#This was actually the second time I wrote this

[just-watch-and-calculate]

ooh writing that is related to time loops but not conventional time loop narrative is interesting. the idea I have now is a bit of a different direction in terms of the underlying concept though

TW/CW: death (mentioned in the 2nd person, implied ending) (also a slight warning: the following is fiction written in the second person and is about being disoriented in spacetime, and about the existential dread from that; also I don't know how much other people get out of this without some rather specific physics knowledge)

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

The rest of your life is ahead of you.

You get ready to end the day by waking up into the comforting embrace of sleep. This is the end of the day, right? Mind already— or still?— groggy, you are not sure. Faint recollections of today make themselves known in your mind. Recollections of one of the two ends of your life. Just whether it is the celebrated or grieved one you are not sure right now. At least you are headed away from it, right?

Thinking about that, you realize that you might be moving away from the moment you will(?) end he day by waking up. You are awake enough to notice that the phrasing of that sounds… off, somehow. The sun is still a bit away from setting— or is it rising right now? By definition the night ends with the sun rising and starts with it setting, so that is no help in figuring out which way is future and which way is past.

You remember somewhat how today went goes. And you remember a bit less clearly how tomorrow yesterday the closest day one night from now goes. That is a sign that the future is that way, right? That we know little enough about that temporal direction to think we have free will there.

But you know better than to think you truly have free will, don't you? You know that when you learn about it you are shocked. And you know that at some other point in time you are not shocked about it, at that point in time you accept that the universe is deterministic.¹

But will that be in the future, or has that been in the past? You hope that that is your future, because you remember enough to know that one direction is much longer than the other. Something goes went will go goes wrong today.

You realize that you should not have such clear memories of both past and future. Maybe that is why today has been— will be?— so confusing. You do know that it does make sense for it to be possible though: the direction of time is surprisingly ambiguous unless entropy is involved, so those memories do little to help.

Entropy! You remember: you can find out what direction is generally regarded as the future quite easily. You grab an ice cube. As you hold it you remember that you have(?) let it go right as your hand hurts slightly from the cold. It slides across the floor towards/away from you. Your hand is wet and cold from it. You know enough about entropy to know that the cube melted from holding it.

Which means that today is still mostly ahead of you. And then… nothing. Not the faintest recollection.

You feel cold panic. You are clinging on to the irrational, desperate hope that somehow you can change this. But you know that you can't. Shattered, disjointed recollections of today are burnt into you memory so much deeper than anything else.

Has some attempt to go back just reinforced fate instead? But that isn't how causality works. It shouldn't be. You hope you are not doomed already. You know you are.

Maybe— maybe your colleagues can help you. They've been working on this kind of thing for some distance time (but it's a lot less in time than what that length would be in space, isn't it?). Your research group is working with small controlled systems to better understand what time is. Most that you remember coming of that research so far only has potential for some parlor tricks, but that can change, even on such a short notice, right? (Hah! 'Short' notice, as if we all already know that time and space are not that different.)

There it is again, that irrational thought that somehow the universe doesn't work as you know it does. That things you know cannot be changed, things you know you cannot change, could be changed.

You stand at the bus stop. Why would you have to wait there if you know the bus has arrived early at its destination will be late at the bus stop?

You are on the bus. You just look out of the window disinterestedly, watching the world go by, letting distance pass like time. Is the bus driving forwards or backwards? Are you headed towards your end or away from it? In any case, part of what has you so disinterested in the bus ride is that you know it is uneventful. You have already ridden here from one of the stops you got on/off the bus at and remember that part of the drive. You also remember the other part from/to the other stop you will get on/off the bus at.

You arrive at the laboratory. "Good morning!" you respond. "Morning!" is the answer you receive from the only other person currently at the lab. You can't shake the feeling you should've responded with 'bye'.

You look at the current setup: two almost identical experiments that can run simultaneously — except one of them has opposite charges and is mirrored. And most important of all, one of them starts as the other ends — one of them is backwards. And you truly do not know which one that is anymore. (Anymore? Or will you just come to learn it later?)

It looks different from the other times you see it. "Hey, could you check my calculations? Something's not adding up, I've found a configuration where I don't know where some of the energy comes from" your colleague asks. "It's just, trying to figure it out has kept me up all night. I'd really appreciate a second pair of eyes on this."

You consider what she says: 'all night', not 'all day'. That clears up how she perceives time. It does not fix how you do though.

You remember what is written on the piece of paper she hands you as you first read it. And she is right, it should all add up, it just somehow doesn't. It is as if the Formulas just 'know' that something will be there to fix things. And if not, who knows what would happen. You would rather not know. With a sigh you say "Whatever is wrong with that calculation, I can't spot it either."

"It's alright, I already modified our setup to test this. Want to give it a try?" she responds. Not waiting for your answer in her eagerness to learn she fiddles with the controls of the experiment.

You run between her and the experimental setup. You suddenly know where the extra energy is: with you, somehow. The setup is currently powering up/down. You have to do something or you really will risk finding out how the universe deals with mathematical inconsistencies.

She calls your name, voice full of worry. You are in the experiment room. The setup is powered. You know what fate lurks here. You want to leave this room so badly.

It is too late. Your path through spacetime is not exactly subject to causality — it kind of is causality. Your path through spacetime is not something you have carved out. It just is. And here it leads you. And one of its ends is here.

You want just one more day.

The last, or perhaps the first thing you know is just how wrong you still were about how time works.

_____ ¹ I'm too much of a nerd to completely gloss over quantum randomness possibly not being deterministic, but for the purposes of this story it can be ignored.

I love time loop stories. Really, I do.

But I'd love to see a story about what happens after you emerge from the time loop.

When, after months or years of repetition, you have to learn how to live with a choice you can't redo tomorrow.

When you meet someone new for the first time and have to figure out how to navigate this brand new conversation.

When you reach for the same day's clothes and realize that you can't wear them because they got dirty. Your laundry, your dishes, your body, your teeth, all the tasks that reset with the loop are suddenly stacking up and you need to set aside time to do them.

When you reach that first weekend and your schedule radically shifts and you don't know what to do with yourself, which is terrifying but also exhilarating in ways you can't explain.

When you casually drop facts learned from those books you spent a dozen loops reading, and you realize you retained something worth keeping.

How your memory gets weirdly good all of a sudden, despite not having all that repetition to fall back on, because suddenly every experience is fresh and new.

And when the seasons change, and your hair grows long enough that you want to cut it, and when you realize it's shocking because you didn't think you'd ever see something as incredible as the passage of time.

[igotanidea]

Bound by business: Jason Todd x reader

Summary: Jason x information dealer reader. He only came for the info, but one thing led to another, a bit of whiskey and some teasing and - .... And she's a self made gotham.boss bitch falling for no one...

Warnings: SMUT MDNI!, dirty talk, p in v, teasing, angst

A/N : Been a while since I wrote smut and a story this long. Let me down gently. XD

***

It was dark and the rain was heavy, doing nothing to hide Jason’s irritation as he speeded on his motorcycle to the bad side of Gotham if there was any good side of Gotham in the first place.

Once having reached his destination, he took his helmet off letting rain wet his ruffled hair and started banging on the door.

His contact in the criminal world had been hard lately and he had no idea why, but the reasons behind the sudden change in the attitude were far from his interest.

HE and Y/N had a long history, went way back to the times when he was Robin and she was a good girl, both memories seeming like a fucking grotesque now.

“Y/N! Open the fuck up!”

“The hell Jason?!”

The door opened but she made no move to invite him inside despite the downpour on the outside. Instead she settled on watching him shake the water off like a dog, deriving some sadistic pleasure from the fact he could barely see with his hair stuck to his forehead and falling into his eyes.  

“The gun shipment. Tonight. I need details. Time, place, figures involved.

“Well hello to you too, Jason. I’ve been fine thanks for asking.” She scoffed and then smirked.

“I don’t have time for this shit-“

“Right, right, of course. I probably should thank you for not putting a gun to my head right away, right?”

“That is to be rectified at any moment now.” He reached towards his holster.

“Don’t be stupid, Jason. You know you only get this far with things because of me. You don’t want to lose an ally, do you?”

“You’re just an information dealer. Plenty of those in Gotham.”

“Mhm. Sure. And how many of them are as skilled as I am?”

He scoffed, pushing right past her, casually shrugging off his jacket and tossing it on the couch.

“Yeah by all means, ruin my furniture. Drink?” she asked, heading towards the cabinet

“Whiskey. Neat.”

“Wow, someone finally developed some standards. What gives?”

Jason scoffed again.

“Standards, my ass. It’s at your expense so why would I hold back?”

“I might hold you accountable to that in the future. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

The glasses clinked and for a moment they both sipped their drinks in silence which gave Jason a second to actually look at her. She was a badass, that was what he knew. But every time he came around to her place, which was not really happening that often, she was almost innocent. Ironically. No make up, comfy clothes, just hoodie and yoga pants. He had seen women try harder to look I-woke-up-like-this.

Y/N was just being comfortable. 

“What’s with the look Jace?” she smirked from under the rim of her glass, her eyes piercing into him.

“I’m just thinking.”

“About?”

“About why you are suddenly not giving me shit.”

“It’s been a long day if you must know. Long and hard day. My shit giving attitude and my humor might be a little off. ”

“Huh!” he huffed dismissively “hard day? You want to hear about a hard day? The one involving guns and fights? And being stabbed with a knife? Twice?“

“We all have our own definition of a hard day, you fool. You deal with bullets, I deal with people.”

“So you’re basically saying that people are worse than guns? Seriously? Damn, girl you got some audacity there.” He half-laughed, taking another sip of the whiskey and swirling the beverage “so, spill. Which one of your usual charming assholes got under your skin?”

“Luckily someone I do not have any respect for.”

“You have respect for no one, sunshine. But please, do tell. Did you kick him in the groin or punched him in the face?”

“Something like that.” She smirked, clearly so full of herself.

“Please tell me you at least broke his nose.”

“I did no permanent damage, that's all I can say.”

“Meaning you did something painful, but not crippling.” He nodded. He was actually learning to use the same method. Putting a gun to people's heads and shooting them dead was not very useful while searching for info. But then again, he had Y/N for that latter purpose. “Black eye? Twisted arm?”

“I thought you came here about the gun shipment info?” she finally sat on the couch and turned to face him with a hint of tease in her eyes.

“I did. But should it stop me from having a little polite conversation with my favorite partner in crime?” Jason leaned back on the coach with a sly smile

“Mh! I call bullshit.”

“How’s your hand doing?”

The question took her by surprise. Right, the hand, of course he knew about it. She got injured during one of her quests last week and has been dealing with the consequences ever since.

“I’m handling.”

“Uh!” Jason raised his hand stopping her in the middle of the sentence “Let me translate: it hurts like hell but you won’t admit it.” Y/N would never confront her pain – neither physical nor emotional. And yes, he was doing the same but it was easier to notice it in someone else than in himself. “So, given the state of that limb you must have got to that asshole pretty hard. Good job, I’ll give you that. It’s not every day I get to hear about your violent tendencies….” He chuckled and sipped the last of his drink, putting the glass back on the table, his eyes fixed on hers with a mischief in them.

“Oh you know damn well about my violent tendencies…”

“Damn right I do. And don’t I just love every fucking one of them…” his voice dropped an octave as he leaned forward, never dropping the gaze.  “Nothing sexier than a woman who can handle herself…”

“Oh yeah?” she allowed him the sudden closeness, clearly enjoying the blooming game “never took you for a guy who loved being manhandled..”

“Oh I am not. But I’m a sucker for watching someone deserving of it experiencing that treatment.” Jason's gaze moved down her body appreciatively, lingering on the swell of her breast under the hoodie and the curve of her hips accentuated by that stupid leggings. He knew she had curves under all those clothes. “It’s a fucking turn on.” He added in a husky tone. 

“Is it now…?” she hummed moving a little closer on the couch, her own drink landing on the table as well as she placed palms on his thighs, using it to lean even more forwards, leaving less than an inch between their faces.

“Fuck yeah it is…” his breath caught in his throat a little at the unexpected but not unwelcomed touch. “Seeing you lay someone down with those gorgeous hands of yours….” He licked his lips.

“Mhm… keep talking…” Y/N switched positions, now sitting on his lap, straddling him, her fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck and he instinctively grabbed onto her hips.  Gods, he was a man and suddenly realized how long it’s been since he had a one night stand, too busy with work.

But this?

This was getting dangerous and deep down he knew that once started, wouldn’t end up easily.

This was not going to be just scratching an itch like it usually was. This would hurt a lot and mixing business with pleasure was never a good idea.

But he couldn’t stop, the primal part of his brain already awakened by the closeness of her body, her almost gentle caresses and the soft, sweet yet seductive tone he had never heard before but she had mastered to perfection.

“I said…” she leaned to his ear “keep talking…”

“Fucks…” he groaned staring at her with undisguised lust “the though of you getting dirty… rough….”

“Uh-huh…” she hummed and started grinding on him. Slowly, almost torturously, causing Jason to take a sharp inhale of breath, but quickly composing himself.

“You always fight like that, princess?” his hands wandered from her hips to her ass, squeezing the ample flesh, pulling her closer to the bulge in his pants.

“Only for the special ones.”

 “Special ones, huh?” he held her hips tighter guiding her movements “Like when you want to prove a point? Or-“

“Or. Definitely or.”

She threw her head back, exposing her neck, giving him not-so-subtle hints.

“Or when you want to send a message?” he willingly moved his lips down her skin, sucking on the pulse points, earning a little, delicious moan and hand tangling in his hair. “A message that you’re taken?”

“Am I taken? Can’t remember…” she pulled back, taking off her hoodie and discarding her bra.

“Fuck yeah, you’re taken.” His lips moved lower, kissing her collarbone and cleavage.

“Good to know…” she made a quick movement to pull and toss his shirt somewhere in the room intensifying her movements on his ever growing tent “I think the gun shipment changed the location…”

“You fucking tease.” Jason hissed, changing the positions so she was trapped beneath his body. “Eight inches. Semi-automatic. Brand new and ready for action.”

“Well don’t I love being at a gunpoint…” her hand found a way to his groin, starting to palm the bulge, enjoying the way she seemed to still be in control, even with him on top.

“Oh yeah? A gun to your head?” he groaned, barely controlling himself.

“Maybe not to my head…”

Y/N wriggled on the bed, rolling on her belly for a moment to reach for the condom in the nightstand and that moment was enough for Jason to get hypnotized by that bounding piece of ass.

“I really hope the biggest size will fit you—”

“Fuck, I’ll stuff you so full you won’t walk for a week.”

He pushed her legs open with his knee, doing a quick job of rolling the latex on his length, teasing her clit with a few featherlight touches, loving how she seemed to beg for more with every squirm and entered her in one deep thrust.

“Big enough for you?” he bit her earlobe licking the shell right after, his voice low.  

“I – mmm… shit…”

“Have you ever had this big?” The thrusts were long and hard and deliciously painful at first before turning into a series of perfectly aimed and ideally paced movements that made her gasp from pleasure. “Answer the question, princess.”

“I – ah! Ah, shit!” nails of the right hand dug into the mattress hard enough to make holes, the other hand reaching for the pillow, quickly pressing it between her head and the headboard to prevent the potential concussion. He was not a semi-automatic gun machine. More like a rifle, never shooting blanks. Thank fucks, she was prepared in many ways and started taking pills a few weeks prior. Not that it was her plan or anything. 

“What was that?” he rocked faster and harder, pulling all the way back only to slam right back inside. “Too much for you, slut?”

“Make me come! Make me fucking come to give me incentive to answer that stupid question!”

“Seems to me like I’m fucking your brains out. Is that right, pretty? Am I fucking you stupid?”

“Fuck!”

“Yeah… you’re so fucked, baby.” He was now hitting her cervix with such a speed and strength as if his life was depending on it. “Fucked by no. One. Else. But. The. Red. Hood.“ Each word was punctuated by a deep movement and if someone asked she would swear it was reaching her stomach. Or maybe she just ate something bad.

“It’s an – ohhh! – oh shit!” she gasped, unable to finish the sentence for a moment. “It’s an honor for you to have me like this….” There was no way she was going to let him win and really fuck her stupid.

“Oh I know… But no one else is big and strong enough for you” he circled her clit, bending head to suck her nipple, leaving a wet trail from one breast to another “now, come for me… come baby…”

She bit her lips so hard that a blood appeared on the bottom one, quickly licking it off, turning Jason wild. He was a sucker for blood. Not only the shooting kind, clearly.

“Yeah…. Yeah…oh! Oh!”

She could feel his pace faltering a little as he was so close to his own climax.

And used it against him, hitting right into the momentum, somehow managing to end up on top of him again, hands on his chest, breasts bouncing, ass slapping on his cock as she rocked up and down, still in control.

“Fuck! Y/n!”

“Yeah, yeah that’s right, moan my name as you come Jason Todd. Red Hood. Whatever. Scream my name.”

“You- where did you learn how to take cock like that—”

“You wouldn’t like the answer. Now come on!” It was immensely hard to keep herself from diving into the sea of release but she knew how to get what she wanted. Years of effing experience in this fucked up place.  

His hands were on her ass, squeezing mercilessly, almost to the point of pain as he finally reached the stars.

Only then she allowed herself to let go as well. Winning, yet again, falling on top of him like a marathon runner who scored a gold medal even if there were truly no losers in this game of love. At least not in terms of the body.

“Damn… you’re heavy…” he hissed, wrapping arms around her, trapping her on top of him, nuzzling nose into her hair. She was right with him, next to him, so warm and soft and tender, making him feel so good, so nice, so liberated.

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy my fat ass bouncing on you.”

“Too tired to even try to pretend.” He whispered, trying to kiss her softly, but much to his surprise, she rolled off him, swiftly avoiding his grip, grabbed the hoodie from the floor and stood up fixing her hair, letting it fall down her back like a h/c waterfall.

“Well this was nice.” Her tone was flat, unamused and the warmth in his chest turned into icy cold right away.

“Wait… what? But-“

“I’m gonna go piss now. Can’t risk any STIs. Those hurt like hell, not to mention it’s kind of embarrassing explaining to my Ob-gyn why I wasn’t careful again. I swear one more time and she’ll drop me as a patient.”

Was this a joke to her!?

“But-“ he stuttered looking at her with wide eyes. This was not what he expected at all and there were like a million questions in his head.  “Y/n-“

“I’ll be right back, but hey – hygiene right? You should get yourself cleaned too” she grabbed the towel from the rack and threw it on him, effectively flattening his still semi-hard cock and his appetite and energy for another round.

“But –“

“This is serious shit Jason! Gotta stay healthy if we’re to repeat it.”

She winked suggestively, rushing to the bathroom, leaving a little crack in the door, so he could faintly hear her peeing.

What was wrong with this girl!?

This must have been just some stupid nightmare, a product of his tired, messed up, beaten brain--

“So. You wanted to talk about something?” she was back about a minute later. “hey, you still didn’t clean up?”

“Are you always like this?”

“Like what?” she touched her right buttock and hissed at the contact with a scratch his hands left on the skin.

“This no-nonsense attitude!”

“What else do you want me to do?” she tilted her head, looking at him quizzically

 “Oh I don’t know!” he finally lost his patience, feeling too vulnerable and too emotional for his own liking, feeling the compelling need to cover himself. Both physically and emotionally. “Normally people like to – oh, I don’t know – talk after sex? Maybe cuddle a little? But you’re just like oh, hey, it was a nice fuck, thanks for letting me use you, dressing and washing up like a freaking germophobe!” he got tangled in his pants, hardly preventing himself from tripping which would be even more condescending.

“Jason-“

“I’m being serious here Y/N!”

‘You called me slut.” She deadpanned, raising an eyebrow.

‘I called you – ok, fine! Fine I called you slut. Is that why you’re suddenly icing me out?”

“No.”

“No!? That’s it? That’s all you got? I can’t fucking believe it!” he punched the wall leaving a little dent, but the broken pride clearly did not affect Y/N.

“Could you please calm down and stop depriving me of my deposit on this place? I’d appreciate it.”

“You’re fucking unbelievable!”

“I don’t understand why you’re being so emotional about it Jason.” It might have been a mirage but from Jason’s perspective it looked like Y/N literally rolled her eyes!

“We had sex!”

“Yes? and?” She hesitated giving him a chance to explain further but he was just standing there with eyes wide and mouth open. “Oh come on, this was just an itch, right? We’re bound by business, not pleasure. You don’t mix two explosives like us. It’s just unwise. We’re both adults, sex is not always about deeper feelings-”

She was still talking but he could hardly hear anything with the way blood was humming in his ears, successfully blocking any other bullshit coming out of her mouth (thankfully for Jason though).

Bound by business.

Mixing explosives.

Unwise.

Unwise!

Fucking unwise!?

“Jason?” she smiled softly, as if nothing happened, bending down and searching his eyes. “That gun shipment of yours? It happens in an hour at the docks and everything is orchestrated by Black Mask. I would take some backup if I were you, it might get ugly.”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

Without any further words he walked outside, feeling defeated like never before and the nail to the coffin was the sound of the door being locked right after him.

He should have known better that a girl who climbed this high in the criminal underworld would be fucked up in some way.

But how can one prepare for the reality of the broken heart?

Back up his ass. He was about to turn his newly found pain into rage and kill each and every one of Sionis’ men himself.

The moon was about to turn bloody that night….

And the worst part?

She was still his information dealer. The best in Gotham, regardless of what he might have said before.

And he was still going to work with her.

Do you know that warning : don’t drink and drive or better : don’t drink and text?

Yep.

Another one should be the warning of developing feelings for your literal partner in crime. 

@lettucel0ver @oohyasumi @apple---cider---vinegar

[secriden]

It's the way "I just think there's no one out there who wants the best for you more than I do" is true because it INCLUDES FADEL HIMSELF. Fadel is so steeped in his anger and hurt and fear right now that he can't even see how loving and being loved by Style is the door to true freedom.

But he's also nowhere near ready to handle that, emotionally, so Style will give him this honesty and then demand nothing from him and move right on to nipple play (familiar, and therefore comfortable, territory - because at least Fadel has a rulebook to follow in this situation). This reminds me of that time when Fadel told Style about his parents' murder and then Style said "I'm sorry" and then abruptly changed the subject. He senses when Fadel isn't ready to actually face the issue, so he'll give Fadel the space to process what's going on - be it his own shocking ability to be vulnerable to Style or the truth of Style's earnest love for him - in his own time.

Just. The selflessness in that. It would be so much easier for Style to push right now -- to force Fadel into the discussion about how Style actually was very much a victim of the combined circumstances of Kant and Bison and Fadel's past. Lest we forget: Style is the ONLY ONE not embroiled (as far as we know as of ep 8) directly with any of the criminal aspect of this universe. He was just a relatively innocent bystander who got into an accident because he was texting while driving, flirted a little bit aggressively because he found Fadel hot, and then got dragged into a game of lies and deception and power without having a clue about what he was getting into until his own heart was irrevocably compromised. (Like no, I'm never letting my Style apologist post go.)

But none of that matters to Style; the weight of Style's care, the way it's informed and threaded through with his own experience with grief and mourning, makes him infinitely more concerned with giving Fadel room to be angry, to be harsh, hell to even hurt him with his dismissal of Style's sorrow and fear. Style understands what it means to need space to grieve and hurt and he is literally making that space for Fadel.

And this is so important because Fadel is so very repressed. Like you know this is a man who hasn't actually emotionally processed a thing since his parents' murder. And who can blame him? He was a just a child. And then he was taken in by a woman who gave him the training and the tools to ensure that he would never be physically vulnerable again but also taught him to completely close his heart to love and trust. I don't believe for a second that Lilly cared one bit about Fadel's (or Bison's, for that matter) emotional wellbeing.

This is why Style is so perfectly suited for Fadel. He may not have the same experiences or lived a life as volatile and violent as Fadel, but the things he has experienced makes him uniquely suited to treasure and mend Fadel's fragile heart.

Fadel needs to allow himself to let go sometimes, to have some fun for once, to face and accept the reality of his own emotions. They both have to learn how to love and be loved, and its fascinating how ideally suited they are to teach each other these things. -- I wrote this on my thoughts on Style after episode 1 - and by god is this show paying it off!!!

I just. I'm so grateful to this show for giving us this. I know it's not prefect, there are things I wish the show had lingered on or left out, but by GOD there are some absolute diamonds in this story that render me overwhelmed with love for these characters.

[toxinoire]

The gelphie kiss in the book is a lot longer than it actually was in my head cause the og text is:

But if I wrote down the vision of this I have in my head it's:

"You'll be alright," Elphaba said, "now you're a seasoned traveler. This is just the return leg of a voyage you already know." Stepping forward, she almost hesistates. But as quick as the hesitation came, it vanished, leaving only one thing left to do. This urge, one she knows should not be done here, especially not now with the air this way; all logic dies for a second.

And so, she put her face against Glinda's and kissed her, soft and lingering. One hand rests on her face; her touch soft, the last time it will ever be. "Hold out, if you can." She murmured, as her fingers gently glided upon the other girl's cheek, and kissed her again. "Hold out, my sweet."

Allowing herself to indulge in this a little longer, knowing it is the first and last. Then, she turns around.

Like, this is how I picture it in my head.

[winchestersisterimaginessss]

Request: hellooo! could you please write one where dean and sam are having their usual arguments but the sister is so sick of their shit, tried to tell them to get a grip and they come to their senses. but then flash forward the boys are ACTUALLY fighting, like throwing punches, and she gets caught by one of them? thanks, love your work!! <3

A/N: Hiiiiii!!! Thank you so much. I love this request and I hope I wrote it in a way you were imagining. If not, send me another request! As always requests are open. You can request anything you want, even if it’s something I’ve already written. Thanks everyone!!

Sam and Dean Winchester X Sister!Reader

I stood at the edge of the living room, eyes fixed on the familiar scene unfolding in front of me. Dean’s voice was as sharp as ever, cutting through the thick air of tension. The words were bitter, like venom spilling out of his mouth, each sentence more loaded than the last.

“Sam, you don’t get it. We don’t have the luxury of time. People are dying out there!”

I watched Sam, his jaw clenched, his posture rigid with barely contained fury. He leaned forward, hands planted firmly on the table between them. “You’re acting like we’re invincible, Dean! Like we don’t need a plan—like we can’t think through this!”

The frustration in Sam’s voice echoed in my chest like a drumbeat. But the thing that had finally snapped my restraint wasn’t their words—it was the way their anger was bleeding into everything. Every argument. Every conversation. It was relentless, a storm that never seemed to stop. I had been trying to hold onto whatever semblance of peace I could, but today… today I couldn’t take it anymore.

I could feel my heartbeat in my ears, that familiar surge of adrenaline clawing up my spine as I paced around the room, eyes darting from one brother to the other. My hands trembled by my sides, but it wasn’t just from the anger. It was the heartbreak—the exhaustion.

It had been happening for weeks. Every day, every single fight felt like it was tearing us apart. The same stupid arguments. The same stubbornness. And it wasn’t even about the monsters anymore. It was about us. The Winchesters. Our family.

And I was sick of it.

“Enough.” My voice cut through their bickering like a knife. The room froze in an instant.

Dean’s eyes snapped to me, that familiar scowl on his face as he straightened up from where he was leaning against the kitchen counter. “Y/N, don’t—”

“No,” I interrupted, my voice shaking, but this time with raw emotion. “No more. I can’t do this anymore. You two are tearing me apart.” I stepped forward, my chest tight with the weight of what I was about to say. “Every time you fight, it’s hurting everyone around you. Do you even see that? Do you realize what it’s doing to me?”

Dean’s expression faltered for a split second, but it was gone just as quickly, his jaw setting again, like a wall coming down. Sam, too, was silent, his eyes fixed on me, but I could see the flicker of guilt in his gaze.

I felt the tears pricking behind my eyes, threatening to spill over. “I’m your sister, goddamn it. And every time you fight, it feels like I’m invisible. Like I’m just the collateral damage. It’s not just your war anymore, okay? It’s all of ours. But I’m the one stuck in the middle, cleaning up the mess. And I can’t… I can’t do it anymore.”

My voice cracked with the last words, the weight of the admission crashing over me. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been holding in until it all came pouring out. The years of trying to keep things together. The endless struggles. But this—this constant fighting, the endless cycle of hate and misunderstanding—was the last straw.

Sam opened his mouth to respond, but before he could speak, I turned and stormed out of the room, unable to look at either of them. I couldn’t. I needed to get away. The walls were closing in. I ran to my room and I slammed the door behind me, the sound echoing through the hallway. The cool, dim light of my room offered no comfort. I collapsed onto my bed, burying my face in my hands. The tears I had been fighting for so long finally broke free, each one a painful reminder of how far we’d fallen.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been lying there, the muffled voices of my brothers drifting from the living room, distant and eventually fading into silence. For a moment, I allowed myself to hope they’d finally come to their senses. The tension in the air lifted, and I let out a shaky sigh of relief. I rolled over, searching for something to occupy my mind, anything to fill the quiet space between the cracks of everything left unsaid.

It felt peaceful—finally.

And then it didn’t.

A thud. A grunt. A crash. The unmistakable sounds of a fight.

My heart dropped. I knew what it was. It wasn’t the first time.

I shot out of bed, adrenaline surging through me. My fists clenched, nails digging into my palms as I sprinted down the hallway. Every step felt like it was dragging me deeper into the chaos that had consumed our family. I didn’t care if I was still raw from the argument. I didn’t care if my own heart was shattered.

I pushed through the door, eyes wide, breath ragged. Dean and Sam were on the floor, fists flying, faces twisted in rage.

"Stop!" I screamed, my voice hoarse and desperate.

But they didn’t stop. They didn’t even look up. Sam’s fist connect with Dean’s jaw, sending him stumbling back. And then Dean retaliated, throwing his own punch, and for a split second, I watched in horror as they both swung at each other, neither one holding back.

“No! Stop! Please, stop!” My voice cracked as I rushed forward, desperate to break it up, but I wasn’t fast enough.

They continued to swing, and this time one of their fists caught me by accident. The world around me seemed to slow down in that moment. The knuckles collided with the side of my face, and everything went black for an instant. I felt my body hit the floor with a sickening thud, the sharp pain in my head drowning out everything else.

Blood filled my mouth, and I could taste the metallic tang of it. I gasped for air, but it felt like the room was spinning. I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t hold me. My body was too heavy, too overwhelmed with pain.

Tears stung my eyes as I lay on the floor, blood dripping from my lips. I couldn’t believe it—couldn’t understand how we’d gotten to this point. How we—we—had let things get so bad.

“Y/N!” Dean’s voice shattered through the haze. He dropped down next to me, panic overtaking his features. “Shit… kid, don’t move. Don’t move, okay? You’re gonna need stitches.”

But I couldn’t hear him. My mind was clouded, my vision fading. I choked back another sob, my hands instinctively reaching up to touch the fresh wound on my face. The pain was blinding. I felt myself shaking violently, my body not able to handle the weight of it all—the physical pain, the emotional pain, the betrayal of it all.

“Why?” I whispered, my voice barely a breath. I turned my head to look at them, but my vision was swimming with tears. “Why do you keep doing this? You’re brothers. You’re supposed to protect each other. Look at me! Look at what you’ve done to me!”

Dean looked as if he had been slapped, his face pale and guilt-ridden, his lips trembling with words he couldn’t form. Sam, who had been hovering in the background, now moved forward slowly, his hands trembling as he knelt beside me.

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” Sam said quietly, his voice cracked with emotion. He reached for my hand, but I yanked it away.

“I don’t want your apology!” I screamed through the blood in my mouth, the words raw and painful. “I don’t want anything from you right now. I just… I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

Sam looked like he was about to say something, but I was already staggering to my feet, my vision still blurry, my head spinning.

“No, you’re not helping!” I shouted, my voice breaking. “I’ll fix it. I’ll fix myself.” And with that, I rushed toward the bathroom, my legs unsteady beneath me, my heart pounding with each step.

I slammed the door behind me, locking it before either of them could follow. I couldn’t let them fix it. Not yet. Not when they were still at war with each other. I had to do it myself.

I grabbed the first aid kit from under the sink, my hands trembling as I fumbled with the supplies. I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I wasn’t sure I could even see straight through the tears and dizziness that clouded my vision, but I couldn’t stop. I had to fix it. I had to fix myself.

I dug the needle from the kit, my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold onto it. not even registering the pain as I pressed it into my skin. I was too dizzy to see straight, too lost in my pain to think clearly. The needle jabbed into my skin, but the agony of it was nothing compared to the emotional ache. My hands were shaking uncontrollably now, the stitches coming out uneven and jagged. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t. I couldn’t see the wound, couldn’t tell where I was supposed to stitch, but I pushed through the agony anyway, my body wracked with sobs. Every breath felt like it was going to tear me apart.

“Y/N, open the door,” I heard Dean’s voice from the other side, pleading. “Please. Please, we’re so sorry.”

“I don’t care!” I screamed through the door, the words strangled by tears. “You should’ve cared before! You should’ve seen what this was doing to me! To all of us!” You whimpered before slammed your hand down on the bathroom sink. “Our fucking family!”

The sobs wracked my body, my chest tightening with every breath. The blood dripped steadily from my lip, staining my shirt and the bathroom counter. I felt myself getting weaker by the second.

“We’re so sorry. Please let us help,” Sam’s voice came through the door, soft, desperate. “Let us help you, bug.” His voice was quiet, gentle, and broken.

“I don’t want your help!” I sobbed, my voice breaking. “I wanted you to stop fighting! I wanted you to care about me. About us.”

But the pain was too much. The dizziness too overwhelming. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I still fought, pressing the needle into my skin.

Suddenly, the door burst open. Both of them rushed in, their faces stricken with horror at the sight of me, hunched over the sink, blood staining the bathroom floor. Dean moved toward me, but I pulled away, backing into the corner.

“I told you,” I whispered hoarsely, my voice ragged with exhaustion, “I don’t want your help.” The words felt like sandpaper scraping against my throat. Maybe I was scared. Scared of how much this had gotten out of control. Scared of how much I’d let it tear me apart.

Dean’s expression twisted in anguish, and for a moment, I saw it. The guilt. The understanding that this was bigger than a typical fight. That I wasn’t just angry—I was devastated.

He dropped to his knees in front of me, the movement quick, but careful. His eyes locked on mine, full of regret, the weight of it pressing down on us both. He reached for me slowly, his hand hovering near my face. "We didn’t mean for it to get this bad, Y/N. We just…" He trailed off, swallowing hard as if the words were too difficult to say. "We didn’t know how to stop."

I felt the tears coming again, but this time, it was different. They weren’t angry, not fiery and sharp like before. This was something quieter, deeper. The rage had burned itself out, leaving only aching sorrow in its wake.

“I know,” I whispered, my voice barely more than a broken breath, “But… you can’t fix it with more pain.” My chest tightened with each word, the weight of everything pressing down on me like a storm I couldn’t outrun.

Sam’s face crumpled at my words, and I saw his jaw tighten as he stepped forward, his eyes darting from my blood-streaked face to the needle still clenched tightly in my hand. His hands shook as he reached for it, and when his fingers brushed against mine, I flinched, my body wracked with a fresh wave of pain.

“Y/N, please.” His voice broke through my haze of pain, gentle but firm. "Let me do it.”

I felt the sting of the needle being pried from my hand. For a moment, I wanted to pull it back, to insist I could finish it myself, but then I saw Sam’s face. The look of terror in his eyes. He knew me. He knew I didn’t do this. I didn’t stitch myself up—they always did that for me. Always. The realization hit him hard, the understanding that I had reached a point where I couldn’t rely on them, not even when things got this bad. And it was that look of pain in his eyes, that unspoken hurt, that made everything feel even worse.

Sam grimaced when he saw the uneven, jagged stitches I’d attempted—some parts too tight, others barely holding together. The pain from them was unbearable, but it wasn’t the physical pain that tore at me. It was the fact that I had been forced to do this alone. That I couldn’t trust them to see the full extent of what I was feeling.

He exhaled sharply and immediately set to work, pulling the needle through my skin with slow, meticulous care. My body tensed in response, and I couldn’t help but whimper as the needle pierced me again. The pain was excruciating, a deep, fiery throb that seemed to echo in every bone, every muscle.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Sam murmured, his voice so soothing it felt like the only thing keeping me tethered to reality. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I’ve got you.” But the words didn’t make the pain go away.

I felt every movement of the needle, every tug of the thread, and the sheer agony of it made my whole body quake. It was like he was stitching up my heart with every pull, each stitch a reminder of everything that had gone wrong. The tears kept coming, hot and bitter, spilling down my cheeks without my permission.

Dean moved in closer, his hand brushing my hair out of my face, and I could feel the weight of his gaze on me. His fingers were gentle as they touched me—like he was scared I might shatter under his touch. I was shattering though, all around the edges.

“I’m so sorry,” Dean murmured, his voice low and raw, barely audible above the pounding in my head. “We never should’ve let it get this far. I didn’t see what we were doing to you, Y/N. We didn’t see how bad it was.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to hold onto the last shred of control I had left. The pain from the stitches was bad—so bad—but what hurt more was hearing the pain in his voice. Dean wasn’t supposed to sound like this. He was supposed to be the strong one, the one who fixed things. But now? Now, he was just as broken as I was.

“It’s not just the fights,” I whispered between sobs, my voice tight with the effort of speaking through the agony. “It’s everything. It’s how we’ve been falling apart for so long, and you didn’t even see it.”

Sam’s hands were steady, but his expression was pained, and I could see the way his jaw clenched as he worked, each stitch a slow promise that he was here, that he wasn’t going anywhere. But it didn’t stop the pain. The physical pain, the emotional pain. It didn’t stop me from feeling like I was drowning in it.

Dean leaned closer, his breath soft against my ear. “We’re here now, Y/N. We’re gonna fix it. We’re gonna fix us.”

I could feel his words, but I wasn’t sure if I could believe them. I wasn’t sure if any of us could ever fix what was broken. Not completely.

But Sam’s careful hands were still stitching, and Dean was still here, his hand resting on my shoulder now, providing the smallest bit of comfort as I cried. The pain from the stitches was blinding, but somehow, through it, I could hear them. They were here. They were trying.

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” Sam said again, his voice breaking. He was almost finished now, his hands trembling slightly as he worked the last stitch into place. “We didn’t see how much we were hurting you. But we will fix this. I swear. You’re not alone in this.”

The last stitch pulled tight, and the pain that followed was sharp, but brief. I let out a sob, my body trembling from the aftermath of it. Sam gently pressed a bandage to the wound, his hands now much more careful, but still steady.

Dean’s voice came again, quieter now, more vulnerable. “We see it now, kid. Everything is better when we’re in this together. We’re a team and we have to stay that way.”

And that—just that—felt like it was enough, for now.

Later, I sat on the couch, the bandage tight across my side. Sam was beside me, and Dean was sitting on the other side, his hand resting on the back of the couch as if to remind me he was there. We weren’t talking much. There was nothing really to say. Not yet. But somehow, the silence didn’t feel as suffocating as it used to. It was a quiet that was filled with understanding—the beginning of healing.

I leaned back into the couch, my head resting on the cushion. I wasn’t fixed. We weren’t fixed. But we were trying. And that was enough for tonight.

We were family. Even if we had to rebuild, piece by piece. We would make it through this. Together.

[mightyostanes]

Why Jews Aren't "Trying to Trick G-d"

(Note only secondary sources are cited in the bibliography)

For my second post I had originally planned on writing something more fun but unfortunately, I feel the need to write this. Lately I’ve seen quite a few people on twitter saying that the way Jews interpret Halakah is that Jews are trying to trick G-d. While this is obviously a bad faith argument designed to be shitty, I still think this subject should be explained in greater detail. Mostly because I think there’s a fundamental disconnect in the way people imagine religions should interact with their deity and how Judaism has historically interacted with G-d. Furthermore, due to the Haskalah and Counter Haskalah I feel that a lot of these ideas have been lost to a lot of Jews in the English-speaking world. Replaced by Platonism that has much more in common with Philo and Maimonides then it does with anything the sages actually wrote or believed. Or to put it in much franker terms the toilet demon mentioned Rabba Bar Rav Huna mentioned in Gittin70:A6 probably wasn’t a metaphor. Instead, it seems incredibly likely that both he and Rabbi Tanhum Bar Tanilai believed in a literal Sheyd that lived in literal toilets no matter how embarrassing that sounds. 

    The reason this bizarre tangent is important is because if you actually look at the biblical, rabbinic, medieval, kabbalistic, and hasidic literature it utterly destroys the idea that the relationship of the Jew to G-d is of one sided kowtowing submission. Granted, it’s quite easy to interpret it that way but that’s mostly due to conditioning in terms of what people think a theistic religion should be about rather than any wiggle room in the texts themselves. In fact, I’d wager most arguments against this have more to do with people’s idea of the Tanakh than the Tanakh itself. 

      The biggest reason for this misunderstanding in my opinion is that very few people actually know what a covenant is let alone its context. To illustrate my point, I’d like you to think back on the last time you made a covenant with someone or something. Assuming you aren’t a ceremonial magician the answer to the question just posed is probably never. In the modern world covenant has become almost solely associated with the Bible and has almost no context. Especially because the idea of the ‘New Covenant’ talked about in the works of Paul the Apostle has very little to do with what covenants historically were. Rather than statements of blind faith, covenants in the Ancient Near East were more analogous to contracts and treaties. There are even some scholars who think that the covenantal theology in Deuteronomy may be based on Ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties. (1)

    In these treaties a bigger state or kingdom would make a treaty for a smaller kingdom to accept fealty to them. (1) In these treaties, at least in paper, rather than being a slave the ruler of the smaller nation was supposed to be a junior partner. Said vassals would also continue to be junior partners to the larger power if they held up the obligations given to them by the treaty. (1) Similarly, just as the smaller party holds obligations to the larger party the larger party also holds obligations to the smaller party. Including ostensibly having to listen to complaints or suggestions the smaller party made. 

   In the Tanakh or Five Books of Moses, there are exactly three covenants mentioned that occurred between G-d and humans. These three aforementioned covenants are the covenant with Noah and his descendants once the Ark lands, (Gen 8:20-9:13), The covenant for Abraham’s descendants where an unknown light phenomenon signifying G-d passes through Abraham’s sacrifice (Gen: 15), and the famous covenant between G-d and the Israelites on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-24). Shortly after the establishment of both the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants G-d or an emissary of G-d appears and holds a banquet with the covenant members (Gen 18:1-10, Exodus 24:9-18). In the Ancient Near Eastern context that these texts were written in, banquets and feasts thrown by a king or senior covenant partner were incredibly important tools for control or consolidation. In both the Neo-Assyrian Empire and in the kingdom of Mari not only eating with the king but being at the table with him showed that you were considered as part of the king’s metaphorical family (2). These constructed family hierarchies would be clearly delineated by how close one sat to the king and how one sat, with the people right next to the king being seen as close immediate family members analogous to sons or younger brothers. In the two previously mentioned covenants the Elders of Israel and Abraham’s family sans Lot were sitting with G-d or his emissary suggesting an incredibly close relationship instead of merely that of master and servant. Especially as the angels or heavenly host were not seated ahead of the human participants at the metaphorical dinner table. 

          This idea of man as junior partner and consultant is also seen in the way that humans can critique, give advice to, or argue with G-d and G-d takes their words into consideration. A famous example of this post covenant is Abraham giving G-d suggestions on what to do with Sodom and Gomorrah and G-d accepting his input (Gen 18). An even more extreme example is in Exodus 32 when Moses actually argues with G-d and seemingly wins the argument thus saving the lives of the Hebrews. Similarly, complaints were by no means unknown by the rulers of vassal states to their overlords. The famous Amarna letters addressed by Egyptian allies and vassals to Pharaoh Akhenaten are filled with complaints and requests, with a few even being acknowledged (3). Considering that Pharaoh’s considered themselves living gods this just adds more background to the precedent of complaining towards, making suggestions to, or arguing with the divine.

    Beyond the kinship of all the community of Israel, and not just a singular son, with G-d there are also many notions that have to be cleared up in regard to humankind’s place in creation. A famous Midrash Tanhuma Tarzia 5 has a Roman Consul asking Rabbi Akiba why Jews circumcise male children when G-d has them born uncircumcised. In response Rabbi Akiba shows the consul grain, created by G-d and bread which is that same grain altered by man. Rabbi Akiba then asks the consul which one is better, before giving the obvious answer that most people prefer bread. This little story besides giving a philosophical explanation for circumcision also gives a good summary of the main ethos of Rabbinic Judaism. That G-d made the world unfinished so that mankind in general and Jews in particular could finish it. To establish the kingdom of heaven on earth rather than merely waiting for it. The translation of ‘Tikkun Olam’ as repairing the world was meant to be understood literally and not just as a metaphor for social justice.

    Lastly and perhaps most shocking to an Abrahamic Gentile reader, the G-d of Judaism was not traditionally portrayed as unchanging or infallible. The idea only gained traction in rabbinic Judaism after Maimonides inserted it into his theology after borrowing it from Aristotelian, Islamic, and Christian ideas in the 12th century. Historically the G-d of Judaism has been shown to change their mind, and according to Moshe Idel is even affected by theurgy (4). As evidenced by many stories in the Torah where G-d explicitly changes their mind on what they want to do. The mutability of G-d’s mind in terms of human prayer and action carries over to the realm of Halakhic interpretation assuming the other party has a good point. The most famous example of this rabbinical overturning G-d’s decree is in Baba Metzia 59B where Three Rabbis tell G-d that G-d and Rabbi Eliezer’s interpretation of a ruling regarding an oven is invalid. They achieve this by citing Deuteronomy 30:12, and Exodus 30:2 stating that the Law is not in heaven and is for the majority to decide its correct meaning. Instead of smiting the group of Rabbis G-d simply laughs stating that ‘My children have beaten me’. Indeed, the Great Maggid even goes as far as to say that G-d, like a parent teaching their child Torah, actually prefers a novel interpretation instead of just parroting the interpretation given by the parent (5).

           In Pauline Christianity Deuteronomy 30:12 which states, “The Law is not in Heaven” has been taken to mean that Halakah isn’t binding in the kingdom of heaven. However, the mainstream rabbinic interpretation means that only living humans can truly follow the Torah and perform Mitzvot to their fullest extent. In the Talmud in Shabbat 88B there is one of many Moses vs angels battles found throughout Jewish literature regarding whether humans should receive the Torah. Just like all of the other stories with this mytheme, Moses obviously wins this battle and takes the Torah to Israel. What makes this story different is that rather than using theurgy to bind the angels or just beating the tar out of them, Moses defeats them with a well-reasoned argument. I’ll let the passage I copied from Sefaria speak for itself.

     Moses said before Him: Master of the Universe, the Torah that You are giving me, what is written in it? God said to him: “I am the Lord your God Who brought you out of Egypt from the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2). Moses said to the angels: Did you descend to Egypt? Were you enslaved to Pharaoh? Why should the Torah be yours? Again Moses asked: What else is written in it? God said to him: “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). Moses said to the angels: Do you dwell among the nations who worship idols that you require this special warning? Again Moses asked: What else is written in it? The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to him: “Remember the Shabbat day to sanctify it” (Exodus 20:8). Moses asked the angels: Do you perform labor that you require rest from it? Again Moses asked: What else is written in it? “Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Exodus 20:7), meaning that it is prohibited to swear falsely. Moses asked the angels: Do you conduct business with one another that may lead you to swear falsely? Again Moses asked: What else is written in it? The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to him: “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12). Moses asked the angels: Do you have a father or a mother that would render the commandment to honor them relevant to you? Again Moses asked: What else is written in it? God said to him: “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal” (Exodus 20:13) Moses asked the angels: Is there jealousy among you, or is there an evil inclination within you that would render these commandments relevant?

-Shabbat 88B (Babylonian Talmud)

       The Mitzvot, something occasionally seen as higher and holier than the immanent aspect of G-d (6) were meant to be performed solely by humans. Because just like the angels, G-d lacks many of these physical imperfections that give many of the Mitzvot any real weight. Therefore, as the ones who do the most mitzvot, how we interpret and follow them is fundamentally up to us.

    Admittedly I could go on and on about the theoretical frameworks behind the ideas. Such as the status of the Torah vis a vis the status of G-d, or the tradition of prayer as legal battle with the divine realm but that’d be a whole other bag of cats. One that’d probably take 20 pages to accurately give my thoughts, thoughts that would be at best heretical to at least a fair number of Jews. So instead let us end this here, there is no way for Jews to cheat Halakhah because it fundamentally belongs to the Jews. It is our burden that we have to bear and our most cherished treasure. Even if it did indeed come from G-d, like any gift the receiver usually is the actual owner and the one who decides what to do with it.

Citation List for non primary sources

Koller, Aaron. “Deuteronomy and Hittite Treaties.” Bible Interpretations , September 2014. https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/2014/09/kol388003. 

Milano, Lucio. “Naptan Ḫudûtu Aškun". Practice and Ideology of Neo-Assyrian Banquets.” Thesis, Storia Antica e Arceologico Ciclo , 2013.Section 3. Eating With The King: The Earthly Banquet. PG 60-80

Nutter, Nick. “How the Great Kings Managed Their Vassal States during the Bronze Age.” nuttersworld.com, August 15, 2024. https://nuttersworld.com/civilisations-that-collapsed/managing-vassal-states/. 

 Idel, Moshe. Middot: On the emergence of Kabbalistic Theosophies. Brooklyn, NY: KTAV Publishing House, 2021. 

Idel, Moshe. “The Son of God as a Righteous in Hasidism .” Chapter. In Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism, 531–85. New York, NY: Continuum , n.d. 

6. Idel, Moshe. “The World Absorbing Text.” Chapter. In Absorbing Perfections Kabbalah and Interpretation, 26–45. New Haven, Connecticut : Yale University Press, 2002

[taffywabbit]

I've been thinking about this song a lot again since yesterday, and if you'll indulge me in being overly wordy and a bit sentimental, I kinda wanna share some of my thoughts here:

so I alluded to this a bit while rambling on bluesky earlier, but early in the process of composing this song I REALLY wanted it to have lyrics. I tried writing some, and having looked at them again this morning, frankly they're kinda garbage and I stand by my decision to scrap them and let the music just speak for itself. but I only really wanted to write lyrics in the first place because I got ONE specific line (and subsequently a chorus, or at least one version of it) stuck in my head and wanted the rest of the song to kinda revolve around it.

the scrapped verses were sorta loosely about how, when you're younger, you tend to have a very straightforward and simple sense of optimism and justice - kids generally believe that things WILL just work out somehow, and often have surprisingly obvious and on-point responses when they learn about societal issues, but adults will often talk down to them and tell them they just don't understand how the real world works yet. and as you get older, that optimism gets conflated heavily with childlike naivety and kinda gets metaphorically beaten out of a lot of people over time, until they're just kinda consigned to the status quo and thinking of societal problems being too large/permanent for them to fix or influence.

this song was meant to embody a sense of rebellious optimism - a stubborn belief that we have a say in the kind of world we live in, and furthermore that our inner child would never forgive us for shrugging and giving up now that we're finally Adults and Adults are supposed to be the ones with the power to actually Fix Things. it was meant to evoke some nostalgia too, sure - thus the title "Grass Stains", which came from the scrapped first verse about childhood, and also just the general musical style being reminiscent of pop punk music I really liked as a kid and still tend to associate with summertime and old video games from that era. but more than that, I wanted to convey the idea that, sooner or later, we have to stop waiting for the Adults to decide how to fix things and get a hand on the ball ourselves; the idea that growing up should empower us, not make us cynical and detached and too tired to care anymore.

anyways, I will spare you most of the unfinished lyrics because I really do promise they're not interesting or good at all, but here's the chorus part and the specific last line that I was really fixated on back then and (for reasons that are probably not hard to imagine) thinking a lot about again now:

you keep pacing

so sullenly facing

away from the task left to you

why can't you see it?

if you want hope, then be it

those gears aren't just going to move

you gotta change the world, before it changes you

so yeah. shit's rough out there right now. shit's been rough for a while and it's gonna continue being rough for the foreseeable future. like I mentioned in the original caption, i wrote this song when I was feeling pretty awful (both mentally and physically, actually - I'm pretty sure I had covid for the second time when I made this lol) and needed something to perk up my mood, and it... kinda worked honestly? and now when I listen to it again I still kinda get a boost from it, especially if I let myself think back to the original message I was trying to imbue it with. it's hard for me to feel totally hopeless or unmotivated while I'm listening to it, and I hope that energy sorta comes through for other people too (though I would obviously be just as happy that people like the music I made anyways, without deeper context or ideas attached to it).

I guess i just wanna say this: remember that the world's gonna change one way or another, but your contributions to it are never meaningless, and their absence would be felt. and you also have the power to embolden and support those around you to become a stronger force for good together. the only real way to fail in all of this is to give up and lay down and let whatever happens wash over you, to believe them when they treat you like you're too small to be a threat or a challenge. and even if you don't believe your efforts matter to anyone else, let them matter to you. if you want hope, then be it. strive to be a force for good in spite of all opposition, and that goodness will in turn continue to propel you forwards.

ok I think that's about as sappy I can stand to be, I'm going to bed lol

hey i finished a new song!! check it out!!

my prompt for starting this was essentially "i'm in a bad mood and i want to make music that'll fix that". apparently what that translated to was whatever genre "music that would make 9-year-old me think they could do a backflip off the swings at the park" is, but like... it DID cheer me up? so, mission accomplished? i hope you enjoy it too!

♫ made with OpenMPT! ✎ cover art by me!

[flowery-mess]

in vino veritas

Pairing: frat boy Noah x female reader

Warnings: 18+ MDNI! / slight smut / drinking alcohol / let me know if anything else should be taged

Words: 2k

frat boy Noah masterlist

„So you can chose from this list of presentation topics or you can think of your own, but you need to discuss it with me in that case. Everything clear? Any questions?” your professor then ended the lesson and you turned to face Molly and Clara.

“How are we gonna do this? There’s three of us.” Clara said, pointing between the three of you. You were just assigned new team project, team meaning two people.

“Ella can be with Noah, they can work on their project after their sex sessions.” Molly said, teasing you with playful smirk.

“Molly, fuck off.” you said with nice smile, showing her your middle finger.

“That’s not a bad idea actually.” Clara nodded along as the two of them looked like they just found cure for deadly disease.

“He has his buddies in this class, he’s not interested in doing school project with me.”

“One, two, three, four aaand five! Perfect!” Molly scanned the area where Noah and his friends sat, pretty happy with the number of them.

“Just text him, or one of us will end up with Anna again.”

“And you don’t want that for any of us!”

Anna was your classmate, short girl with long hair. Clara was paired up with her for another project and she said she’s rather have a bath full of spider than work with Anna again. She didn’t give you details, only that her dorm smells like sweat and that she told Clara she doesn’t take shower more than twice a week to save the planet.

“You’re the worst friends ever.” you ironically said when you pulled your phone out of your bag to text Noah.

“Any chance your friends ditched you for the project like mine?” you hit send and then turned your body so you could see Noah reach for his phone.

He read your text and chuckled before answering you.

“No, but I could ditch them for you.”

Before you could write your response he sent another message.

“Unless you want Trevor to be your partner.”

You looked up to see Noah looking back at you, his face without any emotion so you didn’t know if that Trevor message was just a joke or if he was serious.

“I don’t want Trevor to be my partner.” you sent your reply and before you could see his reaction, you turned back around to face your friends who were patiently waiting for your answer.

“Okay I’ll do it with Noah, but next time one of you will make the sacrifice.”

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

“Do you like any topic from the list?” Noah started the conversation when you two found a free table at the coffee shop in the campus.

“I haven’t read them all yet, do you like any of them?”

“I don’t really care about the topic, you can choose.”

“You sound like a perfect partner, let me see.” you opened the document with different topics and Noah sipped on his coffee. “Workplace diversity, Urbanization and its social impacts, Religion in moder communities, everything’s boring.”

You scrolled some more before something finally caught your eye. “This! Sociology of first impressions: expressions through appearance.” you pointed your finger in the middle of your screen where topic was written.

“Why this one?” Noah asked.

“Because I hate when people judge others based on their looks. I might get angry while doing this project.” you warned Noah, but that only got a chuckle out of him.

“Okay, sign us up for that one.” so you did write Noah Sebastian and Ella Thompson next to that topic so no one could steal it from you.

“Let’s make an outline and we can start on our own parts separately.”

You wrote down ideas and topics you wanted to talk about and when you finished your coffees you were pretty satisfied with the work you’ve done so far.

“How about we work on in at my place on Saturday?” Noah proposed when started packing your things.

“Oh, okay.” you said, surprised by his question. First, it meant that he planned on taking you back to his place on Friday and second, he wanted you to stay and not leave in the morning. But it was because of the project, you reminded yourself.

“Okay. Bye Ella.” he gave you quick salute and left the coffee shop.

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

Sitting on Noah’s couch on Saturday with schoolwork in front of you felt weird. Unnatural.

“So the introduction is done, we can change it as we go on with the rest. I was thinking we could do interview for the practical part of the project?” you looked up from your notes only to find Noah sitting on the floor with his head on the couch and eyes closed. “Noah!” you groaned and threw your pencil at him.

“What? I want to sleep.”

“This was your idea.” you reminded him.

He opened one eye to give the annoyed look, but he knew you were right. He was also a good student and wanted the project to be good, but he was also tired from the party last night and then your bedroom fun that lasted until 3AM.

“Okay. What did you say about the practical part?” he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and sat straight. Sleepy Noah kinda looked cute, but you were sure he was gonna change into angry Noah after you’re gonna propose your ides to him.

“I was thinking about an interview with someone extraordinary.”

“Like?”

“Like, well, you.”

His eyebrows shot up at your proposition “Me? You think I’m extraordinary?”

You couldn’t name the look in his eyes, but it almost looked like it made him sad and surprised at the same time.

“I mean yeah, look at you. You’re what this project is about. Don’t tell me no one ever judged you based on your tattoos.”

He was quiet, confirming what you just said out loud. It was true, he was familiar with the judgement from others based solely on the tattoos that were covering most of his body.

“I don’t think that’s allowed when I’m working on the project.” His answer was short and firm.

He knew that if he’d agreed you’d ask questions like why he got this and that tattoo, the meaning behind them or at what age he started with them. And he didn’t want you to know that, his covered body meant all the obstacles he had to overcome and he didn’t like talking about his past. But you didn’t know that, so before you could shut your mouth the question slipped out.

“Why do you have desolate on your stomach Noah?”

“Stop asking questions Ella, I told you no.”

“It can be anonymous, no one has to know it’s about you.”

“I said no.”

“It can be just few questions, like 5 to 10?” you just couldn’t help yourself and stop your mouth.

“Leave.”

“What?” you looked at Noah, confused by his sudden reaction.

“I don’t feel like working on the project anymore. We can have coffee on Monday and continue.”

He looked hurt, and suddenly you felt guilty.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

But he didn’t answer, instead he started packing your things to show you he was serious about wanting you leave.

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

You didn’t talk about his tattoos on Monday, you talked about the theoretical part of the project. Noah was giving you the cold shoulder, not talking more than he had to.

You couldn’t stop thinking about his reaction to your question about the desolate tattoo. You always wondered what his tattoos mean when you saw him naked, but you never asked. Or you just didn’t have a good excuse to do so.

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

The next Friday you were both more drunk that usual, blaming the beer pong competition for it. When you made it to Noah’s place and you started taking each other’s clothes off, your drunk mind couldn’t help itself.

You slid your hands down Noah’s naked chest and stopped at the desolate tattoo.

“What does it mean Noah?” you asked him in a whisper, your mouth on his.

“What?”

“Desolate. Why do you have it on your body?”

“Because I’m desolate.” he confessed, the lust from his eyes fading away.

“That’s not a nice thing to say about yourself.”

“It’s the truth tho.” he dipped his head in the crook of your neck and started kissing your sensitive skin.

And you pieced all the things you knew about Noah together. He was living alone, in this big ass apartment, he never mentioned visiting his family for the holidays or someone’s birthday. He doesn’t have any pictures of him and his family around the place and his mom never called him at 6 in the morning like yours did.

“What about your family?” he stopped his movements and you felt his muscles tense under your touch.

He pushed himself off of you and sat on his bed, his tatted back facing you. You heard him sigh and push his hair out of his face.

“Why do you care about my family?” he asked just above a whisper.

“I don’t know. You never talked about any family members, you live here alone and you just told me you are a desolate.”

“We said just sex, no feelings. I think that includes this too.”

“Well I’m too drunk so I probably won’t remember shit in the morning.” you lied. And you felt guilty about, but you wanted to get to know him better and the alcohol just gave you courage to continue.

The alcohol probably made him more emotional too, because he believed that you won’t remember what he said to you that night, but how could you.

“I don’t have any family. Parents left me with my grandparents when I was a kid. Haven’t seen my mom since then and I only see my father if he needs money from me. My grandparents died when I was 15 and since then it was just me. I was left with their house and money. I worked through high school so I could afford good college. Sold the house when I was 19 and bought this place. But I got no one Ella, I am desolate. Always have been.” his head was hanging low, his breath became uneven and he closed his eyes to picture his three year old self asking his grandmother when will mom come pick him up.

“Noah,” you didn’t know what to say to his story, you were feeling sorry for him, but you were sure that wasn’t something he wanted to hear. “You made something from yourself, your grandparents would be proud.”

When he didn’t answer you shifted on your knees and pressed yourself at his back.

Noah fell asleep in your arms that night and your view on him changed. He was the great example for your project, how the outside of someone doesn’t reflect his inside.

But in the morning you pretended like you didn’t remember anything he told you and couldn’t figure if he really did not remember sharing his secrets with you, or if he actually didn’t remember.

You finished the project and got almost full score from your professor.

Things between you and Noah stayed the same, neither of you going back to that night or hiss desolate tattoo.

But every time you got the chance, you made sure kiss those letter on his body to silently tell him he’s not a desolate.

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

Tag list: @lacy1986 @chey-h

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This story is a work of fiction, with the plot and characters entirely made up. The appearance and name of the main male character are inspired by Noah Sebastian Davis, but the storyline bears no connection to the real person. Please do not steal or repost this work on other platforms without permission.

[causenessus]

hi! i'll keep this short

i came to the realization everytime i've disappeared from tumblr to "take a break" i never really have because of other things going on in my life (which, duh, this isn't my whole life) but! i also realized that if i never actually take the time to recover and rest and think about things i should be writing i'll never feel better. so! i'm (once again)(but now more formally) going on hiatus until maybe may! i might pop in for spring break or earlier if i feel like it, but until then, not really any writing from me! with that being said, i'll still be around, doting on my moots (i.e. like, dorothea <3 wyr <3 and bug <3) because i love them so much and i will probably also post chapters of present ever so often! the reason being (i'm going to try to make this make sense but it may only make sense to me but i'm aware of how contradicting i am to me five seconds ago when i said i need to take a break from writing) present is a very personal fic for me that i've worked on for years at this point. what i'm posting now are chapters i wrote months ago after I've read over and edited them (or in the case of the upcoming chapter, i did randomly add it in and had to write it from the ground up last week lmao) but if it isn't obvious, present is a work i'm very passionate about and am just posting in case anyone else enjoys it but it feels like it's a work that is very individualized just for me and it doesn't cause me any stress or anxiety. on the topic of individualization, although i am of course so so thankful for all of the support and people that follow me, i do sort of miss when my blog and world were a lot smaller. it's something i feel like i only get when i get to reply to people in comments, but other than that, all the numbers and people on my feed give me a lot of anxiety. the hq (smau fandom especially) fandom or at least how much i'm (was) involved in it has grown exponentially and of course i'm happy about that but it's a bit too much for me. i'll be taking a huge step back from the fandom and any hq works i've written at least in the meantime, but that's not to say they'll never be finished! but i either need to grow to handle the bigger audience that now reads my works or wait for things to grow a little smaller again :) i hope to still be able to read my moots works but forgive me if it takes me a bit or i never get to them! i think at the least i'll still like them to show my support <3 thank you if you read my long ramble! i love you all <3

oh also i'll probably post self ship moodboards and the beginning of my reading list (thank you again dorothea for the idea <3)! but again, I think you get the idea by now; I want to go back to doing this for me! so this is a tiny little goodbye now i'm leaving for you all with forehead kisses and flowers and love notes and mwah <3 i'll see you around!

[letteredlettered]

Hello there! I recently read your thoughts about By the Grace, in which you mentioned that you've never been happy with how it turned out. (I am one of the readers who love BtG, btw, I found it transformative in the sense that i loved it so much that I felt changed afterwards. my comments trace my slow disintegration 😅). I wondered if you'd be willing to share which fics of yours you like the best - which fics came out as you wanted them to, which fics make you feel understood and known? (Totally understand if this is too personal an ask btw but just thought I'd see if it's something you'd like to share).

Well, hi. You sent this ask in August of 2022. I am apparently very very behind on a lot of things. I just had a lot to say to you and didn't have the energy to say it. I'm currently dealing with some health issues so fandom is actually now one of the only things I have energy for, so here I am.

The first thing I want to say is how glad I am that you liked By the Grace. It's hard not to love something I've written, but I think it shows so much about our humanity that something I find so deeply imperfect could be something that really worked for you. Thank you so, so much for all your kind words.

The second thing I want to say is that for me, the fics I like best are the one that came out as I wanted them to, but they are not necessarily the ones that make me feel seen and known. For instance, I wrote By the Grace because I felt upset about the world, and I also felt upset about some things in fandom that felt like an ugly reflection of the world in a place where I didn't want to have to think about such things. The fact that people love BtG, in spite of its flaws, makes me feel that people understood what I was trying to say, no matter how imperfectly I said it; they care about its message and its values, even if I couldn't deliver those messages and values in the way I hoped and worked for.

Another example is The Way Down. The Way Down is one of the first Harry/Draco fics I ever wrote. I started writing it in 2007, and I was in a very difficult place at the time. It was two years after I finished college; I still wasn't doing anything with my life; I felt like a failure. I started to want to stay inside, never leave the house, never see anyone I knew, never do anything but talk to people on the internet all day long. Incidentally I felt very lonely and left out of the fandom I wanted to be a part of, which was H/D. No one was interested in my writing and I couldn't make friends in that community. I couldn't finish the fic. I got myself out of that situation, moved across the country, got a job, made new friends, and also stopped caring as much about whether my fic was popular. I was able to finish the fic because I as a person changed, and that fic reflects both parts of that journey. I don't actually think it's a good fic; some of the characterizations are too fanon for my taste; some of the scenes are a bit too silly; a lot of the deeper parts don't go deep enough. But when someone loves that fic, when it really touches someone, it's like they're loving me as I was then, loving the fact that I got myself out of it, loving a person who can struggle in that way. And that means so much to me.

Meanwhile, Away Childish Things is a perfect fic to me. It came out exactly as I wanted and said so much about both Harry and Draco that I had been wanting to say, that I felt I hadn't been seeing in fic. I knew it was good when I was writing it. Frankly, I thought people would like it, and I was right. I'm not sure that people loving it makes me feel seen and understood. It's not like ACT isn't a personal story for me--it's terribly personal! But I don't think it's saying things that make me feel bad about myself, or that I think other people or the world are struggling with. It's a sharp story that I think many people can identify with from different directions.

In terms of fics that turned out exactly as I hoped, The Eighth Tale is another such fic. It always makes the list because I had this idea for so, so long--a fic in which the war didn't go as it was "supposed" to, but instead drags on and on and on, a fic in which the canonical ending is glimpsed, but other endings are glimpsed too, a fic in which universes collide into the idea that the ending is never set, it's always the choices we make that give us our own endings. But whenever I imagined such a fic it was half a million words long, and while such a fic sounds interesting, I am so glad that @tacktigerfic would come along so many years later to write that grand epic. Meanwhile, what I had in mind was just a little paradox timey-wimey business that should take only 15-20K to get out into the world. I just didn't know how to do it. But finally, I read a fic that really inspired me with its voice (in a completely different fandom; it's Crow on the Cradle by Refur in SPN fandom if anyone is interested) and it helped me to understand I would need a very particular narrative voice to make this fic happen. Then I sat down and wrote it in about two or three sittings. It's exactly what I meant to do.

Ginny Weasley: Dragon Slayer is a similar fic in that it did exactly what I wanted to, and I wasn't sure I would get there. I think both of these fics are things I often think of as perfect because I have a habit of having rather small ideas that quickly turn huge and unwieldy. It's why BtG is a problem, imo. I love that I was able to make these fics concisely what I wanted them to be, no more, no less.

There are fics in other fandoms that are exactly what I want them to be: Sincerely Your Pal, in Captain America fandom, Say More in The Untamed (CQL) fandom. The End Resting Only on Air is the perfect end to my series of fics in The Walking Dead fandom. I still think Or Even Rearrange You has the best Tony Stark voice I've read, and that's cool because I wrote it. The Chuck Writes Story for SPN fandom is one of the cleverest and most incisive things I've written, because it's about SPN fandom more than SPN--and I happened to write it before SPN even had the mythos that it does now. But in terms of fics that make me feel seen/understood and I'm perfectly happy with how they are written, Responsible Science in MCU is always my answer to which fic I've written is my favorite fic for a reason (although it's actually a series). That Lesson Alone in Schitt's Creek fandom is probably one of the most personal things I have ever written, and I wouldn't change a word of it.

But in H/D fandom, if you want a fic of mine that I'm happy with, that came out exactly as I envisioned, and makes me feel seen and understood, only one fits the bill: The Pure and Simple Truth. I actually don't think the writing is perfect--I would tighten it up a little, maybe. But it's exactly what I wanted to write, and it was so fun to write; I still think it's fun to read. But on top of that, this fic is also trying to say something about morality that I think is really fundamental to who I am. It's trying to say things about friendship and forgiveness that I believe with my whole soul. It's trying to say things about conversation, what that means for people, what that can build, what community is and what it isn't. I've gotten a few comments over the years from people saying they didn't really understand it. I've also gotten a lot of comments yelling at me about it because there isn't a kiss at the end. I've also seen people saying that the fic is suggesting that Neville's a bad person because he struggles to forgive folks who tortured him, which is the exact opposite of what the fic is about.

But when people do get this fic, when they comment or message me to tell me what it means to them to see folks who have hurt each other, some of whom have been actual torturers and part of hate groups, come together and grow from that, discuss that, and learn to love in spite all of that...wow, that makes me feel like the things I care about aren't just mine; other people feel that way, which is a wonderful feeling.

[mama-qwerty]

Second Chances v1

Okay, here's the start of my de-aged Knux story. I like the beginning, but am not thrilled with what happens after she finds little Knux. I don't know what's bothering me about it, but it's just not jiving with me.

But I wrote 6200 words, so I'mma post it. I might rework it once I can figure out just where the problem is.

Calling it 'version 1' in case I tweak it and post again later.

~~~~~

The fire burned down, leaving just a few soft flickers of flame against the burning embers at the bottom of the fire pit. Two figures sat around it, on opposite sides. They sat in silence, watching as the last of the flames died down, the darkness of the night around them moving in to replace the light.

“All I’m saying is you could have come to me, and I would have helped you.” Callie’s voice was soft, but edged with frustration. “You aren’t out in those arenas anymore. You’re not on your own anymore. I’m here, and I can help you.”

The echidna across from her frowned, scratching at the bandage on his arm. It was sloppily applied; he’d injured himself during one of his training sessions, and tended to it himself without her assistance.

“No need,” Knuckles said, waving a hand. “I am capable of taking care of myself.”

She sighed. “I know you are, but you don’t have to. I’m here. All you have to do is come to me.”

He let out a huff, giving his head a shake. “I do not need your help.”

Callie rolled her eyes. This was a sensitive subject, but one she had tried again and again to instill upon him in the months since he’d come to live with her. Yes, he was the most dangerous warrior in the galaxy. (Or had been, anyway.) But that life was behind him now. She was going to make sure that life was done, and he never had to feel alone and hunted again.

But he was a stubborn kid. Very, very stubborn. There’d been times when he’d come home looking as though he’d gone three rounds with a pissed off gorilla, and only offered a wave of his hand when she was, understandably, a bit freaked out by that. “I was training,” was his only explanation, which only raised further questions in her mind.

He was still acting like he was on his own, expecting an attack at every turn. She supposed it was second nature to him by now, having been on the run since he was so little, and it was unreasonable to expect that to fade. At all, let alone after only a few months.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t be frustrated by it. And that she couldn’t try to show him that he didn’t have to take care of himself anymore. Not like that.

“Look,” she said, rubbing her eyes beneath her glasses before looking back at him. “I’m not saying you’re some little kid who needs his boo boos kissed. I just want to make sure you’re okay. I would hope that you trust me enough to let me know if you slice yourself open on one of your training runs.”

Knuckles clicked his tongue. “It was a minor wound. I’ve had much worse.”

“That’s not the point, and by the way, the blood all over my towels says otherwise. I thought you’d lost an arm with the mess you’d left behind.”

“You are overreacting.”

“Actually, I think I’m being quite calm and collected, all things considered,” she said, leaning forward to rest her forearms on her knees. “You’re not a child, but you’re still a kid who’s under my care, and I don’t think it’s out of line for me to want you to, you know, tell me when you nearly cut your arm off.”

He rolled his eyes and gave out a huff. “I did not—“

“Can you focus on what I mean instead of what I’m saying?”

“And can you not treat me as though I were some foolish child who needs supervised?”

“I’m not—“

“Enough!” Knuckles stood, rolling his shoulders. “I do not need tending like a puggle. I am a fierce warrior and do not need your coddling. I am grateful for your guidance and support, but your concern is misplaced.”

She sat up, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “For cripes’ sake, Knux, I don’t want to coddle you—“

“I am going to bed. Good night.”

And with that, the echidna stalked toward the house, leaving her by the dying fire.

Callie heaved a deep sigh, rubbing her temples with both hands.

“. . . I just want you to let me take care of you. At least a little.”

She heard the kitchen door slam, and gave a little groan.

That could have gone better.

~X~X~X~

Ridiculous.

Unnecessary.

Condescending.

Knuckles didn’t quite stomp, but didn’t quite not stomp up the stairs, pushing the door to his room open. He kicked it closed behind him, a soft growl in the back of his throat.

Take care of him. She wanted to ‘take care of him’? He took care of himself. He didn’t need her help for that. The only reason he was still alive after all these years was because he was strong and tough and self-reliant.

He tore open the velcro straps at the base of his gloves, giving his arms a sharp flick to send the heavy mitts flying. They bounced off the wall, landing on the floor with two solid thuds. The woman didn’t like when he did that, and would call out to remind him not to when she heard it.

Well, she wasn’t here right now, was she? He was a warrior. He didn’t need such rules.

With a grumble, he sat heavily on the mattress on the floor, shoving aside the curtain that hung over it in a tent-like covering. A few quick movements and his boots were loose enough to toe off. He used more force than necessary, sending them cartwheeling heel over toe into the door. More loud thuds as they settled on the floor, one on its side and the other upright.

He didn’t depend on others. He’d been shown time and time again that trusting others was a recipe for treachery and betrayal. Everyone he’d trusted had hurt him. Turned him in for rewards, used him for their own gain. Yet he continued to trust, continued to hope that someone would help him. Would be his friend.

His mother had praised his kind heart as a child, but now he wondered if it were more of a hindrance than advantage.

Flopping onto his back, he looked up at the ceiling, his eyes floating over the little painted dots there. Back when he first agreed to stay with her, Callie had brought Tails over to try and get as accurate a sky map as possible for those little dots. The clever fox had somehow found the positions of the constellations and stars over Knuckles’ village, and he and Callie had painstakingly painted each one to match those Knuckles had seen in his childhood.

It was a touching gesture. No one had ever gone so out of their way to make him comfortable. To give him a bit of familiarity to his home. He appreciated it.

But it made a tight knot twist behind his ribs when he looked up at them.

Because he couldn’t remember what the constellations were.

The knowledge seemed to flick at his consciousness, teasing the back of his mind, but when he tried to pull the names forward, wrap his tongue around them and throw them out, they disappeared back into his fading memories.

He was losing his connection to his people. His tribe.

The language that he’d been raised on, the words that once rolled off his tongue with ease, now took more effort to get right. Callie had encouraged him to share his mother tongue with her, which he appreciated, but sometimes when he said a word, it didn’t feel right on his lips. As though it were something he had no right to speak anymore.

He had learned a number of different languages in his travels—how many, he wasn’t sure, as there was a certain degree of overlap in a few—and sometimes it felt as though these new languages had almost pushed out his first. Smothered it.

And now, like the fire just a few moments before, there were only a few little embers left of what he remembered. His tribe. His customs. His language. His heritage.

Slowly dying.

He was the last. It was his duty to keep his culture intact. To not lose sight of who he is, what he is. To do so would dishonor the memory of his entire species.

His father.

Knuckles stared at the ceiling, at those little blobs of glowing paint, brow furrowed. He knew those stars, he knew them. He could hear his father naming them as he pointed. Could hear his voice, feel his father’s hand on his shoulder as he sat close by. Felt the soft breeze of the night as it rippled through his quills, while the others sat and chatted by the village fire.

He remembered all of this.

But the words, the syllables, refused to form.

A low growl rumbling in his chest, Knuckles rolled over to crawl into his artificial burrow. Yanking the curtain closed, he bundled himself beneath the thick blanket inside, curling into a tight ball. Shame burned in his belly, because it had taken so long to find the Master Emerald. It had taken nearly ten years to hunt it down. And in that time he had been so concerned with his own survival, he had lost his tether to the very reason he was doing it in the first place.

He missed his tribe. He missed his father. He missed feeling part of something, of being cared for. This planet was fine, one of the more comfortable ones he’d been on, but it wasn’t his home. This house wasn’t his home.

He wanted to go home. Back to when he didn’t feel so lost. So afraid.

So alone.

After a long moment, Knuckles drew in a deep breath, letting it out in a long, slow exhale. He’d been rude to Callie. She’d opened her home to him, and had never expected anything from him except courtesy in return. It was so different from what he’d experienced before—any other time he’d trusted others, they would have turned on him by now. She’d been nothing but kind to him.

Still. That seed of doubt poked at the back of his mind. Maybe it was time to stop being so trusting. To stop expecting anything other than betrayal. Despite her kindness, she could still turn on him. He had to be vigilant.

Soon after, his eyes began to close, and Knuckles the Echidna, last surviving member of his race, and guardian of the Master Emerald, fell asleep.

~X~X~X~

She should have handled that better.

Callie dumped a pitcher of water over the glowing embers in the fire pit, stirring it in with a poker to douse the last of the heat. As the wood hissed and smoked, she cursed herself for coming on too strong with Knuckles.

He was a proud kid. A fighter. A survivor. She knew that.

She really should have expected this reaction, honestly. Suggesting he needed to come to her simply because he’d injured himself? No matter how much blood she’d found in the bathroom—which had been a lot, and she may or may not have freaked out a little bit—she should have just let him come to her when he was ready.

But she didn’t. She pushed. And now she’d pushed him even farther away than he already was.

Once she was satisfied the fire had been adequately extinguished, Callie stood and pushed against the small of her back to produce that familiar crack. Massaging the area, she turned, and headed into the house.

She paused by Knuckles’ door as she headed down the hall to her own room. Leaning in, she heard a soft growl as he moved around. She supposed it was lucky he even came in instead of just wandering off into the trees surrounding her home. Sometimes he stayed out all night, and though she tried not to worry—he could take care of himself, after all—she did.

Her fingers curled into a fist, and she raised it to knock. It hovered near the wood for a moment, before lowering back to her side.

He didn’t need her checking on him. He was a big boy, capable of taking care of himself. He could take care of himself. She just had to keep reminding herself that.

Maybe it was time for her to just back off. He wasn’t like Sonic or Tails. He hadn’t been looking for a family. A home. He’d been looking for that magic rock. And now it sat in his closet, protected by a high-tech security system concocted by Tails. Knuckles sometimes sat before it, meditating. She was glad he had found the thing that had been driving him for most of his life, but saw the question in his eyes on the rare occasions he sat still.

Now what?

She wished she could tell him.

She wished she could help him.

But he didn’t want her help. Didn’t need it. Had said as much not fifteen minutes ago.

Maybe it was time she started listening to him.

With a sigh, Callie turned and headed to her bedroom, trying to convince herself she was worrying for nothing.

~X~X~X~

The night wore on. The house grew quiet.

Inside the middle bedroom, a faint green glow seeped from the closet.

~X~X~X~

Sunlight filtered in through the curtains, and Callie blinked against it.

God her head hurt. Sitting by the fire last night had dried out her sinuses something awful, and she uttered a grunt in the back of her throat as she pushed herself to sit up. She had to peel her tongue off the roof of her mouth.

What a night. After collapsing in bed, she’d tossed and turned for a while, eventually falling into a restless sleep with really, really weird dreams. Something about an egg and trees and a giant owl?

She shook her head. Weird. She didn’t normally remember her dreams.

With some effort she managed to push herself out of bed, shuffling to the bathroom to pee, splash some water on her face, and drag a brush through her hair before folding it into a loose braid. Tossing on a t-shirt and jeans, she pulled her glasses on and headed toward the stairs.

She stopped at Knuckles’ door once again, and this time quietly pushed it open to peek inside. The door thudded against something, and she looked down to see his boots lumped right behind it. She rolled her eyes. Probably got pissed and tossed them again.

Despite his differences, he was still very much a teenager.

Glancing up, she could barely make out a moving shape beneath his blanket. It was unusual for him to still be in bed (well, his artificial burrow, anyway) this late. Normally he was up with the sun to train or patrol or whatever it was he did with himself when he left the house.

Her heart gave a clench when she realized she didn’t really know what he did when he wasn’t here. “Training” was a pretty vague term, and she didn’t know if that meant exercising or running some death course he’d built himself up in the mountains. She could honestly believe either one.

With a sigh, she pulled back, leaving the door open a crack. She’d make some breakfast, and maybe the lure of a hot meal will draw him down so she could apologize for last night.

Her cats’ cries hit her once she reached the bottom of the stairs, and she rolled her eyes as she headed toward the kitchen.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she said with a sigh. She reached into a cabinet to pull out a can of cat food, popping the lid off to shlorp the stuff onto a plate. “You’re starving. Just wasting away. However did you survive on only the dry food you always have available to you since yesterday’s breakfast?”

The cats responded with excited meows as she placed the plate on the floor, before attacking the food as though they weren’t lazy housecats who did nothing but sit around all day before occasionally getting underfoot just as she decided to walk down the hall.

Another eye roll and Callie moved to start her coffeemaker. She’d forgotten to set it last night. With practiced ease of a daily ritual, she cleaned yesterday’s pot, refilled the water and grounds, and let it do its thing.

A yawn escaped her as she leaned back against the counter, massaging her temple, her eyes closed. The soft crunches of dry cat food came from the other side of the counter, as the coffeemaker hummed behind her.

She’d messed things up last night. Once she’d had her coffee, she’d make some bacon and eggs, maybe toss a few sausages in as an apology for overstepping. As he ate—if he ate—she’d tell him she would just stay out of his way, and let him come to her if he needed.

It went against everything she wanted, but this wasn’t about her. It was about Knuckles, and his comfort.

He could take care of himself.

That just needed to be her mantra for a while. Until it stuck.

Bloom and Suki argued a bit over the last bits of moist food, just like they always did every morning. She mostly ignored them. For sisters who’d been adopted at the same time, they really hadn’t bonded, or even seemed to like each other all that much.

A louder growl floated to her, and she called a quick “Knock it off” to them. It faded to softer hissing, as though they were arguing over whose fault it was they were yelled at. Callie sighed, rubbing her temple again, when a thought came to her.

She could still hear the crunch of dry cat food.

That . . . wasn’t right.

Opening her eyes, she leaned over to catch a glimpse of both cats—her only cats—still scarfing down the moist food on one side of the kitchen island.

And still, the crunching continued.

Great.

She hadn’t had her coffee yet, and there was already a problem. Some animal must have gotten into the house and was helping itself to her cats’ food. Mouse? Rat? Squirrel? Not exactly something she wanted to deal with at not quite 8 AM on a Saturday morning.

Moving slowly, Callie grabbed a dish towel, hoping to surprise the whatever-it-was and nab it before it had a chance to run or bite her. Would it work? Probably not. But she had to do something.

She moved slowly, coming around the counter making as little noise as possible. Inch by inch she rounded the island, before she could see the cat food bowl, and the creature having a free lunch. Or breakfast, as it were.

And she froze.

Sitting in front of the bowl, grabbing handfuls of dry cat food and shoving them into its mouth, crunching loudly, was a . . . little red echidna.

“What the . . .”

She spoke without realizing, and the little thing froze, whipping his head around to look at her, eyes wide. Violet eyes. Ones that looked so, so much like those of the echidna upstairs. Her eyes flicked down and took note of the white patch of fur in the shape of a crescent moon on his little chest.

Oh god.

It couldn’t be.

Was that . . . ?

They stood there, staring at each other, frozen in shock for a long moment.

Then the little echidna—what were they called? She couldn’t remember at the moment—reached forward, his eyes never leaving hers, and grabbed another handful of cat food to bring to his mouth.

That got her moving.

“NO!”

Her voice was louder and sharper than she intended, and when she reached for him, he gave a little squeak, turning to scramble away from her. He ran on all fours, a kind of loping half-crawl, half-gallop kind of gait, and he was fast. Callie hurried behind him, her socked feet threatening to slip on her laminated floors.

“No no no,” she muttered as he ran beneath the kitchen table. She slid to a stop and yanked a chair away, falling to her knees to try and grab him, just as he scooted through the other side and made a beeline for the living room. Getting to her feet once more, she followed, trying to keep him in sight. He was about as large as one of her cats—bigger than a kitten, but not a full on adult—which meant he could fit in places she couldn’t reach.

Like behind the computer desk where her laptop sat. He squeezed between it and the wall, and Callie hurled the rolling chair out of the way as she threw herself beneath the desk. The little echidna—what the hell were they called again??—skittered along the back, getting tangled in the cord for the lamp and pulling it down with a crash as he bolted from behind the desk and headed for the side table by the couch.

“Stop!”

He gave another little squeak at her order, but never slowed. Scrambling behind the side table, he latched onto the curtain, climbing deceptively fast for a little guy his size. Realizing she was still holding the hand towel, Callie threw it toward him, not necessarily thinking through what that was supposed to accomplish. But she never expected his reaction.

He launched himself off the curtain and flew across the room.

No, not flew, exactly. More like glide. Like a flying squirrel.

But still.

“Are you kidding me??”

While gliding seemed to come naturally to him, landing did not, and he bounced off the TV, tumbling down to the floor with a few grunts. She hurried over to him, and caught his leg just as he was trying to scurry beneath the TV stand.

“Gotcha!”

He did not like being caught, wiggling and twisting his body like a live wire, uttering little grunts and growls as he did so. Callie kept having to rearrange her grip on him, alternating between grabbing a limb before switching to a different one when he jack-knifed his body to try and hurl himself out of her hands.

It was like trying to hold doll filled with Jell-O, if that doll hated you and was trying to bite you and poke you with its quills.

In desperation, she tried something that usually worked when her own son was cranky and fighting all those years ago.

She tickled him.

At first she wasn’t even sure if he was ticklish. Did creatures with fur have tickle triggers, or did their fur absorb that touch before it could work? It wasn’t exactly a question she’d ever thought to ask Maddie, and certainly not something Knuckles would ever let her know about. Weaknesses and all that.

Her fingers danced over his sides, seeking out the spots that most humans found ticklish, and he continued to fight her. A little more juggling, and she ended up holding him by an ankle, the rest of him dangling. She brought her other hand up and went for the bottom of his foot.

And he giggled.

Her fingers wiggled, barely touching the pads on his foot, and now he wiggled and twisted for a different reason, laughing and giggling at the touch. A smile curled her lips and she gave a little amused hum of her own.

“There, that’s not so bad, is it?”

When his laughter went a little wheezy, she stopped her tickle attack and carefully adjusted him so she held him beneath his arms. He giggled a little more before looking up at her, his eyes big and wide. She felt his little chest heaving from the laughter, and gave him a good look over.

Same eyes. Same moon mark on his chest. She moved him so she could see the arm that was bandaged last night. There was still a tiny wound there.

“Holy . . . ohmygod . . . you’re him. Knuckles?” He didn’t respond to his name. Could he understand her at all? “You’re a . . .”

“Knock knock, MacPhersons!” a voice called as the kitchen door opened. Wade came in, carrying a bag from Dough Ray Me Bakery. “I brought breakie! Or snackie!”

“Baby,” she said, looking at the deputy over her shoulder.

“Yes, dear?” He snickered, amused by his own joke. “Ah, kidding, what are you—”

“BABY,” she said, louder and more urgent. She turned and held the little echidna out.

Wade stopped, his eyes going wide. “Did . . . did Knux have a baby?”

“Knux IS the baby,” she said, moving closer. The boy turned his head, looking between the two adults. “I woke up and he was like this.”

Silence settled for a moment, before Wade rubbed the back of his neck. “So . . . is this something space echidna do? Like a phoenix kinda thing?”

Callie opened her mouth to answer, before closing it again. She looked between echidna and man, before giving Wade a look. “I think my smoke detectors would have gone off if he’d burst into flames to revert to a . . . joey. No, that’s kangaroos. Damnit. What are baby echidna called?”

Wade shrugged. “Think the other boys are like this?”

Her eyes went wide. YES! Verifying Sonic and Tails were babies too wouldn’t exactly make this okay, but would go a long way into making her feel less . . . weird about it. Shared experiences and all that.

“I’ll check.” She thrust Knuckles toward Wade, who looked distinctly unsure about taking him. “C’mon, Wade. I have to make a phone call.”

“I dunno, I’m not really great with—“

That’s as far as he got before she practically dropped the little echidna into his hands. She rushed to the counter, grabbed her phone, and punched Maddie’s contact. It ran twice before she picked up.

“Hey, Cal!”

“Hey, Mads, uh, sorry to call so early, I just have a quick question.”

“Shoot.”

Callie glanced over at Wade, who had pulled Knuckles to cradle against his chest. Knux gazed up at the man, playing with the buttons on the hideous Hawaiian shirt he liked to wear on days off.

“Your kids wouldn’t happen to be, I dunno . . . babies?”

A slight pause.

“It depends on the situation, really.”

“RUDE!” A certain hedgehog’s voice called out in the background.

Oh. Oh no.

“That seemed an oddly specific question for this early in the morning,” Maddie continued, seemingly ignoring her hog son. “Why do you ask?”

A soft, not quite sane laugh escaped Callie, and she switched from an audio call to video. “Because, funny story . . . Today I woke up to . . .” She turned the phone to show Wade holding little Knux. “This.”

Silence. Then, “OH MY GOD! HE’S SO CUTE!”

Wade blushed. “Aw, thanks, Maddie!”

Callie rolled her eyes, and pulled the phone back around to herself. “Maddie, he’s a baby. Why is he a baby?”

“Why are you asking me? I don’t know any more than you do about his species.”

“Don’t tell me you think he’s like some space phoenix thing, too.”

“What?”

“Nevermind.” Callie sighed, reaching beneath her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose. “I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“Hang on, lemme ask Tails.” Maddie’s voice went a little muffled as she blocked the mic, turning to call for her younger son. There was some back and forth between the two, when Tails came on screen.

“Hi, Callie!”

“Hey, Floof,” she said, dropping her hand and giving him a weak smile. “Your mom fill you in?”

“Yeah, and I’m not completely clear on echidna physiology but am pretty sure they don’t spontaneously revert to become babies overnight.”

“Wait a minute, Knux is a baby???” Sonic’s voice started faint but got louder as he pushed forward, sticking his nose in the camera. “LEMME SEE!!”

Callie sighed, and turned to show the hog. A gasp, followed by laughter, and she pulled the phone back around with a cocked eyebrow.

“Hey, see if you can remove the stick from his butt now, so he’ll be more fun when he grows up!”

“Sonic!”

A warning call from Maddie, who wrestled control of her phone from her older son.

“So,” Callie said, trying to redirect the conversation. “Any ideas how this happened, or how to change him back?”

“Tails?” Maddie asked, turning the phone slightly to get the fox in frame. He rubbed his chin slightly, before looking back up.

“The Master Emerald is said to be able to change reality, based solely on thought alone,” he said, before shrugging. “Maybe that has something to do with it.”

Callie could have slapped her forehead. Duh. She knew the Master Emerald could do that, that’s what the whole trouble with Robotnik was when Knux first came. That should have been her first thought, honestly.

She blamed the lack of caffeine.

“That’s a good call, Tails,” she said, glancing over at Wade. He’d pulled Knuckles up and was currently dancing with him, making silly faces. The boy laughed, kicking his little feet, and Callie’s heart just about melted. She looked back to Tails. “I’ll see if I can, I dunno, convince the Emerald to change him back.”

The fox looked hesitant, but nodded. “Probably your best bet. Just . . . be careful.”

“I will. Thanks, guys. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

The Wachowski’s said their goodbyes, and she hung up, putting her phone back on the counter.

“You sure you wanna use that?” Wade asked, pulling Knux back to hold against him. He still swayed back and forth, seemingly without realizing he was doing it. “Could make things weirder.”

“Not sure we have much of a choice, Wade.”

She paused, looking up the stairs toward Knuckles’ room. She tried not to think about having a magic rock capable of altering reality in her house. One that allowed Robotnik to create a giant robot out of cars and trains and who knew what else. One that apparently worked through thought alone.

Because if she thought too hard on it, it really, really, really freaked her out.

“We can call Sonic and Tails to come over,” Wade said, his voice softer. “They know a little more about it and maybe could help.”

Part of her wanted to say yes, because this was way too much to deal with. At all, much less before her morning coffee. She turned and looked back at Knuckles, who was seemingly fine hanging over Wade’s arm.

She sighed.

“No,” she said, giving her braid a little tug. “We don’t know for sure that’s what changed him. What if the other boys come over and BOOM, they get babified? Then we’ll still be on our own and Maddie will be pissed. No thanks.” She sighed again, steeling herself. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

She made her way upstairs, into Knuckles’ room, and opened his closet door. The Master Emerald sat in its little glass box, its ever present soft glow illuminating the otherwise dark room. With a few calming breaths, she reached forward and pressed her thumb on the little square plate at the base. There was a soft beep, and a little recording of Tails’ voice filled the air.

“Identification code, please.”

Callie leaned forward to speak toward the mic. “Callie MacPherson, 7322-07.”

A second later there was another beep, and Tails’ voice again.

“Access granted! Hi, Callie!”

There was a click and a hiss as the top of the clear box opened, swinging back to allow access. The material the container was constructed with looked like glass, but Tails had called it some sort of polymer that was stronger than steel—a recipe he’d concocted back on his home planet when he was five, and at that point she’d stopped listening because it sounded like a lot of tech talk, and frankly she got the feeling that some of Tails’ inventions were borderline illegal no matter what planet he was on.

She reached into the box now, and carefully took hold of the Master Emerald, lifting it out slowly. She’d only touched it once before, as Tails was installing the security system.

She didn’t like touching it.

It was warm.

Not warm as in ‘a rock that had been sitting in the sun’ warm. But warm as in ‘something that was somehow generating its own heat’ warm.

It was almost a living warmth.

And beyond that, it seemed to . . . thrum in her hands.

She tried to tell herself she was simply feeling her own heartbeat through it, that somehow the gem was amplifying it back to her.

But considering how her heart was pounding in her own ears right now, the gem’s . . . well, pulse didn’t match the rhythm.

She tried not to think about it.

She tried not to think about anything, considering the powers the gem held.

Having her house turn into gingerbread because of the ones she used to make with her mother at Christmas popped into her head was the last thing she needed right now.

(damnit stop thinking about that)

Hurrying downstairs, she found Wade entertaining Knuckles by tossing him in the air before catching him. The little echidna laughed, his soft voice squeaking with his happy giggles.

Callie was only a little jealous that Wade could coax such happy sounds from the boy. She didn’t think she’d ever heard teen Knux sound that free. That happy. Sure, he’d been through hell in his quest to find the gem now in her hands, but she thought she had given him a nice safe place to stay. A home.

Maybe she’d just been fooling herself.

Focus.

“Keep doing that and he’s gonna barf on you,” she said, in what she hoped sounded like her usual snark.

Wade caught him one last time, before giving the boy a little nose nuzzle. “Ah, he’s okay. He’s a cute little guy!”

“Yeah, well, why don’t we see if we can change him back—PUGGLE!” The word came out loud and suddenly, and Wade and Knuckles both jerked. She gave them an embarrassed smile. “Sorry, I’d been trying to think of that word all morning. Anyway . . .” She held up the Master Emerald. “Shall we give it a try?”

Wade nodded, turning Knuckles around so they both faced Callie. She stepped forward, holding the gem up in front of the little puggle.

Nothing happened.

She gave the Emerald a little shake. “C’mon. Change him back. Uh, please.”

Nothing.

“Think maybe it’s like a genie kinda thing?” Wade offered, and Knuckles turned his head to look at him. “Like, you gotta wish for it or something?”

“Tails said it works by thought,” Callie responded, watching as the puggle turned back and began chewing on the nearest edge of the Emerald. “But I’m not exactly sure how to do that. And kinda worried about a monkey’s paw kinda situation.”

“Oh, like you wish for something and it grants it in the most horrible, twisted way possible. Like instead of changing him back to his normal self he’s a . . . I dunno, an eclair or something.”

Callie gave him a look. “Why would he be an eclair?”

Wade shrugged. “It kinda sounds like echidna. And maybe it sounds so much like echidna that you think of eclair instead and now he’s a delicious pastry and—”

“I’m not going to think of an eclair instead of echidna,” she snapped, before pulling her lips in tight. “Well I wasn’t before you said that, now that’s all I can think of, thank you very much.”

Closing her eyes, Callie drew in a deep breath, before letting it out slowly.

Okay.

She opened her eyes, and met Wade’s gaze. “I’m gonna try picturing him like he was yesterday, and see if that works. Ready?” Wade nodded, holding Knuckles out. “Okay. Here goes.”

Callie closed her eyes again, squeezing them shut tightly as she pictured Knuckles, teenage Knuckles, and definitely not an eclair, standing before her and giving her that typical scowl, his arms crossed. She kept that image in her mind, her grip tightening on the Master Emerald.

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to happen. A feeling of some sort of energy or something flowing through her as the Emerald did what she wanted. A sudden shift of the air around her. Something.

That didn’t happen.

What did happen was little Knuckles sneezing, spraying the Master Emerald—and her—with little puggle snot. She jerked, opening her eyes.

“Well, that’s just grand, that is,” she said in her best Wallace impersonation. She turned and walked to the hand towel she’d thrown at Knuckles while he was hanging off her curtain, and picked it up to wipe the spray off the most dangerous and powerful gem in the entire galaxy. Then she turned the towel to herself, wiping her face and heaving a sigh.

“At least he’s not an eclair,” Wade offered, tucking Knux into his elbow. “What now?”

Callie cocked an eyebrow at him, tucking the Emerald against her hip. Her eyes flicked behind him, and found her coffee pot nice and full. “Coffee,” she said, heading toward it.

~~~~~

And that's where I petered out because it's just not working. UGH

[deliur]

can I request a thanos x reader angst where the reader almost dies in mingle when she gets pushed out by another player, and Thanos thinks she’s dead but finds her after? (dating please!)

i’m sooo sorry, I didn’t see the dating part until after I wrote this and if I rewrite it just won’t be enjoyable.. but it’s kinda romantic???

I’ll run away with you.

Relationship: Thanos/F!Reader

Tags: Implied death, blood, drug usage, they r lowkey crushing on eachother hehe, they knew eachother before squid games.

No, I didn’t spell check this,,,

You and Thanos had gone into these games together, not knowingly though. Actually, you were familiar with him and Nam-Gyu. You worked in the club that Nam-Gyu promoted and Thanos frequently visited. You were just a simple drink runner, though. Just looking for tips. That’s how you met Thanos, becoming good friends after awhile. You had hung at his place after hours many times, and maybe things got a little more touchy than friends would typically get.. But you never spoke about it afterwards. Just friends. Nothing more, nothing less. But the average person knew friends didn’t look at each other the way he looked at you when you weren’t paying attention. To your surprise, the club guests stopped tipping you when they noticed you being around Thanos too much.. It’s not like he could help you either, he was suffering his own debt as you fell into yours.

That’s how you ended up here, 5 minutes until the next game would start and you swallowed dryly, sitting on the edge of your bunk. Your back warm with anxiety. Thanos came, sitting by you as he was obviously drugged up. He grinned wide as an open palmed hand patted your back a little harder than intended. You gasped softly as the feeling caught your breath and knocked you out of your anxious trance. You looked over at him, facial expression softening slightly as your panic left just by a little. “We got this shit, man! We fuckin’ dominated in Red light, Green light AND Penta! Maybe more of these no brained losers will get wiped out this round and we’ll get our money. Get the fuck outta here, y’know?” He asked, being too enthusiastic. Too harsh. You brushed his hand off your back, shaking you head at him in annoyance. “I’m not even worried about money anymore.. I’m concerned for my life and yours.. You should be too. I’m sick of washing blood splatter off my face.” You said harshly as you glared at him. He rolled his eyes and laughed. “Whatever, I know deep down you’re just as harsh and Nam-Gyu and I.” He slurred slightly as he fidgeted with his necklace. Your eyes locked on it. “You’re only like this cause you’re fuckin’ high, Su-Bong.” You mentioned.

. . .

Sooner than later, you were ushered into a large room with the other players, like animals. Like sheep being pushed into the open to be devoured by wolves. You and Thanos stood alongside each other. You slowly looked over at him, only recognizing him as the high junkie you met at the club. You squeezed your eyes shut for a second as a twisting feeling arose in your chest. Your throat burned. You were scared.. So scared. And Thanos and Nam-Gyu were fucking high. They probably didn’t even know the gravity of the situation. The yellow platform you all stood on began to spin, playing a childhood nursery rhyme as it did so. Your breath picked up, breathing heavy as you prepared for the platform to stop.

“dung-geulge dung-geulge, dung-geulge dung-geulge, bing-geulbing-geul dol-agamyeo chum-eul chubsida, sonppyeog-eul chimyeonseo, nolaeleul buleumyeo, lallalalla jeulgeoubge chumchuja.” The nursery rhyme rang throughout the room. The song stopped. The platform stopped. You looked around frantically as the voice came over the room. “Six players!” The Ai voice chimed happily. It angered you. You looked at Nam-Gyu and Thanos with pleading eyes. Thanos grabbed your arm and pulled you with him, frantically looking around. You spotted Se-Mi and Min-Su, along with Gyeong-Su. You pointed at them. “THEM!!” You managed to get out of your throat in fear. Thanos yelled at them. “GET THE FUCK OVER HERE IF YOU WANNA LIVE!!!” He yelled as they noticed and trailed behind the group. Once you all made it in the room, Thanos looked down at you, clutching his bicep in fear as the gunshots sounded. Your eyes were squeezed shut as you twitched with each gunshot. His eyes softened slightly at your fear. The others weren’t paying attention to you two. “It’ll be okay. Hey, we’re gonna get out of here after this game.. I promise. Everything will be normal, we’ll go to the club.. Get drinks.. Do karaoke.. Just stay strong. Promise me you’ll stay alive?” He asked, seeming as if your fear sobered him just enough to feel empathy for you. You opened your eyes slowly, nodding. “I’ll live. Only if you live.” You said with a small grin as he plastered on a big smile. You held up your pinkie. He twisted his with yours. You were intertwined. You looked in his eyes for a moment, him staring back at yours. Like it was the last time you could see him. You knew he had a good soul.

The doors unlocked as you both snapped out of it, making your way back to the platform.

. . .

This was the last and final round now.. Your group had lost Gyeong-Su at this point. It was all too real.. But you just needed to survive this last round. One more round, and you would all vote X.

One more round, you would all be out.

One more round, you’d all be safe

One more round, you’d be laughing with Thanos again.

Just one

More

Round…

You were zoned out as the platform spun. Three players. Thanos and Nam-Gyu, assuming you were with them. Se-Mi and Min-Su took off to find someone as you were left. Fuck. You took off to find a different group, looking around frantically. You saw an open group, gasping as you began to run towards the door. Someone shoved you tp the floor as they sprinted past you and into the room, shutting the door. You were left on the floor, panicked. You were going to die. Thanos noticed you missing. “Where… Where the fuck is she?! Did she not follow us?? He said frantically as it then settled that there was only two of them.. He spotted you across the room before someone ran in him and Nam-Gyu’s room, shutting the door. Thanos tried to shove them out but Nam-Gyu grabbed him, shaking his head as the door locked. “It’s too late. Doors are locked. Shes gone.. I’m sorry man.” Thanos got out of his grasp as he saw a body identical to yours on the floor as the guards aimed the gun at the head. “DON’T SHOOT!! TAKE ME INSTEAD!” He yelled out of the small slot in the door, now completely sobered up. You had been pulled into a room with people last minute.. But he didn’t know that. He watched as the woman he thought was you got shot in the head, her blood splattering all the way to his door. He clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms as he turned to the random that came into the room. “This is YOUR FUCKING FAULT.” He yelled at them, ready to strangle them as Nam-Gyu grabbed him. Thanos yelled out “I didn’t even get to fucking tell her!” Nam-Gyu looked at him oddly, letting go. Thanos’ breath shook as he looked at his shoes, slumping down with his back against the wall, head in his hands. “I was gonna tell her when we fuckin’ got out of here.. She’s the reason I came to these games.. Was gonna fix my debt.. Start a life with her. She made me want to continue to live. Now shes FUCKING GONE because of YOU.” He said harshly as he looked at the random player, who looked incredibly guilty. Thanos’ eyes were red, not from drugs, from stress and emotion.

The door unlocked, finally. Nam-Gyu helped Thanos up as his cheeks were stained with very few tears. He would wait until tonight to let it out. He chest burned with guilt. Why hadn’t he made sure you were behind them. This was his fault. He watched you get shot, and it was all his fault. Everyone walked back into the main room as he saw your head in the crowd. His face lit up for a second. “No.. that can’t be her.” He muttered before you came running to him, wrapping your arms around him tightly as you buried your face in his chest. He looked down at you before pulling you back. “Is that really you? You didn’t die..? But.. I saw you get shot-” he rambled before you cut him off by pressing your lips to his, not very softly before you pulled back and held his face in your hands, making him lean down and pressing your forehead to his. “I’m not dead. I promise. But please.. Vote X.. get out of here.. With me. Please.” You said, shakily as he nodded. He was caught off guard by your lips on his earlier.

Voting commenced as he looked over at you with confidence in his eyes. “I’ll run away with you. Start over.” He said as you gave him a soft smile with a nod.

Let’s hope voting works in your favor.

[anniesocsandgeneralstore]

here to stay | rhett abbott x oc

Summary: Tessa comes across the high school rodeo team sweatshirt that Rhett donated to the Boys' Home - and decides to keep it for herself. (wc: 3401)

Warnings: background ocs, no actual rhett in this chapter, a flashback

✎……PREVIOUS CHAPTER || MASTERLIST || NEXT CHAPTER

Rhett hooked his forefinger beneath her chin and her breath hitched in her throat. Got caught on something like yearning as he wiped at her chin with his thumb. The edge of those rough calluses brushing against her bottom lip. 

It was everything she wanted when she was fifteen. He wanted her. Looked down at her now with blue eyes so soft and wondering, mouth ticked up in some smirk only slightly cocky. He swiped his thumb over her chin a second time, pulled in closer to her, made it feel like he was the only other person there. The sounds of chattering children and cars as they drove by were drowned out by the rushing sound in her ears. The pit in her stomach burst into flames, roaring and all-consuming as she felt the heat coming off of Rhett’s body. So close. So wanting. 

He wanted her. She wanted him back. Even after what happened at the bonfire. With his laugh so soft and smell of freshly ground feed and open sincerity. And wasn’t that everything she desired? To want and be wanted in return?

But just like that, the moment was over. He retracted his hand and pulled away from her. Tessa looked up from the bucking bronco on his shirt to his face. Some fear there she recognized from the general store.

“M’sorry ‘bout las’night. I think y’re one helluva girl and I just…M’sorry I’made ya uncomfortable, s’all. Wasn’t my intention.” 

His mouth opened and closed, those crystalline blue eyes widening as he stared at her. He thought he messed up again. Made her uncomfortable. That she would bolt from him again at any second. But there was no room for fear. No frigid wind to put out the flame. She didn’t know what had changed. Maybe it was seeing a side of Rhett that was entirely unexpected to her. That he would apologize for coming on too strong. That he would take his niece out for ice cream and watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with her. That he would reveal to a girl he couldn’t remember the name of a week ago that he used to pretend he was a cowboy in his front yard. Whatever it was, this didn’t feel fleeting, in the moment. 

With Rhett, right now, it felt complete. 

And sorrow may have still been inevitable, in her experience it surely was, but it was a risk she was willing to take. 

So she opened her mouth and spoke quietly, “D’you get it?”

“Uh-huh,” he muttered back, a relieved smirk on his face as he licked his thumb clean. “Tastes good.”

But then he was leaving. Gathering his niece under his arm and giving Tessa a reluctant goodbye with a sad kind of smile. And she let him go.

Unconsciously, she reached up and touched her chin, her bottom lip. She could still feel his touch against her skin. Warm and rough and so gentle all at once. Something she hadn’t felt since high school fluttered around in her stomach as she grinned beyond her control. Bit her lip to try and hide it as she felt her cheeks heat. Just from the memory of being touched by him — of being the center of his attention.

It was everything her fifteen year old self dreamed of. Wrote about in her diary she still had tucked away on a shelf back home. Somewhere deep inside, she could even feel that teenage girl squealing and giggling and kicking her feet. 

But was it what her twenty-three year old self wanted? Dreamed of? Wanting to be wanted was not the same as wanting. As desiring to be around someone all the time and longing for them to know the innermost parts of her like the back of their hand. To know the innermost parts of them in return, no matter how messy. To see it and love it and want to build with it. With them. With Rhett? She didn’t know.

Her life was complicated and busy. Haunted by a living ghost of who she would become. Determined to change her fate. And yet terrified to do it. Her efforts so far had led to nothing but understandable heartbreak and defeat. Too many schedule changes and cancellations. Not enough time spent with the person she thought she could maybe desire if given long enough. But she was never given long enough.

She was never enough to try for. To stick it out and wait and hope. Would Rhett be willing to wait? To try? Just to be with her? His whispered reputation around bar tables and over the back of salon chairs wasn’t promising. According to Laney, he’s slept with more women than she can count. Warm bodies to scratch an itch and satisfy a carnal desire and then left with empty promises of a phone call. To Tessa, it sounded like a lonely existence. One she wasn’t sure she entirely believed either. He seemed too kind and too sincere for it to be the whole truth. 

“M’sorry ‘bout las’night. I think y’re one helluva girl and I just…M’sorry I’made ya uncomfortable, s’all. Wasn’t my intention.” 

Someone whose sole intention was to sleep with her wouldn’t say that. Wouldn’t go so far to apologize in person and then keep talking to her after. Reveal secret pieces of himself to her.

Rhett Abbott was turning out to be far more confusing than she thought he ever could be. The boy she crushed so hard on in high school she cried over it. The bull rider who forgot her name. The man who invited her to bonfires and came on too strong and listened. A puzzle with pieces so jagged and random they surely didn’t fit together. But some part of her was determined to figure it out.

Even if it meant breaking her own heart in the process.

“That y’r boyfriend’r somethin’?” a cracking voice asked suddenly. 

Tessa jumped as she looked over to see Wyatt sitting down beside her on the bench. Shaggy black hair falling in his eyes  — she needed to get him in for a haircut soon. If he even let her. He was shorter for his age, scrawny with bones sticking out even though he ate enough to feed three people most days. He looked pleased that he had been able to scare her as he settled into his seat. 

“No,” she replied, hand over her heart as if that would stop its rapid beating. “Rhett’s a friend. His niece Amy n‘ Jace’re in the same class.”

Wyatt didn’t respond. Suddenly disinterested as he poked his thin fingers into the holes in the metal table. Jace sat on the bench seat beside them, possibly pretending his spoon was an airplane and his empty ice cream bowl was either a target or a boat to land on. 

Tessa looked over her shoulder to see Colton still across the street with all his friends. Laughing and attempting tricks on his skateboard. She turned back to Wyatt. “Why aren’t ya with Colton n’them?”

“They…They didn’really talk t’me, so…” 

She had to stop herself from tsking, from reaching over and pushing his hair out of his eyes and laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. She knew this was going to happen. They were all older than Wyatt by several years. All high schoolers while he was still in middle school. At least they hadn’t made fun of him or teased him. At least he didn’t say they did, anyway. 

It was hard to make friends while living in the Boys’ Home. Regimented schedules and fairly strict policies about any of the boys being out of the house on their own. Tessa knew it was for their own good. Living in the Home made for a safe space for them to live and learn and grow. A place where their needs could be met and problems could be solved. A place where she hoped each of them felt cared for and loved. Despite the hindrances to their social lives.

“Wanna play finger football?” she asked, eyebrows raised as she took the ice cream cone wrapper she was going to throw away and began folding it into a triangle. 

Wyatt shrugged. “Sure.”  

“Can I play?” Jace quickly jumped in to ask, dropping his spoon with a clatter. 

“You can keep score f’r now,” she replied as she finished folding the wrapper. “Play the winner when we’re done.” 

They played for a few minutes. Wyatt beat her soundly at the game that was really all hand-eye coordination (of which Tessa severely lacked), and then he beat Jace too. Who grumbled at his loss, lip sticking out as he set his chin down on his arms crossed on top of the table. And Tessa smiled when Wyatt offered to give him a few pointers when they got home. 

It amazed her sometimes how tight-knight the boys were. They were nearly like brothers. Supported one another and fought with one another like them too. Older ones helping the younger and always looking out for one another at school. They stuck together, and for it Tessa was grateful. It was hard going through life when you lived in a place like that. At so young. A constant reminder and marker for the rest of the world to see that you were…Unwanted. That there was something wrong with you.

There was nothing wrong with any of them. Puzzles that needed to be figured out, pieces that needed to be found. And she hoped they knew they were wanted. They were cared for. They were loved. Maybe not by the people who should have been doing those things. But by someone. By her. 

When they came back to the Boys’ Home, the smell of pot roast permeated the air. Tessa took in a great lungful of the scent and breathed out a sigh. Something like nostalgia and longing hit her in the chest. It was her mother’s recipe, a smell that reminded her of home. Not even just the place, but the feeling. 

“Alright, if y’re homework’s not done hop to it — n’if it is, I need ya t’show it t’me so we can go over it together, alright?” Tessa told the three boys as they ran past her in the entry hall, making a beeline for their shared room with the other two who didn’t get to go out for ice cream. 

All three of them gave some vague noise of agreement before they disappeared from her sight. She laughed with a shake of her head as she walked further into the house.

The Amelia County Boys’ Home was built in 1886 as just a residential home. A grand Victorian settled in the newly established Wabang, Wyoming — then a booming oil town. The house one Walter Granger had built when he and his wife first got married. They were together only five years before he died. Left widowed, with more money than she knew what to do with, and no children of her own, Abigail Granger decided to convert her home into a place for troubled and orphaned children.

By the time the Home was nearing its 100th anniversary, it was bought by the state. Out of private funds and Abigail Granger dead for nearly twenty years. But its legacy was one that permeated the town, the county, the whole state even. Boys were sent from all over for well over 100 years to live and learn there. Boys whose parents couldn’t take care of them for a while, boys with behavior issues, boys who had nowhere else to go.

June Abernathy volunteered there when Tessa was young — before Tessa was born. And maybe that’s what made her youngest daughter fall in love with the place. Or maybe it was some innate sense of caring. Generosity. Charity. That made her want to work there since she was twelve years old. Most kids wanted to be astronauts or work at zoos or be doctors — but not Tessa. The only thing she ever wanted to be was a social worker, before she even knew what the title was. It was her calling. Her destiny. 

Even if that destiny forged some weight on her shoulders that never seemed to go away. Some weariness that had sunk into her bones. One that, most days, she forgot about. But others…But others it became impossible to ignore. Brought tears to her eyes and a pathetic whine to rise in her throat like she was a toddler throwing a tantrum. Because there was never enough time. Never enough of her to go around. To carry around her own and the baggage of five boys whose lives had been harder than most was a burden no one person should have to bear. 

But Tessa did it gladly. Because it was what she always wanted.

Right?

After checking the pot roast, Tessa went to the living room where more clothing donations waited for her to sort and fold. Grabbing the box on top of the pile, she sat down on one of the couches to begin. The background noise of the boys talking, the old house creaking, and birds chirping outside permeated the air. She hoped and prayed, as she grabbed the hoodie from the top of the box, the rest of the weekend would go as smoothly as the morning had. Linda was leaving soon for her days off — it would just be Tessa in a house full of pubescent and pre-pubescent boys. Always a herculean task, one that left her feeling more ragged than usual, but one that gave her time to grow closer to the boys under her care.

Before she could truly inspect the sweatshirt for stains or holes, Levi walked into the room with his hands shoved in his own hoodie pockets. The seventeen year old wore clothes like they were meant to cover something. Meant to hide in. Big hoodies and t-shirts. He was shorter than Colton, pale and all sharp angles. Inside and out.

The cut above his eyebrow was healing well. Just a dark red line now, scabbed over and healing itself, instead of the bright crimson it had been. But the bruise around his eye still looked gnarly. Purple and angry, swelling his lids shut slightly.

Another fight at school that left Linda furious.

But Tessa just felt some heavy weight in her chest.

“Feelin’ okay?” she asked as he flopped down into the armchair across from her.

“M’face hurts,” he grumbled back, revealing a red knuckled hand to card it through his jet black hair. Then he sighed. “N’so does m’head.”

“Wan’some ibuprofen?”

“Yeah.” He paused, finally looking up at her with those spring-grain green eyes. “Please.”

Tessa smiled, small and soft, before she put back the sweatshirt and went to the kitchen. A minute later, she handed Levi a glass of water and two little red pills. He swallowed them without drinking anything.

Sitting back down on the couch she asked, “Wanna talk’bout it?”

“No’really,” he said, clenching his jaw.

Tessa bit her lip. Busied her hands with the donated hoodie again, looking it over for longer than she should but not really paying attention as she chose her next words carefully.

“Principle called ya know. Told me wha’happened,” she spoke gently, calmly, making sure he sensed no anger or disappointment. “That some other kid was gettin’ beat up n’you stepped in.”

Levi wouldn’t look at her. Worked his jaw back and forth as his leg bounced anxiously. He always had been an angry kid. It was why he was at the Home in the first place. Too many fights in his hometown. His single mother didn’t know what to do — didn’t know how to handle him. And maybe didn’t want to handle him. A kid with so much anger, made only angier that no one seemed to care. No one seemed to want to try. To stick around.

Tessa hoped he knew that she wanted to try. Wanted to stick around.

“I wan’you t’know…” she started slowly, “Fightin’ isn’t always th’answer. N’t’be honest, if ya keep it up, y’ll end up someplace worse than a Boy’s Home. N’there won’be anythin’ I c’n do t’stop it.”

He finally looked at her. A hint of fear in that green eye that Tessa hoped sunk to the heart.

“But uh — I am proud’a ya…For standin’ up f’r that kid.”

The corner of his mouth ticked up as he looked back to his lap. Tessa smiled too. 

“Ll’try, Tess,” he mumbled. “I don’...I don’ wanna leave.” 

Some of that weight lifted from her chest as he walked out of the room, back to the boys room. Tessa smiled again, proud of herself for getting through to him, when she finally acknowledge the donation hoodie she had been messing with for the past few minutes.

It was an Amelia County High School Rodeo team sweatshirt. Sage green and faded with time and good use. The sleeves were frayed and dotted with small holes. It had seen a good few years. She grinned as she took in the bucking bronco logo with a cowboy clinging to the saddle. One hand raised in the air with a lasso twirling above his head. 

She thought back to Rhett Abbott, her cheeks warming. 

A group of them snuck down to the hotel pool past their curfew. They were supposed to be in bed, sleeping and preparing for the round of rides and ropings set for tomorrow morning. But that didn’t seem to matter to any of them just then. When it was ten o’clock and they were hours away from home. Their chaperones none the wiser as they snuck out of their rooms in their swimsuits. Giggling and whispering and quietly squealing to one another.

Tessa sat at the edge of the pool, feet ankle deep in the cool water with Taylor Goyer at her side. A fellow barrel racer, two older than her, and one of the team captains. If she was down here with the rest of the delinquents surely it was okay.

Taylor was telling her something about a movie she watched recently. Something about magicians and card tricks and stealing money. But Tessa wasn’t really paying attention. Instead, she was focused on the group of bull riders huddled together at the other end of the pool.

Rhett Abbot was one of them. He was thin and baby faced and his hair was slicked back from the water but he was still handsome. Even in that horrible hotel pool light. He shone with the water still clinging to him, laughing at something one of the other guys said. She had never seen him shirtless before. And it made something stick in her throat that she couldn’t quite get rid of. 

“Who’re you lookin’ at? Dalton?” Taylor broke her out of her revere. 

“Um — “ Tessa shook her head as she looked back at her friend. “No one. Jus’got lost’n space I’guess.”  

Taylor took the excuse with narrowed eyes, jumping right back in and telling Tessa that she should watch the movie she was talking about. And Tessa looked back at Rhett one last time as he grabbed Alyssa Harrod around the calves and pulled her into the pool.

She wondered if he would pull her into the pool now. If he would wrap his arms around her waist and try to pull her under to ruin her hair. She shook her head and scoffed quietly. 

What a ridiculous thought. She was an adult now. Grown out of wanting to be teased that way. But still, some part of her that was still fifteen, wanted it desperately.

With a sigh, she turned the sweatshirt around, and her eyes widened.

Abbott was iron pressed onto the back in block white letters. Most of them were peeled up and fading, but that last name was still clear as day. She remembered seeing that sweatshirt on Alyssa Harrod. On Olivia Barlow. It was a stamp. A seal. A claiming back in high school. They were seeing Rhett Abbott, and all that that meant.

The hoodie couldn’t be a donation. It had a name on it, the boys couldn’t wear it. So, indulging her fifteen year old self just this once, Tessa got up from the couch with the article of clothing clutched in her hands.

And stuffed it into her closet.

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[buckydeservesthebest]

That's me joining the party late…

I honestly find it unfair how it is that even though both Steve and the rest of the Avengers have shown to have no problem with using violence (which on a large amount of occasions is lethal force) to fight bad guys, when Bucky uses light non-lethal violence in the form of self-defense against a group of armed cops who were sent to mercilessly kill him, he alone is considered violent and “morally questionable” because of it.

I mean, as Luna rightly said, not only was the level of force Steve used to fight the STRIKE team in the elevator basically the same as what Bucky used against the tactical team (Steve crashed Rumlow into the ceiling knocking him out in the process) even with the difference that STRIKE wasn't using lethal force against him. Rather, his form of combat in the Lemurian Star fight was far from non-lethal. In the opening battle of Civil War in Lagos, Steve initiates the fight by crashing a member of Crossbones' team into an armored vehicle in a way that I really doubt he survived. Steve even removes gas mask from one of those guys before knocking him out (this is the only move by Steve that seemed unnecessary to me). Also In CA:TFA, we see Steve throwing a knife at an HYDRA agent who wasn't attacking him, killing him in the process.

Still, as well said in previous posts, I don't consider that this makes Steve less moral, but it shows that he is not a pacifist who doesn't hesitate to use lethal force when the situation calls for it.

We've also seen Natasha strangling people. Clint throwing explosive arrows. Sam launching missiles at point-blank range. And I haven't seen anyone call them morally questionable for it.

In contrast to most heroes, Bucky is one of the most pacifistic and one of the most restrained when it comes to fighting. Bucky is canonically a non-violent person, someone who didn't even voluntarily join the military, but was drafted, unlike Steve. Within the Howlies, his role was primarily as a sniper and not part of the direct action, firing only when enemies approached and put his comrades at risk. His distaste for having to fight was made more than clear in Infinity War, T'Challa himself acknowledged.

Even in TFATWS, he spent the whole time holding back his punches so he wouldn't have to end up killing anyone. In the Madripoor shooting against the bounty hunters, he's the one who looks more frustrated to be in that situation than Sharon and Sam himself. And Bucky only returns fire to cover them, and even then, he doesn't shoot to kill. The first bounty hunter appears to be shot in the arm and not the head. The second one he clearly shoots in the leg and not the head or the chunk again. And the woman who was still attacking them at the end, he throws a pole at her shoulder (one of the least lethal areas) and again, not in the head or the torso. Bucky has excellent marksmanship skills, it would have been very easy for him to shoot to kill, and yet he didn't. In contrast to how Sam fired missiles left and right in the opening aerial fight of the series, blowing up at least 5 helicopters with unconscious people on board.

As Luna and my friend @tragicfantasy-girl rightly said, in the Bucharest fight, even with everything against him, Bucky was doing his best not to kill anyone. Fighting is something he has never enjoyed, the way he says “it always ends up in a fight”, with utter disgust and exhaustion, says it all.

Side note: being hit by a brick may be considered deadly in real life, but this does not apply to fiction. There a person can survive a nuclear explosion if the script says so.

*I wrote a complement to Luna's post, about how not only was Bucky trying to catch the cop who fell over the railings, but that his intention was never actually to throw him in the first place.*

Another thing I think it's important to clarify, is that the cops are not only not bystanders, and I think it's arguable to say that they are also not as “good guys” as it may seem at first glance. As they following an extrajudicial execution mission on a foreign soil, against a man who has not even been proven guilty and was not given a trial is literally illegal as it is a huge violation of his human rights, *and this is something they know very well.*

Not only this, but the very shoot-on-sight order *must* follow a protocol. According to the US Department of Justice, before resorting to lethal force, agents are required to give a verbal warning and ask the target to surrender to authority, something they clearly did not do. The tactical team's performance was at the very least negligent in breaking an important rule. So by this definition they are also committing a crime.

(Had Bucky had the opportunity to have a legal defense, I'm sure both Ross and everyone involved in that order, would have faced a pretty nice indictment that would have possibly revoked them from office...)

And I mean, taking on the tactical team Bucky only acting in self-defense using non-lethal force, that's something that already deserves recognition and says a lot about how good he is, considering the level of danger he was facing.

But fighting for his life by limiting himself to using only non-lethal force was not the only difficulty Bucky was dealing with, but two other factors beyond his control made his situation much more complicated to deal with:

i) By that time, the amount of Bucky's memories and emotions (what makes him himself) were still very small, and the fuzzy state with memory gaps and flashes in his brain makes it difficult for him to control his responses and behaviors to outside stimuli, especially those that are considered dangerous and a threat to him. Bucky was basically a man with general amnesia being driven primarily by his survival instinct.

ii) Extensive brain damage affecting his limbic system, amygdala (which plays a key role in identifying potential threats and triggering appropriate reactions, such as the 'fight or flight' response), frontal lobe, etc. Aggression is one of the most common consequences of brain injury.

(I can't possibly imagine how difficult dealing with all that was for him, and I think it just emphasizes his great moral quality, as well as what a good man he is and always has been.)

And as Luna said again, Bucky later decided to jump several floors to avoid having to face the cops, just as Steve did in the elevator fight. And Bucky also chose to run away from the helicopter fire even though he could have used a gun to shoot it down to defend himself.

The way Bucky has always shown that he dislikes having to get involved in conflict is something that has been consistent throughout the 13 years of his character development.

But, doing a little evil for the sake of the greater good (like terrorizing and committing crimes against that corrupt senator from FATWS) is still doing evil.

@gyokujyn I have to respectfully disagree wholeheartedly with this line. As there is nothing ��evil” about the way Bucky turned Senator Atwood, who was literally at the time ordering the death of an innocent man, over to the authorities.

All Bucky did was implant a device that took control of the vehicle and recorded the conversation that incriminated her (that's the evidence he gave the authorities to convict her). Bucky used the device to lock the car doors to prevent both Atwood and her criminal henchman from escaping until the police could arrive and arrest them both. Bucky could have used a more violent approach such as forcibly stopping the vehicle, tying them both up and handing them over to the police, yet he did not, opting for a non-aggressive method.

In TWS, Steve was comfortable with letting Natasha kick the undercover HYDRA agent off the roof of a building as a method of persuasion to get him to cooperate. Which is no more moral than having done it himself. But neither this nor what Bucky did to turn the Senator over to the authorities falls into the category of “doing evil,” because by definition, “doing evil” implies acting with malice, and there is literally no malice in either case.

What Bucky did, if anything, was to do justice by turning a criminal over to the authorities and thus prevent her from continuing to cause evil.

I also have to object to the idea that Bucky's motivations are inward facing and that he doesn't see the overall good of the world like Steve. And is that as tragicfantasy-girl said, Bucky is NOT in the same position as Steve, not only from the point of view that he is not an Avenger or that he is not a hero adored by the world, but for the fact that Bucky does not trust himself, as his biggest fear is that he will end up hurting others.

As TFATWS made clear, and as production confirmed in several interviews, Bucky believes that he is a bad person, and that hurting others is something that is inscribed in his DNA. Of course, we know that this is a bullshit lie, and that it's just the idea that the show's production wanted to sell us on him so as not to disassociate him from the false label of “villain in search of redemption” that Marvel has always subjected him to.

But at the end of the day, although false, this perspective that Bucky has of himself, as well as the guilt he carries, is totally in line with his character, with the naturally peaceful man who just wants to live in peace and who is happy doing farm work and raising goats. The one who is so good-hearted that even though he acknowledges that he had no choice in any of what he was forced to live through, he doesn't feel any less responsible for it, and he's not going to stop fighting to try to make amends for sins that are not his own.

Yet, Bucky has never hesitated to abandon his longed-for peace and go to join the fight for the greater good, not only for his dear friends, but for everyone, for the whole world. Just as he did by joining the Howlies even when he was already experiencing severe PTSD, and despite the constant fear that the risk of being recaptured represented to him. As he did by not hesitating to confront the other Winter Soldiers who posed a global threat. As he did by voluntarily returning to cryostasis until his mind was “reliable” again. As he did when confronting Thanos and his army. And as he did when fighting the Flag Smashers, who as a group of terrorist super soldiers, were also a threat to society.

The difference between Steve and Bucky does not lie in the nature of their motivations, because fighting for the greater good is all the two of them have been trying to do all their lives. The difference lies in the confidence they have in themselves. Steve recognizes himself as a hero and is confident that his hands are the safest to make decisions for the greater good of society. Bucky does not consider himself a hero or someone with the safest hands to be the one to decide about the common good, because he believes himself to be a monster who does not deserve forgiveness for sins he knows are not his own. And yet, even doubting himself, when the world needs him, he never hesitates for a moment to put his life on the line and give his all to protect others. That is something that only a good man with a huge heart, who always fights for something bigger than himself, can do.

"I don't ship T'Challa and Bucky".

Nor do I. You don't have to...

What do all close bonds have to result in ships anyway? There are other kinds of love than romantic/sexual and there are other kinds of bonds.

Why can't two characters have close emotional bonds without being romantically in love with each other? I say they can! I say we need more extremely close platonic/sibling- like relationships which do not involve who wants to sleep with whom.

Lol, sorry I am ranting. I love how you never pass up on a chance to shit on TFatWS though. It deserves it. Someone even theorized that the reason the scenes with the Wakandans are framed like that in the series is to insinuate Bucky betrayed them.

He would *never* have betrayed them. Bucky is not a betrayer. i'm not saying that to woobify him or because he's without flaw, but its just not in his nature to betray or backstab people. He's a protector by nature like you suggested. Not if he's able to exercize free choice and consent anyway. What he did as the Winter Soldier.. well can that even be counted as betrayal when it wasn't done of his free consent or choice?

Which all goes to show how little the writers of that series understood Bucky/just literally wanted to undermine and subvert everything about his established personality and nature. Why don't the writers just go ahead an kill him off already? Permanently this time. They clearly couldn't care less about his character at this point so they might as well. Just at least give him a heroic death....

Yeah, honestly Bucky breaking Zemo out isn’t my gripe, it’s that he’s not given a justification that matches his character. Say if the super soldiers were a threat to Wakanda, or even a direct threat to Sam (instead of them just doing their own thing and it’s really Sam and Bucky trying to stop their quest to provide vaccines for the refugees), and Zemo was once working closely with Nagel and had a direct line in, I would think that might be sufficient justification for Bucky to break Zemo out. As it stands it’s like three degrees of separation and it made no sense for Bucky to go that far, for something that had minimal returns.

I heard that Cap 4 will contain a scene where Isaiah becomes “possessed” in the manner of a brainwashed Winter Soldier and fights against Sam. I would be interested to see whether they treat that as Isaiah’s fault and something he needs to make amends for, or as something beyond his control and the fault of the person who controlled him — as it should be. Although, if they take the correct stance, given the writer is Spellman, I would question that divergent treatment of two similar characters. 

There is a subsection of series fans who believe any direct acknowledgment of Bucky’s extensive trauma or purporting he is a man with strong moral goodness is woobification. Pointing out that he is a good man who would not fucking do that is not what woobification is about.

I think there’s also a subsection of fans who prefer to characterise Bucky as morally ambiguous. It’s not the characterisation I see from movie canon, and I think it’s more in keeping with the comics Bucky who’s a very different character.

[blobwithapencil]

somehow my brain has decided to be neurotic about atsushi as a trans man, so I’ve decided to inflict my thoughts upon you

in the beginning of the series, atsushi is very much afraid of byakko. He’s scared it will hurt people, and he’s terrified because it’s out of his control. He has been hurt so much, and he is so scared of inflicting that pain on other people without even knowing it.

Atsushi is a victim of horrific abuse.

imagine with me for a moment, a young trans man who has gone through violent abuse at the hands of a male authority figure. His abuser is the biggest example of an adult male in his life, and he has no reason to think that all men aren’t like that. So he grows up believing that men are inherently violent, and angry, and cruel, and everything he doesn’t want to be.

When standing face-to-face with his own masculinity, he feels dread and fear mixed up into a wonderful fuck-you cocktail made specially for him. He shoves it down, but he can’t run from it forever.

I think it’s fairly obvious by now where I’m going with this.

atsushi is the young trans man, and byakko is his masculinity and gender identity.

at the beginning of the series, atsushi is all alone, believing himself to be a fundamentally violent, broken person, and the ADA changes that. instead of his abuser being his sole example of masculinity, atsushi now has some good people who care about him, and male influences that are well-adjusted enough. He doesn’t want to be his abuser, but that is not a guaranteed thing that comes with accepting masculinity anymore. For the first time in his life, atsushi allows himself to look at byakko and accept it as a part of himself.

do you ever think about how maybe if byakko was given room to exist and its needs were met, maybe byakko could have been calm instead of the wild animal it was? Do you ever think about how byakko acted like a wounded animal, lashing out at anything that got near it because it didn’t know kind hands existed? Do you ever think about how that boy exists dozens of times over, all over the world, and they grow up prickly and defensive and isolated? Do you ever think that they don’t know their hands are capable of kindness?

[artilite]

fuck you *lethal companies your in stars and time*

(long) exposition under cut (spoilers for ISAT + lethal company logs)

This au takes place around the time of sigurd's logs/before them (i haven't decided if Sigurd's crew exists here or not yet)!

Siffrin was someone who used to live on the Golden Planet before it got eaten. They may not remember anything beyond being found in an escape pod, but they're still paralyzed by fear when getting close to the selling window. He's always first in the facilities, making jumps, braving traps, and heading as deep as he can for scrap.

Mirabelle and Isabeau are the medic and fighter respectively, who both came from the same moon colony. They were both pressured into taking jobs by a work-based society, and applied for the company under the impression that it was a short, high-paying internship with nebulous risks.

Odile is their resident ship manager. She keeps a watchful eye over everyone and relays information about monsters, scrap, etc. In absolutely dire situations, she may come help with scrap. Despite claiming to be a first-timer, her badge says Leader??

Nille and Bonnie ended up with the crew after taking a chance to run away from their parents. Seeing a high-paying job that provided everything and would take them far away sounded too good to pass up. Nille lied about Bonnie's age to take them with her. After seeing the reality of this job, though, she regrets not finding another way out. Bonnie is permanently on ship-duty; they mainly type in whatever numbers Odile tells them. Nille is also a fighter, though she prefers the weighty stop sign as opposed to Isabeau's shovel.

Loop, after hundreds upon thousands of quotas, dying every possible death, learning everything they could- even the real identity of The Company- realizes there was one thing they've never done before. They've never died to The Company. Desperate for a way out, and haunted by the whispers and screams beyond the wall, they give themselves up. Maybe that would finally satisfy the monster- to have devoured every last piece of the Golden Planet. Maybe their crew could finally rest easy that way. Well, they didn't loop back. But through the dark and damp, there's static on the walkie talkie. Loop picks up, and hears their own voice just beyond the wall.

(Loop's design is the most different by far, since instead of consuming a star, they themselves are slowly getting digested. They're inspired by the visual of red crying faces from the logs :D)