#We would've survived if you had just stayed with us for 5 more minutes

[sachirobabe]

Chapter 5

Gojo Satoru x reader

Wc: 3576

Curseless au

Summary: Amidst the zombie apocalypse, your courage shines as you not only saves lives but capture the heart of Gojo Satoru. Together with his first-year students, you all embark on a perilous journey, not only for survival but in a quest for a cure that adds a poignant layer to the unfolding romance.

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"Where's Shoko?" Gojo asks as the two of you walk back into the kitchen/dining area.

Before Nanami could answer, the kitchen doors swing open, revealing a girl with brown hair. "What now—oh, you must be Y/n." She smiles. "I'm Shoko, I'm so happy to have someone smart."

"Oh, thanks," you laugh, "Are you a doctor as well?" She nods and takes out a cigarette.

"I for sure would've thought that you'd quit those by now." Gojo shakes his head, assisting you in sitting.

"I will." She rolls her eyes. "Unless we figure out how to make our own." Shoko winks at you.

It's ironic, a doctor smoking. They're all about health and here she is, smoking a cigarette without a care in the world, literally.

"How do you deal with him?" She asks you, "I already like you more than Gojo."

"He's not that bad." You say and he grins at you. "Well," you begin, "he did almost get us killed the first time we met."

"He's never leaving your side now." Shoko shakes her head, "You should've seen him before all of this happened."

"He was insufferable." Nanami's deep voice chimes in.

"Hey!" Gojo frowns, "I'm not that bad."

The entire group laughs, it felt a little nice to forget about the tragedies happening outside. It's quickly ruined as you let your mind slip away from the conversation at hand.

You remember everything that you had taken for granted. Now you're sure it'll never go back to normal unless there's another planet suitable for sustaining life. Even then, there's no way of knowing if there's someone capable of building a rocket.

You're in the beginning stages of spiraling, you feel like crying and shutting out the whole world. You excuse yourself to the bathroom, everybody continues the conversation. You briefly hear them talking about getting some rest for the night as you leave.

You quickly close the bathroom door behind you, your breathes become more rapid and tears begin to fill your eyes, you don't bother in blinking them away. You think it's better to feel your emotions rather than conceal them. You manage to keep your meltdown quiet, so others wouldn't worry as they walked by.

The thought of life and how everything is gonna turn out is eating you alive, your tears fall quicker when you think about if you'll survive, you're careful when going out, but are you going to have to live your entire life killing zombies and scavenging for food?

You're overwhelmed by the amount of questions flooding your mind, but you begin to calm yourself down, firstly by your breathing. They're not as frantic as before, you remind yourself to take it day by day. 'You're not alone now.' You repeat to yourself.

You blow your nose and wash your face to cool you down, your eyes look tired as you stare at yourself in the mirror. You give yourself another minute to make it look like you weren't just having a breakdown.

As soon as you open the door you're met with Gojo, his arm freezes in mid-air as he was about to knock.

"There you are." He smiles, you force one back and quickly advert your eyes, faking a yawn. "Everyone's heading to bed, you tired?"

You nod, even though you aren't. "Are you?" You ask and clear your throat after it came out raspy.

"Not really. We don't have to keep watch either, Nanami turned on the fence and made sure all the doors were locked." He says.

"That's good." You nod.

"Let's stay up a bit," He smiles and wraps his arm around you to help. He definitely notices your eyes being red, he's seen you tired and this was not it. "I'm so glad we found my friends—"

"Gojo, I'm sorry, but I really am tired." You interrupt him, now feeling even worse than you did.

He stops you both in the hallway and forces you to take a seat next to him, "No you're not. What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm tired like I said." You sigh.

"Liar." He sits next to you, fiddling with his fingers, "I could tell something was up when you left."

You try again once more, "I had to use the bathroom, nothing else."

"Bullshit," He starts, "This is my question. What's wrong?" His eyes now meet yours and you avoid his blue eyes.

You clench your jaw. You felt pathetic having to tell him that you were crying because of the future, you had only known him for a few days, but your trust in him had grown exponentially due to the circumstances, and that scares you as well.

"I didn't feel good."

"About what?" He pushes.

"The future. It's scary and sometimes it overwhelms me." You shrug, resting your head on your good leg.

He stays silent for a moment, nodding to your statement. "You can talk about it to me. No more of this 'I barely know you' bullshit, we're all surviving together."

You flinch a little at his harsh words, "I was just upset, that's all. When I'm upset I cry, it feels better to let it out." Your eyes are now staring into his, "And it terrifies me that I don't know what the future will be like. Will we have enough food? Will the government save us? It's endless."

"We'll get through it. Day by day." He reassures. "You don't think I'm terrified too? I worry about keeping my students safe, my friends, and now you. The government probably doesn't even exist anymore, we're fending for ourselves, which is terrifying, but the more people you have, the easier it is."

You feel your tears begin again and look away, this time you're able to blink them away, Gojo was making it harder because he rubbed your back reassuringly.

"I already failed in keeping you safe." He sighs, "It was so stupid of me to not think about jumping it before the zombies came." His brows furrowed.

"You weren't the one climbing, I was. I got myself hurt, don't feel like you need to take responsibility for that. You've already done so much for your students." You say. 

He shakes his head, his white fluffy hair falling into his eyes. "I don't know what I'd do if any of them got hurt. Any of you." He admits.

"You put a lot of pressure on yourself." You say, "I think you should depend on us sometimes too." He smiles softly at your words and gently bumps his shoulder with yours.

"Do you feel better?" He asks, noticing your sleepy face.

"Yeah. Thank you, Gojo." Your head leans back against the wall, your eyelids feel heavier with every blink.

"Satoru."

"Hm?" You say, barely keeping your eyes open.

"Call me Satoru." You nod and rest your head on his shoulder, he doesn't mind, laying his own on top of yours.

It was silent for a few minutes, Gojo listens to your breathing soften and knows you've just fallen asleep. Now that he's alone in his thoughts he thinks about a lot that you said, he wonders how a cure could be found. He knows it'd be impossible to turn zombies back into humans, but what about preventing humans from turning?

It was late enough, he hadn't slept much in days, he was really feeling the effects of it. He gently moves your head off of him and is careful when picking you up bridal style. He quietly walks into the room and sees Nanami awake, a small flashlight in his hand as he reads a book.

He gives his friend a nod as he sees his futon is already set up, he gently puts you back down, making sure your injured leg is straight and not gonna ruin the stitches. Then he places a blanket over your body, he stares at you for a long as he can before his eyes give out on him and he passes out.

Your thigh is extremely sore, the small cuts have began to scab and your stitches are swelling, but that's to be expected. You finish wrapping and stand up, the place has running water and electricity, so you enjoyed a warm shower.

You walk down to get breakfast, wondering what the plans are for today, you see everybody already eating.

"Your food might be cold." Nanami says as he slides your plate and you thank him.

"Do you want it warm?" Satoru asks.

You're a little confused, "What?"

"Your food," He says, "do you want it to be warm?"

"Um, it's okay, it's my fault it's cold—" You begin, but he takes your plate and is off to the kitchen.

"Your leg feeling better?" Shoko asks, her fork is cutting up some of her food as she slowly eats it.

"I'm very sore today, so no venturing out for me." You chuckle, you tell her in a little more detail about the stitches and how it's healing, knowing she'd understand.

Satoru comes back with your food, now steaming. He sits back down and takes a bite of your sausage, "It's a fee."

You rolled your eyes, "Thank you." The first and second years were messing around in another room, so it was just the adults at the table. Satoru really knew how to push people's buttons, you've lost count at how many times Nanami has rolled his eyes at the white haired male.

"I'm trying to be serious here with you, Gojo, but I'm about to throw you out to the zombies." Nanami threatens, he takes his map back from the man child, erasing the drawings he was making.

"You know I'd win." He grins.

"Unfortunately. I'll take you out myself then." He glares and lays the map back out on the table, you move your plate to the side so there'd be more room.

"What's this?" You ask, putting your full attention on the blonde.

"A map, duh." Satoru says obviously. You can't tell if he's trying to annoy you as well or if he really meant his statement.

"I'll help Nanami and take you out too, smartass." You deadpan. "The markings." You face Nanami.

"These are all the radio towers we've tried." He softly smiles at your response to Satoru, but it quickly goes away, you're still able to catch it though.

"Oh shit. You've really gone far." Satoru brings himself back into the conversation.

"We'd like to try this one," Shoko places her finger on the map for a moment, "But it's very dangerous there."

"Gangs?" You question and she nods.

"We'd need all the help we could get, I would've liked to leave today, but.." Nanami stops, pointing to your leg.

"You wouldn't risk going without me? I don't want to hold any of you back." You say.

"Gojo says you're valuable when fighting. I'd feel more comfortable having another set of hands and eyes." Nanami explains, "How long would it take for those to heal." He means the stitches.

"Anywhere from 2-4 weeks if I'm careful and clean the wounds often." You estimate. "Could be longer because I'm running out of antiseptic."

"What's that?" Satoru frowns.

"Rubbing alcohol, idiot." Nanami mutters the last word, but Satoru's hearing picks up it.

"Or hydrogen peroxide and iodine." Shoko adds, "For this being military, there's no infirmary."

"Where the hell are we gonna find antiseptics." Satoru rubs his forehead.

"Luck, by visiting the pharmacy's nearby." You say.

"We can do that." Nanami decides, "Anything to get you to heal quicker."

You give him a small smile and thank the group, they are all getting ready to walk around and try and find some extra resources. You are obviously staying behind, you'd only bring the group down in the condition that you're in.

"I can stay with you." Satoru offers.

"No way. I'll be fine. Nothings gonna happen here." You assure, he's bringing up a chair for you to sit in so you wouldn't have to stand while keeping watch to open and close the gate after they leave.

"They don't need me." He smiles, "Plus I know how lonely you'll be without my presence."

"If anything, she's gonna be relieved." Shoko says as she leans against the doorframe and inhales from her cigarette. Satoru frowns at her, "Besides, I need a bodyguard."

"Nanami will be there." Satoru answers.

She shakes her head, "I need all the protection I can get."

Satoru knows what she's doing, "You've survived so far."

"She doesn't need protecting," She points at you with her cigarette, "she's badass. And she saved you." She reminds.

"I wasn't armed," He defends himself, "otherwise I would've protected her." His nose is high in the air, annoyed with the conversation.

"I'll be okay, Satoru. You guys shouldn't be too long anyway." You shrug, "Now go get ready."

He pouts, really wanting to stay there with you. As he leaves he glares at Shoko and she laughs. Nanami comes up after them and explains how to turn the fence on and off, even though you wouldn't need to, and how to open and close the gate.

It was simple, not complicated at all. Shoko handed you a medical book to read knowing you'd get bored. You open the gate and the group quickly slips through, as soon as Satoru goes you push the button to shut it again.

Satoru turns to face where you're at and waves, you chuckle and wave back, not sure if he can even see you. They slowly become smaller and smaller as they continue walking.

You were advised to not move in case anything happens and they needed to be let in quickly. You weren't planning on moving either way, you want to minimize the movement to not reopen the stitches.

Occasionally you'd read a page of the book and look up and scan the area to make sure the group wasn't back yet. It quickly became tedious, you sigh and push the book to the side. You look out to the semi-open land, it was a little out of the city, but there were still occasional buildings and complexes.

Your mind is constantly worrying about food, there is a storage unit attached to the military base you're all currently staying at, but foods gonna run out quickly even with rationing.

Gardening had been a small hobby of yours when you were little, you remember planting all kinds of vegetables with your mother. You smile softly at the thought, your father would snap pictures of two then he'd join in as well.

'Gardening doesn't sound too bad', you think to yourself, but you also think that you'd all have to be permanently stationed somewhere, it'd be difficult to move plants, you didn't know too much about that.

Out of the corner of your eye you spot white hair, it was of course Satoru. The group was back, you frown as you felt like not much time had gone by. The sun was starting to go down a little, you must've been daydreaming a lot longer.

You make sure no zombies or others were following them as you push the button to open the gate, you shut it once they've all slipped through and slowly make your way back down to the main area to greet them.

"Any luck?" You ask.

"We found antiseptics." Itadori answers, wiping his nose from the cold.

"And some bandages and stuff, no luck on food though." Shoko smiles and takes off her coat.

"Let's go, I'll help you re-bandage." Satoru says, holding you again.

"First-years, you guys are in charge of dinner." Nanami says and sits down with Shoko and the second-years.

"Ramen." Nobara declares as she heads into the kitchen and the two boys follow after her.

"Anything happen out there?" You ask Satoru as he sets you down on the toilet seat.

"Nah. Not much trouble, what about here?" He says as he carefully unravels your wrapping.

You shake your head, "No, but I was thinking," You begin and he nods letting you know he's listening, "I've been worrying about the food and how quickly we're gonna go through it, if we can find some crops or seeds anywhere I can replant them."

"Not bad," He smiles widely, "I don't think we'll be staying here permanently though."

"I know. I'd also like to have a lab to work with Shoko in, you know maybe find out some more things about the zombies." You say, "A military base would be the best for us, it's secure."

"I agree," he sighs, "I'm not sure how long we'll stay here." His hands are careful as he dumps the liquid over your thigh. You're starting to get used to the burning.

"Has Nanami had any luck radioing?" You do some breathing to help get your mind off of the sting.

Satoru shakes his head, "I don't think we will, but it's worth a shot."

You watch him clean up the liquid, his hands are still freezing as ever, but he's starting to get the hang of bandaging.

"Let's get you all better, starting with no walking." Satoru picks you up carefully just how he did the night before.

"Woah—" Your eyes widen, "I can walk—"

"Nuh uh, we want you healed as quickly as possible." He says.

"You'll get tired of carrying me." You answer back.

"I'm strong." He winks at you and then looks ahead.

"What if I have to go to the bathroom." You deadpan.

"Looks like I'm going too." He smiles widely. "Kidding, I'll wait outside." He rolls his eyes.

The next few weeks go by excruciating slow, you felt terrible about getting injured, but it couldn't be helped now. Everyone was so helpful and kind during your healing process.

You had gotten closer to the second-years, all of them have been great. Maki was still a little unsure about you, but at least she was kinder now.

Satoru though, in just a few short weeks you had developed a small little crush. He had a way with words and was much more comfortable with you now. You know it'll go away, you've just been deprived of human interaction. That's what you keep telling yourself.

But in the meantime, it was fun to have one despite the circumstances. He was there for you for your whole recovery, anything you mentioned he got it done.

"You want to watch?" You ask confusingly to Satoru.

"Yeah!" He excitedly says. "I was forced to be your butler so I wanna see my work be payed off."

"You offered." You press your lips into a thin line and he just chuckles at your reaction. You slowly removed each stitch and Satoru watched intently. You could feel his breath on your leg from how close he was.

"We should keep this as a trophy!" He says as you plant them in his gloved hand.

"Why would I do that?" You frown, inspecting your work and seeing your wounds healed. You still put on some ointment to keep it from getting dry and itchy.

"Is this your first time having stitches?" He asks and you nod, "Well, I'd say that's a milestone."

"We're not keeping them. That's gross." You say and force him to toss them in the trash.

"Let's see that leg in action." He backs away and gasps dramatically as you stand, "Good as new! All thanks to me." He stands proudly.

You roll your eyes at the man and walk past him, it felt good to stand and walk on your own. You still have to be careful since the area is still a little tender. Everybody was sat near the kitchen, all eyes turned to you and smiles were plastered on every face as they realized.

"You're good as new!" Itadori gives you his famous smile.

"Glad to have you back, these losers need a bodyguard." Nobara says and both boys glare at her.

"We should start planning." Nanami says as you sit down, he notices Satoru walk into the room and frown when he sees his students already taking a seat next to you. Nanami eyes the spot next to him and Satoru grumbles.

"It'll take us about three weeks to get there and back." Shoko says, pulling out a small notebook and pencil to write things down.

You feel someone bang on the table twice, all of your attention goes to Inumaki as he signs, "What about the cars?"

Nanami sighs, "It'll bring too much attention. I don't want any trouble." He signs back.

Inumaki thinks for a moment, "I think it'll make us look scarier and less approachable."

"I agree." Panda signs.

"Maybe next time, we have to be strategic with our risks." Satoru joins in and Inumaki slumps in his seat, not wanting to walk for weeks.

"We have our rest stops, remember?" Maki says to help ease the pain of walking for long periods of time.

"And what if the tower doesn't work?" You say, Satoru interprets for Inumaki since you're still learning to sign.

"At least we'll know." Nanami eyes the map, "I know there's a huge military base near the coast. I used to drive by it sometimes."

"It's far from where we are and if we get there and find out it's taken, we'd have nowhere to go." Shoko adds.

"Alright, so when do we leave." You say.

"Tomorrow." Satoru declares.

[fenimores-book-nook]

Day 3 ~ self care writing

November 16th, 2023 ~ Thursday

I just got done making 11+ drinks for a bus load of college students that came into the shop. I remember the dread I felt when I saw the bus pull up. A tiny sliver of hope I had that they would just walk past the shop got squashed as they started heading my way. I knew what I had to do. RACE TO THE DOOR BEFORE THEY WALKED IN AND SAY, "SORRY, WE'RE CLOSING EARLY!"

Nah, I didn't do that. I wanted to, though. I stuck it out. I took all those orders, watching the drink line on the coffee bar get longer and longer and longer and longer. I don't even think everyone ordered something and it was that many. But THANKFULLY, when I had about seven drinks left, my wonderful boss came in and started helping me immediately. And when we had five left, one of my awesome managers came in and helped as well. Which I am SO grateful for. If they didn't start helping I probably would've been stuck making those drinks for at least seven extra minutes. (five minutes seems too short and ten minutes seems too long)

Thankfully, I think almost all of them just walked out. Okay, I know I shouldn't be saying that because I do work here and I should be glad for customers--which I am!!--but that was A LOT. And for a little anti-social birdie like me...yeah. But lookie! I survived!

Here's my congratulatory iced tea latte for myself along with the "Monster of the Month" book club book I just started reading! :) The iced tea latte, I rewarded with the name: Crisp Apple Morning. It's an English Breakfast tea with caramel apple butter syrup and vanilla syrup. Then I added soy milk! It's very good. I very well might also reward myself with buying lunch from somewhere because I have barely gotten a break to sit down since those college students came in. But, I finally do now! Even though I only have like 10 minutes of my shift left, it's okay.

~

Flash forward in my day- it's 9:52 pm currently. So far, the rest of my day after the college-student-bombardment has been:

1 pm ~ got off work, grabbed some lunch (I was right about the reward lunch), and headed home to relax and continue watching Wizards of Waverly Place.

5:35 pm ~ left home again for an event with a friend that happens downtown (same area as my work): Third Thursday. It's a fun little event that happens every third Thursday of the month. There are usually vendors along the street and most of the businesses stay open later than usual. We got some free hot chocolate, dinner, and I got a $3 book from a second-hand book store that I LOVE and I prove that love by being an incredibly faithful customer to them. ;) The book I got was an Ivy and Bean one, it's a part of a collection of several other books that I used to love so much when I was younger. So since I have a need to leave that store with a book in my hand and because it was that cheap, I thought: why the heck not?

8:20-30 pm ~ came home from downtown and sat and read for a while! I finally am getting more into Iron Flame, mostly because my sister is pressuring me to keep reading it because it's so good and she wants to talk to someone about it. (she's almost finished with it) And I know it is and will be super good, there's just so many other books that are just as good- AH!

~

Okay, nighttime self-care things now. :)

Things I did today that I felt helped my progress in self-care:

I sent a close friend a text explaining that I wanted to talk about some struggles I've been going through, which is a step for me given I'm not the greatest at talking about my feelings.

I was kind of inspired by this quote I saw today: "Sometimes peace requires you to be quiet, even if you're right." I had been debating doing this one thing that would not be classified as me being quiet, but I just felt like it wasn't going to be a smoothing-over type of thing, so I was unsure I wanted to deal with the response right now. But then I saw this quote that struck a chord with me. Even though, that part inside of me is longing to take that unquiet step, is it worth my peace at this moment in time? So, I took the step to be peacefully quiet. And I'm okay with that for this moment.

When I came home from work, I let myself just relax and do the things that felt good for me in the moment instead of pressuring myself to do other things that seemed more productive.

(pinterest) Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is sit quietly and do nothing. :)

So, that's one more day of self-care writings- yay! Day three, going strong!

Until the next one,

Thalia <3

[umbc-hvz-official]

Playing Creatively at UMBC HvZ

Tonight, rather than completing the current objective of escorting a moderator up to PAHB circle, human [name removed for privacy] decided to take a more creative route by fucking around for 15 minutes trying to make a shitty little house out of cardboard. This human's squad may have all fallen victim to the plague just before completing their objective, but at least [Emmett] figured out how to put a goddamned "roof" on their "house".

[burningcowboyhoagietaco]

A Way to Learn a Lesson

written by:

@burningcowboyhoagietaco

illustrated and edited by the amazing, the one and only:

@lenle-g

Before I publish the story id like to thank @lenle-g from the bottom of my heart for being patient with me, being nice to me the whole time, and for making my story even better and more exciting. Without her I would have stayed in my normal, not that good English story. so thank you for everything!!! <3<3

And here's my part at @tagminibang submission:)

☆☆☆☆☆

Scott, no!!! No way! I am not going to give any lectures to anyone." John's voice comes out tight. "Especially not in front of a crowd. No way."

"Why not?" Scott raises a brow, his voice honeyed with ‘big brother wants something’. "It's not like you're gonna get executed by some children just for talking space at them, right? You love talking about space. It's all I've heard since you were, like, seven."

"No, that's not it." There's a sharp shake of the ginger’s head, "Scott, come on!" John knows for a fact that his oldest brother knows he's the most socially awkward person to have ever lived on Tracy Island (and maybe the entire planet). "You’ve lived with me long enough to know how much I hate social.... anything." John complains. "Why would you ever think I'd want to do this?""

"Well, yes, I know that," Scott shrugs, "I've seen that look you get on your face when there's a lot of people around." He’s well aware that his brother is an introvert who hates socializing with anyone, so he quickly changes the subject to try and make his younger brother feel a little more at ease. "But hey... everyone knows how much you like it when anyone talks about space or anything about astronomy. You'd be amazing at it."

"That's a different thing." John says flatly. Flattery, it seems, wont get Scott very far. "It's like, whenever you guys ask me anything about space, I like to answer them for you, but from random people…? And in huge crowds? I just simply can't." Surely he doesn’t have to explain himself much more than that?

"Oh trust me, everything is going to be fine." Scott was a flippant hand around, talking without really thinking, because all he wants is for his brother to get out of Thunderbird 5, to visit Earth for a little bit, to mingle with people a little. It can't be that bad. "If anything happens, Gordon and Alan'll be in Thunderbird Five doing Space Monitor duty, me and Virgil are gonna keep an eye on everything, and you’re in safe hands with Lady Penelope and Parker. It's all set up, so please go have some fun for once and teach the children something cool."

"My answer is still no." John says persistently, without hesitation. He's pretty sure it'd be worse than being in the middle of a hurricane, or testing one of his Grandma's new cooking experiments. It’s lucky Scott misses his involuntary shudder.

Scott, though, is so done with him at this point, that he's pretty sure there's no choice but to use plan b and hope that that works instead on his unwilling, stubborn, red haired brother. They've got to get him down from orbit and to that lecture somehow. Scott's just not going to stand for anything else.

"Are you sure that's your last answer?" Scott asks, with a heavy sigh, already planning the best way to call in the big guns.

"Yes," John scowls, arms folded. "Yes, it is."

They'll see about that.

...

"Is everything ready?" John adjusts his sleeves, smoothing down his vest and putting the last touches on his collar. Neat, simple, formal. Can't go wrong. "My presentation papers, laptop, and my mini simple dimple?”

"Yes, all in the bag." Scott calls back, rapidly checking everything, "But do you really need that little fidget thing of yours?" He picks his younger brother's old toy up between forefinger and thumb to examine it, remembering the day John made their Mom buy it for when he gets stressed.

"What fidge- oh, yes I need it." The look on John's face leaves no doubt about that. "I've used it ever since Mom bought it for me."

"Hey… Mom would've been proud of you, you know?” Scott tells him, in a quick flash of brotherly pride. “For, you know, going out of your safe zone for a little while and teaching the children and all that."

"Yeah, I know…" John finds him a nervous smile, "But I'm not doing this voluntarily, you've forced me with that plan b of yours."

The second John says that Scott's cheeks dimple, the corners of his eyes crinkle, and he grins victoriously, his teeth a bright white in the earliest rays of morning sun.

“All I had to do was make a call." He shrugs, "Lady Penelope did all the talking and somehow convinced you to go." Scott got a little more excited. He took a couple of steps forward, slightly standing on his toes reaching John's level asking"How did she convince you?" Clearly waiting teasingly for an answer to come out of John's lips

"Huhhhh." John exhales loudly, a little despairing. "She promised me we'd go to the Pagasa Astronomical Observatory after I finish the lecture with the children." He shrugs, keeping his eyes down, embarrassed.

"The what now?" Scott stares at him, thoroughly confused.

"The Pagasa Astronomical Observatory in the Philippines.” John says, like that was obvious, “It's equipped with a 45-cm computer-based telescope. It's so powerful that astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts can now conduct effective observations of stellar bodies and other distant space objects! Scott, it’s been my dream to go since I was, like, 17."

Scott always knew how much of an astrophile his younger brother is; he never cared about his physical appearance, nor his poor eating habits and he always used to make excuses to read his books alone, yet no one has ever interfered in his personal life.

"Okay okay space lover boy,” Scott grins at him. He'd expected Penny to be persuasive, but resigning herself to hours stuck with John in full excited-about-space mode would hardly be in his top ten. Either he's gonna owe her one, or Penny's more resilient than him. “You can go, no one is holding you back."

The short silence between them was broken by a ringing sound from a nearby table, which John answers.

“...Mhm, yes? Oh, the lecture." It must be Penelope calling, "Yeah, I'm ready, I'll head out now." John grabs his bag, wandering toward where the FAB1 must already be idling on the Tracy runway. "Time to go."

"Mhm,” Scott makes an agreeable noise, watching him go. “Please stay safe and please don't make an idiot of yourself." He's teasing… mostly.

"Yeah yeah," John waves at him over his shoulder, not even looking back. "I won't."

…

"Are we there yet?" Despite the consistently amazing views out of FAB1’s windows during the flight, John’s found himself mostly looking down, fidgeting with his fingers. He’s worrying, just a little, about what awaits him in the Philippines - a whole different tropical island to his own, though still in the South of the Pacific Ocean.

"Just give Parker ten more minutes, darling,” Her Ladyship smiles at him, “We'll arrive in no time."

There’s a moment of silence before, unexpectedly, it’s broken by a call flashing up from, of all places, Thunderbird Five. There’s a prickly sense of discomfort as John realises that, of course, it’s not him calling. Gordon must be trying to reach them.

"Heeeeey Lady Penelope,” The kid greets, as Penny flicks it on, seemingly a lot less bothered by the change than he is. “Oh, and Mr. Tracy.” There’s a huge smirk on his face. “How's our newest teacher holding up?"

"Firstly, my name is John.” John points out, flatly, “Second, I'm not your teacher so please don’t call me Mr. Tracy ever again. Thirdly…” He concedes, quirking an eyebrow, “Yeah, I'm good for now, but fourth… How are you holding up, up there in my Thunderbird? She’s not much like Four, is she?"

"Ooooooooo that's a good question,” Gordon looks half like he’s considering it, half like he’s really missing his own ‘bird. “I'm holding up pretty well thanks to Alan. He’s taken all the Monitor duty stuff, so all I gotta do is keep an eye on you guys." He sounds a bit… sarcastic about that. “It’s pretty boring, honestly. How do you survive up here without a pool?”

"Young Master Gordon, are you quite done talking?" Parker glances, unimpressed, at the little floating hologram of John’s brother in his rearview mirror, "Because we're about to arrive at our destination."

"Huh… oh yeah,” Gordon doesn’t seem too bothered about that, but he waves merrily at them all the same, “Okay bye and John, please have fun, you too Lady Penelope, okay bye guys."

It’s only a few moments later that Parker opens his mouth to tell them that they’ve arrived at Chino Roque Theater, pulling up out front to let them both climb out.

John's eyes widen: it’s nothing like what he saw on the internet. It was more enormous, more luminous, more spectacular than anything he’d seen or read online. All he remembers reading is that it's a sphere shaped building located in the Philippines, in Anilao Hill, but the pictures on the webpage didn’t do it justice like being there in person does.

The building was smooth and round; the auditorium shaped like a massive egg nestled in amongst the other buildings. They were early enough that the sun was just cresting the horizon, colouring the sky with reds and oranges, visible through the geometric front of the building - where giant triangles of glass intersect together to give the people inside an amazing view of the sky at night.

"M'lady, you and John can go ahead. I'll park FAB 1." Parker said, before going to the parking lot - unaware just how tiring and long his journey to find a place to park is going to be.

They both head inside the building, admiring the sweeping glass fractals of the roof high above them. It’s incredibly beautiful, really a feat of engineering. So much so, that John almost forgets why he’s even there, until he spots a couple of buses arriving on the other side of the building, and the panic sets in. He was expecting to be a little bit anxious, but this feels like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest. He presses a hand hard against it, trying to calm his racing pulse and stop the sudden shake of his fingers, and Penny must notice, because a little hand settles, ever so lightly, on his shoulder, drawing his attention to her.

"Hey John," Lady Penelope looks him steadily in the eye, projecting warmth and reassurance. "They're just a small, mixed group of children and teens. They can’t possibly hurt you, now can they? They just came to have a small lecture because all of them like space and astronomy just like you. Imagine yourself at their age, meeting a real life astronaut.” John tries very hard not to remind her who, exactly, his Father was, as she goes on - trying to visualise being a kid that didn’t get ‘take your son to work days’ at NASA’. It’s a pretty horrifying concept. “Most importantly,” Penny adds, “it's only for an hour or so, so you don't need to worry so much." She had to smile just to reassure him. “You’ll have filled their heads with space facts and be out before you know it.”

"O-okay,” John takes a deep, steadying breath, “I don't know if I'm supposed to trust you on this, or whatever, but I really don't have any other choice." He also wants to add that they forced him to go, but at the last second he remembers that they never forced him - he agreed to go because Lady Penelope promised him a trip to the observatory.

It seems like a pretty weak reason, now that he’s outside the stage door, knees shaking.

"Mhm, I think it's time to go inside.” She nudges him callously in the right direction, and John’s palms meeting the solid metal of the double doors is the only thing that keeps him from following gravity’s call and landing on his face. “Again, if anything happens, I'll be at the back of the room and I have a plan b if things get too much." John, pretty shocked by just how many plan b's the Lady Penelope might have prepared for the day, can only shake his head, bemused. “So stop worrying and get out there!”

She vanishes off into the atrium, and John can’t help the loud exhale that escapes his mouth before he musters up all the courage he can, and enters the room.

Bright lights startle him for a moment, and he’s pretty sure he does an awful, awkward impression of a blind baby giraffe as he stumbles out onto the stage and freezes as he notices the first smatterings of audience are already taking their seats.

The moment he placed his foot on the smooth wooden floor, his heart had started to beat faster, his hands began to sweat, the more steps he took forward the more he felt anxious. It was, he’ll think later, one of the toughest moments of his life, and he’s been to space. Multiple times.

Come on John. He tries to straighten up, shake off his anxiety, This can’t go worse than your first EVA.

Taking another deep breath, John waits patiently for all the attendees to take a seat inside the room. Waiting doesn’t help his anxiety levels at all, and he can feel them increasing by the second, but, determined, John doesn’t let it stop him from starting his lecture.

"H-Hello everybody,” He starts, incredibly conscious of the hushed silence that falls across his audience. “I'm John Tracy, M.Sci, PgDip, B.Lang Hons,” he rattles off his credentials, his nerves almost blurring them together, “I worked with NASA as an astronaut for three years before going… uh… solo in my astronomical studies, and I'll be your guest lecturer for the day.” He swallows around the lump in his throat, as a ripple of hushed oohhhs and ahhhs goes through the crowd. John’s pretty sure his face has gone bright red. “Thank you for having me at the Chino Roque Theater,” He goes on, before his embarrassment can bet the better of him, “I hope everyone’s had an amazing day so far. We'll be spending the next hour or so talking about astronomy and space physics, so shall we get started?" John thought it was a good opening, and yet his back was really wet from all the people's eyes on him. Glancing offstage, Penelope throws him a thumbs up, and he feels a little better.

"Um,” He blinks. “So does anyone here know how old the universe is?" John ventures, only to be surprised as almost everyone answers at once;

"Almost 13.8 billion years!"

"Yes,” The edge of a smile works its way onto John’s face. Clearly this was going to be a shout out the answer kind of lecture. He can work with that. “That's correct, now does anyone know how the universe started?"

"The Big Bang!" Most of them answer, and John feels a surge of relief. These guys really are into space.

"Okay, okay, not bad at all." He nods affirmatively at them, and the screen behind him lights up with an artist’s rendition of the Big Bang happening. "Now if I were to go and search ‘how old is the universe’ in, say, Google, the answer would be 13,772 billion years. It’d be the same thing if we looked at NASA, or even Wikipedia - so how did people get to know the age of the universe? How do you even start calculating something that old? Well I'm going to explain it for you in two ways: the good, nice way, and the kinda not that good and not that scientific way." There’s a bit of an awkward pause as John wonders whether or not he’s explained that well. When only silence greets him, he very quickly realises he needs to press on.

"So, uh, the good way.” He folds his fingers together behind his back, trying to resist the urge to fidget. “Well, in the middle of the previous century, as telescopes developed, we noticed something strange. We found that stars in very distant galaxies tend to look red… Umm, which is something that’s not supposed to happen.” A chuckle escapes John and, to his relief, the audience laughs with him. Scott never gets his space jokes. “So why’s that?” He asks, “See, if a chemical element gains or loses energy it’ll emit light in certain frequencies, thereby creating certain colors.” A small movement of his hand signals the slide to change, and a picture of the visible section of the electromagnetic spectrum appears, colouring the room with rainbow light. “For example,” John goes on, bathed in blue and violet, “Consider something like… a desk lamp, as like an element. If you give a lamp electrical energy, it’ll release that energy in the form of heat and light, yeah?" There’s a murmur of uncertain understanding in the room. “Electricity goes in, the bulb gets hot, and it gives off light. Well, we know stars do pretty much the same thing - only powered by nuclear fusion rather than a nine volt plug.”

"From studies of the sun and stars that are near Earth, we know that they’re made of helium and hydrogen, yes?” There’s another murmur of agreement in John’s crowd, “Well, hydrogen and helium can create red light, but they don't have the ability to create these shades of red that we see in deep space." The slide behind John clicks to a comparison of the two shades, on two different stars - making the difference clear.

"So, if stars are made of helium and hydrogen then why do distant stars have different colours? Are their compositions different?uh, well It’s possible, but not likely. The strongest explanation is that the color difference is due to the movement of the stars." The room gives a soft gasp at this news, and John knows he’s onto something good.

"So there's something called the redshift and blueshift phenomenon that says that if an object radiates light and approaches you, the color of the light begins to turn blue, and if the object is moving away from you, the color will turn red. This happens because the wavelength of light contracts and expands with movement meaning that something stretching equals red and contraction equals blue."

"And the strange thing is,” John adds, his audience listening raptly, “That most, if not all, stars show the same behavior, so, if we think about it, if all stars are moving away from us, that means that they were close to us at some point, and if we follow their path, we find that everything in space meets at a point named ‘singularity’."

"It was believed, in the past, that everything in the universe, or at least in the visible part that we have observed, that is to say,” John flicks to a graphic on his next slide. “All the galaxies, planets and stars, were all gathered at one point - the singularity. The theory is that this point exploded in what we call the ‘Big Bang’, and from that time onward, the universe has been in constant expansion.”

"So it’s with data from this knowledge that we can calculate the age of the universe:” With a wave of his hand, John puts a series of bullet points up on the screen behind him, then reads them aloud.

“One, the universe began as a very small, single point.” He reaffirms, “Two, the universe is constantly expanding outward from that point, and three, from these we have the ability to calculate the expansion rate of the universe, by calculating the speed of the stars that are moving away from us. If we take the furthest accelerations and enter them into this equation,” John’s board merrily does it’s thing behind him, “Then, we get the age of the universe."

"And, so we don't forget, all this talking was about the good way. There is another way to calculate the age of the universe, the, uh, not as good way, or, more specifically, the less scientific way.” A ripple of laughter goes through John’s audience - and he relaxes a little more. Maybe Scott was right. Maybe these are his kind of people. Scott’s never laughed at a space joke for sure. “There's no problem with it,” He quietens them again with a gentle gesture, “and it does support our theory and calculations, so I guess we should talk about it."

"Since ancient times, humans have been looking at the sky, watching the stars, and giving them names like Cygnus, Canis Major, Orion.” All names any young astronomer in the Southern Hemisphere would recognise, and be able to enthusiastically point out in the night sky. “In those days, there wasn't the internet so they were looking up at the stars instead.” Much like John himself, when he’d been a boy.

“As a way of calculating the age of the universe, astronomers set out to search for the oldest celestial bodies in space.” He goes on to explain, “The idea was that if we find a star whose age equals X, then the age of the universe must be greater than the number X. So we pointed our telescopes up there and started trying to find out their ages from birth, to youth, to their old age until their end."

"Can anyone guess the age of the oldest star we've found?" A lot of answers were guessed, some of them were pretty close, but some, amusingly, were way too far. "Ok, ok…” John puts his hands up to pacify his excited crowd, “Umm I see there are a lot of answers, but the oldest star people discovered was actually estimated to be 13.5 billion years old. The HD-140283, or as you might know it, the Methuselah Star. That number is very close, you’ll notice, to our estimation of the age of the universe."

"But if we found a star that is 13.5 billion years old today, then we could find an even older star next week and that would ruin all of that,” He chuckles, mostly to himself, “We also should note that this method alone isn't suitable for determining the universe’s age, but as long as we have two methods with corroborative results, we can be reassured that the estimate is correct.” He pauses for a second, “So, does anyone have questions?" A couple of hands raised, and John found himself suddenly answering a lot of questions - but he managed all of them despite his fear of the huge crowd.

He’s starting to feel more than a little overwhelmed.

"Umm… W-well that was a lot of questions,” John tries to pull it back in, his allotted lecture time ticking away on the big clock at the back of the hall. He feels a little panicky from the bombardment, and his palms have gone sweaty. “We’d better move on.” To distract himself from the people, as much as anything, “Our next topic is the theory of relativity, so l-let's get started on that."

Lady Penelope, from her fold-out seat at the back of the room, frowns. It’s clear John’s terrified and she wants to use plan b, but as long as he’s still standing on his feet, and giving the lecture, he's probably fine for now. If anything, it’d cause more of a disruption to drag him away now.

"Umm,” John takes a breath, trying to centre himself in the science of it all. “Let's start with a supposition, a hypothesis if you like, and consider it together. Okay, you’ll have to bear with me on this one, but let us suppose that we were all asleep, and the universe suddenly inflated by a thousand times.” There’s a murmur in the crowd at how odd everything abruptly getting that much bigger sounds, “Your bed, your pillow, your desk,” John extrapolates, “even the meter we measure stuff with. If humans became a thousand times bigger, when we woke up would we feel something strange? Would we even notice anything had changed? You’d think so, but no.” John’s settling back into his rhythm now, “So why is that? Because the bed and everything became a thousand times more inflated and our bodies also inflated a thousand times, with everything scaling in parallel relation to each other so that this percentage, this scale, was preserved throughout the room. You’d never know the difference."

"Henri Poincaré, the well known mathematician and theoretical physicist, says that we will never be able to discover that something like this has happened, even if we use all the mathematics and calculations ever invented.” John drives the point home with another illustrated slide, “This hypothesis is called the Poincaré hypothesis, and simply, because the meter with which we measure things will have also expanded a thousand times, there’s never going to be any equation or calculation or any analysis possible that could lead us to the truth, because the ratio is preserved in all parts."

"Now, this is important, because the same thing also happens with time. If everything suddenly got a thousand times faster, we’d still never feel anything different. Why’s that?” He asks, rhetorically, “Because time is also a thousand times faster, your heartbeat is also a thousand times faster, your body would function a thousand times faster to keep up with it all. As long as everything is increased by the same amount, the ratio is preserved, and none of us will be able to detect any change."

"So Poincaré asked the scientific community; is there no way to know that time increased or that things inflated?" John tells the room, "Well, it was Albert Einstein who answered him, deciding that the one and only way to tell, would be to have someone observing what happened to the world from another galaxy, from another world, lightyears away. For someone to point a telescope in our direction, and look through it at us, and say what happened to the Earth? Why are humans walking a thousand times faster than in the past? But this person who realized the situation,” The astronaut waves a flippant hand, starting to feel much more confident again, “would have to be a person standing on a fixed external platform in a different world, so that what happened to us was not also happening to him."

"But, as Einstein commented, this hypothesis is impossible for a simple reason and it's that there is no fixed platform in the universe - the entirety of it is in constant, turbulent motion. For example, the Earth rotates at a speed of 460 meters per second, revolving around the sun at 30 kilometers per second, and at the same time, the sun and it’s planets and dwarf planets and moons and asteroids, all revolve around our galaxy, The Milky Way, at a speed of 300 kilometres per second, and so the whole universe revolves. That's,” John takes a deep breath, finding himself out of air after so much explaining, “why it's impossible for us humans to completely accurately judge the motion of any astral body."

"Because there is no fixed berth, we can only offer relativity. This is the first part of the theory that Einstein came up with, in summary; it cannot be said that the monotony of a body is absolute motion."

"Another thing he said was that, because of the vastness of the universe, it’s impossible to synchronize, what does that mean? Well, I will give you an example.” He flicks his slide, “Say I’m a person in the Philippines, and I'm talking to someone from the United States. We synchronize, and hear each other in real time, because we have a method of fast communication. I can hold my device and say; hello, how are you?” John holds up the slim, sliver slice of his phone to show the audience, “How’s the weather there? And they’d answer me with something like; I’m fine thank you, it's night here so it’s a bit hard to tell what the weather’s doing! What’s the weather like there? And I’d answer them; it's daytime, and maybe ask them something like, what are you eating? They’d answer me; a burger, and then I’d tell them that I'm eating kaldereta, and it’s much better than a burger."

In the audience Penny quietly hopes that Gordon, who's probably listening in with the rest of his brother’s, missed the fact John was making jokes on stage. The poor little bugger’ll never live it down otherwise.

"These two events, each person talking to the other, are compatible.”  John goes on, absolutely oblivious, “It’s possible because the two wireless devices, be they mobile phones or more sophisticated comms systems, are on the same globe, creating a fast means of communication.”

"But,” John postulates, “If I was talking to someone from another galaxy and I used the same means of communication to make a call, do you know how long it would take to get to them? It would be about five to six thousand years until my signal reaches the phone of our friend, and they’ll have married, had children and died, and their children would have married and had children and died, and so on, for thousands of years before then."

"And that's why it's impossible to synchronize between the ends of the universe,” John balances his palms like he’s weighing two invisible ends, “It rather puts a damper on our chances of finding and communicating with extraterrestrial life, for sure, but at least it’s possible to synchronize within one system, like the system of the Earth. "

"This is a thing that also applies to light, for example: any star you could look up and see now, the light emanating from it may be coming from thousands of years ago. This means that it’s possible that the star you see shining could have exploded and disappeared, and hasn't existed for a long time. Why? Because it takes a couple of thousand years for the light from that explosion to reach us."

"There isn’t any proof for the hypothesis that the universe is linked by time, but the thing that happens that we’re sure of is that the universe is made up of, sort of, separate islands of different times that have no connection between them. The connection between movement and time in space is something we all know about, for example, a day on Earth equals twenty-four hours, yes?” There’s a chorus of agreement from the audience, “But on Saturn, a day is ten hours because it rotates faster. Astonishingly, a day on Mercury is the same as fifty-eight whole Earth days, which, infact, is also a Mercurian year, because the planet revolves around the sun for the exact same period as it revolves around itself."

"Okay, so, to what extent is movement related to time?” John asks, well and truly into this whole teaching thing now, “Well, Einstein was the first person to discover the connection between them and suggested that; suppose you’re on board a very fast rocket, 100,000 miles per hour for example. The mechanical watch on your wrist would be delayed over the flight, but you wouldn’t feel like time is being delayed. Why’s that? It’s because the rhythm of your heart would slow down - all of the vital processes in your body that are inside the rocket will slow down."

"As you move more, something called the dilation of time will happen.” He steps to the side, as if to illustrate the point, only to find himself stumbling a little, like if the ground beneath his feet had moved. “T-Time slows down,” John tries to recover it smoothly, but everything’s starting to feel, weirdly, like it’s shaking, and he doesn’t think it’s the anxiety anymore, “and that's-"

John doesn’t get to finish his sentence because there’s an abrupt shift and a loud cracking from under him, and getting off the stage suddenly seems like a good idea. Someone screams outside, and the volume in the room skyrockets as the children start panicking. John’s one hundred percent sure this wasn't anything planned.

He knew he shouldn't have come.

Earthquake? He wonders first, then; Tsunami? Ground slip? Hurricane? Whichever it is, John has to prioritise calming the people and evacuating them out of the building. The giant glass panels above them are trembling with the force of the shaking, and, as a professional at this sort of thing, Thunderbird Five’s Space Monitor doesn’t like the look of it one bit.

"Everyone calm down,” He has to shout to make himself heard over the roar of people, even with the microphones pointed his way, “This is a normal thing. All we have to do is evacuate immediately, as calmly. as. possible. I don't want anyone crowding the exits, do you all understand what I just said?" The front rows, white faced with fear, nod encouragingly at him, and he watches as they begin to lead the way toward the glowing green signs that signal the emergency exits. Immediately after making sure the crowd is moving, John pulls up his comm to contact Gordon.

"Gordon, are you on the line?” John’s a little breathless and he climbs down from the precarious stage, into the throng of terrified bodies, “We have a situation in here."

"Let me guess, you caused it?" Gordon seems so excited to hear something other than his brother's boring lecture that humour has outweighed his professionalism.

"Gordon,” John grits his teeth, “I'm being serious right now, there was a huge movement in the ground beneath the Chino Roque Theater, and it's still ongoing. Tell Alan to do a check on what's happening beneath us using the Ground Penetrating Radar." He orders.

"F.A.B." Comes the far more serious response, before Gordon clicks off the line to do just that. Squashing down any fear he’d about the now swelling, shuffling crowd, John opens his arms wide and walks toward them, the motion sort of like he’s trying to herd sheep, as he tries to evacuate the people safely out of the building.

He’s not exactly an expert at being on the scene during rescues.

"John, there's a landslide going on right now,” Alan’s worried little voice comes ringing out of his comm speakers, “Right next to the theatre. You’d better get out of there. I’m monitoring the situation, but it’s looking like you’re going to need International Rescue to get you and the people out of there. The debris field is spreading fast." John would do almost anything to be up there instead, at his own screens. “I've contacted Virgil and Scott, I’m patching them through now.” Alan clicks Scott and Virgil, both clearly just finishing their suit up sequences, into the conversation. It seems important to keep them up to date with John's developing situation.

"Hey Mr. Tracy, how are you holding up?" Scott jokes over the roar of his launching Thunderbird, the sound filling the background of the call with white-noise, "Oh, and how was your lecture?" John thinks he sounds far too casual in contrast to the impending danger all around him.

"Oh my God, Scott, is now really the time?” John groans, and a kid with mousey blond hair not dissimilar to Alan’s looks up at him, very confused, before the astronaut waves him on, “You are an adult person,” He reminds his big brother, “Please don't be like Gordon right now. He’s practically still a child."

"Hey!” Gordon had clearly overheard the conversation between his brothers, and springs up to defend himself. “I'm only two or three years younger than you!" He complains, not about to do the math.

"Gordon, we don't have time for arguing about that now,” John frowns, “and Scott, I'm holding up alright at the moment. Please don't ask me anything about the lecture until I get back home." If his voice cracks a little on that last bit, he’ll never admit it.

"Okay, okay I won't ask anything about that,” Scott reassures him, his amused, big brother grin very much in place, “Keep on evacuating the people safely until we arrive John, you’re doing great. It won’t take us that long. ETA at 15,000 mph is sixteen minutes.” He reassures, “We’ll be there before you know it."

"F.A.B. Scott." He reluctantly signs off. Now that he’s finished talking with Scott, John’s pleased to see that a lot of people have already made their way out of the atrium’s three sets of double doors, evacuating the building to get as far away from the landslide as possible. His fingers itch to pull up the schematics from Thunderbird Five on his comm, no matter what the people around him might think. He quickly caves, and it feels worth it to be able to see the incoming tide of slipping land.

They don’t have much time.

“Let’s go!” He shouts, chivvying. He’s a little breathless with the tension, so he keeps things short. “Come on! Let’s move guys!”

From his vantage near the crumbling stage, John can make out Lady Penelope and Parker by the main doors, ushering people through, and the sight of them fills him instantly with immense relief.

“Okay, that's a good amount of people out.” John has to jog to catch up with them, skirting around a little old lady with a zimmer frame and taking a second to correct her course, “Lady Penelope, Parker, I think you should go and check on the people who’re out. They could have minor injuries from the stampede, and International Rescue are still ten minutes out. I'll make sure the last few stragglers exit safely."

Penelope just nods, pale and worried. Her blond brows are all pinched in together, nervous and Parker looks practically haggard as he claps a reassuring hand on John’s shoulder, her faithful old companion following her pink shape dutifully out the doors. Hopefully they’ll go make sure that no one was badly injured in any way.

Turning back to the slow cascade of cracking rubble behind him, John finds the stage area has been all but obliterated, and his heart aches for the patrons of the Chino Roque Theater who’ll have to rebuild from scratch when this is over. He imagines the Tracy fund can contribute a significant amount toward that though. They often do for worthy causes.

John pushes the damp curl of his slightly sweaty bangs out of his eyes and climbs over what looks like a twisted piece of ceiling girder toward the sound of people, possibly trapped stragglers, who are calling for help.

"I miss Thunderbird 5 so much,” John mutters, keeping it under his breath so that no one hears him, as his palms are scraped raw against the concrete he’s trying to clamber around. There’s a rippp of fabric on a jagged piece of metal and the knee of his previous pristine brown jeans meets much the same fate as his poor, scuffed hands. “Oh, come on!” He’s having no luck today, “I'd so rather be assisting the situation from space. I can’t believe I’m stuck here." John grumbles, to no one in particular. He’s just not built for this kind of thing. Heavy labour and getting sweaty pulling people out of scrap heaps is what his other brothers do. At least rescues in space don’t have all this… gravity to contend with.

"John?” The crackle of a comm cut’s across his complaints, “What’re you still doing in there?” Gordon’s voice breaks him from his thoughts, little brother’s tone heavy with concern. “The building could fall any moment! You're so lucky the landslide isn't moving very fast, but it’s not gonna stay that way forever." Gordon was really worried about the fact that his older brother was still inside. “It could engulf the building! You need to hurry it up, bro.”

"I'm evacuating the people as fast as I can,” John gets both hands under the armpits of a boy who couldn’t be older than seven, and swings him above a pile of rubble toward safety, “I'll be out in no ti- Ah!"

John’s voice gets cut off with a startled cry, and it takes Gordon a second or two, time John might not have, to remember how to breathe so that he can yell in any way coherently into his comm. His eyes are wide, his anxiety levels through the roof as he tries, and fails, to rouse his brother on the other end.

"SCOTT! You need to get there now.” Gordon’s aware that he’s totally losing his cool, panic creeping in over his weak layer of professionalism, “I just lost contact with John.” He gasps, “He was evacuating people and I heard him yell and now he’s not responding! And- and it's not just him. There were other people he was trying to get out."

"Hey Gordon,” Scott tries to keep his voice steady to inject some kind of stability into the conversation, “Don't lose your cool yet. I'm sure nothing that bad happened to John. Just stay your positive self, okay? I’m arriving right now and Virgil isn’t far behind me."

Thunderbird One is panning over the city, low enough to ruffle the hair of people looking up, but it’s not a problem until the usually so sure and steady pilot finds his hands nearly slipping off her controls as Scott catches his first, horrific glimpse of the building that he knows his younger brother is inside.

“What the…?”

The Chino Roque Theater is almost flat.

"Virgil,” Scott swallows hard to try and remove any of the tremor from his voice, “A-Are you seeing what I'm seeing right now?" He almost succeeds.

"Scott this isn't a joke, it looks like half of the building has come down with the landslide! John’s in there!" Virgil sounds more terrified than Scott thinks he’s ever heard him. What scares him the most is that the exit was on the side that has fallen in, which means that a lot of people are trapped under it, their John included. "Scott, we need to help them right now.

"Okay, here's the plan,” Scott’s hands tighten white-knuckled on the steering yoke, “You wear your exo-suit and go clear the debris out of the way so that we can save them, and I'll get rid of that roof with Thunderbird One and check for life signs. Remember that saving lives is our top priority, got it? No matter what’s happened to John."

"F.A.B." Virgil sounds incredibly tense. He lands Thunderbird Two as fast as he can in the crowded, limited space. Local people are beginning to make their way out of their houses to see what all the commotion is about, and the cramped city streets aren’t ideal for International Rescue’s four hundred and six ton workhorse.

Two’s pilot struggles into his exo-suit, rushing to get the Jaws of Life prepared despite Scott’s insistence that he focus and take things slow and sensible. It’s not long until he finds himself digging among the debris looking for buried people and, in the white rush of it all, Virgil’s not even sure how he got there.

"Scott,” he presses on his comm, “Please tell me you’ve got something?"

"Fortunately and thankfully yes,” It’s hard to find the hopefulness in big brother’s clipped Mobile Control voice, but it’s there to Virgil’s expert ear, drizzled in nervous relief. “I've got a whole cluster of life signs,” Scott reports, “BPM signalling in the green. "I think they’re just trapped under the debris." Alan’s echolocation report came back suggesting that there’s a big space under what could be folded sheet metal from the ceiling, that they’ve huddled in. I'm really sure there's nothing that bad, but still we have to continue otherwise it will take a bad turn for us and the people in there."

“I can use the grappling cables in Thunderbird One to take the strain off the roof,” Scott adds, “But I need you in there to get those people out.”

“Already on my way,” Virgil ducks under some rebar, skirting around the rubble and pulling away loose debris as he goes. His heart is loud in his own ears, and Virgil hopes the creak and groan of metal and concrete above him is Scott lifting the weight off the roof, keeping it from collapsing any further onto the people below, and not anything more sinister. Virgil gets peppered by a slide of small stones, but the roof holds steady.

He presses on until he catches sight of the cluster of around forty people, all huddled together around a tall, central figure with a shocking amount of rubble dust smeared over his face, and powdered through his ginger hair.

“John!” Two’s pilot makes a beeline for his brother, despite the fact three of the people are stuck under rubble. Clearly John’s in control of the situation here, and he’s never wanted a mission update from their Space Monitor so much in his life. He can’t help but hone in on the fact John's left arm is crudely wrapped in a piece of cloth from his sleeve, which he must’ve ripped off in order to tie it.

"You have to tell me exactly what happened,” Virgil drops the controls for the Jaws of Life, and grasps his brother’s biceps in both hands instead, resisting the very strong temptation to pull the spaceman in for a hug. “And what happened to your arm?!?" There’s a river of blood seeping from beneath the make-shift bandage, but John, it seems, isn’t bothered by it in the slightest.

"Not now Virgil.” His concerns get thoroughly dismissed, “We’ve got to get these people out of here, and then I'll tell you everything." Virgil didn't like the idea that something happened to his brother and he's silent about it, but after all John was right about saving the people first since his arm is under control for now.

John crouches by the nearest injured person; a pale, skinny teen with a sizable piece of rebar keeping him pinned.

“You’re gonna be out of there in just a second, Lito.” Virgil watches him reassuring the young man for a long moment, “Uh, Virgil?” John prompts. “Any time?”

“What?” He blinks, “Oh, yeah!” His brother is clearly waiting expectantly for him to use the Jaws of Life to get the poor kid out. "I’m on it, but you better tell me everything after we're done saving them." Virgil demands. “But, uh, Scott’s kind of holding the roof up right now, so you’re probably right.”

"Okay,” John literally rolls his eyes, busy stealing a pair of blue rubber gloves from the Med Kit Virgil brought with him, and snapping them on to protect his hands and the fine cuts he’d gotten from climbing over rubble. “I promise I'll tell you everything, but can we start actually rescuing them now?" Rolling his eyes right back, the bigger man uses his exosuit to heft the rubble off Lito, before John swoops in to apply pressure to his injuries.

“Give me the fold out stretcher from your sash.” He orders, hands bloodied “Then go get the next person out. Efifania, Sergio?” John beckons a pair of nearby dad’s in closer, clearly having singled them out as capable stretcher bearers. “Think you can manage Lito here for me?”

As Virgil starts removing the rubble from above the other two trapped people, a middle aged man and a younger woman, it becomes immediately obvious that both of them have more severe wounds than young Lito. They both need medical treatment immediately.

“I’ll carry one of them.” Without the three extra sets of hands he’d need, Virgil has to leave a couple of crowd members applying pressure to their wounds, as he moves back to where John is helping Lito unsteadily to his feet. “Think you can walk, young man? We’re gonna need that stretcher for the big guy.”

“I won’t let you fall.” John promises, and Virgil feels a real swell of pride at how well his brother is handling the situation whilst being outside of both his space station and his comfort zone. It looks like having a rescue and a job to do really gives him no time for anxiety. "I agree that that's our best plan.” He adds, nodding, short and sharp, to confirm it, then John turns, an arm around Lito’s waist and the kid’s arm slung over his shoulder, to address the crowd.

“Anyone not so severely hurt needs to help get the injured out of here.” John instructs, the small crowd listening raptly. The look on the faces of these scared people is one Virgil is all too familiar with, but he knows John has far less experience of in person. They’re really looking to him as their saviour. “Virgil here is going to lead us through the path he just made.” Which is news to Virgil, but does seem like the best plan. “International Rescue will then be able to take us all to the hospital to get checked out, and then I’m sure you’ll be released to go home to your families before you know it. Got it everyone?"

In that moment Virgil finds himself struck with amazement at how John seems to have become almost as fearless as Scott, as they started carrying the two injured people out to safety. It was really a new side to him that Virgil doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

"Virgil… I need you to check on Lady Penelope and Parker.” John’s keeping pace at his side, helping the boy they’d dug out along as he goes, “I told them to check to see if anyone was hurt."

"Hmm, yeah you're right.” Virgil frowns. If Penny and Parker have any more injured party members, even minor ones that just need a check up, Thunderbird Two will need to evacuate them to the hospital as well. “Have you got any idea where they might be?"

"Well, I told them to get somewhere away from the landslide,” John frowns, as their limping, shocky party stumbles out into the bright light of day, to be greeted by the roar of Thunderbird One’s engines high above them. “They should be near here.” He yells over the sound of it.

As usual, it turns out that John is completely right. Penny and Parker are waiting for them, but neither John nor Virgil find the look on Lady Penelope's face all that reassuring.

"JOHN!” She rushes toward the battered, bloodied spaceman, her arms outstretched. Virgil very quickly and carefully finagles poor Lito out of the way as his brother gets ambushed. “Are you okay?!?” Penelope demands, frantic, “What happened to your arm?” She reaches for the bloodied bandage, and John winces, “I'm so sorry,” All of John’s carefully constructed rules around personal space are shattered as she cups his cheek, inspecting his face for injury. It’s lucky that John is by far the most patient of the Tracy boys. “I shouldn't have left you there.

"She’d been so terrified, perhaps more than anyone else here. The horrific view she’d seen with her own eyes is going to haunt her for a long time yet. One second she was getting out of the building to reassure and check up on the people, and the next she was watching half the structure collapse completely, with John under the side that fell. She still feels a little sick.

"I'm so, so, so sorry John,” She repeats, before he can get a word in edgeways to reassure her, “Please, you must tell me if there's any way I can make it up to you. Ask me anything and I'll do it."

"Okay guys,” Virgil chuckles, “while you talk things out I'll go to get the injured people aboard Thunderbird 2. Make it quick though, we’ve still got people who need immediate medical treatment, got it?"

"F.A.B. Virgil.” John nods, “We'll be quick. Penny, I..."

“I’m so sorry.” She repeats again, and pulls his good arm over her shoulder as if to steady him as they make their way at the back of the crowd toward the big green Thunderbird.

"No no no, Penny, please stop apologising.” John’s fingers tighten for a quick moment on her shoulder, in brief reassurance, “I'm not going to ask you for anything because it was never your fault.” He insists, “It was just some bad luck, that's all. Fortunately I, and most people, got out safe with no severe wounds. These things happen.”

“Your arm.” She points out softly, hoping that all that blood looks worse than it is, “John I can’t believe you stayed behind like that, it’s so...”

“Tracy?” He grins, amused but very weary.

“Scott Tracy.” She corrects, scowling a little as she holds on just that little bit tighter around his waist as his adrenaline from the rescue starts to flag. “I thought you had more common sense.”

“Hate to disappoint.” She feels the warmth of him chuckling, “I’m lucky it was nothing worse than his cut from some shattered glass that fell on my arm while I was helping one of the guys who got stuck. I don’t think any arteries or anything have been damaged, but it is... kinda deep." And he might be getting a little lightheaded from the blood loss. Still, he really wants to reassure her, just like she had reassured him before he’d gone in to give the lecture.

"Hate to interrupt your moment, but are you guys done?" Scott pops up from who-knows-where amongst the crowd to yell at them. He’s clearly joined the relief effort. "Virgil’s just finished getting everyone aboard Thunderbird 2, and he's ready to launch." He adds, squinting at the pale, wobbly mess of his brother. "And you really do need to check your arm. That looks nasty.”

"Yeah Scott,” John wipes a tired hand over his dirty face, dislodging dust, “We're done. Don’t let Thunderbird Two wait for me, I'll hitch a ride with Lady Penelope, uh,” He turns to her, bashful, to check, “If that’s okay?"

“Of course,” Her Ladyship concedes, “Scott?” She is mildly concerned that big brother might want to have the injured member of his flock under his wing so he can smother him.

"Yeah sure, ride whatever you want.” Scott flip flops a dismissive hand at them, “You can ride a pod, I won't care as long as your destination is the hospital."

"How about you, Gordon?” John knows his little brother is still on the line, probably sulking. “Is it okay if I take the ride with Lady P?"

"W-what do you mean by that?” Gordon sounds confused and maybe a little embarrassed, like he’s been caught out. “Scott already said you should go, why’re you asking me?"

"Well, she's your girlfriend.” John grins, teasing, as Penny helps him into the back of FAB1. “Of course I have to get permission from her boyfriend.

"Penny swats at him for that, amused, but careful not to hit his injured arm. She doesn’t need anyone’s permission to do anything, but it is fun to see Gordon squirm - especially as Scott and Virgil both crack up, and even Alan in space starts teasing him.

"What?!?” Gordon’s face, bless that darling young man, has gone bright red. “J-Just go already." He ducks off the comm screen to try and hide his embarrassment, but it’s far too late for that.

He’s lucky that Penelope finds it incredibly endearing.

"John,” She nudges him, as the Tracy’s all click off the line to go do their actual jobs. She’s a little concerned that he’s looking a bit spaced out, if you’ll excuse the pun, and it’s probably a good idea to keep him talking. “You know we're still going to The Pagasa Observatory, just like I promised you, right?"

"Wait really?” John’s head tilts, a little floppy, towards her from where it had been sinking into FAB1’s luxurious headrests. He’s looking a little grey, but it’s good to see his eyes open. “After all that happened?” A ginger eyebrow quirks, “Are you sure there's time for that?"

"Well, we’re on our way to the hospital now, but there’ll be plenty of time this afternoon.” As long as the medics give him a clean bill of health. “You can change your clothes after we're done checking your arm then there should be time for you to go see that big telescope you've been dreaming of visiting. After all, I did promise you we’d go there after we're done."

"Well, that sounds good to me!” John smiles like there’s a supanova fuling him, “Penny you’re the best."

They reach the hospital a little after International Rescue has dropped off the fourty or so injured people, and so there’s quite a wait for a Doctor to be free so that they can have a look at John’s poor, sliced arm. Penny seems to be doing a worried hover at his side, while he waits, shaky from blood loss, and though he’s not used to having so much company, John has to admit it’s nice to have a chance to catch up with his old friend with no rescue alarms blaring.

Alan reports in that the two worst injured in the landslide have been hospitalized as fast as possible, that they were stable - the doctors have said their prognosis looked good. He also tells him that Lito’s family had been asking after the redheaded lecturer who’d helped him out of the rubble, and that John Tracy, M.Sci, PgDip, B.Lang Hons, should probably expect a gift basket in the mail quite soon.

John gets quite flustered about that. He’d just been doing his job.

The spaceman's arm was eventually treated, and Scott calls in to ask what actually happened to his arm. It still hurts, a properly bandaged throb just under his elbow, but not like before. The painkilling injection and little bit of morphine they’d given him when they stitched it up had probably helped with that.

Alan’s reports dug up that the landslide had been caused by a water main leaking under the building, and destabilizing the soil. Over time, water can do a lot of damage, washing away vital infrastructure if it’s not been properly reinforced during construction.

As the Chino Roque Theater was a new build, there must have been a mistake in the installation of the pipes during construction.

Someone was getting a big lawsuit heading their way, and Tracy Enterprises will be more than happy to fund the lawyers for the theatre.

As Lady Penelope promised him, they found John a change of clothes and went to the Pagasa Observatory. Penny’s quite sure she’s never seen anything as wholesome as the moment John sees the telescope - his eyes went all shiny, and the smile on his face was massive.

"Lady Penelope, Parker come take a look at the stars!!!” He calls, over his shoulder, with the enthusiasm of a boy half his age, “They’re really beautiful from here!" With such a high-powered lens pointed up at the cosmos, it rivals even his view from Thunderbird Five.

"Indeed, they are." Lady Penelope and Parker both step up to take turns, but John was the one to look through the telescope the most. With all the stealth her years as a secret agent offered her, Lady Penelope took a picture of him.

"Parker, come take a look." She whispers, beckoning her old companion gleefully over. "He looks so happy and innocent in this picture. Wouldn’t it be lovely to see his face like this always?"

"We still have some time before they close,” Parker points out, a sly grin creeping onto his nosey old face. “How h’bout we leave him like this for a little longer?"

"That, Parker.” she smiles, “Is an excellent idea.”

The End

[vocalxtributes]

[Tw// Violence, mentions of blood and death]

13 tributes. No guaranteed number of winners.

No more practices or do overs. This is it.

This is the beginning of the Décès Match.

The first batch of tributes were revealed to the whole nation. The reigning champion. Académie céleste, in other words, Yoon Jeonghan's team.

Trumpets were blaring. Camera's were flashing. Cheers could be heard everywhere. People were excited for this year's match. Almost everyone was watching the match. It would be the first ever match where all four of the cursed abilities would be present. Three of which Jeonghan had.

To say that the tributes were nervous was an understatement. Almost all of the five tributes were being affected by pressure and worry. Jihoon was pacing back and forth the waiting area, Joshua was muttering words to himself, Seungkwan was bouncing his leg up and down, and Seokmin was already crying while talking to someone on the phone. However Jeonghan... He seemed the most calm out of all the tributes but if one looked closely, they would see the leader's eyes constantly flashing from red and black as his fingers twitched, small amounts of smoke appearing and disappearing.

It was not until it was announced that the tributes would be transported in five minutes that Jeonghan snapped out of his little moment and walked towards his members.

"Gather around everyone. I have a few words to say to all of you."

Everyone did as the leader said, gathering around and linking arms with each other. "I want you all to remember that the first thing we have to do is find each other okay? We need to stay alive and find each other. That's our best straight to keep everyone alive", The leader reminded. "And please keep in mind that no matter what happens out there, I am proud of you. You've all come such a long way to be as amazing as you all are right now. I'm sure everyone will do great. And... You all mean a lot to me. Let's all survive yeah?" His members nodded and hugged each other tightly, "We can do this! We've trained hard for this!" Jihoon exclaimed, trying to hype up the others, the healer smiled "We'll win. We have the best team ever."

"Yes we do. They should be nervous." Seungkwan joked. The team was in good spirits, ready for the game when a staff member approached the team, informing them that they would be transported to the arena now.

One by one the tributes were taken to random safe places in the arena where they would wait.

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

The buzzer goes off.

The match has officially begun.

Each of Jeonghan's members spread out, doing their best to locate each other without having to run into the other tributes. All his members were doing well, some of them pausing the search to create weapons for themselves, some trying to look for food.

[The paragraph after this will be focusing mostly on Jeonghan.]

Jeonghan sprinted into one direction, fast enough to explore the area quicker, while still trying to be quiet in order to not attract the attention of others.

Slash.

A sharp wooden spear came flying from nowhere, grazing the leader's arm. Jeonghan hissed in pain, there was no way that that was a normal knife. He gripped the wound and looked around before he was tackled to the ground, the spear pointed against his throat.

The leader looked up at his attacker, reading the name and position embroidered on the male's uniform.

'Xu Minghao/The8'

Jeonghan met the eyes of the attacker, a merciless glare in his eyes. "Would you rather die here right now from this spear? Or would you like to suffer and die from my poison that entered your body him?"

"How touching that you're letting me choose how to die in such a threatening way." Jeonghan chuckled. "You have no idea who I am don't you?"

"And why would I care about who you are?" Minghao replies, pressing the spear harder against the leader's throat, puncturing Jeonghan's skin. Jeonghan let out a gasp as he felt a sticky substance from where the spear was at, he didn't need to see it to know that it was his own blood. "Well, you should care about who I am because if you knew who I was, you would've known better and just leave me be." He smiles and uses his ability to stop Minghao from moving, paralyzing him temporarily and getting him off of his body.

"You're t-the cursed one-" The attacker mumbled.

"Indeed I am." Jeonghan says as he ripped the sleeve of his uniform, tying it around his neck to slow down his bleeding. "Lucky for you, I'm not in the mood to kill yet. I'll leave you alone. You'll be able to move in a couple hours. Goodluck." He says, chuckling as he walked away from the attacker.

The leader continued to explore his surroundings, only to be caught in an illusion just a few hours after his first encounter with another tribute.

Hours into the match, the exact moment the leader was caught in an illusion, Seokmin felt an intense feeling that his leader was in danger. And he set out to find him.

Only to cross the paths of two other tributes.

He was sent into a fit of panic, and he froze on the spot.

"See hyung? I told you there was another tribute around here." The Oracle snapped his head towards the owner of the voice, seeing a male with dark brown hair, on his uniform the word 'Oracle' and the name 'Dino' were embroidered, the other male having 'Leader/Healer' and 'Hoshi' on his uniform.

Seokmin calmed down a bit after knowing that he encountered two people who were the least likely to attack him.

He was wrong.

The two ganged up on him and it all happened too fast. Seokmin was on the ground clutching his eyes that was burning in pain.

"You're a h-healer- You're supposed to h-heal people. N-not hurt them-" Seokmin says once he's steadied his breathing. "Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do." Hoshi shrugs as he nods at Dino, giving him a knowing look. Dino grabs a vial of water and opens it, splashing water on Seokmin's face. "The water will help with the pain." Hoshi mutters, a slight smirk appearing on his lips.

The Oracle removes his hands from his eyes, opening them slowly once the pain has subsided. But... He couldn't see anything.

He was blind.

"How dare you take away my sight..." The oracle weakly spat.

The two teammates erupt in laughter. "We wanted to have our fun with you." Dino says, trying to calm himself down as Hoshi crouched in front of Seokmin, holding onto his jaw.

"Fun time is over."

Snap.

Meanwhile, Jeonghan was still trapped in the middle of the illusion, a scene that Jeonghan had always dreamed of was happening to him right now. He was seated on a swing, next to the love of his life. And slowly they both leaned in. His wildest dream was about to happen, he wanted to stay in the moment forever.

A loud canon sound booms through the entire arena, followed by a robotic voice.

"Two Oracles have been eliminated."

That statement snapped Jeonghan out from the illusion. He realized he was in the match and what has happened was all fake. Rage and worry filled his system and he unleashed his smoke, hearing the screams of the trickster responsible of the illusion. And he kept going. Until the illusion was gone and the screams were no more.

The leader walked up to the dead body hidden by some fallen trees, reading the name of his first victim.

Wen Junhui.

Another canon.

"A trickster has been eliminated."

He suddenly remembered the robotic voice alerting them of the elimination of two oracles and he started running frantically looking for Seokmin.

He stumbled and fell, landing next to a body. Eyes pitch black, neck snapped. He propped himself up, looking closely at the body, and then realization struck him.

"SEOKMIN NO!"

[This is based from a story that admin wrote. Everything is purely fictional.]

[PS. Don't come @ me]

Tags: @moonlit-jaemin @yanlee (og) @ekjjh @m00n-purplerose-chatbot @seventeen-chatbot @boxer-joshua @decadewonwoo @marcelinethevamp-cb @bimbo-sana @bimbo-somi @iceskater-sana @vampiremomo @seleneminnie @yanderechae @bossladylisa @baristadahyun @kaanghana @vampireprince-jeonghan @shin-haneul @yandere-bc @maniac-yeonjun @badboyjjh @shyboicya @midari-jieun @fairy-twice @demon-lee @heathenxbovs @hunter-chaeyoung @scholar-lia @thewolfpack-cb @split-jiu @la-soleilmafia-cb @urboys @camboy-superm @yourlele @yanderejoy @playboyyoungk @hybridteez @yanderetzuyu @neodaddies @npc-haechan @m-brian (DM for +/-)

[justanotherlifeff]

Levi Ackerman × reader

Genre: Angst, Hurt/comfort, Fluff, matured themes, slowburn

Warning: There's mentions and descriptions of underage rape and suicidal themes and self harm.

Your POV

The 57th expedition is two days from now and to make things worse, Hanji came over. She declared that as it is our only titan shifter's first expedition, we will be drinking tonight to celebrate. Although her motive was to experiment if Eren can get drunk, heichou strictly denied her requests since Eren is underage. I personally didn't want to drink because those men from when I was 5 were always drunk. "Drunk people are bad and dangerous" was a thought that was stuck into my head. Hence, I was planning to avoid their little party at all costs. It was morning at the moment and we were supposed to have breakfast. I made tea for everyone since I woke up before everyone else. I had already memorised how everyone had their tea, 2 spoons of sugar and milk in Oluo, Gunther and Petra's, 1 spoon sugar without any milk in Eld's, 3 spoons in mine and sugarless for Levi heichou. Eren didn't like tea. I had it all memorised because I tend to wake up before everyone else and thus, I always get the breakfast duty. I made pancakes for everyone and when I was done, I poured my tea in a cup and started reading the book. Every day, Levi would wake up early and sit with his own book and tea too. We would discuss the contents of the books when I go to clean his room. We would also share some of our personal issues to eachother and while I don't know how much it helps him, but it helped me ease up quite a but. Just as I was thinking these, he entered the dining hall as usual and took his cup which I had already filled with tea just the way he liked it. Eventually everyone else came around thus making it impossible to read because of the commotion. Hanji started blabbing about her experiments. Yes, she arrived yesterday and stayed the night in a spare room.

After breakfast, it was time for training. Levi heichou was giving me intensive 3DMG training recently since I already passed his strength trainings. We sparred more later, to test how much I had improved my strength and he won most of them due to his immense stamina which was impossible to match but I gave him a hard time though. In case of 3DMG, he decided that I wasn't making enough use of my agility and that I should be able to match his speed and accuracy. I was still learning his spinning move as I couldn't get a hang of that anyway. Today, we were supposed to have our last practice session as most of us will have hangovers the next day. Not me though. I'll just lock myself in mine and Petra's room. I've noticed by time that Petra tried to impress Levi heichou a lot. It kinda pissed me off because who even looks for emotional attachment when they might die anytime? And it's not like heichou was interested in her anyway. That's another thing I liked about him. He was serious about his career. I had always respected determination and I felt like there couldn't be a better mentor than him. However, something about it was bothering me. Levi heichou was making me feel things that I never felt before. It started with the way he looks during our training sessions, no, all the time honestly. I started having these urges to touch those muscles beneath his shirt, that showed slightly when he was sweaty after training, his clean shaven and extremely smooth looking cheeks and that extremely soft and silky looking hair. God knows how it would feel to run my fingers in there... Yes, that's exactly the problem. I shouldn't be thinking these. Things escalated when he convinced me to stop cutting myself, something even my parents couldn't do. It happened a week back.

One week ago

I was cleaning the floor in Levi's room while he was getting his paperwork done. "So, the protagonist is in a situation where he couldn't blame the antagonist as the antagonist had reasons to justify what they did too. It kinda resembles our world doesn’t it? I mean, titans don't have minds so, they can't really control what they are doing..." I was talking to heichou about the book I recently finished. "Hmm. However, one has to do what one needs right? The protagonist killed the antagonist at the end. It didn't matter if the antagonist had justification for what he did. It depends on who wins at the end. If the antagonist did, then the he would've been portrayed as the protagonist." heichou answered, not looking up from his paperworks. "Yeah. It's the weak who always loses." I muttered. "Not always. One can start off as weak but get stronger. That's what smart people who want to live do." Levi answered to that, before stopping for a moment and asking, "You mentioned that you want to live to make things right didn't you? What is the 'right' for you?". " I don't know, happiness? That's my goal." I answered. "Well, that's what we all want. Anyway, what's your plan to achieve that?" he asked. "I don't know, it started with getting strong enough to take care of myself but I don't really have an aim anymore." I answered, acknowledging it for the first time. "If you want happiness so much, why do you cut yourself? As much as I can recall, you told me, you did that to remind yourself that you're alive. If you don't have a plan, why remain alive at all?" he asked me, looking up from his paper works at me, raising an eyebrow. "Well, that's true... I don't know what I'm doing to be honest... Being alive honestly is pointless." I muttered as an answer. It was the truth. I had no reason to live.

"Oi brat, take my advice on this, you're an extremely skilled soldier. You think I am itching to be alive? I have a goal to be happy too and the fastest way towards it is a bullet in my fucking head. But, there's also another way, that is using my strength to do something for humanity, getting this war over for good and opening up a tea shop. My plan in this case is to stay alive and keep fighting. I suggest you to have the same plan. When this war is over if you are still alive, these people you saved will make a way for you. And trust me, cutting yourself won't help you at all because that only limits your agility as, trust me, I've got into enough fights to know how much every single cut hurts. It may not affect your performance by a lot but a mimimum percentage of performance issues can get you killed in expeditions. So I suggest you to stop with that shit and get your priorities straight." heichou advised me with a straight face. "So, you suggest me to try my best to survive? If I can get through this war, then the people will help me make a way?" I asked before pausing for a moment and stating, "I honestly didn't join the survey corps to make some dead people proud of me. I just wanted to die I guess..."."Well then, you're at an advantage both ways. If you die, you get to your goal. If you live, you get to your goal in long term too." he answered.

"Heichou, why did you join the survey corps?" I asked him out of curiosity. "Well, Erwin blackmailed me into it at the begining but later, I decided that my life was meaningless too and decided to do exactly what I advised you to do." he answered. He was right. If I survive, after the war with titans are over and the survey corps are disbanded, I'm sure they will give us all a way to live. However, will I always be alone? What's the point of living like that? No, wait, Uncle Erwin will be there... He's as good as family, so I'll be fine. Atleast as long as he lives. Maybe I'll even consider marriage... There are so many possibilities... Heichou was right. I had to survive or die in combat. Its good both ways. "(Y/N), if you really want to remember that you're alive at times, instead of cutting yourself, remember your interactions with your comrades. I'm sure you made an impact on a lot of them and you wouldn't be able to do that if you weren't alive." Levi ended his statement with that as I was leaving his room after cleaning. "Yes heichou. Thank you for the advice" I answered before leaving. An affect on my comrades, did he mean the way I intimidated them? But doesn't that mean that I'm an emotionless piece of shit? Or was he talking about my conversations with him? Did... Did I make him feel alive? Because, even if I hated to admit it, he made me feel alive. I felt like I didn’t have to hurt myself anymore.

Present day

Levi heichou beat me this time as well after we sparred for 30 minutes. No one lasts that long against him. During the 3DMG session, everything was going well until suddenly captain Levi attacked me. He came out of nowhere and tried to cut me but I instinctively dodged and tried to escape him. I was shocked as I didn't expect something like that. He was as fast as I am in 3DMG and with his special techniques, he was faster. He slashed his blade against me again and to block it I used my own blade but the blade broke. I was scared that he might kill me and that's when he told me that he was testing how well I'd do in unexpected situations and he definitely wasn't satisfied with my skills.

Levi POV

She was pretty good at running away but she used one blade at the wrong angle when I slashed my blade at her. Ofcourse she didnt learn about what angle to use because Shadis didn't know some of the tricks I learnt underground. However I expected her to use two blades. That's just common sense and the fact that she panicked in a situation like this is unacceptable for someone as skilled as her. She has a lot if potential but stupid decisions like that will get her killed. "Do you have a brain of the size of a pea brat? Anyone with common sense would use two blades. Are you trying to get killed in any unexpected circumstance? " I shouted at her. She kept a straight face but I could see the embarrassment in her eyes. Serves her right. "Sorry heichou. It won't happen again" she said with determination. I'm not usually too hard on her because she doesn't disappoint me often so I let it go. I taught her the angles she should use. It would make her blades last longer. She practiced with complete determination but failed to get the spinning move done. Honestly, no one I trained was able to do that, so, I didn’t judge her. However, she wasn't the one to give up. I respected that about her as a mentor. It was time for lunch and Petra already cooked stew. We had lunch and I saw her head upstairs and come down with her 3DMG and blades. "Oi where are you going?" I asked her. "To practice the blade angle and the movements you taught me. I want to be able to get the spinning move perfected." she answered, saluted and left. I didn't expect her to be able to do it.

I went to my office to complete some paperwork and after about 2 hours, I heard the sound of her falling down with a thump and occasionally, frustrated cursing. I went to the window and saw (Y/N) falling on her face every time she tried but getting up to do the same nonetheless. "Damn, this girl will kill herself at this rate." I thought and felt a bit proud about being her mentor. I looked at her graceful moves through the air, which turned into a complete disaster whenever she tried to use the spinning move on the titan dummy. "There must be some problem with her balancing" I thought. I found her beautiful the day I first saw her. "Just another pretty face that's gonna be titan food" I thought. After she sparred with me and sat on my face, I think I blushed for the first time ever in my entire life. I didn't let anyone see though because it's inappropriate. Now that I see her potential and determination, she seems to be more than just another pretty face. She is what I'd call beautiful. I knew she deserved a normal life and yet she chose this uncertain life where death my come and where its impossible to have a family. She is a very brave person. I know some stuff about her past. How she was rescued from a brothel before being sold off in the underground. How she killed a Garrison member but was let out because she was a minor. I was curious about her given that I was from the underground too. As these thoughts plagued my mind, I suddenly understood exactly what was causing the problems with the balancing.

"Oi brat. Get down here." I called (Y/N) out, who was sitting on a tree, about to do the spinning move again. When she got down, I noticed that she got some minor cuts on her face. Atleast her instincts were good enough to make her use her hands to prevent her face from getting hit. "Yes heichou?" she asked, confused. "I have a fair idea about why you can't get that move done. Your body proportions are what's causing this." I told her with a calm voice even if talking about it made me uncomfortable. "I don't understand..." she muttered, clearly confused. "Your breasts are what's causing the issues. My body structure allows me to distribute all my weight at the correct points but as your body structure is different, the distribution gets disoriented as your breasts are the weights that make you slouch forward easily." I explained as calmly as possible. This was awkward. I saw a blush slowly creep upon (Y/N)'s cheeks as she muttered, "But they aren't too big...". " Well, the simplest errors can make it impossible to master this move. I'm not sure if you can do it but try using bandages to bind you chest and make the surface as flat as possible." I answered with a stoic expression, which was very hard to bring given that I have never talked to cadets about their breasts, and the fact that this particular cadet made me want to rip her clothes off didn't help at all. "Hai!" (Y/N) answered before running off towards the castle.

She actually did it. It didn't take any effort at all. I was right about the problems with body proportions. You came back after a while with an almost flat chest. It didn't look comfortable at all because she looked like someone punched her on the face. I, however, was impressed by her determination. And, the fact that she was able to get the spinning move done at one try. Ofcourse, it wasn't perfect, it had many flaws, but, it was an amazing feat as no one else was able to get this done. However, I knew that this wouldn't work well with her because being uncomfortable on an expedition isn't an option. "Oi, get down" I commaded her as she got down from the tree, pleased with herself. "Yes heichou?" she asked. "You won't be using this move. You're not feeling comfortable in bandages and that's as obvious as it can get. Just make use of the speed training we went through." I advised her. "Yes heichou!" she answered and as she was going off towards the castle, I spoke up, "Oi (Y/N)! You did well.". "Thank you heichou" she answered, giving me a rare smile. She really should smile more often.

Your POV

I came back being pleased with myself after getting a rare compliment from Levi heichou. After some very intense and not to mention, painful training for 2 hours 30 minutes that compliment probably was the best gift anyone could possibly ask for. I went back to Petra and my room to find Petra sleeping. I took a shower and went to take a nap. I was asleep but I was woken by feeling someone drag me out of the bed. I woke up and saw Hanji dragging me out. I tried to get out of her grab but Petra and Eren also held me firmly. I could've gotten away from Hanji easily but I couldn't fight with three people grabbing onto me. They brought me downstairs and Levi heichou was there too with a glass of alcohol in his hand. I was shocked to find him here and looked at Hanji and she explained that she dragged heichou out here so that he won't drink alone in his room, in Hanji's words, like a sad excuse of a human. Apparently he drank alone before expeditions. No matter how hard I tried to avoid drinking, Hanji was relentless. I had to drink a few sips of alcohol. As the alcohol started kicking in, Hanji convinced heichou to have a drinking contest. I had to admit that the alcohol made me feel light headed and more confident. I liked the feeling despite the horrible taste which is why I drank a bit more than I planned to. Then I remembered that my body weight was not enough to take it all but my head started spinning by then and I was slipping on and off my consciousness.

Levi POV

Hanji thought that she would win because she was taller but she didn't know about my high alcohol tolerance. After an entire bottle, Hanji was done. It seemed that she had lower alcohol tolerance than I imagined. I had one more glass and I won naturally. I was pretty drunk and thought it's best to go to bed. Before I got up, (Y/N) puked. Everyone was a bit surprised as they didn't notice her taking on two glasses like an idiot. Since no one was sober enough to get her up to her room, I knew I had to do it "Tch! They had to get wasted now." Eren was already sleeping as he wasn't allowed to drink. "Ofcourse she puked. She didn't come down for dinner" I remembered. "Petra, get Eren to clean this mess up. I'm taking her upstairs and you're coming with me to clean her up" I stated with authority to a tipsy Petra. I took her to the bathroom in their room and made her sit on the floor. She was barely conscious. I waited outside for Petra to be done washing and dressing her so that I can pick her and put her to bed. Petra called me when she was done. I picked (Y/N) up and put her to bed while Petra was washing her clothes.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Your past will be explained now. It includes rape and underage sexual acts and, well, some seriously nasty stuff so don't read if it bothers you. Skip to the next chapter in that case.

"Heichou?" she called out weakly before I left. "What brat?" I asked keeping my usual bored face. "The first day we met, didn't you call me a privileged brat? How does it feel to know that the only thing your prostitute mother told you is that you're born to do exactly what she does? How does it feel when those men do things to your mother and all you can do is sit in the room and read a book to pretend nothing is happening? How does it feel when those drunk men touch you, do things that they did to your mother and hurt you like your body is splitting? How does it feel to know that your mother left you to these people and that you'll never see her again? How does it feel to be hit and cut by these men? How does it feel not being given water unless you drink the semen of those people? How does it feel when you gladly do it because you are so thirsty? You don't know anything about the life I had, heichou. When they told me I'm safe after taking me out of that horrible place, I believed them and I regret it because that man I killed wanted to do the same things I went through in that hell. He told me that I shouldn't mind because he assumed I enjoyed these back then. I enjoyed slitting his throat and gauging his eyes out. You knew nothing heichou " she said, her voice cracking as tears left her eyes. I looked at her, shocked by her sudden confession. I had no idea that she still remembered what I told her that day. I had no idea it hurted her feelings to that extent. Besides, as much as I knew, she never said anything about herself to the court or to anyone. As much as I knew, she didn't talk in her court case about murdering that man. She only did it for self defense. I looked at the weeping girl. She was a brave soldier and seeing her break down like that made me feel things I didn’t quite understand. It made me do something that I never did for anyone before. I sat on the edge of her bed, took her hand and said "Now you know how to fight. No one can hurt you now. You can trust yourself and if you want, you can trust me. I'm sorry about my behaviour that day. I shouldn't have judged you without taking a closer look." She gave me a shocked look after I said that. I gave her a small smile, and left the room. This was the first time I smiled after years.

To be continued

Taglist: @kingtamakimurder, @realityisoftendisapointing

[cutiesexylovelybts]

Member: Jimin (BTS)

Genre: Angst/fluff/fiction/friendship

Word count: 1559

Summary: After a hard day of practicing difficult thoughts come to mind. So many questions arise feeding Jimin's fear and insecurities. The comeback is around the corner and here I am feeling this way. Did I lose my passion? Can I escape this dark prison I put myself in or will I be able to soar high again freely?

A story inspired by the album Map of the Soul 7, specifically Black Swan.

It was 22:00 PM. It was a crazy day. Here I was, sitting in the dancepractice room exhausted, drenched in sweat, my body all sore thinking about what happend today.

Everyone already went home but I decided to stay and practice some more.

I don't know what's going on with me lately... We have a new comeback around the corner and here I am still unable to do that spin.

I always seem to sabotage myself. Everyone tells me I'm doing fine and my dancing is amazing but I'm having a hard time believing it myself.

Come on man.. , we've been here before...*sigh*

Aah... perfection, this word has been my best friend, pushing me to work harder over the years but at the same time it was also my worst enemy.

Before we debuted I was always working so hard. Pushing myself to sometimes extreme ends, I didn't allow myself to give anything less than perfection.

Though I love it and want to achieve it, I'm also affraid to face it.

What if I don't make it..

What if I ruin it for the others..

If I fail, we all fail.

What if I can't do this happily anymore...

What if, what if, WHAT IF! SO MANY IF'S AND WHAT IF'S ARGH!..

I'm so much in my mind I can't get anything usefull out of me. This is my passion right?

That being said...

Why do I secretly feel like running away from all of this?

These past years we have been so succesful. It's like we are living the dream that was beyond what we could even imagine. Who would have thought 7 guys from South Korea could make it this far.

As happy as I am about how succesful we are, soaring in the sky with the wings given by ARMY..,

That's also how scared I am of flying so high in that spot.. From this height it seems like I have more fears than I ever had before. When we debuted I couldn't have ever imagined that this dream could feel so much like a nightmare at times.

I mean.. Our last comeback was months ago. And before that we were even thinking of possible disbandment. Can you believe it?... Just thinking about it.. I immidiatly feel the tears well up in my eyes.

You know what I fear the most.. I can't even say it. It's such a crazy thought but... What if I don't love doing this anymore. I can't be thinking this right now. What the heck is wrong with me!..

But it's a fact though, this fear is so real.. I'm scared. It's like a shadow, following me everywhere I go. Reminding me that flying that high may mean one day, if we ever fall, we might not survive that fall. If I lose my passion for all of this what's the use of continueing? Wasn't it this passion that saved us so many times before..

No I can't cry! We are at a better place now during this comeback.

*sigh* at the other hand, now that we've released the news about our comeback everyone is expecting a huge comeback. Especially our ARMY, more then dissapointing myself I really don't want to dissapoint them.

*sigh* I miss them so much... They always know how to encourage us when we are feeling down.

They have given us so much I want to give them perfection as a present and a thank you for everything. Just imagining those smiles, those cheers, those happy faces. I don't want to dissapoint them. I want to be real with them and show them I still love being with them while doing what I love the most. I still love it right?

But the way I am now.. I don't dare to face them. How am I going to face them if I can't even face myself...

I lift up my head and look at myself in the mirror. I saw a man sitting in the dark feeling so vulnerable and small. At that moment I couldn't stop the tears from flowing. A few minutes went by of me crying out of frustration and exhaustion being so dissapointed in myself.

Aah.. What am I going to do with you. Look at you questioning your abilities and talents again. Like you haven't gone through this before. Are you really going to give up? What would ARMY think of this, what would my brothers think of me like this?.. Comeback is just around the corner. Come on stop crying, get up and let's practice some more.

The moment I wipe my tears and get up I hear a voice calling my name.

Jimin?.. What are you doing here in the dark? He switched on the light.

At that moment I panicked and quickly wiped my tears. I was a total mess so ofcourse he immediately caught on what was going on. I mean he isn't my soulmate for nothing.

Jimin.. Are you crying? What's wrong?

Seeing him looking at me so worried made me feel like bawling my eyes out. I know I wasn't going to be able to hold back. I didn't want him to be worried. As my eyes filled with tears I suddenly see 5 other heads pop out behind him.

Oh noo what's going on?

Did we arrive too late?

We just brought you some food and drinks because you were practicing so hard. You know you should rest as well right?

See.. I knew he was going to be upset about what happend at dance practice today.

I was amazed to see even Yoongi hyung was here to comfort me. Normally he would've already gone to sleep after such a crazy day like this one. RM hyung is so busy lately with the songs and yet he is still here at this moment. Let's not even talk about Jin hyung. He is amazing, working on his singing and dancing. He even started learning the choreo earlier because he didn't want to slow us down, even though we told him that's not the case. He is working so hard, I'm really so proud of him.

Hey come here!! Before I know it I'm being hugged by the six of them.

Aahhww uri Jiminie don't cry. Everything will be alright. At that moment I couldn't hold my tears back anymore and let everything out.

Oh no.. Hobi hyung is looking at me with those worried eyes again, he knows I always beat myself up when I can't do the choreo as I want it. It's difficult dealing with us during dance practice sometimes yet he is always there to help us out. Everytime this happens he will always take the time to explain those moves we have a hard time with. Those eyes are speaking to me, clearly asking me: "Why didn't you reach out to me Jiminie?"

And these two goofballs always know to find me when I'm down to cheer me up. We are all exhausted of this crazy day.

And yet.. here we are.. After our group hug and them comforting me I told them my fears and insecurities. Afterwards they all shared theirs as well and I can say some tears were falling and some bawling happend. Jk still had a hard time seeing his hyungs having a hard time. I didn't think they were having such a hard time too. It's been a while since we shared with eachother like this as we ate and drank together. I'm happy to see us like this on this practice floor. It's almost been 7 years and we are still us. Our worries and fears are different now but I'm happy to see Bangtan still being Bangtan.

Taehyung shared with us all his fun adventures with ARMY on weverse and suggested we scroll through ARMY's posts for encouragement. We read some funny and touching posts to eachother and before I know it my insecurities and fears became insignificant. Looking at these brothers of mine and our ARMY I felt a current of a comforting warmth flow from my heart to my whole body. A sensation that made me feel secure and safe. That's when I realised again for the gazillionth time.. As long as we love eachother and trust eachother we will keep soaring together. And even if we fall, if it's with this family we can always soar toghether no matter what. That's when I looked at the clock and saw it's 0:00AM. It's a new day already. And no matter how great the struggles were yesterday, there was always a day that they passed just like today. As long as we are alive we can still fight.

Since we have been gifted with these wings helping us to soar higher we might as well go as far and as high as we can. Yes we might always feel the fear of falling, but falling is a possibility and no certainty. Just like any other ending. At the end of the day none of us know the ending so we might as well enjoy the ride there.

If we have eachother and ARMY we will always have the courage to face our fears. We will always find the love and the passion to continue. We will eternally be bulletproof.

Thank you for reading my first short story. I hope you liked it and I wish you the best. Remember to never give up but keep moving forward no matter what. Have a nice day😄💜

[chants-de-lune]

Even though it didn't happen in the show (unfortunately), do you have any headcanons on what would've happen if Clarke had come to space with the others ? Like, what would've been her relationship with them (especially Bellamy) ?

thank you nonny 

Echo

For the longest time, they don’t talk more than necessary. 

One day Echo comes down with a fever, cause unknown. Clarke can’t shake her natural caretaker mentality, and stays with her despite the protests.

Echo wakes up from a fever dream about Roan, crying.  She opens up to Clarke, and soon they start discussing everything.  The nature of the Azgeda-Trikru conflict, the nightblood legends, the reign of commanders.

Hearing the myths settles something in Clarke’s heart, and she feels calmer. 

Clarke isn’t sure when she and Echo become people able to sit and talk for hours, but it’s definitely for the best, seeing as they’re stuck here for a few years. 

Monty

Clarke brings Monty water when he’s lethargic in bed, crying into his pillow when Harper’s off somewhere else. 

They talk about Jasper’s final hours, Clarke holding Monty’s hand tightly and blinking back tears. 

She finds him some engineering files in the database to keep his mind occupied. 

In quiet moments, she asks him about the three months that she had missed. 

They become each other’s go-to person for issues about relationships within the Ring.

Raven

They certainly have baggage, but they get through it fairly well.

Raven isn’t too pissed about Clarke’s original plan that would have left her out of the bunker. “I thought I was dying, I would’ve made the same call.” 

One night they get drunk and agree that Finn Collins was a sob story best left in the past. 

They find other things to bond over; Luna made Raven question her sexuality and Clarke was more than welcome to answer questions, giggling on the nights when they had algae booze. 

One night, Clarke was reading on a futon and Raven came over,  flopping down with a wince and resting her head on Clarke’s stomach. Clarke ran her fingers through Raven’s hair, and she knew in her heart that they had healed.  

Murphy

The first few months are a little caustic and snarky. 

Eventually, Murphy reminisces about the time he had held a heart, one belonging to the dead girl who had taken his dignity from him, and pumped blood through tubes into Clarke.  He asked a few curious questions.

Those questions turned into Clarke giving him a crash course on health and first aid, and surprisingly, Murphy listening to everything. 

Clarke wonders if this is how Abby felt, having Jackson at her side and ready to help.  There aren’t too many medical emergencies during the six years, but having Murphy as a right hand man definitely helps. 

They roast each other, constantly.  Bringing up the fact that “you tried to hang my partner!” and “yeah well you almost shot him” becomes deadpan gallows humor.

Emori

She and Emori come from the most polarizing of backgrounds, and thus it takes them a while to warm up to each other. 

Emori naturally takes an interest when Clarke and Murphy start talking about things like shock and hypothermia, and she shadows him when Clarke starts rambling from her medical classes. 

Clarke is upfront about Emori’s hand. The first day that she and Bellamy start assigning tasks, she asks Emori “what do you feel you are capable of? I don’t want to insult you by assuming.”  Emori’s respect grows for her. 

They never quite get to the hugging stage, but Emori touches her on the shoulder with her affected hand from time to time, and the gesture speaks volumes.

 Emori is quite adept at keeping up with Clarke’s sass and jokes, something she enjoys when the six of them (sometimes Echo joins in) spend time together in the common room.

Harper

Clarke hadn’t had the opportunity to grow closer to Harper, who had been more of Bellamy’s personnel at the dropship. 

But she and Clarke eventually grow close, braiding each other’s hair and talking about everything that had happened.  Harper opens up about her trauma and depression, Clarke gives her the best therapy she can manage with her limited knowledge on mental health. 

 Harper is the one who cuts Clarke’s hair when she decides that enough is enough, and the two have a fun night of re-piercing each other’s ears when they find needles and old earrings in a drawer onboard. 

Harper is a cuddly drunk, and if Monty isn’t around, Clarke lets her giggle on her shoulder with a suppressed laugh. 

With booze in her system, Harper blushing talks about Monty, about their love and how he holds her.  Clarke starts to think that maybe she herself is due to have another shot with men.

Bellamy 

1. “Can’t we give her another minute?” Emori calls from the cockpit.  Raven sighs, looking over to Bellamy.  

“20 seconds. The radiation is already affecting the avionix.”

Bellamy looks back to the lab, his heart pounding.  Ten seconds later, there’s a crash by the entrance as someone runs around the corner.  He sprints over, and Clarke is there on the ground, staring at him as she fights for breath. “Fell and twisted my ankle,” she said, and Bellamy sees the crack in her helmet, the faint red rashes on her face. “Hey, that’s okay. You’re alright, you made it,” Bellamy mutters as he pulls her up, feet already carrying him back to the shuttle with her arm over his shoulder.

2. The crack in Clarke’s helmet is mendable with tape, but Bellamy knows that she has less oxygen than everyone else, and the launch is stressful.  He straps in next to Clarke, holds her hand the entire time.  He doesn’t realize that he was holding his breath until they’re surrounded by space, and ‘home’ is looming ahead of them. 

3.  Monty and Raven struggle with the oxygenator, the metal old and stubborn.  Clarke’s oxygen tank ran out minutes ago, and now Bellamy was holding her in his lap, passing his own tank between the two of them.  His lungs were burning but his heart even more so, seeing her laying limp in his arms, rashes still cruel on her face.  If anyone else was hovering nearby with another tank, he wasn’t reaching for it.  His partner, his responsibility.  Just as his oxygen neared 1%, the right plug reached the right outlet, and cool air began streaming in.   Clarke’s eyes fluttered open, smiling at the relief on his face. 

4.  He picked up Jaha’s bottle and gazed out at the viewing port.  She walked up to him. “Didn’t leave enough for us to have that drink,” he said, holding it out to her.  Clarke gave him a half smile, taking the bottle and putting it to the side.  They stared out at the burning mass of Earth.  “6 people are easier to handle than 100,” mumbled Clarke.  “And Octavia has over a thousand,” Bellamy shook his head.  “Hey, my mom’s with her,” she reassured him. “We’ve both got family waiting for us.”  Bellamy held out his hand, and Clarke took it.  For a few minutes they gazed together, hands clasped tightly.  

5. Everyone had slept on the floor that night, exhausted by the 12-hour rush to escape the apocalypse.  Bellamy and Clarke returned from the viewport, shucked off their boots, and laid down near Raven and Monty.   Bellamy was laying on his back.  In a moment of irrational boldness, Clarke tentatively laid her head on his chest.  She was about to shift away when Bellamy’s arm pulled her closer, further onto his chest.  Soothed by his sigh of relief, she fell asleep listening to the sound of his heartbeat. 

6.  Only five rooms are in decent quality on the Ring.  Monty and Harper take one, Murphy and Emori take another, Raven and Echo bicker over the room closest to the command center so much that they decide to share it, with Raven dragging in the mattress from room #4.  Clarke stands hesitantly in the fifth room while Bellamy sits on the bed. “Don’t walk away this time,” Bellamy whispered, tugging her hand so she would stand between his legs. “I don’t want to sleep alone.  Not with all my memories of the last time I was here.” Clarke nods, wrapping her arms around Bellamy’s shoulders. “I’ll stay.” 

7. The proximity is comforting, especially after months of separation, uncertainty over whether the other was alive or not.  They occasionally drift but they often spend time in a common room on the same couch, or in their room, brainstorming and designating tasks for the others on board.  They find a chess set and she teaches him chess, unable to hide her smile when he soon starting winning more games than he loses. 

8.  When the last of her radiation lesions fade and the Ring is particularly quiet, he kisses her at the viewing port. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” he murmurs, “but I had to wait until we were safe, so I could do it over and over.” Clarke smiles against his mouth and grips his hair between her fingers, pushing up on her toes to kiss him vigorously.  They pull apart, and the blinding smile on Bellamy’s face makes it feel like a moment that they’re not just surviving but thriving instead. 

9.  Her burns fade and he kisses every inch of her face until someone yells at him to stop.  They lock the door to their room and he kisses every inch everywhere else, and she does the same.  The first time he enters her, Bellamy moans out an “Oh, Clarke”, so tender and sweet that Clarke nearly cries.  He falls apart after she does and lays his head on her chest, her hands holding him there. “It’s never felt that good for me.” “I know, I’ve never felt that way either.”  

10.  “I want to have kids with you,” she whispers to him three years in, “but not up here.” He nods against her shoulder.  “Too many variables, too dangerous.”  She turns to nuzzle his cheek. “And too dull, too many bad memories.” She pulled back to look him in the eyes. “Our children deserve to grow up with the wind and the sunshine.”  Bellamy kissed her forehead. “And they’ll get that, because that’s what we deserve.” 

[survivor-ingary]

Episode 2 - "I DON'T WANT THE MYSTERY MOUSE-CA-TOOL BESTIE" - Ellie

At the tribal, Ping was voted out of the Pendragon Tribe nearly unamimously. Tribal immunity for this round is Pictionary.

I bet all these bitches know i voted for Keith and now they are going to come kill me in my sleep if i die i blame dylan

yass round 2 i either think im in the best position on this tribe or theyre all secretly coming for me thats all

Tribal went as well as I expected it to go. No major drama. It seems like Keith is in real trouble if we do go to tribal again though which would put me in a very tricky spot. For now, though, I will be trying my best in the upcoming challenge. The problem is, however, timezones and schedules. Jon is going to be our drawer, but he can only do it tonight or in the early afternoon tomorrow which I will not be there for. Additionally, Keith is asleep so we have no idea what his schedule is going to be so we basically had to schedule the challenge without him. And Nya could only do right before the deadline tomorrow which Jon cannot do. I hate this for us, truly. I just hope that Moth and I can rub our brain cells together for this one so that we can pull out a win. OR somehow the other tribes fail horribly. On the bright side, I am finally starting to catch up on Duolingo exercises. They're a lot easier than I thought, but it is still going to be tedious af to save up enough coins for some of the higher end products at the shop. As a final note, I am going to work with Nya in the long term as we promised each other to. Hopefully that actually works out. Time to actually be loyal and be a hero this time around. Need to try something different.

If we lose this challenge, I will be very upset. We went so hard on this challenge!!! I believe that we can at least get second place, but I don't know how crazy the other tribes are. So, let's see what goes on

Ayyyyy soooooooo looks like the four, Colin, me, Ava, and Brayden are officially in an alliance!? I’m really hyped to be working with everybody and already have sights on who should go if we have to go to tribal 👀 but like I’m gonna feel so bad if we go to tribal and I orchestrate a whole plan to take someone out I gotta do it when I’m not in my feels and the planets aren’t fucking with my emotions too heavy. But go alliance ! This means I’ll be able to stay safe until hopefully a merge and hopefully we can avoid a tribe swap till then which I get those vibe from it !! But I’ll be here to survive two more tribals just in case which is pretty rad. Other then that hopefully me offering to draw doesn’t end us up in the bottom and we can keep killing ! But anyways that is it as off know hopefully I have a lot more coins tomorrow morning and I get hit the hat shop bright and motherfucking early.

Just got asked to be apart of an alliance <33333 the besties in the group trust me which maybe ain't the right move but for now we gotta love the bonding. exciting!!!

YAY FOR ROUND 2! Okay, so I meet once again with the Hat Shop and... third times the charm! Except,,, the charm is getting nothing AGAIN lmao I'm not complaining though, still got that extra vote :P I stayed up at 1 AM for this challenge, and I honestly think our team popped off. Anastasia was guessing a ton, and Riley was amazing at drawing real quick! I have a relatively good feeling about our performance, so I hope I wake up to the news of our tribe being immune :D

so yesterday I set myself on a mission to get an alliance. I wanted Ava + Brayden + Toph + me as a majority alliance. it was our day off from tribal so I thought it was the perfect day to do it!! I talked to Brayden about it first because he's the person I feel the most comfortable with, and then after a lot of coordination and careful communication I was able to pull it together!! I think the most important thing when making alliances is making everyone feel like they're a big part in it. So I was careful to ask each person how they feel about the others, about the game, and made a point to say that I wanted to work with them specifically. Some may call that a little manipulative, but I wanna make sure that I'm an essential part of the alliance!! i need everyone to feel like they need/want me there.

all of this happening so soon into the game is a testament to how aggressive I'm playing this time around. I usually like to lay low and just rely solely on my social game in the start, but I'm trying this out to establish myself early on! I wanted to play the tribe leader and I think I'm doing that in a smart and subtle way!!

so yes now we have a 4 person majority alliance named "duolingo owl hate club" because fuck that guy. I think we're the 4 most active and present people on the tribe so it's only natural for us to work together, but I think it's definitely worth noting that I was the one that was pulling the strings here.

We just did the pictionary challenge, I have a good feeling about it!! Toph was an amazing artist, and if we win, all credit rightfully goes to him!! I think the guessers also did great of course, but like come on, the artist has to be the mvp. I'm really hoping we pull through!! I don't mind going to tribal, but I genuinely don't wanna vote anyone out yet. I'm fine just playing the game in a precautionary way. I know I'm in a great position if we do go to tribal, but it's always preferred that we don't go.

Everyone else on my tribe: doing the challenge and kicking ass

Me: I’m sleep

Riley (Tumblr has once again chosen violence so only the first 10 get banners 🥲)

I think our challenge went pretty well! My team were good guessers. Feeling like I've established some Integrity now. Hope it keeps me safe later!

Toph Soooooo we finished the challenge with 32 points and like wig !! I was a quick as drawer for 32pts expect when my internet lagged, but still ! I think we whooped some ass and if we do go to tribal I know it won’t be me going, thanks to Duolingo owl hate club but I’m also worried same could have and advantage because they seem pretty kean on learning a lot in like 3 hours and then tried to cover that statement to not seem so threatening but like babs s a huge threat too apparently they love Duolingo and know 5 laugnes ? This is from brayden but If so go babs ! That’s absolutely iconic for real Life but fucking scary in this game ! I gotta be buddy buddy with them so hopefully if they do have something it won’t be them going home first and it will be Ava. But I’m thinking we might get second place again unless someone is a fucking wizard at this.

Dennis hmm i think we did well enough in the challenge to not see tribal tomorrow but who knows i guess we shall find out tn

the way ellie was so on top of stuff yesterday only to oversleep the challenge makes me giggle maybe shes freaking out about it which makes me also giggle but i dont think its really a big deal

anastasia asked me to call yesterday and i was like sure lets talk but it is damn near impossible to hold a conversation with her idk i tried BUT she did tell me “yeah i just got off a call with ellie” im like i see. she says shes down to work with ellie but that quickly switched from ellie being ~experienced~ but good to know ellie is also playing hard. anastasia also mentioned that she talks to riley a fair amount who i still have yet to connect to well. but dat makes me think ellie is def talking to riley too miss debate team is definitely a talker. but good on her for the social game i guess

kenneth keeps being like haha we’re the same person and im like yeah👁 i bet we are👁

i just wanna win and not think about tribal just keep it slow and chill for now keep learnin my welsh i guess

Ava Second challenge was Pictionary and I had a ton of fun playing. The tea is: toph did a great job. He was pretty vocal about not being a great artist but really I think he did great. However, Babs was super inactive yesterday and ~too late~ said they were a great artist and should've been picked to draw. It was kind of like.... k babs thanks for the belated "help". They did do great guessing which scored a point in my book. Brayden was supposed to play but last minute logged off without saying anything so we did the challenge without him :/ sorta a bummer. Anyway the lack of participation from Sam is kind of popping off so we'll see where that leads them... Overall a fun game and fingers crossed we did well!

Moth I think we did okay at the challenge. Today I am dying from the heatwave so I’m not thinking too straight! Stay cool everyone

Ellie So yesterday Anastasia and I called for about an hour!!! I’d say we’re definitely way closer, she’s someone I really wanna work with although the idea of her and Brayden eventually being on the same tribe is kinda scary cause I know how close they are. Still she’s so fun to talk to and I just love her energy so much!

Pictionary challenge results: Jenkins Tribe wins with Penadragon second, Hatter Tribe has to go to tribal council on the following day.

Ava Well well well seems our bob ross, toph, didn't pull through (y'all think babs would've pulled it out for us or slept through our challenge like they said they almost did?) I can't wait for tribal. I'm in it for the drama. I'm hashtag voting Sam off - didn't even bother to be apart of our challenge and not too sure they've even been online for a full 24 hours. Weed out the weak.....

Anastasia

Brayden https://imgur.com/n60Lz0c

guys i dont know what to do someone help me out

Dennis i hope damn brayden gets the boot

Raffy Woo! We don't have to go to tribal again! We stan!

Ellie So I figured I’d go idol hunting today cause the shop was about to close and I just wanted to see what had been bought and what possible hats there were, I see that there’s a hat I have enough for that hasn’t been bought and I decide fuck it let’s get it

APPARENTLY ITS SOMETHING THAT IM NOT ALLOWED TO KNOW WHAT IT IS OR HOW TO USE IT YET???? THEY SAID ILL FIND OUT ABOUT IT LATER

I DONT WANT THE MYSTERY MOUSE-CA-TOOL BESTIE

Sam Well you see. I like all my tribe people. And I think we did real good on that music video! So, I think rather than voting anyone else off, I think I should just vote myself off if that is possible! Ahhh

Babs So sad to see Sam not only go but go through what they're going through :( same w Toph :( they all seem so lovely

Keith Not sure if i submitted a confession after the last tribal. But if I didnt here it is.

Happy I made it out of that tribal. I had raffy backing me with whom I played. Last time we played. We were at odds. We didnt work together but whats worse that we were against each other. It was either him or me goin out. Hopefully thats the past n we can work together. I jus need to keep things calm n show that Im not here itching to make big moves. So they dont feel threatened by me. N its easy cause right now. I havnt made that kind og bond with anyone on my tribe. To even think of such moves. Lets see what round two holds for me.

Colin so uh

we lost! :(

I was really bummed tbh. Like I thought we did well but circumstances with the challenge were just really unfortunate, from conflict about who wanted to be the artist to people disappearing the moment the challenge started, I think we did well despite all of that. Except we did kinda get stomped anyway. Oh well!! The game moves on. Tribal has to happen.

Initially I was gonna push for Babs, just because I feel like I don't wanna attach myself to them too early on. I've seen how much of a bitter player they can be, and lets just say I'm not the most loyal ally to have. however! 9 minutes after we lost, Ava announces to our alliance that she's voting Sam. I wasn't surprised, Sam has been the one not really pulling their weight. But I had some good connections with her!! we both did colorguard and shes so sweet and easy to talk to. I was really conflicted for a little bit, debating on whether or not to actually push for Babs. I think brayden sensed my hesitance but we both knew there was nothing really I could do to stop Sam from being the vote. At first tribal, the initial name always spreads like wildfire.

However, my mess was stopped abruptly by Sam asking to be voted out. welp!! okay then!! babs stays i guess!! i'm not too bothered. I'll never turn down an easy vote hehe.

Pretty sure there's a swap tonight. I'm kinda scared of that

uwu

Brayden

i almost forgot to upload this but dont worry i just remembered

Colin screams

Toph So we’re going to tribal in 20 and all I have to say right now is if there is a tribe swap after I’m gonna so scared but I ducking called I had a vibe and it was right that’s what is gonna win me this game trusting my intuition. I’m holding on now and gonna be the biggest comp beast next challenge in case I get fucked on this swap !!!! Or at least if it is a swap 🤔

Riley I don't know what this announcement's gonna be I'm worriedddd... Ginny said it probably means we're swapping teams but I don't wannaaaa I like our team.

Toph Sam self sacrificing made this the easiest vote ever and me being safe is a plus I guess 😎

[vocalxtributes]

[Tw// Violence and death]

"Arena Area will be compromised. Tributes that are not in the Valid arena area will be terminated. Red markers on the edge of the valid area will be shown to guide the tributes safely."

The robotic voice and the red markers were enough to have the remaining tributes emerge from their hiding spots. The red markers surrounded almost the whole arena. Only the center of the arena was the valid area.

And what's troubling the tributes, are the screams and grunts coming from that area. Clearly there was a fight going on. But the tributes knew deep down, that they're being led to the center so they'll be engaged in combat. All of them. They were rushing the match. They wanted to end it so badly.

Hoshi and Dino exited the cave that they were currently staying at, walking towards the center of the arena, fear was evident in the two, but they decided to brush it off and face their inevitable fate.

Seungkwan who was staying with Woozi had stood up, guiding the injured smaller male with him towards the center. However, Woozi hesitated. "What about Joshua? He's not back yet-" Seungkwan sighed, "I'm sure Joshua heard the announcement as well. We'll see him at the center, don't worry okay?" The trickster reassured.

Well Seungkwan wasn't wrong.

The tributes met at the center, with an intense fight going on in front of them.

The two cursed men.

Not only were they met with the two fighting men, but they were also met by the dead bodies of Seokmin, Joshua, Minghao, and Wonwoo.

Dino let out a gasp at the sight of Minghao's body, eyes wide open, irises an intense shade of green, fingers still in his mouth. The leader gripped his teammates shoulder and let him bury his head in his chest.

In the center most part of the arena were the two men fighting, both of them enveloped in Jeonghan's thick black smoke. Seungcheol was grunting in pain but his sheer willpower was keeping him from fully succumbing to the smoke's effects.

Jeonghan, who had gained little immunity from the smoke in the past few years, didn't feel as worse as Seungcheol. Yet his other abilities were taking a toll on him.

The awful memories were coming back.

Seungcheol was doing the same thing Jeonghan's father had done to him all those years ago. He was making him use his own abilities against him.

Jeonghan knew that he'd experience it once more. And so he trained hard enough to come up with a solution. He had learned how to use his abilities on more than one person. And while he was using them on himself, he was using them on the other leader as well. And he felt it. Seungcheol was getting weaker with every passing second.

The remaining tributes couldn't do anything other than watch the legendary battle going on in front of them. All of them held their breath when Seungcheol fell on his knees.

Woozi and Seungkwan almost sighed in relief at the sight of Seungcheol crumbling in the hands of their own leader. Vernon however only felt fear. He knew Seungcheol would do anything just for his own sake. Vernon was aware of where his leader had come from, and he refuses to go back to where he used to be. Seungcheol wanted the glory and honor. He wanted it so bad.

The healer expected next thing that happened. It was indeed one of the things his leader would do.

As soon as Seungcheol knew he'd lose to Jeonghan, he came up with a plan. Healers were meant to heal others he thought... So why not have them heal him right now? Infiltrating the minds of both Vernon and Hoshi, he forced them to heal them with the best of their abilities. And slowly he stood, his body healing, his strength coming back, and his energy doubling.

"Hoshi hyung!" The youngest of all the tributes panicked. His hyung was in trouble. But he knew he couldn't do anything. The young boy was sobbing. He can't lose his Hoshi hyung now, or not ever. He was nothing without him. All he did was protect and defend the young oracle. But now he was in trouble yet he felt his hands were tied. He knew he didn't have any means of helping him. Nothing could break the young man more.

Vernon... He was smiling sadly at how his leader, whom he considered as a brother, used him one last time. Tears fell down on his cheeks as his eyes turned to a ghostly white. A common sign of exceeding the power limit.

"I forgive you hyung." The Healer whispered.

Woozi couldn't hold back anymore. He had to do something.

With shaking hands, he summoned fire in his hands, sending balls of fire towards the opposing leader's direction.

Jeonghan's loud voice could be heard. "NO! STOP IT JIHOON! MESS WITH HIM AND HE'LL KILL YOU TOO! I CAN'T LOSE ANYONE ELSE PLEASE!" The leader yelled, voice filled with desperation as he turned to look at them. He glanced at Seungkwan, giving him a knowing look.

Then, the two healers dropped down dead on the ground. Seungcheol chuckled, ignoring the broken cries of the youngest tribute, and ignoring the body of his own teammate. He was now at his peak.

Jeonghan was strong, but it doesn't mean he wasn't tired.

Seungcheol pushed himself to his limit, using his abilities with the intent to kill. And at the exact moment, Seungkwan encased all of them in his illusion. An illusion of Jeonghan dropping dead in front of Seungcheol as he laughed in satisfaction.

Jeonghan hurriedly conversed with his members, it was only a matter of time before Seungcheol would sense an illusion around him.

"I have a plan. But I need you both to trust me. Can you both do that?" Jeonghan asked in a hushed whisper. "Hyung we do but what exactly are you planning?" The trickster asked worriedly.

"When I give seungkwan the signal, you're gonna break the illusion. And I'll surprise Seungcheol, and when I catch him off guard, I'll feed off most of his life force, which will hopefully help me regain a bit more strength. But Woozi, I need you to finish him off for me. I can't do it myself. Not with my condition. You're the strongest at the moment. Can you do that for me?"

"I'll do anything hyung. If it means we get to come home. I'll do it."

Jeonghan nodded. And with one last look at his members he yelled.

"Now!"

Seungkwan broke the illusion and Jeonghan charged at Seungcheol.

"Wait! How are you alive?! I killed you-" He was cut off with Jeonghan's scream trapping the both of them in the smoke, feeding off of his life force.

Jeonghan knew that his actions would use up more of his energy than what he'll get. And he accepted it.

He had to die to take away most of Seungcheol's life force.

And so he did.

Woozi could make out Seungcheol's figure dropping weakly to the ground, he summoned fire and lightning. And he shot it at him. Lightning up the area, making it visible through the smoke how he died from one lethal blow.

The smoke cleared up, but they were not met with one deceased leader. They were met with two.

Woozi and Seungkwan broke into sobs at the sight of their leader, a soft smile plastered on his face as a single tear fell from the leader's eye.

The two would've mourned and wailed at the fate of their leader, but the countdown cut the both of them off.

"5 minutes til Arena's self destruction."

The two exchanged a look and hurriedly picked up the bodies of their fallen teammates, not wanting to leave them behind before they locked in their scores in the transportation cubicle.

Two minutes before the scheduled self destruction of the arena, they met the broken eyes of the last surviving tribute apart from them.

'Lee Chan' 'Deo Academy' 'Oracle'

"Come with us. I can disguise you as one of our tributes." The trickster whispered.

The oracle shook his head.

"No, you go on. I want to stay with Hoshi hyung."

"But your Hoshi hyung wouldn't want you to die here."

"20 seconds til self destruction"

"Seungkwan." Woozi tapped his shoulder, "Leave him be. We have to go."

Seungkwan tried not to cry even more as he turned his back away from the arena, Woozi closing the doors and enclosing them safely inside the cubicle as they were transported outside the Arena, ending up in the center plaza where people were waiting for them.

Loud cheers, trumpets blaring, and cameras flashing. Everyone were pleased for the traumatized men.

"I PRESENT TO YOU, THE VICTORS OF THE DÉCÈS MATCH!"

[This is based off a story that admin wrote. Everything is purely fictional.]

The honourable tributes: @hiphopxtributes @performancextributes [You will always be remembered.]

Tags: @moonlit-jaemin @yanlee (og) @ekjjh @silverypurple-rosedlions @seventeen-chatbot @boxer-joshua @decadewonwoo @marcelinethevamp-cb @soonyoungii @bimbo-sana @bimbo-somi @iceskater-sana @vampiremomo @seleneminnie @yanderechae @bossladylisa @baristadahyun @kaanghana @vampireprince-jeonghan @shin-haneul @yandere-bc @maniac-yeonjun @badboyjjh @shyboicya @midari-jieun @fairy-twice @demon-lee @heathenxbovs @hunter-chaeyoung @scholar-lia @thewolfpack-cb @split-jiu @la-soleilmafia-cb @urboys @camboy-superm @yourlele @yanderejoy @playboyyoungk @hybridteez @yanderetzuyu @neodaddies @npc-haechan @m-brian (DM for +/-)

[justanotherlifeff]

Levi Ackerman × reader

Genre: Angst, Hurt/comfort, Fluff, matured themes, slowburn

Warning: There's mentions and descriptions of underage rape and suicidal themes and self harm and other triggering stuff.

(Y/N) POV

"You mean to say that you managed to convince Marie to transfer from the survey corps just two days before the expedition?" Hanji asked me with disbelief. "Yes" I simply answered. "Well, we don't even have time for replacement... Why exactly did you do that? And don't bring up the reports on her endangering the squad. If that bothered you, you would've done this earlier." Hanji asked in a flat tone. "I thought I could make her obedient. However, if she has the guts to try to open her shirt and try to seduce my husband, I don't think she would ever listen to me. I need obedient soldiers in my squad, not people who try to steal their superior's husband." I answered with the same flat tone.

"Huhhhhhh? That bitch did that? Oh sorry.. I keep forgetting that I'm the commander now and I should be.. Ahem... A bit more reasonable but yes, Marie will be transferred to the Garrison tomorrow as getting the paperwork done would take time. I have sent the papers to Commander Pixis already before talking to you because I knew that you must have a reason for making this decision." Hanji answered giving me a mischievous glint. I gave her a victorious smirk of my own because I got an useless burden off my shoulder. I went back to the stable and saddled my horse to go back home. Hanji was in Utopia district with her squad.

She left for Utopia 3 days before the expedition. Marie gave me her letter requesting transfer only a few hours after the talk we had at my office. I left for Utopia with Levi and Farlan that evening. Levi and I had dropped off Farlan at Historia's Orphanage on our way to Utopia. It was an 11 hour journey and so, we reached Utopia at dawn. The first thing we did was send the letter to Hanji's office by a cadet, take a small nap, had breakfast and went straight to Hanji's office. It was already afternoon when I was called to talk to Hanji. We already were done with lunch by then. "So, how did that go?" Levi asked me. He was already in the stable when I arrived, his horse ready to go. "It was alright. Hanji approved of the transfer. We just have to go back and I'll see that everything goes smoothly." I answered, as I saddled my horse.

Levi answered with a "hmm" and was silent till I was done with the saddling. "Do you want to see how Farlan is doing on our way?" Levi asked me. I personally felt uneasy not having Farlan near me, given that I spent every second of my time home with him. I knew that Levi felt odd too as he always looked after Farlan whenever I was cooking or cleaning or busy with something. "Yeah. That's a good idea." I muttered as we both got up on our horses and galloped out of the stable and out of the scout regiment branch.

"(Y/N) SAN!" the kids in the orphanage yelled happily as they ran towards me. I didn't see them for a while and so, didn't mind when they all tackled me to the ground. "Oi calm down! I already have to fight titans and having to fight you kids now aren't helping!" I told them trying to sound irritated but the smile on my face betrayed me. "Oi brats. Get off her." Levi walked towards them and they all got off me immediately. Obviously, they were all scared of him. "(Y/N)! Welcome back!" a smiling Historia came towards me from inside the orphanage as we stood at the yard. She had Farlan in her arms.

"Yeah... I just had to see Farlan before going." I muttered with a smile as I took Farlan from her arms. "He's doing very well so far. The kids love him." Historia smiled at me. "Thank you for taking care of him. I'd not trust anyone about this besides Hanji and Mikasa." I answered her with a smile. Levi was already beside me and took Farlan from me. "We will be late if we delay more now." he muttered, holding Farlan. "Yeah... We have to keep going..." I muttered sadly. I wasn't ready to leave Farlan alone for so long, that for a life threatening expedition. I trusted mine and Levi's ability to survive though. I kissed Farlan's forehead before Levi handed him to historia again. We bade eachother farewell before going back on our way.

The next day

I woke up at dawn. Levi woke up a little later after I was done making breakfast. The expedition would start today. After taking a bath, a very long one since we won't be able to do that for 3 days. We both dressed in our new uniforms, ones that were heavily insulated to protect us from the bitter cold. Green overcoats with a fur lining inside, our usual white pants as they are warm enough and fingerless gloves to protect our hands from frostbite but retain the perfect grip on our swords. Our boots were good enough to keep the cold out of our feet. Wearing earmuffs weren't an option as that would hinder our ability to hear clearly and decrease survival rate further.

It was assumed that all the titans that aren't already killed are either abnormals or ones that were too weak to travel to the executioner from hell or didn't go there by chance. Dealing with abnormals are much much harder than normals. The districts in wall Maria were safe as the gates were sealed in every district, even in Shiganshina. That bastard beast titan did that one thing right. It would take us 20 hours to travel half of wall Maria as we intend to, however, we cannot leave one spot missed. There's a chance that we could encounter the beast titan, the cart titan and Reiner. We just couldn't afford to leave a small area untouched. We could fight for 10 hours before the sun sets. The first expedition is solely to take out any titans, not the shifters, however, you can never be too careful. We usually kept our horses at a small shed we made in our yard.

After saddling the horses, we galloped towards the headquarters, I went to the supply room to get mine and Levi's gear. We were a bit late as Levi insisted on getting clean properly and bathed for nearly an hour. Levi was assembling all the soldiers in our team and asked me to get his gear for him. Just as I was at the entrance of the supply room, I saw Marie getting out of there. "Oi Marie. What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be going to the Garrison barracks?" I asked her with suspicion. "Yes. I was taking my gear." she answered simply before she left.

"Why didn't she do it earlier? Was this intentional? Did she mess with mine or Levi's gear? No... I did her a huge favour by not ruining her career. Anyone with common sense knows that there's still a high chance that I'd survive with a messed up gear, a higher chance for Levi. No one in the right mind would try to sabotage my gear. That's practically ruining their lives by themselves." I thought as I strapped onto my gear and walked out of the room with Levi's. There wasn't any time to check the gear now. There's 30 minutes left till 6am. We need to be going now.

"Listen you all. I will be repeating the plan once again. Once we all get in position, the team furthest, the one near the wall Maria would shoot flare signals. The closest to them would do the same and it will go on till it reaches the members closest to Trost. The same will be done in the opposite way to indicate the start of the expedition. Levi heichou and I would be in the middle. If squad 1-4 faces any major problem, notify Levi heichou as you all are under him. He will be in squad 5, closest to you. Squad 7-9 would do the same but with me. I'll be in squad 6. Use smoke signals to contact any of us the same way we would start the expedition.

If the issue isn’t major, use red signals to ask back up from the closest team. If the issue is major, use black signals and we will be there as soon as possible. If a snow storm starts, retreat immediately near wall Rose. We will be moving in a straight line and so, we will all be able to meet at one point in that case. The teams furthest from wall Rose will have to cover a distance of about 1508km in this expedition. We would have to adjust our speed with that. Every one hour, we would shoot green smoke signals that would be used at the start of the expedition too to help everyone detect each squad's position. Speed will be adjusted according to that.

The signals will start from the squad closest to wall Maria, and the other team will adjust to their speed and position and shoot a signal again and so forth. The formation cannot be broken at any cost. We will travel 503 km each day, search every spot for titans. It would generally take about 7 hours to travel that distance each day but we need to make sure no titan slips our hand. We would take a look inside every city, every building, and make sure no titan escapes our sight. The supply wagons will be stationed with squad 5 and 6 as those are the most heavily guarded squads. Squad 1 and squad 2 will be moving together when we are near the districts and will separate as the districts end. Just one more advice to you all, stay alive." I lectured the soldiers.

We were on top of Wall Rose, a cold wind blowing and a somewhat calm atmosphere. The place outside the walls were white with snow. Winter expeditions had a different advantage towards us. The sunlight level is lower during winter and thus, titans will be less strong. Taking them down in open ground will be easier. However, there's no telling for sure if the new recruits can do that. After all, things like that come from experience.

"Let the expedition begin!" I shouted as we got down the wall with everyone else and were on our horses. I wondered how uncle Erwin felt when he did that. This feeling of fear, guilt, determination and excitement... Did he feel all that too? As I was the strategist in our team, Hanji left the entire team under my command. Levi was in charge of keeping everything in control and our biggest weapon. His experience would help me make quick decisions about unfamiliar scenarios. Basically, Levi was controlling my decisions with his experience while I controlled the team with my strategies. This was the beginning of the 67th expedition.

3 hours later

My squad was in position, traveling in the middle of the formation. We didn't encounter any titan yet and I was glad to know that Hanji's predictions may have been right. Most of the titans were killed by the executioner from hell. The survey was going well, however, squad 8 would be travelling in a village as we speak. They will have to search every building there. We decreased our speeds as the map says us to do so, to let squad 8 pick up the pace with us within the next hour. However, just as I thought everything was going smooth, a black smoke signal was detected from squad 7.

"Diana, take command of the squad. I'll go take a look at that." I instructed my second in command and charged towards squad 7. It took me about 7 and half minutes to reach squad 7 only to find that another smoke signal had been shot in squad 8. Damn it... They couldn't take the abnormal even with perfect manoeuvring grounds? It took a total of 15 mins to reach squad 8 and two people were already dead there. 5 abnormals were chasing them and they were trying their best to avoid them. Obviously they couldn’t hold off that many abnormals.

Just as I looked back, there was a titan standing next to the building behind me. An abnormal. It had a grotesque smile and dived at me but I jumped away at immediately. I went to use my 3DMG to get away from it but the strings shot out and away from the equipment, suddenly breaking with the force. I took a quick look at the torn metallic string and it was clear that it was cut. Marie sabotaged my equipment. The titan dived at me again and jumped away at the last moment, gripping it's hair to use it as a rope and used the force on it as the titan got up to fly upwards and slashing the titan's nape barely, using the blades on the titan's back to slow my fall down. I met squad 7 on my way there and I needed quick reinforcements.

Not just recruits, I needed Levi here as getting 4 abnormals without a 3DMG was impossible. I shot a black smoke signal, hoping that squad 7 would understand the emergency. I saw squad 7 doing the same thankfully and I knew my squad was smart enough to inform Levi. With that, I tried my best to hide from the abnormals, that the three remaining members from squad 8 was keeping busy and I searched for the bodies of the two deceased members so that I could take one of their gear.

Levi POV

We have only encountered one abnormal so far and it seemed like shitty glasses did a good job predicting the amount of titan we could face. Things were going pretty well till I saw a black flare being shot from squad 6. (Y/N)'s squad needs help? How is that possible? "Mikasa, take command." I commanded Mikasa as she was the most capable out of all my squad members and rushed towards (Y/N)'s squad. After reaching there, I found no Titans, however, (Y/N) was nowhere to be seen. "Oi, where's (Y/N)? What's with the black flare?" I asked her second in command. "Heichou, (Y/N)-san went to check on a black flare that came from squad 7.

They shot another black flare just now. I assumed that (Y/N) san asked for backup." she explained. I noticed that black flare too. "Okay. I'll be going then." I told her before galloping to squad 7. No titans were there and I could see a black flare from squad 8. They should be in a village now. That's probably where they encountered titans. I didn't waste any time and sped my way to squad 8. It took me about 23 minutes to reach and I found three recruits barely hanging onto their lives, trying to keep away from 4 abnormals. (Y/N) was nowhere to be seen. I didn't waste my time and sped towards the titans and just as I tried to use my 3DMG, the wires broke when they were shot. I was taken aback by that.

I probably maintain my gear better than anyone else in the survey corps. What the fuck just happened? Before I could react, an abnormal caught me from behind. I was struggling in its hand when the titan suddenly fell flat on its face, dropping me. I landed on my feet to see (Y/N), running at me.

"Levi, Marie sabotaged my gear. I'm guessing she did the same with yours. I had my doubts that's why I was able to escape the titans. There's a body with a 3DMG attached to it 2 houses from here. I got mine there too. I'll hold them off. Hurry!" (Y/N) briefed me on the situation and I left her to handle it while I ran towards the location she pointed me to only to find a titan standing there. However, it was a 2 meter class. It sped at me as it was an abnormal and I got up the stairs of the house next to me, used the railing to jump high enough and cut the titan's nape flawlessly.

I could see another 12 meter class drop in the distance as I reached the bodies. One of them didn't have a gear. I assumed that's the one (Y/N) is using. I took the gear from the other soldier and strapped it on quickly and joined the fight. (Y/N) killed one more titan and assisted me to get the fifth one. "You guys are very less in number. I'll send someone from my squad. Fall into formation for now." I commanded the 3 soldiers left as (Y/N) called both of our horses. "Hai!" the soldiers saluted before I motioned them to be at ease and got on my horse as (Y/N) got on hers.

We travelled together towards our squads as I told her, "You should've just expelled her out of the survey corps." "Yes. I know. I figured that she would take the chance I gave her and use it properly. I'll have to talk to Hanji about it and get her a criminal offence." (Y/N) answered, with a grave expression on her face. "It'll be alright. See you later." I told her as I parted from her after she reached her squad.

Day 2 of expedition

We were closing in to the titan forest near Karanese district. Only mine and (Y/N)'s squad will be going through the forest as our positioning was like that. The peaceful atmosphere didn't last for too long after we entered the forest. It seemed like hoards of abnormals were in there, just waiting for someone to enter. My squad, including me shifted to ODM gear, getting as many titans as I can. I was getting them all flawlessly while Mikasa was a big help too. The others were struggling. There were about 40 titans in this forest and after I was done with about 20 and my squad got 10 more. I heard the sound of one more ODM gear and (Y/N) came to assist.

I was fascinated by the graceful moves she was making with her body, the flawless use of ODM gear and the clean cuts she made. She moved in perfect harmony with me, assisted me in my kills and took assist from my moves too. She made me feel like both a proud mentor and a husband. She got 4 more titans, Mikasa got one as I took down the 5 remaining titans. "(Y/N), what are you doing here? Where's your squad?" I asked her as she landed. "Well, we entered the forest before you, cleaned up about 28 titans. I had to take down most of it but the squad got like 7 of them. Some titans fled in your direction and I followed them and got here and helped you out." she explained. This is why I loved her. One person who doesn't have to be the damsel in distress was all I've ever asked for. The rest of the expedition was more or less peaceful.

Day 3, end of expedition

The expedition was over as we reached Utopia district at evening. I had a titan kill of 54 as I had to assist the squads under me a few times. (Y/N)'s titan kill was 43 as she had to assist the squads under her too. All squads encountered heavy numbers of titans and apparently my training helped them. 20 people from our team died. A total of 177 titans were killed. We got 5 more black flares in the entire expedition. I got 3 and (Y/N) got 2. Most of the titans were abnormals as Hanji predicted. There were a few titans that were too deformed to move fast enough and we killed them easily. It was the same as every other expeditions. The parents of the dead demanding answer. This time, (Y/N) was the victim as she made all the plans and she was in charge.

"YOU GOT MY SON KILLED! HOW COULD YOU! YOU DIDN'T EVEN BRING HIS BODY! ARE YOU EVEN HUMAN?" a woman was shouting at (Y/N). (Y/N)'s head was bowed. I didn't know what she was thinking. "That's enough. Your son was useful for the recapture of Wall Maria. He killed a titan before going out. I'm sure he won't appreciate it if you call the people he gave up his life for monsters." I told the woman, putting a hand on (Y/N)'s shoulder but she shrugged it off.

"Levi, I need to deal with this on my own." she told me before facing the woman. "I am very sorry for your loss. I truly am. Your son was very brave. I wasn't there when he died but I heard from his squad mates about how he took down a titan as Levi heichou says so. Levi heichou tried his best to save as many people as possible and so did I. I'm a mother myself, so I know how it feels. If something happened to my son, I would feel as if death for myself is better. I won't judge you for being angry. You have every right to be angry. It was your son who laid his life on line. No mother would ever want their children to do that. I understand that. If calling me the monster helps you ease your pain, I will gladly take that name for myself." she told the woman, who now looked at her with surprise.

The woman broke down and started crying before sitting on the streets. (Y/N) kneeled in front of her and rested her arm on the woman's shoulder. "I'm sorry. No one deserves to die. Your son deserved a better leader. I'm sorry we weren't good enough." (Y/N) told the woman, her eyes showing remorse but her face as hard as a stone. "(Y/N), we have to go and report to HQ and pick Farlan up." I told her as I stood beside her. (Y/N) got up and got on her horse. The other parents of the dead saw this scene and didn't question (Y/N) anymore. They understood the message she wanted to give.

The bodies that could be recovered were distributed before we went to pick Farlan up and travelled to Trost. We reached Trost at 3AM. I held Farlan to my chest the whole time as I was warmer than (Y/N). Farlan wore warm clothes but still, you couldn't be more careful. (Y/N) left for home with Farlan while I went to report to Hanji on her behalf. Our team was lucky that most of the abnormals we faced were concentrated towards mine and (Y/N)'s squad. Hanji's team lost 40 people. Infact, they had to stop at Krolva district to take in reinforcements from the Garrison. It wasted time but was effective in getting rid of all the titans on their path.

"So, we have to make do with 140 scout members for the next expedition." I stated, raising an eyebrow. "No. We will take support from Garrison. They will send their most elite soldiers with us. The next expedition won't be too hard as we took down most of the titans left anyway. By the way, what did you want to tell me about Marie?" Hanji asked me before I explained the whole situation of her destroying our gears. "She actually did that? Well, I'll talk to Pixis personally about it. I'm sure he will take action as he's (Y/N)'s father. Other than that, he was never much fond of indiscipline except for when it comes to drinking." Hanji answered.

"Wait, you know?" I asked her, quiet surprised. "Yes of course I do. She told me on your wedding day. Didn't she mention it to you?" Hanji asked me. "Well, she might have forgot. Things weren't very steady back then as she was pregnant and all." I muttered. So Hanji knows. I'll have to ask (Y/N) about it. "Well, I'll have to make reports now. Being commander is such a pain... It even affects my titan research... Anyway, you may leave." Hanji told me and I left. At least we were all safe for one more day. The 67th expedition was over.

To be continued...

[AUTHOR'S NOTE:(Y/N) and Levi left from Trost to go to utopia at 7PM and reached Utopia at 6AM. (Y/N) was called in Hanji's office at 2PM and they reached Trost at 11 PM that day.

Given that Orvud district is 80 km far from the Reiss Chapel, and that the distance between wall Rose and Wall Sina is 130 km, it could be assumed that every district is 20 km long, and the distance between the reiss Chapel and Utopia district is 30km. It could be assumed that Historia's orphanage is near the Reiss Chapel as she owns many lands there and possibly other lords had land there too. So, Levi and (Y/N) would reach Historia's Orphanage by 24 minutes.

Taglist: @reality-is-often-disappointing, @kingtamakimurder