#Terrible life ruining mistakes that they already learned from previously

[kid-az]

Hey Omori fandom, fun fact!

Did you know people can meaningfully improve and mature as people and aren’t always cursed to make the same, terrible, life ruining mistakes 24/7 until they die!

[crusherthedoctor]

Sonic Heroes: Sweet or Shite? - Part 1: SILVER

There are some heroes I like. And there are some heroes I don’t like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That’s where this comes in.

This is a series in which I go into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the heroes in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves over the course of time. Two things to keep in mind:

1. These reviews will be focusing mainly on game portrayals. Though alternate media will occasionally be mentioned, it'll be for the sake of adding onto a point if a portrayal is similar enough, or to compare and contrast if a portrayal is different enough.

2. These are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don’t bite. :>

Anyhow, for today’s installment, I decided to challenge myself by starting off with a complicated one. Born from the future, and never content to stay put in said future, it's the saviour whose debut came from the most unfortunate game... Silver the Hedgehog.

The Gist: Once upon a time, in the distant future, there was an idealistic young hedgehog named Silver, gifted with the power of telekinesis for reasons unknown. With his amazing potential, he was truly destined for a wonderful, prosperous li-just kidding, it was shit.

“All two of us.”

For as long as he knew, the world was forever plagued by Iblis, the terrible Flames of Disaster. Cities stood in ruin, flames stood high, the floor was lava... it was a bitter life to be certain, all thanks to Iblis. Not even defeating the titular creature did much good, since it would simply come back to be a shitty boss fight another day. What was he - and his friend, Blaze, a character we definitely never saw before and definitely didn't have a completely different backstory before - to do?

Trust the first person he sees, of course. Even if they look like they might be related to the same Flames of Disaster that he fights so constantly.

If he had eyelids, he'd be winking at the camera.

This mysterious fellow, Mephiles the Dark, informed Silver that if he were to wipe out Iblis for real, he would need to take a trip into the past, and eliminate the root of the problem... Sonic the Hedgehog? That was what Mephiles claimed, yes. What was his proof? There was no proof.

That was good enough for Silver.

Oh look, it's Fleetway Sonic.

After an elaborate series of events, which should sound exciting but really isn't because it was just Silver going “Iblis Trigger grrr” in varying tones of voice, he was finally able to corner the blue hedgehog... twice! And despite having less fighting know-how than the hero who saved the world plenty of times, he effortlessly came close to killing the blue hedgehog... twice!

This looks like a jobbing for...

Why twice? The first time was halted by Sonic's friend Amy Rose, who Silver had met beforehand after she mistook him for Sonic, an understandable mistake that even the keenest of eyes would be forgiven for making.

The second time was also interrupted, this time by Shadow the Hedgehog. There's only room for one controversial non-blue male hedgehog in this franchise, sonny boy. Actually, his reasons were more benevolent than that: he wanted to show Silver the truth about what was going on, by time travelling to the incident that gave birth to Iblis. Why was one able to to this, so long as more than one Chaos Emerald was present? No one knew.

That was good enough for Silver.

“I challenge you to a dumb-off.”

As it turned out, Iblis was one half of a sun god called Solaris, the other half being the aforementioned Mephiles. The Duke of Soleanna wanted to reunite with his late wife by harnessing Solaris' power, which succeeded from a certain point of view since he's dead now too. The resulting blunder split Solaris into two halves. One half was all brawn, with little capacity for intelligence. The other half was Iblis.

Understanding the error of his ways, and after making peace with Sonic, Silver went back to the future to try something different, which consisted of doing the same thing he always did. Luckily for him, the script decided it would work this time, albeit at the cost of Blaze sacrificing herself... Maybe? Sort of? It’s not entirely clear what happened to her, and it’s not like this was the last we ever saw of her.

~La laaaaaa, la laaaaaa, la laaaaaa, heading to a better game, la laaaaaa~

But ohhhhh nooooo, turns out THAT didn't solve anything either! In the present, Sonic was killed by Mephiles, after the latter realised he should probably do that already if he wanted to make any progress at all with his plan. This incident led to Iblis being brought into the present, and they fused to become the omnipotent Solaris once more. Such power... such divinity... such devastation...

Actually, he was really easy. The antlion from Underground Zone was harder.

Manchild robots - 1, god of time - 0.

With their super forms in tow, Silver, Shadow, and the revived Sonic joined forces to defeat Solaris, with Sonic in particular going the extra step in retconning Solaris out of existence entirely. Since time itself reset, meaning Iblis was no longer a memory, Silver's timeline was given a second chance. What was he to look forward to in this new, promising future?

Shit.

The Design: Let's take a closer look at Silver's appearance, shall we?

Or rather, a certain thing that's wrong with it.

He's holding up fifteen fingers.

Yes, you all know what I'm pointing to: the hairstyle. Let it be known that I'm very aware of the intention behind this design choice. It's supposed to be based on the Japanese Red Maple Leaf, which holds a lot of relevant symbolism for Silver's character. This is a fine idea in theory, and I can respect the intent and the creativity.

But here's the thing: If it looks like a ganja leaf, people are going to say it looks like a ganja leaf. I know some fans will gnash their teeth at me saying this, but the fact of the matter is that intentions and ideas, no matter how good they may be on paper, don't always translate well into the final product. Unleashed Secret Rings Black Knight Sonic '06 in general is certainly no stranger to showcasing examples of that, and Silver's hairstyle is no exception. There are ways to incorporate symbolism in a character’s design without making them look like meme bait in the process, and no amount of “umm ackshually” will change that, I'm afraid.

That said, there's another reason why I'm staying clean of Silver marijuana: it doesn't work for a hedgehog character. With the other hedgehogs, their hairstyles are simple and get the point across: Sonic's goes without saying, Shadow's is more angular to befit a slightly rougher hero, and Amy's is a cute bob cut of sorts. But Silver? Even without the ganja, you've still got the two tentacles making up the back of his head.

I'd rather not be reminded of hentai quills, thanks.

“I thought Crusher-san would like it :’(”

I do find it hilarious that they went through numerous designs for Silver, and this was what they chose to go with. Some of his prototype designs may have fared better had any of them been used instead... but we didn't end up with any of those ones. We ended up with this one, therefore I'm judging this one.

But don’t worry, it’s not all bad with Silver...

The Personality: As far as actual character goes, Silver's personality is as straightfoward as most characters in the series, yet it's no less interesting, because it took a while for it to fully evolve to what it currently is. The seeds of his character - a good-natured yet awkward and rather insecure kind of guy, who doesn't fully understand how the present time works - have always been there, but it was often downplayed in earlier titles due to him being hungry for Iblis Trigger blood... or being an arsehole for no reason.

Although to be fair, everyone in Rivals is an arsehole for no reason.

Eventually though, after the writers gave him a Snickers, these traits got more opportunity to shine. Mostly in side media admittedly, but it's been noted in the games as well. With no Iblis to angst over, he's proven to be a surprisingly bubbly chap, who just wants to know how you're all doing, fellow anthro kids. And whereas his naivety was previously used for intended tragedy to benefit the evil plan of a guy who thought taking the -istoph- out of Mephistopheles would make him inconspicuous, now it's been used for a bunch of low-key contexts that do a much better job at endearing him to the player.

Finally, something I can relate to.

Hell, he even seems to have learned from the Mephiles incident, as he was quick to make it clear to the next shadowy deep-voiced anthro with demonic eyes he met that he wasn't gonna fall for any of them fibs no more, ya hear?

“YouTube and Twitter don’t count.”

All in all, it works well enough, in my opinion. His personality does pave the way for some funny and wholesome moments, and since they’re no longer trying to build him up like he’s Shadow 2.0, he's nowhere near as much of a tool as he was before. So I guess you could say... I like it?

Does this mean I can say that I like the character as a whole then, design and '06-induced idiocy aside?

Well, not quite...

The Execution: This is where the complication part comes into play. We know now that I like his personality, not so much his design, but that's only the half of it. It would be more accurate to say that I like his personality... and dislike everything else.

Aside from that, obviously.

For starters, the creation process for his character and story was summed up with, in their own words, “Think Trunks from Dragon Ball Z”. So he comes off as rather lazy and uninspired. Now I'm not expecting my Sonic characters to be 100% unique, there's always going to be similarities to other franchises no matter what you do, even if subconsciously or by complete coincidence. Taking inspiration in itself is no big deal at all.

But... was that it? Copying a DBZ character to such a blatant extent? Was there no other thought put into it?

Naturally, this ties into an overarching problem: the franchise's mid-00's habit of trying way too hard to be the anthro Dragon Ball Z. Sonic has had DBZ influences since the early days, with the Chaos Emeralds and Super Sonic, but it didn't assimilate itself into every waking aspect of his universe. It was merely an additional flavor that added to the complete package, in the same way that a Death Star with a moustache didn't mean the franchise was suddenly Star Wars the Hedgehog.

But come the turn of the millenium, nearly every main title in the series ended with Super Sonic and/or Super Shadow saving the day, while everyone else either stood around being useless, or only helping in ways that no one actually cares about. Including the in-universe President apparently, since only Sonic and Shadow were featured in the photo on his desk.

Amy smiled. “I guess the rest of us can go fuck ourselves, huh?”

This reached its peak with - of course - Sonic '06, with Silver in particular being an obvious result of this then-ongoing trend. And yes, it would be unfair to use him as a scapegoat, considering it was already a problem long before he turned up. But moreso than even Shadow, it's an era that Silver is forever a relic of, for better or for worse.

But it doesn't stop there. Since Silver is considered a mainstay character, his gimmick of being from the future also creates problems of its own, because in order for him to make further appearances, he keeps turning up for little explained reason, and thus he suffers the Deadly Six problem of being shoved into places where he doesn't belong, for fanservice's own sake. Take Sonic Colours DS for example, where he went back in time JUST to check out Eggman's theme park... Okay...?

On one hand, I’d visit it too, since it's made by Eggman. On the other hand, I’d stay clear of it, since it's made by Eggman.

And when there IS a justification with more weight to it? It's just recycling the '06 routine of trying to avert his ruined future, which isn't much better. The cause may differ depending on the story, but if his future is a permanent shitehole for one reason or another, he might as well cut out the middle man and stay in the present altogether, since that's where his friends are anyway. But they seem intent on not doing that, despite the future schtick being a noose around his neck at this point.

In hindsight, maybe this was a hint to how the rest of the arc would turn out.

And then there's his dynamic with a certain purple cat... No, not Big. The other one.

“I’m here, by the way.”

Simply put: I don't like this dynamic. At all. Or rather, I don't like how they keep milking it. Blaze's backstory was radically changed to justify her presence in Silver's future, and it really shows, since she barely even shows up half the time, as if the developers themselves forgot she was in the game. But her backstory has since been restored to her original alternate dimension interpretation, so hanging around with the grey hedgehog is all good now, right?

To be brutally honest, I probably wouldn't care for this dynamic regardless. But I would be more willing to tolerate it, and I'd refrain from groaning every time they're seen together... if they weren't intent on playing it up so much in spite of '06 being wiped out, sometimes with a bit of commentary involving their thoughts and memories, which only succeeds at making things more confusing. If Blaze is around, Silver will be nearby, and if he's not at first, he will be soon enough. This franchise does have a problem in general with restricting who's allowed to interact with who (I personally believe Sonic Heroes may have led to this, or at least it accelerated it), but I'd argue it's at its most insufferable here, with Blaze's potential and her entire world taking a backseat to being the sidekick of Ganja Man.

And you might say “Well, it's part of the franchise now, so you'll just have to accept it”. To which I ask: Have you accepted Two Worlds? Have you accepted Solo Sonica? Have you accepted Sonic's friends not doing much as of late?

Yeah. That's what I thought. “It’s just how it is” doesn’t mean you can’t criticise it.

Meanwhile, Marine is lucky enough to get so much as a shout out.

So yeah, I have quite an extensive list of grievances involving poor Silver. But... very little of it has to do with him, right? They're all indirect problems that he just so happens to be linked to, as opposed to someone like Chris Thorndyke, who is genuinely a shit character through and through. This is more comparable to Tails being bitchy in Lost World, or Amy being manipulative in Chronicles, or Sonic being a smug dumbass in IDW, or Shadow not wearing a Hawaiian shirt in Boom. Frustrating, regrettable, but not really the character's own fault.

Yet even after all that, there's one last kick in the teeth... How do you fix all this? And how do you fix it when he's since gained a sizable fandom, many of whom like him for these very attributes? If you leave it as it is, you're stuck with this big, awkward mess that everyone pretends to ignore. If you try to do something about it, you'll get complaints about disrespecting the True Silver Spirit, and you’ll get questions about why you didn't create a new character instead... And if you did use a new character for the sake of a clean slate, THEN you'd get complaints about not using Silver.

It's a tough call to be sure, and it's such a shame because like I said, I do appreciate his personality, so I can't say he's bad outright. But with all this... clutter, I can only put him in the average category. So, in he goes.

Crusher Gives Silver a: Thumbs Sideways!

Well, I'm glad this one's out of the way. Putting my thoughts into words with Silver was harder than it should have been. I do slightly regret starting this series off on a rather downer note, but rest assured, it's a lot more positive from this point onwards, since while I have higher praise for some heroes more than others, the hero characters as a whole fare a lot better than the majority of villains not named Eggman.

I guess you could say that I hope to show why Sonic's friends aren't as shitty as the haters would suggest. ;)

[negasonicteenagemess]

girls/girls/boys  peter parker imagine

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Word Count: 3.5k+ (I think it’s my longest yet)

Request: I suggested it and people said yes sooooo here it is lads. It’s 7:30am and I haven’t slept so forgive the mistakes

A couple Spider-Man ps4 references here and there

No Endgame spoilers

masterlist

New York. The best place on Earth, at least in Peter Parker’s eyes. After an alien invasion here and there, the people of this city came together in one, borderline heroic, ideology. To rebuild together. As a city united, they fixed not only the physical attributes of the city, but the hearts as well. Hope returned as people such as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man began to step up to protect the city they loved. 

The people of this city made it so easy and great to love for Peter. Well, besides when he gets beaten to a pulp by bad guys. That isn’t fun for anyone.

As Peter walked on the cracked pavement under the setting sun in the city he loved, with the girl he loved, he couldn’t help but admire her. After nine months, to this day, of dating this girl, Peter knew he loved her.

Yes, he knew it was crazy, but if he had to hear ‘you’re in high school, you don’t know what love is’ one more time, he’d just lose it. Deep down in his heart as he saw the light breeze ruffled her hair, he knew that what he felt for her was love.

He loves her with every fiber of his being.

But those three little words were never once said due to his guilt. Peter felt that it was wrong to confess his love to her without her knowing everything about him. That hiccup just so happened to be clad in red and blue spandex.

Nine months, the time frame of a pregnancy and he still hasn’t told her the truth about why he cancels dates and misses class more often than not. He was scared in all honestly. He couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving him because of his alter ego. So, he kept it bottled inside, along with his revelation of love.

As they walked in a comfortable silence, Y/N began to lose herself in her thoughts as well. When she met Peter Parker for the first time in biology in freshmen year, she knew she was done for. As cliched as it sounds, he was different than most other guys. His heart, the care he held, made him who he was, and she loved that about him.

But, just like Peter, she was keeping a secret from him that she thought would ruin their relationship. She liked boys, obviously because she was dating one. What Peter didn’t know was that she liked boys… and girls.

The way she thought of it was stupid. The logical side of her brain knew that he would never hate her for being bi. The other side of her shivered in fear of the thought of Peter kicking her out of his life.

She didn’t want his feelings for her to change which is why she’s been silent on the topic. Tonight, that would change.

“So, what do you have in store for our epic anniversary?” The boy questioned as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Y/N smiled as she made eye contact with him.

“It’s a surprise,” the smile on her face grew as Peter shook his head and chuckled. “You and your surprises.” He leaned in to give her a short peck on the lips as they kept walking. Her cheeks turned red at the small act of affection.

After small talk, and down a few more blocks, they arrived at the restaurant with insanely bright neon lights. “Karaoke?” Peter read off the sign on the restaurant window. Y/N beamed at the confusion on Peter’s face, “yeah! I thought it would be fun to give it a try. But if you don’t want to then we-“

He cut her off, squeezing her hand, “No this is great. Just keep in mind, singing is not my strong suit.” He opened the door for her as she giggled at the comment.

The couple was soon seated at a booth while a very drunk man sang ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ Peter and Y/N went over the memories they made together over the past few months. One of the employees took the mic, and with a voice laced with boredom, called the next person up. “Y/N L/N, you’re up next.”

Peter’s eyes widened as he looked at his girlfriend questionably with a French fry between his fingers. Y/N nervously chuckled, “I immediately regret this.”

Stunned, Peter stumbled through his words, “I um.” He cleared his throat before continuing, “I think you’ll do great.” The initial shock washed away, as he offered her a comforting smile. She nodded her head trying to convince herself more than anything as she stood up and walked to the stage.

“You got this Y/N,” Peter encouraged, tossing her a thumbs up when the mic was placed in her hand. An anxious smile graced her lips as she gave a small wave to the people watching her intently.

‘This was such a bad idea,’ she kept thinking over and over again just as the music began.

“Oh god,” she whispered before the words made their way on the screen towards the far left of the stage, in the direction that Peter was.

“I don’t wanna hear you’ve got a boyfriend Sometimes you’re better off alone”

The beat was familiar for Peter, but he didn’t quite know the song. He felt down because of how tense Y/N was, but the proud smile never left his lips as he cheered for her from halfway across the restaurant.

“But if you change your mind, you know where I am Yeah if you change your mind, you know here to find me ‘Cause I don’t ever wanna be your boyfriend”

Y/N’s voice gradually grew slightly more confident as the song went on, and every now and then she’d look at the screen for the words. With this newfound confidence, which wasn’t much, she began to look at the other people in the ‘crowd.’

Peter’s eyes eventually trailed to one of the T.V.’s behind the bar. There was a hostage situation at Grand Central. Again. He bit his lip and looked back at his girlfriend. ‘Why the heck would someone hold other people hostage at GC?’

“I am just a villain vying for attention From a girl A girl who can’t decide and here’s the reason why”

She found her eyes searching for Peter’s, and as they locked, words spewed out of her mouth.

“Girls love girls and boys”

The song soon ended and she stood there awkwardly yet again. She walked off the stage and back to the booth where her boyfriend was waiting. When she approached the table, Peter quickly stood up as his eyes kept flicking from Y/N’s to the T.V. behind her.

The uneasy smile returned when she approached him. “So… what did you think Pete?” She bit her lip, anticipating his response.

“Uh, it was great babe, but I gotta go. May needs something.” Peter grabbed his jacket from the booth about to step away without acknowledging the look on Y/N’s face.

“Something more important than our anniversary?” Her voice was shaky, from anger and sadness simultaneously. He stopped his steps and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry,” before Y/N could respond, he bolted out the door of the restaurant.

She let out a light scoff as she plopped herself into the booth. Pushing the plate to the side, she leaned her head on her hands while tears pooled in her eyes.

Somehow, she knew this would happen. She knew that Peter wouldn’t like her because of this. Their waitress walked by, noticing her distress. “Hey, you alright?” The kind woman questioned with concern. Y/N sat up, redness around her eyes, “my boyfriend ditched me after I basically told him a really big secret.”

The waitress felt bad for the poor girl and saw that there was obviously a person who previously occupied the seat across from Y/N. “I saw your little performance and it was great. I’ll make sure everything’s on the house.”

Y/N’s eyes widen at the woman’s statement. “Y-You don’t have to do that.” She wiped the tears off her cheeks as the waitress waved her off, “Nonsense. It’s the least I can do.” She smiled down at the poor girl. “Thank you,” Y/N sniffed. The woman nodded her head and walked off to assist another customer.

Y/N huffed, pulling out her phone and going straight to the contacts with the only person she could think to call. Pressing the device against her ear, she waiting as she heard it ring.

“Hey Y/N what’s up?” MJ’s iconic gloomy while simultaneously cheery voice greeted. “MJ, I-I don’t know what to do.” Her voice stuttered as she fiddled with the napkin on the table.

“Woah what happened? Where’s Peter?” MJ’s voice grew with concern as question rattled her brain. Y/N sobbed, “He left. He fucking left me here after I basically told him that I’m bi. And-And it sucks because I did the plan, with the karaoke to, you know, break the ice. But it didn’t work. He ran out of here MJ.” Her breathing was uneven as she recounted the story from just a few moments ago.

“Oh god,” MJ whispered into the phone as she got up from her bed to grab her coat and jacket. “Y/N, send me the address to that place. I’ll try to be there soon.”

Sighing, Y/N tried to deflect. “No, you don’t have to-“before she could finish, MJ interrupted. “Yes, I do. You’re always there for me Y/N, so now it’s my turn,” MJ boldly stated as she shut the front door. Y/N closed her eyes, as a few more tears escaped, “thank you.” They bid their farewells and MJ was already on the way.

Across Midtown, Peter was graciously learned that he was taking out ‘terrorists’ that were holding hostages in Grand Central. Slowly, one by one he stealthily took them out. But he made a terrible mistake. His phone. The small device was tucked into the waistband of his boxers so there wasn’t much he could do at this point.

The ringtone blared and all eyes were on him. “Oh no,” he whispered as the gunmen started firing rounds at him as he stuck to the ceiling. He ran on the ceiling yelling, “Hey Karen.”

The automated voice responded, “Yes, Peter?”

The boy dodged bullets left and right before he zipped down onto the ground. “Can you connect to my phone?” He blurted, now throwing punches at the man in front of him. Peter webbed one of the men to the floor before he was bombarded by more of those men. “Hey guys, sorry about crashing the party,” Peter exclaimed mockingly, shooting a web at the ceiling, swinging and kicking on of the men in the face.

“Actually, I’m not that sorry,” he joked. His phone rang again, but this time he was able to see who it was on the interior of his mask. “MJ?” He whispered. His distraction allowed the men to get a few hits in. Before he could get shot at again, he used his webs to pull the guns away from them, throwing them far behind him.

The ringing didn’t stop, and Peter groaned, “answer it, please Karen.” Silently, the A.I. did what it was told.

“MJ, can I call you back, I’m a little busy,” he shouted, tripping one of the terrorists. MJ scoffed on the other end of the line, “really Peter? It’s your anniversary and you ditched Y/N at a restaurant.” MJ was fuming and the taxi driver gave her strange looks.

“Look, I know it was bad, but believe me,” he paused, kicking someone in the face, knocking them out, “I really wanted to stay. Because I- “He cut himself off. He didn’t know what to say, his mind went blank until he felt a sharp pain in his gut from the terrorist. “You what, Peter?” MJ angrily said, paying the driver and getting out of the car. “I love her, okay?” He shouted. He froze and so did the men before him. They all kind of exchanged ‘what the fuck’ looks before one of the men lunged at Peter.

“I gotta go,” he hung up before she could protest, knocking out the last few guys then calling the police.

MJ went into the restaurant going straight to her best friend. When they saw each other, Y/N stood up next to the booth to hug her friend. MJ let her friend vent, knowing that just being there and listening to her meant a lot.

The night went on, and the pair grew tired. MJ took her friend home, paying the taxi fair for her. “You sure you don’t want me to stay the night?” MJ offered as the approached Y/N’s apartment door. She nodded her head, “I think I’ll be okay.”

MJ let out a short breath, “call me if you need anything, alright?” Y/N softly smiled nodding her head. She went in for a hung, again, needing any form of contact at the moment.

“See ya,” MJ stated, walking back towards the exit of the building. “Bye,” Y/N mumbled loud enough to be heard. She went inside her apartment, going straight to her room. The second she shut her door; the tears began to flow as she covered her face with her hands.

She tried to stabilize her breath, but it was getting too hard. She sat on her bed, not feeling motivated to even change her clothes. Y/N looked at her clock and saw that it was only a little after eight. She sighed as her tears slowed down. Her eyes began to get heavy and she decided to just lay down, trying her best to ignore the deep feeling in her heart.

Soon after the police arrived, Peter learned that those men had plans to plant bombs in the terminal. He was relieved to know that he got there fast enough to prevent the bombs. Peter then leap in the air to swing on his webs to the girl he loves.  

Running, swinging, and jumping through the city was usually such a rush for Peter. The city he loved looked a lot smaller from where he was at, but the rush was non-existent that night as his one goal was to get to Y/N.

As he landed on the fire escape quietly, he looked through the window to see his girl asleep on her bed. He pulled the mask off his face, his brown locks flopping as he did so. He examined the red material in his hands mulling over his thoughts. Is it really worth it, keeping this secret from her which ultimately makes her feel like shit in the end? Peter sighed, running a gloved hand through his hair as he bit his lip in thought.

After a while of thinking, he pulled the mask back on, “hey Karen?” The automated voice replies, “yes Peter?”

“C-Call Y/N,” he stuttered, nervous about the next interaction. He kept cracking his knuckles, as he heard the phone ring. He looked through the windowpane and saw her slowly wake up to the ring of her phone. She groggily sat up, rubbing her eyes, most likely from leftover tears as Peter thought.

He watched her pick up the small device, her eyebrows raised as she just stared at it and watch it ring. He watched hopefully as she pressed the screen, only to hear her voicemail message start. She threw her phone onto her bed, holding her head in her hands. “H-Hang up and call again Karen.” His voice was rough as he saw Y/N’s distressed state.

“Peter, that isn’t such a good idea,” the automated voice suggested, but Peter blew it off. “Just do it, Karen,” his frustrated voice pleaded even though he knew the A.I. would obey.

The ringing began, again, and he watched as Y/N groaned, grabbing the device yet again. Under the mask, Peter bit his lip, whispering to himself “please pick up. Come on, come on.”

He saw her roll her eyes and answer the phone. “Peter, stop calling me. It’s late. I’m tired and I just need time to think.” He watched as she lowered her phone about to hang up.

His eyes went wide as he begged, “wait, wait, wait!” He said this far too quickly and rushed which got Y/N curious. She sighed exasperatedly. “What do you want, Peter? You wanna leave me hanging again or- “she scoffed.

He could hear how hurt she was from what her did and her felt awful about it. He rubbed the back of his neck, doing the only thing he thought could solve this. “L-Look out the window,” he implored.

Y/N slowly averted her eyes towards the glass, only to quickly stand up and drop her phone. After Spider-Man, or Peter, pointed towards the lock, Y/N with furrowed eyebrows, rushed to open the window.

They both stood there, looking at each other. “Hey,” Peter awkwardly greeted with a small chuckle. “Spider-Man…. You’re Spider-Man.” She stated, trying to get herself to understand the situation.

She moved to allow Peter into her room. As he crawled through the window, he pulled his mask off. Y/N was able to see cuts and bruises littering her boyfriend’s face. “Oh my god,” she worriedly stated, walking close to him and enclosing his face in her hands to examine the damage. “It’ll heal in a few hours,” he whispered, closing his eyes as he leaned into her warmth.

“When, why did this happen?” Y/N questioned, softly running her fingers over his bruises. Peter sighed, recounting the memory, “you remember that one field trip in freshman year at the science exhibit?”

She made eye contact nodding her head as she continued to examine his injuries. “There was a radioactive spider they were testing and surprise surprise, it bit me. I gave me powers.”

Y/N froze, “so when you told everyone you got contacts, was it just your…abilities?” Peter nodded his head, placing his hands over hers. “I-I felt like you needed to know before I told you.” He considered the option about whether or not to tell her, but what the hell did he have to lose?

“I’m sorry I left. There was a hostage thing at GC and- and I know you were super scared on that stage, but those people were gonna die and,” he rambled, but Y/N cut him off.

“Peter, it’s okay, you did what you had to do,” she moved her arms around the back of his neck and looked lovingly into his eyes, “I thought you left because you realized you didn’t like me-“ this time, it was Peter’s turn to cut her off.

“I love you,” he boldly confessed, placing his hands on her hips gently, “and I didn’t want to tell you until you knew about, this.” He said referring to the suit and his identity.

Y/N had no words, nodding her head to what he said. She gathered her thoughts quickly, “did you happen to pick up the… the stupid song I sang?” She bit her lip, now she was the one who was nervous.

Peter’s cheeks flushed red as he looked down his shoes, “I’m sorry, I was distracted because of the news.” Y/N chuckled breathlessly because of her nerves.

“Well, umm” she stumbled through her words, “I don’t know how to put this.”

Peter smiled encouragingly, “whatever it is, I will still love you. Unless you told me that you killed someone or something.” Y/N shook her head, mirroring his soft smile.

“I’m just gonna say it,” she practically dared herself, “I’m bi. And the song was about girls liking boys and girls. And since I like boys and girls, I thought it was fitting to do that for our anniversary.” She spoke very fast, but Peter was able to understand it all.

“Wait, really?!” He excitedly asked, pulling a way to get a better look at her face. Y/N did not expect that reaction at all. “Yes?” She answered questionably as she gripped Peter’s shoulders. He smiled, “I’m glad you told me, Y/N. After a year with you, I’m just glad you got the courage to tell me.”

Her heart melted as she didn’t expect such a sappy answer. “I wish I told you sooner, I just didn’t really know how to do it. So, MJ helped me plan the whole thing at the restaurant. Even though that completely backfired.”

“Yeah she called me basically telling me I’m a shitty person,” he laughed due to the classic Michelle Jones behavior. Y/N’s heart filled with joy at the thought of her best friend defending her. “God I love MJ,” Y/N said as she laughed with Peter.

Their laughter died down as they just admired each other. “And I love you,” Y/N expressed as Peter softly raised his eyebrows. “You mean it?” He asked as if it wasn’t real.

“More than you’ll ever know,” she whispered leaning in to finally kiss the guy she loved with all of her heart.

AN: I’ve lived in Florida for most of my life, and recently Pride month has meant a lot more to me due to the Pulse shooting in 2016. Under one common ideology people from Olrando, all over the state then soon all over the country showed their support. The LGBTQ+ community grew stronger as everyone united under the idea that love wins.

Which is kind of the reason I really wanted to write something like this.

So I hoped you liked it!

[gyldenglor]

Humans are Space Orcs - Puppy

A soft rap on the door dreamed Vy'Keens' attention away from her paperwork. She looked up with the indomitable patience of a Kral.

That patience immediately began to wane as she saw a human standing at the entrance to her quarters.

"Peter - how can I help you?"

Peter smiled, being careful not to show his teeth - while many aliens have learned that it's not intended to be aggressive, Peter still felt that it was best to err on the side of caution.

"Hey captain - do you mind if I ask you for a favor?"

Vy'Keen leaned forward, interested in what the human has to say, yet still cautious of what the outcome could be. "Go on."

"So, you know how Sophie's dog died, about three months ago?"

"Yes."

"Well, I've done some research, and I found a rescue puppy ready for adoption on a nearby planet - it wouldn't be far out of the way, we could be there within less than a day."

Vy'Keen hesitates. She's aware of the nature of a juvenile dog being referred to as a puppy, but she doesn't understand the logic.

"Why would she want to have a new dog?" Vy'Keen inquires. "Wasn't this one painful enough?"

Peter smiled sadly, an oxymoron that Vy'Keen herself had only recently started to understand.

"Humans are stupid that way," he explains. "We love to love so much that we barely consider the end result. Dogs live such short lives, in comparison to us, that the result is almost always that we're left mourning them, heartbroken and devastated.

"And you know what? It's worth it every time."

"So… It's worth it to have your heart cease functioning?"

"No, no - to be heartbroken means to be really sad," he hurriedly explained before the captain could call for a medical exam on Sophie for a broken heart. "And Sophie needs to be able to move on - and there's no better way for her to do that than to adopt a new dog. I know it seems counterintuitive, but it really is the best option for her."

Vy'Keen took a moment to think. "And this new dog - it would be similar to this one, correct? And it would not present an issue to the crew?"

Peter sheepishly scratched the back of his head. "So… It may need to be potty trained. And trained in general."

"Potty...Trained?"

"Yeah - Spot knew how to use a litter box designed for dogs, so his waste could be easily disposed of. The new puppy, though, will have to learn how to do that - and while learning it would be confined to Sophie's room, so if it has any… Accidents, it won't be anywhere except for where we can clean it, and it won't be a hazard."

Vy'Keen hesitated, but she trusts Peter's judgement - as much as she could trust the judgement of such an illogical race, that is.

"And what of the other training?"

"Just to make sure it behaves well, and respects personal space," Peter clarified. "Also, it may be...loud."

"Like this dog was?" Vy'Keen thought back to the errant 'barking', which while loud, was rare enough to not be an annoyance.

"Yeah, but, constantly." Peter had a feeling he wasn't doing himself any favors - but he didn't want to deceive the captain. After all, he had the utmost respect for her. "We could soundproof Sophie's room while we train it to be quiet."

Vy'Keen's tail twitched, betraying her underlying anxiety regarding the situation. "While I do prioritize Sophie's mental wellbeing, I would very much appreciate keeping the rest of my crew comfortable. Is there any other way to ensure this animal would not be disruptive? I fear that soundproofing her quarters could result in safety concerns."

"Well, they do make collars that alter its bark to be audible only to humans, but they're not exactly cheap."

"Then the cost for that would come from your wages."

Peter nodded. "Yeah, makes sense."

"Is there anything else that I should know about?"

Peter hesitated before continuing. "It's going to have to chew a lot, but chew toys shouldn't be an issue."

"I'm familiar with the concept of teething," Vy'Keen explained. "My kind undergoes teething when our ability to chew tree bark develops."

"Perfect! So, can we actually do this?"

Vy'Keen paused. There were many, MANY reasons not to, but for some reason, she felt that the potential benefit to the human crew may be worth it.

Furthermore, to be able to document the growth patterns and behavior of a death world predator, as well as how humans train them, could generate a significant amount of revenue, and the ship DID need some expensive maintenance...

"So long as we can collect data on its growth and the training process."

"Absolutely!" Peter enthusiastically agreed.

"Send me the coordinates and we can arrange for a stop to pick up this animal," Vy'Keen commanded. A part of her couldn't believe she was saying yes.

She knew that if it weren't up to her alone, yes may not have been the answer the human received - luckily for him, however, Xlaxis and the security officers had already cleared canines for extended stay on the ship, meaning that Vy'Keen could make these decisions on her own.

She hoped she wouldn't come to regret it.

"And I will notify Sophie-"

"No!" Vy'Keen nearly jumped out of her chair at the sudden exclamation. Instinct kicked in as she cautiously watched the human, ready to run. "We actually have a way that we wanted to tell her - if that's okay. Maybe at dinner?"

Vy'Keen's patience dwindled further. At this point, she just wanted the exchange to be over. Why must humans insist to deliver information in convoluted ways?

"If you must."

Peter thanked her, and she dismissed him. He hummed a strange tune as he left, one that Vy'Keen couldn't quite understand - after all, the Kral had no concept of music.

Later that evening, when the crew gathered for dinner, Vy'Keen made sure all human crew members were present.

She made sure to informed Xlaxis that they should record the occasion, explaining the circumstances and the opportunity to observe humans partaking in 'surprise'. Xlaxis readily agreed - they knew very well just how much could be made from such an observation.

About halfway through the meal, at which point the humans had already made a mess, as usual, (thankfully they always cleaned up after themselves,) Peter called for everyone's attention. Xlaxis immediately started documenting the occasion, recording visuals and audio, as well as the biometric data of each of the human crew members.

"So, Sophie, all of us decided to get a surprise for you," Peter announced. "And don't worry, the captain already said yes."

Sophie seemed very confused, and her biometrics indicated an elevated heart rate.

Peter pressed a button on a remote, and the hologram protector for the mess hall came to life.

Vy'Keen had no idea how he had gotten his hands on it, but she would have to make sure that Peter explained himself later.

If he had somehow managed to, once again, replicate the functionality of a remote on the ship, she would need to reprimand him.

A hologram of a juvenile canine shimmered into view - it seemed to be very small, and was completely brown. Vy'Keen was taken aback by how different it looked in comparison to Sophie's deceased dog - Spot had been white with somewhat small eyes, and small ear flaps.

This one seemed to have eyes too big for its own head, and ear flaps that hung down past its jaw.

Sophie let out a massive gasp, and her biometrics indicated that her heart rate had skyrocketed. Xlaxis became concerned for a moment, on standby in case she had a 'heart attack' - such an occurrence had only been observed once before, and the texts humans had presented to explain human biology were still being studied.

So, the only widely-known symptom of a heart attack was an erratic heartbeat - and when the heartbeat changes depending upon how the individual is breathing, it can make catching the attacks very, very difficult.

"She's a Beagle Chihuahua mix, and when we pick her up, she'll be ten weeks old. Her name is currently Phoebe, but we can change it -"

"Annie," Sophie immediately blurted out. "Her name is Annie!"

Peter grinned, and some of the crew shrunk back at the aggressive display of teeth.

"Annie it is then."

Sophie let out a squeal, and jumped up to wrap her arms around Peter. "Oh my God, thank you so much! I'm so happy!" The other humans laughed and slapped their hands together.

Vy'Keen couldn't help but feel happy with regards to how this had played out. She didn't understand why she felt happy - perhaps she had begun the process of pack bonding, as well?

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

Entry #2,532,176

Author - Vy'Keen

Race - Kral

Captain

Subject: Warning

BEGIN REPORT

I've made a terrible mistake.

I let the humans bring a juvenile canine aboard my ship.

Yes, the humans have higher morale than previously thought possible. Yes, Sophie, whose pet canine had passed away recently, has recovered significantly in her mental health.

However, after three months, I must warn anyone reading this report: DO NOT LET A PUPPY ABOARD YOUR SHIP.

They are a constant source of chaos.

Thankfully the humans invested in a collar that renders its ceaseless exclamations inaudible to anyone but themselves. However, we can still see and feel the effect it has on the ship.

Every morning, it wakes at the same time Sophie does. And it goes absolutely wild.

Occasionally it escapes from her quarters, and will proceed to sprint throughout the entirety of the ship. We thought the humans were fast. We were fools.

The humans can barely keep up in their attempts to catch it. They must appease to its hunting instincts with small biscuits in order to get it to approach, and even then it will sometimes outmaneuver them and continue its rampage.

It will pick up anything left unattended, and shake it around and chew on it. It has ruined many, MANY pairs of my crews footwear and various other protective coverings of the same functionality.

Luckily, it no longer urinates or defecates wherever it deems appropriate, and will actually go to its designated waste area. For the first month, the biohazard team was on high alert. I had to give them bonuses.

And as quickly as its rampage begins, it ends. It seemingly randomly collapses and falls asleep.

The humans then pick it up and dote on it, speaking in bizarre ways to it, kissing it over and over again.

Sophie and Peter, especially, obsess over it. There are times that I've walked into the meeting room in the morning, and found Peter, Sophie, or both of them barely conscious on a seat, with the puppy curled into a ball on their laps.

I must admit that I've experienced flaws in my logic.

I can, and will not, force the humans to remove the puppy from the ship, as it appears as if pack bonding is… Contagious. I have grown to like the puppy, despite its terrifying predator instincts.

Furthermore, I fear the humans would mutiny if I forced them to reject their predator companion.

Finally, the amount of data we have generated from this one specimen alone is amazing. It turns out, humans can actually pack bond on sight - even when it's only a picture, or in this case, a hologram.

The puppy has entered my quarters - apparently it has escaped Sophie's quarters, yet again. I can hear the humans attempting to call it towards them.

I'm going to attempt to hold the animal in my lap, to observe why humans enjoy doing so. I will return to this report once I've completed my attempt and will fill in my experience.

END REPORT

ADDENDUM

I now have the puppy in my lap.

It was terrifying to approach it. It watched me with the cold, calculating stare of a predator.

When I finally bent to pick it up, it raised onto its hind legs and stretched its front legs towards me. I do not know if this was a display of aggression, or wanting to be picked up.

I picked it up in the same way the humans do, with one hand on each side. I was careful not to injure it with my claws, to ensure that it would not become enraged and attack me.

I carefully carried it to my seat, sat down, and placed it on my lap. I made sure to stay completely still so it would not perceive aggression, or an attempt to flee, on my part.

It curled into a ball and is now asleep.

I feel an inexplicable fondness for the predator.

From this, I can draw only one conclusion.

Pack bonding is contagious, and I have caught it.

[starlight-matrix]

Cold

@vldangstbang Behold, my 2019 Voltron: Legendary Defender Angst Bang fic!

Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Violence, Major Character Death

There is a scene toward the end of the fic that may be very triggering for some audiences, so please be very careful! There is a marker labeled “First Ending” and if you might be triggered by some extreme violence, please just stop there. I’ll put an explanation of the scene at the very end of the post for anyone who is curious and wants to know without reading the actual content. Stay safe!

The first time Lance meets Keith, he gets punched in the face.

It’s his own fault, really. Everyone knows not to approach Keith Kogane when he’s pissed off. Lance decides to approach Keith when he’s in the middle of a fight, which is, in hindsight, a fucking stupid decision. Some time after the fact, however, he finds he doesn’t regret it.

The first time Lance meets Keith, he gets punched in the face.

It’s his own fault, really. Everyone knows not to approach Keith Kogane when he’s pissed off. Lance decides to approach Keith when he’s in the middle of a fight, which is, in hindsight, a fucking stupid decision. 

(Some time after the fact, however, he finds he doesn’t regret it.)

He makes the dumbass decision halfway through the second semester of eighth grade, when he really should be in the library studying for final exams instead of in the school courtyard, flirting with Nyma Johnson while Pidge and Hunk laugh at him from a bench ten feet away. It’s blessedly beautiful out, just enough clouds for it to not be sweltering, but still few enough for the sun to shine down and brighten up the grey of the school.

Lance is in the middle of a slowly ebbing conversation when a sudden ruckus from the other end of the courtyard catches his attention. Loud shouting and sounds of a scuffle are audible in the distance and Lance excuses himself to see what the fuss is about. By the time he reaches the source of the noise, a crowd has gathered, students cheering on two teens pushing and shoving at each other like fighters in the center of a ring.

Lance immediately recognizes one of them as Keith Kogane. How could he not, when the guy’s practically the school prodigy? It takes him another few moments to recognize the smaller kid as a sixth grader who rides his bus and is generally quite obnoxious.

And, of course, Lance’s first instinct is to attempt to dispel the fight. On his own. A fight between Keith Kogane and someone who very obviously does not regret pissing him off.

As previously said: a fucking stupid decision.

“Hey, guys, I know you’re both mad but if Iverson catches you fighting you’ll probably get in-”

Before Lance can finish his sentence, Keith’s violet gaze is turned on him, and pain blossoms in his cheek as he gets caught up in a fight he really shouldn’t have had anything to do with. Hunk and Pidge are shouting in the distance as Lance stumbles backward from the force of the hit, his mouth tasting of iron and aching terribly when he lifts his hand to the swollen area. He glances at Keith and immediately wishes he hadn’t. The guy looks absolutely livid.

More shouting ensues and Lance tunes it all out, returning to Hunk and Pidge and letting his two friends fuss over him. The crowd suddenly disperses and Iverson’s voice cuts through the chaos in the courtyard screaming ‘Kogane’ at the top of his lungs. Lance looks past Hunk inspecting his cheek to see Iverson grabbing Keith by the arm, shouting at him about the school rules and how many infractions he already has.

Iverson stops his lecture to drag Keith back into the building, and for a split second, Keith’s gaze meets Lance’s once again. This time, Keith almost looks apologetic.

News of Keith’s expulsion is the first thing he hears at school the next morning, and Lance doesn’t see Keith again, nor does he expect to. Rumors about the raven-haired prodigy spread and quickly fade away. People stop talking about him as if they’re both terrified and vaguely awed by him. Keith disappears from everyone’s list of conversation starters, and Lance can’t help but wonder if there was anyone in their school who actually knew him beyond his reputation.

Lance is undeniably excited for his first day of high school. He has his favorite sandwich tucked away in his bag, he’s wearing his favorite outfit, he’s sitting on the bus next to his favorite friend. Lance doesn’t think the start of his day could possibly get any better.

He also doesn’t think the start of his day could get any worse, which is a mistake on his part.

The first thing Lance notices as he’s stepping off the bus is Keith’s form in the parking lot, next to a bright red bmx bike with chipped paint and a fraying seat. His hair is longer, though not by much, and Lance grudgingly admits that the mullet doesn’t look terrible on him. Keith is taller too - again, not by much - and Lance offhandedly wonders if anything else about him has changed.

(The angry curse Keith spits out when someone bumps into him doesn’t encourage that particular train of thought.)

“Lance? What’re you glaring at?” Hunk asks.

“Keith Kogane.” Lance replies, the distaste spilling out before he can pretend it’s not there.

Hunk follows his line of sight and quirks his brow. “Isn’t that the guy who punched you last year?” He says dismissively. Lance shoots him an incredulous look. “Hey, man, you got in the middle of that fight all on your own, even though you knew his reputation. That hit was just a side effect.”

“I kept biting my cheek for a week because it was all swollen!”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should learn not to butt into people’s business.”

“Says you, Mister I’m-Going-To-Pry-Into-Your-Love-Life-Until-I-Ruin-Your-Chances-At-Romance!”

“Again, totally your fault,” Hunk counters matter-of-factly. “You’re the one who blatantly insulted Rolo in front of Nyma when he just so happened to be her best friend.”

Lance frowns and crosses his arms over his chest indignantly, knowing Hunk is right. Of course Hunk is right. Hunk is always right. “Yeah, well, you’re not the one who got punched in the face for trying to keep a sixth grader from getting pummeled. Or who got slapped by the girl you like.”

Following Hunk through the front doors of the school, Lance watches Keith fade into the crowd of students and instead turns his attention toward a familiar length of blonde hair. Nyma is standing only ten or so feet away, right next to Rolo, smiling her perfect smile and laughing her perfect laugh. Lance pointedly doesn’t acknowledge their linked hands, or the way Rolo leans over to kiss Nyma on the cheek. Hunk makes a noise of understanding and leads him further down the hall.

Pidge is leaning against a pillar where the hall opens up into the cafeteria, scrolling through her phone and glaring down at whatever she’s looking at. When Lance and Hunk call out to her, she tucks her phone into her pocket and waves back with a half-smile, grey bags under her eyes.

“God Pidge, did you even sleep last night? You look like hell.” Lance says.

Pidge frowns. “Gee, thanks Mr. Casanova. You sure know how to make a girl feel beautiful,” She deadpans, shoving Lance with her shoulder. “And no, I didn’t. I was up late playing Overwatch with Matt.”

The three of them maneuver through the hall and plop down at an empty table in the cafeteria to compare their schedules, chatting about Overwatch and Pidge’s brother, Matt. Lance and Pidge both silently mourn the fact they don’t have any classes together. He and Hunk have three of the same classes though, which is a good thing. They continue their conversation about video games until Pidge brings up a sore (not really) subject.

“Hey, did you guys know Keith goes here too? I saw him walk by right before you guys showed up.”

Lance groans in loathing, and Hunk answers for him. “Yeah, we saw him when we got off the bus. Lance isn’t too happy about it, but it’s not like we have to hang out with him or anything.”

“But he goes here! Which means we could end up in the same classes!” Lance complains. “If I have to relive the trauma of being punched in the face by him every day, I’ll be miserable!”

“Stop being so dramatic, you big pissbaby. It’s your fault he hit you anyway, you’re the one who butted into his fight.” Pidge points out. 

“I have the worst friends! Neither of you are supporting my perspective on this!”

“That’s because your perspective is flawed.”

Lance shoots Pidge and Hunk equal looks of ‘I-Can’t-Believe-I-Trusted-You’ and they both firmly ignore him. Before he can make a bigger show of pouting, the bell rings overhead, and the three of them are standing to find their respective classes. Pidge grumbles incoherently as she heads off to the gym and Lance wishes her the best of luck, hoping and praying none of the staff will give her any trouble concerning the locker rooms. He and Hunk split ways in the hall between the science and mathematics buildings, Lance not quite appreciating the fact that he has maths class first thing in the morning. Can’t be worse than having P.E. first, though, he thinks.

His immediate thought when he walks through the door of his new maths class is “Oh God, it actually can be worse,” because there in the middle row, looking ridiculously content sitting in a maths classroom, is Keith Kogane, eyes distant as he stares at the whiteboard at the front of the room. Lance notes that he has earbuds in, and silently hopes Keith gets busted by the teacher. Moving to take a seat as far away from Keith as possible, Lance looks up at the whiteboard and scowls at the sloppily-drawn seating chart in one corner.

His morning only seems to get worse when Lance walks up to the seating chart and realizes he has to sit right next to Keith. Apparently there isn’t anyone with an “L” surname in this class.

Glaring at the whiteboard for far longer than is strictly necessary, Lance turns and maneuvers through the rows of desks and drops his bag onto the one to Keith’s right with a loud thump that makes the raven-haired boy jump, much to Lance’s amusement. Keith shoots him a glare and folds his arms over the table, resting his head on them with a sigh. Lance’s victory smirk melts to a frown. Did Keith not remember him? There wasn’t even a hint of recognition in that glare; what if Keith simply didn’t know him? Lance huffs and sits down, admittedly disappointed.

A couple minutes later, the second bell rings to announce the end of the passing period, and the teacher stands from her desk to introduce herself. Lance turns to see if Keith is paying attention (he’s wearing earbuds, so clearly he’s the type who doesn’t care about class, Lance thinks) and realizes that his earbuds aren’t actually earbuds; they’re simply aux cords plugged into hearing aids in both of Keith’s ears.

Lance wonders how he never previously noticed Keith wore hearing aids.

He also wonders how the whole ‘aux cord turns hearing aids into earbuds’ thing works, but that question is dissipated by Keith catching him staring and raising an eyebrow. Lance quickly looks away and focuses his gaze on the teacher, who starts to explain the class rubric. Lance can feel Keith’s eyes on him for another few seconds, but he doesn’t look back, and when he glances at Keith again in the middle of class, he’s dutifully taking notes as if nothing had happened.

Lance tunes out most of first period, simply due to the fact that the teacher handed out a syllabus at the start of class that specifies everything she’s saying to them in perfect detail, word for word, so it’s pretty redundant to listen to her say it all over again. Lance finds himself watching Keith out of the corner of his eye. As soon as the teacher had started talking nearly half an hour ago, he’d produced a couple of barrettes from nowhere and pinned his hair back so it wouldn’t fall in front of his hearing aids, and Lance can’t stop his brain from telling him it’s cute.

The entire time the teacher drones on about classroom etiquette, Keith is jotting down everything she says in his notebook, writing so fast Lance can hear his pencil scraping over the page, and a subtle glance at Keith’s notebook tells him it’s likely that Keith is the only person who will ever be able to actually read his notes. It’s weird for Lance to see Keith so focused and peaceful - the only emotion he’s ever seen on the guy is anger; intense, furious anger.

But here, in a maths class of all places, Keith looks strangely calm. There’s no hint of frustration in his face and his eyes only ever leave the front of the room when he’s pausing to take notes.

The bell is ringing before Lance even notices the time flying by, and he quickly looks away from Keith in an attempt to keep his absent staring a secret. He listens to Keith shuffle about beside him as they both put away their things, and when Lance looks up again, Keith is across the room and walking out the door. Lance waits a good long moment before following, meeting Hunk in the hallway outside and making no mention of Keith as he’s swept up in conversation.

He doesn’t see Keith again that day. When Lance gets home that night and his mother asks how his first day of high school was, his response is: “It was a very enlightening experience.”

Lance continues to silently observe Keith throughout first period maths. He doesn’t get to do so as fervently as he had the first day of school, since after the introductions of the first day, they’re immediately thrown into actual classwork and assignments. Lance doesn’t enjoy maths - he doesn’t hate it, of course; he understands the practical nature of everything and doesn’t have enough of an issue with the content to really dislike it at all - but he finds himself actually looking forward to it every day, simply because of all the things he notices about Keith.

He learns that all of Keith’s notebooks are space-themed, with planets and nebulas on the fronts of each one. He learns that Keith’s favorite pencil is a red mechanical one with rubber grips; he once watched Keith miss a good two minutes of the lecture in favor of rooting through his bag in search of said pencil when there were two other, perfectly usable pencils already on his desk. He learns that Keith takes his hearing aids out when the class gets too loud during work time.

Lance watches Keith out of the corner of his eye whenever the teacher pauses her chatter, and Keith never catches him staring, always absorbed in the lecture with tunnel-vision focus Lance is somewhat jealous of. The constant observation causes him to have a little more homework to do after school, but he can’t bring himself to break the habit. He’s too curious about Keith, about how this ragged teen who once showed such livid anger manages to look so soft.

A month has passed since the start of high school when Lance speaks to Keith for the first time.

He’s walking out of his American History classroom during lunch, having forgotten his jacket on the back of his chair earlier in the day and gone back to fetch it. The classroom is in a short hall that is almost impossible to find without some kind of help unless you’ve been there before, and Lance’s heart jumps into his throat when he trips over a pair of legs sticking out from next to a trash can in the walkway. He catches himself and turns to find Keith sitting on the floor up against the ugly brown brick wall, knees now pulled to his chest as he stares back at Lance.

“Keith?!” Lance says, visibly surprised. Keith’s brow furrows. “What are you doing here?!”

“Um...eating lunch?” Keith deadpans, gesturing to the sandwich in his hands.

“Yeah, but why are you eating lunch way out here? Wouldn’t it be better to eat in the cafeteria? This hallway isn’t even indoors, you’ve gotta be freezing your ass off.”

Keith simply shrugs. “Cafeteria’s too crowded. And noisy..”

Lance nods in understanding, even though he can’t really relate to Keith’s point. He’s always felt a little at home in chaos - it’s simply a side effect of growing up in a busy household.

“You sit next to me in maths, right?” Keith asks. Lance nods. “And you’re the kid I punched last year too, aren’t you?”

Lance is shocked to hear him say that, and it must show on his face, because Keith shrinks a little smaller and turns his violet eyes to the floor, and Lance can’t help but notice the pink flush that reaches up to the tips of his ears.

“I’m sorry about that, by the way. I didn’t mean to hit you, especially not as hard as I did. I thought you were one of that kid’s friends, joining the fight to back him up. I acted on reflex.”

“Oh.” Is all Lance can say, and after a few seconds of silence, he pulls his jacket on against the cold and takes a seat on the cement next to Keith, far enough away so they aren't touching but close enough that he won’t have to talk too loud to be heard. 

“Why were you fighting him, anyway? He was a sixth grader, what did he do to piss you off so bad?” He asks.

Keith looks up at him and then away, as if pondering his answer. “...he stole something that was really important to me. And then threatened to give it to the Principal and get me expelled.”

“Whoa...wait, what the heck did you have that could get you expelled??”

Again, Keith hesitates, and Lance finds a pair of violet eyes on him once again, studying him, as if Keith is trying to gauge whether or not he can trust Lance with whatever the answer is. Lance can’t blame him for it. After the fight last year, it’s a totally plausible theory that Lance would take Keith’s answer as blackmail to get him in trouble- revenge for getting punched in the face.

“...a knife,” Keith says after a long moment. “It used to belong to my parents. That kid stole it out of my bag during P.E. and threatened to take it to Iverson so I’d get expelled from the school. That wasn’t the actual reason I got expelled though, ironically enough.”

Lance doesn’t say anything, obviously waiting for an explanation, and Keith’s face tilts up into a smile that makes Lance think his assumption that Keith was just a rude fuck is very wrong.

“I punched Iverson in the face.”

“You punched Iverson?!” Lance blurts, grinning from ear to ear. “Dude! That guy was an asshole! Man, sucks that you got expelled for it though, with how rude he was to all his students.”

“Yeah. He was going off about how I was supposed to be a good example, spewing shit about how I’m a prodigy or whatever and shouldn’t be getting into fights and ruining my image. Made it seem like my image being ruined somehow ruined the school’s image too,” Keith explains. “They weren’t going to even suspend me for the knife thing, but then Iverson said it was stupid that I cared so much about a gift from two people I never even got to meet. And I fucking decked him.”

“And that’s why you got expelled. For decking Iverson.”

Keith nods, and Lance is in awe. He can’t say he wouldn’t expect such a thing from Keith - after all, he is known for being prone to fighting - but to punch Iverson, the meanest adult Lance has ever laid eyes on, is something he considers to be incredibly admirable despite the fact he definitely doesn’t condone violence. Keith seems to loosen up a little at the fact that he’s smiling, which Lance watches with keen eyes; the way his knees drift farther from his chest, the way his head lifts up from where his shoulders were stooped low.

Lance’s cell phone vibrates in his pocket, startling them both, and he pulls it out to find a couple texts from Pidge asking him where he is. He’d completely forgotten about his normal lunch plans in the unexpected conversation with Keith. He texts her back saying he’ll be right there.

“My friends are waiting for me, so I gotta go,” Lance says, standing and brushing dirt off the back of his jeans. “If you want, you can come eat with us. We eat in the courtyard, so it’s not loud. And it’ll just be me, Hunk, and Pidge. They’re both nice, I’m sure they’d like you.”

Keith looks at him with wide eyes, and Lance offhandedly realizes that this is the first time he’s ever actually spoken to Keith. He also remembers the fact that Keith did, in fact, punch him in the face last year, and while he knows Hunk and Pidge don’t hold a grudge over that, Keith doesn’t. Lance almost expects Keith to decline his offer and never talk to him again.

But then Keith smiles, a small, soft smile, and gathers his things. “Sure, I’d like that.”

Keith easily becomes a natural part of their group. He’s awkward that first day, not knowing how to act or what to say, but he quickly warms up to Hunk and Pidge, and after about two weeks it’s hard to imagine what their group would be like without Keith.

Lance doesn’t stop his observations. His eyes are constantly on Keith, taking in everything about him. He learns that Keith loves everything there is to love about space and its infinite possibilities. He learns that Keith is a good artist, and prefers drawing nature and space to anything else, but can still do amazingly realistic portraits. He learns that Keith has lived with his current foster family since he was twelve, and that this is the longest he’s stayed in one place in his entire life.

He learns that Keith was born with good hearing, but a degenerative disease caused his ears to slowly become less functional, and now he can’t hear anything without hearing aids. He learns that said degenerative disease could one day cause Keith to be completely deaf.

With Keith opening up to them and showing his true colors more and more, Lance comes to see that he really isn’t a violent person at all. When they hear stories of Keith’s fights from his point of view, they learn that most of the time, the other person was goading him or did something cruel that most definitely deserved a good hit. They learn that Keith sometimes has trouble controlling his emotions, and that when he gets angry or upset, it almost always ends badly. They learn that Keith doesn’t feel guilty for any of his outbursts, save one: the one with Lance.

That in itself is gives Lance goosebumps, and when Keith first tells them, he swears they’re both red in the face. Keith says he feels guilty for hitting Lance when he was just trying to help.

Of course, Lance forgives him - he already has, in his mind at least. Keith starts to adjust his old routes through the school so he can join the group on their way to class, suddenly appearing at Lance’s side from seemingly nowhere so they can walk to lunch together. And because he’s with their group most of the time, he gets halfway through the school year without a single fight.

The first time Lance learns anything substantial about Keith’s home life, he doesn’t even realize it.

It’s raining out - not the gentle, peaceful kind of rain, but the kind of rain that makes your skin ache and soaks you to the bone. The four of them made the regrettable decision to walk to the arcade instead of riding the bus straight home after school, and they spend a good twenty minutes racing through the downpour before they finally make it to Pidge’s house. 

Colleen Holt offers to dry everyone’s clothes and make them all hot chocolate, and offers to drive Lance, Hunk, and Keith home afterwards. Keith gently denies a ride home, even though Colleen insists that cycling home in the rain is a terrible idea, but then the storm slows into a sprinkle, so she stops pushing. Lance and Hunk have spent enough nights in the Holt household to have clothes there, and Pidge offers up some of her brother’s old clothes for Keith to wear.

Lance is mostly dry, snug and warm in a pair of blue lion-themed pajamas Pidge says are tacky when Colleen hands him some black plaid pants and a bulky maroon sweater that looks like it’s from the early 80s to give to Keith. He finds Keith in the upstairs bathroom, and when he pushes open the door that isn’t all the way closed, he catches Keith with his shirt halfway off, his back exposed and showcasing several colorful bruises painted along his spine.

Lance expects Keith to hide himself, and he’s right, as Keith whirls around and turns toward him, back now hidden against the wall. Lance turns his gaze to the floor and sets the stack of clothes on the bathroom counter. “Uh, Colleen wanted me to bring these to you...sorry for not asking if I could come in, that was bad manners. I’m just gonna…go. Now.” 

With that, Lance retreats out the door and pulls it shut, pointedly avoiding Keith’s gaze. However, the image of Keith’s violet eyes wide in shock stays in his head long after he’s back downstairs.

They don’t talk about that incident at all that night. Keith comes into the living room with his hair curtaining his face and takes a seat on the floor in front of the couch, right in front of where Lance is sitting cross-legged next to Hunk. He counts this as him being forgiven, and when their clothes are done drying and Colleen is piling everyone into the Holt family stationwagon, Lance’s eyes stay on Keith’s form until the car is too far away for him to see that mop of black hair.

Over the next few weeks, Lance’s gaze is on Keith more than ever before, and he starts to see ticks in his friend that he’d not quite seen for what they were previously. He catches on to the way Keith sits, arms tucked close to his body, back slightly hunched, as if he’s trying to occupy as little space as possible. He watches the way Keith is always hyper aware of his surroundings, how his gaze lingers on anyone who walks by their lunch spot, how he flinches whenever someone is too loud or when someone gets too close. How he never sits with his back to anyone, always sitting against a wall or tree or in a spot where he can see the entire courtyard.

Lance notices how he’s never seen Keith without his signature red hoodie on, sleeves all the way down and black fingerless gloves covering his hands. He notices how Keith’s hair is always left to curl around his neck and most of his face. He doesn’t have the same P.E. class as Keith, but according to Hunk, who does, Keith never changes into his uniform in front of others.

While Lance has no concrete evidence to back up his theory that Keith is being abused at home, the pieces of Keith’s behavior that suggest it are overwhelming.

One day, after at least two weeks of theorizing, Lance finds himself on the complete wrong side of town from where his house is. He’d taken a few wrong turns walking home from the arcade he was at with Pidge and Hunk - from whom he’d turned down rides, since Hunk and his mom weren’t going straight home and his house is further away than the Holts’ - and is suddenly in a neighborhood he’s never actually been in before except for on the school bus, and even then, he’s always so engrossed in conversing with Hunk he never really notices the scenery change.

The houses here are small, tiny, even, and all of them are in varying states of disrepair: yards of dead grass full of weeds and litter. Lance can’t help but feel rather uncomfortable in such an environment, and he’s on the verge of calling his mom to come pick him up when shouting from one of the houses catches his attention. 

It’s incredibly noisy, even though it’s at least two houses down from where Lance is standing. He can make out that the argument is centered around money, though he can’t tell what the two sides are, or distinguish between who’s yelling what. But then the shouting increases to full screeching and a door is thrown open with a crash that makes him think the door might have actually been broken, and a short frame stumbles out, a fist from inside the doorway connecting with their face and then pulling the door shut again.

It isn’t until the person is out in the yard that Lance recognizes them. It’s Keith, and the fact that his theory is suddenly being proven true makes his heart wrench in his chest.

Lance waits until Keith is collapsing onto the curb before he walks another two house’s distance so he’s at the edge of Keith’s brown lawn. Keith looks up and sees him before he can speak, and the look of pure shock mirrors the expression he was wearing that day so long ago when Lance caught him by surprise in Pidge’s bathroom. It’s a bookend, he thinks to himself; a moment in the beginning of a realization that happens later on, exactly the same.

“Lance?” Keith says, words quiet and stunned-sounding. 

Lance nods with an awkward half-smile and twiddles his thumbs in front of him, taking a few more small steps toward Keith. “Hey.”

As he steps closer, Lance can see Keith’s condition more clearly in the fading light. The street lamps flicker on just as he stops about two feet away from his friend, and suddenly he sees the way Keith’s ear is split open, blood trailing down the side of Keith’s face.

“God, Keith.” He says, taking a seat next to Keith on the curb, glancing back at the house with an ache in his stomach. 

Lance pulls his sleeve over his hand and inches toward the wound. Keith starts, leaning away, and Lance pauses. Their gazes meet and Lance feels his stomach sinking further when he can only interpret the expression on Keith’s face as fear. But then Keith’s features soften, and he lets Lance use his sleeve to wipe off the blood trailing down the side of his face. There’s only the sound of their own breathing and a dog barking somewhere in the distance, and Lance barely registers that he now has Keith’s blood all over the sleeve of his favorite jacket.

When the blood is mostly gone or dried onto skin, Lance carefully dislodges Keith’s hearing aid from his ear. It’s broken, a long crack going down the entirety of the speaker and exposing the wires within. Lance gives it to Keith, who looks down at it with a quiet huff. 

“This isn’t the first time this has happened, is it.” Lance says, more a statement than a question.

“...no,” Keith says. “But it is the first time he’s broken one of my hearing aids. Usually he avoids hitting near them, since they’re so expensive.”

“Why haven’t you told anyone? You could get him arrested. A guardian shouldn’t act like that.” 

“I know. I only live with him because he’s the only person in the area who could take me when I got kicked out of my previous foster home a while ago,” Keith explains, curling his fist around the hearing aid and pulling his knees to his chest. “And...there are a couple of reasons why I haven’t told anyone. Mostly because I don’t want to have to leave this neighborhood.”

Lance waits for Keith to continue, and he does.

“When I was younger, I had a foster brother. His name was Takashi Shirogane but everyone called him Shiro. We lived here together. We were really close, or...so I thought, at least.”

A car drives by, casting stark shadows against Keith’s face. Keith’s eyes dart to the ground, to Lance, to some point in the distance. But Lance can’t bring himself to look away.

“When he turned eighteen, he got kicked out and disappeared. I thought he would come back for me, even just to visit, but...he never did. But I don’t think he would just leave and never come back, you know? So I chose to stay here in case he ever comes back. He won’t be able to find me if I get sent to some other house in some other town.”

“Keith-”

“That’s not the only reason, though,” Keith interrupts him. “I was planning on running away, when I first started high school. He started treating me worse because he thinks I’m more of man now, since I’m older, so I should be able to take it. But then you spoke to me that one day, in the hall. And you invited me to sit with you and Pidge and Hunk, and you didn’t make it a one-time thing, either. You let me keep coming back, day after day.” 

Keith leans into Lance, and Lance lets him. “Did you know that you guys are the only friends I’ve ever had in my whole life, aside from Shiro?” 

“No, I didn’t know that.” Lance whispers. 

Keith doesn’t seem to have anything else to say, and Lance doesn’t know what else he can say, so they sit there in silence until Lance’s mom calls, demanding to know where he is. He explains that he got lost and that he stumbled across a friend’s house, and that he really doesn’t know where the hell he is. Keith supplies his home address and Lance’s mom says she’s on her way there. Silence falls once again when Lance hangs up.

“I should go back inside before your mom gets here.” Keith says after a moment.

“Keith, are you kidding?” Lance gapes. “You shouldn’t go back in there, period!”

“It’ll only be worse if I stay out overnight. And I don’t want to be a burden, not on you or your family or anyone else. I’ll be fine, Lance.”

Lance wants to argue that Keith’s definition of the word ‘fine’ has to be drastically skewed for it to apply right now, but he has a feeling it’ll only cause problems, so he says nothing. Keith stands, and Lance does the same, and before Lance can do so much as wipe the minuscule pieces of gravel off his jeans, Keith is hugging him and burying his face in the crook of his neck, carefully aiming his wounded ear away from Lance’s jacket to avoid getting any more blood on it. 

It’s Lance’s turn to be surprised - he’s never seen Keith hug anyone. Physical touch has been a slow thing for Keith. Pidge had to teach him what a fist-bump was. Yet, here he is, arms wrapped around Lance’s torso, fingers clinging to the fabric of his jacket as if Keith doesn’t want to leave him after all.

But then Keith is pulling away, and he says a quiet “seeya” before disappearing inside his house.

Lance almost expects the yelling to pick up again, but it doesn’t, and only a few minutes pass before he hears his mom’s voice  calling for him from her car a house over. He climbs into the passenger seat and apologizes for not having called earlier, and he vaguely explains that he got so caught up in talking to Keith that he didn’t notice the time passing by. It isn’t a lie - Lance doubts he’d ever be capable of lying to his mom - but it isn’t the whole truth, and while he wants to tell someone about what’s happening to Keith, it’s not his truth to tell.

And so he keeps it in, only half-listening as his mother recounts her day and blatantly ignoring his siblings as they start rambling about the chaos of life when he gets home. He sits through dinner without adding much to the conversation, and if anyone notices, they don’t say anything about it. His older sister gives him a dirty look when he misses her question about whether he’ll be bringing Pidge and Hunk over anytime soon, and he slips into his room before she can complain.

When Lance gets to school the next day, he pretends not to notice the lie in Keith’s story that the now-missing hearing aid fell out and got stepped on the day before.

A week later, Keith comes to school with a black eye and cut lip and a wrist that twitches whenever he tries to use it - the only injuries Lance has ever noticed outright, though he wonders if maybe he only noticed because he knows - and Lance decides he has to do something, whether Keith wants him to or not. 

Lance calls Pidge and Hunk over to his house that weekend under the pretense of a dinner with his family. It starts out just like any normal dinner with them over: Hunk helps cook dinner and chats avidly with Lance’s mom in the kitchen, Pidge beats Lance’s brothers at Mario Kart and effectively distracts them from bugging everyone else, and all of Lance’s siblings talk at a mile a minute to get ‘embarrassing school stories’ about Lance from both his friends. 

After dinner, Lance swiftly ushers Pidge and Hunk up to his bedroom and blocks the door with his desk chair to make up for his door not having a lock, placing both hands on his hips and turning to his friends with what he hopes is a serious expression that doesn’t betray the worry he feels for Keith. 

“Okay, why are you looking at us like that? You look like you’re about to scold us or something.” Pidge inquires, crossing her arms over her chest and raising an eyebrow at Lance.

Lance lets the serious expression slide off his face and takes a seat in his desk chair against the door. “Um, so last week I found out where Keith lives by accident, and I kinda found out his foster dad is abusing him, and technically he never asked me not to say anything and he came to class the other day all injured and I honestly can’t ignore it now that I know, so. I want to do something, but I don’t really know what I should do, and you guys are smart so I thought you could tell me.”

“Whoa, that sounds like some pretty heavy stuff.” Hunk says, concern riddling his features.

Pidge nods and rests her chin in one hand, focusing on something across from her with pinched eyes. “We should definitely tell someone. But we shouldn’t involve the police right away, it might be too much for Keith. We should take it slow, subtle.” 

“Yeah, okay.” Lance agrees. “So who should we tell?”

“Your parents. They’re probably the best people for this. They’ll be understanding.” 

“Don’t you think Keith would be overwhelmed by my family, though?”

“Oh, definitely. You just have to be there to help him out when it gets too intense.”

Lance takes a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this then.”

One week later, Lance has a plan. 

His entire family ends up involved in it somehow, and Lance is grateful to have such a large family: it means he has a lot of support. Pidge and Hunk were eager to help - and their parents all agreed to help as well - and Lance has to admit that the two of them came up with most of the plan themselves. Lance just provided the most crucial part. An endgame.

The endgame? Getting Keith into a safe space: Lance’s home. 

Now, they just have to convince Keith to go along with it, without him actually knowing the plan.

Lance does his best to act like there’s nothing out of the ordinary. He doesn’t want Keith to be suspicious of anything, or worse- think Lance doesn’t like him now that he knows the truth.

He waves at Keith when he gets off the bus with Hunk. He groans when Keith reminds him they have a maths test in about fifteen minutes. He listens intently as Pidge rambles about how Matt’s supposed to be coming home next month, and that he’ll be bringing his college roommate.

When Hunk and Pidge split off to go to their own homerooms, Lance turns to Keith and begs for a run-down of the formulas they need to know for their test. He hasn’t studied; he was too caught up in planning to even remember. But he knows Keith studied. And even if he hadn’t, he knows Keith is too good at maths to not know. So he begs Keith for help. And, like the good friend he is, Keith does.

They spend the precious few minutes before the start of homeroom running through all the material they’d learned the past month, and by the time the bell rings, Lance feels at least a little bit prepared for the test.

(He still fails, which he doesn’t find out for another week, but he tried, and that’s what matters anyway, right?)

It isn’t until lunch period that their plan really goes into action.

“Hey, so my brother’s birthday is today,” Lance starts - and it isn’t a lie. “and my family’s got plans to bake him a cake and set up for like, his birthday party and whatnot. He’ll be at work until like seven pm, so my mom said I could invite you guys to come help with the setup.”

“Well, you know I’m coming. My moms already told me your mama invited them to do all the food prep.” Hunk answers immediately.

“I’ll call my mom and let her know. It’s not like I have plans or anything.” Pidge says.

They all look to Keith at exactly the same time, and for a split second, Lance is worried Keith will suspect the entire conversation is scripted (which it is), but he just looks awkward and nervous.

“You won’t be a burden if you decide you join us, y’know.” Lance says.

It must be like Lance was reading Keith’s thoughts, because Keith’s ears turn pink, and he shifts a little in his chair. Pidge and Hunk nod and hum in assent to Lance’s statement, and Keith looks to be considering his options: he can accept, and hang out with his friends in their home environment for the first time since that rainy day that feels so long ago, or he can decline, which would ruin Lance’s plan completely, however unintentional.

And either Keith is finally starting to truly warm up to them, or Lance is just plain lucky, because Keith smiles - a rare, toothy, beautiful smile - and says, “Sure. Why not?”

Lance beams in return, can see Hunk and Pidge beaming as well, half out of relief their plan is working and half out of pure happiness, because Keith is coming with them, and while it isn’t a big deal, really, Lance suspects all three of them see it as some kind of milestone.

With that part of their plan sorted, normal conversation resumes, and when the bell rings, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge share a thumbs up between each other the moment Keith’s back is turned. He doesn’t seem to suspect a thing, and Lance is grateful, because the entire plan hinges on Keith staying oblivious and not getting angry at Lance for concocting the plan in the first place.

Lance tries not to think about what’ll happen once Keith inevitably realizes he’s been betrayed.

After school ends, Lance calls his mom to come pick the four of them up, because Hunk is the only one who could actually ride home with him on the bus. She’s expecting his call. True to script, he asks if she can come get them, and she asks if it’s just going to be Hunk and Pidge. Lance feels himself smiling when he says “No, Keith’s gonna be coming too. I know you wanted to meet him.” and he can imagine she’s smiling, too, because aside from Hunk and Pidge, she was the first to accept Lance’s plan, and had dove headfirst into helping with the preparations.

They chatter rather aimlessly while they wait for Lance’s mom, everyone but Keith a little bit on edge with the secrets they’re keeping, and Lance is grateful it only takes her about five minutes to arrive (he suspects she may have already been in her car, ready to go, when he called).

“You must be Keith!” She says as they all pile into the car. “Lance has been chattering on about you for a while now, I almost thought he’d abandoned Hunk and Pidge completely!” 

Lance sputters, can feel his face growing red, can feel Hunk and Pidge’s eyes on him. He turns to look out the window, because he doesn’t want to see the knowing looks they’re surely giving him. And he doesn’t want to even imagine what kind of expression Keith has.

“I bet he just badmouths Keith for being better than him at everything.” Pidge says snidely.

“Hey!” Lance squawks, because he has absolutely been doing that, but no one needs to know. Especially not Keith himself. “He’s not better than me at everything! And I don’t badmouth!”

Lance can see his mother side-eyeing him, eyebrows raised. He knows she can see straight through his horrible attempt at saving himself from embarrassment. Which is pointless, because he’s already embarrassed. And, because she’s Maria McClain, he watches her smirk and roll her eyes as she turns her gaze back on the road and continues talking like nothing’s happened.

“So, how was school, then? Anything noteworthy happen?” She asks, perfectly mundane. “How did you do on that test you forgot to study for?”

Keith is chuckling in the backseat, Lance knows it, and he shoots the guy a look that he hopes conveys how utterly betrayed he feels. “Hey, I’ve been busy! Doing...stuff.” Right, because that wasn’t at all ominous. Keith just raises an eyebrow. “And besides, Keith helped me study! This morning. Before the test. That counts!” 

He doesn't sound at all convincing, but everyone is entertained to some degree, and while Lance kind of wants to point out how they’re all entertained at his expense, it’s nice to see a smile on their faces. With all the planning they’ve been doing and the nature of the situation at hand, it’s been a few days since Lance has seen Hunk’s eyes crinkle around the edges or heard Pidge’s full belly chortle. And Keith...well, he’s chuckling, and that’s something Lance recognizes as rare.

The ride from Alternia High School to the McClain residence is spent in constant chatter. Lance steers the conversation away from himself and his mistakes, and they get talking about cakes and party decorations and what kind of music should be played and oh yeah, Andi doesn’t even like cake, so what on Earth are they gonna do now? By the time they pull up to the quaint grey and white house Lance has known all his life, Hunk and Maria have narrowed down a list of four food choices to prepare in place of cake, and Pidge is playing space trivia with Keith in the back.

Toni and Camilla’s matching Frozen bikes are toppled over on opposite sides of the front lawn and on a normal day Lance would have been wondering who was watching them if they weren’t in the car with his mother, their full-time babysitter. But this isn’t a normal day. 

“Alright kids, let’s get to work!” Maria says, turning to wink at everyone before climbing out of the car, waving her hands in an encouraging gesture Lance immediately interprets as “hurry up.” His friends also grasp the message and soon they’re all clambering up the steps onto the front porch of the McClain residence. Maria kicks a basketball out of the way of the door and opens it with one hand while texting with the other, and, once inside, is nearly bowled over by small children.

“Tio Hunk, tio Hunk!” Toni and Camilla, their words overlapping as they interrupt each other and compete over who can manage to get to Hunk first. 

Hunk, to his credit, has mastered the role of ‘doting uncle’ and scoops them both up at the same time, one in each arm, and lets them throw their arms around his neck and pepper his cheeks with kisses. Pidge snickers into her hand, and Lance can see Keith trying not to laugh, too.

Lance puts on a fake pout and crosses his arms over his chest. “Hey hey hey, since when is Hunk the favorite uncle?”

“Since always!” Camilla says with a smile, giggling even more when Lance scowls.

“Oh, come on,” Pidge pats him on the back. “You can pout and complain over being abandoned later. We have a birthday party to set up, remember?”

Nodding, Lance lets Pidge wrap one hand around his arm and her other around Keith’s, and pull them both after Maria, who has disappeared into the kitchen. There are three other adults in the kitchen already - Lance’s father, who appears to be rummaging through kitchen drawers; and Hunk’s moms, who are greeting Maria with kisses on the cheek and both seem to be holding an assortment of dishware. His sister Melissa is standing on a step-stool in the living room, holding a roll of red paper streamers and looking incredibly bored. Half the roll is already taped up on the wall and Lance wonders why the hell she isn’t taping the rest of it up instead of standing there.

“Did you find any tape yet, dad?” She calls across the room, sounding annoyed.

“Not yet, just be patient! Why do we have so much junk in these drawers?!” John McClain calls back, sounding equally as annoyed..

Ah, that makes sense.

“You should have told me we needed tape earlier, I could’ve grabbed some on my way home!” Maria says. Lance watches her cross her arms and frown disappointedly at his father.

It’s quite funny, actually, how easily she can throw even her own husband into instant regret.

“I didn’t know we were out of tape in the whole house! I could have sworn we had more in one of these drawers, but we have so much random crud in them that even if we do have more, I don’t think I’d be able to find any if I looked around for ten thousand years!”

“Still, I think tape is a pretty important thing for a birthday party, don’t you agree?”

“Are they fighting?” Pidge asks quietly, leaning close to Lance’s ear, as if trying to be discreet. “I thought it was impossible for your parents to fight.”

Lance laughs a little to himself. “Oh, trust me, they fight sometimes, and this is not it.”

John and Maria are still bickering over the obvious importance of tape in any kind of situation that involves decorating, and Hunk bypasses all of it to offer his personal tape roll to Melissa, who looks like she’s about ready to keel over from holding her arm up so long. She smiles gratefully and continues hanging the length of streamers, carefully climbing down the step ladder to move it a few feet over before climbing back up to curl and hang more. It looks amazing, Lance thinks.

“Tio Lance, whos’ that?” Camilla says, tugging on Lance’s sleeve and pointing at Keith. 

“That’s Keith,” Lance answers with a smile. “He’s my friend, like Hunk and Pidge. And I think,” Lance leans in close to Camilla’s ear, Toni leaning in to eavesdrop. “He could use some hugs.”

Toni and Camilla nod very seriously, turning toward Keith with a synchronized rhythm that could actually be considered quite creepy, like they’re the twins from The Shining or some shit. Keith, who has clearly been watching the conversation - most likely because it was about him - has a very quizzical expression on his face and Lance puts on his best evil grin as he watches Toni and Camilla practically barrel into Keith’s legs, wrapping their arms around him as best they can.

Pidge full-out belly laughs at how completely out of his league Keith looks, hands hovering above Camilla and Toni’s heads like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to hug them back, but then they’re giggling and he smiles, genuinely smiles, and his gloved hands rest on their shoulders as they rub their noses on his calves. Lance doesn’t mention that they might be wiping off actual snot.

“You’re tio Keith now!” Toni tells Keith, clearly not willing to accept rejection. “Come help us with our project! It’s the most important project of the whole party, mama said!”

“The most important? What is it?” Keith questions.

“Decorations! The plate ones!” Camilla yells in Keith’s ear. “We have to make ‘em ‘cause mama  said a party has to have plate pictures! The best ones!” 

“From the best artists, mama said!” Toni agrees, beaming.

“Wow,” Keith says, crouching to Toni and Camilla’s height. “That really is the most important.”

That feedback seems to be the final building block in Toni and Camilla’s easy love of Keith, since as soon as they hear him reiterating how important their job is, they each grab one of his arms and almost make him fall over in their haste to drag him over to what Lance assumes is their designated “decorating area” in a corner of the living room. They spout out questions on if Keith is a good artist and what kinds of things he can draw, and Lance finds himself simply waving the three of them off when Keith looks back at him and Pidge, as if asking what to do.

“Do you think we should save him? I doubt they’re gonna give him back unless you go tell them he has a different job to do.” Pidge asks.

“Nah,” Lance says. “This’ll keep him busy so we can talk to mama and the others.”

“Fair enough.”

While Keith is occupied with drawing on the paper plates Toni and Camilla hand him - turns out he’s a really good artist, who knew? - Lance drifts from person to person in the most natural ways he can, making sure everyone knows what’s going on with Keith. He takes Melissa’s place hanging the streamers when she complains about her arm being sore. He relieves his father of the search for tape by telling him Hunk had some, because apparently no one had done that yet. He hunts down and cleans some dishes Lily and Sunny Garrett needed but couldn’t find.

He, Hunk and Pidge drift past each other while helping prepare and trade information, some of it useful - like Pidge’s discovery that Andi will be home an hour early because of an unexpected hour change due to the time of year - and some of it not - like Hunk’s unnecessary comment on how Lance keeps glancing at Keith and is eventually gonna give them away. Which actually is helpful, now that he thinks about it, but the smirk and eyebrow wiggle Hunk gives him really isn’t.

When the brunt of the preparations are done, Lance breaks away from setting the table to grab the paper plate decorations Toni, Camilla, and Keith were meant to be making. He finds his niece and nephew practically laying on top of Keith, whose face is almost obscured by carpet as he valiantly tries to continue drawing what looks to be Camilla in a princess dress while the two kids are bouncing up and down on his back, clearly having gotten bored with coloring.

Or maybe less bored with coloring, and more intrigued by Keith. Lance doesn’t know which.

Keith looks up when Lance approaches, and Lance effortlessly scoops Toni off Keith’s back. Toni protests with an obnoxious whine but doesn’t make any attempts to get up when Lance sits cross-legged on the carpet and plops the boy down in his lap. Camilla stops bouncing and Lance is pretty sure he hears Keith heave a sigh of relief, but he doesn’t mention it.

“How are the decorations going, kids?” He asks, ruffling Toni’s hair. 

“Uber good!” “Good!” Toni and Camilla say, their sentences overlapping. “Keith is uber good at drawing! Just like us!” Camilla continues. 

“Uber good? Where did you learn that?” Lance questions.

“Lourdes!” 

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Is Lourdes your other sister?” Keith asks, eyes still on his paper plate drawing. “You’ve never talked about her before, just Melissa.”

“Yeah, she’s the middle sister. Melissa’s the oldest, then Andi, Lourdes, me, and then these two little pains in the butt.” Lance explains, ignoring Toni and Camilla’s whining about being insulted.

“So you’re technically the baby of the family, then.”

Keith still doesn’t look up from his drawing, but Lance can see the corners of his mouth quirk up and knows he’s smirking, as if this were some funny joke. Which it isn’t. Toni and Camilla laugh at it anyway, and Lance frowns. “Maybe! But that doesn’t mean I’m any less mature!”

“Oh right, as if Lance and mature even belong in the same sentence.” Says a new voice.

Lance turns to find Lourdes standing right above him, holding two huge paper grocery bags and looking like she’d just rolled out of bed despite it being early evening. One of the perks of college, Lance supposes- everyone’s too Done and Tired to care about appearances anymore. 

“Okay, first of all, rude,” Lance snaps, scowling up at his sister with his hands on his hips. “And also, what the actual heck do you have in those bags?”

“Four lemon curd cheesecakes, a box of those vegan pumpkin cookies Melissa likes, and about six rolls of tape. Mom texted me to get some stuff because apparently she completely forgot that Andi doesn’t like cake and needed an emergency backup. Lucky I wasn’t home yet.” Lourdes replies, ignoring his scowl. Her eyes land on Keith and she raises an eyebrow. “Who’s he?”

Lance stops scowling and Keith finally looks up from his drawing, confused and maybe a little bit sheepish. Lance opens his mouth to answer, but Toni and Camilla beat him to the punch.

“He’s Keith!” “He’s Lance’s friend!” “He helped us with our pictures!” “Yeah, he’s uber good!” The two of them talk over each other, as always, but their explanation (if it can even be called that) gets across well enough. Lourdes smiles at Keith and Keith tentatively smiles back, grunting in discomfort as Camilla flips positions on his back to gesture wildly at his drawing. “He’s drawing me as a princess!” She says, beaming from ear to ear like it’s the best news in the whole world.

“Whoa, that’s pretty cool!” Lourdes sets the paper bags to the side and crouches down next to Lance and Toni, peeking at Keith’s drawing and whistling. “And it is uber good, just like you said.”

“Yeah, uber good!” Toni parrots. 

Keith mumbles out a “thank you” and watches Lourdes ruffle both Toni and Camilla’s hair before standing back up again to take the paper bags to the kitchen. Lance watches her go. In any other situation, he would’ve expected her to tease him- because yeah, he’d talked about Keith a lot, even before he’d involved his entire family in his plan. He’s still kind of surprised she didn’t tease him, even a little bit, but the smarter part of him knows it’s because she doesn’t want to make it obvious that everyone in Lance’s family knows who Keith is, even if it wouldn’t be that strange.

“Lance! We need to get the desserts set up, come help get this cheesecake on the table.” Maria yells as she makes her way over to them. “Toni, Camilla, go ahead and put your decorations up.” 

Toni and Camilla scramble to gather all the paper plates strewn about the living room floor. Keith helps them and lets the two kids drag him to the dining room table, showcasing where to put the paper plate art and chattering on about how “the angle has to be perfect” or something similar. Maria reaches Lance’s side and walks with him toward the kitchen where the cheesecakes are.

“It looks like he’s opening up. That’s a good thing.” She says, smiling warmly at the three. Lance knows she’s talking about Keith, and his own gaze falls on the boy. He nods. 

“Have you figured out how you’re going to explain this all to him?” 

“Not yet.”

Lance can feel his mama’s gaze on him, and he just keeps watching Keith. He watches him struggle to get one of the half-bent paper plates to stay neatly upright against a bowl of oranges, watches Toni and Camilla watch him, waiting, watches them applaud when he moves away and the plate doesn’t topple over. Then one of them bumps the table and causes it to fall, and they both start apologizing profusely while Keith looks on like he’s waiting for death’s sweet release.

“You’ve been brave with this plan, mijo.” Maria says, tucking an arm around Lance’s middle. “You know Keith might not react well. He’s probably going to be hurt, if he’s as guarded and private as you tell me. But I think it’s good that you’re here for him. Sounds like he needs it.”

Lance rests his chin on her head. “Yeah, I know he does. I just hope he doesn’t hate me after.”

Andi hadn’t been included in any of the plans for helping Keith, since it was all meant to overlap with a Super-Secret-Birthday-Bash Andi couldn’t know about, so the shocked expression on his face when he comes home to a horde of people screaming “happy birthday” at him in varying volumes is entirely genuine. He leaps about a foot in the air and the (empty) plastic cup he’d been holding goes flying across the entryway, almost hitting Sunny Garrett in her smiling face.

“The fuck?!” He yells, half-glaring at everyone.

“Language, mijo!” Maria yells back, though she’s still smiling from ear to ear. She pulls him down to her height and presses a kiss to his cheek. “It’s your birthday! Your surprise birthday party!

Andi makes a face like he’s constipated and then tilts his head, eyebrows going upward in a yeah-that-makes-sense fashion. “I feel like I should have expected this.”

“Well, it’s good that you didn’t, it would have ruined the surprise. Now come on, we got you cheesecake.” Maria pats him on the back and leads him out of the entryway, toward the kitchen. As she passes by where Lance is standing with Hunk and Pidge, she nods to Keith - still stuck in a Toni-Camilla sandwich - then winks and keeps moving. Andi notices the exchange and shoots Lance a confused look. Lance just shrugs. He’ll have to explain everything later.

For now, he has a message to pass on: it’s time to make Keith Kogane a McClain.

(Or, well, get him used to the McClains. Saying they’re gonna make him a McClain is weird. Like he’s gonna marry into the family or something, which is definitely not what’s happening here.)

(Later, Lance sees that Keith does become a McClain, as wholly as if he’d been born one.)

Dinner is a whirlwind of energy, with the ever-so-embarrassing Happy Birthday song ritual that has Andi’s ears turning red and food being passed around and everyone talking at once with at least four separate conversations going on at any given minute. Everyone’s eager to talk to Keith, and if it were anyone else’s birthday Lance would probably feel terrible for his friend taking the spotlight, but it’s Andi, and one glance at his brother confirms that Andi’s most likely grateful to have the attention on someone else so he can eat his cheesecake in the rare, temporary peace.

Keith is introduced, a little belatedly, to everyone at the party and they all take their turns making conversation with him, asking about his art and how classes are going and if Lance is just as annoying at school as he is at home. Lily and Sunny ask him for an opinion on the pizza they’d all had for dinner, and when he expresses his gratitude, they start on about whether or not he likes cooking or baking. Turns out, he’s never actually baked anything in his life, and the only thing he knows how to cook on his own is mac & cheese. The women look personally offended.

They promise to teach him how to cook at least a few basic dishes sometime, and Lance smiles to himself at the barely-there grin on Keith’s face when Sunny ruffles his hair.

Lance gets roped into a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos by Toni and Camilla, and he loses every round because he’s too distracted, watching Lourdes and Keith where they’re sitting on the floor across the living room. He can’t hear what they’re saying, but by the time the game is over, Keith is bright red and Lourdes is cackling like a Disney villain. Which she is. Lance swears.

Melissa gathers Toni and Camilla and bids everyone goodbye over the sounds of their protests. “We’ll be back tomorrow morning, calm down.” She says, when Camilla starts crying.

“But tio Keith won’t be here tomorrow!”

Lance thinks it’s adorable how attached to Keith the two had become over the course of the evening. Camilla continues to sob and Toni looks like he’s on the edge of crying too, and Melissa sighs, probably bone tired. Lance moves to try and calm them, but then Keith is crouching low to hug the both of them, still looking totally out of his element but perhaps a little less terrified.

“Hey, I’ll come back and visit sometime, okay?” He says. Toni and Camilla nod. “I promise.”

The two siblings cling to Keith a little longer before pulling back and hurrying to their mama, sobs replaced by little baby sniffles. They all wave until the door is closed behind them. 

“So, who’s up for some MarioKart?” Pidge suggests, raising an eyebrow..

“Oh hell yeah! I’m gonna whoop your butt, Holt!” Lourdes easily accepts the challenge.

Pidge, Lourdes, Lance, Keith, and Hunk all end up crowded on the living room couch, trading off controllers whenever one person loses. Both Lance and Lourdes’ legs are in Hunk’s lap, and every once in a while he makes a face at their feet, though he makes no move to push them off. Pidge is sitting with her neck up against Lourdes’ side and the rest of her body flopping over the armrest like a limp noodle, and Keith is squished into the space between Lance and the other end of the couch, hands leaning on the armrest to avoid getting bumped by Lance’s elbows.

It’s mundane, and familiar, and comfortable, and Keith looks so relaxed, and Lance prays that it means his plan is working. He prays that Keith will understand, once everything is explained. He prays that Keith won’t hate him and run away and refuse help like he did before.

He prays that, no matter whether this fantastical plan succeeds or fails, Keith will be safe.

Lance’s nerves get the better of him, and he gets no higher than seventh place on any round. Pidge and Lourdes wipe the floor with all of them, expectedly, stealing first place from each other over and over until they’ve got about the same amount of wins. Keith does surprisingly well for a MarioKart beginner and Lance finds himself watching Keith more than he’s playing the game. 

Thoughts swim in his head of the worst possible outcome of the night, where Keith calls him a traitor, storms out of the house, and refuses to talk to Lance ever again. He imagines what he’ll say, what he’ll do, what expression will be on his face. He imagines what would happen if Keith just… went with it. If he easily accepted that Lance just wanted to help, and chose to stay. That’s the outcome Lance wants, and he’s more than a little bit terrified of the other possibilities.

He wants Keith to let him help, wants Keith to be safe, wants Keith to be happy. 

Lance’s hasn’t been in the game for several rounds now, and he only half-notices Pidge’s eighth win of the night. He’s staring at Keith’s fourth place ranking when Maria calls for them all to come into the kitchen for cocoa. There’s a lot of shuffling and stumbling and Lourdes almost falls on her face, but they all make it into the kitchen laughing and smiling from ear to ear.

He and Keith are the last ones into the kitchen, and he watches his mama gently tap Keith on the shoulder and usher him back out of the room, handing him a mug of cocoa on the way. And oh fuck, here we go. Lance holds his cup but doesn’t drink. He tunes out the MarioKart character stat debate going on beside him, is too busy watching his mom and Keith. He knows what they must be talking about- knows she must be explaining their plans to Keith. It’s nerve-wracking.

Lance knows the exact moment Keith realizes that everyone who was at that party, aside from Andi, is 100% aware of everything going on in Keith’s life. He knows because Keith’s head snaps around and sharp eyes land on him- glaring, cutting holes in his skull, full of hurt and anger.

This is what Lance was scared of.

Keith turns away, and Lance feels his stomach plummeting into the ground. Does Keith hate him now? What’s he thinking, of course Keith hates him now. How could he have thought everything would work out just fine? They’re not in a damn fairytale- this is real life, with Lance’s real friend, whose secrets he’s spilled to practically everyone he knows. Lance knows his intentions were good, but does that really outweigh the fact that he’s meddling in Keith’s life? They haven’t even been friends for that long. A couple months at most. Lance has no right to tell Keith what to do.

No more than two minutes into Lance’s staring-off-into-space-silent-guilt-parade and movement snaps him out of his thoughts, and Lance watches Keith storm around the living room, collecting his things. No one is talking about MarioKart now. Everyone is watching Keith.

“Keith, mijo, at least let me drive you home. It’s late.” Maria asks, her face full of concern.

Keith shakes his head, avoiding eye contact, and yanks his shoes on. He looks back at Lance and Lance feels like he might crumble under that gaze, because Keith is fucking pissed.

The front door opens and Keith leaves, closing the door behind him, and without really thinking, Lance races after him. He’s wearing socks and cargo shorts and it’s past dark in late autumn, and he’s freezing the second he walks out the door. “Keith!” He yells, his feet already sore from running on cold pavement. “Keith, wait!” Keith is fast, and he doesn’t slow down.

Lance catches up and has to stop himself from grabbing at Keith’s arm, because the last thing he wants right now is for Keith to react on impulse and get them in another bad situation.

“Keith, please listen to me! I just wanted to help-”

“Help?!”

Keith whirls around and Lance takes a stumbling step back. Keith is glaring at him, expression clear even in the dim street lighting. He looks small, somehow, his shoulders hunched in and his arms pulled close, hands balled into fists at his sides that Lance can’t help but stare at. 

“Do you really think spilling my private life to everyone you know is gonna help?! What if they tell the police?! What do you think is gonna happen?!”  

“He’s abusing you, Keith!” Lance says, trying not to shout. “What if we can get him arrested?”

“And what if you do?! Lance, the whole reason I haven’t told anyone about this is because when social services finds out, they’re gonna relocate me. Another family, another town- that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid! I finally made friends, I don’t want to leave. But you know what? It doesn’t matter now, because clearly the friends I made don’t care about my fucking privacy.”

Keith’s words sting, like little needles stabbing into his skull, and Lance says nothing. Keith looks angry, and hurt, and there are tears in the corners of his eyes that twinkle in the lamplight. What can Lance say to him? After all that? Keith’s right. Lance fucked up. There’s nothing else to it.

Lance watches Keith turn around and leave. He stands there on the pavement until Keith’s form disappears around a corner and then he stands there a little longer, because he’s… in shock. 

This is what he was afraid of. This was the worst case scenario.

Finally, when Lance’s socked feet are numb and his whole body is shivering, he turns his back on where Keith’s gone and walks back up to the house, where Maria, Lourdes, Hunk, and Pidge are all waiting just inside the door, the same expression of concern mirrored across their faces.

“He left.” Lance says. “I- I fucked up. Really bad.” 

“Oh, mijo, this isn’t your fault. You did what you thought was right.” Maria says, pulling him into her arms. “Sometimes, when we do something out of love, it backfires. That isn’t our fault.”

“I don’t think Keith’s had a lot of love in his life. Maybe he just doesn’t understand.” Hunk adds.

Lance nods against his mama’s shoulder, and she pets his hair for a bit. Once they all discover how freezing cold Lance is, they gather around to smother him with blankets from the couch and Maria makes another round of cocoa for everyone. Conversation is slow and strained, and Lance tries to tune out most of it, but every time he slips into feeling absolutely miserable about hurting Keith, Hunk or Pidge or Lourdes says something funny that has him giggling despite it all.

When the cocoa is gone Maria finally ushers everyone to bed, and Lance ends up in his room with Pidge and Hunk shoved in next to him on the bottom bunk. 

“What should we do now?” Lance asks into the dark, Pidge’s hair tickling his cheek.

Hunk, already half asleep, mumbles into his shoulder. “Just give him space. He’ll come ‘round.”

Keith does not come ‘round. At least, not very quickly.

When Lance and Hunk get of the bus on Monday morning, Keith doesn’t wave at them from his bike, doesn’t follow them to where Pidge always waits, doesn’t walk with Lance to maths. 

Keith doesn’t give Lance so much as a side-eye during class, and Lance says nothing. 

It’s like they’ve gone back to the first weeks of school, when Keith was just “that kid who punched me that one time” and Lance was “the one who got in the way.” Keith doesn’t walk with them to their classes, doesn’t sit with them at lunch, doesn’t share his notes with Lance or argue about the probability of aliens with Pidge or let Hunk fuss over his hair like a surrogate mother.

And Lance says nothing. Keith has every right to avoid him- to avoid all of them. Lance feels bad that he’s ruined Pidge and Hunk’s friendship with Keith too, just by getting them involved. But he does his best to stay positive, to not let what happened with Keith drag him down too much.

(He lies. It eats away at him as he tries to sleep, and no matter how many times Hunk or Pidge or his mama try to tell him it’ll all work out, Lance can’t seem to figure out how it possibly could.)

Around a week and a half passes before Keith approaches them again, and when he does, he has another black eye over the one that had finally started to heal, a gash on his eyebrow, and a thick ring of bruises around his throat that have Lance’s stomach churning. When he looks Keith in the eye his heart sinks too, because Keith’s expression isn’t angry, or hurt, just… tired. 

“Dude, you look like you’ve lost a Kaiju battle or something.” Pidge blurts out. 

Lance blanks, because what the fuck, Pidge?! But then he hears Keith actually laugh- not quite a happy laugh, more the awkward kind of laugh, the kind of laugh you laugh when it feels like the world’s falling to pieces around and you have to laugh because if you don’t you’ll just start crying.

“Yeah, well,” Keith says, his voice cracked and raw. “It definitely feels that way.”

Pidge snorts, and Hunk sighs, and Lance stares at Keith. He should say something. But what? Apologize? He already has, and Keith didn’t take it too well. Should he explain himself? He thinks that might make Keith even angrier- it would sound like Lance thinks Keith is weak and helpless.

But Keith doesn’t want to talk about the failed “rescue mission” half-disguised as Andi’s birthday party. Keith doesn’t mention it at all, just asks, “Can I sit with you guys?”

No one answers. Pidge and Hunk are clearly waiting for Lance to make the call, and Lance appreciates the gesture, even though he doesn’t think it’s earned. Keith waits, not mentioning the fight they had or how Lance betrayed him or even anything more about his wounds. Keith waits, watching Lance watch him, and Lance thinks that Keith’s question never needed to be asked.

“Of course you can.”

For the first time in what feels like an eternity, they’re all together, joking and laughing and poking fun at each other, just like friends should. Keith is smiling, and laughing, and Lance is happy. 

When they all get out of class at the end of the day, Keith is waiting for them in the main hallway. He seems nervous, more nervous than he had at lunch, but he debates with Pidge the logic or not-logic of a comic series they apparently both read and Lance decides not to mention it. Hunk joins in on their debate once he has a better picture of the context and Lance listens with a laugh, not really understanding any of it but enjoying the ridiculous things they use to justify their side.

They all say hi to Mrs. Holt and wave dramatically at Pidge as their stationwagon pulls out of the parking lot, and Keith falls behind as Lance and Hunk make for their bus. Hunk goes on ahead with a playful nudge at both of them and Lance pauses, watches Keith, tries not fidget.

Keith looks at him and his expression is sad, almost desperate. “Lance, I’m really sorry about the other night. You didn’t deserve to get yelled at. You were just trying to help me, and I didn’t want to admit I needed help. I just- I’m not used to people being nice to me. It caught me off guard, still does, and I think I didn’t know how to cope with your family treating me like I’m… one of them. So I picked the first excuse I could to get mad and I treated you like actual shit. I’m really sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize, you had every reason to get mad-” Lance starts.

“No, I really didn’t!” Keith interrupts him, quietly catching himself with a whispered apology. “You wanted to help me, and you did what you thought would help. You told people you trusted and I got mad at you for it. That’s not fair. It’s not fair for me to reject you when you’re just trying to be a good friend. I think I understand what that means now, y’know. Being someone’s friend.”

Lance finds himself smiling, because this is what he wanted Keith to understand- that he has friends, people who love him and care about him and want him to be safe. He wanted Keith to understand that he has people who want to help him. People that will help him, if he asks.

“Keith,” Lance says, holding a hand out for Keith to take, if he wants. “Wanna come to my house tonight? You did promise you’d visit Toni and Camilla again sometime.”

Keith stares at him for a moment, and Lance wonders if maybe he should have said more, if he should explain more of his process or how much his family loves Keith or apologize again, even though Keith doesn’t seem to think he’s at fault. He wonders if this is too forward, asking him to come over again like it’s not big deal. He wonders if Keith will say yes after all that’s happened.

Keith smiles, shy and small and real. He takes Lance’s hand, and says, “Yes, please.”

That night, when Lance and Keith are snuggled up in blankets on different bunks in Lance’s bed, Lance explains to Keith every aspect of his plans to get Keith into a safer place.

Keith listens, doesn’t say anything until Lance is finished. A heavy silence hangs between them.

“How many people were involved?” He asks.

Lance counts on his fingers. “Well, my whole family, aside from like, Toni and Camilla. And Andi, since we couldn’t tell him about the party. Hunk’s moms, Hunk and Pidge, Pidge’s parents- we had backup plans in case you’d rather stay with Pidge or Hunk than me. So… ten people?”

That heavy silence falls again, and Lance finds himself fidgeting, anxious and impatient. He picks at hanging threads from the mattress above him, fiddles with the hem of his blanket, and waits.

Finally, a reply. “That’s a lot of people.”

“Yeah.”

“That means I’m important to you, doesn’t it?”

Lance blanks, for a second, then smiles from ear to ear, because yes, Keith finally gets it. “Hell yeah you’re important to me, dude! You’re one of my best friends now! That makes you a VIP.”

Lance hears Keith’s soft, raspy laugh echo in the darkness of the room. “Sweet.”

Just like how Keith became a part of Lance’s little friend group in no time at all, Keith becomes a part of the McClain family pretty much within the span of a single night. 

No one so much as bats and eyelash when Keith joins them at the breakfast table the morning after his first night staying over, and in the week since, he’s had personalized allergy-free lunches made for him by Maria, had an hour long Nicolas Sparks debate with Andi, and had his makeup done by Melissa, Lourdes, and Toni and Camilla, all on separate occasions. 

(And yes, Lance forced his mama to take pictures on each of those separate occasions.)

Maria drives them to and from school, picking up Hunk along the way most days. She takes him and Keith out to buy coats and new jeans, because Keith didn’t bring a whole lot with him when he left home and he doesn’t actually have a good winter coat, which is sacrilege in her eyes. 

Lance offers up his own bedroom to share with Keith, and at first he’s nervous. He’s always had a hard time sleeping with others in the room, because he’s a restless sleeper. He moves around a lot. He makes noise. Growing up, Andi constantly complained about being kept up by Lance shaking the bed, until finally Melissa moved out and Lourdes offered to share with him. 

Keith? Keith does not complain. Keith sleeps like a rock. It usually takes Lance a good while to fall asleep, even with his earbuds in playing ocean songs and all possible light blocked out by an eye mask. Keith, however, simply lays down and passes out, and does not move until he wakes.

It’s almost like we were meant to be, Lance thinks. The sentiment makes him giggle.

Everyone adores Keith, dotes on him and teases him and treats him like he’s been a part of the household from the very beginning. Lance can’t help but wish that Keith never has to leave.

(Lance worries. He worries so much. When they turn onto the main hall in school one day and Keith’s foster dad is standing there, talking to a teacher, and Keith looks so pale and small and scared, Lance grabs his arm and guides him to another exit, Hunk doing his best to calm Keith and Pidge watching behind them like a hawk watching for a potential predator. Keith stays home from then on and Maria lets him. And Lance worries. How long, exactly, can all of this last?)

“Is Toni gonna die?” 

Lance looks at Camilla and resists the urge to smile, because despite the nature of her question, she doesn’t seem even the slightest bit concerned for her brother’s well-being. 

“No, Camilla, he just has the flu. He’s not gonna die.” He says, patting her on the back.

Camilla turns and glares at him for making her stumble and Lance has to hide his smile behind a hand. She finishes off the braid she’s doing in Keith’s hair and turns to Lance, holding it out in his direction with the most begrudging expression a five-year-old can have. She’s Melissa’s kid, that’s for damn sure. Lance takes the end of the braid and ties off the elastic for her.

“All done! Look, look, look!” Camilla says with sudden enthusiasm, shoving a plastic play mirror into Keith’s hands so he can see the masterpiece that is his new hairdo.

Camilla has spent a good fifteen or twenty minutes twisting three smaller braids into one gigantic plait that’s about as wide as Keith’s head, with bumps at different angles and crooked chunks of braid and little hairs that didn’t quite fit into the plaits sticking out every which way. It looks terrible, Lance thinks, but in the cute, learning-curve kind of way that can only really be achieved when you have a five-year-old who has only ever done the hair of dolls decide to give you a makeover.

Lance fully expects Keith’s face to contort into something that portrays how much Camilla might need to practice, but Keith just smiles, turning the mirror this way and that to get a view of every angle he possibly can. He’s beaming, and Camilla is beaming, and Lance fucking giggles.

How can a guy who didn’t know what a fist bump was a few months ago, be so good with kids?!

“It’s amazing, Camilla,” Keith says, handing her back the mirror and feeling along the plaits with his fingers. “I love it. Thank you.”

Camilla squeals and throws her arms around Keith, probably dislodging part of the braid as she jumps up and down in her excitement. Keith has spent long enough in the McClain house to be very much used to Toni and Camilla’s boundless energy, and he just laughs, a soft, comfortable laugh, gently patting the braid back into place (still crooked, but a little better) when Camilla stills.

The three of them are all bundled up in late-autumn-early-winter-weather clothes, sat outside on the front walk to avoid contracting the flu from Toni and getting sick themselves. Lance is sat on the steps of the porch with his jacket pulled up as far as it’ll get on around his neck, while Keith and Camilla are on the walkway with a few blankets between their butts and freezing concrete.

It’s been ten days since Keith started staying at the McClain house, three days since he stopped attending school, and Lance feels an ache in his stomach, like their luck is going to run out soon.

An unfamiliar car pulls into the driveway.

At first, Lance eyes the car with vacant curiosity. Their house is at the dead-end of a street and it isn’t uncommon for their driveway to be used as a turn-around for lost drivers. 

One glance in Keith’s direction and Lance instantly knows that something is very, very wrong.

Keith looks scared. His face is ashen, eyes blown wide, hands gripping the blanket beneath him like a lifeline even as he scoots in front of Camilla almost on instinct. Lance is on his feet and moving toward them before the car door can open. And when it does, all hell breaks loose.

“Where the fuck have you been?!” The man shouts, in a voice Lance barely recognizes from that night so long ago. “You fucking ran off for an entire week, you think you have the right?!” 

Lance doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to say, it’s like a horror movie is happening in front of him. The man shoots out a hand and grabs at Keith’s hair like a murderous villain, lifting him off the ground and dragging him a good few feet forward, as if Keith weighed nothing at all. 

“Get off, asshole!” Keith shouts, kicking at the man and shoving at his hand, trying to dislodge the fingers tangled in his hair. “Fucking let go!” 

Without thinking, Lance lunges for Keith and pushes at the man’s hands, shouting for him to let the fuck go and fuck off, what right does he have to treat Keith like this? Camilla is wailing and Keith is swearing and Lance is shouting and the man is yelling at Keith for being a brat and disobeying curfew, what a fucking idiot, how dare he. If there was a neighborhood watch, surely someone would have called the cops by now, with all the noise they’re making.

Lance takes an elbow to the face and stumbles, falling on his ass and catching himself with one hand that he’ll definitely be picking rocks out of with tweezers later. Keith is screaming his name and then screaming curses at the world. Keith’s foster dad kicks the feet out from under him and Lance watches Keith get manhandled, kicking and scratching and biting, toward the man’s car.

Lance climbs back onto his feet and a door opens, but not a car door- the front door of the house is thrown open, and Lance doesn’t think he’s ever been so grateful to see his dad’s face. 

John McClain, Captain of Lions Beach Police Station, walks out like the eye of a storm, calm and collected. He lifts one hand out at Lance as a cue to stay right where he is and Lance does stay. He hears Camilla’s cries soften and turns to find his mother in the doorway, one arm cradling a coughing Toni and the other holding Camilla close, both kids’ faces pressed up against her and shielded from the drama. When she catches Lance’s gaze, she smiles, small but reassuring.

“Let him go and put your hands up!” John demands, loud and stern.

Keith’s foster father pauses, but only to glare at John as if he were the scum of the Earth. “Why the hell should I listen to you? You kidnap my kid and then think you can order me around?!”

John pulls out his badge, and the man suddenly looks very, very scared. He drops Keith instantly.

Keith scrambles to his feet and runs for the house, grabbing at Maria’s sleeve as soon as he’s near. Lance picks up Camilla so Maria has a free arm to hug Keith. He can feel Keith shaking, can hear his heavy breathing, but his eyes refuse to leave his dad and the scene before them.

“John Doe, you are under arrest for trespassing and assault. You have the right to remain silent.” John pins the man up against his own car and handcuffs him. There’s a police siren in the distance. “If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided for you…”

A police car pulls up to the driveway just as John is finished, and out climbs two officers Lance vaguely recognizes, probably from some potluck or another. The two new officers take over and Keith’s foster father disappears into the police car. A minute later, an ambulance pulls up.

“Lance, mijo, take Toni for me, okay?” 

Lance sets Camilla down and takes Toni, who is fast asleep despite the chaos. Maria kisses all three of them on the head before wrapping both arms around Keith and starting down the steps. 

“I called Melissa and Lourdes, they’ll be home soon as they can be. I need you to stay here for a little while, okay? Take care of Toni and Camilla?” Maria says, her smile strained.

‘Why can’t we go with you?’ Lance wants to ask. But he knows why. There’s no telling how long it will take to sort out everything that’s just happened, no telling what will happen to Keith or if they’ll get in trouble for harboring a runaway or- or- Lance shoves aside thoughts of Keith’s foster dad getting off scot-free and Keith having to go back to him. His parents will never let that happen. 

So Lance just nods, tries his best to smile, and stays. Keith peeks out around Maria as they walk toward the ambulance and Lance doesn’t know what to say. So he says nothing, just watches as his parents disappear down the road, and prays that Keith will be with them when they return.

Lance takes Toni back to bed in the living room and Camilla helps him lock up every window and door in the house. He makes it into a game and manages to win a bit of laughter from her, which he counts as a feat. But as soon as they’ve settled in the living room next to a sleeping Toni, she releases all her questions on him in rapid succession. Where did nana and papa go? Why did the big truck take Keith away? Who was that man? Why was he being so mean to Keith?

Lance hugs her close and tries to explain. “You know how the bad guys in movies can be really mean to the heroes, and at the end the heroes beat the bad guys in a fight?” Camilla nods. “Well, that man that hurt Keith was a bad guy. Papa’s at the police station to make sure than man gets in trouble for being mean, and nana’s at the hospital to make sure Keith’s okay. That’s where the big truck took him- it’s an ambulance, they come rescue people who are hurt and heal them.”

Camilla nods, taking his cobbled-together explanation as fact. “When will tio Keith come home?” 

Lance gives her a shaky smile. “Soon.”

Half an hour after the first responders have come and gone, Lourdes gets home, and Lance tells her everything their mama didn’t have time to mention. Camilla is fast asleep and when Lourdes pulls Lance into her arms, he cries, because he’s worried. He lets out all the emotions he’s been holding back, because he couldn’t bear to cry in front of Camilla and make her more scared.

John calls not long after Lourdes gets home to say that Keith’s foster father is in holding and that the specifics of the arrest will be handled by other officers, and that he’s heading to the hospital to check on Maria and Keith. John tells them not to worry, that everything is going to work out.

(Lance still worries, but he forces himself not to focus on it, because John McClain is not a liar)

Melissa gets home after the call, Andi gets home an hour after that, and they wait together in the living room, huddled like wolf pups waiting for their mother to return with food for the winter. Toni and Camilla wake up and demand movie time, and three episodes of Tangled: The Series later, they’re asleep again, along with Lourdes and Andi, who are both exhausted from their days.

Lance is exhausted too, body and soul, but he can’t find it in himself to sleep. His mind is going a mile a minute with thoughts of Keith and their parents and restraining orders and relocations and what if Lance could track down Keith’s brother? His fingers fidget with whatever they touch and Lance fights the urge to text Hunk or Pidge for help, because he’s not sure if he should share yet. What kind of rules are there in sharing this kind of thing? Would he get in trouble for telling them?

“I can hear you overthinking from all the way over here, Lancey-Lance.” Melissa says, using an old nickname that he hasn’t heard from her in years. “Do I have to ask what’s on your mind?”

Lance looks around Lourdes and Camilla’s sleeping forms between them, locks onto Melissa’s calm gaze, so much like their mama’s. “I just… I can’t stop thinking about what’ll happen to Keith. What if mama and dad get in trouble for letting him stay here? What if social services take him to some other family in some other town and I never get to see him anymore?”

“Lance, Keith ran away from a man who was abusing him. I don’t think mama and dad could get in trouble for protecting him even if dad wasn’t a police Captain. They’ll fight for Keith if they have to, you know that. And besides, they have a little trick up their sleeve they haven’t told you yet.”

Lance narrows his eyes at her. “What kind of trick?”

Five and a half hours. Keith’s ER checkup takes five and a half hours. Lourdes is awake again and doing homework in the dining room, Melissa is heating late-night leftover fried rice, and Andi is still passed out in the living room with Toni and Camilla. Lance is sat across the table from his sister, trying to focus on his own homework, but he has to keep reading the same sentences over and over again because his brain is too distracted to comprehend the material.

Lights stream through cracks in the dining room curtains and there’s the sound of an engine, of car doors opening and closing, of footsteps on the stone walkway and hushed voices outside.

Lance is on his feet in seconds and heading for the front door, Lourdes at his heels. He hears her talking to Andi, probably trying to wake him up, hears Toni and Camilla’s still-sleepy voices, but he doesn’t wait. He pulls the door open and there are his parents, coming up the steps.

Keith is wedged between them, a duffel bag in his arms. He’s smiling.

Everything in Lance wants to throw himself at Keith and squeeze his brains out in a hug, but he has no idea how injured Keith might be, so instead he throws himself at his mama and reaches an arm carefully around Keith to pull him closer. Keith comes willingly and Lance feels fingers in his jacket, holding tight. It doesn’t take long for everyone else who’s awake to join the hug.

“I’m fine, really.” Keith says in Lance’s ear, answering the question he hasn’t even asked yet.

Lance deflates, tension flowing out of him. Keith is okay. Keith is home. The hug huddle starts to disperse and Lance is shoved aside by Camilla, who tackles Keith ‘round the middle and sobs into his coat. Maria pulls Lance closer and kisses him on the cheek, hands in his hair, and Lance leans into her with a smile even as his eyes stay on Keith and Camilla. Keith drops the duffel bag onto the porch and kneels to Camilla’s height, hugging her back. She sobs a bit more and everyone starts to gravitate back into the house, but Lance stays, watching.

“That scary man came and hurt you and then the hospital people took you away-” Camilla says between hiccups, one hand wiping tears while the other clings to Keith’s jacket with an iron grip. “And Lance said you would be home soon but then it was a really long time and I missed you!”

Keith smiles, and Lance swears there are tears in his eyes. “I missed you too. All of you.”

No one asks for a full story from John and Maria McClain until Camilla has been detached from Keith’s torso and put to sleep again, Melissa having made the decision to simply stay the night rather than try and drive home. Toni is balled up in one of the armchairs and Camilla is splayed across the fold-out couch in the living room, dead to the world despite her earlier energy.

Andi is half-asleep and groggy but he lets Lourdes pull him into the dining room and sit him down to hear the news of the night. Lance sits with his chair right up next to Keith’s, their shoulders up against each other, the steam from their cups of tea mixing, their fingers just a few inches apart.

“So, there’s a little something we didn’t tell everyone while we were making plans for the party, simply because we weren’t sure how it would work out if needed. But,” Maria explains. “when we were thinking of ways to truly help Keith, Melissa suggested we apply to be emergency foster parents. That would mean if a foster child nearby was displaced, they would be brought here, Keith included. And your father was able to find out that there are no other such families nearby.”

“Which means that when Keith was taken into social service custody, he was automatically put into your custody after the hospital cleared him, right?” Lourdes asks, beaming.

Maria nods, and Lance wants to cry, because his parents are amazing, so beautifully amazing.

“As foster parents, we will only have custody of Keith until a family chooses to adopt him. And you guys seem to enjoy having him around so we talked to social services about how we could go about adopting Keith to be a part of our family, permanently.” John starts, expression smug as he drags out his sentences. Lance and his siblings are hanging onto every word. “Of course, we asked Keith first if he would like to stay, and, well, you wanna tell them what you said, Keith?”

All eyes lock onto Keith and he shrinks under their gazes at first, clearly exhausted and ready to sleep and perhaps still adjusting to having siblings, but then he smiles, brighter than Lance has ever seen him smile, and Lance’s entire body seems to heat up. “I said yes.”

Lourdes starts to cheer and Andi whacks her upside the head, reminding her that there are kids asleep in the next room over. Lance wraps his arms around Keith and Lourdes is pouncing onto them just seconds later. Keith melts into their hug and Lance couldn’t possibly be happier.

If someone had told fourteen-year-old Lance that he’d end up with Keith Kogane as a brother in under a year, he never would’ve believed them, but right now? Being with Keith just feels right.

✿ First Ending, Fin. ✿

“What the fuck do you mean, we missed Keith’s birthday?!” Pidge yells, enraged. “You mean his birthday was like, a week after we became friends, and he never told us?! Dude!”

“He said he’s never celebrated his birthday before, since he doesn’t actually know his real one. I think he just… didn’t think it mattered? I mean, this is Keith we’re talking about.” Lance says.

Lance, Pidge, and Hunk are sat at a corner table in the obnoxiously busy cafeteria, their normal spot being damp and freezing with early December rain. There’s less than a week before winter break starts and the three of them are despairing over the fact they’ve missed Keith’s birthday.

“Well, maybe we can still do something? It might be a little late, but it’s better than nothing.” Hunk says. Lance nods. “Besides, he’s a McClain now. And the McClains are great at parties.”

Lance snorts a laugh, because that’s something Keith learned very quickly- there have been two more birthday parties since Andi’s, and both had hours upon hours of loving setup behind them. The McClain family goes big or goes home. Hunk knows that, has been a part of that mindset for as long as either he or Lance can remember, and he chuckles too, leaving Pidge to roll her eyes. 

Someone’s yelling in the distance and Pidge shoots a glare down the hall in the direction of it. “I forgot to tell you guys, Matt’s bringing his college roommate home for Christmas break.”

“Oh, I remember you mentioning it.” Lance says, sucking down the last of his Capri Sun.

“Yeah, well, apparently Matt cried over the phone because his roommate doesn’t have a family to spend the break with, so mom told him to invite the guy to spend the holidays with us.” There’s more yelling and Pidge frowns. “I’ve only heard stories about him so far, but he seems cool.”

“What’s he like?” 

“He’s in the same major as Matt, so he’s an astrophysics nerd. Matt has a total crush on him so I know he’s buff as shit and he has this cool scar over his nose, and he’s Japanese, so I’m pretty sure Matt’s used anime puns. Apparently he talks in his sleep.” Pidge pauses, clearly thinking up more tidbits. “His name’s Takashi but Matt says everyone in their classes calls him Shiro-”

“Wait, Shiro? Like Takashi Shirogane?” Lance blurts out. He remembers the name.

Pidge tilts her head at him. “Yeah, do you know-”

A high-pitched scream cuts through their conversation and everyone whips around to look at the origin of the sound. It’s a young girl Lance recognizes from his English class, Rom or Roxy or Ro or something similar. But Lance’s eyes don’t stay on her for long. Because there’s a gun.

(If you had told eighth-grade-Lance-McClain that his first thought, when caught in one of the most terrifying situations he could have possibly imagined, would be “what would Keith do?” …)

What would Keith do.

Lance knows Keith. Lance knows Keith. Knows how determined he is, knows how protective he is, knows how strong he is and how quick he is to take action, knows how many fights he’s been in- knows he came out on top in every single one, despite whatever consequences followed.

Lance knows if Keith were here, and he hopes to God Keith isn’t, that he would charge the kid holding a gun and firing on people Lance has known most of his life.

Lance can’t charge the kid holding a gun. He’ll die if he charges the kid holding a gun. He doesn’t want to die to the kid holding a gun. So he searches for the next best thing and instantly his eyes land on Romelle, the girl who screamed whose name he suddenly remembers clear as day.

She’s crumpled and crying and only a few feet away, and Lance drops to the ground, doesn’t let his eyes leave hers as she watches him come closer and closer until his hand touches hers.

She looks up at Lance and Lance smiles a shaky smile, fumbles for reassuring words. 

She looks up at him and starts wailing.

Lance looks up, at the shadow behind him, and there’s the gun, inches away from his temple.

Keith can’t breathe.

He sits on Lance’s bunk, huddled in a corner, staring at nothing. His eyes are rubbed raw and he can’t bear to move from his spot, can’t bear to leave the room, can’t bear to see Lance’s family - his family, now. It hurts too much to see the tear lines on their cheeks, the bags under their eyes.

So he stays on the bed, curled in Lance’s jacket that still has faded bloodstains on the sleeve.

❀ Second Ending, Fin. ❀

For those who scrolled down to get that content warning- there’s a school shooting scene at the end of the fic. I’ve not experienced a school shooting or any kind of shooting, but I’m sure it’s absolutely harrowing, so I don’t want anyone who might be sensitive to that content to be hurt. Please be careful!

[adhoption]

GAME OF FINALES

There were many things to love about the finale:

Seriously, the aesthetic of that whole start, a broken city of ashes, the Targaryen banner slung over the ruins, that shot with the dragon wings, Dany’s zealous speech... nice. 

She’s been getting away with being a power-mad, egotistical, vengeful white saviour for years, killing anyone who dares to even disrespect her, and it’s been presented as WOO STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER and fans encouraged to believe the hype about her destiny to save the world and right to rule as much as she does. It’s nice that they did the twist of ah, actually this kind of person is bad news, it’s only a matter of time before they cross the line and start killing innocents. It was coming. 

But at the same time, it wasn’t really coming when it did? They didn’t lead up to it at all, and if anything she’d been more tamed since meeting Jon and friends than in the early days. They could have shown her arc going towards madness, not in the opposite direction. They could have shown her grieving, being consumed with a need for vengeance, rather than go from a speech about mercy to massacring children with no reason. They could have made them collateral damage as she tried to go for Cersei who was using them as human shields and Dany decided she didn’t care, or have the newly orphaned children try to defend their city and throw rocks or toy horses at Drogon and Dany burn them just seeing them as enemies. That would have been a way to cross the line, rather than winning the battle and then deciding to go for an impromptu barbecue.

What’s weird is that they spent the first half an hour of the episode explaining how it was actually inevitable and reminding us of the bad stuff she’d done before, like the characters were actively trying to justify the way the plot had turned in retrospect, like the opposite of foreshadowing, the opposite of build-up. These episodes were filmed at the same time, but it felt almost like this was a weekly show and the writers were responding to the criticism of last week’s. Outrage that Jon didn’t say goodbye to Ghost? Quick, reunite them and make him tickle him behind the ears (I was on my edge of my seat chanting Ghost Ghost Ghost the moment Jon went north again, I was so afraid they’d forget about him again). Laughter that a coffee cup was left on a table? Quick, tuck a plastic water bottle under a chair.

It’s also important that whenever the atrocity was mentioned it was explained that poor Dany lost her best friend and her dragon, whereas Cersei was just pure evil and hadn’t, say, lived her whole adult life under a prophesy that she would see her children dead and a young queen would come and destroy her, then watched all three of them die, seen her parents die, her whole world come crashing down, lurch from an abusive relationship to co-dependent incest and alcoholism and grief, and then simply decide to give no quarter to prisoners just like Dany burns them alive.

There’s a lot of things like Mad-Dany that which would have been nice and fitting if they weren’t rushed. Varys went from servant to traitor to bonfire in one poorly-lit, mumbled minute where you had to guess what was going on. Jamie went from ‘I’ve decided to stay with Brienne, the culmination of my years of character development’ to ‘actually no’ in a minute of her blubbing as out of character as him losing all moral fibre. This used to be a show of elaborate over-lapping plots, and characters who grew year-on-year. So yes, Dany-goes-bad, Jon-kills-her, Jon-has-to-go-back-to-Night’s-Watch, all nice and fitting ends to their stories. Nobody-sits-the-throne is a good resolution, symbolically melting it and starting afresh, electing somebody who wasn’t one of the main leaders. Gendry would have been nice, a fitting end to the story which began with the mystery around Robert’s bastards and Ned saving his life exactly like he did Jon, two children in danger as secret heirs to dynasties, and the irony of Dany having legitimised him only for him to usurp her as his father did hers. 

But not Bran. This isn’t Bran’s story. Bran’s war was the Great War. He spent years of character development journeying beyond the wall to meet his destiny, learning from and becoming the Three-Eyed Raven, clashing with the Night King, gaining the ability to see through time and space and weirwoods, gaining the ability to warg into direwolves and ravens and Hodors. But he has zero of the aptitudes needed to be a king. He is barely even human any more. He has no strength or compassion, no steel or charm.

Here are some particular points that I loved:

I loved the way how, after years of patiently watching Bran crawl around in the dark to gain the ability to go back in time and influence past events, or the power to take over the mind of a dragon, he didn’t just... use none of those powers in the pivotal moments of the last couple of seasons apart from to do a few seconds of raven-scouting and volunteer himself as bait. It was important after all that build-up that there would be a pay-off, that the gun Chekov’s character had spent the whole play building would actually be used.

So it was satisfying the way that after the Night King won and conquered Winterfell, walked into the Godswood and reached out to claim Bran, Bran touched the heart tree and his eyes went white before they were brutally turned blue. Then, after we watched the army of the dead sweep south with a terrible inevitability, the last stand of the living as Cersei realised her mistake and all the forces of King’s Landing were similarly overwhelmed, scorpions aimed at the White Walkers on dead dragons, confused Night King coming face-to-face with the reanimated Ser Gregor, Qyburn staring in fascination as the dead tear him apart, wights of Jon and Dany and Arya and Sansa and the Hound coming to claim their living enemies, the living finally fall and the Night King sits the Iron Throne, it fades to black... and we are in the weirwood with Bran, making a crucial change in the past, perhaps in that vision of the creation of the Night King, perhaps in another pivotal moment in the series. Then the next episode opens and the dead are bearing down on Winterfell again, but this time, something small has changed, making all the difference. This time, they won’t win.

Or perhaps it was revealed that Bran had gone back and become the Night King, and that was why he was able to control the dead, using his warging and Three-Eyed Raven powers, and then Jon or Arya had to kill him. Or perhaps he was able to warg into one of the dragons and fight the way that Jon and Dany riding them couldn’t. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I do remember how satisfying it was that the skills he’d learnt actually meant something. It would be disappointing if he only came back to sit making cryptic comments from the corner for two seasons, saying he was no longer Bran Stark and couldn’t be Lord of Winterfell because he was a bird now, only to then randomly be chosen as a king of a distant city on his first visit. 

It would then be especially weird if, after being named the first ever Stark king and uniting the north with the other six kingdoms as rightful king of both, the north then decide that they can follow Ned and Sansa as Starks but not him because as someone who was previously Lord of Winterfell and just left the north for the first time in his life they aren’t going to follow him as a southron king, whereas they will follow Sansa who grew up in King’s Landing.

In the same way I love the way that, after patiently watching Arya crawl around in the dark to learn how to see without eyes, learn how to wear other people’s faces and become them, she didn’t use any of those skills in the last two seasons, only stabbing with a dagger which she already knew how to do. It’s exciting watching Chekov’s character bludgen an intruder with a rolling pin, but a bit strange when you know the gun is hanging on the wall. 

After years of hearing her list recited, it was satisfying that she ended up crossing off the final name and killing the people she was supposed to kill, rather than just claiming the person that Jon and Dany and Bran and Beric were destined to kill and had built up their character arcs around, and making it look easy, thus derailing not only her own narrative arc but theirs as well.

Similar to Bran, it was also important that she had a fitting end that matched her character development to date, like how she spent the last episode building up motivation to avenge the innocents Dany had just burnt, and to protect Jon who she knew was rightfully the first in line but would never have the heart to move against Dany, so she bravely went to kill her herself, moving in darkness or wearing a face as a disguise, and was killed by Drogon, but not before taking him down at the same time, proving herself a dragonslayer and assassin worthy of legend, which finally gave Jon the heart he needed to do what he needed to do and kill Dany to avenge the little sister whose hair he used to ruffle and whose sentences he used to always finish, finishing her final act for her instead. 

Or did she go back to the riverlands and take up the mantle of Beric and the Hound who had saved her life, becoming the leader of the Sisterhood without Banners, a protector of the smallfolk and innocents everywhere against the tyranny of lords and soldiers whose atrocities she had witnessed at Harrenhall and The Twins and across the riverlands (and now at King’s Landing), riding around on her white horse and delivering the justice that Beric and Thoros used to give with their hanging ropes, or she and the Hand had given to the likes of Polliver, or that she had given to the Freys. There was that poignant scene where a little girl came to her with the names of men who had done unspeakable things to her village, and Arya calmly added the names to a list. There was that scene where she found Nymeria again, leading her pack of a hundred wolves around the riverlands, and joined forces with her to ensure that evil had refuge in the towns or in the trees, and turned to her and finally said “Yes. This is me.”

It was important that she had a satisfying, fitting end that matched her path and her background and her newly earned skills, like Bran, rather than say, him becoming king, or her randomly deciding to become a sailor having previously shown precisely zero inclination or aptitude for a life on the seas. It would have been especially ridiculous for her to start her nautical career by heading out with a single ship across the open ocean, which the books tell us has been tried before by whole fleets of ships and they have been torn apart by storms, and just doing it immediately with no real planning, in a jarring contrast with a scene where everyone else is talking about how they have no ships and are about to start building the sort of fleet that might be able to support her.

I loved the way the writers remembered they’d left Ellaria Sand to be kept alive in a dungeon beneath the Red Keep and had her released as leader of Dorne to take part in the council, rather than just replacing her with some randomer and not even acknowledging if she was dead or not.

I loved the way Brienne got over her rollercoaster emotional journey from stoic professional to sobbing teenager after one night of lovemaking and took the time to ensure Jaime’s memory was honoured correctly, such as by writing his biography with all the things he’d told her, and especially remembering to correct the single most important thing he’d told her (that he’d only killed the Mad King to save the whole city which was about to be blown up), and not just... leaving it written in his biography that he’d infamously broken his vows and killed the king and was known as Kingslayer since without providing any of the vital context, which she was one of the only people in the world who knew. It’s also a nice end to her character journey, which is based around her oath to protect Sansa and Arya, that she just leaves them both to take on huge risks and responsibility on her own and gets a new job wheeling Bran’s chair around.

‘Bran the Broken’ was definitely the best name they could come up with to describe a disabled character who definitely couldn’t have gone without an epithet (because all the others had to have one, like Cersei the Sassy and Joffrey the Juvenile Delinquent and Tommen the Timid and Dany the Deluded) and who had no other qualities, such as literal super-powers, which could have lent themselves to better ones. Bran the Raven had a ring to it.

I loved the way that the most teased and important plot twist, R+L=J, which they spent ages having characters explain to each other in hushed, important scenes, turned out to be important to the plot in any way. It would have been a bit disappointing if, say, only a handful of characters ever found out about it, or if the whole story could have happened in exactly the same way without it ever having been mentioned (beyond one episode where Jon rides a dragon and crashes it after achieving nothing).

[itsallavengers]

Now I want to know the whole capture the flag story oh my god they are savages and I love them

Everyone blames Clint for starting it, later on, but in reality he was just the one who mentioned it in passing at the breakfast table on the morning of that Fateful Day.

In fact, they hadn’t even been that into the idea. Tony had outright laughed and then just wandered back off to the workshop. Natasha had turned to him and pulled a face of disdain. It had only been Bruce, Thor and Steve who were wholly into the idea. Thought it would be good for ‘team building’.

Oh, how wrong they were.

(Read more under the cut)

“PUT DOWN THE GUN, ROMANOV, OR I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL PUT MY SUIT AROUND YOU AND SET IT TO SELF-DESTRUCT.”

“GIVE ME THE FLAG OR STEVE’S GETTING IT IN THE KNEE!”

“You can’t seriously be…. you’re not actually going to shoot him right?” Bruce asked weakly, standing between them with his hands up, trying to calm both Natasha and Tony, who were facing off in between a red and gold flag Tony had rendered earlier that morning.

Natasha turned to him. “Don’t underestimate me, Banner.”

Tony wiped the cut over his eye and raised the repulsor he’d rigged up. “Clint already fucking tranqued Captain America, Bruce, their team are full of monsters. We need you. We need you to-”

“I’m not hulking out over a pimped up game of tag, now both of you put down your fucking weapons!” Bruce yelled.

Steve chose that moment to headbutt Natasha in the stomach and steal the gun from her hand. Which would’ve been all well and good- but they hadn’t accounted for Thor swinging down off the rafters and punching Steve sqaure in the jaw before running to the flag himself. 

Tony fired a warning shot which may or may not have been slightly above ‘warning shot’ levels. “Touch my flag again, you bastard, and I’ll fry the lot of you,” he dared. From the floor, Steve groaned and raised his hands in a thumbs up gesture of agreement.

Thor removed himself from the wall he had been inserted into by Tony’s ‘warning shot’ and smiled. “Two against one, Iron Man. Barton is on his way. Captain America is down and Bruce will no longer fight for you. You cannot win.”

Tony bared his teeth. “I will go down with this flag, motherfuckers.”

Natasha picked the gun off the floor and pointed it right at his dick. “Wanna risk it, Stark?” She said, other hand stretching out. “Give us the flag.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Give us the flag.”

“Give me your gun.”

“That’s…. that’s so not how this works.”

Tony shrugged, the hand gripping at the flag pole tapping out a staccato rhythm with his fingers. “My house, my rules.”

God. He hoped the new AI he’d designed (after Clint had fucking gone into the servers and put JARVIS to sleep) would work. Because he was going to do something pretty stupid.

“Steve, darling?” He called after another few seconds, “you remember what happened at Central Park, with the football tryouts?”

On the floor, Steve paused his pained rolling. Tony knew he was casting his mind back to when they’d last been at the park, and Steve had gone over to watch some guys playing (some admittedly terrible) football with one another before snapping after thirty seconds and running over in order to give them a lesson in how to effectively tackle someone 

“Riiight through the window,” Tony said, putting a foot behind him and bracing.

It seemed their enemies realised what was happening at the same time Steve did, because as soon as Steve jerked back to his feet, Thor was already reaching out.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which way you looked at it) Steve was faster.

“Tony wHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU D-!” Bruce yelled loudly, the rest of his sentence cut off as suddenly Clint launched into the room and drop-kicked him efficiently.

Tony didn’t have the chance to answer anyway. Too busy being forcefully tackled by Captain America, their precious red and gold flag still clutched in his hand. He felt the air leave his lungs fast, pushed out by the pressure of Steve’s shoulder on his chest, and his feet weren’t even on the floor as Steve just sprinted further and further and further.

“LATER, TEAM CRAP!” He yelled out to them, giving one last wave before Steve pushed them through the window and sent them falling down to the streets below.

Ha. The flag was still theirs. Now all they had to do was survive this bit.

Luckily, the CCTV cameras had caught the pattern he’d been drumming into the pole a few seconds previously and had deployed the suit immediately, because Tony watched it shoot out of the window after them , latching around the bracelets he’d slipped onto Steve’s wrists as they’d been hurtling down the side of the tower. It was a terrible fit- his and Steve’s bodies weren’t exactly similar- but it did the trick, and with a yell of mild panic, Steve hit the repulsors like Tony had taught him and balanced them out in the air, about eight floors from the street. Tony felt the pull as Steve slowed them both down, but didn’t let go of the Flag. Not after all the effort he’d gone through in order to keep hold of it.

Up above, he saw Clint and Natasha peering out of the window after him. “BRUCE JUST HULKED OUT,” Clint cupped his hands and yelled, and then Tony watched both him and Natasha duck as a piano flew out of the window. 

“THAT MEANS WE WIN!” Tony yelled back up.

“WE WILL NEVER SURR-” Another crash, and then a green fist flashed through the window, just for a second, and suddenly Clint was falling out of the hole Tony and Steve had made seconds previously. 

Natasha cocked her head and watched him for a second, before turning back to them. “DO YOU MIND JUST GRABBING HIS ANKLE OR SOMETHING?” She called down.

“The question is, do we actually want to do that?” Tony mused, whilst Steve snorted and flew up to meet the flailing body of their insufferable archer, “also, honey, this might be bad timing, but I’d like to point out that you flying my armour is insanely hot and I would definitely like to explore this in future-”

His voice was drowned out as Clint’s body smashed into him,  and he huffed in annoyance. “Why does he have to interrupt me all the time? Barton, I was discussing important relationship things and you just fucking drop in and-”

“Oh, God, if you’re talking about your stupid armour kink then you can just drop me again,” Clint declared, before making a grab for the flag. Tony screamed, batting him over the head and trying to scramble as far away from Steve’s hold as he was able.

“ENOUGH!” Steve grabbed them both by the collars of their shirts and tore them apart, until both of them were dangling on opposite ends of Steve’s arms. Tony only noted minimal wobble as Steve balanced out on the foot repulsors, too, which meant he was learning- that was always nice to see. “I am calling a ceasefire on this game. Both of you stand down.”

“Steve!” Tony said, betrayed, whilst Clint just made another fruitless grab for the flag.

“I’m being responsible,” Steve said primly, before smiling, “also I’m pretty sure I’m concussed right now. And three of us just fell out of a window. Two went voluntarily. I think it’s time to call it quits.”

Tony folded his arms and then jerked out a leg, aiming for Clint’s shin across Steve’s body. Clint jerked away, and Steve hastened to steady them again, just as Clint reached out an arm and punched Tony in the shoulder, making it go dead. Reflexively, Tony’s grip relaxed on the pole as he winced- only realising his grave mistake as he watched the flag drop don where he couldn’t grab and keep going, down. down down, until-

“Well, that solves that problem,” Steve shrugged, watching the flag as it clattered onto the road and was then crushed brutally by a truck seconds later. He frowned as both Tony, Clint and Natasha from a hundred feet above them, all screamed in horror. 

“Barton, I’m going to ruin your life,” Tony turned to him, “you made me drop my flag and I’m going to ruin your fucking life-”

“Hey, I didn’t know you were that weak, did I-”

“Fuck you, my team still won.”

“No you didn’t!”

Steve gave them both a warning shake, and they went silent, Clint sullenly folding his arms. “As team leader of the Avengers, I declare our team the winners,” he said, before shooting upward, back toward the floor they’d started out on.

Clint yelled in outrage. “Bias! Under what grounds?”

Steve looked to Clint, and then over to Tony. “Well, for one thing, he was the last one to hold onto it.” He paused, and then shrugged. “Also he’s really hot and I’m very easily swayed by him.” 

Before Clint could even gag, Steve chucked him back through the window where Natasha was waiting. Tony grinned down at both of them, wrapping his arms around Steve as they hovered in the air. “Well that was fun, kids,” he said sweetly, as Clint looked around for something to undoubtedly try and shoot them with, “but you heard Cap. Our team won. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to go to hospital.”

“I will murder you in your sleep,” Natasha said bluntly.

“Losers talk!” Tony sung to her as Steve lifted them through the air to a safer distance, aiming for the penthouse.

Below him, he heard a particularly violent Russian curse, but chose to ignore it. He was the bigger man, after all. “Are you actually concussed?” He chose to say instead, turning to Steve.

“Well, Thor hit me very hard.”

“He tends to do that when he gets overexcited.”

“This was a really bad idea.”

“With hindsight, I can see why.”

There was a short silence, and then Steve turned back to him. “Rematch next week?”

Oh, Tony loved him. “Obviously”

[sage-nebula]

I was wondering if you'd deem it plausible to believe that V was more obsessed with the idea of the perfect love and had tried his best to project it on to Rika? Besides the trauma bonding you'd described with such precision, V also had his Freudian excuse of being incredibly guilty of never having returned his mother's love (the one person in his life who'd loved him the most)...Apparently, the VIP book had even claimed that V had loved Rika in a philosophical way?

It’s going to be very hard for anyone to get me to say anything positive about Another Story. That includes justifying Cheritz’s decisions to describe V’s love or relationship with Rika in any way, and also includes their decisions to retcon huge chunks of his backstory in their sloppy effort to construct a plot.

Make no mistake, everything about V’s mother was incredibly heartbreaking, and definitely hit the most poignant emotional notes in V’s Route. Nothing else comes close, not even Saeran’s death. What happened to that woman was horrible and, at the same time, painfully believable given how it was written. You really couldn’t help but feel for her, and in a way I’d argue that the desire to give her a happy ending (even though such a thing was impossible) was even more powerful than the desire to give one to V.

… And it also retconned V’s entire backstory for no reason other than The Drama of it all.

We don’t know much about V’s backstory in Original Story, true. But the little bits that we did learn were retconned by Another Story. In Original Story (in the guidebook specifically, I think) we learn that V has two parents and a sister, both of whom live overseas (or at least his mother and his sister live overseas). Another Story retconned that to say that his mother was dead and that he was, apparently, an only child. They tried to fix this in the book that came with the True Believers package by saying that he has a stepmother and half-sister, and that it was just his biological mother that died in the fire, but that (to me) feels more like a hasty justification so they could fix what their story broke. They punched a hole in the construct of their narrative and then slapped a band-aid over it. Which, okay, whatever, fine. I’d be okay with that if they hadn’t also mangled V’s characterization in the process, as well as spat upon his relationship with Jumin, all for the sake of (as I said before) The Drama of it all.

In Another Story, we’re led to believe that, in his youth, V was very cold, stiff, and pragmatic. He didn’t actually love his mother (or wouldn’t allow himself to love her) because he didn’t know her. Jumin, of all people, had to try to talk him into getting to know her. He had no interest in art whatsoever and instead was only concerned with running his father’s business, and though he did try painting once, he gave it up immediately because he was bad at it. He only really returned to art because of his mother’s death, and even then turned to photography solely because he was too afraid to try painting again after the aforementioned failure. The picture we’re given of V in his childhood and adolescence is one of a professional, somewhat stiff and sarcastic, young man who didn’t really care for art at all … despite the fact that we get this in a chat in Original Story:

In Original Story, we’re told by Jumin that, as a child, V was already partaking in artistic projects such as taking photos of a wall, painting over the wall, and then taking photos of the finished product to compare. In other words, V was interested in painting and photography at the same time, and did them both. Yet, in Another Story, Cheritz wants us to believe that this never happened, and that V’s relation to art exists solely through his tragically fridged mother, and that the only use he had for photography was ~not looking at the world directly~ and ~running away from his painting failure~.

What is the truth, Cheritz?

The truth is that Cheritz, apparently, didn’t believe that V’s story was tragic enough. They didn’t believe that it was tragic enough that he genuinely fell in love with Rika, that she was abusive to him, and that it took eight years (as of the Another Story timeline) and a lot of help for him to be able to extricate himself from that relationship. As such, they retconned his parental history, his artistic history, and his personality in his youth. It’s the same thing they did with Saeran, in a way; they took what was previously a believable, well-written, sympathetic character, and ruined it in order to suit their needs for a terribly written, garbage AU. Only whereas Saeran was twisted into caricatures, V was tossed into the Angst Bucket and twisted OoC in flashbacks to his youth. (While at the same time having his relationship with Jumin rather spat upon, because what, you’re telling me Jumin didn’t love V? And that V didn’t love Jumin? Give me a break. I’m not saying you have to ship them romantically, but there was a lot of platonic love between the two, and to say that V never understood what love was outside of how his mother loved him until he met MC and her magic vagina is just goddamn ridiculous.) 

I’m sorry, but you’ll be hardpressed to get me to say very many nice things about Another Story. I’m in the minority camp that wishes Cheritz had never made it. I understand why they did, I know that the allure of money was strong, but they did an absolutely terrible job. I didn’t like V’s Route, I know I wouldn’t like Saeran’s Route after reading all the spoilers, and when Rika’s Route is inevitably created and released, I won’t like that, either. They should have just left the routes at the original five (or included a route for V in Deep Story, because it would have been incredibly easy to do) and moved on to a new game. It’s a shame that Mystic Messenger’s popularity doesn’t seem to have allowed them to do that.

(To answer your question more directly: Not really, no. I do think that V tried to cure Rika’s mental illness by loving it away, as many abuse victims do, but as it always happens in real life, that didn’t work. Unfortunately, the message never fully sank in that it wouldn’t work, so V kept trying. But that’s not the same thing, and part of me suspects that the reason why Cheritz tried to retcon / rephrase what V was doing in their “explanations” in Another Story is so that they could justify MC healing Saeran and eventually Rika through the Power of Love™ while still having V fail. It’s gross, but after Saeran’s Route, it’s what I’d expect at this point.)

[criminalmastermine]

So, fun (not fun at all) fact:

*TRIGGER WARNING*

(also probably nothing you want to read so...)

Yesterday, even though it's not written anywhere and by government and general medical staff is not official... I've become disabled.

I never wanted this to happen to me. I bet no one lays on their bed and think: "oh, wouldn't it be cool if tomorrow I go to my doc's and he tells me: hun, you're disabled."

This conversation I was having with him was already going terribly wrong because... There's honestly a lot of fucked up things going on whenever I have to go see this particular doctor.

This doctor is my psychiatrist. We've been seeing each other for 3 years and a half. Previously, he saw my mom, when she was alive and treated her to his best. I requested my mom's medical records because... Oh well, it just looks to me I'm losing it the same way she did but faster. I got denied, clearly. Med records are BS and gosh the bureaucracy you have to go to get a sheet of paper is really a pain in the ass.

My mum died 3 years and a half ago. This is no one's business so, I'm just ranting because... Idk. Keeping it on my chest just fucking hurts. It was very sudden. She told all the doctors, the nurses, the auxiliaries, my father and family not to disclose a single word about what was going on. She was at the hospital for 17 days and I found out she was dying 2 days before she did. I never even got to say goodbye. So of course, my already existing depression got worse and I went through loss and had to verbally abuse my family doctor into getting me a psychiatrist because my family doctor didn't think I needed one.

Before that I had struggled for years on end with depression. I tried to commit suicide several times and almost succeeded twice. I was medically dead for maybe like a minute before they brought me back. But of course, because depression is not considered a real illness among my family members (even my mum who had suffered from it turned a blind eye) and the society I live in, everything just got ruled out as a mistake.

A fucking mistake.

I found early on that hurting myself was a shameful but useful way to take my mental pain away and cover it by physical one. So as an 11 year old pre-teen/child I scratched the living shit out of myself and blamed the dog or my clumsiness on it and, even if no one believed it, they nodded their heads. And that's honestly part of what I wanted. I didn't want people to find out I self-harmed myself, that I was depressed or that life was meaningless to me as whole most of the time, because I knew it would pain people around me and gosh, maybe it's because I'm a Pisces, or really empathic. Or maybe just plain stupid. I thought lying to them and myself was the best thing to do. Was I wrong.

There was a side of me that craved constantly that someone would notice that I wasn't okay and they would explain to me why that happened to me or how I could make it stop or whatever. I just... Didn't want people to know I did all that shit to myself.

So I kept all my emotions bottled. I saw people suffer around me and voicing it. I saw how those people got attention from teachers and family and friends and they treated them with cottons. And I didn't want that. I didn't want a different treatment. I didn't want people to pity me. I just wanted someone to tell me how to make it stop. And since I knew no one would be able to explain it to me without me having to talk about every single thing in my life that hurt me... I kept my mouth shut. I kept it shut for so many years that when it came the time to voice them, nothing came out.

I used sarcasm to cover my pain when I talked about thing that hurt me because I was on therapy and I had to talk about what hurt me. And I talked about it like I was a third person seeing a little girl's life get ruined over and over again. And then, my therapist told me she had patients that needed help more than I did. With a single sentence she invalidated all my pain. She invalidated a year of me trying to open up for the first time in 20 years. And I had a breakdown. Had to be stopped by nurses, was sent to my psychiatrist. Was sent to a mental hospital and my friends thought I was a weirdo. I isolated myself and no one cared. No one reached out. And I focused myself on writing and living through social media and good feeling dramas to pretend I wasn't damaged.

But it never worked. And I had be admitted again and again in the hospital. I tried all the pills, I took them all without a single complain because I just wanted to be normal, to lead a normal life.

I enrolled in school and I got kicked because I couldn't get out of bed. I was either too depressed or too drugged to live a normal life. And I got invalidated again. And I got scared, that this would happen to me for the rest of my life.

On the several times I stayed at the mental hospital I saw all kinds of people. I saw people so kind and non judgemental, people that understood me. But they weren't nurses nor doctors. They were patients. People much older than me, people that could have been my mum or my grandma, that saw a little broken girl and showed more care than people that have been with me for years.

And I got kicked from the mental hospital too. Because I used sarcasm. Because I smiled. Because I was kind. Because I was trying to live a normal life. Because they all said the same shit since I could understand the words: "you're highly intelligent, you could do better than this, you can stop this". But wouldn't I made it stop if I could?

And life got worse and then better and worse again. And I smiled, I laughed and talked. And people never saw the ugly, depressed side of me. Because I chose not to show it. Because I didn't want to hurt them by showing them it.

And then yesterday, after 3 years and a half of constant pills, treatments, admissions, opening the bottle that spilled my emotions evenly. I finally broke.

I used sarcasm. And my psychiatrist said to me: "You are so intelligent and have learned to hide things so well... You talk about your problems in a joking manner. That's why people who haven't seen you the way I've seen you behind this closed door can't see the pain you're going through. At this point, there's nothing much else I can do for you. I'm a doctor, I give people medicine to help them boost so they can continue working. But no matter what I give you, there's something stopping you and I can't do anything with my methods anymore but keep you drugged and sleepy so you don't hurt yourself. You are afraid of studying or working because they've kicked you out. There's places you could try to go to. Places where with your disability they would understand if you couldn't make it a day."

And the world stopped for me.

What did he mean by "disabled"?

People at the mental hospital, younger people, craved that title. So they could free themselves from many things. So they could get stability without having to apologise for what they couldn't do. They wanted to be disabled mentally so they had an excuse.

But I don't. I've only wanted to move on, heal and get to where I could get because of my own merits. And now it's not possible because I carry a title that will have people look at me in a different light. And no one knows what went inside those walls. I don't want it to happen. But it's there. It's true. I can't change it.

Someone finally admitted what I knew but didn't want to admit seriously because I was and am scared. I'm broken. And I will never be fixed. And even if I got fixed, I would never be the same.

There's two only treatments available for me. Imagine your average psychiatric ward from 1930's and their inhumane treatments. That's the only medical choice I have left. And they can't warrantee it will meld the broken pieces.

Is this the only thing left in my life? A fake smile, electroshock and inner pain? Is that all you can see in my eyes?

So what if I'm broken? Haven't I been for a long time? Am I not the same as I was before? Why are they looking at me differently?

Why can't I see myself in the mirror as I was anymore?

[jasoningram]

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[the-bounce-back]

I FEEL GOOD, SOMETIMES I DON’T

I should probably start by saying that this post will be very different from what I’ve previously shared on here.

In all honesty, I was unsure if I should even post this at all. When I started this blog, my vision for it was that it was going to be a hub for infinite good vibes, positive energy and empowerment for myself and whoever ended up reading it to combat and eventually overcome depression, anxiety, emotionally harmful thoughts and so on. But I’m realising now that I’ve made a bit of a mistake in my approach.

So far, I’ve been writing about aspects of my mental health that I’ve already overcome, accepted and healed from - hence why I’ve been able to write my advice with so much self-assurance and positivity. Writing about things within my comfort zone and knowing that my learning from my experiences has helped people has undeniably made me feel really great lately. However - behind the scenes, to put it dramatically and in true Liv style - the past couple weeks have been really, really sh*t for me.

It’s hard for me to even write this, because it forces me to acknowledge that things really aren’t okay right now. I kept convincing myself that I shouldn’t put it on here, because it really goes against the light and fun tone I’ve been able to maintain from the start. But after much thought, I remembered something very important:

As much as I wish that the positivity and self-confidence I’ve been feeling for the past couple months could magically erase the years of mental health issues, it just doesn’t add up or make sense. Of course there will be be bad days, slumps, insecurities and irrational thoughts from time to time that manage to rear their ugly heads - it’s a part of the healing process. It makes perfect logical sense, because it’s how we overcome these times that end up proving how strong and resilient we have become.

I say that, like I haven’t been in denial that a slump has been looming for a while now. I’ve been so obsessed with this happiness and positivity that I’ve been feeling, that I’ve literally forced myself to ignore the huge red flags that everything was going to go to sh*t very soon. I tried to rationalise that the feeling of unease in my stomach was due to the novelty of moving and securing this job has begun to wear off, and that text book near-panic attacks were just due to me being tIrEd or hUnGrY.

I’ve decided to write about this, because I also want to normalise the hard and sh*t parts of healing. I want people to know that having bad days is okay, not being a ray of f*cking sunshine all the time is okay, having meltdowns is okay, that not feeling okay is okay - as cringe as that may sound. I also want to show that not having all the answers all the time, winging it and having a well deserved whine and moan is fine, too - and that’s essentially what this post is going to be about. I need to f*cking vent.

These past couple of weeks have been hell for me, to put it lightly, and as earlier mentioned, I chose to ignore every single sign that a slump was pending. When I’d come home from work with a gnawing feeling in my stomach that something bad was going to happen, I’d just binge eat a bunch of junk food and then go to sleep so I didn’t have to think. Whenever I’d be dangerously close to realising that the happiness I’ve been feeling is slowly but surely crumbling, I’d find myself forcing myself to banter and laugh about the whole situation so that I could mask how shit I was feeling about myself. And when I had two separate anxiety-attacks - which I haven’t had in ages - I forced myself to make light of them and make jokes.

Honestly. I feel like such an idiot for not taking them seriously. The first one was me waking up at my mates house after her birthday party with an insanely high heart rate and in a cold sweat. I was the only one awake at the time and I was actually really scared of dealing with it alone, so I ended up leaving. I later made light of it by saying that it was probably just because I was still drunk, that I’m a drama queen and that I was definitely feeling better after sleeping in my own bed.

The second one happened literally a couple days later. I blacked out and almost fainted on my commute into work. I‘ve experienced lightheadedness and dizziness before, but this was definitely different. My vision was blurry, I was seeing black dots around me, the music I was listening to kind of faded out and sounded muffled - like I was underwater - and my legs were shaking like mad. If I hadn’t had something to cling very tightly to, I’m very convinced that I would’ve passed out and fallen. I still can’t remember how I managed to stumble off the train at the right stop, but when I finally got some fresh air and my senses stabilised, I noticed how much of a cold sweat I was in.

Most normal people would’ve realised that they needed a time out at this point, but not I - I was forcing myself to believe that I was still happy, that everything was okay, that I just needed to ensure that I got a good night's sleep and eat something. I only told my housemate, my sister and my mum what had happened, made jokes about not wanting to go on WebMD because it’d tell me my brain is hemorrhaging… and then went about my day.

Right now I’m really torn, because I really want to internally punch myself up for not listening to my body...but at the same time I’m trying to be kInDeR tO mYsElF and fOrGiVe MySeLf for not following my own advice. Who even am I?

With all jokes aside and the background for this post out of the way, let me get very real.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been having this feeling of unease for a while now. This is a classic sign of anxiety - feeling that since things are seemingly too good to be true, something terrible must be coming up to ruin the peace. Since I know that when I usually feel like this it’s just down to irrational thinking, I kept suppressing the feeling and convincing myself that I was gucci.

Only this time, the feeling was real. I received some potentially life-changing news last week, that really rattled me to my core. I don’t even want to share what it is at this point, because I’m worried that discussing it openly on here will manifest it more than I already have by telling the few people I trust. All you as a reader needs to know is that it was heartbreaking and very illusion-shattering, and it definitely pushed me over the edge that I had no idea I was so close to.

The interesting thing about receiving bad news is that the way you take it onboard says a lot about your mental state. If you’re in a good place mentally - much like I was a couple weeks ago - chances are that you’ll be able to deal with it in a healthy manner and feel very assured that things will turn out fine, at least after the initial shock. But unfortunately, since I’ve spent the past couple of weeks convinced that something bad is going to happen, it’s really just sent me in this massive downward spiral.

When I get sad - like, really, really sad - my usual composed and collected self goes out of the window and my mind goes down a very irrational and self-deprecating path. My first thought when I heard the bad news was that it was my fault - I felt like I had literally spoken and willed it into existence, and blamed myself. Of course, it’s easy for me to see the irrationality of this feeling as I’m writing about it within a short window of sanity before the next emotional downswing comes. But when I let myself just be sad, I really and truly blame myself, and I don’t even know how to stop it.

The problem with me is that I struggle a lot with separating different things going on in my mind when I’m feeling like sh*t. I can never be in my feelings about one isolated thing - once the waterworks start, I really just feel sad about everything until I feel like there’s literally no point to my life anymore, and I start contemplating whether this life really and truly is even worth all this stress. The phrase “when it rains, it pours” is even an understatement, because why am I being attacked by this storm from a million different directions?

The maddest thing is that I feel like I deserve it, even though it literally makes no sense. I find myself thinking that this sh*t is all happening because I’ve made such a big deal out of putting my own mental and emotional wellbeing above my own family and friends - and now I’m being punished for it. I’m not entirely sure how or why this concept that I’m being punished has even manifested itself in my mind, but lately it’s really been taking over and literally poisoned my thoughts.

It’s my own fault that my relationship that my family is strained - I was the one who decided to move away.

My family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances don’t really care about me, or particularly like me for that matter - they just tolerate me because I’m there. It wouldn’t make any difference to them if I lived or died.

The pride, confidence and success I’ve been feeling careerwise lately is going to come crashing down any second now, because I don’t even really have the brains or resilience to make it like that. I’m an imposter, and people will soon realise it.

The immense loneliness I feel from time to time is there because deep down I know that the people I deem important in my life only see me as a background character in theirs.

I’m putting up a front that the failure of my last relationship it was all for the best and that I learned and grew from it, but deep down I know I’ll probably never fully be ok again. And even if I was to, I’d never be capable of loving them back because I’ve become too emotionally apathetic to feel anything for anyone again.

This confidence in my beauty that I’ve been feeling lately is all a scam. Deep down I know that I’m hideous, and no amount of healthy eating, working out, positive affirmations or glowing up will ever be capable of changing that.

...you get the point. It was actually really hard to type those out - as mentioned earlier in my blog, putting words to feelings you usually keep buried inside is genuinely traumatising. The thing is, when I read back what I’ve written when I’m in a good frame of mind I know it’s all rubbish. I know that my family and friends are proud of me and my success. I know that I matter. I know that the loneliness is my head messing with me and unresolved issues, because I’m surrounded by amazing friends. I know that when the time is right and I’m emotionally ready, I’ll settle down with someone on my wavelength that actually deserves me. I know that I’m very beautiful.

But the power of the mind really is a force to be reckoned with. It’s terrifying. It really has me thinking so irrationally and doubting my own knowledge, and it’s so emotionally draining. Furthermore, it convinces me that I’m the only person in the world feeling like this, that I’m some sort of emotional outcast that’s carrying this huge burden in secret. I literally feel like I can’t tell anyone how I truly feel anymore because - even though I preach about being unapologetic about feelings - I’m terrified that I’ll be judged, thought to be overdramatic or labelled as attention-seeking.

I think the horrible and most frustrating part of this whole slump business is the three states of mind I differentiate between until it passes. I’m either balanced, really f*cking numb or really f*cking sad.

The balanced part - not to be confused with actually being content - is the state of mind that I force myself to be in when I’m at work or need to interact with people and feel relatively normal. People don’t even know - or care - enough to see that I’m constantly having to fight myself to not be affected by anything that could trigger the other two mindstates.

The sadness that takes over from time to time is the hardest to deal with because it’s so unpredictable. I’ll just be going about my day at work, sitting on the bus, hanging out with friends, watching a movie alone when I suddenly just feel tears coming. Most of the time I don’t even know why it’s coming because it seemingly doesn’t even have a trigger. All I know is that it’s really f*cking hard to keep the tears back, and if I let the tears come I know it will go on for a really long time.

The third and final one - the numbness - is definitely the most scary one of the three simply because it’s so out of character for me. I’ve been a quite sensitive person my entire life - as in no stranger to crying and getting in my feelings - so when these feelings began to emerge I was worried that there was something wrong with me or that I had snapped. Well, I would’ve been worried if I had been capable of feeling it at the time. As someone that’s used to crying whenever things get hard, suddenly feeling numb, empty and unbothered by all the sh*t that’s going on is a massive red flag. The first time I felt it - in conjunction with ending things with my ex - my therapist theorised that it was my brains way of protecting and repairing itself from the overwhelming amount of sadness I had been feeling. I’m no neurologist so I don’t know if this is correct - but it would make sense if that was the case. The numbness, apathy and lack of emotion was a blessing at first, but I soon noticed that it actually makes me not even give a f*ck about my family, friends, job, body or health either - which simply isn’t me. In the long run, the lack of emotion really ended up taking a toll on my health. I was drinking very excessively at this point in time and tried other substances that I know for a fact I wouldn’t have dreamt of trying otherwise - simply because I didn’t care if I lived or died anymore.

Luckily my periods of numbness aren’t as bad as that anymore. I’d like to think that it’s because I have become more resilient and mentally strong since then, but I’m not even sure anymore. All I know is that when I lie in bed at night and try to allow myself to cry to let out all the pent up emotions, the tears don’t even come. That’s how I know that something is very wrong.

Whenever I feel myself slipping into this rotation of mindstates, I desperately try to find a way to get out of it because I’m scared of how long it is going to last this time. You might as well call me Solange, because I literally try to work, laugh, sex, joke, eat, drink, shop, clean, read, cry, sleep, pray, ignore and - as you can see - write it away. Sometimes I’m able to distract myself for brief periods of time, but as soon as the good feeling wears off I’m just back to feeling like sh*t again. I’m scared now that all the positivity that I’ve been feeling in conjunction with moving and starting a new job is beginning to wear off, and that going back to constantly having this underlying sense of sadness and loneliness will fully take over my life again.

Unfortunately, only time will tell. And much like Solange implies, I can’t keep trying to avoid confronting my problems.  I’m just going to have to ride this sh*t out, hope for the best and force myself to stay positive, even though it all feels really hopeless right now. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to revisit this post and share the lessons and solutions I’ve been able to devise by going through it - after all, that’s what I’ve been doing in my previous posts. But I don’t know when that will be.

I could go on writing about this forever, but my mind tends to go around in circles when I feel like this and I feel like I’d just be repeating myself. Although the purpose of this post was for me to have an outlet for my emotions before I ended up snapping and going full on Mrs. Hyde, I hope that me sharing how I’ve been feeling can let whoever might be going through a similar period know that they aren’t alone, regardless of how lonely and alienated the sadness makes them feel.

I want to round up this post with a short list of tips for whoever can relate to this post, on how I personally try to make these episodes at least slightly easier to deal with (Because is it even a Bounce Back post if it doesn’t have tips in bullet points? I don’t think so):

Time your productivity with your emotional upswings.

If you’re anything like me, the particularly bad feelings come and go in waves. When you can feel that you’re in a good-ish state of mind, make sure you address all your responsibilities, chores and other things you need to do. Don’t worry too much about the amount of extra time it ends up taking - taking slightly longer on a task is much better than doing it when you’re in a sh*t mood and would honestly just want to off yourself. For reference, it’s taken me two weeks to write this blog post just because I didn’t want to write it while being miserable - because I knew it wouldn’t be very helpful, would make me feel worse and probably wouldn’t make much sense.

Don’t neglect yourself.

Luckily I have a full time job now that doesn’t allow me to fall into patterns of self-neglect anymore. But if I didn’t, I’m positive that I’d just be in bed taking depression naps, netflixing, ignoring everyone and either overeating or not eating at all. In fact, that’s literally me on weekends when I don’t have plans. Not healthy or helpful at all, in other words.

A shower (or even better...a bubble bath), brushing your teeth, leaving your room, eXeRcIsE, fresh air and a cheeky cuppa really does do wonders in terms of mood-lifting. I promise that giving yourself that extra push to do at least 3 of those things will make you at least feel like you’ve done something with your day so you don’t have to be so hard on yourself for being a lazy sh*t.

Keep your living space clean (!!!)

Fun fact - I may or may not have burst into tears after coming home from work the other day and seeing that there was a whole lot of sh*t on my unmade bed and on the floor. On my good days I’m usually a bit (a lot) of a neat freak, so when my living space is disgusting it really just is a reflection and a brutal reminder of how bad my state of mind is. Of course, I had no one but myself to blame for the mess but it really ended up being the last drop that sent me over the edge.

If you at the very least make sure your floor, bed and other areas you know you’re going to want to wallow in self pity in later on are tidy, it really does make a huge difference. One less thing to have a meltdown over; we stan.

Force yourself to believe that it will pass.

This is really difficult when you literally feel like you want to play in traffic. But try your best to remember other times in the past where you felt like your life was falling apart and appreciate that the lessons you learnt from that have made you slightly more resilient this time around, even though it may not feel so.

For example - regardless of how terrible I feel right now, I remember times when I couldn’t even brave leaving my bed to go to uni or work...and that was for a lot less bullsh*t than what I’m going through now. Furthermore, the more of these episodes I have, the easier it is to convince myself that it will, in fact, pass. It always does. You just have to ride it out.

Don’t isolate yourself.

I thought I’d finish with the one that’s the most challenging (for me). I’m naturally a bit of a loner - always have been. Going to other people to talk about how much I’m struggling has never come naturally for me - it’s not really until my adult life that I’ve learnt to understand the importance and benefits of talking to others. Furthermore, when my brain tells me that my family and friends don’t even f*ck with me like that, it really is a huge challenge to overcome that feeling of insecurity and reach out to the people that supposedly hAtE mE. I’d rather just stay in bed and protect my feelings by just being alone and then cry about feeling lonely. Make it make sense, please.

Of course, this is far from healthy and it is imperative to learn how to break away from this pattern of thinking. Nowadays I force myself to leave my room and annoy my housemate, force myself to grace my friends with my comedic abilities so I can at least try to have a laugh, and force myself to reach out to family members that I’ve managed to convince myself don’t really want to talk to me.

It really does make a massive difference and I promise you that you will be positively surprised. It really makes you remember that it’s all in your head and makes you more able to disregard the feelings when they come and try to attack you.

Whew enfant. I definitely feel better now. Apologies in advance for the rambling and the probable confusion, but to be honest no one really forced you to read it. I don’t really know how to end a post like this, so I’ll just finish up by reminding whoever needs to hear it (including myself) that these feelings are normal and will pass, as well as that feeling like this doesn’t imply weakness or a lessening of worth.

Keep telling yourself that until you believe it.

In the meantime, I’m going to try my best to keep my head above water and keep dishing out posts about how to get through times like this. Fear not, I still have loads of ideas that I want to share - and I’m not letting a sh*tty couple weeks ruin the good thing I’ve started.

Love,

Liv

[squisherific]

Worth The Wait

Rating: T

Summary: The war is over. Gray is on his bed, and Juvia is in his bathroom. Will she ever come out? This is a terrible description. Gray x Juvia. Gruvia. 

Read on FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12429437/1/Worth-The-Wait

A/N: For Gruvia Week. This isn’t technically based on any prompt, because I’m a rebel, or I should say, because I’ve had this headcanon for a while, and I’m too lazy to try and make it fit a specific prompt, but I guess passion may fit the best, so enjoy lol. ^__^

A couple of weeks had gone by since the great war against Zeref’s army and Acnologia had ended. Things were slowly but surely falling back into place. Magnolia and several of the neighboring towns, which had suffered the greatest damage from the battles fought on their grounds, were being rebuilt stone by stone and brick by brick.

Many of the mage guilds had pitched in with the repairs, including the mages from areas thankfully untouched by the terrors of battle. Gray supposed the hard work was made quite a bit easier by the fact that they were all being treated like heroes by the locals. It was a desperate battle among mages, dragon slayers, demons, demon slayers, and even dragons, but it was the regular townspeople that usually paid the highest prices during times of war. Homes were lost, families separated, towns decimated, and casualties numbered in the thousands. And those elements were just the most visible consequences currently being dealt with. However, the emotional and mental trauma was yet another enemy left behind for those survivors to keep on fighting even when the magical threats had ceased to be.

That was war, and that was what Gray Fullbuster himself had only nearly just survived. In fact, technically, he hadn’t survived at all. He had died. He knew he had, because he had done it to himself. When he had forced that ice blade through his abdomen, the point of the sword feeling adversely hot as it pierced his body, he was sure that those were to be his final moments on Earthland. And yet, here he was two weeks later, his house in mid-repair and expansion, while the source of his survival had currently, and seemingly made camp in his bathroom.

How had he gotten to this point? Well, it was kind of a long story. But, as Gray lay bare-chested on his bed, the lights dimmed in what Gray felt was an inviting way, and his room looking unusually tidy, he certainly had time to mull it all over as he heard another mysterious object clatter to his bathroom floor. He frowned, and sighed and thought.

During the war, he had a few close calls. Enemies tougher beyond any he had previously faced were hell bent on destroying not just him, but everything he held dear in his life. Not being a stranger to loss was an understatement where Gray was concerned. If not for Fairy Tail, loss would be more familiar to him than most any other experience in his life. Yet during the war Fairy Tail, too, was something he almost lost, and it would have been his own fault had it happened.

Gray had done something which he had felt was unforgivable. He had sought to fight and kill one of the most important people in his life, his best friend Natsu. You could argue he hadn’t been in his right mind. You could argue that circumstances made his actions understandable, and perhaps even justified in a way. But Gray knew better. He had acted rashly and wrongly. And he had almost ruined one of the bonds he had held most dear, and he was determined to pay for that grievous error with his life.

Gray felt in that moment, when standing in front of Zeref, and after having heard what Happy had said about Natsu’s life being in jeopardy, that if he could just stop Zeref, no matter the cost to himself, then he could have peace. He didn’t need anything or anyone else at that point. Too much had gone wrong. He had made too many mistakes along the way. He had hurt too many people. And too many people had been hurt for, and because of him. It was his last resort. It was what he had been preparing for. Should the worst happen, he always had Lost Iced Shell.

A lost attribute spell was one of the most difficult and dangerous types of magics one could use, for implementing such a technique usually came with a hefty price. He hadn’t wanted to use it. How many times had he been on the brink of casting Iced Shell in the past, and been saved by others, or stopped in mid-cast when he remembered what it would cost his friends were he to die? No, he didn’t want anyone else to cry over him. But that was the beauty of the Lost attribute. He had found a way to remove that unpleasant side effect when leaving his life behind as ice. This way would be a clean escape. And that was the core problem. It was an escape.

But thankfully, that course of events never came to be, for that precious friend stepped into things once again, and reminded him what it was to be a part of Fairy Tail. They were a family, and running away from life, no matter the reasons behind it, wasn’t the answer. And every day since the war concluded, he had never been more grateful to still be alive.

And yet, the reason Gray had attacked Natsu, the reason he had decimated Zeref’s right-hand man Invel, the reason he had learned lost iced shell, the reason his mind had been so muddled, the reason his heart had been so pained, the reason he had pierced his body with his own ice blade, the reason he had survived it, the reason he was so glad to still be alive, and the reason he was now currently so infuriatingly nervous were all tied up with the same person. And that person had now been in the bathroom for the last half hour.

Had it really been a half hour? Gray checked the clock hanging from his bedroom wall again, and then with a sigh, lay back down on his pillow, hands folded behind his head. Was she sick? Should he check on her? She was carrying an awfully big bag when she had gone in there. Was this normal? He had lived with her for six months, but he never remembered her taking this long to get ready for bed. Then again, it was never his bed she was getting ready for.

Gray didn’t know what to do with himself. Why had he done this? Inviting her to spend the night was a ridiculous idea. Why did he think things would progress naturally? When has anything ever progressed naturally between them? No matter how much he tried to control the direction their relationship went in, she always managed to veer him off course, and tonight seemed no different.

Gray had promised her an answer. That’s how this new section of their life had truly begun. He had broached the subject. He was thinking towards the future. He had wanted to live, and he had wanted it to be with her. He needed it to be with her. But for a short while, which had felt like an agonizing eternity, she had not lived. She had died in his arms. No actions he took, nor any amount of pleading had coaxed her into opening her eyes again. He was convinced that the person he had to protect at all costs, was beyond his reach. He had been too weak again. And he had paid the highest of prices. But she had succeeded where he had failed. She had saved him. Why couldn’t he do the same for her? His emotions that followed that moment, holding her limp body in his arms, were things that still haunted him in his dreams.

He had so many regrets. He felt like he had done so many things wrong. And when he was sure this loss was the one to break him - when he had tossed everything else away in his rage and his grief, she had done the unthinkable yet again, and had come back. She had lived, and his future, that one he wanted so badly to protect, was again back in motion.

Should he tell her he was about to toss that future to the winds again in order to cast lost iced shell? Should she know he was about to erase her memories of him forever, in his clumsy attempt of making amends? Should she know that in that moment as he faced Zeref he had forsaken all plans of giving her that answer, in order to truly save her and all of his other loved ones the way he believed he should have done from the start? Would she be angry? Was she ever really angry with him? He wasn’t sure, not of any of it. But he told her anyway. And she had listened, even when she had already forgiven him for all of it before he had ever uttered a single word. Because that’s how she was. She understood, she always understood.

Another odd noise rang from the bathroom. Was it a hair dryer? Had she taken a shower? Is that why she was taking so long? Forty five minutes as he checked the clock again. He looked to the side of his small bed. Had it always been this small? Could they both even fit on it?

Gray recalled her squeezing in next to him once during those six months when they had lived together. That bed had been really small, too. Yet she had managed to join him in it without him noticing. How long had she had been there before he had woken up to fine her nestled into him like that? That had unnerved him. Not because he had disliked it. No, quite the opposite, and that was the problem,. He was not ready to take the relationship in that direction yet. He still had so many things left to do. But, she had again steered their ship off course, and he needed to right it immediately, or he would be in very dangerous waters indeed. But now, Gray was ready to finally take that next step, and explore the uncharted territory, because the other destinations had already been settled.

When the fighting had ended, and everyone and everything seemed to be taking a much needed intermission, Gray had pulled her aside so he could talk to her privately. That’s when he had confessed to all he had attempted to do, all he had regretted, all he had wished for, and all that he had felt, and especially for her. He didn’t know why he had been so especially scared when telling her things that he not only long since felt, but things that she likely long since knew. Originally, the conversation was supposed to be about him accepting her feelings, but things had now turned into him wanting her to accept his. Was there ever a chance she’d push him away, or deny him that happiness? Of course not. That’s partly why he loved her. But it was a relief that they were no longer just thoughts, feelings or actions, but now also words that she could be sure existed in his heart.

Gray’s mind wandered back to the bed. When she had slipped into his the last time, he knew she just wanted to be near him. She told him as much, and he had believed her. And that was partly what worried him now as the clock neared midnight. Is it possible she misunderstood something about his invitation that evening? Surely not. But she was so unpredictable. Sometimes she seemed miles ahead of him in her desires, and at other times, she seemed naively behind.

The problem was, Gray didn’t quite know where he and Juvia stood at the moment. They were in this weird limbo of a new relationship, but they seemed emotionally so far past that point, that it was unfair to classify it as such. They used to live together, and Gray wanted to live together again. That’s why he was expanding his house. So, there would be room not just for Juvia, but hopefully, for whatever life blessed them with in the future.

They had been spending much more time together since the war ended. Gray had hinted at the reasons for expanding his home. He even had a ring stashed away, waiting for the right moment. And as far as their physical relationship went, kissing had become an incredibly frequent occurrence. They had done a few other things as well, when they could catch some time alone in between rebuilding Magnolia. All those things were wonderful things. Gray wanted more of them. But nothing had really been discussed.

So, when Gray told Juvia to come over that evening, and she offered to bring dinner, Gray had advised her to bring an overnight bag as well, with some essentials, in case she got “tired” and wanted to spend the night.

Juvia had looked confused for a split second, but then Gray thought he saw that look of dawning comprehension hit her. He knew he saw her flush. He knew he was a bit flushed himself. When Juvia came by earlier that night, it didn’t look like she was spending the night, her overpacked baggage was more like she intended to stay the month. Dinner had been hurried and awkward. Gray was nervous, Juvia was doubly so from what he could tell. He had lost count of how many forks she had dropped. Was this really the same girl who had so casually snuck into his bed once before?

And that’s why Gray was worried. This was not the first time Juvia spoke a big game, but when things started actually happening, she became surprisingly oblivious and shy, but endearingly so, too. Because that meant Gray was able to take the lead, and that’s how he liked it. When they had finished dinner, they dawdled some time away chatting while washing and drying the dishes together. And then there was nothing left to do but get ready for bed. They had both had a very long day of working on repairs to the guild, but Gray knew sleep was the last thing on either of their minds. Juvia insisted Gray use the bathroom first, and now, as the clock had long passed midnight, his bladder dearly thanked her for that kindness. He didn’t think he would have lasted until now if not for that.

But he really was getting very fretful. Having all this time to think things through was playing havoc with his emotions. He had assumed Juvia knew what was insinuated by his invitation tonight. But what if he was wrong? What if she finally got out of the bathroom after whatever mysterious ritual she was currently performing, and headed for the couch instead? He would be completely mortified. And if she wasn’t ready for this next step, he didn’t want to force her. Maybe he shouldn’t even be on the bed. Maybe he should take a spot on the floor instead. Why was he jumping to the conclusion that they were going to sleep together? He hadn’t even outright asked her.

This is so frustrating! And what on earth is taking her so long?!

Gray wanted to pull his hair out. He wanted to scream into his pillow. He wanted to pace the room until he wore a hole into the wooden floor. Because he was tired of waiting. Not just tonight, but ever since she had crawled into his bed all those months ago. Ever since she had first moved into his home after Fairy Tail disbanded. Ever since he had cried into her chest and she consoled him on that snowy hill. Ever since she first called him Gray-sama. Ever since he accidentally grabbed something he shouldn’t have on that rainy day when he met her. Because this urge wasn’t born from love, but love had grown to strongly accompany it, which had made the desire so much more unbearable.

Gray heard another clatter of something on his bathroom tiles. He had, had enough of waiting. He sprung from the bed, and hurried towards the door. Without knocking, he found the door surprisingly unlocked. The view that met his eyes was strange in a multitude of ways.

Juvia was bent over in a compromising position made even worse by the fact that she was wearing a very skimpy piece of underwear indeed, with a blue, practically transparent frilly thing draped over it. Her arms were attempting to grab a big pile of other frilly and delicate pieces of lingerie that looked to have fallen from their precarious place on the side of the tub into the tub. There were haircare and makeup products and tools strewn all over his tiny bathroom sink and on the floor along with several magazines, one of which Gray could see was open to a page with the headline, “7 Quick Tips To The Most Beautiful You.”

Quick, huh?, Gray thought ruefully to himself.

Juvia, clearly not having heard Gray open the door, jumped at the sound of his voice as he said her name, and sent the delicate pieces of underwear scattering back into the thankfully dry tub. She swiftly turned around, her eyes wide in dismay. Gray got a look at her front this time, which was not that much more covered than the back. Her breasts were spilling out of her bra, which was also layered with the slinky baby doll, and her hair was meticulously curled. Gray could tell that even her face had been done up with God knew how many layers of makeup judging by the amount of products behind her, but in that odd way where it looked as if she wasn’t wearing much at all. She looked gorgeous, but this is preparation he’d expect for a grand ball, not his house, although, granted, her outfit wasn’t really appropriate for the general public. What was she up to?

“Gray-sama! Did you need to use the bathroom again? Juvia can get these things out of the way,“ she said hurriedly, and she began to bend over again to move her items to make space for him.

“No, I don’t need to use anything,” he said, and before he could ask anything else, Juvia, still looking quite frazzled, began bombarding him with questions.

“Oh good,” she sighed in relief, “well, as long as Gray-sama is here, which does he prefer, this blue,” she said, holding her arms wide so Gray could get a good look at her negligee, “or perhaps this black one,” she said holding another slinky piece of lingerie up in front of her, “or maybe this pink one?” as she pulled yet another piece from the massive pile. “And what about Juvia’s hair? She thought down would be best, but maybe Gray-sama likes it up instead?” and she started collecting her curls into a ponytail and clutching them there tentatively, waiting for his opinions with an anxious expression on her face.  

However, Gray didn’t answer any of her questions, and instead asked one of his own in genuine bemusement, “what are you doing?”

Juvia was already flushed, but she grew even more so at Gray’s query. She looked a bit crestfallen, though Gray didn’t understand why.

“Juvia was just getting ready for bed,” she said, trying to hitch a smile onto her face.

Gray frowned a bit at her. “It’s been over an hour,” he said. It was easy for him to sound sympathetic rather than irritated, because Juvia’s expression looked so defeated. She let her hair fall down around her shoulders again, and put the pink and black pieces of lingerie back on the overflowing pile.

“Juvia…wanted to look desirable for Gray-sama,” she admitted in a small voice and after a long pause. She was avoiding his gaze.

Gray didn’t fully comprehend this line of thinking, and he said as much. “But, you always look desirable,”  he stated bluntly, his brow furrowed. Maybe he should have said something more comforting. She had looked so upset, and she had clearly been trying so hard. But, when Juvia raised her face this time, there was a legitimate smile there now.

“Really, Gray-sama?” she asked hopefully. She looked quite touched.

Gray again didn’t really understand what was going through her head, but he was glad she looked happier. “Well, yeah.”

It seemed like she might cry at that, but Gray was glad when Juvia stood up on tip toe and kissed him instead. He kissed her back, his tongue meeting hers as he threaded his fingers through her hair and pulled her closer to him. She did feel really good against his bare skin. Her hands had begun to trace the grooves of his back and he knew she could feel that pressure from him against her. This was good. This is what should have been happening an hour ago. But they were still in his bathroom. They needed to move.

He painstakingly broke the kiss enough to breath, “Do you want to come to bed?”

Her forehead against his, and her nose brushing his, she said, “yes, Gray-sama, Juvia would like that very much.”

Gray grinned, and he took her by the hand.

He needn’t have worried that they weren’t on the same page about this matter. As with all the most important things, he and Juvia were two halves of the same whole. As long as it was the two of them, everything would be ok. That night was more than ok, though. It was everything it should have been, and it was worth the wait.

The End

A/N: I told you the description was a terrible one lmao. And now I am officially out of headcanons. Thanks for reading, and I hope it’s not absolutely foolish of me to ask that if you enjoyed this to please review. ^__~

[b-leikur]

[W101] Dragonspyre Thaumaturges

I promised @kataba-artblock that I would tell him more about Lionheart by expanding his backstory. And I know that @appuru-pi and I spoke about it before, but it would be nice to share through a post, like I’ve done previously with Garrett’s story!~ <3

During the earliest times of Dragonspyre, back when it used to be a triumphant land permeated with currents of lava and the husked breaths of imposing drakes, there lived two adult Pyromancers. They originally came from Mooshu, but they decided to settle down in neighboring Dragonspyre, due to a terrible disease speading through Emperor Yoshihito’s land of purity by the elephant demons and their minions.

Around the same time when Malistaire joined with Sylvia in marriage, the two Pyromancers had a son - one which was named after Dragonspyrean customs and traditions; Alexander. (Although they called him Alexandros and/or Aleksandr) He was one who happened to possess the magic element that’s naturally and actively opposing Pyromancy: Thaumaturgy.

For wizards of Fire to have an offspring that’s the opposite element is a case that’s awfully rare within the Spiral - it is said that once or even twice in one hundred years, it would happen for two Pyromancers to have a Thaumaturge child. Alexander was not an only child, for he would be gifted with three more siblings - each named after how their mother first percieved their features or personalities as infants. The second son and the second eldest was named Angel. The Pyromancer mother chose this name because she percieved the infant Thaumaturge’s smiles to be akin to that of an angel.

Alexander proved to be a caring older brother while he was still young - Angel sought him as an example of a brother he could learn a lot from. As the two Ice children continued to bond and get to know each other better, they would soon sat hello to their third brother, Karic. For a Thaumaturge, Karic certainly had the energy of a Storm child, he would always try to tackle his brothers to have them play with him any games that were part of any little wizard's childhood; such as tag or hide and go seek. Unlike his older brothers, who were already getting used to their power over Ice magic, Karic wished he could be like his parents, a Pyromancer - he regularly dressed in red, and politely asked his mother to teach him fire spells.

“No, I’m sorry, sweetie. You were born to yield the power of the Ice, exactly like your brothers. Once you’re a big boy, one day you’ll get to the fire spells that I could teach you as your secondary magic element.”

“Yes, momma.”

The fourth brother to Alexander, Angel and Karic was Ethan. He stood mostly by his eldest brother’s side - clinging onto him. He would always try to hug his brothers, he was quite the attention seeker, as their father would confess amused. It was his way to tell them how much he loves his siblings, as he is the youngest.

As the four Thaumaturge boys continued to grow in strength and power, the glorious days of Dragonspyre came to an end. Alexander was the only one to fully witness the violent, slow-paced destruction of the world’s major districts and lanes.

He was still too juvenile to fully fathom this tragic turn of event; the Dragon Titan, the ancestor of all Pyromancers - had awakened with a loathsome hunger for conquering the volcanic realm of Dragonspyre that it once reigned over.

The tears of horror and the wails of despair which permanently tainted his brother’s figures simply had their eldest brother’s heart split in half - the ordeal of wizards being sacrificed in order for a tyrannical drake to reclaim its territory only brought the fright of death upon Dragonspyrean warriors as well as settlers from other parts of the Spiral - such as Alexander’s parents.

As a result of the Dragon Titan’s wrath against the people of Dragonspyre, many of the residences of the mercenaries or ordinary wizards were severely ravaged, leaving them with no place to stay. Alexander, his brothers and their parents were lucky, for their homstead sustained minor damage. A week after the drake’s rampage, grave words had spread amongst the now heedful locals: “Sylvia Drake, wife of the highly-acclaimed Necromaster Malistaire Drake passes away in the thick of the Dragon Titan’s charge.”

Neither Alexander nor his brothers understood at their age that time how devastating the death of Sylvia was for most of Dragonspyre - she was the Captain of the Dragonspyrean Army, ready to serve attentively. Fellow mercenaries and wizards respected her for the high rank she held.

The four children of ice would be awfully oblivious of the fact that they would eventually have to confront Malistaire himself - a broken man who wished to bring his wife back to life by awakening the Dragon Titan from its slumber.

Around his teenage years, Alexander had gone through a swingeing change in his personality - he was incredibly irascible, and horribly impatient. He also grew to loathe his given name, believing it wasn’t as ‘regal’ as his parents originally thought it sounded - so he dubbed himself ‘Lionheart’; therefore he hard-heartedly told his brethren to only refer to him by that name, and not ‘Alexander’ anymore.

His brothers did not take his militant behaviour too well - fearful of Lionheart’s agressive words, they ran away from Dragonspyre, and hid away in Wintertusk, where they would vow to never see their “so-called brother” no more, unless he would have a change of heart and reconcile with his grief-stricken siblings.

“Y-You!”

“Why are you here...?”

“Angel, don’t! Stay away from him!”

Lionheart’s genuine reaction to the trepidation in his brothers’ eyes and voices, and the way they would embrace each other tightly, and sniffle in shock - they may not see through his rough exterior, but Lionheart felt emotionally ruined, but he didn’t express it openly, as he believed it to be nothing but a weakness. Raw emotion was meaningless to him. Once he left his brothers’ hideout, his mind would fall into conflicting thoughts, that would only fuel his bitterness.

“...They still think I’m a monster...”

Yet the painful distance between the four brothers didn’t last an eternity.

When faced with the challenge of dethroning the Shadow Queen, and to tear apart the Song of Creation, Lionheart would’ve never thought to hear the voices of his second and fourth brothers; Angel and Ethan, now proud 18 year old and 17 year old Thamaturges. They both confessed to their eldest brother that it was a mistake of them to run away, and to judge Lionheart’s behaviour so harshly, and that it was all but a misunderstanding between brothers that were different in personality. They eventually make up by welcoming him as “Big brother Lionheart”, a name he was only called by in his childhood.

[raitrolling]

9, 14, 25, 27, 31, 40 and 41 for Katrin!

9. How do they manifest energy, exhaustion, tension, or other strong emotions?

katrin tends to keep a lot of her emotions to herself, and doesn’t really show them outwardly. she spends a lot of time in her own head, so she’s not really focused on how she appears to others and doesn’t think people would actually want to get to know her. when she’s stressed/panicky or particularly upset she’ll start talking really quickly and repeating words/phrases and basically go into stream of consciousness mode re: verbalising her thoughts. but otherwise, she’s usually fairly quiet and hesitant with her speech, which can make it hard to tell what she’s feeling apart from ‘probably feeling down, as always’.

she can be a little cheeky and mischievous when she’s around someone she’s comfortable with and she’s in a good mood, which usually manifests in somewhat unpredictable and almost out-of-character actions. 

14. What do they care deeply about? What kind of loyalties, commitments, moral codes, life philosophies, passions, callings, or spirituality and faith do they have? How do these tend to be expressed?

katrin loves two things: money, and daydreaming about being rich. she writes as a form of escapism, and uses her stories to create an ideal world where everything is perfect and she’s super rich and loved by everyone. because of this, she tends to create plans in this fantasy world about how her life and the world around should go, and gets upset whenever things don’t turn out as planned (nevermind the fact that her fantasies are completely unrealistic). while her motivation to write tends to waver depending on her mood, she’s still very attached to her fantasies and tends to use them as a method to pretend her real problems don’t exist.

her love for money is what turned her to a life of crime, due to her ex-moirail’s influence and the fact that she’s really bad at running legitimate businesses. she’s fairly committed to her red-eyed raccoon persona, if only because she can kind of live out her fantasies as her self-insert character who is The World’s Best Thief. however, her lack of sense and inability to consider the consequences of her actions tend to cause her to lose any money she gains incredibly quickly (usually by purchasing more alcohol or wasting it on get-rich-quick schemes), but she still keeps trying because she doesn’t know what else to do otherwise.

25. What do they need and want out of relationships, and how do they go about getting it?

katrin wants, essentially, a fairytale romance. a handsome prince (or princess) on his white horse who’ll scoop her up from her dreary life and take her to his magical castle and solve all her problems and give her all the gifts (but especially all the money) and let her do whatever she wants and she’ll never ever have to worry about anything ever again. unfortunately, that’s both A. incredibly unrealistic, and B. katrin’s own issues (a terrible combination of being horribly dependent on other people but also having a tendency to isolate herself from those she’s close to whenever she’s having problems) tend to put a strain on her relationships, especially since she makes no effort to better herself and never learns from her mistakes.

what she needs is someone who is kind, gentle, and patient with her since it takes a long time for her to feel comfortable around someone, but is also able to put their foot down and force her into recognising her faults and working towards changing her ways. they’ll need to have a high tolerance for bullshit (since kat tries to take advantage of her friendship with people to try and get free things out of them, or just outright stealing from them but expecting to not face any consequences), but if they come across as being too violent or forceful she’ll get panicky and lash out or start avoiding them entirely. she needs to start taking steps towards considering the consequences for her actions, and being a bit more emotionally available to others and healthily depending on others (i.e. being able to share her problems and talk about how she’s feeling, instead of bottling everything up and making people feel sorry for her so she can use them for money/food/gifts/etc.), but she can’t do it on her own.

27. What do they strongly like and dislike, in any category? Why?

katrin loves money because it’s something lowbloods can’t normally have a lot of. she thinks it’s unfair that highbloods get to be rich and have all these nice things while she can’t, just because she got hatched into the lowest caste. also, money can solve all of her problems: you can buy food, you can buy nice clothes, you can go to fun events where there’ll be free food and drinks, you can buy nice things to decorate your hive and make it look fancy, you can buy things that’ll make you happy, you could even buy friends if you really wanted to. she’s very greedy and materialistic, but also sees material items as showing status, and believes that people will like her more if she has cool things she can show off. she also likes comic books and superheroes (particularly Wonder Woman, Black Widow, and Rocket Raccoon) for the same reason she loves to daydream: they’re full of super strong and super cool people who always win their fights and are loved by all. her reasons for liking anything are fairly simple and childish, really.

she has a strong dislike and is terrified of firearms, due to previously having a stalker who used sniper rifles and would try to kill her because he had a blackcrush on her. she’s quite hesitant of blackrom in general because of this and relationship with her ex-kismesis, and her views on what is considered a healthy black quad are very skewed.

31. Is there anything that counts as a “dealbreaker” for them, positively or negatively? What makes things go smoothly, and what spoils an activity or ruins their day? Why?

despite constantly taking advantage of people’s kindness and cheating people out of their money/possessions, she hates it when someone does the same to her. she thinks it’s unfair and cruel that someone would do such a thing to her, but when she does it it’s fine because she actually really needs whatever she took from them. she also doesn’t like it when people tell her she can’t do something she wants to do, though rather than it being a ‘dealbreaker’, its more of a thing she’ll get pissy about and then try to do it anyway (and then wonder why she’s getting punished for it).

and for the reasons mentioned in the previous question, she won’t fuck with anyone who uses guns as their strife weapon or happens to have a gun on their person. at least, she won’t fuck with them unless she thinks she can get away with it.

40. What do they wonder about? What sparks their curiosity and imagination, and why? How is this expressed, if it is?

i’ve kinda already been answering this question through every single previous question, since her imagination is so focused on her self-insert fictional world and the fanfiction she produces as a result of it. but she usually writes in journals, then types them on her computer to upload online. while she mostly writes original fiction, she’ll sometimes swap out the names of her own ‘characters’ (read: real people she knows), to characters from whatever series happens to be popular at the time in order to create fanworks in hope they’ll get noticed and make her rich. hey, if it worked for the 50 shades woman, it should work for her, right?

41. What associations do they bring to mind? Words or phrases, images, metaphors or motifs? Why?

since katrin started out as a self-insert i started rping for shits and gigs, when she became a legitimate character she kinda developed into something that somewhat parodies her own origin. she writes her own self-insert fanfiction and lives in her own fantasy world where she’s the perfect protagonist who is amazing at everything and everyone loves her and she has the best relationships ever and everything she does is always right and always goes perfectly and all that jazz. like every babby’s first oc who is a self-insert because we don’t really know how to write proper characters yet, her fantasies are always super idealised and nothing can ever go wrong for her, until reality comes crashing down on her which she tries to recreate her fantasies for real.

the concept/theme of time is also a theme that tends to crop up for her frequently, too. her sgrub au counterpart is a time player, her ‘true’ psiionic power is chronokinesis, and in times of turmoil she often finds herself wishing that she could either have more time to figure things out, or that she could go back in time to retry everything and make it better. she tends to find herself preoccupied with the past and what could have been, that she doesn’t consider the future and how she still has time to improve and actually make up for all her mistakes. there’s nothing particularly symbolic about it, it’s just something that happens to crop up from time to time.

i tend to associate her with bookish heroines (such as liesel from the book thief, briony from atonement, and matilda from... well, matilda) due to her writing habits and tendency to live in her own head. although unlike those characters, katrin isn’t really an avid reader aside from comic books. on a side note ive wanted to read northanger abbey because of its premise reminding me of kat, but i always find jane austen books to be kind of a slog to get through.

[emmilynestill]

Previously on To Sacrifice the Sun....

Here we are, with the summaries of all 18 chapters plus prologue under the cut.

I hope to have the new chapter (plus the chapter of (Don’t) Let Me Go up in an hour.  Fingers crossed)

Overall story summary:

Felicity Smoak was recruited by ARGUS directly out of MIT and became one of the youngest Field Agents in their history. She was the Tech Guru of one of their most elite teams and her partner, Oliver Queen, was the love of her life. Then a mission went south, with terrible consequences. Felicity turned from field work and Oliver, hiding away in ARGUS’ hidden R&D center, the Cave.

Five years later, a new evil is infiltrating the world, but it’s looking for the same lost Mayan City and the same missing artifact. The one’s that Felicity had made herself the world’s leading expert on. So now she was going to have to face her past, her greatest fears, and her biggest mistakes to find whatever HIVE is after before they do, because if Damian Darhk finds it first, no one on the planet will be safe.

Catch up here:

New readers check this out:

Read under the cut for Chapter summaries and title art:

Previously on…

Prologue:

Five years ago.  

Guatemala

The night before a huge mission, ARGUS Agent Felicity Smoak has a terrible premonition that things are going to go badly.  Their mission is to go to the Temple of the Jaguar in Tikal, find the Obsidian Skull, a powerful Mayan artifact, before Reiter and his Shadowspire troops. It is her job to translate the hieroglyphics and find the skull.

Her “secret” boyfriend, Oliver, arrives and tries to take her mind off the mission, plying her with Guatemalan rum.  Felicity teases him that the team knows all about them and most of them are hooking up with each other anyway. (Ronnie and Caitlin are secretly married.  Lyla and Digg, their CO, are also together.  Only Slade and Sara are not).

They make love and Felicity is overcome with emotion and the feeling that something horrible is going to happen, but can’t bring herself to tell Oliver.  He tells her that after they beat Reiter he wants to move in together and finally go home to see his family (they still believe he and Sara died on the Gambit 5 years prior).  Oliver tells her his fantasies of getting married and having a baseball team of children, a Queen Legacy.  They talk about their future together.

After the mission in Tikal, Felicity wakes up in an ARGUS medical facility in terrible pain.  Her surgeon, Shado, explains to her that much of the team was injured and that Ronnie (one of the eight team members and her best friend’s husband) was killed.  

Shado explains that Felicity was shot in the abdomen.  They had to do a hysterectomy and now she can’t have children.  In shock and in pain, Felicity feels hopeless and doesn’t believe she will ever feel happy again.  

To preserve Oliver’s dream, she decides to sacrifice her happiness for his.  Felicity refuses to talk to him or tell him what happened, believing he will leave ARGUS, go home to Starling, start over, and have his dream life with someone else.

Chapter 1:

The Cave (ARGUS science and Technology center).

Five years later, Felicity is working as a team leader in the secret underground ARGUS Science Center.  After Tikal, she sealed her medical records and refused to speak to anyone from the team except Caitlin, who had lost her husband. Felicity did not tell Caitlin about her injuries until she found out, five months after the mission, that instead of leaving ARGUS and going home as Felicity had wanted (and expected) Oliver to do, he was taking an undercover mission with the Bratva, deep in Russia. Caitlin encouraged Felicity to tell Oliver the truth and she rushed over to stop him from leaving but is too late. Since then, no one has seen or heard from Oliver but his handler.

In present day, Felicity returns to her lab to see, Digg, who she hasn’t seen in years.   He tells her that there is a new threat, Damian Darhk and HIVE, who are searching for Kin Cuudad, the Lost City of the Sun, and a magic artifact, Kin Zil, the Gift, which is rumored to be far more powerful than the Obsidian Skull (the artifact that killed Ronnie).  Digg needs Felicity to come back into the field, because no one knows the Lost City mythology and the Mayan language like Felicity.

Felicity, suffering from PTSD, tries to deflect, saying the city isn’t real, it’s a myth.  Digg tells her they found a Door.  He says they are assembling the old team and Caitlin has already agreed to come.  He leaves and Cait, who is now a part of Felicity’s CAVE team, comes to apologize for not telling her earlier and to ask Felicity to help her face her demons on Yucatan Peninsula.  Feeling she has no choice, Felicity agrees.  

Chapter Two

The airport, the next day

At the airport, Felicity and Caitlin meet Curtis and Cisco, two other members of their CAVE team, who are joining team them for this mission (Curtis replacing Ronnie as Team Engineer and Cisco running comms from base).  Their silly teasing starts to relax Felicity until they start teasing her about seeing her “Gorgeous ex” and she realizes that Oliver, who she believed was still in Russia, would be meeting them in Mexico.  Felicity has a panic attack in the bathroom and Caitlin talks her down, but she still feels that she ruined Oliver’s life with her bad decisions.

ARGUS Safe House, Mayan Rivera

During the flight, Felicity prepares herself to see Oliver again and decides when they arrive at the Beach House/Safe House it would be best to get to over with.  She goes to the beach to find Oliver, only to see him smiling and talking to a very pregnant Lyla.  When Felicity sees him touch her pregnant belly, she panics, again, running away and having another attack.

After calming herself some, Sara finds her and welcomes her warmly, introducing her to Roy, Lyla’s replacement for Special Ops (since she is too pregnant to go on the mission).  Roy worked with Oliver in Russia and recognizes Felicity’s name.  Sara and Roy express their belief that the break up was Oliver’s fault.  Shado and Caitlin interrupt before Felicity can convince them otherwise.  

Surrounded by friends and support, Felicity is feeling better even if they are all pushing her to talk to Oliver. Until they see him and abandon Felicity to her fate.

Chapter Three

ARGUS Safe House, Mayan Rivera

Left alone with Oliver, Felicity freezes.  Oliver takes this badly and offers to leave the team if it would make her more comfortable. This leads to Felicity giving a long, anxious, babbling speech about how she is a train wreck emotionally.  She is devastated to learn that Oliver has blamed himself for the break-up all this time.  When Felicity tries to say it is her, not him, Oliver reveals that he feels responsible for her getting shot since the gun was aimed at him.  Then he walks away.

Later, the entire team gathers in the War Room where they are told they are going to the Mayan City of Palenque to gather clues, before heading into the jungle and to the Door.  Curtis and Cisco reveal their inventions for the trip, including a new bow for Oliver.  Digg tells Oliver if things go south it is his job to protect Felicity.  Felicity is given a photograph of the supposed Door and translates it with her newly enhanced glasses.  For the first time, she believes this may all be real and gets excited, feeling more herself than she has in years.

The next morning, the team of 8 travel to Palenque which has been emptied of tourists.  The old team (Slade, who lost an eye there, Sara, Digg, Cait, Oliver, and Felicity) come face to face with the Mayan world for the first time since Tikal.

Chapter Four

At Palenque, Felicity is searching the Temple of the Sun for clues on how to open the Door to Kin Cuudad, the Lost City, but all she is able to find is a fresco she knows well.  It depicts the founder of Palenque, King Cadmeal, who escaped from the Lost City and is said to be the child of the Daughter of the Sun and the Warrior King, but nothing new.

Curtis and Sara manage to leverage open the stone slab to get into a Chamber at the base of the temple where Felicity has never been in before.  She and Caitlin search there for clues and come up empty handed.  She is about to look in one of the four (uninteresting) tombs when Curtis starts teasing her about Oliver and trying to get her to tell them why they broke up.

This leads to Caitlin telling them how they escaped Tikal, after both Felicity and Sara were unconscious, a story Felicity had never heard before.  Caitlin tells the group the entire story, including Ronnie being killed, Sara being buried in rubble, and the gun being shot at Oliver and Felicity stepping in the way.  Only Oliver and Cait at that point were unharmed and in his rage Oliver was able to capture the skull and smash it against the wall so Digg could shoot and kill Reiter.

After the emotional story, Felicity seeks Oliver out and tells him she is glad she took the bullet because he saved them all and is a hero.  She hugs him and walks away.

Chapter Five  

That evening, Felicity is sitting on the crumbling steps of the Palace staring out at the jungle when Oliver finds her.  They talk about their memories from their time in the Yucatan five years ago, and things are just starting to feel normal, when the talk turns to Russia.  Then Felicity learns Oliver came to bring her to dinner.  Her CAVE team often tease her about forgetting to eat, but she is humiliated that they sent Oliver, until he confesses he volunteered.  

Felicity blurts out that she didn’t want him to go to Russia, that she wanted him to go home to Starling and be happy, which makes things tense again.  She tells him she tried to stop him from going to Russia, but it was too late. Oliver is obviously upset about the information, but tells her he’s glad she told him.  He then asks her to come to camp and have some of his famous five-alarm chili.  Slade and Digg want to “initiate” Roy and Curtis.  Felicity agrees thinking the chili will be her penance, until Oliver confesses he made a special not lethal batch for her and Cait.

Chapter Six:

Back at camp, Felicity confronts Caitlin for sending Oliver to get her and playing matchmaker, until she finds out Oliver really did volunteer.  Cait apologizes for pushing them back together and confesses that she is ready to move on with their CAVE teammate, Barry, and feels guilty about it, but, also, that she wants both Felicity and Oliver to be happy.

At the campfire, Cait is convinced that the nonlethal chili is evidence of Oliver still being in love with Felicity.  The team gangs up on the newbies as they eat the painful chili.  Roy handles it well, knowing what is expected of a Spec Ops, but Curtis freaks out, to everyone’s, especially Slade’s, amusement.  In the end, they confess the joke and Slade shares his flask with the team, Guatemalan Rum that reminds Felicity of her last night with Oliver.

The rest of the team gets drunk and decides to try and play Mayan ball, which gets very competitive very fast. Slade’s team starts to win when he puts Sara on his shoulders.  Curtis falls and twists his ankle and Oliver turns to Felicity and asks her to help him, “Kick Slade’s ass.”

Chapter Seven

Caught up in the moment, Felicity allows Oliver to bring her into the ballgame which involves her sitting on his shoulders and trying to get a ball in a hoop 30 feet off the ground. At first, she’s freaked out, but they work well together and manage to play to a tie.  Roy tackles Sara and Slade, but Slade refuses to forfeit.  The game looks like it will never end when the skies open up and it starts to pour.  

Oliver and Felicity share an emotionally heated (and UST ridden) moment in the rain before Slade calls them to help gather their gear.  Felicity pretends to fall asleep in the tent to avoid Sara’s ribbing and Cait’s questions, trying not to imagine Oliver naked in the next tent over.

Chapter Eight

Felicity wakes up the next morning after a strange dream about King Cadmeal and his wife dancing around tombs, with the intense need to look in the tombs in the chamber under the Temple of the Sun.  No one else is up and Felicity struggles with how to make Curtis’ fancy coffee maker work until Oliver shows up and does it for her.  They have a pleasant breakfast discussing how eggs are eaten in Russia.

The conversation turns to how they slept and Felicity confesses her dream and is pleasantly surprised by how serious Oliver takes it, though he always does.  Oliver offers to take her down into the Temple of the Sun himself and doesn’t seem to find it necessary to wake anyone else.

In the base of the temple, Oliver struggles with opening the tombs by himself, but refuses to admit it. There is nothing exciting in the first two tombs and Felicity starts to think it’s a dead-end.  Talk of her dream leads her to admitting have intuitions and promotions since before Tikal.  Oliver is upset that she didn’t tell him back then.

But then he loses control of one of the huge limestone slabs covering a tomb and it falls to the ground, causing a layer of red clay on the inside surface to crack and reveals an intricate carving underneath.  

Chapter Nine

The Carving reveals symbols of Kin Cuudad as well as having a carving of the Daughter of the Sun and the Warrior King facing each other and making a strange pattern with their fingers. They also seem to be wearing jewelry that Oliver postulates may be the Gift, Kin Zil.  

Oliver confesses a fascination over the Daughter of the Sun and while discussing them Oliver and Felicity almost kiss, but it is interrupted by Felicity having a panic attack.

The spell is broken and they explore the inside of the Tombs.  The hieroglyphs of one of the Tombs reveals it to be Cadmeal, the Daughter of the Sun and the Warrior King’s son, the founder of Palenque.  Another may be his wife and they discover an intricate moonstone carving in her hands.  Her fingers are also splayed like on the carving.

Before they can discover anything else, the emergency comms crackle on and they learn from Digg that they are under attack.

Chapter Ten

While Oliver and Felicity are in the base of the Temple of the Sun discovering what was in the tombs Palenque was invaded by HIVE.  The rest of the team engaged in a gun fight and Digg ordered Oliver to take Felicity and get her to the Door ahead of the team.

They take what they can from the tombs and photograph what they can’t.  Oliver hoists Felicity out of the underground Chamber first and while she is waiting for him she gives into temptation and listens to what is happening with the team, learning back-up is on its way. but Roy is seriously injured. An explosion rocks the temple sending Felicity into a flashback of Tikal.

A kiss from Oliver pulls Felicity out of the flashback.  They zip line to the other side of the park, where he drags her into the jungle. There they find an all terrains motorcycle and take off into the jungle.

Chapter Eleven

On the back of the motorcycle, Felicity struggles o hold on with the rocky terrain, but manages to work the GPS and communicate with the team (while Oliver drives and only has access to what she is saying.)

Ground back-up has arrived at Palenque, but things are not going well for the team and a medievac has not arrived for Roy who is rapidly losing blood.  Cisco and Lyla, from base, reveal that they can not send in air back-up because of an approaching hurricane.  This triggers a panicked meltdown from Caitlin until Felicity talks her down.

Then Damian Darhk announces his presence over the comms, having captured Curtis, Slade, and Sara as they attempted to lead HIVE away from Oliver and Felicity and the rest of the team. Darhk demands the location of Kin Cuudad.

Lyla shuts down the comms, tells Felicity they are erasing all records of the Door’s location from everyone but her and Oliver’s devices, and then cuts them off from ARGUS communication system to protect them from HIVE.  Just as Felicity is about to explain this to Oliver, a black blur jumps in front of them, the bike crashes and the word goes black.

Felicity wakes up to Oliver’s concerned voice and they discover a jaguar jumped out at them.  The crash broke Oliver ARGUS watch and damaged Felicity’s, messing up their GPS.    As she works to fix her watch, she catches sight of their missing jaguar in the tree.

Chapter 12

Stranded in the jungle without access to the team or base, and with broken tech, Oliver and Felicity come face to face with the reason for their motorcycle crash, a giant blue-eyed black jaguar.  Oliver asks for his bow, but Felicity gives him the tranq gun, instinctively not wanting to kill the animal.

Reluctantly Oliver agrees while Felicity works furiously to fix her ARGUS smart watch and get the GPS to the Door back up.  Unfortunately, while rebooting the watch it's makes loud, high pitched noises that startle the cat and it pounces, leading Oliver to have to shot it twice with the tranq gun.  

The confrontation has left Oliver tense and pessimistic, pushing Felicity to take on more of her ‘Sunshine’ roll to giving him more hope.  She is able to get her watch to work on basic settings and tapes it to the handle bars. Then while Oliver checks on their bike, she indulgently watches the jaguar, which she begins to find beautiful and fascinating.

Oliver freaks out a tad when he sees her pet it, but they are soon back onto the bike headed for the Door.

Chapter 13

The remainder of the trip to where Felicity’s broken watch locates the Door is long and, largely, silent, leaving her far too much time to think.  Most of it she spends thinking about Oliver.  She decides she needs to tell him everything as soon as they have a free moment and, for the first time, she starts to think that they might actually have a future together.

Once they reach their destination, they find nothing special and begin to worry the watch is truly broken. The storm in worsening and Oliver is focused on finding shelter.  

And grunting.  And brooding.  And generally being a pessimistic jerk.  

But when Felicity sits to work on her tablet, Oliver notices that she is sitting on a hidden tarp.  Under the canvas, they find the Door, but since they still don’t know how to open it and the hurricane is fast approaching, Oliver leaves in search of shelter, leaving Felicity to examine the Door.

Underground, she finds a carving almost identical to the slab at the Temple of the Sun.  Then she realizes that the sun carving in the center is actually composed of two sets of handprints and her hands fit perfectly. She calls for Oliver, who is irritated by the interruption, but he, reluctantly, agrees to place his hands next to hers in the carving.

The Door shifts and opens, disappearing into the hillside.

Chapter 14

The Door opens to a staircase leading into the ground.  Felicity is ecstatic and disappointed Oliver doesn’t feel the same, but they head down anyway.  At the bottom of the stairs, they find an opulent room filled with magnificent Mayan frescos and carvings, but, unfortunately, not a way out other than the way they came in.  They are able to locate a Door like the first, with handprint sun, but there seems to be a piece missing from the center and when they place their hands in this one nothing happens.  

Oliver leaves to get gather their things while Felicity translates, but she doesn’t expect him to spend the next several hours more out in the storm than in with her.  She has the distinct feeling he is avoiding her. Worried and upset, Felicity heads out to find him.  

She finds him struggling with securing the tarp over the entrance to keep out animals during the storm. Feeling foolish, Felicity insists on helping and they quickly get the job done, barricading themselves inside.

Down in the chamber, Felicity again becomes annoyed when it becomes clear that Oliver isn't going to take off his dripping wet shirt, as any agent would do.   She takes off her shirt and insists he does the same, which reveal his injuries from the crash.  

After caring for their (fairly minor) wounds, Oliver asks Felicity to show him what she found while translating. She shows him how one side of the room depicts the Daughter of the Sun and the other the Warrior King.  They meet in the middle where their lives combine. During a betrothal scene, the Queen gives the Warrior a sun shaped medallion, a shape that appears in each of her panels and they postulate that this may be Kin Zil, the Gift.

After, Felicity tries to begin a conversation about five years ago, but Oliver insists he needs to sleep.

Chapter 15

Almost 24 hours later, things have not gone as Felicity had anticipated.  Despite her trying to bring the subject up, Oliver has slept and groused and grumbled and avoided her, all very uncomfortable in this small room. Now, he was out hunting it the tail-end of the storm in a thinly disguised effort to be away from her and Felicity has had enough.  Her guilt has only extended her patience so far and now she’s pissed.

Sick of being stuck in the chamber alone, Felicity goes out into the rain to freshen up and clean her clothes. Outside, she decides to say ‘frak it’ and take off all her clothes and take a shower in the warm rain.  Oliver returns, dead bird in hand, and flips out. They have words.  He stomps off.

Felicity returns to the chamber, deciding to only wear her dry clothing (her shirt and a pair of panties), and the hell with Oliver.  When he arrives, he’s even more snappish and irritable and finally Felicity confronts him on it.

Oliver breaks and confronts her on her confusing behavior, now and in the past, and how difficult it has been to interpret.  He wonders if she is playing games and if he ever knew her at all.  Felicity fervently denies this, along with ever lying to him. Oliver says that’s a lie because she promised to be with him Forever and Always.  Felicity tells him she promised to LOVE him Forever and Always and not only had she never lied, but she never broke her promise.

Oliver takes a moment to process this, then crushes her to the wall in a searing kiss.

Chapter 16

Oliver and Felicity kiss

And they kiss.  Then they kiss some more.   Lots of kissing.

Felicity reassures Oliver that she did indeed mean that she was still in love with him and had never stopped. Oliver is relieved, but confused. He asks her why she left him and she tells him he couldn’t possibly understand because he is missing an important part of the puzzle.  She promises to tell him what it is but warns it’s a long story.

They untangle themselves and Felicity nervously explains how difficult this is for her.  Oliver asks for her to start at the beginning and she explains that the last night in Tikal she had been genuine in their conversation about building a life together.  Everything changed at the hospital.

Oliver is upset because he was sedated when this happened and angry at himself, but Felicity only agrees to go on if he agrees not to blame himself.  She tells him there were complications from the surgery and he clearly believes she has a chronic health problem.

Felicity finally blurts out that she lacks the requisite parts to make babies.  Oliver is first shocked, then devastated, and she has to fight her own answering defensiveness and anger, realizing that a large part of the reason that she never told him in the first place was her fear that he would eventually leave her over it.

Oliver expressed anger over Felicity keeping this from him and believing that her choice could have possibly lead to his happiness.  He tells her he needs to take a walk and leaves.

Felicity collapses in sobs.

Chapter 17

After Oliver leaves, Felicity is overcome with grief and, feeling abandoned, she cries her heart out, but once she is done and is able to think more coherently, she realizes that Oliver probably did not leave because she is infertile and doesn’t want her anymore, but because he needs to process the enormity of everything she kept from him.

Pulling herself together, Felicity realizes that Oliver left without even the shirt on his back, which is terrifying.  But, since she can do nothing about it, she sits and spends her time fixing his comm link and waiting.

Oliver returns calm and sheepish since he got lost.  They begin to talk and Oliver tells Felicity he is angry with her but not for the reasons she thinks.  He is angry at her for even thinking he cared more about having children than being with her and feels that he had the right to mourn this with her, since if she doesn’t have children he has no intention of having children either.

They cry in each other’s arms and talk about their grief, comparing themselves to John and Lyla and how hard it is and will be watching them have a baby together.  They reaffirm that whatever happens from her on out they plan to do it together and begin to solidify their relationship physically, when Oliver rolls off Felicity and grabs his bow.

HIVE has found them.  

Chapter 18

Ghosts swarm into the chamber and Oliver starts to fire his bow while Felicity acts as his quiver, until the Ghosts get too close and they engage Oliver in hand to hand.  Thankfully, the Ghosts seem intent on capture and are not shooting them.

Felicity decides she has no intention of sitting by and being a spectator in this and grabs a pen dart just as a Ghost grabs her. She acts helpless, which fools the Ghost, but not Oliver.  However, when the Ghost begins to molest her Oliver stops fighting.  It gives Felicity the opportunity needed to use the pen dart to kill (or maybe just put asleep for 48 hours) the man holding her. Together they disable/kill the last three Ghosts.

Oliver expresses his pride at Felicity with numerous kisses, but they both realize that this is no longer the place and Oliver wants them to get out before more HIVE operatives arrive. As Felicity begins to gather essentials she has a strong feeling that they can not leave this place to HIIVE.

It’s too late anyway, because Darhk and another dozen operatives are outside.  They are at a stand-off with none other than their friend the jaguar who has killed as many Ghosts as Oliver.  Darhk uses his magic to force a confrontation with the jaguar and one of his men, but the jaguar out runs the automatic weapon and kills the Ghost.  Darhk tries to use his magic on the Jaguar and it doesn’t work.

At this point Felicity is loving the jaguar and doesn’t want him hurt.  So, when Darhk orders all the Ghosts to open fire on the jaguar Felicity calls out, prompting Oliver to send an explosive Arrow into one of HIVES trucks gas tanks.  

They retreat into the chamber to grab their things and escape before the smoke clears, when Felicity notices the moonstone fallen on the ground.

Oliver, however, noticed that their jaguar friend is now in the chamber as well.

Felicity, moonstone in hand, stills Oliver.  A strange calm and confidence over takes her and she speaks with the jaguar (who does not speak back, btw), realizing that the moonstone is the key to the other Door. The jaguar, who Felicity has now names Kinich Ahau after the Mayan sun god.  Lies down peacefully happy with her deduction.  

Felicity places the stone in the middle of the palm print sun and her hands-on top.  Slightly reluctantly Oliver turns his back on the jaguar, curls himself over Felicity and does the same.

[shavonnegoshorn-blog]

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