#TO BE FAIR. I have like 5 things that could be responsible for memory loss and the actual event I'm trying to remember was years ago. But

[trans-leek-cookie]

I'm trying to remember shit about how my hypothyroidism works (like things my doctor mentioned when I got diagnosed) and it's SO HARD!!! and you'll never guess. You'll never guess what one of the symptoms of hypothyroidism is!!!

MEMORY PROBLEMS

[regalstudies]

Japanese Movie Recommendations!

こんにちは皆さん！今日、特別な順序ではなく５本の好きな映画を紹介したいです。

Hi everyone! Today I’d like to introduce you to 5 of my favourite Japanese movies! My personal tastes lean more towards the horror and anime side of things, but I hope there are some here that you guys haven’t seen! Cinema can be a great avenue to delve deeper social commentaries about the country we’re interested in learning about, so I’ve tried to pick some recommendations with that in mind! :]  

I’ve attempted to add all relevant content warnings, but there may be something I have missed so please take caution! I’d recommend having a look at what people say on DoesTheDogDie.com if you have specific concerns

Without further ado, let’s get started!

1.  Confessions (告白) directed by Tetsuya Nakashima (中島哲也)  

Confessions is a 2010 psychological thriller based off of the mystery novel of the same name. It follows the aftermath of the murder of a school teacher’s daughter by her pupils, who utilise Japan’s laws on age of criminal responsibility to “get away with it” and focuses on the differing perspectives of those involved. This film explores themes of revenge, familial values and expectations, and the normalization of violence in youth. This film is unmistakably heavy, but it is powerful.

This was introduced to me by my professor when I was doing a Japanese Film course in Uni, and it has stuck with me for YEARS. Not only is the story itself poignant, it’s brilliantly acted, beautifully shot, and has so many striking visuals with artistically composed scenes. As this was a fairly successful film,  there are a fair few articles analysing its themes - if anyone is interested, I can try and dig up the resources we used when we studied this in class! :]

Content warnings: depictions and mentions of mental and physical abuse, violence towards children, violence committed by children, bullying mentions of animal death, attempted suicide, murder, mentions of chronic illness (AIDs and cancer in particular)

2.  The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫の物語) directed by Isao Takahata (高畑 勲)

A retelling of famous folktale Taketori Monogatari (竹取物語) for modern Japanese audiences, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya brings new life to the classic story without sacrificing any of its heart. Takahata cited his own inability to connect to the original tale as inspiration for the retelling, aiming for something which the audience could connect to emotionally and really understand the titular princess. 

The film deals with feminist concerns about the restrictions of womanhood (especially in the ambiguously Heian-era Japan), familial obligation, love, and the beauty of life. It’s a cultural adventure which I would recommend to anyone regardless of their familiarity with the tale it is adapting! Honestly, I’ve written essays about  Taketori Monogatari and this film still managed to move me to tears with how beautifully and painstakingly rendered it is! I’d need a whole other post to detail just how much I appreciate the /art/ of this piece.

Content warnings: animal death, suggestion of sexual assault, arranged marriage, memory loss

3. Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から) directed by Hideo Nakata (中田 秀夫)

This 2002 horror movie is a sad ghost story! It follows the story of a single mother trying to get through her life while dealing with her divorce proceedings, new slightly-run-down apartment, and the paranormal occurrences haunting herself and her daughter. This movie deals with familial issues, parental sacrifice and confronting trauma.

Dark Water deals with aspects of Japanese horror which fans of Ringu (coincidentally, also directed by Nakata) may recognize, so I’d definitely recommend fans of Ringu and people wanting to explore the way that different cultures portray horror to give this one a shot. I found this one so fun to analyse  recurring themes and imagery in Japanese horror, and I’m more than happy to encourage others to fall down this rabbit hole too!

Content warnings: missing children, death (including that of a child), threat of death, drowning, abandonment, divorce

4.  The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女) directed by  Makoto Shinkai (新海 誠)

This 2006 sci-fi romance tells the story of a high-school girl who discovered that she has the ability to travel through time! Dealing with friendship, the pressures of growing up and romance, this movie integrates slice-of-life and coming of age themes into its sci-fi setting! Its your classic tale of fairly innocent time-travel shenanigans and trying to right some wrongs, and makes the the ultimate heartwarming story! 

This one used to be pretty popular amongst anime fans a gooood few years back, but I haven’t seen people talk about it in a while and I wanted to mention it just in case it had fallen off the radar!  With simple yet fluid character designs and beautiful scenery, this piece manages to portray grounded teenage characters and capture that warm summer feeling throughout.

Content warnings: threat of death, train accidents, minor violence and name calling

5.  Tokyo Sonata (トウキョウソナタ) directed by  Kiyoshi Kurosawa (黒沢 清)

This 2008 drama follows the disintegration of a middle-class family after the patriarch loses his comfortable salaryman job unexpectedly. This film tackles issues faced by many modern families as the sense of traditionalism and societal normalcy becomes strained under the pressures of expectation, unemployment, and inability to communicate your authentic self to your family.

This film is an incredibly grounded drama, depicting real issues faced by so many families. Take a look at the date on this film, and you’ll realise how true-to-home this story of societal and economic uncertainty is for so many. Despite it all, what seems on the surface to be a depressing story of a family at their worst, actually displays a message of hope throughout. I find it to be a very realistic and poignant film.

Content warnings: unemployment, financial struggle, communication issues, war, military, abuse, domestic violence, crime, robbery, kidnapping, themes of suicide and depression, sexual assault, car accidents, police presence 

Bonus!  Gohatto (御法度) directed by Nagisa Ōshima (大島 渚)

This one was recommended by my flatmate for this list, as a quick shoutout because “its very good” so I don’t personally have much to say about it - but I’m never going to complain about a recommendation for a gay samurai film. :]

それで、おすすめを終わります！

Thank you all for reading through this list! If you have any recommendations of your own, please feel free to add them on!

[setsunasknife]

I have seen some people calling Towa a "siscon" after the latest episide, giving a reason why they hate her even more. Is her clingyness for Setsuna really that extreme?

This is my first ask ever! Thanks for playing!

So, let’s go through a couple things real quick:

1. Towa loves her sister, is the only blood relative that she can remember. Towa recalls a very happy relationship where they relied on each other and loved each other. I can’t blame her for wanting that back after years of feeling like she’s lost something.

2. Towa has A LOT of trauma associated with Setsuna. Towa has a lot of REGRETS associated with Setsuna. Towa blames herself for losing Setsuna, for Setsuna losing her memories, for Setsuna not being able to sleep. Towa has a very big weight on her shoulders when thinking of Setsuna. She’s her big sister and she should’ve been there for her.

3. When she finally gets Setsuna back, Setsuna doesn’t remember her. The very person Towa has been looking for and missing for 10 years. Setsuna is cold and seems angry with her, I don’t know about you, but that would hurt me a lot too. I would also try as hard as I could for my sibling to see that I love them.

4. AND THEN, to be shown that your sister has a happy life without you while you struggled day in and day out with their loss is like rubbing salt in the wound. Towa is a VERY emotional character, her full demon state was triggered by strong emotions. I can’t blame her for being heartbroken and angry that everyone had a good life without her.

5. To the be FINALLY shown that your sister was heartbroken and looking for you in the same way you have been for the last 14 years? Towa’s feelings were validated and shown that Setsuna really does love her. It’s no ones fault her memories had to be taken, Rin was doing what she could to help her baby not be super traumatized at 4 years old. Well, it’s Zero’s fault but let’s not speak ill of the dead.

So overall, I feel Towa’s reactions to everything are pretty fair for a 14 year old girl who’s been traumatized by the loss of her sister. Is she clingy? Hell yeah. But it’s a trauma response to having felt responsible for “ruining” her sisters life.

And for those being really mean to Towa about it, then why did Setsuna have the same reaction to seeing her memories? Setsuna loves her sister too.

Thank you so much for the ask! 🥰

[revengeisourlullaby]

If I Never Knew You Pt.2

Pt. 1   Pt. 2    Pt.3   Pt.4   Pt.5   Pt.6

Warnings: 18+, eventual smut, arranged marriage plot, kinda royal au, some fighting, secret relationship, angst.

a/n: Here is part 2! I might upload part three tonight. I’m so excited to see where this goes. It seems that the first part is doing pretty good so I might upload them faster. As always requests/asks are open! Just give me little time to get to them. Enjoy! 

Word count: 1.8K

Walking through the town, you felt an inordinate wave of liberation flow through not only you but also through Loki. It felt as if the weight of the world released itself from your shoulders. Confidence and strength soaring through the air. Loki lost his stiffness, his typical carefree nature restored once you became more grounded. 

“See, not so bad, right?”

Shaking your head, a cynical chuckle escaped your throat

“For you maybe. All these eyes on us is kinda gross.”

“It’s only because the most attractive prince has finally decided to show his face.”

You looked at Loki, amusement absent from your face. He laughed, a belly laugh almost. It was a free sound you had yet to hear from him and when you did your face painted your emotions before you had the chance to process them yourself. 

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Yes, but you, my dear, tolerate it. So who's really at a loss in this situation?”  

“Well, it’s not me.”

“It couldn’t be me Y/N.”

“Looks like we’re both losers then Loki.”

You were approaching the main entrance of the palace and began to wonder if Loki was considering bringing you inside.

“We lost when we fell in love with each other Y/N. Listening to the heart is the most foolish thing one can do and yet here we are. Charging full speed with our eyes closed hoping we don’t trip over anything.”

Guiding you up the steps of the massive golden structure Loki called ‘home’ your nerves struck up again. 

“Seems to make sense that if we’re going full speed, might as well exploit our courtship in the place where you will eventually be spending all your time in. And with all things considered, sneaking you in is...counterproductive, to say the least.”

Exhaling, you brought yourself together and walked in front of Loki. His hand rested on your lower back escorting you inside. Grabbing fabric in your fists, you hiked your dress up a bit making sure you didn’t step on it. Walking through the main threshold, you realized you were worrying for nothing. The halls were massive, the ceiling stretching higher than you ever imagined.

 It would be a miracle if you were to run across someone you knew in a place so vast.

 You looked around in shock at everything you were being hidden from. The thought of it hopefully being yours to share with Loki in freedom and not in constraint was illuminating. One day to not only be openly in love with him but to call him your husband. Your partner for life was the solace you needed. Everything looked new to you because you had only ever seen the hallways in the dead of night to share evening visits with Loki, being as slick as one could, and it always working in your favor.

“Wow, it looks so different here with the sun shining through. Always felt like a runaway sneaking through the backways and balconies to get to your quarters.”

“And now you get to walk there like every other person in this place. Quite fancy isn’t it.”

“Okay, I didn’t ask for the smart mouth, you ass.” 

“Comfortable, are we?” 

“With you? Always.”

Finally, you two had walked up to Loki’s quarters. Opening the doors he welcomed you in and you welcomed yourself to his bed. Flopping down on the edge of it, the edge of your dress flying up and you went down. Hearing the door shut, you lifted your head up to face Loki at the door, only thing was he wasn’t there. Furrowing your brow you sat up on your elbows and by the time you looked behind you, it was too late. 

“Boo.”

Your body reacted before you could control your response. Your stomach fell to your ass, eyes widening and a sharp inhale all followed one another before you finally shook off the anxiety and realized that Loki had popped up behind you. 

“You asshole! What if I screamed, huh?”

Loki laughed falling over on the bed, your reaction to him obviously something of hilarity to him. You rolled your eyes and pushed his shoulder in and began to pout. He caught his breath and calmed down enough so he could respond back to you. 

“You’re only screaming for one thing and unfortunately, darling, the sun’s still out. So, someone will have to wait, considering they’re so concerned about being caught.”

Loki raised his eyebrow and your mouth was agape. You squinted your eyes and an idea popped in your head. Rolling over on your knee you placed yourself on top of Loki's lap, resting your hands on his chest stealing his smirk for this moment in time.

“I can control myself...you on the other hand, once you start you can't stop.”

To emphasize your point, you rolled your hips into his and brought your body down to level his. Reaching his ear you whispered

“If you can find containment within yourself, a prize will await you this evening.”

You moved from his ear and hovered in front of his face, your lips ghosting one another. You pulled back a little bit to stare into his eyes. They were hypnotic no matter how many times you saw them. Loki’s hand trailed up your backside squeezing the mound of your ass before continuing up your back. His hand finding refuge at the nape of your neck. He pulled you back to his face, a gentleness about the entire interaction, and kissed you. 

There was a different kind of spark in this kiss, it felt electric, coursing through your veins and settling in your brain as a memory you’d never forget. Losing yourself in the thrill of it all, your hips began moving against his. Your building arousal creating a fog between you. The more you ground into the god below you, the more apparent his bulge was. Flipping you on your back Loki now held the reins of the situation. 

“Now, don’t tempt me Y/N. You have a habit of teasing and where does it always leave you?”

“At your mercy.”

“Clever girl. So if you like to save this accolade you mentioned for later, mind your manners, my love.”

He leaned down to kiss you as to punctuate his words, ending the discussion with the pull of your lips between his teeth. Hissing through the pleasure you couldn’t help but roll your hips up towards him, now being the one desperately craving friction. Testing the waters, you wanted to see how far you could push Loki to his limits. Your hand found the scruff of his neck and scrunched his hair. Sucking a breath in between his teeth, he pulled back a light laugh following. 

“I’m aware of what you’re attempting to do Y/N, and I think it would be fair for you to know that it’s a feeble attempt. Reason being, now you’re the one left in ardor.”

Loki pulled off of you but made sure to drive his point home by sliding down your body and resting between your thighs before fully standing up. You lied on the bed in slight agony of your current predicament. You sighed and brought yourself up on your elbows. Looking ahead of you, you saw Loki sitting in the massive throne chair that was in his room. It was gothic in nature yet still regal with the back of the chair rising well up behind him and the arms of it embellished with Asgardian design. 

His position in the chair was more than purposeful. His legs were spread wide, his arm resting on the arm of the throne and his hand propping up his head to look not only at you but out on the balcony. The late evening sun illuminating his eyes, bringing a whole new meaning to golden hour. He looked breathtaking and it was as if you were falling in love with him all over again.

The lust you were previously feeling was now amplified but also accompanied with adoration for your lover. You raised yourself from up off the bed and waltzed over to him. A fire behind your eyes and in your presence but you had yet to act on it. Coming in front of him, you kneeled in front of him and looked up. Two could play at this game. Your hands slid up his legs, paying special attention to his thighs and feather lightly rubbed on this. His eyes were boring through yours and you felt small under his gaze. 

The silence between you was telling, that if you were to continue with your actions there would be no waiting until later. You wanted to enjoy the silence between the two of you, so you turned your back to him now sitting on your behind, and crossed your legs. You leaned your head back so it fell in between his legs, but before fully getting settled you reached for the two books resting on the side table in front of the chair and placed them in your lap. You wiggled your hips and settled into a comfortable position. 

Resting your head back, you craned it further attempting to look at Loki. He rolled his eyes knowing exactly what you were asking for. 

“You know, if I knew how often you’d beg for these I would have never indulged in your initial request.”

“You and I both know this is enjoyable for both parties.”

Loki huffed, a silent agreement without saying explicitly that you were right. Loki began to rub your temples. You closed your eyes enjoying the sensation and the loving intent of his actions. You finally felt calm and safe compared to the rest of the day which was riddled with anxiety and panic and the nagging fear of all the ‘what ifs’ you came up with. You had exhausted yourself and this simple action put you at ease. You opened your eyes for a moment and glanced down at the books in your lap trying to decipher which one was Loki’s. 

Catching a glimpse on the side you realized the one on the bottom was Loki’s current project at hand. Grabbing it, you twisted your arm behind you and slid the book into Loki’s lap knowing that sooner or later you would end up dozing off and you figured that getting this out the way would make it easier for both of you. 

“You are truly something else.”

“And you love me for it Loki.” 

“Can’t argue that one.”

A small smile painted your face before it fell back into its relaxed state and you began to drift off. Every little thing that had happened today made you feel that you were a few steps closer to getting what you so desired with Loki.

[fruitcoops]

Remus gets injured in a game. I have literally read everything you have written but i'm not sure if you have wrote one like this. If you have, ANOTHER PLZZ

Hello anon! I wove this together with a couple different prompts, listed below:

1. Coops argument

2. Prompt 21: “You need to eat something”

3. Remus gets in a fight with Snape

4. Protective Sirius

5. Coops going home grumpy after losing a game (see link)

Sweater Weather credit goes to @lumosinlove! TW for fights, blood, bruises, arguments, and someone getting called a wh*re

Snape’s cheek gave easily beneath Remus’ fist, which was a tad bit surprising. He wrapped his other hand in the neckline of his jersey, yanking him back in to land another punch to the side of his head—that would leave a nasty bruise in the morning. Stars sparkled in his vision as Snape got a lucky shot in and he doubled down, ignoring the thin line of pain that trickled down his chin.

“Break it up, boys, that’s enough!” The referee’s whistle blew as he and another pried Remus’ hands off Snape’s jersey; someone took him by the shoulders and pushed him away from the fight. Pots.

“Say it again!” Remus shouted at Snape as the refs and their teammates continued pulling them apart. “Say it again and I’ll knock your fucking teeth in!”

James’ hold on him faltered for a second as another person skated over and tried to join the melee. “Cap, no!”

“Move, Pots.”

“Loops won the fight, it’s done. Let’s just keep playing.” James shoved both their chests hard enough to send them back a few inches, but Remus’ blood boiled as he ground his mouthguard between his teeth. He glanced up at the clock—3:16 left in the third, Snakes up by two. Their win was almost guaranteed and Snape was still pulling this bullshit.

He skated quickly over to the bench and mumbled his thanks to Hestia as she pressed some gauze to his lip and ice to his cheek. “Lupin, you’re in for the rest of the game,” Coach Weasley said, tapping him on the arm with his playboard. “Anything broken?”

“No, Coach.”

“Then get your ass back out on the ice and score some points. We need some speed.”

He could feel the fury rolling off Sirius as they wove through the Snakes’ defense, shooting again and again to no avail. Frustration built up in every nerve—he was worried about the win, of course, but mostly he was pissed. Pissed at Snape, pissed at James for pushing him, and pissed at Sirius for butting into the fight.

Remus scored a final goal just as the buzzer sounded. Hissing filled the stadium, even though it was a home game. Snape smirked at him as he skated past and the only thing keeping him from dragging him right back in by his greasy hair was the possible suspension.

The shower was cold, because of course the fucking shower was cold. Remus shoved his stuff in his duffel and waited outside the locker room, silently fist bumping the guys as they left. God, he hated losing games. It was inevitable, but it always felt shitty.

“How’s the lip?” Sirius asked when he finally came out, bag slung over his shoulder.

“Fine. What the fuck was that?”

“What was what?”

“You butted into my fight. Nobody asked you to.”

Sirius’ eyebrows rose. “Re, he called you—”

“Yeah, I know what he called me,” Remus snapped, practically slamming the door to the parking lot closed. “I was there.”

The only reason you’re on this team is because you’re the captain’s whore, Snape had sneered. He bit the inside of his cheek as his anger flared at the memory. “I was just trying to help,” Sirius grumbled.

“Well, you didn’t. You proved his fucking point.”

“I didn’t prove shit!” Sirius scoffed as they got in the car. Immediately, Remus felt claustrophobic.

“I had it handled, Sirius!”

“You’re still bleeding!”

Remus ran his tongue along his lip—sure enough, the salty tang of blood filled his mouth. He swore under his breath and held his sleeve to his lip; his cheekbone throbbed and he knew it would be swollen in mere hours.

“Here.”

“I don’t need that.”

“You’d rather stain your sleeve than accept a tissue from me?”

“It’s a black sweatshirt, it’s fine.” Sirius muttered something. “Care to share with the class?”

Sirius sighed as he turned off the freeway. “I said it was your idea to keep these here in the first place. I don’t know why you’re being all pissy with me. We’ve lost games before.”

“I’m pissed because you don’t think I can handle myself in a fight.”

Sirius took his eyes off the road for a half second in shock. “Excuse me? Why do you think that?”

“I just told you!” Remus said, exasperated. “Snape was being a dick, so I punched him. I didn’t need your hero complex to swoop in and save the day.”

“Re, I didn’t even get a hand on him. Pots—”

“Oh, I’m pissed at him as well,” Remus snorted, staring out the passenger window at the blurry lights against the dark. “If someone calls me a whore, I’d rather get the message across that they can’t do it again.”

“Would you rather have gotten a penalty?”

“Yes.”

“That is unbelievably selfish.”

Remus laughed without humor. “Y’know, it’s really funny that you’ve never had this conversation with Logan, the king of the penalty box. Is it because he’s not a delicate flower like me?”

“Wh—” Sirius clenched his jaw and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Remus. I have never seen you as a—a delicate flower. For your information, I have chewed Logan out on multiple occasions.”

Remus gritted his teeth and trained his gaze firmly out the window. He heard Sirius sigh next to him and it took every ounce of willpower to keep his composure. The next ten minutes were dead silent and deeply uncomfortable, which was a rarity with them; even after losses, they would talk through the errors or try to lighten the mood.

Both of them closed their doors a little harder than necessary when they got to the house and Hattie trotted over hesitantly when they came inside. “Hey, Hatters,” Remus murmured, crouching down to her level and holding a hand out. She licked his cheek and let him bury his face in her thick fur—Sirius scratched her ears as he walked past. “Did you have a good time while we were out? Huh, baby girl?” He looked up and saw the tail end of Sirius’ eye roll. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Sirius, it doesn’t work. I’m giving the dog a hug because I’m still pissed at you.”

“There is literally no good reason for you to be pissed at me!” Sirius finally said, tossing his keys into the bowl by the door. “Holy shit, Re, I don’t even think you’re mad at me!”

“Oh, yeah? Then who am I mad at, oh great and wise captain?” Remus practically spat, shouldering past him into the kitchen and wrenching a cabinet open. “Please enlighten me.”

“I wish I knew!”

Remus slammed the bread down on the counter and glared at him. “Then maybe you should shut the fuck up if you don’t have anything to support your claim.”

“Acting like this is a goddamn debate club isn’t helping. Your lip is bleeding again.”

“Fuck.” Remus ripped a paper towel off the roll and dampened it, holding it to his lip with a wince. Sirius opened the freezer and dug around for a moment with another paper towel. “I don’t remember you getting hit.”

“This is for you, you stubborn fucker,” Sirius said as he walked over and pressed it gently to the side of Remus’ face. “Better?”

“…a bit.”

The tension on Sirius’ face began to fade; he just looked concerned as he pulled the ice away and checked the bruise. “Your eye might swell.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you actually want to talk now, or should we yell a little more?”

Remus sighed and felt his anger abate. He was beyond exhausted, and still upset, but having Sirius nearby was like balm on a burn. “I don’t know.”

“I’m going to make some sandwiches. Hold this.” Sirius tapped the ice towel and moved to the abandoned loaf, grabbing some peanut butter and jelly as he went.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You need to eat something.”

“I’m fine.”

Sirius glanced over his shoulder and gave him a look. “I know you, Re. You’re not going to feel better unless you get some food, and neither will I.”

“I hate it when you’re reasonable.”

“No, you don’t.”

Remus’ lack of response was enough of an answer. The pain stretched to his forehead and he grimaced, prodding his lip cautiously. Sirius whistled for Hattie and spread the leftover peanut butter from the knife onto a clean spoon, holding it down for her to lick. A smile tugged the corner of Remus’ mouth. “Cute.”

“I can be cute on occasion.”

“You’re always cute.” There was a beat of quiet. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re forgiven. I’m sorry for yelling.”

“Not for interrupting the fight?”

“Nope.”

“That’s fair.” Something tickled at the back of Remus’ throat. “I fucking hate Snape.”

“Me, too.”

“Surprisingly enough, it feels pretty shitty to be called a whore. Who would’ve thought?”

Sirius turned and faced him, sleeves rolled to his elbows. His eyes were soft. “You know that’s not true, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Remus. What he said wasn’t true. You have nothing to prove to anyone on the team, least of all to me. You earned that spot on the roster fair and square, and Snape’s just freaked out because there’s another player who could grind him into the dust without breaking a sweat.” He stepped closer and leaned on the counter next to Remus, leaving a few inches between them. “I don’t think you’re a whore, if that means anything.”

Remus laughed softly. “Of all the people out there, I think you’re the only one who could reliably make that assumption.”

Sirius didn’t smile. “You’re my best friend and also my fiancé. The sex is a great bonus, but my favorite part of being with you is just being with you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Remus muttered, though the sharp edges began to smooth in his gut. He closed the distance between them and laid his head on Sirius’ shoulder. “Love you.”

“I love you, too. Can I take a look at your lip?”

“Sure.” Remus peeled the towel away and Sirius bent slightly, poking the area around it. “Ouch.”

“That’ll probably take a week or so to heal. He got you good.”

Remus pouted. “No kisses for a week?”

Sirius did laugh that time, bright and sunny enough that Remus nearly made his lip bleed again with the answering smile. “I said nothing about no kisses.” Warm lips trailed from his unbruised cheekbone to the edge of his mouth, leaving tiny tingles in their wake.

“I really am sorry about what I said. You were right, I wasn’t angry with you, and I had no right to go off like that.”

Sirius shrugged. “It happens.”

“It shouldn’t.”

“Then let’s agree to talk first, bite heads off later, okay?” He held his pinky out and Remus linked it with his own, kissing it quickly.

“Deal. Are the sandwiches done? I’m starving.”

Wordlessly, Sirius handed him a sandwich and hopped up to sit on the counter, scooting over to make room for Remus to join him. They ate quietly, swinging their legs as the calmness of the kitchen crept back in once more.

[petri808]

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

Inukag AU

“Ready to go, dear?” Mrs. Higurashi asked her daughter as the young woman looked around the room one last time.

Inuyasha watched carefully, noting the hints of nervous energy flowing from Kagome as she nodded, seemingly going along with leaving the hospital. She was finally discharged, and one would think it would be a happy moment, but based on those subtle changes, he suspected otherwise. Inuyasha didn’t want to alarm anyone, so he dutifully followed behind, carrying Kagome’s small suitcase. He could ask her later in private.

The entourage that joined in were, he, Miroku, and Sango trailing Mrs. Higurashi and Kagome in separate vehicles back to the Higurashi residence. They’d left the decision up to Kagome as to where she wanted to go, and she’d picked her childhood home. Inuyasha couldn’t say he was happy about it, but it was understandable under the circumstances. It would be too weird for her to go to their home so soon when he was still really just a stranger in her eyes. So, to make the transition as painless as possible, they’d brought all the things Kagome would need and placed them in her old bedroom. Sango helped to gather and pack all the clothes, toiletries, and any other items she was sure a young woman would want to have. While he and Miroku did the heavy lifting and transporting of the boxes. It was… painful for Inuyasha. To see their shared bedroom barren of half its contents as if they’d broken up for good. The room was cold enough, and the emptiness now exacerbated. Tonight, would surely be the hardest-to-date to go home.

But alas, Inuyasha knew he couldn’t let this pain consume him. He was making great strides in endearing himself to Kagome again, so to risk it all by letting emotions ruin it, would be the stupidest thing in the world. Three and a half months of the loss of Kagome’s presence already felt like a lifetime of heartache he wouldn’t wish upon his worst enemy. Well, except for the one who helped to put him in this mess. But it wasn’t fair to blame it all on his ex. He was a big boy. The burden was just as much if not more on his shoulders. So, Inuyasha chose to use that acknowledgment to motivate him and not let the pain drag him down. This was a second chance at a redemption he was lucky enough to be granted. Though it was extremely awkward at times. Kagome’s personality was fully intact and still very much the sweet, yet feisty brunette that had stolen his heart. Dealing with everything really brought back all those feelings one gets when starting a new relationship. Excitement and dread to not do or say the wrong thing or make a bad impression. He wasn’t in the same depressed and angry mental space as when they’d originally met, but the anxiety was definitely back full force.

Once they were all settled at the Higurashi home, Mrs. Higurashi and Sango went off to the kitchen to prepare a dinner for everyone. Miroku stayed in the living room tending to the twins, which left Inuyasha alone with Kagome. With her consent, they were in her bedroom, he helping her to carry and move boxes, or put away items to make it feel like home again.

“Is it weird,” Kagome questioned as they puttered around the room. “Being in here for you?”

“A little,” Inuyasha answered honestly. “I’m comfortable in here after all these years, but it’s different now.”

The woman nodded her head quietly, clearly in the throes of her own thoughts. “My mom mentioned you stayed for a short time in here… after the accident.”

Inuyasha stopped moving and turned to Kagome. “I did. I hope that wasn’t a problem.”

Again, Kagome shook her head without a verbal response. “It’s just— strange, even for me to be here.” She continued after a long, exhaling pause. “My last memory is of the college dorms, so to move straight back here is weird too.” She sat down on her bed. “I… feel like I’m not supposed to be here.”

He moved closer, sitting on the bed too, but leaving an arms-length between them. “Stop me if it’s too uncomfortable, but… I couldn’t help but notice you seemed sad or nervous back at the hospital. I didn’t wanna say anything with everyone around, but… if you wanna talk, you know I’m here for you, right?”

Kagome slowly nodded. “You’re right, Inuyasha. I was nervous about leaving. Not because I wanted to stay, just nervous about what to expect once I did leave. I’ve been trying so hard to process everything going on and to stay positive, but it’s not always easy.”

Inuyasha could feel a verge of tears building in the woman’s eyes and it sent a pang to his heart. He hated seeing her have to go through all this. Hated himself for having caused all of this. It brought a wave of his own tears to the forefront. “I’m so, so sorry Kagome,” his head and ears drooping. “But I promise to help you through this. Even if at the end we part ways, I just wanna make sure you get through this.”

“I know,” she smiled weakly. “I believe you, and you don’t have to keep apologizing Inuyasha. You didn’t intend for any of this to happen.”

He made a bold move and reached out, placing his hand over hers. “Could you tell me, what is scaring you the most right now?”

Kagome paused. “Mmm, it’s the not recognizing things. I’m sure there’s been changes during the time I can’t remember. What if I don’t recognize places around town and get lost? What new technologies have popped up? There’s just all these unknowns— and it kind of scares me a little. It feels… like I’m all alone even though I’m not alone. Does that make sense?”

“I think… I understand. Everyone around you knows what’s going on but you don’t, so it makes you feel alone?”

Kagome snapped to attention with excitement. “Yes! That’s exactly it!”

With no chance to process the elation, Inuyasha found himself being hugged by the woman so tightly, he could do nothing but melt from the contact. His arms wrapped around her to return the gesture, pushing all the calming energy could into Kagome that he could. It felt… breathtaking to be in her arms again and he couldn’t stop himself from burying his face into her hair, smelling the strawberry scented shampoo he’d grown to love on her.

When Kagome finally pulled away, a few happy tears trickled down Inuyasha’s face. Concerned, she reached out to his cheek and wiped them away. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, no,” his hand covered the one resting on his cheek as he smiled weakly, struggling to hold back the dam. “I’m sorry for crying, it just… I just,” a few more tears rolled down. “I missed you so much Kagome. I-I know this is much harder on you, but Kami I just miss you so, so much.” That was it, Inuyasha couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. “It hurts to not come home to you. I swear I’m gonna insane sometimes wishing I could go back in time, so the fight and accident never happened. When you hugged me, it just felt so comforting, that…” his words choked, and all he could do to stop from rambling was let out a long sigh.

Kagome smiled and smoothed her thumb against his skin, “it’s okay to let it out, Inuyasha. I get it. This is hard on both of us. I’ll admit it’s a little surprising to me too how natural it feels to be here with you.”

“You’ve always been the better person,” Inuyasha mumbled out. “The one who could always make things better. Me, I’m just winging it.”

“I think you’re doing just fine,” she smiled. “One step at a time, right?” Kagome cupped both his cheeks. “Like you said, we’ll get through this. I have faith we will.”

Inuyasha nodded quietly, sniffling the last remnants away. “I really don’t deserve you Kagome.”

“Hush. I saw something special in you once, and based on what I’m seeing now, I was right. Do you really think I’d have given you the time of day if I didn’t think you deserved my attention?”

“No…”

“Exactly.”

That made Inuyasha snort a laugh. “Kami. This is why I fell so hard for you. You were never too afraid to call me out on my bullshit!”

Now it was Kagome’s turn to blush. “Thanks… I guess?”

Inuyasha smiled and chuckled. “I’m glad we could talk to each other like this again.”

“Me too,” Kagome smiled.

After that night, every night, Inuyasha called Kagome after dinner to see how her day went and to tell her, “sweet dreams.” During the first few calls, there were more silent moments than talking moments despite their breakthroughs, but it was improving. They’d play games like 20 questions to spark a conversation, which often did the trick, or if in a particularly good mood, a mild form of truth or dare. It was a great way for Kagome to ask anything she wanted to of Inuyasha and no matter how tough the subject matter was, he’d answer them truthfully. She was having to learn about him all over again, so he did his best not to get upset if Kagome didn’t know something as mundane as his favorite brand of chips, or what his favorite color was. Sometimes he was tempted to test her memory to see if telling a falsehood would gain a pause, but in the end thought against it. He couldn’t risk upsetting her, even if it was meant as a tease.

As he sat on the Higurashi’s couch next to Kagome fidgeting with his fingers, the nervous energy was obvious from both sides. Inuyasha pressed forward despite the butterflies in his stomach threatening to unfurl his breakfast.

“No really, you tell me what you’d like to do?” Even though Inuyasha knew a lot about Kagome, he didn’t want to behave as if he did.

“But you’re the one asking me out on a date. Shouldn’t you have something planned in advance?” Kagome retorted in exasperation of the ridiculous back and forth going nowhere.

“I figured it would be nicer if you chose.”

“Oh.” Kagome paused. “I guess I assumed since you know me already, you’d just pick a place I like.”

“I mean, I could, but I didn’t think that would be very fair.”

“Inuyasha, it’s okay. I promise. I accepted the fact you know a lot about me, so something as simple as dinner or a date, it’s okay to choose.”

“Sorry, I just didn’t wanna do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

Kagome smiled and took his hand. “And I appreciate it, really I do. But could we just pick somewhere already? I’m starving!”

Inuyasha chuckled, his frayed nerves dwindling away. “Yes, m’lady. There’s a new sushi place that I think you’ll like…”

On his days off, they went out together on dates, sometimes him choosing the location, sometimes her. Since she couldn’t remember the last 5 or so years, there were several changes around town that were new to Kagome. Initially, she’d worried before leaving the hospital about how she’d feel about all the changes, but those concerns had melted away, and her excitement often became infectious for Inuyasha. She’d drag him around to see the sights, almost wanting him to show her all the changes. He rarely went out, so there was a lot for him to learn too. Baby steps were the name of the game. Simple dates, no touching yet, not even hand holding, letting Kagome guide the pace. Inuyasha also found their times together becoming more exciting to him. Over time, all relationships tend to find a groove where one feels comfortable, settled. Not that there’s no excitement anymore, but it’s just not the same as the rush of a brand new relationship with all the what if’s, the embarrassing moments, and heart racing unknowns.

No matter how many dates they’d gone on so far, each time Inuyasha pulled up to the Higurashi home, the same flutter of energy pulsed inside of him as if his inner demon just couldn’t wait to see its chosen mate again. Inuyasha was still nervous about the future, but so far things were going great between he and Kagome. Who would have thought such a horrible circumstance could lead to this kind of exhilaration? Because he swore… he was falling in love all over again.

[wondereads]

Personal Review (02/13/21)

Stain by A. G. Howard

Why am I reviewing this book?

Stain is one of my favorite books ever, and I took the opportunity to reread it recently to both experience it again and refresh my memory so I could review it. I really do love this book, and I hope more people read it!

Plot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Princess Lyra was born with an extreme sensitivity to sunlight, something debilitating for the future ruler of a kingdom that never sees night. On the other side of things, Prince Vesper of an underground kingdom needs sunlight to live. The two kingdoms were split many years ago, but it is prophesized that Lyra and Vesper will reunite them. Unfortunately, Lyra's remorseless aunt is set on having one of her own daughters sit on the throne, and Lyra, while she avoids dying, loses her memories and takes on the name Stain, oblivious to her true identity.

A fair warning, the plot of this book is very slow. The book is over five hundred pages, and there's a lot of description. It's also a very character-focused book with lots of introspection, and it will frustrate you. There's a lot of near misses where everything is almost set right, but that is a way for the book to keep you hooked despite the comparatively low stakes. This is a fantasy romance, so the focus is mostly on Lyra and Vesper's relationship and the obstacles in that. Their relationship is also responsible for joining to kingdoms and setting the world to rights, but it's really about them.

The worldbuilding is light for a high fantasy novel, which contributes to the very fairy tale-esque style of the book. The history of the kingdoms is important, but things like the magic system, the world outside these two kingdoms, and government structure are left decidedly vague. This could be a good thing, if you're a fairy tale fan like me, but it could irk you if you can't stand untouched worldbuilding.

Characters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Lyra, also called Stain for a good portion of the book, is an interesting main character. She's a bit different from the typical YA protagonist in that she's very reserved and almost a pushover until she comes into her own. One particularly unique thing about her is that she is mute; she cannot speak, so she communicates in sign language, or, later on in the book, with the telepathic skill of the people of the night kingdom. Personally, I love Lyra. She originally holds a lot of self-loathing because of the way her aunt and the day kingdom treat her, but her memory loss actually functions as a way for her to act the way she wants without fear of judgment.

Vesper is the secondary main character and love interest. He has his own issues with sun poisoning and slowly being turned to gold, but he is primarily written as the love interest and not the main character. He starts off sort of bland, but that is quickly rectified through plot means that I will not spoil, and he develops quite a bit more spunk. I must say, he sets the standards incredibly high for any romantic relationship because he is absolutely smitten with Lyra. Their relationship is one of my favorite romances, and it's also wonderfully healthy with mutual adoration and good communication (once the mistaken identity has been taken care of). It also subverts the typical 'fated-to-fall-in-love' trope, which can be cheap and superficial, and makes it much more genuine.

A special mention to my favorite pegasus, Scorch, who is very important to the story but in ways that will spoil everything unless you are much smarter than me.

The most prominent side character is Crony, the old witch who takes Lyra in when she loses her memories and knows a lot more than she lets on. She very much fits the role of a grumpy, crotchety, old lady, but she's also very lovable and has a great relationship with Luce. Luce has some great character development. He's a sylph who lost his wings from interfering with humans too much, and he can only regain them through a selfless act. Being a very selfish creature, he draws it out for much longer than he needs to.

Finally, the villain. Lyra's aunt, Griselda, is such an interesting antagonist. She, quite literally, has no conscience, so her penchant for evil is unrestricted. Her backstory is very compelling, and she's a great example of a three-dimensional villain that is still absolutely horrible. Her daughters, Avaricette, Wrathalyne, and Lustacia (she has a theme going), are pulled into her schemes. Lustacia in particular has a good inner conflict—she's in love with Vesper and wants to make her mother proud, but she's also hesitant about outright evil.

Writing Style 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The writing in this book is incredibly detailed and a little bit flowery. The whole tone is very ethereal and detached, and the descriptions of both the environment and the characters' inner feelings are very in-depth. Personally, I love it. It adds a lot to the mood, that fairy tale style I've been mentioning, and it also is very light on dialogue, which makes sense when your main character doesn't speak. I could very easily see this book as being written by Lyra, who definitely puts actions over words.

Something to keep in mind is that my love of this style is my own opinion. If you're used to more fast-paced books, as is typical within YA, this could bore you. Because the plot is so slow and the writing is diffusive, it moves away from the normal high-action style of YA writing. As such, consider your own tastes before beginning this book.

Overall 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

As I said before, this is one of my favorite books. It contains one of my favorite romances ever, and I love the writing style and how it creates such a light and airy tone with a rather serious plot. Still, I do try to be somewhat objective in my reviews, and I will admit that this book is not perfect. It is very slow, and the writing style could be a point of annoyance for other readers. If you're looking for a dramatic, fantastical romance, this one is for you. Don't pick it up if you're looking for political intrigue or an epic battle. Still, I try to recommend this book to as many people as I can, so if you think this is anything like what you'd enjoy, please give it a go!

The Author

A. G. Howard: 51, American, enjoys gardening, also wrote Splintered (which I have also done a review of) and Roseblood

The Reviewer

My name is Wonderose; I try to post a review every two weeks, sometimes once a week, usually over vacations. I take recommendations! Check out my about me post for more!

[aelingalathyniusrailme]

so I’ve been thinking recently about mor and emerie.

we have basically two things to connect them

we have the line where emerie blushes when they talked about mor

and we have the fact that they both like women. (I feel like we can assume for emerie with the previous line and the fact that she said she doesn’t need men)

so now that’s not a lot and if this were an author who writes sexuality to be a lot more fluid then I would definitely say this is not nearly enough to put these two characters together. I would say that it just sounds like we’re finding the two lgbt characters and putting them together because the author needs some representation.

but because this is sjm, who severely lacks in diversity and specifically same sex couples, if she can write a well done sapphic romance that is not problematic I’ll take it. so how compatible do we think these two actually are for each other?

also i’m not gonna include quotes bc that’s kind of a lot so i’m going off my memory and the wiki page lmao

1. trauma

both of their trauma is rooted in oppression against women in their respective societies and their horrible horrendous fathers

mor

mor was abused by her parents and the day she bled for the first time her power awakened. keir saw this as a bargaining chip to get more for her virginity. he sold her to eris like cattle, but mor had sex with cassian to “ruin her for eris” then kier tortured her and left her in the autumn court with a note nailed to her saying she was eris’s problem. something we don’t know happened in between this and when azriel rescued her and then she went to live in velaris

emerie

she was also abused and beaten by her dad. he held her down and clipped her wings making it so she could never fly. her father beat her mother so bad he killed her and made emerie dig the grave. there was probably more that emerie hasn’t shared

2. response to trauma

mor

became rhys’s third and governs velaris. learned to fight with illyrian techniques and every other way she could find. became strong so she could never be helpless again. worked to make sure women sa victims had a place in the library

emerie

took over her fathers shop and has to constantly fight to keep it from her family. went to training with nesta and is learning how to fight. took the blood rite and became carynthinian and is a valkyrie

3. personalities

mor

she’s bright and welcoming to most. she’s pretty bubbly and knows how to connect with people. she’s stubborn and determined. but she doesn’t like darkness and is kind of reserved when it comes to the really personal things. she loves more risqué dresses specifically the color red. and is confident

emerie

she is also welcoming and she’s resilient. she is the more responsible mom friend. she is kind. I think she’s a little more introverted. she is brave and doesn’t take shit from men. she stays in her comfort zone and it took a lot for her to come to training but she did anyway. she loves reading and working in her store.

4. past relationships

mor

mor’s only serious lover was a human queen (i forgot her name) when she went to meet the current human queens she didn’t see any of her lover in them. so I’m going to make the assumption that she was kind, fair brave probably some other things. her lover wanted kids so she and mor broke up and when mor decided to go back to her, the women married a man and had kids. mor may have some unresolved issues with this it’s unclear

-side note if they get together maybe mor will see some of her lover in emerie

emerie

we don’t know. she may or may not have had an ex but it does sound like she’s been pretty busy so 🤷‍♀️

5. relationships with other people

mor

mor and azriel’s relationship is tense and pretty uncomfortable. azriel pines while mor acts oblivious. mor and cassian’s relationship is pretty sibling like besides the having sex that one time. cassian is a buffer for her and az and they bicker a lot. mor and feyre are super close and are very supportive of each other but occasionally call each other out. mor and rhys again have a very sibling like relationship but they disagree on important decisions a lot of the time. idk how to describe mor and amrens relationship

emerie

emerie is equally close with gwyn and nesta. they are all sisters. they love and challenge each other to be better warriors and people. emerie trusts them with her past. they worked together to win the rite. she and cassian have a pretty lowkey relationship.

6. how being together would benefit each of them

for mor she would have someone who makes the cost of coming out seem worth it. she would have someone who I believe will ground her but also challenge her.

for emerie she would have someone who brings her out of her comfort zone but is also super supportive of her decisions.

they would fight together. they could travel and having mor might help fill the loss of emeries wings and ability to fly. they would understand each other’s trauma because they can relate. they would have a extrovert meets introvert sapphic love story. and I think they would tease each other like a lot.

so where they relate in trauma and resilience they differ in personality

[cafeinthemoon]

The Leaves of Her Garden - Chapter XVI

Title: The Leaves of Her Garden

Genre: Fanfiction

Pairing: Madara Uchiha x reader

Rating: Mature

Word count: 3163

Chapter (s): 16/?

Read the previous chapters here: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Interlude, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15

Symbols: ⭕ | ➕ | 🖤 | ▶▶

Chapter XVI - The Week Before the Travel

 If you thought your life has been through enough changes the moment you arrived at the Uchiha compound, the week before your husband’s farewell came to show you that there’s nothing that has already been through many changes that couldn’t be transformed a bit more.

The mornings were reserved to your shinobi training. You always used the same place of the day you learned how identify your chakra pathway, the garden. You liked it for its quietness and privacy: it was like whenever you were there, you could never be interrupted by someone or something unexpected. It seemed to work as a fence to another world, where time stopped just for you two.

Your progress came faster than you were expecting. Yes, it’s true that you were far from becoming a skilled shinobi like the ones you met there, but what you were capable of doing now were impressive when you considered that you were an adult who never had any preparation until then.

After learning how to control your chakra, your first challenge was to practice with kunai. When Madara put a blade on your hand for the first time and explained what you were supposed to do with it, you couldn’t feel anything but the uncomfortable weight of the weapon; you almost told him you didn’t want to hold anything like that again, but since you were going so far and you asked for that, you couldn’t look behind. When you found out you could transfer your chakra the kunai, holding it became strangely easier: your hand no longer trembled and you felt at will to throw it at the closest tree. The first time you did it, you ran to look at it closer and were surprised of how deep the blade entered the wood.

You then started to train your defense: for now, it was better for you to learn how to protect yourself and avoid conflicts, just as you wanted in the first place, and Madara stated that this part of your training would make things easier when you started to learn attack methods. This time you felt less difficulty to adapt because of the previous session you had before the ceremony; you also noticed the difference between striking using your chakra and just relying on your physical strength: your movements were more fluid, faster and well led. You felt less tired at the end too.

You were almost happy with your results when Madara decided to include the kunai in the process.

- But you almost don’t use any weapons when you’re fighting – you protested, using the vision you had with Hashirama as a parameter – Besides, if I won’t be attacking anyone I don’t need to know everything about a weapon right now.

His response was to laugh and disappear, taking the spot behind you right after; he held you neck and you felt something cold touching your skin. It didn’t take too long for you to recognize the sharp texture of the kunai. You froze.

- I forgot to say that these weapons are not only used for long-range attacks – he whispered to you – It’s not uncommon that a victim find themselves exactly like the way you are now. And what would you do in such state?

- I…

- It’s better to learn how to avoid it, right? – he replied for you – Besides, not everybody has the luxury of obtaining success in fights with their bare hands. For most shinobi, it’s unrealistic.

Yes. You almost forgot that, just like the Senju head, the Uchiha one was not a common man. Maybe if you had more contact with common shinobi you could have developed comparison methods that would sound more fair. But you didn’t say that to him. You just nodded and continued your training.

Later, by noon, it was the time when you were taken back home to clean yourself, eat and have a time to rest. You wouldn’t see your husband for a long time then: as the head of the clan and being busy with the preparations for the travel, spending the mornings with you was the best he could do for you now. Not only this, but you also thought that it wasn’t healthy for a girl to spend too much time in the company of a man, even if this man was as close to her as a spouse; you needed the company of other women too, and common people who had nothing to do with war and politics.

Fortunately, Ayane and Aiko kept visiting and taking care of you after your marriage, and while you developed an even closer friendship with the first, you started to see the second as a new mother life has decided to give you. Being with them, talking, eating and even working together (because after your insistence they allowed you to perform some of the house tasks) was refreshing; the moments you spent with them were of pure and simple joy, and worked as a period of rest from the intensity of your husband’s company.

One day, when you and Ayane were walking at the house’s surroundings, you finally had some time to continue that conversation you started when you were preparing for the wedding.

- So, y/n-sama… I hope everything went well during the wedding night.

There was no embarrassment in the girl’s words, so you felt at will to speak. You smiled and, before you noticed, you were speaking much more than you thought you would.

- Well, I… I don’t even know how to explain this to you! It was strange and incredible and… – you sighed and turned to her – Beautiful. At first, when you left me in that room, alone, dressed for the night, I was scared. I went to the porch to take some fresh air and to observe the stars. After some minutes, he came. I turned to him and it was like... I mean, now I was a married woman, about to be taken. I never felt the reality of my new condition so deep as during that moment.

You lowered your tone, and a sort of sadness was sensed in your words as you relived those memories.

- Do you remember the state in which I was brought here? I was still grieving the loss of my mother, and just lost my job and my house. But now I was given a new family, protection and a home. I wasn’t expecting this. It was so overwhelming that I started to cry.

You paused, trying to process your feelings. Ayane encouraged you.

- And what did Madara-sama do when he saw you crying?

A smile grew on the corner of your mouth and you sensed your face warming up.

- He hugged me and took me inside. He told me not to thank him with tears. I thought about that. He was right, you know? It was not the time to cry. Not anymore. He closed the porch’s door behind us and was going to start to touch me, but I was so nervous that I flinched at his first movement. He noticed it and told me to sit on the futon. He went there too and spent some time in silence, doing nothing, just looking at me. It was… unsettling, but not entirely bad. It was... – you sighed – Oh, it’s so hard to explain!

Ayane smiled.

- It’s alright. I think I know what you trying to say.

You felt relieved to see you were making some sense despite the confusion inside your head. This gave you the courage to continue speaking.

- You know how intense are Madara-sama’s eyes, Ayane. Every time he looks at me, I feel like all my clothes are nothing, because he’s looking inside me. As if I was naked from body and soul. That night it was the same sensation but deeper, so that I wasn’t sure I would be able to stand it. That was the first time something like this happened to me. It was scary to think that from that moment, I was going to be the wife of man capable of such thing.

You laugh at yourself at this.

- Tell me. Are all the Uchiha like this?

The girl laughed hard at your question.

- Well, none of them are exactly like Madara-sama, of course, but all of us who are Sharingan bearers have some intensity in our eyes. But I think that since you already experienced the strongest Sharingan of our time, you’d have no problem handling the other ones!

You smiled and were about to tell Ayane about the experience with the Mangekyo Sharingan, but something held your tongue. You somehow sensed that it was not the type of thing you should tell other people, no matter how close was your friendship with them; that was a pure, unique sign of intimacy that didn’t belong only to you, but to Madara as well. Something only for you two. You decided to tell part of the story then.

- There was a moment when he talked to me about his life – you started – He said he already experienced fear and loneliness. He told me he understood how I was feeling and that the best thing he could do for me was to share his experience. And it worked. Somehow our feelings started to blend as one, and I was no longer afraid. I finally let him touch me.

Ayane’s curiosity was only excited with this strange narrative of yours. She came closer to you, whispering as if someone could appear and interrupt the conversation at any moment:

- And how was it?

You looked at the sky when you replied.

- It was… wonderful. In a strange way. At first I was uncomfortable, and even thought I was going to get hurt, but little by little I got used to it. I felt like I was not alone anymore. I felt I was part of something again. Visible. Desired. I felt… safe.

- That is quite an explanation, I must say – she replied with a smirk – And then, what happened?

- Well, I felt a bit tired and ended up taking a nap – you laughed – But he took care of me when I woke up and spent the night by my side. It was weird, because I am not used to sleep with other people so close to me, but it was good.

You decided you were away from the house for too long and started the way back, hurrying up before a worried Aiko could go after you.

***

Your life was not only training and talking, of course.

Following the protocols established when you accepted the role of Sachiko, you had studying sessions about History, Politics and Arts to improve your intellect. Since you were used to a routine of books and research thanks to your experience as governess, it wasn’t that hard to stay for a couple of hours occupied with them, but when the evening approached you couldn’t resist to a period of rest. Aiko would bring you tea and food, and you either stood with her talking about your day or listening as she told you stories of her youth, Ayane’s childhood or important things you were supposed to know about the Uchiha, or went to your room to draw or play the koto while you waited for Madara to come back.

You skills with the carbon were developing in a satisfying rhythm now that you had more time to dedicate yourself to this pastime and less anxieties clouding your mind. You made countless sketches and finished many of them in the evenings when you were alone after the women left and before your husband arrived. Your memories, the people you’ve met and the places you’ve been – the entry of your first house, destroyed by war, the house of your adoptive mother, your room there; your lost friends, your mother, your student, Izuna, Aiko, Ayane, Madara; the garden you were training with him, the forest, the river – all was turned into art.

You also composed new songs or parts of songs for your koto when you weren’t feeling like drawing. You wanted to show some of them to Madara; they were better than that one you’ve wrote for your student, which was never played by you again.

You weren’t sure of how or why, but even before you could see him inside the room, you always felt the moment he arrived; you weren’t able to explain exactly how it happened, but you could feel what it seemed to be a sudden change in the air whenever he came around. You have noticed this trait since you met him for the first time, but it was like after your training sessions your capacity of feeling it has increased. You’ve been willing to talk to Madara about this strange sensation, but you didn’t know how to introduce the subject.

He would always come to see you by night, after finishing his activities and taking care of himself. He used to find you immersed on the strings of the koto or sitting on the couch, a drawing on progress on your lap. You always waited for him to start the conversations; despite the intimacy you managed to build in those few days, you still sensed you couldn’t invade some parts of the territory that belonged to him: if he had to tell you something about it, he would do by himself.

On the other hand, he was always interested in how you spent your days when you were not with him: he would approach you and sit by your side, surrounding you with one arm, and listen to you while observing your drawings or the way your fingers would slip through the instrument’s strings in an unconscious manner as you spoke; from time to time, he would use your pauses to make a specific question for something you didn’t explain so well or forgot to say, but most of the times his questions were directed to how you felt about the things you saw or what you thought of the situations you got through. It was strange in the first days, for you never were the type of speaking your mind so easily, but Madara had a way to find out the things he wanted and his questions were made in a smart, assuring manner, so you never felt forced to tell him anything. As time passed, you noticed that those direct talking about your feelings made you more good than if you kept all of them to yourself.

After those conversations, you would organize your things in the place of the room you reserved for them and prepare to go to bed. Sometimes you would spend a moment alone at the porch, but there were nights when the breeze were too cold for one to stand there for a long time, so you just let Madara close the door and went directly to the futon.

***

He took you most of the nights during that week. None of those times were exactly like the wedding night, but in all of them there was something you enjoyed most, whether it was the way he took care of you right after, how he allowed you to sleep in his arms or the things he said while touching you, praising your body, the smell of your hair or your voice when you said his name. At first you were afraid that you would always feel the same discomfort of the first time, but it didn’t happen: as time passed, it was like your body was slowly adjusted to his, and your pain diminished until it was almost gone. Between those nights there were one and another when he came later and you ended up falling asleep on the couch; there was a time when you thought you were carried by someone at some point of the night, but you weren’t sure if it was a dream or not until you woke up next morning on the futon and saw that your husband was already gone.

An important change that occurred was that instead of limiting himself to touch you, Madara taught you some of the things you were supposed to know as his wife, such as how to use your lips, your hands and even your voice to give and gain pleasure. For he was your first man everything was new to you, which sometimes led you to some uneasiness or doubt whenever something seemed too strange to you, but here you ended up knowing another side of Madara: he was an excellent communicator; none of these things were shameful or to be treated with secrecy, and neither he wanted you to see them as such, so that he would always speak clearly about his wishes and fantasies while encouraging you to speak about yours; he also sensed whenever you felt uncomfortable with something, even when you didn’t speak. It wasn’t the case that you had thought so much about these things before meeting him – you naturally knew it would be expected if you ever became someone’s spouse one day, but the thought was too vague until then; you were never too worried about it. However, now that staying with a man was a main part of your life, you started having ideas. It was a side of you haven’t discovered yet. And not only you, but Madara was more than pleased to know about this side.

There was a night when he noticed you were urging to tell him something, but refused to speak. You were already lying on the futon, your back turned on him, when you felt him surrounding your waist with his arms; soon you felt a soft kiss on your shoulder.

- You want to tell me something, don’t you? – you heard him whisper – What is it? Is there something bothering you?

Your face warmed up with the question.

- Not bothering me. It’s just that…

You sensed his arms tightening their grip.

- I see… – another kiss, longer and warmer – There is something you want to do.

You didn’t reply. His leg entwined with yours, his knee between your thighs. You were almost lying on your stomach, his body heating up your back, his nose smelling your hair, his hands starting to come and go all over you.

- Don’t be shy, girl. If there is something I do not approve, it is false modesty – he approached his lips from your ear, his voice so low you’d swear you were hearing it in your head – The rest I can handle.

You smiled and finally told him what you had in mind. It was funny that once your thought were turned into words, it seemed something simple, even silly, compared to some of the things he taught you. Still, he showed immediate interest and helped you with everything you wanted.

[acciocriativity]

All Too Well||Harry Potter

Pairing: Harry Potter x Reader/Sirius' Daughter

Summary: The Second Wizard War was over more than a month ago and everybody had scars that might never be fully healed. This is not a new concept for you, you lost everything you once had.

Warnings: The whole thing is really angst

Word Count: 2,2k

A/N: I absolutely loved to write this fic, it is my first request so I'm a bit nervous haha. I hope you all enjoy!

I was used to the pain, both physical and emotional. After a week of Tonks and Lupin's funeral, everything was empty and the pain was numb, I had no hope that this would end anytime soon.

Largo Grimmauld's house had stayed for me, but after everything that happened, I couldn't even think of putting my feet there. To be fair, anywhere I could possibly go would have memories that are too painful to bear, so I rented a room in the Leaky Cauldron until I had an idea of ​​what to do with my life. I just didn't imagine it would take so long for that to happen.

Almost a month after the War was over, I had the willpower to go to the bank, as I was the last Black alive, everything that was in the coffers of those horrible people was now mine and they needed my consent to make the transfer.

To be honest I wish I had set fire to everything but unfortunately I needed money, my savings were almost over but I swore, even as a new millionaire, that I would not use anything more than necessary and that as soon as I had a job, I would return every penny, the minimum to make my father proud.

The next step took a few more days, visiting the abandoned house at Largo Grimmauld. For a few seconds I waited to see Kreacher there, which is really ironic, his bad mood would be the most comforting thing for me at the moment.

The pictures continued to scream, the mess was still in place, nothing new. There was no way I could live there at all, the few months I spent there were only possible because my father was there, Harry was there and obviously Mrs. Weasley's food helped a lot.

I haven't seen her since the Battle of Hogwarts, I knew that no Weasley would be against my visit, after all we were allies and even friends but I couldn't make it. They are dealing with their own losses and I know that He is there too.

He, it’s been a long time since I didn’t think about him or at least I wanted to fool myself thinking so. In the past year nothing has been able to take the eminent worry out of my heart, not for me but for him.

As I looked around the dusty room, I realized the stupid idea I had, here was the climax of my relationship with Harry.

- They would be very proud, you know - I said quietly looking at the brunette in the corner of my eye, he was looking at that picture again - not only because you are fighting as you can but because you are still you, you are still Harry, only Harry.

We were silent for a few seconds until I could see his green eyes staring at me in the pitch of the cold night, with only one lamp on and then he smiled, for how long I didn’t see his eyes shine so brightly?

- I guess only you think so but that's okay, I like just being Harry with you - he took one of my hands and we stayed like that, in silence, a moment of peace and quiet.

I felt an overwhelming urge to cry but I didn't allow myself to. Not after all this time that I was fixing the broken pieces of me. I took a deep breath and looked around, even though I knew there would be no one there, I went upstairs to my room.

Big mistake again, I already knew what would be waiting for me up there.

- Harry, what are you doing here ?? My dad will kill you if he finds out you are in my room! - I was in shock with the little love he had for his own life, since Sirius' room was right next to mine.

- And who said he needs to find out? In fact, we are not doing anything inappropriate, I just… - he didn't want to admit it, but it was always obvious, the dark circles under his eyes gave away his sleepless nights.

The only thing I did was make room on the bed, which was enough to make him smile and lie down with me. We didn't sleep, we just kept talking until the tiredness won us over but even without sleep, I felt that I was helping in some way.

I walked calmly through the room, it was the same way I had left it, the bed untied and the light blue paint already peeling, I opened the closet and started to take some clothes off the hangers.

I was sure that I would return there, that everything would work out, that I could somehow form a home at some point and how wrong I was...

The third step towards my full recovery was one of the most difficult decisions I had to make. Admitting that there was no more space for me in London, that I was alone and I could do nothing about it, that I needed to leave everything behind and start over once and for all.

In the meantime, I often visited that house. I was not ready to let go, even the things I hated the most there, which is basically everything.

The last step was to say goodbye, so I visited Tonks and Lupin’s grave, I also visited Andromeda for the first time and finally met Teddy Lupin. He was adorable as I had imagined, with his mother's colored hair.

I said that I needed to be away for a while and she replied the only thing I didn't expect to hear.

- I understand dear, but know that you can always have a home here with us - her voice gave me a comfort that I didn't know I needed until then.

- I will remember it fondly and I will really come back, I want to be in the life of this little one here, if you let me - and then, her response came with a motherly hug, I couldn't contain myself anymore.

I couldn't take the weight of the pain alone and she didn't say one word until I calmed down. If I wasn’t as broken as I knew I was, I wouldn't have left her house anytime soon.

Apparating in front of the Burrow wasn't the most difficult part, even though I didn't completely master the apparition. I changed my mind at least 10 times before I reached the door and another 5 times before I knocked.

The sky was completely black, but the storm clouds covered the view of the moon and stars, no sound from inside the house was made and so I tried again and waited patiently.

- Y/N… my dear, what are you doing here in the middle of the night? Come in, you must be cold - the red-haired woman was wearing a purple robe and the only change I noticed was her tired eyes and lacking the natural glow inside them.

- I'm sorry for suddenly appearing here Molly, I wanted to say goodbye - I spoke as soon as I entered the room, almost as cold as outside.

- Are you moving dear? You should have warned me before, I could have made you a farewell party - she guided me to the kitchen and I was sure I wouldn't leave without a cup of tea.

I tried to stay as calm as possible, but I couldn't convince my heart to do the same. The sofa, the dining table and even the stairs...

- RONALD WEASLEY COME HERE NOW - the irritated voice of the matriarch echoed across the walls of the house, giving goosebumps to those who were unused, that is, Harry and me.

- It's always like that? - I asked slightly intimidated to the boy with glasses next to me.

- You haven't seen anything yet - said Ron as he passed us on the stairs and went down to face his mother's anger over some mess he had made.

We were 12 years old and I couldn't say that we were close friends, who would be friends with the daughter of a murderous traitor? Why did they invite me? I didn't even remember.

- And where do you want to go? I've heard of several good places to live in the countryside - the smell of tea brought me to reality and then I noticed his gaze under me.

- Well, I'm going to spend some time in the United States - I replied with the confidence that still remained in my body, if it had been in another situation I would have found the expression of surprise on her face really amusing.

We stayed for a few seconds in silence drinking tea until she answered me a little more calmly.

- If you're sure, I can only tell you to take care and keep in touch. I understand that this adaptation period has not been easy for any of us. If that's what you need to heal yourself ... - her face fell a bit and I noticed right away.

- Do you want to hear about the place where I'm staying? - I asked with a small smile and little by little she got excited again.

As I did not want to bother her beyond the point I already was, after the tea we said goodbye with a hug still in the kitchen, when we arrived in the living room we hugged again and I had the same feeling as when I hugged Andromeda earlier. I never had a mother and after so long, it seems that I got two maternal figures who really cared about me.

- Don't forget to send me a lot of pictures, okay? - before I could answer, we both turned around as soon as we heard a noise on the stairs.

There was no one there and even if there was, it would be difficult to distinguish a silhouette in the middle of the darkness formed in that area, but for a few seconds I managed to see an unowned foot before it disappeared.

- I really need to go Molly, can you tell the others that I'll be in touch soon, please? - she confirmed with a smile and I left without giving a second look at that staircase.

Why was he spying and listening to the conversation? My life has been around the actions of Harry Potter for a long time, but it has been years since the direct contact was over, until now. Why now? Why do I have to remember him again? Why do I have to walk around being a shadow of what I once was?

- Can you sit down and talk to me? - His voice sounded irritated for no plausible reason.

- Oh sure, do you want me to sit and listen to all the reasons why you don’t love me anymore? Do you want to put more salt on the wound or what? - my usual sarcasm was multiplied by 1000, even though I knew that Harry hated that.

I didn't wait for an answer and immediately left his empty dormitory towards the Gryffindor common room, which by luck or a lot of planning on his part, was also empty.

- You know that I have strong feelings for you, but not as befor- can you grow a little at least once? - his steps came behind me and I felt his gaze piercing my back, until I couldn't take it anymore and I turned to look at him.

- You already made your point clear yesterday Harry, if you want to break up alright, but I will not be silent hearing about how you fell in love with another girl- and for the first time he did not answer me back - Yeah, do you really think that I wouldn't notice? I was the first to see it, believe it or not. My mistake was to close my eyes and pretend that everything was fine between us.

He found no words to answer me and I was too tired to hear anything else.

- I will return your things and you can feel free to do whatever you want to, our conversation is over.

Some women passed behind me in the bathroom, I knew what was going on in their heads, "what's wrong with her?" or "why is she crying?" but I didn't mind and kept looking straight into that foggy airport mirror.

As soon as the door slammed and I knew I was alone for a few minutes, I closed my eyes and then made a promise to myself.

- I'll be back and I won't even remember why I had to forget you in the first place.

Harry Potter Masterlist

[skylights2000]

Switch! (Gundham x Fem! Reader) Part 5

~

Before you knew it, a week had passed. As weird as it was, you were slowly starting to get used to things. Even so, when Sonia announced that she might have found a solution, you immediately agreed to try it.

Boy were you regretting it now.

~

Sonia handed you a smooth black crystal and a flat white stone with a weird symbol painted on it. She gave the same items to Gundham, who was standing across from you. You noticed that the symbol on Gundham’s stone was slightly different than yours.

You shrugged, assuming it was meant to be that way. Sonia knew what she was doing.

You would later regret not voicing that observation.

From the minute the ritual started something felt off, like something about it just wasn’t right.

You were always a worrier, so you just wrote it off as you overthinking things. It was only natural to be apprehensive after what happened last time.

Sonia began the incantation, but the more she chanted, the more it changed. Your chest began to hurt, growing incessantly until it felt like you were being stabbed.

You tried to say something, but your mouth wouldn’t move. Every time you tried to speak, it felt like the words were being shoved back down your throat, choking you and making your eyes water.

The chanting reached its crescendo, and pain exploded inside you. It felt like you were being ripped apart. Your mouth fell open in a silent scream before everything went black.

~

You woke up in your bed. For a minute, you wondered if it was all a dream, but as you sat up, you could feel the dull ache in your chest. You groaned, holding a hand against your chest as you breathed through the pain. It was when it subsided that you noticed something.

Your vision was blurry. You blinked several times, but nothing changed.

No way.

You touched your face, combed your fingers through your hair, and looked at you hands.

Your hands.

They were your hands!

You scrambled out of your bed and into the bathroom. Your reflection stared back at you. You didn’t realize how much you had missed it.

You were back in your body! You were you again. A smile stretched across your face, and you laughed giddily.

You barely heard your bedroom door open before your knees gave out. You sank to the floor at an awkward angle, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

You were a bit surprised when Sonia appeared in the doorway, looking extremely worried.

“You’re okay!” She cried, collapsing next to you and hugging you tightly.

“Woah, what’s wrong?”

“It is all my fault! I should have noticed that I had written your rune incorrectly!”

The symbol on the rock flashed through your mind, and you scratched your cheek embarrassedly. “Actually, I noticed it..”

Sonia gaped at you. “Why did you not tell me?!”

You shrugged helplessly. “I thought you meant for it to be that way!”

“Why of course not!”

You smiled apologetically. “Why don’t we just say we’re even then?” You offered.

Sonia nodded with a relieved smile, and you allowed her to help you up. She helped you brush your hair and chatted happily to you while you brushed your teeth. You really wanted to shower, but Sonia insisted that you eat something.

“You have been asleep for two days.”

You stared incredulously at her. “Two days?!” Your voice cracked, and you started to cough. Sonia rushed out of your bedroom, returning with a glass of water. You downed the whole thing in a few gulps.

“Have I really been out that long?” You rasped, wiping away the water that had dripped down your chin.

Sonia nodded grimly. “We were beginning to wonder if we should take you to the hospital..”

“We?”

“Gundham and I.”

“Gundham’s here too?”

“He is the one who helped carry you home. I hope you will forgive us for letting ourselves in without your permission..”

You just shook your head. “You don’t have to apologize for that. You were just trying to help.” Your insides twisted with guilt. “I’m sorry I caused so much trouble.”

Before Sonia could argue, you heard a knock on your front door.

“Oh, that must be Gundham!” Sonia rushed out of the room, and you hesitated before following after her.

You don’t know who looked more surprised to see you, Gundham or his mother, who was standing beside him.

“You’re awake!” Mrs. Tanaka quickly passed the box she was carrying to Gundham and engulfed you in a hug.

After the initial shock, you hugged her back. You still weren’t used to hugs from anyone other than Hinako, but you found yourself feeling strangely comfortable around Mrs. Tanaka. “Yeah, I just woke up a little while ago.”

Mrs. Tanaka immediately began fussing over you. “How are you feeling? Have you eaten? Are you tired?”

You weren’t used to having so much attention focused on you. It was a bit embarrassing.

“Are you hot? Oh gosh, you don’t have a fever, do you?!”

You waved your hands frantically. “N-No!” You really hated how squeaky your voice came out. “I-I’m just not used to so much attention.” You admitted, scratching your cheek nervously.

“I bet your parents were worried too. Do they know you’re awake?”

You weren’t sure what face you made, but it apparently wasn’t a good one, judging by the way her smile dropped. You dug your nails into your cheek a bit harder than you meant to and winced.

“It, uh, It’s just me and my foster mom. I should go” You pointed awkwardly over your shoulder. You wanted out of this conversation. “Call her.” You didn’t wait for a response before you speed walked back to your room.

Once you were inside and the door was closed, you trudged over to your bed and sat down.

I bet your parents were worried too.

Yeah right.

You didn’t remember much about your parents, but one thing always stuck with you.

“I’m sorry but the orphanage is already overcrowded.”

“Take her or we’ll leave her on the street.”

“How can you be so cruel to a child?!”

“She was a mistake.”

You shook the memory from your head. Now wasn’t the time. Hinako may not be your biological mother, but she was the only real mother you’d ever had, and Mrs. Tanaka was right. Hinako probably was worried.

She picked up on the second ring.

“(Y/n)?! Where were you?! Are you alright?!”

“I’m okay, just tired.”

“Oh thank god..” You could hear the relief in her voice. “I’m so glad you’re okay, sweetie.”

You couldn’t help but smile. “Sorry I worried you. A lot happened in the last few days.”

It took a lot of explaining, but you finally managed to convince her that you really were okay. She still insisted on visiting soon, and you agreed, knowing it would give her peace of mind.

“I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

You hung up and slid your phone into your pocket. You took a minute to just close your eyes and breathe. Your chest still hurt, but it was slowly ebbing.

She was a mistake.

Mistake. What if they were right?

Your morbid thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“You can come in.”

You expected it to be either Sonia or Mrs. Tanaka, but you were surprised to find Gundham standing in your doorway.

“I apologize if my mother upset you.”

You smiled, but there was a sad tinge to it. “Don’t worry about it. It just brought back some stuff I don’t like to remember.”

He nodded solemnly. “I am sorry for your loss.”

Loss? Oh. He thinks they died.

For a second, you considered just letting him think that, but you never liked lying.

“They’re not dead. They just didn’t want me.” You couldn’t keep the bitterness out of your voice. “I hear they have two kids now, a girl and a boy.” You tilted your head back, forcing the tears away. Once you were sure they wouldn’t fall, you continued. “They finally got the perfect family they wanted..”

You heard his footsteps, and when you turned to look at him, you were caught off guard by the hand that landed on your head. Gundham looked incredibly awkward, but his words were sincere when he spoke.

“It is their loss.”

For a long moment, you just stared at him, eyes wide and mouth agape, and he began to look more and more embarrassed the longer you gaped at him.

Then, you cracked a smile that slowly turned to a grin as you began to giggle. “I guess your mom was right.”

“Pardon?”

You just shook your head, eyes shining brightly. “It’s a secret.”

He grumbled about that not being fair, but you just laughed even harder. He crossed his arms over his chest with an irritated huff. “Are you finished?”

“Ye-Yeah.” You choked out through the last of your laughter. You straightened up, your smile softening suddenly. “Hey Gundham?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

To your great amusement, he pulled his scarf up to hide his reddening face. “You are welcome, mortal.”

“(Y/n). Call me (Y/n). We’re friends, after all, aren’t we?”

That seemed to only contribute to the blush spreading across his cheeks.

“Very well...(Y/n).

[princekirijo]

BRO, YUKARI. 👀👀

OK HERE WE GO STRAP IN FOLKS IT'S YUKARI TIME! Also a lot of this is kinda salty? I guess? So just a fair warning I just have strong opinions on Yukari 😔

Ok so Yukari. I love her so so much she's one of my favorite characters in the series and one of my trio of comfort characters (the other two being Akihiko and Mitsuru). She's such an interesting and complex character that gets heavily misinterpreted by a lot of the fandom (*cough* cishet men *cough*).

Like ok first off people say that she's mean but while she can be very rude and one of her big flaws is that she doesn't consider others' feelings she's not entirely a bitch either? I think the best example of this that not many people I've seen talk about is how she's the only character who objects to the protagonist and Fuuka joining immediately and wants to make sure they're not being forced into joining. While ultimately both of those characters join of their own accord, Yukari asks them multiple times if they're ok with joining, something the others never do (Mitsuru is guilty of being quite insistent on them joining but that's a discussion for another time). She also feels incredibly guilty for spying on the protagonist at the start, pointing out multiple times that it is a violation of their privacy. Both of these show that she genuinely cares about other people. Pictures are from you lol <3

On that subject when Ken joins Yukari is actually the nicest to him out of all of them, often making sure that he feels welcome and making an effort to talk to him. I think the only other character that does that (if my memory serves me right) is Fuuka. In her social link too she helps out that little kid that was crying in the middle of Paulownia Mall, staying with them until she found their parents or that they were safe. And even in Ultimax her relationship with Ken is just so cute she's so nice to him, she really is like his big sister. So to say that she's just mean and just a bitch is wrong because there's plenty of examples of her being a very nice person.

And actually a lot of people hate her because of how 'easy' her social link is to reverse (I've seen people on YouTube mention this a few times so I thought I'd talk about it). I think it's either rank 5 or 6 there's a scene where Yukari loses her purse and goes back to get it. You find her surrounded by a bunch of guys who are threatening her and are very close to hurting her. The protagonist steps in to stop them and then chases them off. Now I think it's only in the male route this happens (again my memory is bad so sorry about that 😞) but she gets annoyed at you for helping her and then you're given a few options. The correct one is to leave her alone (or something like that) but the one that most people go for which reverses the Social Link is the option to hug her. And people (male youtubers *AHEM*) get annoyed about this because oh yeah of course in this scenario hugging Yukari is a great option and why the hell would she get angry and reject them like that. Like jeez I don't know definitely not the fact that she's very clearly shaken up by the fact that she was almost attacked by three men (who could have done god knows what to her if we hadn't intervened). And definitely not because she's said lots of times that she doesn't like to rely on anyone (particular men) given the whole situation with her mother. The other thing is that I don't think it's outright stated but I really wouldn't be surprised if Yukari was super touch averse given the situation with her mother throwing herself at random men all the time. And (as we discovered lol) there's a very high possibility that her mother was an alcoholic because of this she says in the answer after Junpei's past where he talks about his alcoholic dad:

So like if her mother was an alcoholic there is a high chance she could have suffered some form of abuse which would lead her to being very anti touch. So it really drives me mad when people get annoyed about her Social Link being so easy to break because if you think for a second before doing anything, you'll realize it makes sense that she wouldn't want to be hugged.

But that's enough salt, I love Yukari for a lot of different reasons but the main one is (predictably given that it's me) her relationship with Mitsuru. Regardless of how you want to view it, they are so important and integral to each other's character development. From the tension between them at the start of the game to the end where they're so close, it's honestly one of the best relationships in the game in my opinion. You can really see how much they grow to care for each other. Yukari is the only character brave enough to call Mitsuru out for her bullshit and you can see how Mitsuru grows to appreciate that (because as much as I love Mitsuru, Yukari is absolutely valid to call her out for some of the stuff she does and she needs Yukari to do that). Yukari also ends up being the catalyst to Mitsuru's ultimate persona awakening. At the start of the game too, we're made to believe that both of them are very different. But as the game progresses we're shown that they're actually quite similar. Something I love that the movie does is this scene here (again thank you for pointing this out to me):

The way Yukari finishes Mitsuru's sentence so to speak shows that they actually have pretty similar reasons to awakening to their powers (Mitsuru in order to protect her father and Yukari to protect her father's memory and find out the truth about what happened to him). Yukari also helps Mitsuru open up to others (she's the only other person aside from Akihiko that Mitsuru calls by their first name) and Mitsuru helps Yukari (in a way I can't explain because my brain is failing me) to not judge people as much. They're so important to each other and their character development is so interlinked I just love it so much and it's a big reason as to why I love both of them.

And my other reason as to why I love Yukari is that she's allowed to express her anger in a way that isn't fake or cute (I honestly can't think of another female character who is allowed to do this but I'm sure there's other examples). The best example of this is of course the Answer which I've spoken about before so I'll do my best to keep it brief. I think Yukari's anger in the Answer is a very real response to grief. She's upset over the loss of the protagonist (whom she's heavily implied to have feelings for but I don't think it's outright stated) and she's jealous of Aigis because she inherited his power. She wants to save him so badly because she really cared for him so now that she has a chance and the others are stopping her (in her eyes) she feels betrayed so of course she's going to lash out. Now I fully acknowledge that what she was doing was wrong and she is acting very rude but as I said it's her way of dealing with grief. Something P3 does very well is show how different characters react to grief (eg Mitsuru closing off even more from the others, Akihiko deciding to take it in his stride, Ken having a similar reaction etc). And Yukari's way is no expectation and it's not bad because there's no bad or wrong way to deal with grief. Something people forget as well is that she acknowledges and apologies to the group after the Erebus fight for her behavior and she explains herself (another example of how she is actually a nice person and not a total bitch). I just really related to how she dealt with the whole thing and I love her for that. I also think that some of the other characters in the series (Ann mainly) should have been allowed to express their anger in a more... Real way? Ugly way? I'm not sure how to describe it but I would have liked to see them get angry in a way that wasn't cute (somebody pointed out that the negative reaction to Yukari's anger is probably what stopped future female characters from doing just this and it was an excellent point).

OK so this was super rambling and if you got to the end then wow thank you. I just really love Yukari and it makes me upset how a lot of fans treat her, either as a typical oh this is my persona waifu uwu or she's such a bitch I hate her with no thought process. I honestly understand why some people don't like her but I just ask that people think about how she reacts to certain things and why she acts the way she does before just essentially watering her down to a bitch with daddy issues. She's my emotional support bisexual and I adore how she interacts with the other cast (especially Mitsuru).

[blackenedwhite97]

Storge (Familial Love)Pt.2- EraserMic x Student!Reader

This post includes: Mentions of loss of family, cursing, mentions of fiscal problems, mild violence and injury, a prominent homosexual relationship, and mentions and depictions of anxiety.

Original Request: “Imagine living all by yourself. You’re a teenager that lost their parents years ago and refused to become a part of the foster system. So now you work and take care of your own apartment all while going to school at U.A. It was starting to take a real toll on you when Mr. Aizawa and Mr. Yamada approached you, like concerned parents. It could be written as platonic or romantic. (Not with the reader, I'm talking about Mic and Eraser)”

Authors Note: 

As per usual I over wrote! This will be divided into two chapters. I went off on a bit of a tangent with this one but to be fair i wrote the first half over two months ago and the second half this week.

Word Count: 5.6k

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Chapter 2

That day you walked home in your new coat; the wind’s bitter teeth unable to gnaw at your bones like it used to. When you reached your front door, you didn’t want to shrug it off and toss it into the pile of sweaters and hoodies you kept near the door for cold days. You wanted to keep it on even if that meant, for the first times since the weather had changed, you’d be sweating through your clothes. It was new, you like new. It was a gift; you’d forgotten how much you like gifts. You cooked in the coat, did your homework in your coat and eventual fell asleep on your couch swaddled in the warm fur hood.

When the sun broke through your blinds the next morning you uncurled yourself, reluctantly peeling off the coat in favor of getting some fresh air on your sweaty skin. You checked the time on your phone, 5:32 AM. It was still early and you wagered you could sneak in a couple more hours of sleep before you had the be in class, but you overflowing kitchen garbage can caught your eye and you decided you’d rather use this time to maybe take care of somethings you’d let slide. First order of business was to clean your dishes, the counters, and gather all the miscellaneous trash scattered around your apartment. The second was to take said trash to the complex’s communal waste bin across the parking lot. Your apartment was starting to look like a functioning home again, the next thing to go was the pile of warm layer next to the door, you wouldn’t be needing those anymore.

The snow crunched under your feet, more had fallen throughout the night and it hadn’t yet been disturbed by the day’s traffic. The sky was pink and the rooftops white, and in the early morning silence your neighborhood didn’t look half bad. You lifted the heavy metal lid to the trash bin, tossing your over-stuffed bag before the seams could give way. With a clang you dropped the lid, the sound resonating through the streets. A dog barked in response and the world returned to silence.

You took a deep breath of crisp clean air and for a moment everything faded, only the blazing sky and your swirling breath mattered. Then the snow behind you started to crunch, footsteps moving closer. You turned around, suspicious of anyone else up and about this early in the morning. You were met with two familiar sleepy eyes peeking out from behind a thick grey scarf.

“Mr. Aizawa, G-good morning?” you greeted awkwardly.

“Uh, yeah. Good morning.” He said back, his hands shoved in his pockets. “I’m- just heading back from a night patrol. Sorry if I startled you.”

“I didn’t know you patrolled around here.” You’d never seen him before, which you guessed was technically the point.

“I-” he paused. “Just expanded my patrol range recently.”

“Oh, good to know.” You smiled at him; you rarely saw heroes here. If you did it wasn’t for long.

“Okay, well, I’ll see you in class.” He started to turn away.

“Hey, Mr. Aizawa?” An idea suddenly popping into your head. He paused and looked back at you. “I- since I have my provisional licence I’m allowed to patrol with a licensed hero and if you’re in the area on my night off-”

“No.” He said, turning back away. “You’re too loud. I’m sure Mr. Yamada would be willing to take you on patrol, if you ask nice enough. He can’t stealth to save his life.”

“I am not!” you huffed. “I can stealth if I want to!”

Still turned away from you chuckled. “Prove it in class today, then maybe.”

He started away again and in mere second scaled your building and leap across the roof out of view. You made you way back to your apartment, taking care to step slowly and as carefully as the snow would allow it. You’d show him stealth!

Mr. Aizawa wasn’t kidding about class. The whole obstacle course was built around stealth, evade capture for thirty minutes with no use of force and pass. It was in teams, you failed, your team also failed. You, as you were fully aware were, the least subtle out of your teammates. He had grouped you together on purpose, you knew it. You had to think logically, you had to plan to move around as little as possible. You ended up pulling a cluster of debris around you and your team in the middle of what looked like a junk yard, using your power to keep them in place as All Might thundered around looking for you.

        While it definitely was suspicious that this pile of debris wasn’t moving while the world’s strongest hero was lunging around, shaking buildings with each impact Mr. Aizawa passed your team. You were dismissed early for lunch with your team, beaming as you left the training grounds. You’d passed, proved you were stealthy.

        After you had wrapped up your lunch you decided to head back to your home room early, you were tutoring a first year in history and needed to take time to refresh your memory. Why not in an empty classroom?

        You knocked on the door tentatively, hoping Mr. Yamada had taken his lunch outside of his room. That, however, wasn’t the case. “Hello?”

        You slid the door open a fraction. Mr. Yamada and Mr. Aizawa sitting across from each other on two student desks, a convenience store bought bento open between the two of them. “Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt I was looking for a quiet place to study.”

        “Your always welcomed in your homeroom! Come in, we’ll keep the talking to a minimum.” Mr. Yamada waved you inside as he hopped off his desk to grab a white steaming cup from the edge of his desk. “What are you studying?”

        “First year history.” You held up your worn out textbook. “I tutor some of the underclassmen.”

        “Any from my class?” Aizawa asked.

        “E-Eijiro Kirishima.” You were pretty sure he was in Mr. Aizawa’s class, the kid sure complained about him enough anyways.

        “Hm.” He shrugged to himself. “I wondered how he suddenly started passing most of his tests.”

        “Speaking of passing…” you trailed off looking at Mr. Aizawa expectantly.

“Yes, you did.” He sighed into his coffee.

“See, I can be stealthy!” you exclaimed, clutching your book to your chest.

“No, you can hide. You tripped over your own feet leaving for lunch.” Mr. Aizawa grumbled.

“But you passed me!” You chirped. “You said that if I passed you’d take me on a patrol!”

“I said maybe I’d consider it” he corrected you.

“Sho.” Mr. Yamada chided him, eyes peering over his orange glasses.

“I-” Mr. Aizawa looked at his partner, then over to you. You gave him the sweetest smile you could muster, Mr. Yamada doing the same. “When’s you’re next night off?”

“Thursday.” Your smiled grew genuine.

“I’ll be in your neighborhood around 8, take a nap after school and don’t be late the next day.” He instructed, eyeing Mr. Yamada frustratedly.

“Yes, sir!” you bowed. You began backing out of the room.

“Aren’t you going to study?” Mr. Yamada called as to were just about to breach the doorway.

“Right! Yes, thank-you!” You scurried forward, taking your usual desk and opening the textbook.

The next few days passed, work claiming your evening, classes taking up your days until you found yourself lacing up your boots at your front door waiting for 8 o’clock on Thursday evening. You’d seen Mr. Aizawa once in your neighborhood since Tuesday morning, and he was sporting a bruise that seemed to disappear by the beginning of class that very same day. You supposed he had access to Recovery Girl’s powers in the morning before the building filled up with students.

You leaned against your window frame, staring out into the parking lot waiting for the familiar darkly dressed silhouette to appear against the snow. When he finally leaped down from your roof you raced out the door to meet him. you slide to a stop in the slippery snow, spattering his legs with wet slush.

“Subtle.” To your surprise an entertained grin tugged at his lips. “I have a specific surveillance target tonight. I want you to get your patrol experience but if I tell you to turn tail or stay back you do as I say, got it?”

You nodded. “Who is it?”

He stared walking; his footsteps impossibly silent in the dense snow. You now realize, if had wanted to hide his presence the other morning, he could have. You tried to mimic his soft steps, but your pace suffered and you found yourself trailing behind him.

“His alias is Earth Breaker, he’s an elemental type villain. He can control earth at his will, that means projectiles of stone and a solid defense.” Mr. Aizawa briefed you.

“Any we’re surveying him because?”

“Remember that apartment complex that went down last month about six block from here?”

“That was him?”

“Yeah. He killed lots of people in that building.” Mr. Aizawa paused and looked at you. “I’ll tell you when we need to stealth you can just walk normally for now.”

You straightened up and jogged to catch up to him matching his strides until he began to slow about six blocks later.  He held up a hand and turned to you. “Stay fifteen feet back, don’t lose me.”

You nodded and strayed off to the side of the sidewalk where a hedge of wild bushed would give you quick cover if you needed it and began to follow Mr. Aizawa from a distance. He ducked into an open gate, melting into the darkening yard, you hugged the fence and peered into the dark until you caught a glimpse of him moving again. He darted across the yard and you ducked into the gate just in time to see him jump the farthest fence. You dashed to the fence, careful to slow down so you didn’t make a loud impact against it. On the other side Mr. Aizawa’s rough voice whispered through the gaps in the wood. “The house across the street to the east, you see it?”

You looked to the east along the fence, you were in a perfect position to keep an eye on the top floor of windows. “Yeah.”

“Keep an eye on the top windows, I’m moving in. Text Mr. Yamada- Hizashi- the street name and district if things go awry. Do not engage unless absolutely necessary. Understood?” this a quiet thud a phone landed at your feet, a text chain with Hizashi already on the screen.

“Roger.” You nodded, grabbing the phone from the ground. You heard him leave but not where he went, and for several long minutes you waited in silence. Nothing in the windows stirred save the lights going on in a room, then going out again. You pre-typed the text to Mr. Yamada in case you had to send it quick and waited. You kept waiting. The street was so silent that you felt as though outside of yourself time had stopped.

You sat in limbo until suddenly the ground beneath you began to tremble. Waves of tremors rolled past you, flowerpots clattered on their saucers and fences began to sway. You stood up and dashed toward the gate, fighting against the tremors to stay on your feet. A loud bang rang out through the streets, echoing from the house across the street. You latched onto the top of the gate and peered over it just in time to see a cloud of dust washing towards you. You ducked until the worst of it washed passed you, by this time lights all around the neighborhood had begun to turn on a civilian peaked out of windows and doors.

You held your breath and hauled yourself over the fence, landing in a bed of flowers, you felt a tinge of guilt about crushing. Through the settling dust you could see the front of the house you’d been watching; it was covered in dust and the front door was hanging on by a single hinge. In the doorway a hulking man stood, his arms braced against the door frame which had fishers running through it that bled into the walls. His eyes were a light with an animalistic rage, the type of rage only a mad man could carry inside.

As the dust continued to roll back you could see more of the street, rocks and dirt scattered everywhere. Shingles and chunks of siding rained down from the house and bounced off the street. Mr. Aizawa crouched in the street, dust rolling off of him as he shielded the bottom half of his goggled face. You looked at the phone in your hand then back at him, he still seemed so calm. You left the message unsent.

“A SPY?!” The man in the doorway roared. He brought one of his great fists down onto the stone walkway at the front of the house and a fissure formed, snaking across the ground towards Mr. Aizawa. “THEY SENT ANOTHER SPY?!”

Mr. Aizawa launched himself backwards, barely escaping the crumbling ground beneath him. He should have been faster; you could have gotten away quicker than that. You watched as he landed, quickly shifting his weight to his left foot immediately after hitting the ground. He’s hurt.

You hit send. Better safe than sorry.

Earth Break fired off two quick fire blasts, Mr. Aizawa easily skirting one but heading straight into the middle of another. You shot out your hand and thought about pulling him towards you out of the way. He grunted as he was jerked backwards, landing and sliding into the grass. He side glanced at you, keeping his head turned towards the enemy. His hand hung at his side flinched, his fingers motioning for you to back up. You did as you were told, scrambling sideways into some bushes that lined the yard you were in. He stood and took off, even on his injured leg he managed to fade away into the night.

Behind you a low creak altered you to someone peeking out of the front door. You turned around and saw a man wrapped in his house coat staring wordlessly at the behemoth across the street currently smashing apart the driveway. You whistled quietly at him, his eyes darting to you. He stopped himself from shouting in surprise with a hand over his mouth and a calming breath. You crawled closer to him with a finger help to you lips.

“Get back inside, to the rear of the house!” you whispered.

He looked back across the street and his eye swelled with fear as he took a step back inside the house, this time a yell escaping him. You spun around to see a chunk of the road hurdling towards the house. Thinking quickly, you darted towards it and just as it passed over head pulled it towards you with your quirk. You rolled to the side narrowly escaping being totally crushed, instead getting away with a nasty gash in your arm from a stray piece of rebar. You jumped to your feet and looked back at the house, the owner was a few feet inside frozen with fear.

“Run!” you shouted at him. With a tremendous grunt behind you another chucked of road was launched towards you.

“ANOTHER ONE!” he roared.

You darted in the only direction you could at the moment, the house. You rushed in through the door,  and pushed the man inside along as you did. You breached the kitchen just as the boulder crashed through the doorway, tearing into the walls as it did. Debris flew everywhere, pieces of wood and insulation filling the air. You pulled the man through his house until you both burst through into the backyard.

“Keep going!” you huffed as you spun around and darted back through the house.

You breached the crater where the front door had once been, the shadow of a massive dust storm beginning to swallow the top of the house. Rocks and dirt and chunks of boulders began whipping around, leaving the house was next to impossible unless you wanted to be bludgeoned with debris. Windows shattered, the ground shook and the foundation began to crumble beneath you. The cement base tore through the carpeted floors in spears, you had to jump left and right narrowly avoiding serious injury until you made it to the stairs where the spears were having a harder time getting at you.

Then everything stopped, the spears crumbled into sand and the ground stilled. The house moaning as it settled back into its uneven foundation. The street quieted, almost back to the timeless silence before the chaos had begun. A single roar of anger pierced the air, cut short with a grunt. You steadied yourself on the stair railing and made your way on uneasy legs to the front yard. Mr. Aizawa stood, covered in dust and debris, with a single boot pressed into Earth Break’s chest. His hands pulled tightly on his capture weapon, restraining the boulder of a man below him.

The street began to fill with lights and sirens, the cool blue darkness of the night flooded with red and white. Police piled out of their cars and vans to load the villain into an armoured truck for transport. You plopped down onto the front steps, brushing aside an uprooted plant. You sat and watched the arrest, watched how many officers it took to contain just one man. He was the definition of raw power, one stray kick tearing off a police car door.

Once he disappeared into the truck you leaned back onto your arms, you were beat. You were sore and exhausted, but you were also in a strange perverse sense happy. Perhaps it was the adrenalin of what you’d just gone through still coursing through your system or the afterglow of a technically successful patrol, but you felt like this was what you were meant to be doing. This hero thing, this was for you.

When a pair of ambulances arrived, you watched as the paramedics jumped into action. One of them offering medical treatment to Mr. Aizawa who, you had only just noticed, was making a b-line towards you. He waved off the paramedic, limping towards you on his injured leg.

“Are you alright?” He grunted, lowering himself onto the step next to you.

You looked over yourself, your sleeve was torn, and arm was scratched up from the rebar in the boulder but you would live. It immediately started to thrum with pain when you looked at it, the blissful ignorance of adrenaline wearing off as soon as you actually took stock of the injury. You were covered in dirt and dust, but you still felt good, despite your injuries.

“Yeah. Just a scratch.”  You shrugged. “How’s your leg?”

“I’ll live.” He grumbled looking down at his torn pant leg. “Thanks for that by the way, the save earlier. Even if you did put yourself directly into harm’s way, like an idiot.”

You chuckled to yourself. There was always a learning opportunity with him.

“No problem?”

You both sat in silence for a moment, watching some of the police cars start to leave.  It was him who spoke next. “So, where’s my phone?”

“Oh,” you looked over your shoulder at where you had dropped it, a large boulder sitting in the wake of a deep groove in the lawn. “it’s-”

“Under that boulder?” he sighed.

You nodded solemnly; you couldn’t afford to replace that phone.

“Well, at least it’s not you under the boulder.” He turned back to face the street.

Was that… a glimmer of fondness? You smiled to yourself, a familiar warmth blooming in your chest. You still missed that, people being glad to have you around. You didn’t really spend enough time around people to feel that anymore.

“Okay,” Mr. Aizawa pushed himself to his feet. “let’s get that armed checked out.”

“It’s a scratch, I’m fine.”

“It’s flesh eating bacteria waiting you kill you.” He said, pulling you up with surprising strength for a guy with a bum leg. It wasn’t quite the same as Mr. Yamada’s unbridled kindness, but you got the feeling this was Mr. Aizawa’s version of fussing over you.

***

“Hey.” There was a quiet knock at the door of your room. You looked away from the fuzzy TV screen to find Mr. Yamada leaning up against the door frame, a disappointing looking cup of coffee in his hand.

“Hi. What’s are you doing here?”

“Sho- Mr. Aizawa had to get an x-ray for his ankle so I thought I’d stop by and keep him company while he waited.” Mr. Yamada looked over his shoulder, sighed, shook his head and turned back to you. “It would seem he needed so such company though.”

“What do you mean?” You gestured at the chair in the corner of the examination room for him to sit.

“Well,” he gladly took the seat, propping his boot clad feet up on a basket of magazines. “he’s been on the phone passing around the emergency room, probably hurting himself even more. He’s giving the station an ear full right now, he’s not very happy with them.”

“Why? They came pretty quick.” You picked at the paper rolled out across the bed.

“You.” Mr. Yamada placed the cup in his hands on the ground and looked up at you. “He only let you patrol with him because the report he was given on Earth Breaker misclassified him in threat level.”

He leaned back into the chair, sinking down like a bored teenager trying to slip away. “I’ve never heard him chew someone out for so long.” Mr. Yamada grumbled.

“Really?” You didn’t really know what to say, partially because you couldn’t picture Mr. Aizawa being upset and the other part because you were trying not to fall asleep. The adrenaline had worn off about half an hour ago and the pain meds the nurses gave you were strating to lull you to sleep.

“Yeah.” Mr. Yamada pushed himself back into a proper sitting position, tucking one leg under himself. He was obviously uncomfortable in the wooden waiting chair. “I was surprised when the nurse said you were still here, I thought you’d have gotten stitched up and went home.”

You blinked a few times, begging your eyes to stop drooping.

“I have to wait for my case worker to come get me, since I’m a minor leaving the hospital after treatment is kind of tricky. I can’t check myself out.” You shrugged.

Mr. Yamada sighed, not particularly happy with his new position but seemingly not bothered enough to fix it either. “How long have you been waiting?”

“I called and left a message like, an hour and a half ago.” You looked down at your phone, there was a new crack in the screen. No New Messages.

“And?” Mr. Yamada asked.

“Well, it’s currently 2:30 in the morning,” you breathed, “so I assume she’s asleep. If I don’t hear form her in another 30 minutes the hospital will call child services and they’ll send an overnight clerk to get me.”

“Shit.” He mumbled. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah. Mr. Yamada?”

“Mm?” he looked at you, his body sliding down in the chair.

“Don’t expect me to make to class on time tomorrow okay?” you grinned. You were tired and it was the best approximation of a joke you could make.

“I’d be upset if you even showed up.” He huffed, pushing himself up.

You both sat in silence for a few minutes, the distant gruff voice of Mr. Aizawa lecturing someone filling quiet. You looked at the TV for a bit, our eyes burning with exhaustion. You tried to read the medical posters, but the reading made it hard for you not to nod off. Eventually, after a particularly long blink Mr. Yamada spoke up.

“Lie down, go to sleep. I can wake you up when someone comes to get you.” You were about to protest when he reached up a turned off the lights. The open door still letting in the cool light from the hallway. “Shhhhhhhh.”

You could have sworn you’d seen his silhouette sink down in the chair as his shush came to an end. While you hated the idea of sleeping around other people you couldn’t fight the urge to close our eyes and fine rest.

***

“Should we wake her?”

“We have to, she has to sign a form before she can leave, Zashi.”

“Shit, right!.....Hey Sho?”

“Mmmm?”

“Thank-you.”

A hand gently shook your leg, waking you from your shallow sleep. You blinked into the dark room, a figure leaning in the doorway, silhouetted by the hall lights. At the end of the paper topped bed was Mr. Yamada, or rather his very recognizable silhouette. Still dazed with sleep you rubbed your eyes and started to pull yourself up, the paper crinkling and tearing under you.

“Hey, kiddo.” He greeted softly.

“They here?” you mumbled, stifling a yawn.

“No, no, no.” he seemed somewhat nervous, glancing behind him at the figure in the doorway. “Mr. Aizawa called in a favor with someone at Child Services, he got permission to check you out. We’ll give you a lift home.”

You blinked. You weren’t entirely sure if you understood what was happening, you were too tired to really care. Home sounded good and he said you could go home. You nodded anyways and slid off the table, Mr. Yamada putting a pre-emptive supportive arm around you. You were on auto piolet, the pain meds and sleepy daze that hung over your head making it impossible for you to fully wake up. You signed some paper, a nurse said something nice. Mr. Aizawa looked…soft. No, nice…nicer than usual.

Then you were in the back seat of Mr. Yamada’s car, drifting off against the car door and dim streetlights passed you by.

***

You woke up to the sun piercing through your blinds, hot rays of light warming your chilled skin. Your room, perusal was chilly, though you were curled up under several blankets. You stretched and groaned, the that fog that hung over. You last night lifting. Lifting. Lifting. Lifted. Panic. You shot straight up, your aching muscles expressing their displeasure at the sudden movement. You looked around for your phone, it was usually under your pillow but then again you didn’t even remember getting into bed.

You didn’t really remember getting home or leaving the hospital. You ran your hands up and down the bed until your phone caught your eye as it rested atop to dresser across the room. You crawled across the bed, stumbling to your feet and looked at the time. 12:14 pm. You’re heart sank. It was Friday and you were late, again. Then your eyes caught sight of a folded piece of paper, a hastily written note on the back of your grocery receipt.

‘Don’t you dare come to class today. Here’s my number, send me message when you wake up. Let me know you’re not dead. -Mr. Yamada.’      

        You looked down at yourself as the panic subsided. You were in the most basic configuration of your hero costume, the jacket, gloves boots and utility items were folded up next your phone. All that remained what your pants and undershirt, both in need of some patch work and cleaning. You dethatched all of the pieces that couldn’t be washed and gathered up those that could and threw them in the communal washing machine on the floor below. When you reached your apartment again all you wanted was to eat and shower, but you typed out a brief, to the point text and sent it.

               ‘Not Dead. – Y/n.”

        A hot shower warmed you right up. You got a better look at the bruising on your arm and knees, noting too serious nor life threatening. In fact, you’d think you’d probably gotten worse during training. When you got back to your phone you quickly found out Mr. Yamada was an emoji texter. You could only imagine how he and Mr. Aizawa’s message exchanged must look now.

               Glad the hear it! Got something I wanna talk to you about when you have time!’

                    ‘IT’S NOT BAD! I promise!’

                    ‘Is there a time I could stop by this weekend?’

‘Mr. Aizawa would be there too or course! Not like a one on one thing, that would be weird.’

        You could see his energy channeling into texting anxiety. You checked your work schedule, you had day shifts this weekend so any night would work. You responded as such, suddenly realizing you had invited them over to your dumpy apartment. You could kick yourself. You looked around; this place was so rundown that it needed to exorcized of its dust. You flopped back onto the bed, dreading all the cleaning you had ahead of you. To top it off you had a night shift to get ready for.

***

        Saturday. Within the next day you had gone to work twice and between shifts thrown out everything that wasn’t wearable, washable or too offensive to be allowed continued existence. By the time you were moderately happy with your place it looked like a college dorm pre-move in. It’s not that your place had much personality to begin with, but over the last few months the mess had become your only sense of self here. Between your busy schedule and lack of motivation to do anything outside of work and school, you had gotten comfortable living in the product of that life.  Despite the stress of having guests over to a home you were ashamed of, the cleanliness was…nice. You could get used to this.

        You were almost able to enjoy the new environment when a knock sounded at your door and your gut squeezed in on itself. You tried to relax, telling yourself that they weren’t going to judge you. They fought villains for a living, you were not their idea of a bad person. A bad apartment doesn’t make you a bad person. You still felt shitty, though.

        You opened the door. The two of them stood in the hall, shoulder to shoulder, in casual clothes. Mr. Aizawa looking tired, but not as frustrated as he seemed to be when lurking in the halls at U.A. Mr. Yamada was bright and smiling, without the cockatiel hair he seemed less larger than life, more puppy-esque.

        “H-hi!” He greeted.

        “Hey.” You smiled back politely. Okay, now let them in. “C-come on in.”

        It took you a second to open the door wider and step aside, hopefully they didn’t notice. Who were you kidding, Mr. Aizawa definitely noticed, hopefully Mr. Yamada was still unaware of your currently mortified state. You turned around; they were taking in your space. You followed their eyes. Your walls were too bare, your couch sagged awkwardly in the middle, you didn’t even have a kitchen table.

        “This is nicer than your place when you first moved out.” Mr. Aizawa mumbled under his breath, ginning as he elbowed Mr. Yamada.

        “I mean,” Mr. Yamada blushed. “there’s a reason that building doesn’t exist anymore.”

        “Did you guys want to sit? I have… water?” Yes, those were things you said when you had guests.

        “No, thanks.” Mr. Aizawa said, nudging Mr. Yamada towards the couch.

        “O-okay.” You rubbed your arm awkwardly.

        The three of you went towards the couch, the couple sat on the couch and you leaned against you leaned against the T.V. unit. Silence hung in the air; it was a dense silence filled with unspoken words. You were nervous, it felt like you were doing your own parent-teacher interview. Mr. Aizawa remained ever calm, he looked almost serene compared to, not only how you felt but also, to how Mr. Yamada’s vibrating leg betrayed him to be feeling.

        “So,” Mr. Aizawa started.

        “So,” Mr. Yamada trailed behind. With a stern look from his partner he continued. “I know, when you lost your parents you didn’t want to be mix matched with other families.”

        A strange feeling began rising from your stomach, it was somewhere between anxiety and comfort. It made no sense, but you pushed it down and let him continue.

        “And since you’ve been on your own you’ve done really good for yourself.” He fiddled with a loose thread on a tear in his jeans. “But there are some drawbacks, like last night with the whole hospital thing, right?”

        You nodded. Wanting desperately not to jump to the conclusion you felt tickling the back of your mind.

        “I, uh, I was… Well, we were-” Mr. Yamada swallowed hard.

        “We were wondering if, just until you turn 18, you would consider letting us foster you.” Mr. Aizawa has said it but all you could see, and feel was the sheer panic and surprise of Mr. Yamada’s face.

        “Y-you want…to-” you breathed. That warm feeling refused to be repressed any longer and spray forth, a bright shiny joy engulfing you. You had thought you didn’t want this, that you were better off just waiting out your years as a minor. You hadn’t thought about how much you missed family in a long time, how much you missed having people fuss over you and worry about you and even make assholes of themselves for you.

        “It’ll also be easier if you go on school trips or want to apply for a licensing exam, we can even help out with, like, normal everyday life stuff maybe.” Mr. Yamada threw in.

You grinned to yourself. You had five months left to be a kid.

Read Chapter 1 of Storge here!

[dwellordream]

“Relations with real parents, of course, provided the context and often times much of the subterranean content of girls’ socialization. As the age of marriage increased, middle-class daughters resided for a longer and longer time with their parents. The historical literature has appropriately stressed the dependence of Victorian daughters, yet it has disagreed on how to interpret it. Historians of medicine and of the prescriptive literature have tended to stress the costs of such training in self-discipline, seeing girls’ exercises in self-suppression as the origins of a range of psychosomatic ailments.

With a more positive emphasis, historians of domesticity have emphasized the health of girls’ gradual socialization into the world of their mothers and grandmothers, depicting daughters and mothers ‘‘lolling [together] in placid domesticity.’’ The legacy of the Victorian home was more variegated than either vision allows, though, with maternal dependence often suppressed in accounts of actual lives. In some sense, the object relations theory of gender socialization was designed for the Victorian family. Nancy Chodorow’s argument about the ‘‘reproduction of mothering’’ assumes an asymmetrical family structure with mother at home and father at work. Unlike her brother, the theory goes, the girl learns gender behavior through imitating her mother, often blurring her own sense of self with her mother’s.

In this environment, affiliation and nurturance emerge naturally at the center of her identity. (Her brother needs to learn masculinity from a largely absent father and must therefore break abruptly from his nearest love object, his mother, in order to assume an abstract masculinity.) This insight about the blendedness of female identity in late-Victorian America helps to explain the anomalous position of mothers in many of the documents of girlhood. Frequently mothers simply did not appear in their daughters’ daily accounts of their lives. The absence of a mother in a diary often did not reflect her real-life absence. Instead, it was likely to suggest that she was omnipresent, part of the assumed background of her daughter’s life rather than its figure or pattern.

Even fictional accounts of girls and their journals acknowledged this absence. Mothers frequently emerged in diary accounts only to depart or to return or to get sick. In diaries from three different years in the 1880s, Mabel Lancraft, daughter of an oyster grower in Fair Haven, Connecticut, mentioned her mother scarcely at all. Her mother took an active role only in regard to three separate events: a contentious shopping trip, a trip to school as her daughter’s advocate, and her rare absence from home, which required that Mabel herself prepare dinner. It is in such moments as the last that daughters paid tribute to mothers and to their particular and often archetypal qualities.

When Bostonian Agnes Garrison was in New York and got an earache, she realized how much she counted on her mother in the normal run of things: ‘‘I don’t know when I have had such a hard time or when I have missed my dear Mamma so much. Cried as much for her as for earache. . . . There is nobody like Mamma when one is sick.’’ Southerner Lucy Breckinridge ‘‘spent the day’’ watching for her mother to return, and noted that when she finally arrived, ‘‘The house is much brighter now.’’

Literary critics have often noted the propensity of nineteenth-century female authors to ‘‘express hostility toward their mothers by eliminating them from the narrative,’’ in contrast to twentieth-century authors, who dramatized the conflict. One such contemporary observer was Florence Nightingale, who during her own crisis over her life purpose commented on how the novels of her age featured a heroine who ‘‘has generally no family ties (almost invariably no mother), or, if she has, they do not interfere with her entire independence.’’ According to the critic Carolyn Heilbrun, the removal of familial impediments represented wish fulfillment—a magical, fictive freeing from real-life constraints, especially those imposed by families. Girls’ diaries seem to have shared in both the plotting templates and the psychological bedrock which underlay such portrayals of familial displacement and liberation.

…So what do we make of girls’ frequent decisions to leave their mothers out of the record? We might conclude that a mother’s absence from journals and diaries represented the same thing as a mother’s absence from novels—an easy resolution to the need for imaginative space, without yet the daring demonstrated by such writers as Virginia Woolf, who confronted and considered killing the smothering, maternal ‘‘angel in the house.’’ The potency of the maternal ideal became especially apparent when mothers had died. Indeed, the death of a mother might be the initial inspiration for a daughter to write. Grief over a loss that often seemed equal to a loss of self found a ready outlet in one strand of girls’ autobiographical writing in which the spirit of the ‘‘angel of the house’’ was described, memorialized, and apotheosized.

The critic Elaine Showalter has observed that many Victorian women writers had lost, or were alienated from, their mothers. Showalter concludes that the resulting male-identification contributed to their careers. The diary evidence from the United States suggests another possibility—that the loss of a mother may have encouraged writing which was initially a form of communication with an absent or imagined ‘‘other’’ from beyond the grave. In such journals, the palpable agenda of the journal writer was to apply a salve of words and an illusion of communication to the intense aloneness of the orphaned or the motherless. When Helen Ward Brandreth began her journal, at the age of thirteen, she described herself (‘‘a low forehead, light hair and eyes’’), noted her age, and then recorded the next significant information about herself: ‘‘My Mama is dead, she died March 5, 1871, so my eldest sister May takes care of me.’’

The death of a mother during a girl’s childhood or youth distilled and romanticized maternal imagery. In their depictions of their dead mothers, girls concocted a powerful maternal essence which inhibited and censured with far greater impact than could any living representative. As such, dead mothers came to stand in for a potent superego—an angel in fact rather than simply in allusion. In Victorian America, the association of mothers with religious virtue, as a ‘‘channel of God’s grace’’ (according to Jane Tompkins), was a commonplace. For girls whose mothers had died, the association was fixed: mothers, feminine virtue, and an idealized but elusive better self.

…In some sense, idealizing mothers, especially dead ones, bespoke a universal urge for the perfect unity of the womb or before. In that sense, the strong identification and attachment between mothers and daughters argued by Nancy Chodorow and others was intensified by its arbitrary dissolution through death. Testimonials in diaries about lost mothers provide the words to suggest the bonds which often remained unvoiced in the diaries of the daughters of living mothers. Mothers were often absent from the record when present in fact, and most clearly articulated in the fabric and manuscript of self when they were in fact dead, sick, or away.

Whichever the case, the writings of Victorian daughters confirm the prolonged attachment of daughters to mothers with whom they shared a largely domestic sphere. Yet that primal bond of identification, encouraged by the Victorian separation of male and female spheres, was also subject to countercurrents from the culture of selfhood itself. As adults claimed a private self removed by propriety from public view or discourse, they taught those same values to growing girls. In theory, a girl told her mother all, and had no secrets. In practice, daughters, like their mothers, resisted expressing or confessing controversial emotions. In rooms and journals provided by their parents but taken for their own, girls, too, elaborated a layered culture of private secrets which sometimes pitted them against their mothers.

This was less true earlier in the nineteenth century. Parents claimed privacy for themselves but resisted giving it to children. Parents who had scrutinized their children’s writings for signs of grace earlier in the century were not indulging idle curiosity but fulfilling their highest parental responsibility to see to the spiritual salvation of their children. The substitution of character building for salvation seeking as the goal of adolescent socialization was a change in vocabulary rather than a revolution in parent-child relations. Adults’ increasing rights to privacy within their homes meant greater parental obligation to monitor children, rather than less. When parents took their children inside and closed the door, they gained sole responsibility for their upbringing.

…Yet the idea that ‘‘a secret is not a good thing for a girl to have’’ became harder to defend as Victorianism evolved to encourage the privacy of the individual. The surreptitious surveillance which we associate with Victorianism was the result of the twin beliefs in the abstract value of privacy and the responsibility of parents to monitor children. Motivated perhaps by the greater actual autonomy of their daughters, who were no longer constantly at their mothers’ elbows, and also by their own increasing responsibility for girls’ upbringing, parents were often interested in the contents of daughters’ diaries and journals. Although we think of the Victorians as inappropriately intrusive, their recourse to indirection was a sign of their deference to the idea of privacy. Earlier generations would have had fewer scruples about direct intervention.

As youths made the transition to adulthood, they at first felt guilty about secrets they kept from parents. Lucy Breckinridge neglected to tell her father about her engagement, and remonstrated with herself for the omission: ‘‘I am afraid it is deception, and yet, I cannot make up my mind to do it. I am a coward! I try to reconcile myself to it by arguing that if I am silent now, there may something occur to make Pa favor my plan and if I told him now, it would distress and anger him. . . . And then, all girls do it. Sallie Grattan did not even tell her mother! But that’s small comfort. I’ll think of it and try to make up my mind.’’ Lucy Breckinridge’s defenses of her secrecy in the 1860s lacked conviction. In resorting simply to fashion—‘‘And then, all girls do it’’—she was leaning on a reed so weak as to offend even her own sense of righteousness.

Yet at the same time, Breckinridge was offended at an incursion on her own sense of privacy. When a letter came into the house from Captain H., the man to whom she was engaged, ‘‘Pa got hold of the letter and read it and then sent for me to get it, a very bad thing in Papa.’’ When Lucy decided to break off with her Captain H., largely because of her parents’ disapproval, Lucy referred again to her father’s intrusion on her privacy: ‘‘Pa opens all my letters since Eliza’s alluding to Capt. H., and I have not a doubt was very much interested in the Capt.’s letter today.’’ It was wrong for her to withhold important information about her engagement from her father, Breckinridge seemed to feel. It was perhaps even worse for her father to pry into her mail, without her express permission, ‘‘a very bad thing.’’ The certainty of that last judgment suggests that girls were increasingly claiming a right to their own privacy.

As might have been expected between such a fiery duo, the etiquette and the morality of privacy also figured in the relationship between the feminist orator Lucy Stone and her diary-keeping daughter Alice Stone Blackwell. Perhaps not surprisingly, as in her campaign to restrict her daughter’s reading, Lucy Stone upheld woman’s self-sovereignty—as long as it did not extend to her daughter. In February 1872, when Blackwell was fourteen, her mother scolded her sharply for reading someone else’s letter. ‘‘Mama told me I had never done so naughty a thing since I was borne.’’ This strong rebuke upset Alice ‘‘utterly,’’ and she described herself going off to school ‘‘in a very low state of mind.’’ Several months later, though, the tables were turned. Alice recorded: ‘‘I accused Mama of scratching out something in my diary, and she confessed to having done so. We had a conversation which nearly resulted in my giving up keeping a diary and burning the old ones, but the affair ended satisfactorily.’’

Coming from the champion of women’s rights, Lucy Stone’s act of willful intrusion on her daughter is shocking. Not only had she read her daughter’s journal, but she had been unable to resist obliterating contents which displeased her. The conversation between mother and daughter nearly ended in a dramatic scene of destruction, with the daughter threatening to break off the edifying practice of journal writing and to burn the old ones if her mother couldn’t guarantee their privacy. Clearly, Alice had learned the lessons about the sanctity of privacy which her mother had been trying to teach her. Equally clearly, Lucy Stone was still participating in a nineteenth-century culture which exempted relations between mothers and daughters from the strict code of privacy which characterized relations between adults.

As late as the 1890s, Ladies’ Home Journal was still declaring the rights of parents to open letters addressed to a daughter, but even this conservative publication suggested, ‘‘This is seldom done where the confidence between the parents and child exists.’’ The controversy in the spring of 1872 between the women of the Blackwell family, like those of myriad other families throughout Victorian America, were skirmishes in a prolonged cultural conflict over the rights of daughters to identities separate from their mothers’.”

- Jane H. Hunter, “Houses, Families, Rooms of One’s Own.” in How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood

[snowdice]

Gaps in His Files (Part 10) [Relabeled; Refiled Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan/Patton

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton

Appear: Remy, Virgil (but only in the epilogue)

Summary:

Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.

When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?

This is set 25 years before Sometimes Labels Fail though it’s story is completely independent of it and it is not necessary to read that one first.

Notes: Superhero AU, memory loss, past child abuse, past child neglect, unhealthy ideas about ones place in relationships, emotional suppression, self-deprecating thoughts, medical procedures mentioned, very brief unhealthy views of sex

I feel as though I should make a statement in Logan’s defense before you read this. There is a thing called unreliable narration and... our narrator is spiraling. 

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

“I have to go to work today,” Patton said Friday morning. “I am trusting you enough to not attempt to go to school like yesterday if for no other reason then so you don’t embarrass yourself.”

Logan nodded and Patton didn’t think he’d gotten his point totally across yesterday, but he thought Logan would probably not do anything today since on Fridays he only had to attend two classes and not teach or meet one-on-one with anyone.

“Good,” Patton said, biting his lip. Logan was distracted with one of his personal files and wasn’t looking at him. He’d been quiet yesterday after Patton had dragged him back from the college. He’d stopped asking Patton questions about himself or really talking to Patton at all, instead choosing to stew in his ire in silence. He read the book Patton got him and was civil when he needed something from Patton or when Patton asked something out of him, but his discontent with Patton’s presence was written all over his face. ‘Maybe I don’t want what I built’ echoed in the silence between them. It really sucked to know that Logan could so easily learn to hate him. “Bye then. I’ll see you later.” He shut the door to the apartment behind him.

He drove to the hospital in a daze of emotional numbness and sat in his car in the parking lot, staring at the tall building for almost 15 minutes with a tight feeling in his stomach before finally forcing himself into the building.

He had been hoping that having something to keep his mind busy with would help him feel better, but it just seemed to make things worse. It made the gaping hole in his chest widen and widen until it threatened to consume all of him. When he went to check on a patient’s wound, he felt like he could throw up despite the fact that he was long past being grossed out by medical things. It just kept getting worse and worse as Patton worked mechanically through the morning. Talk to patients, smile at coworkers, take vitals. Don’t rest. Don’t feel. Don’t break. Break and someone dies.

“Patton,” a voice called as the lunch hour crept closer. Patton turned to see Remy rushing down the hallway towards him. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I have a shift,” Patton replied blankly. He tried to turn away from him because a friendly face was the most dangerous thing right now, but Remy grabbed his arm. “What do you want Remy?” Patton asked, refusing to look at him. There was a pause before he was tugged on and yanked into a hall closet.

Patton rounded on him once the door closed behind them, a bit of it leaking, just not in any way that would actually help. Instead, it came out in a way that would likely just make it worse when the guilt hit later. “What?” he snapped harshly.

Remy didn’t respond for a long moment, just leaning against the opposite wall of the closet with a frown on his face. Patton bristled under the scrutiny.

“I heard Bluebird got beamed by a memory gun.”

“Yes, I’m sure everyone knows that by now,” Patton replied scathingly.

Remy again didn’t react to the harshness in his tone. He just nodded. “Bet that’s hard for people who know him personally,” he said.

“What do you want?” Patton said and this time it came out more wobbly than harsh.

Remy sighed. “Patton go home.”

Patton shook his head and could feel pressure building up behind his eyes.

“Patton this is not the place for you today. I’ll tell Bev you’re sick. Just leave.”

“I…” Patton stuttered. “I can’t. I…” he started to shake, bursting at the seams. “I can’t,” he gasped, and he didn’t think he was talking about how he couldn’t leave work anymore. Remy leaned forward to tug him into a hug and Patton shattered like a window in a hurricane.

He could hear Remy saying things to him, but he couldn’t make out anything of the words except the soft sympathetic tone.

“A little girl fell out of the window,” he blurted out, unable to keep it in anymore, “and she was so tiny and so hurt and I had to cut into her with a knife so I could try to put her bones back together right and if I did anything wrong she might not ever be able to move right again. She could’ve died on the operating table and it would have been my fault. I shouldn’t have been the one to do it. Why did they pick me to do it? I’m not any good at this. I shouldn’t be here. I’ve just gotten lucky and one day someone isn’t going to wake up that should have and they’re all going to know how much of a fuck up I am. I can’t do anything right. I pretend and pretend to be good at things and nice and perfect but it’s all just an act and eventually everyone’s going to see it and they’ll all hate me. No one loves me and no one should love me and everyone who thinks they love me will eventually find out the truth and leave me because I can never be good enough no matter how hard I try.”

“Woah, hey, that’s not true Patton,” Remy said looking alarm. He was trying to wipe the tears off his face with his sleeve, but more just replaced them the next moment. “That’s so very not true. You’re not a screw up. You’re a great doctor and you’re not faking anything. So many people love you for you including me.”

Patton just shook his head. “You don’t know me,” he cried. “You don’t know me at all. The only person who I’ve ever even let really known me is Logan and I love him so much, but he doesn’t love me back, because I’m not good enough. And now he hates me.”

“No, no, Pat,” Remy said. “I know you’ve probably had a rough couple of days, but that man absolutely adores you. He could never hate you no matter what. He’s a dork who’s afraid of his feelings sometimes and he gets all pissy with strangers, but I know he doesn’t have it in him to hate you. No version of him ever could.”

Patton just laughed. “No. He doesn’t love me. Not really.”

“He does, babe. I promise he does.”

“I proposed to him,” Patton said. He managed to steady his voice, but tears were still streaming down his face. “He said no.”

Remy blinked and his mouth gaped open for a moment. “When…?”

Patton sniffled. “Two months ago.” It had been a soul draining, humiliating experience.

“How do you feel about marriage?” Patton had asked one day in bed after staying in Logan’s apartment for the third time that week. He had been thinking about it for a while and that day he’d blinked open his eyes to see Logan staring at him with the softest expression he’d ever seen on the man’s face and then Patton had been slowly and thoroughly kissed the rest of the way awake. It hadn’t even led to sex that morning, but Patton had thought he wanted to wake up like that every day forever.

“Marriage?” Logan had asked in response with a lilt to his tone that had made Patton swallow.

“Yeah,” he’d replied, “uh, specifically you marrying me.”

“Are you saying you want to marry me?”

“I… yes,” he’d admitted, but felt the need to backtrack, “but only if you want to.”

There had been a long pause and Patton had felt his heart shatter in it. “Give me some time?” he’d asked, but Patton had known that meant no. They had been dating for three years and he knew Logan had likely already made his decision about Patton long ago. He didn’t need more time. He was quick at making decision and he rarely went back on them. Patton had known him saying that meant Logan didn’t think Patton was good enough. That he hadn’t loved him enough to want to wake up next to him every morning. Patton had felt tears prickling at his eyes which wasn’t fair to him, so he’d turned away.

“Of course, sweetie,” he’d said as steadily as possible and that had been the end of the conversation.

“So yeah,” Patton continued in the present. “There’s something wrong with me and I… I don’t know what. If I did, I’d change it, but I can’t figure it out. Maybe it’s just all of me. Maybe he’s too smart and can see through all of the acts and knows how horrible I really am inside.”

“Oh sweetheart,” Remy said and leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead. “You are wonderful. I promise. You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met. Want me to slap Logan for you? That might fix the problem.”

Patton chuckled darkly. “Which problem?” Remy grabbed his face and made him look him in the eyes.

“You need to go home,” he said firmly. “You need to take a bath and eat some ice cream and watch a sad movie so you can pretend you’re crying about that. Okay?”

Patton didn’t respond, just averted his eyes.

“Come on Pat,” Remy cajoled, “nurses orders.”

Patton smiled just a bit. “I’ll take the day off,” he conceded.

Remy frowned probably because he could tell that Patton was not going to follow the rest of his instructions because Patton was too rotted on the inside to listen to anyone’s advice.

He let Remy deal with telling people he’d be gone for the day and headed back to Logan’s apartment.

Want to read more? Click below!

Part 11

[themissingmarvel]

Kind Regards, Detective [Part 8]

(I am going to prompt this with first, an apology for how long it’s been. I blame Animal Crossing as well as the apocalypse. That said, and this is a TW/CW there is a major death. So be advised.)

CATCH UP: [Part 1] // [Part 2] // [Drabble] // [Part 3] // [Part 4] // [Drabble 2] // [Part 5] // [Part 6] // [Part 7]

Pairing: Detective Loki x fbi!Reader

Word Count: 3.1k

Warnings: Language, descriptions of violence, major character death

They didn’t fall asleep right away. Which made sense on many levels. She was still shaken and he was still quite taken with the woman in his arms, who he had dreamed of namelessly for so long. She was already a dream. But that was dangerous, and he knew it.

She told him stories of training in the bureau, and what she had encountered. Being a woman and an agent was never easy. He told her stories about when he started off as a beat cop and his first time arresting someone back when he worked in Philadelphia. He talked about having seen so much and knowing what he did, he wanted to bring his work to an area that didn’t always get attention. That needed good cops. Conyers had been that place.

Her words were shaky when she discussed the loss of her sister, and that was what the CD had been in reference to. David had lost so much in his life so young he supposed he didn’t really understand that kind of pain the way he wanted to. He hadn’t ever loved something like that before. He had felt adrift, a ship without an anchor. Love was a memory to him and he dreamed of it sometimes so hard he could taste it. 

When they did finally fall asleep, David had buried himself against her and they had managed to look disgustingly adorable in a way neither would ever admit to, even in a court of law. Y/N had prided herself on her ability to keep work separate. It helped that at least once a month she’d spend a couple days out of town. Sometimes longer. Meant she had good excuses for staying settled. David had no such excuse save for his own emotional damage as a child and teen. 

Her phone was what stirred her from sleep, sleep that rarely came so deeply. The phone was by her bed, the issued FBI one she was sure was being tracked but didn’t much care. Breaking away from the warm embrace of the man who had no business being as wonderful as he was, she fumbled for it before answering, not registering the emergency ring, “Agent Y/L/N. Yes, that’s what I said. Wait, what?” 

Loki had stirred when she woke, though more so as he watched her suddenly sit up, pushing back her hair that had become quite a mess. He was almost hurt he didn’t get a chance to see her as she woke. A soft waking. Not this.

Already she was on her feet, “No. That’s incorrect. I’m still in New York, the drive was a nightmare so I decided to stay at a hotel and- it doesn’t matter. Check my phone records, I never-!”

She was silent, David sitting up as he watched her, a frantic look suddenly dissipating from her delicate features, her skin pale, eyes wide, looking like a deer in headlights. So far he had found that answering the phone was not ending well for either of them.

He was adjusting his own hair, standing and going for his shirt and belt, watching as she pulled the phone away to look at the screen. 

By now she had adjusted to this sort of new normal. Henry Best was not a shy man and she suspected that for a long time he had been killing people. For whatever reason, it had escalated the past few months and she was certain when they looked at patterns statewide, they would find a broader, less direct pattern. No roses, but perhaps notes. Ones discarded. A disappearance and a body found days or weeks later would be easily dismissed by an overworked department. 

Closing her eyes tightly, she took a breath before lifting the phone back to her ear, “When was he found? Yeah, check the hotel records I don’t give a fuck. You think I seriously killed my own coworker?! Tell Kendrick to call me himself, then!” She pulled the phone back and hung it up.

It was six in the morning, and she supposed the few hours of sleep they had gotten was a blessing, but one she would regret. She would speak at the funeral later and try not to loudly blame herself, but it would be hard not to. She hadn’t pulled the trigger but she had left a loaded gun on the table just the same. She had let David in and in turn let other parts of herself go.

David was quiet before he spoke, “What happened?”

What a stupid question. It was met by a look of anger he didn’t recognize immediately but knew as rage. It was a powerful kind of rage that clouded judgment and made people do stupid things. He hoped it was the kind of rage Y/N could reign in and use as fuel but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know enough. He knew fragments and pieces and he hoped she could keep herself together. Keller Dover had let that rage nearly destroy him and almost got himself killed. It was personal.

“Adrian is dead. They found his body in the parking lot of an empty office building, two shots to the chest. They found texts on his phone from me, though we both know it wasn’t. It was ‘me’, asking to meet him with important information I was ‘too scared’ to speak over the phone. Adrian died alone, bleeding to death in a parking lot because of me.” 

Her face was stoic, eyes cold and echoing of something akin to heartbreak. She didn’t love Adrian. Not really. But she liked him. She liked how he flirted and made her feel cute, how he called her ‘ladybug’ and would grin even through the phone. Even when he was such a fucking asshole, blowing off her requests for meeting up or talking about his dates… she knew. He wasn’t a bad man, he was kind of a dick, but he sure as hell didn’t deserve to die. But she had killed him, hadn’t she? Maybe she didn’t pull the trigger but she left the gun on the table.

When her sister died, long ago, rage had taken the place of sadness and grief. She had felt anger like no other that the world would have reached out and taken her sister from her. It wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fair. Sadness was so hard to manage but rage and anger was always so much more reasonable, in an odd way. Sadness you had to cope with but rage you could channel elsewhere. It also made you stupid as hell. 

Loki was walking to where Y/N was, reaching for her arm before she snatched it away, “Hey, this isn’t your fault, we both know-”

“But it is!” She stared at him, eyes wide and deadly cool, “It is my fault, David. I thought that this,” she gestured between the two of them, “was a good idea. And it wasn’t. Henry got my phone credentials somehow and he got to Adrian.”

David stepped back, absorbing the blow that hit him right in the chest. She hadn’t meant to hurt him, but when a wounded cat is cornered and injured it will always lash out, even at what it loves the most. She was defending herself. Somewhere he knew that, in the same way he knew he would be doing the same, were he in her position. But he allowed it to sink, instead stepping away and getting himself dressed.

He was cautious as he watched her solemnly get dressed, do her hair as best she could before silently stepping into the bathroom to use the crappy-but-acceptable toothbrush and toothpaste provided. Her brain was trying to process what just happened, but so was David’s. He was reeling from the pain of being told he was a mistake, and because he knew that she didn’t mean it. He hoped she didn’t. He felt responsible as well, that he had distracted her from the case. Perhaps, he thought, it might give him clarity to have the step back that she didn’t. 

If Henry had reached out to Adrian, it was because he knew a few things. First, he knew that Adrian provided Y/N with information frequently enough that he had access to quite a bit of data. He probably knew more than he even realized he knew, and he was a risk. Also, Henry knew that Adrian trusted Y/N completely. Enough that he’d simply drive in the middle of the night to meet up with her over a simple text. But doesn’t the FBI train better?

Suddenly it was David working like a profiler, and perhaps it was the brain of the woman he had slept next to that was rubbing off on him. 

It didn’t make sense that Adrian would just trust a text message from Y/N, did it? 

Looking down at his own phone, he scanned through a few missed calls and voicemails, a text or two from guys at the precinct. Opening his work mail, he noted a few important forensic items and tabbed them for later. One that stood out was the email that the PAM shots had come in.

When Y/N came out she was silent, her words feeling like pain, should she utter them. Instead, she grabbed her things, hardly looking at David as she felt the weight of the boulder she had decided to shoulder pressing down on her before breathing out the words, “Let’s go.”

___

The drive itself hadn’t taken long, all things considered. Y/N had insisted she drive her own car, the reliable car that felt reliably foreign, making her feel like an alien in a world she was supposed to be part of. Adrian didn’t deserve to die. Arguably, most folks didn’t, really. He was a good guy, though. He did the stuff you were supposed to do. Being an asshole wasn’t a reason to off someone and yet Henry (and she was sure it was Henry) had chosen him specifically. Whether or not it was because he ‘knew’ something, it was calculated. Gunshots, however, meant this was not as planned as he had wanted it to be. Something had been off. Emotions had been involved. This had been a crime of passion and not a single note was left behind. Not a single rose.

He wasn’t the pattern, though. So it made sense.

Pulling up to the precinct, she got out and made her way to the door, aware of Detective Loki only steps behind her, protective in a way he didn’t like, even for himself. Henry was bold, however. Further forensics on the phone had shown Y/N’s phone had been cloned, of course. She supposed handing the man her jacket in his office where he had defense level technology hadn’t been her smartest move. 

She had to play chess and make him think she was still playing checkers.

“Agent? This was delivered about an hour ago, one of the DC Agents dropped it himself. Credentials checked out. It’s for you.” A young man was behind the precinct desk, looking a little tired but otherwise unbothered, handing her a small package. She was curious, though not concerned this time, able to spot the small sticker on the bottom left of a glittering ladybug. 

Taking the box she glanced at David and nodded her head towards the long hallway that led towards the interrogation rooms. She was silent, moving like a whisper over the ugly rug in the dingy department that desperately needed an upgrade. Opening the door to the other side of the one-way mirror, she removed her jacket and her phone, David following suit. It was eerie, how silent she was, even her movements noiseless as she fiddled with the microphone settings and turned off all recording devices. She went so far as to power them off entirely, making the room dark. 

Shutting the door, the young woman gently opened the box and withdrew a sleek, silver Samsung Galaxy, definitely not government issue. Squinting, she pressed the power button and turned it on, the phone booting up with no problem, the background a picture of a ladybug. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes and smirk through the pain, “Subtle, as always.”

Sitting down, David took a seat by her, watching as the phone appeared to begin on its own, the woman taking the cue to prop it up and sit back, the two close by once more as they watched a video begin.

“I know. This isn’t subtle, right? I mean, if you’re watching it then it’s not supposed to be. After what Henry did, I didn’t want you getting another package and being scared again.” 

It was Adrian, his face, brown scruff over his handsome features, sharp jawline and broad shoulders visible, stunning hazel eyes that were arguably more green than hazel visible. His hair was dark brown as well, normally gelled down and styled, though a bit more tussled now. He was sitting in his apartment, what looked to be his apartment. Pictures of his family were behind him and he was sitting on his couch, beige… funny the things we choose to see.

“He texted me tonight. I mean, you did, from what police records will show, but it’s him. He’s gotta think I’m some next-level idiot, you know? He tried to get your tone down but he can’t get that icy exterior quite right,” he smirked, looking into the camera, Y/N’s eyes softened as she knew she was watching the final moments of a man’s life. You don’t turn away from something like that.

“It’s my fault… I’m sorry.” She whispered as she watched the video, her body caving in on itself as she felt herself tense.

“And before you apologize, don’t! Hey, for all I know, things turned out just fine and you’re gonna make fun of me for this video and I’ll get the credit for catching The Black Rose! I won’t let you live it down,” he smirked.

Tears burned at her eyes, holding a hand over her mouth to stop herself from speaking again, almost wounded by how eerie it was how well he knew her. It fucking hurt.

“I can’t call you on your phone because it’ll route to his. He has authority over it by now, so don’t trust it, whatever you read on it. It’s useless. I used this because I knew I could jailbreak it and install the firmware to keep him out. But yeah, this’ll be pretty useless too if he gets wind of it.

“Anyway. He wants to meet me. I figure if I can get some recordings of him in the parking lot, maybe clone his phone myself without him knowing, maybe I can get something off him for you. If not, if you’re watching this and feeling like shit… it means it’s a good thing I sent the phone. Because if you’re watching this, much like those tropes I know you hate, then I’m dead, Ladybug. And I’m sorry for that one. But it sure as hell isn’t your responsibility and you need to know I’m doing this because I chose to. You’ve always been the brave one, Y/N. I’ve watched you take hits from assholes, get threatened, travel across the country, work yourself through hell on earth… you’re brave. You’re good at your job. And you always deserved better than me. Doesn’t make much sense to tell you I always loved you, so I won’t. But I’m doing this not for you, but because of you. Catch the asshole.”

The video closed, another taking its place, this one far grainier and from within a spot on the dash of Adrian’s car. It was a shitty camera, one that would be found, quite obviously, and that was broadcasting a recording. Later they’d find out not even Henry could trace the broadcast, but Y/N knew. David knew. Both knew as they sat in the dark interview room in the Conyers precinct.

The audio was muffled and quiet, which made sense. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. But it showed Adrian getting out of the car, jacket on, walking over with his hands up. He was speaking, softly, and staying still as another man entered view.

Henry.

He had his hands in his pockets, though he was visible. His head. Face. Hair. Unmistakably Henry Best. It was like watching a horror movie, though, and she hadn’t even realized that David had wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled himself to her, ready to stop the video at any moment. 

Shouts were exchanged suddenly, Henry barking at Adrian who stepped back, his hands still up, shaking his head and looking almost quizzical as he tilted his head to the side, “-her…-?” It was barely audible, though Henry’s face contorted into anger, rage, pulling a gun out of his pocket suddenly and screaming, “You could never understand my love for her!”  

One shot. Two shots. Three shots. 

Each made Y/N jump, tears in her eyes as she watched her friend, one of her closest friends, the man she trusted, shot dead in front of her, the feed suddenly cutting out. 

The video closed, leaving only the phone with its basic desktop icons before them, Y/N reaching out and gently picking up the phone, “You fucking idiot, Adrian.” Tears were falling down her cheeks, not that she cared. And even Adrian’s promise that his death was not on her was not enough. The guilt was tremendous and suddenly she felt like she was the one speeding down the highway and popping a tire. She felt everything spinning out of control and she wondered if this was the same kind of end her sister had met. Chaos. Loss. Helplessness. Blame. 

It was the icon in the bottom of the screen, however, that snapped her back, looking down at the icon that was only black but was titled all she needed:

“EVIDENCE”. 

His last gift was not a video of his death, but rather, Adrian had ensured, was a gift of life and a promise of revenge against the man who had done so much. And, perhaps, a warning of something more sinister.

(Tagging: @escapingthoughtsandsecrets​ @is-it-madness​ @detecellie​ @doritosandavocados​ @oscarflysaac​ @peccobagnaia​ @miss-missing-patd​ @hockeyandheroes​ )