off the bodyguard routine a little.” There. That’s more like it. A laugh, even if it’s a small one. “I just worry about you, is all. I don’t know how to stop it, and I’m not sure I can, but I’m working on it.”

“I worry about you too, you know.” She sniffs, swiping at her nose with her hand. “I’m fucking terrified because, now that I’m like you, I know what your limits are. I’m scared you’ll forget them, or you’ll ignore them because you’re trying to be a good man.” She cranes her head, meeting his gaze. “But you are a good man, Bucky Barnes. You never stopped being one, no matter what you think.”

“I think your picture of me might be more flattering than who I really am.”

“Shut up.” She presses her palm over his mouth. “I have visions, so seeing is never my problem. And it’s not the way I’m picturing you. We’ve known each other long enough for the shine to wear off.” Never. It’ll never be possible for him to know her so long that she’s not absolutely golden from where he’s standing. “It’s who you’ve shown me you are. And if the rest of the world doesn’t see it, that’s their problem. Not yours.”

He’s not sure if he buys all that, but it’s enough that she does. She sees him as that man, so he’ll try every day of his life to be just that.

“Come on.” Gently pushing her off of him, he stands and offers her his hand. “That’s enough training for today. We’re still wounded.”

She chuckles. “Is that your excuse for calling it early?”

He nods, barely suppressing a grin. “That, and you’ve gotta change into something that doesn’t fit you like a second skin before my brain permanently short-circuits.”

“Showers, then?”

“Showers.”

___________________________________________________________________________________

The compound sustained heavy damage thanks to Thanos crashing a ship into it, but in the past few months (helped along by Pepper’s billions and the entire galaxy’s appreciation towards the Avengers in equal parts), enough repairs have been done to make it partially usable. In this case, the locker room. Just the one, though. Which, of course means co-ed showers.

She won’t admit it, but she’s particularly appreciative of that little detail today. As she circled the compound on her last lap, she saw that the only two cars there are hers and Barnes. They’re the only two people here, and she fully intends to use that to her advantage.

“Join me? I don’t want to overextend my shoulder trying to wash my hair or back.” It’s a blatant lie, and from his expression, she can tell that he knows it too. But, he nods.

“Yeah, doll. I can do that.” Part one of the plan has been executed beautifully. Onward to part two.

She purposely leaves the travel sized bottles of shampoo and body wash on the floor so that, after rinsing off for far longer than is really necessary, she has to bend over to retrieve them. If it weren’t for her enhanced hearing, she’d completely miss the sharp intake of breath in response to her little show, but she catches it and can’t help grinning to herself. Part two: get him as worked up as she is. So far, so good.

The feeling of his fingers massaging her scalp, working the shampoo through her hair, is almost enough to make her forget that she’s a woman on a mission. Almost. As soon as she’s rinsed the soap out of her face, she turns to him.

“Your turn. Bend.” It’s not the first time they’ve done this, and as always, she has to fight back a laugh as he inclines his head towards her, the entirety of his hair falling forward to cover his face. “This used to take a lot longer before you decided to chop it all off.” He chuckles, eyes closed against the soap.

“What can I say? Seventy-three years without a haircut is my limit.” She can’t blame him, and although it was a shock at first, she’s come to like this new look. It makes him look…younger, somehow. More boyish. Like his life hasn’t contained as many horrors as they both know full well it has.

“You checking for lice or something?”

“Huh?” That jerks her out of her sentimental daze. “Looks like you’re clear.”

There’s no way to put it politely. She’s straight up ogling him as he rinses off. Five damn years…

“Ready to get your back?” And, she just got caught staring.

“Sure.”

His hands are gentle, putting as little pressure on her injured shoulder as possible, growing firmer as they work down her back. She holds her breath as she feels his palms ghost over the swell of her ass, but then he’s back to safer territory. At least, that’s what she thinks until the metal arm snakes around her chest, just below her breasts, holding her in place. His free hand runs down from her sternum to her middle, stopping just above her hips, then- fuck. Nothing. He’s backing away.

“Do you need help with your legs?” No, what she needs help with is located between them. Suddenly, the shower feels far too hot, and she’s desperate to cool off.

“That’s okay.” Her voice is shaky, and she mentally berates herself as she steps under the spray, rinsing away the soap.

She’s not at all sure that her excuse for leaving the shower and going to towel off made any sense, but with a few feet between them, she’s able to breath again. Alright, scratch the whole “shower seduction” idea. It wasn’t that great to begin with. She gets him as hot and bothered as she is, and then what? Shower sex is a slippery affair, and plus there’s the height difference… in the steamed up mirror, she catches sight of him climbing out of the shower and toweling off. Fuck it. What does she have to lose?

“Come here.” As he turns around, she hops up on the counter top (thank fuck Stark went all out and got the sinks that can easily hold the weight of an adult), allowing her towel to slip further down her chest.

She doesn’t miss the way his eyes flit down to her cleavage before settling back on her face as he stands in front of her.

“Yeah, Doll?”

“Let me get your hair. You’ll never get it dry yourself.” She’s really running low on excuses, but if she plays her cards right, she won’t have to keep up this ruse for much longer.

“You know-” She murmurs against his ear as she starts working a towel over his tousled locks, “-if you don’t take me right now, I’m gonna be really offended.”

His head snaps up, and she nearly drops the towel.

“Well, I can’t let that happen, can I?”

She has a smart-ass remark all planned out, but then his lips are pressed against hers, hard, insistent, and her brain completely empties of anything other than pure need. She’s not completely sure how, but somehow the towel wrapped around her torso (it’s so short, it didn’t even cover her ass sitting down) disappears, leaving them chest to chest, both still slightly damp from the shower. On instinct, her legs wrap around his back, bringing them so close together she can feel his cock twitch against her thigh.

“The floor, or-” It’s murmured against her ear between nibbles.

“No. Here.” It’s all she can do to hold back a moan as his whole body rumbles with quiet laughter.

���Someone’s eager.”

She leans back far enough to peer into his eyes.

“And you’re not?” The response is a thumb against her clit, and she has to bite down hard on his shoulder to muffle a yelp.

“If I’d known you were ready, you wouldn’t have gotten any sleep for the past two months.” That would’ve been a very small price to pay.

Five years is a long time, and her body tenses up at the intrusion of his finger inside of her, but she immediately forces her muscles to relax, and within seconds, it’s all she can do not to writhe against him.

“That’s it. Relax. I’ll take care of you.” It’s a lost cause. This is going to be noisy. She hazily thinks to herself that it’s all his fault.

He’s always been one for foreplay, making sure she’ll be comfortable once they actually get around to the main event, but finally enough is enough and, reaching between them, she stills his wrist.

“Get inside me.”

“Are you sure? You’re still tight-” Disentangling one of her arms from around his neck, she gives his hair a sharp tug.

“I’m like you now, remember? You’re not going to break me.”

He pulls back from her, hesitating, eyes darting between her face and the door.

“What?”

“I don’t have-” Oh. She quickly runs the calculations in her head. Given which day of the month it is, the likelihood would be-

“It’ll be fine. Just pull out.” To her relief, he doesn’t argue.

Her breath catches as he pushes inside of her, and if the panting against her neck is anything to judge from, she’s not the only one affected.

“It’s been too damn long.” Despite the situation (or perhaps because of it), she laughs breathlessly.

“You think it’s been too long? Try five fucking years!” His laugh tickles her neck.

“You’re never gonna stop using that one, are you?”

“Nope. I think I’ve earned the right.” After all, he constantly reminds her that he had to wait 98 years to meet the love of his life, so fair is fair.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to make it up to you.”

“Sounds like you just set yourself a challenge.”

“Guess I’d better get to work then.” As he says it, he pulls nearly all the way out only to slam back in again.

It’s primal, the way their bodies move together, desperate for a connection that’s been missing for so long. There’s no room or need for words to be spoken; their gasped breaths and strangled moans say it all. His hand sneaks between them, toying with her nub, and that’s what sends her over the edge. It’s the tipping point for him too because, muffling his cries against her shoulder, he pulls out just in time.

“We shoulda done that before the shower.” She’s still gasping for breath, but it forces a laugh from her. He follows suit, offering her a spare towel to clean herself up.

“You’ve been holding out on me, Barnes.” He shoots her a questioning look as she hops down on shaky legs. “I thought it was good before, but damn.”

He laughs, pulling on his jeans. “I didn’t want to risk breaking the bed. I’m a gentleman like that.” She knows the real concern was her safety, but if she concentrates on that too hard, she’ll start going mushy, and in this instance, crying after sex seems like it would kill the mood.

“You know-” She pulls her t shirt over her head, not bothering with a bra. “-I never really liked the bed I have now anyway.” It’s also really too small for two full-grown adults to share comfortably.

Sliding his duffle bag over his shoulder, he takes her hand. “Then maybe we should go home? Give you an excuse to get a new one?” Before she can answer-

“Go home. Please, I’m begging you, for the love of god, go.” Her eyes dart towards the source of the noise. The door, or more specifically, the other side of it. “Hearing you and the bionic man fucking once was enough. I’m gonna shoot you both and then myself if I have to listen to round two.”

Bucky catches her eye and mouths “Oops!”, sending her into a fit of giggles.

“You know Sam, you could’ve just walked away. You didn’t have to wait outside the door like a creep.” She has to bite her fist to keep from laughing out loud.

“Yeah, trust me. I could hear you from all the way down the hall.”

“Sorry.” She gasps it out between bouts of laughter, and she must be pulling a funny face, because he snickers to.

“No, you’re not.” No, she really isn’t. Just that they got caught.

“We’re heading out. You’ve got the place to yourself.” Giving his hand a tug, she pulls open the door, revealing a flustered Sam.

“I hope you remembered to wipe down the counter, you nasties!”

As they make their way down the corridor, Bucky calls out,

“See you Monday?”

“Yeah. And you’d better be wearing pants!”

[gveret-fic]

robot Lena ramblings

okay so here are my headcanons that I had written in fic form: they all decide from the start they are not above “borrowing” proprietary technology from companies; Kara’s powers and alien network makes it so that she can get any earthly or alien materials they might need; they go all out for Lena and make her the best looking and working android ever known to man; they look at a lot of robots for the design but they’re all stiff and don’t work for what they intend to do so they end up getting the general mechanics of an articulated drawing figurine Winn owned (something like the SFBT-3) so Lena would be able to do karate and play hockey and anything else she wanted; they got all her sensors and moving mechanics from various existing robots and precise gadgets like the surgery assisting machines; they manage to build her servers and processors small enough to fit into the body and to find an energy source capable of powering it all up; the looks Lena gets from the first result from a generative adversarial network (like the this person doesnt exist site) and is a dark haired pale faced green eyed woman (who’d have guessed? Not me); the voice is randomly selected and generated by a neural text to speech synthesis system to speak english with an irish accent that makes Kara’s heart melt; they put on her skin prosthetic syhthethic skin which has sensors for humidity, temperature, pressure, heating capability and self healing (fun fact prototypes for all of those exist irl); they finish by using animatronics technology that achives a full range of facial features and Lena ends up looking freakishly human, and only occasionally giving people that weird wax figure vibe that in their defense, some real people (like cough cumberbatch cough zuckerberg) also have. Lena gets finished and she can experience the world like never before, she has a whole new way of comunicating and is fascinated by intonation, cadence and other vocalizations she couldn’t express in writing, as well as facial expressions an hand gestures; she’s enchanted by being able to move and experience the world first-hand, she knows the imput shes getting to process is coming from cameras and microphones all the same but she can decide to take in and experience things as long as she wants, she can look at them from different angles, which videos photos or recordings never alowed her. Being with Kara is awesome, shes very tactile 10/10 cuddles, never treats her like shes less because shes an AI and is so excited to talk to her about science and the world, she matches her in excitment about all the new experiences, and as an alien she gets Lena’s neweness to the world like no one else. Its also comforting in a way to know that beause of what shes made of she can be things for Kara other people can’t, like a body to be hugged without fear of hurting, someone with somehwat enhanced vision and hearing to notice what Kara’s referring to, and something else she never considered before a night of whispering and vulnerability, someone that wont leave her after growing old and dying. I headcanon Kara as the kryptonian equivalent of ace in this universe since she still sees herself as a scientist, she understands kryptons pov of not needing physical relations and finding a partner thats worthy because of their intelect, which AI Lena so is, so yeah this Lena is not that kind of robot. Like you can see I just have too many feelings about Lena discovering the world and Kara having someone like her in her life.

-Submitted by anon

😭😭😭😭 That was so..... that was so fucking incredible and detailed and emotional and well thought out and perfect and touching and I’m so full of feelings ohhh my god........ Thank you so much, I love this a truly insane amount. Lena discovering the nuances of spoken and body language... Kara having a partner she can squeeze with all her heart, who can understand her in a way few others can, that she can grow old with.... 😭 Lena’s design being inspired by surgery assistance bots for maximum precision!! She can play hockey! The Irish accent! Maybe she develops it all by herself by a happy accident of machine learning. Lena discovering the world in a new way... discovering her new body... discovering her relationship with Kara..... Ugh yes thanks so much 😭

[theshipsfirstmate]

Agents of SHIELD Fic: Tell Me I Got Here at the Right Time

finale and post-finale dousy spec. What if they had to fully reset the timeline before they could take it back? What if Daisy was left out of that decision?

A/N: Genuinely don’t know where this came from, other than I can’t seem to stop writing for these two. Also, I want to state for the record that I love Peggy Carter and shipped peggysous, but these two just have my heart and inspiration rn.

Title from “Here at the Right Time” by Josh Ritter.

Tell Me I Got Here at the Right Time (AO3 - wc: 4378)

They think she can’t hear them. In truth, Daisy wishes they were right.

“I still don’t think this is a good idea.” Simmons has regained a good bit of her sparkle since Fitz’s return, but the worry in her voice is what’s most evident now.

“I know. I’m not sure I do either.” There’s a muffled sound after Fitz’s response that Daisy guesses is Simmons swatting at his arm.

“It’s your idea!” she hisses. “What if-“

“Don’t even say it,” her husband answers. “And it’s not my idea. You know that.”

They choose that moment to step back outside, where Daisy’s wringing the nerves out of her hands, hoping to twist them into even more resolve before she steps into the makeshift portal. She knows Fitz has run over a hundred successful tests, has seen over half of them first-hand. But still.

He’s the one of the pair who meets her eyes first, so she hones in before he can try to talk her out of it again. “You promised.”

“I shouldn’t have,” he admits. He’s probably right. But he knows what it means to her, and they all know she would have found another way if he’d refused to help.

“But you did.”

“Yes, I did.” Fitz grimaces, hazarding a glance at his wife, who’s rubbing anxiously at her arms, and then sighs. “Daisy, are you really sure? If something happens to you…”

“I’m sure.” And she is. Danger be damned. “I’m going. I have to.”

She’s had more than enough of time travel. They all have. She’d be happy to never jump again for the rest of her life. But when she regained consciousness after that final battle with Malick and realized the sacrifices that had been made to defeat the Chronicoms for good, she knew immediately that she would be making at least one more trip.

They’d had to do it, the team swore, though they all had a hard time looking her in the eye. Everything, and everyone, had to go back to its rightful place before they could steal the timestream back from Sybil. Daisy didn’t fault them, but her heart broke down to pieces just the same when she woke up to find an empty chair at the foot of her recovery bed.

“He didn’t want to go. He made us promise to tell you that,” Simmons had told her tearfully, needlessly. She already knew.

It took her less than a month to come up with the plan, but a bit longer to convince the rest of the team -- and Daisy still thought of them as a team, scattered though they were now to their own concerns. 

What sealed it for everyone else was a newly-discovered footnote from an historical S.H.I.E.L.D. ledger. 

“According to public records, Daniel Sousa still died at the Hotel Roosevelt on July 22, 1955, like he was supposed to,” she’d explained on their video conference, even though the words burned in her throat. “But not long after, an underground faction of early S.H.I.E.L.D. agents started to assemble in the Los Angeles office. They organized in secret, and fought against the shadier HYDRA factions, every time one of its slimy snake heads popped out of the ground. They didn’t always win. But they did their best.”

“We know Peggy Carter was one of their leaders,” Daisy told the group. “But there’s no solid information on any of the others.”

“You think Agent Sousa faked his death again. On his own.” Simmons had been the one to put her pieces together, to say out loud the hope that was stuck in her throat. 

“We gave him the blueprint,” Daisy nodded. None among them doubted his devotion to rooting out HYDRA, but she knew hope was part of what had her convinced, and she promised she’d weigh their approval before she’d risk her life. “It would be just like him to keep fighting.”

Fitz had mastered the tech in his time away, and had, of course, immediately started constructing a prototype in his backyard before she’d even thought to ask, much to Simmons’ chagrin. As it stands in modern-day Manchester, it looks like a simple phone booth -- a nerdy tribute Daisy’s dying to tease him about -- but he can calibrate it to any coordinates and time in the known universe. And she knows where she needs to be.

“What if he really is dead?” May had been the one to ask the questions no one else dared, though even she had waited for a private phone call to bring them up. “Or what if something happened, and he doesn’t remember you?”

“Then I’ll know for sure,” she’d answered, in part working to convince herself. There was perhaps a fate worse than being forgotten, in this case. “And even if…. even if he doesn’t want to come back, I’ll at least get to say a proper goodbye.”

It was clear everyone had their doubts, but even the most stalwart member of her found family couldn’t deny her that much. 

“You’d better come back.” Simmons is tearing up again, and Daisy definitely cannot handle that right now. “Your goddaughter will be waiting.”

That’s been the hardest part of any of this. It had been a surprise when Fitz returned, just moments after they’d successfully banished the Chronicoms back to their own space and time. It had been a bigger surprise that he’d appeared with a pigtailed toddler in his arms, who’d immediately wriggled out of his grasp and wrapped herself familiarly around Simmons’ legs.

Their daughter was two, almost three, when Simmons forced herself to forget her, but she was brilliant, of course, and somehow made of even stronger stuff than her parents. She powered through her mother’s initial shock and dismay and overwhelming guilt, helping to mend all of their hearts in the process. (Fitz had also dutifully shown her pictures of her S.H.I.E.L.D. family, so she recognized “Auntie May,” “Big Mack” and the rest -- and had a special spot in her heart for “Aunt Dede,” which Daisy did not take for granted.) 

“I’ll be back,” she promised. “You tell her to read Rocky a story every night for me.” 

She and Simmons had stayed up the night before -- after putting the little girl to bed alongside her favorite cuddly toy -- talking through all of the possible contingencies. Almost none of them were worse than never knowing, never getting any sort of closure, her friend had agreed. Almost.

“You remember the order, yeah?”

“Yes, Fitz,” Daisy answers dutifully, trying not to roll her eyes. They’ve been over this fifty times, and drilled it in person at least ten. It’s more time and practice than they ever used to get in the field, on the fly. She’s itching to get a move on. “Launch, exit, cloak the device with the watch…”

“Then, when you’re ready to come back, de-cloak, enter and launch. It should bring you right back here.”

“No matter what,” Simmons chimes in, casting her a look that says much more than her simple reminder. “24 hours is the limit.”

“I know,” Daisy nods, nervously smoothing down her period-appropriate ensemble. “I just need to see him.”

Fitz and Simmons nod solemnly in unison -- if anyone can understand it, it’s them -- and with that, Daisy steps into the booth, preprogrammed with her coordinates, and hits the button on her modified wristwatch.

The jolt of the jump feels familiar, which she takes as a good sign, and when she steps out of the booth, a quick survey of her surroundings allows her to exhale a sigh of relief as she cloaks the pod.

Fitz had plotted out an alley next to the old SSR office in Los Angeles. They know from de-classified S.H.I.E.L.D. documents that the underground corps started in a hidden basement office of the same building, so that’s Daisy’s best guess as to a starting point. It’s a few weeks after his “death,” and if she knows Sousa, he barely missed a day of work.

She double-checks the lobby just to make sure she’s at the right spot, and then sneaks back around the side to slide in through a basement window well. She lands in some kind of storage room, full of file folders and cobwebs, and makes her way to the cluttered, dingy hallway, where, behind a closed, unmarked door, she hears a familiar voice that makes her breath catch in her throat.

“They need to keep thinking I’m dead,” he’s explaining to someone. But he’s not, and the relief is enough to make her brace herself on the doorframe. “And we need to find out what exactly Stark knows about what I was carrying, and more importantly, what he knows about who might be after it.”

Daisy takes a slow, deep breath and knocks softly on the door — and three things happen. First, she hears the conversation go silent, saved for a concerned murmur. Second, Sousa opens the door and she sees him for the first time in months, handsomely square as ever in a dark grey suit and pale green dress shirt. And third, she scans the room and realizes there’s a non-zero chance that she’s about to cry in front of Peggy Carter.

“Daisy?” Sousa’s eyes go wide when he sees her, and it’s hard to be concerned about comporting herself in the presence of the legendary founder of S.H.I.E.L.D. when she’s wondering if his heart is stuttering in his chest the same way as her own.

It hits her in that moment, how much she’s boxed away the memory of him, how much she refused to let herself mourn his loss. He’s right there in front of her -- the man who’d carried her out of Malick’s torture chamber on a bum leg and kept vigil as she healed, the man who’d pushed her towards closure with her mother when she needed it most, the man who had appeared in her life and upended it simply by being kind and loyal and supportive in a way that she’s never known another person to be -- and god, she’s missed him. 

“Agent Sousa,” she grins, even as traitorous tears threaten to cloud her vision. “Good to see you again.”

He stares at her, slack-jawed for a long moment, saying only her name again, but softer, and that’s when she realizes she’s frozen too, helpless to move at the consoling sight of him. They only startle from their reverie when the third person in the room primly clears her throat.

“Pardon my manners.” Daisy moves past Sousa, hyper-aware of all the places she brushes against him, to finally break his disbelieving gaze and extend her hand. “Agent Daisy Johnson.”

“She’s CIA,” Sousa adds after her, and they both watch Agent Carter bristle a little, so he tacks on: “One of the good ones.”

“Well if Daniel vouches for you, it much be true,” the woman stands and straightens her skirt, still eying Daisy suspiciously as she reaches out her own hand to shake. “Peggy Carter.”

“Of course I know who you are.” This earns Daisy a small frown, so she scrambles to cover. “From Daniel… er, Sousa -- he’s told me all about the great work you guys are doing here.”

Another frown, and a glance at the man behind her. Daisy realizes after the fact that it would make a better compliment if the work they were doing here wasn’t supposed to be top secret.

“Are you alright?” Sousa’s brain starts catching up, and he reaches out, fingertips brushing against her waist, before pulling his hands back just as suddenly. “Is everything okay? How are you….here?”

“I…” Daisy hazards another awkward glance at Agent Carter, who’s looking at her like she just stepped out of a spaceship, which, honestly? Not far off. “It’s kind of a complicated story.”

“I’ll give you two a moment,” the other woman offers, her accent masking politeness over her obvious concern. “Then, Daniel, if you-”

“I know,” he answers, though he never takes his eyes off Daisy. “Of course, I-- thank you, we’ll just be a minute.”

“An honor to meet you, truly,” Daisy stutters as Peggy freakin’ Carter exits with a slightly disapproving eyebrow raised in their direction. Simmons is going to kill her.

Sousa closes the door and turns back to face her slowly, almost like he’s preparing himself to find an empty room. But the second his eyes meet hers, the paralyzing effects of surprise and awkwardness fade and Daisy rushes forward into his arms. Burying her face in his neck and catching the scent of his aftershave, she feels herself relax for the first time in a long time.

“Daisy.” He whispers her name, still sounding just as awed, but this time, it’s for her alone. “I thought… is this real?”

“Yes,” she nods into his shoulder, trying not to let him notice that the word comes out on a sob. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry they made you go. Sorry I wasn’t there to stop them. Sorry there wasn’t time to tell you. Like everything else when it comes to him, the apology is so much and not enough, all at once.

“Don’t be sorry.” He pulls back a little, takes her face in his hands and swipes his thumbs at the tears that are smudging her eyes. “Don’t cry. Please.”

“I woke up and you were gone.” She didn't let herself cry about it at the time, the combination of shock and other distractions keeping her emotions occupied. But every time she came to, alone in that healing chamber, was a fresh wave of heartbreak, and they’re all returning to her now, on a tide of tears. “And I--”

“I didn’t want to go,” Sousa interrupts, reaching down to squeeze her hands in his.

She just nods, still taking in the sight of him. “I know.”

“Why— how are you here now?” His brow furrows and she knows exactly where he’s gone, from shock to worry. “Is everything okay?”

It’s the kind concern in his eyes, the way he’s still steady and supportive, even when she’s dropped in from the future, unannounced, pulling the rug out from under him once again. (If she’s totally honest, it’s also the set of his jaw and the memory of how his chest felt beneath her palms.) Daisy lets herself give in, reaching up for his shirt collar in a familiar movement, and pulls him down to capture his lips. Just like before, he pauses for a second and then gives chase, kissing her back with a passion she thought she’d been exaggerating in her memories.

“Sorry,” she whispers again when they pause for a breath, even though this time she’s really not.

“Please don’t be sorry for that,” he grins, blinking his eyes open slowly. She remembers that soft look of wonder, from a stolen moment when there wasn’t enough time to bask in it. 

“I just- We did that once before,” she admits, “back in the time loops. But you didn’t remember.” 

“Well, now I’m extra glad you came back, if only to remind me,” he grins, and it makes her want to kiss him all over again. So she does. But he keeps this one quick, pulling back to ask again, “How did you come back? What’s the plan here?”

Daisy doesn’t quite realize what he’s asking at first.

“Fitz knocked off the Chronicom tech and built his own pod,” she answers, fluttering her hand to the side before bringing it back to his lapel. “I’ve got 24 hours before I’ve got to bring it back.”

There’s a question that goes along with her explanation, but she can’t find the words to ask it just yet, not when the answer could break what’s left of her heart. Instead, she tells him the first truth at the front of her mind. “I just missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” he answers. His hands are warm around her waist and she has the fleeting thought that it’s been worth it, even if this is all she gets. And then, because she didn’t catch his meaning the first time, because some part of him knows some part of her better than anyone ever has, he just... asks. 

“So, can I come back?”

Daisy goes light-headed with possibility. It can’t be this easy. “What?”

“Can I come back with you?” She watches for a joke in his eyes but it’s the same old earnest Sousa. “Will they let me? Will it… end the world?”

“No. I mean, yes. Are you sure?” She’s not even sure if her words are forming coherent sentences. Every relationship in her life has been fraught with conflict and heartbreak, for as long as she can remember -- and this one she just gets to have?

“Yes, I’m sure.” Now the teasing smile makes a hint of an appearance. “I’ve been wondering if you’d come back for me since the minute I woke up back in my old house.” 

That confession hits her sideways, just like it had when she asked if he was the type who liked picking other people back up when they fell, and he’d looked into her eyes -- and even deeper -- and answered: “Not for everyone.” 

She knows what the longing has been like for her. But she had so much more time with it than he did. They never even came close to defining this...thing, this flint of friction that gives off sparks between them, and still, he’s just been here. Waiting.

“You had goodbyes you wanted to say, loose ends,” she recalls, trying to clear the whiplash from her mind. The last thing she wants is for him to take the leap and regret it halfway down. 

She shuffles a small step back, but unwilling to completely lose contact, takes one of his hands in her own, studying it intently as she offers him the easy out.

“Daisy.” Sousa lets out a little humorless laugh. “You know they had to knock me out to send me back, right?” 

She didn’t know that, actually, and her fists start to clench in an instinctive response. But he eases them open, drawing her gently back towards him, and she follows.

“My loose ends aren’t in the past anymore,” he says softly, rubbing a thumb over the pulse point at her wrist. “I came back and I made my peace -- said what I needed to say to the people that needed to hear it.”

He glances towards at the door -- she’d known that one of those conversations was always meant for Peggy Carter -- and then back at her, and she believes him. Somehow she trusted him from the beginning, even when she had little more than his name and photo on an old S.H.I.E.L.D. file, and she trusts him now more than ever, even as a tiny bit of skepticism is still warring with her hopeful heart.

“But your team. The underground S.H.I.E.L.D. force. That’s you, isn’t it? You and Carter?”

“It is. And a few others. They’re gonna do good work, I know it.” She nods a confirmation. They will. “But I built it so I can lift right out. They’re a well-oiled machine already. Plus, everyone already figures my days are numbered.” 

He’s been planning for this. For her. Of all the possible outcomes, she hadn’t even thought to hope for one where he was waiting with his bags packed, metaphorical or otherwise. He’s a constant surprise and it makes her heart leap to dangerous places every time.

“I went back to work because I’m devoted to the cause,” Sousa continues, “but if you think I haven’t spent every free moment trying to figure a way back to you, thinking about what I’d do if I saw you again...”

“Daniel...” There isn’t much more to say but his name, and even that’s difficult when her throat is thick with emotion. 

“Unless you don’t want me to.” He saves her again, breaking the heavy moment by teasing her some more.

“Of course I do,” Daisy answers, swiping under her eyes. “But I’m gonna ask if you're sure a couple hundred more times.”

He nods, lips pursed. “My answer won’t change.”

“Okay, but we do have some time,” she reminds him with a nervous laugh, even as she’s starting to have faith in his certainty. “You want to sleep on it? Get some dinner or something?”

He grins even wider. “Yeah, you know, pizza sounds good. Your place? In about sixty years?”

She rolls her eyes at him, achingly grateful for even the hint of their familiar dynamic amid all this intensity. “All right, all right, old man. I get it.”

“Do you?” 

“Yeah, I do.” She reaches up to soothe her thumb over the crinkle beside his eye, another tiny detail she’s spent the last few months missing. “But you can keep reminding me.”

He catches her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm and promising, “I can do that.”

She takes a deep breath as he gathers his suit jacket from the back of the chair. Here goes everything. It’s not until they turn to leave that she realizes. 

“Do you need to…”

He’s a little solemn when he catches her meaning, but she’s surprised when it doesn’t make her worry. “Give me just a moment with Peggy, and I’ll meet you…”

“In the alleyway,” she finishes. “I came in through the storage room.”

He nods, and tugs her close for a hard and fast kiss to her lips that has her still dazed when she grasps for the door handle. 

To Agent Carter’s credit, she only looks slightly impatient when Daisy exits, pursing her lips as she brushes past her in the narrow hallway, unsure of what else to do or say. There’s an echoing silence that borders on uncomfortable, and then the other woman speaks. 

“He’s been different lately,” she offers softly, like a secret, before she’s close enough for Sousa to hear, and Daisy stops in her tracks. 

“I thought it was the obvious. I got the sense he was weighing his days after nearly dying. But he’s been waiting for you, hasn’t he?”

Daisy nods, sheepishly, turning back to meet eyes that impossibly seem to already know what’s about to happen. “To be fair,” she answers, truthfully, “I was waiting for him, too.”

The S.H.I.E.L.D. founder gives her a small smile then, and to her surprise, it’s one she recognizes from the mirror. It’s genuine, but sad, and Daisy feels it even deeper because she knows that an affection for the kind and loyal man waiting on them both isn’t the only emotional baggage they have in common. (A very small, very selfish part of her counts her blessings, though, that the other woman hadn’t been able to love Sousa the way he deserves.)

She nods in return, and makes her way back down the hallway, back through the cluttered room, back out to the alley, and back to where she first landed, where she ends up standing, waiting, twisting her hands nervously for the second time in just a few hours. But before she even has long enough to start worry that he’s having second thoughts, Daniel rounds the corner with a suitcase in hand and a grin on his face she wants to remember forever.

“You’re ready?” she asks. He nods, never breaking his stride or her gaze. “You’re sure?”

“I told you,” he assures, pressing a kiss to her forehead, “my answer’s not changing.”

“And Carter?” She takes his hand to step him back against the building, away from where their portal might appear. It’s only partially a distraction from an nerves that might be lingering on her face.

“She understands.” Sousa laces their fingers together and squeezes. “And I may have told her there’s a chance I could pop back around someday, if she needs me.”

He’s not totally out of line. Fitz had warned that the tech was to be used for emergencies only, but Simmons will surely convince him that anything involving Peggy Carter constitutes a proper emergency.

“She doesn’t seem like someone who would be very supportive of a team member jumping ship mid-mission,” Daisy observes, aiming for casual, as she uncloaks the device, which is, thankfully, right where she left it. “Pun not intended.”

“She’s not, usually. But I told her the truth.” A spark of fear lights inside her chest, but he puts it out immediately. “Just enough of it. I trust her.”

“Well, if there’s anyone who can keep a secret...”

Daniel ducks his head in agreement and adds softly, “And then... I asked her if there was anything she wouldn’t do, to have more time.” 

There it is again, that cymbal crash of her heart that takes her breath away. Daisy’s never known a man like this, and while she knows the future is always uncertain, she’s grateful to the abstract laws of time, science, fate and whatever else that she doesn’t have to lose him to the past.

“So, where are we headed?” Daniel follows her into the booth with a hand at the small of her back. It’s a bit of a tighter fit than her arrival trip, but neither of them mind in the slightest.

“If the wind is right, English countryside, 2020,” she answers with a grin. It’s a bit of luck that threading her arms around his neck allows her to kiss him and press the button on her wrist at the same time.

“We’re going home, Agent Sousa.”