#What does being a middle child entail exactly?

[kakusu-shipping]

Thank you for the nice tags on the pic published to catchonehand!

Zen as the middle child? I'm curious and would love to know what you're referring to 👀

I got this ask like two days ago I'm so sorry I caught a cold and didn't get to answer fdjgfkdgjkdf

This is the post in question btw for anyone confused because again I reblogged that like two days ago

The fastest answer is I've been seeing a lot of Ramattra as a Protective Older Brother to Zenyatta art, and have always seen Zenyatta Genji in the same Brotherly Found Family kind of relationship (vaguely all my relationships are grey and moldable by recent art I've seen)

So if this Found Family Tree goes Ramattra-Zenyatta-Genji, that makes Zenyatta a Middle Child which I feel is fitting.

The funnier half of it though is that sense Ramattra was made for the Omnic Crisis, and no Omnics were made after the Crisis, this means Zen (at 20) HAS to be older than Ramattra, physically. Meanwhile Genji is 35 if I remember right (the official character page doesn't show their ages anymore so this may be subject to change in OW2)

Meaning by AGE it'd go Genji-Zenyatta-Ramattra, keeping Zen the Middle Child once again.

Out of all the lore we could have possibly gotten for Zenyatta, after 6 years, they choose to make him a Middle Child. Short Middle Sibling Energy.

[blackicephantom]

A Divine taste

For a man as intelligent and responsible as one certain Silvermane Guard Captain, Gepard Landau, he could make really dumb decisions. Just like this one. 

It’s been years at this point. Years of playful chases, painful wounds and last minute saves on both sides. Time they, somehow, decided to take out of their free will. And with so much time spent together come secrets, small and big. One of those secrets is that Sampo is not like most of the other citizens of Belobog. Like most of his fellow Fools that hail from Epsilon he is a notorious creature of the night, a bloodsucker, a vampire. 

He never had a problem with it, on the contrary even, most of his business partners were night owls which played right into his little greedy hands. And if there was a little conflict it just needed a little snap of his fingers to resolve itself. Only if his trusty smoke bombs didn’t help of course. He still had an image to keep, after all. 

And he would have kept that little part of himself away from all and everything, had he not crudely miscalculated on one of his little errand runs for Natasha. Get to the checkpoint, pay the client, take the goods back to the clinic and DONE. That’s how it was supposed to go. What WASN’T supposed to happen was that his client had backup, quite a few fellows that were unfortunate enough to fall prey to his scammings, that wanted to see him either bleed or dead. What was he to do but try to save his own skin? Sadly these men already knew some of his tactics, which meant his sleep-inducing bombs didn’t knock everyone out and bullets started flying the moment they had a clear field of sight again. While most of those missed him, there still were one or two lucky shots that hit their target. At the smell of his own blood the dual haired male knew he had to hurry, because blood meant hunger. And hunger meant losing control. And losing control was not an option.

So he drew his blades and dispatched the group as swift as the hunter he pretended not to be. But it was still not fast enough. He didn’t kill a single man, couldn’t live with the idea what a certain blond Captain would think of him, so the scent of iron grew even thicker in the air and his mouth slowly started to fill with saliva. Taking another deep breath Sampo groaned. It’s been sooooo fucking long. Shaking his head he desperately tried to keep it together, fighting against his instinct to find the next nice smelling person and just feed to his heart's content.   

Just as he was about to finally turn away he heard hurried steps and yelling, the metallic sound of them being his clue that the guards had arrived. And wherever the Silvermane Guards arrive, their Captain will follow. It’s just this one time when Sampo does NOT want to see the middle Landau child, he is the first to round the corner, the first to see the blood. Clear blue eyes looked around, took everything in, until they landed on his person, saw the two gunshot wounds and connected with his own dimly glowing jade ones.

Something seemed to click in the blonde's mind and before he could say something the conman used just a snippet of his powers and simply vanished. 

It wasn’t one of his best or proudest moments but he was starting to panic, ok?!

Ever since that day something had changed between the blond Captain and the thief, Sampo just doesn’t know what exactly.

Back to the dumb decision making tho.

Gepard knew Sampo was a vampire. And Sampo knew that Gepard knew that the conman needed blood from time to time. Not really often, just a sip here or there to get by, unless the older of the two were to get injured. He has told the blond so himself. Told him in detail what risks that would entail and how severe the injury would have to be before the gnawing HUNGER set in.

 (It had taken them weeks, if not MONTH, to have that conversation. And Sampo still felt guilty that they had to have that in the first place.)

It had taken the arrival of the Trailblazer and the Astral Express, the sealing of the Stellaron, a new Supreme Guardian and the reunion of the Over- and Underworld  for everything to finally boil over for the two of them.

Gepard and the Silvermane Guards were outside of Belobog’s save walls because of renewed Fragmented monster sightings. Which makes sense with the end of the Eternal Freeze and all that. And while Sampo knows that his favorite guard was not only good at his job but also very damn durable, he had a very bad feeling about this. So he decided to investigate a little. Bribing a few people here, eavesdropping some Silvermane Guards there, needling Seele just to be a nuisance and get info from Lady Bronya and he was on his way outside the walls. Because if there was one thing that Sampo Koski had learned during his time traveling from planet to planet, then it was to listen to his instincts.

Once there he couldn't stop himself  from cussing and cursing.

There were Fragmentum monsters, alright. But these were not the small flies like a few Flame- or Frostspawns. Ohhh no no no. He wasn’t even that worried about the Imaginary Weavers he saw as well. But the Searing Prowlers and their icy counterparts? Those raised quite a few concerns. But what made this the worst that could have happened was the unfavorable mix of Decaying Shadows, Guardian Shadows and the Aeons-damned Stormbringer right in the middle of this horrendous battlefield. And even more important was the heavy scent of iron in the frigid air, the red splashed almost artistically on the white ground, and the struggling figure of Gepard Landau. Sampo was not stupid enough to underestimate the Preservation Pathfollower, having been on the wrong side of his gauntlet a few to many times and protected by his crystal clear ice shield just as often, but his once pristine uniform was torn in some places and red seeping into the white fabric. Yet he still stands strong, Belobog’s shield not yielding, still protecting the wounded Guards that try to regroup.

The Captain's guitar case hits enemy after enemy, renews and rebuilds his shield as often as his endurance, stamina and his ability will allow him, but just this once it seems not to be enough. Sampo was still too far away to hear them clearly but his eyes tracked every little movement, so he knew the exact moment the golden Landau child ordered their retreat and the criminal would do anything to make sure that the Captain would follow his own order.

Swift as the cold wind around them he stepped up to the slowly tiring Captain and offered his humble assistance. “Need a hand, dear Captain?” If said man was surprised to see him, he sure didn’t show it, simply pushed the closest Prowler away and sighed. “I can’t believe that I’m about to say this, but yes.” And that was more than enough for the older to grab his blades and throw himself into the battle, allowing his body to move as nature had dedicated it to: swift, smooth and stealthy. Not even the slippery underground was of any hindrance to him, he simply calculated how far he would slip on the ice if he had the right speed and went with the flow, felt the adrenaline pump through his veins and let his mind drown in the Elation of the battle. And where he fell short, Gepard would take his place: freezing the enemies that got just a tad too close for comfort, taunting the monsters that were trying to go after the retreating Soldiers or starting to go a little to hard after the blue haired conman and looking to it that the shimmering ice of his shield never faltered.

So they fought and fought until one of the more able bodied Silvermanes called to them. “Captain Gepard! All soldiers are back behind the gates!”  The blond gave a small sigh of relief before tensing up. Something was not right. Blue eyes flicked around the white fields they fought upon, searching for whatever raised his hackles but coming up with nothing. Not even the sudden appearance of Sampo at his side could quell this strange feeling. Tightening his hand around Earthwork’s strap he whispered to the other male. “I have a bad feeling. Something is not right here.”  Sampo overlooked their surroundings again and did a mental checklist of the monsters he saw when he first arrived here and froze. Looking again through the bloodied and slowly swirling snow he just had to ask. “Gep….. Did you see or fight the Stormbringer?” The others serious voice gave the younger pause and then he screamed with all his might towards his men, still waiting at the entrance. “CLOSE THE GATES!” right as a swirling green glint shone through the glittering white.

The Stormbringer had used their distraction and locked onto the gates, where all of the weak and injured were. All the soldiers that would definitely not survive the hit of the monster's arrow, especially not a charged one. Blue met green and then nothing but chaos. The gates closed, just as ordered, but they were so slow, so fucking slow. Gepard took another deep breath, focused all of his remaining power and determination into his right hand, before forcing his gauntlet one last time into the ground at his feet and casting one last blindingly blue shield for the time being. Wave after wave of ice climbed on top of each other, layer before layer and Gepard prayed to Qlipoth and the Preservation that it would be enough. What he did not take into account in that instance, was that the centaur like creature would change targets at the last second, as if it had just waited for the Gepard to use up his ability. Because now, he was practically defenseless except for Earthwork. And while he COULD tank such a hit, had done it dozens of times and in much more severe situations, it was never without some kind of backup or a fast cooldown for his shield. Which is both rather unavailable at the moment.

Thinking fast he put his case down with as much strength as possible and put his whole weight against it, just as the creature released the first arrow. Despite being not only tired but also wounded he took the hit. But it pushed him so far back that he was close to losing his ground. When the pressure had vanished Gepard grit his teeth and moved as fast as he could, which was still faster than average, but way too slow for the current situation.

Sampo on the other hand knew the same thing. Knew without a single doubt that his very dear Captain Landau was on the last leg of his legendary endurance and could not withstand another attack without being severely, if not fatally, wounded. And that? That just wouldn’t do. Crouching low in the snow he observed for no more than seconds, watched the Stormbringer not letting up from Gepard, followed its movement as it readied another attack and pounced. He may be at an elemental disadvantage but that doesn’t change the fact that he was not human. In the blink of an eye he stood just behind the beast and slashed at its hindlegs, making it stumble right before it kicked out. Sampo used that little window to get underneath the centaur and cut its belly open in one clean cut only to disappear right after. It screeched and trashed, looking for the one that wounded it so much.

 Sadly he miscalculated, again, and it stormed towards the still stumbling blond. Even bleeding and unable to walk quite right it was faster than the captain and the conman could only watch for the moment as beautiful blue grew wide. For him it happened in slow motion: Gepard bracing himself, eyes tightly shut, only to be flung to the side with way too much power for any mortal to survive, no matter if they follow the Preservation or not. At least not when that someone is already as tattered and beaten as the younger is at the moment.

Jade green glowed and slowly bled to red while the pupils narrowed to slits and a deep growl rumbled in his chest. With one step he was between his dearest human and the frozen wall he was hurling towards, embracing the slightly smaller body so that his back took most of the sudden impact. The wall crumbled slightly from their speed and weight and Sampo could taste the blood that suddenly pooled in his mouth. Not only was the blond not the lightest soldier out there, crushing his whole body against the hard surface, but there were also the ragged edges of the ice they crashed into that cut deep into his back. Sliding to the ground he steadied them both and tried to look at the others face. Matted blond hair stuck to his forehead and he was coughing up red, red, red blood til it left a small rivulet at the corner of his mouth. Next the now red eyes looked further down and saw the rather huge injury in his side from where the monster put his claws to fling him away. “Fuck.” was everything that came to mind at that discovery.

Outside, the Fragmented monster was still raging, clearly searching for them and Sampo knew they didn't have much time on hand. Of course, just as he thought that it turned its head just so and locked onto them. “Oh for Aeon's sake!” Why the fuck was that thing not dying?! He knows, for a fact, that these damn monsters can bleed out. So why in the Elations name was this one still standing? A weak groan in front of him distracted him  momentarily from the approaching disaster. With his left hand he pushed Gepard lightly against his chest and bowed his head so he could hear him. “Easy there Cap.”  Bleary blues looked around and finally saw the Stormbringer outside of their new little cave. “Aw fuck.” was the answer to that, honestly, terrifying sight. And if the chest underneath his hand wouldn’t have such problems getting air in the connected lungs, he would have laughed. Because hearing prim and proper Gepard Landau swear? A treat like nothing else. Or at least nothing much else. 

There was a strange tension between them when Gepard let his head fall against his shoulder, exposing his slender neck to hungry red eyes. Only the shuddering breaths of the other kept him from leaning down and getting a taste, because the hunger was slowly creeping up on him. And their still bleeding wounds did not help in that aspect. Then he MUST have hallucinated or simply misheard due to blood loss, because there was just no way in this galaxy that the blond in front of him just asked him that. But knowing Gepard like he did, he just had to make sure. “You did not just ask that of me.” A pained chuckle was his answer, as well as this irritating screech from outside. Right after that came another coughing fit and a pained hiss. “I’ll gladly….ask again if you want.”  The sound of hooves trampling on the still falling snow kept his attention on the outside while he hissed between his teeth “Glad you finally found your humor Geppie, but I’m afraid this is no time for jokes.”

Green light seemed to focus on one spot. Another arrow that’s being charged right in front of them. “Do I look like the type to joke?” Pulling the younger just a little bit closer he chuckled. “Guess not.” The light grew brighter and time was running out. The temperature around them dropped just a little bit more as ice slowly crawled around them. Or more specifically a short distance in front of them, nothing more than a few inches away from their feet. Ice, that Sampo knew, was created by only one person. Looking at the still gauntlet glad fist, his suspicion was confirmed. Just as the wind arrow whistled through the freezing air outside, said fist clenched tight and smashed into the ground, raising the smallest shield the vampire had ever seen from the proud captain. It was just big enough to cover both of them, yet hard enough to actually withstand the attack. The only downside? Now they were trapped. One bleeding, hungry vampire and one equally wounded and bleeding Silvermane Captain. And the longer Sampo held him close the sweeter he smelled. Only Gepards next words pulled him back from the edge. “That one….. is not going to hold very long.�� he said, right as more of these annoying arrows hit the barrier. Another deep but rattling breath. “So I ask again. How much blood…. would you need to get us the fuck out of here? Preferably alive?”

Just the mere idea of it, of biting down and finally tasting that tantalizing  red nectar, made saliva pool in his suddenly dry mouth. Swallowing, he growled into the younger one's  ear. “You are insane, Gep.” Another heavy hit and the ice started to chip away, the shield still solid enough. For the moment. “That doesn't ... .answer my question.” More attacks hit the wall and more ice started to crumble.  Pulling him closer still Sampo hissed. “You want a wounded vampire, ME, to feed on an already heavily injured person, YOU, that's already been bleeding for quite some time!” Green was starting to reflect through the ice again and both of them knew that the shield would not hold out after that.  A gloved hand slid along his cheek, only to pull his head down in one swift movement, bringing his nose and fangs dangerously close to the blonds still unblemished neck. It didn’t help that Gepard turned his head just slightly further away, giving him even more space and the blue haired male just couldn’t look away from the exposed skin. Swallowing again, and again, he still hesitated, much to Gepards frustration. Huffing he tried again. One last time before that damn thing just outside will ultimately kill them. “You can be angry all…….you want with me. But….. you need to get us out of here first.”  Panting like a dog the blue haired one growled again, deep and frustrated, put his second hand on the smaller one's chin and turned him just slightly more to the right before grumbling “We WILL talk about this, Gepard.” 

Only then did he bite down, hard and fast, his fangs piercing the delicate skin in one smooth movement. Sweet ambrosia filled his parched throat and there was really no other way to describe it. The taste of Gepards blood gave him a high like no other and he pushed his fangs just slightly deeper in, wanting just that bit more of it. Only the hand pulling on his hair and the small sound the other let slip shook him from his haze and he let go again. Licking every last drop from his still wet lips he couldn’t help the quiet moan that fought its way out of his throat. That right here was by far the best blood he has ever tasted.  No matter which planets he has traversed, no one and nothing ever tasted like this or quenched his thirst this fast. It was an addicting feeling, for sure. Out of the corner of his eyes he could swear he saw a pretty pink dusting the Captain's pale cheeks and shook his head. There were more important things at the moment. One last lick to the wound and Sampo looked straight ahead. 

Through the remaining layer of ice he could still see the gathering wind of the Stormbringer, ready to fire and shatter their last bit of protection. With Gepard’s taste still on his tongue he pushed said blond a little to the side so he could sit up a little and focus. Red eyes glowed brightly and with the boost of the fresh blood from moments ago his own powers took hold. Between one breath and the next the ice wall shattered. An arrow was let loose only to stay right in midair, right inbetween the monster it came from and its target. The Stormbringer was clearly confused why its attack did not proceed and tried to gather more wind, only to suddenly stop. If the monster was the predator for the duration of the fight and the two males its prey, it knew on an instinctual level that the tables have now turned.

First it took two steps back and shook its head, then began the slight trembling of its limbs. 

The frigid air had frozen its wound shut, the bleeding not strong enough before it happened. Then it watched as its own arrow split apart into smaller pieces, which in turn formed deathly sharp blades and started spinning. With a snap they were sent flying, cutting deep into the monster's skin and even severing one of its front legs. It tried to parry, but just before it touched the blades they turned into a gentle breeze, only to reform behind its back and continue. Confused and enraged, it looked for the attacker, trying to see from where the blades were coming. But there was nothing, nothing but the cave….

Blood red met with the visor of the Stormbringer. 

And in a cruel twist on the vampire's part he watched as their enemy stood frozen, probably from terror. Just outside their little cave was one big swirling mass of wind, a focused storm ready to tear anything apart. He smirked, bloodied fangs on display and eyes alight in glee as he watched its desperation to get away. All blades stilled themselves, still surrounding the beast. With another resounding snap they pierced through its thick hide, keeping it immobilized, while the small storm in front of them cut it simply in half.

Hazy blue eyes watched everything happen, from the moment the older simply stopped the attack in mid air, right to using the Stormbringers own tactic against it. And if the poor Captain found that display of power and self control rather attractive, he would say it’s the bloodloss. Because there was no way in the Preservation that he would ever admit to being hopelessly attracted to the taller male. At least not out loud….

As the adrenaline slowly faded from his system he felt the cold creeping under his wet and torn clothes, as well as the throbbing and hurting of his many wounds. With a quiet curse he tried to sit up, at least a little, but the moment he moved pain shot through his entire body. 

Just as he was about to just push through the agonizing feeling, gentle hands stilled him and he looked up into still red glowing gems. He wanted to say something, opened his mouth only to close it again when the other leant in so his mouth was right beside his already reddening ear. He wanted to ask what was wrong when Sampo talked first. It was one simple word, yet Gepard felt it right down to the deepest parts of his body. “Rest.”

Shuddering, he fought to keep his eyes open but the gentle hands held him close and secure. A feeling that was as precious as it was strange to him. Shaking his head that deep voice spoke again while one of those big hands slid into his matted hair and gave him gentle pats. “Rest. I’ve got you.” 

With that rare feeling of safety Gepard was unable to resist the voices pull and let himself be held. With every breath he took it got more difficult to keep his eyes open, every blink took longer than the last, till his eyes just stayed closed and his breath finally evened out.

Sampo was honestly impressed that his beloved Captain held out for so long. There weren’t many people out there who could withstand a vampires hypnotizing voice, let alone fight it. 

But for now, this was the best option, for he still had to get the blond back to Belobog and to a medic. And with how severe his injuries were it was the best that his favorite human being on this planet was not awake when he moved them.

Pulling the sleeping soldier out of the cave he pulled him up into a princess carry, ignoring the blood he smeared all over himself and still trying his best not to irritate the wounds further. With one last look back over the battlefield he let the wind carry them back towards the gates and towards the still waiting soldiers. And if he used another snippet of his powers to conceal the bite on Gepards neck and force his eyes to be the right color again, no one would ever know.

(No one but Natasha and, by extension, Serval. Those women were just terrifying and scared the living shit out of him.)  

[jerrykinoff]

Tommy Cash x Deutsche Bahn - Vice September 2023 interview

translation under the cut

Public transport turned Tommy Cash into a train

We visited the trap wonder child at a shoot and talked about his legendary transformations.

Just a while ago he was strolling barefoot on the gray stone floors of Platform 2 at the Berlin Spandau train station, now his feet are being put in the giant Balenciaga rubber boots. Tommy is sporting an old conductor uniform, tight middle part and two braids plaited up until the very ends of his hair when I intercept him for an interview in between the shoots. We are at the set of a rather bizarre ad shoot for the “Zukunft Nahverkehr” initiative with the slogan #mobilityisahumanride. The trap wonder child is playing the main role in it and with the help of a few spritzes of perfume (“Ö de PNV”, get it?), he transforms into a very delighted S-Bahn train which is dispersing the exhaust gas with taekwondo moves and in which people are feeding each other pickles.

What does this all mean? The future will be better, when we use public transport more often. But it also simply means: We can finally look forward for a full dose of TOMM¥ €A$H, in all of his absurd glory in the form of the ÖPNV ad and the trending reels from Paris Fashion Week, and soon, finally, in the form of a new album. He is working on it every second and is now using every break during the shoot to re-listen to a track with an AirPod in his ear and a smile on his face. This week, he still has two video shoots ahead of him and in November he’s going on a tour with Oliver Tree. They both not only like making music together, they also share a tendency for absolute randomness and creating things which nobody could expect. Like turning yourself into a human train, or, a “human ride”. Or a vagina.

VICE: Hi Tommy. Today you are becoming a train. Could you tell us about your first time, about your first transformation?

Tommy Cash: It was in 2016, back then I dropped a music video in which I became the intimate area of a lady. That’s how it all began and since then I have been turning myself into all sorts of things. 

How did playing a role of a vagina feel?

Oh. It was brilliant. It felt good. 

How did you prepare for it?

I was just being myself.

Are you coming up with all these ideas on your own?

For the most part, yes. I am, so to speak, an orange. You can make juice from oranges, you know? But that entails a lot of different types of work. I could probably press out all the juice by myself, but I like having an input from styling, hair and camera people, etc. when shooting videos. The camera person, for example, knows which shots will look the best and can change things, if needed. But it’s still my juice.

And the juice is tasty. When could we look forward to the new album?

Soon. We are working on it in full swing. Somewhere in December, but the rollout begins soon, during the coming weeks. We should know exactly when around my birthday. My birthday is on November 18th.

Ah, you are a Scorpio. Makes sense. Is there a song on the new album, which you are most excited about?

Yeah, especially some collabs. The track for which we are shooting a music video tomorrow became a kind of a proper anthem. Scandinavian brothers who find each other. I’m really looking forward to playing it live. [Author’s note: the feature with Käärijä “It's Crazy It's Party” came out in the meanwhile and it kicks ass.]

When you’re looking for feature partners, what matters to you the most?

They can’t be too clean, polished. For me, art means being free and taking risks. It’s important to me that we have the same worldview, the same sixth sense. They need to be open, for whatever happens. only then something magical can be created.

Collabs or not, you are in fact taking some risks. Do you have any advice for those, who do not trust themselves that much?

Oh yes: just do it! Don't give a fuck about anything. Stop overthinking. Most people are nice. The percentage of people who will try to discourage you or write nasty comments is very small. It’s fucked to not make something because a couple of people said so. They are only scared of what you can achieve. 

There are very few negative things to be found about you on the internet. I looked extra hard, but the people are simply obsessed with you!

Ah, it should be a love-hate relationship. There always has to be a few people out there who hate you deeply. The most should of course love you. The most important thing is that the people feel something when they see you. 

And you offer them quite a lot too. You dress well, you model, you dance and then of course the music. Is there anything you are bad at?

Tennis. And I was a very bad boyfriend for some time. But I’m working on it now. 

Yeah? How’s that going?

Since then I have been pretty good.

What makes you a good boyfriend?

Time. I think, as time passes,  you learn from your mistakes. It sounds cheesy, but when it comes to relationships, I have already grown up. 

I’m glad. I think we should all work on this in the future. Speaking of the future, or rather about the “art of the future”, NFTs - you already have fingers in the game, correct?

Correct, “me in gold”. Sold for 1,3 million. I only played along because I respect the artists a lot. It was for an art gallery in Estonia. Actually I’m not really into the whole NFT and AI thing. Physical art is more of my thing. I like what people can make, not computers. I find that somehow boring. People teach computers to think like people and then they run on some sort of a god complex. That’s why we, people, are much cooler than computers. I don’t get this “virtual art”. There are other advancements which interest me more. 

Like, for example, the future of mobility? What does it look like for you?

I have thought about this already. I’d like to get a horse and a carriage and use it as my only way of transport. I live in Tallinn. The distance between places there is manageable, it could work. Horses are a greener solution than fossil fuels or lithium batteries. We focus so much on the future, that we often forget what used to already work very well in the past. 

What is public transport like in Tallinn?

It’s pretty good. You can easily get to most places with a tram, trolley or a bus. But there is a lot of construction work going on, the streets are dug over. You can barely get from point A to point B. You need to ride around the whole city. But this does not affect me that much, because I’m a homebody. When I’m not traveling for work, I like staying home and being comfortable. But the people there make an effort to use public transport more. This is good. For the planet. 

Like your horse carriage! I’d like to grill you a bit more about your viral moments at Paris Fashion Week. Which outfits, looks, characters were your favorites? How do you even call it?

So some people call it “performance art”, but i just say “outfit”. Sounds better. My favorites? They are all number one. But I can pick a top three for you: paparazzi, bed and the muscle suit. They really stick to your memory. There are, however, looks which were not posted in full. Even more shocking ones. One time I went naked, but as a lady. I just changed a body part.

I’m asking myself which one. Did it hurt?

No, it’s back to the way it was, so all is good.

That’s reassuring. How do you even come up with these outfits?

Mostly because of boredom. Everyone looks the same at shows. Like mannequins. For us, these events are like masquerades. We want to make them exciting ourselves. At the end of the day, we go to these shows to be seen. Paris Fashion Week wasn’t really Paris Fashion Week, but it was “Tommy’s Fashion Week”because we just appeared everywhere. You could not miss us. That was so fun.

Appearances, album, shoots, releases, tour, …With everything that’s going on with you right now: Are you not crazy stressed?

It’s so stressful, all the time. Sometimes I forget everything and then I’m happy. But most of the time I am only stressed. There is always something I’m working on. And everything happens at the same time.

How do you deal with it? Do you have any tips on how to chill out?

You can’t really chill out fully. I would have to be a guru or a pope to rest on my own. I can’t do that. But I would simply say to try to live more in the moment and don’t forget to have fun. Even if this is something I’m still bad at.

I hope that this too will get better with time for you. That leads us back to the catchphrase “better future” and of course you as a human train. [The producer is standing at the door and pointing at her clock] Tommy, I wish you lots of fun during the rest of the shoot!

[padfootastic]

hello! here’s a lil drabble/ficlet situation about sirius being super invested in baby harry’s life, to the point he gets annoyed and jealous when he’s not immediately caught up on every little thing.

x

“I can’t believe you’d do this to me.”

Lily entered the dining room to an unusually confrontational scene. On one end of the table was her husband, hands held up, palms facing outward in a gesture matched by the pleading look on his face. Right across from him was Sirius, arms crossed across his chest and a severe frown on his face. In the middle, Harry was sitting with a thumb in mouth, watching his father and godfather intently. Lily was a bit surprised at how quiet he was being—usually the presence of his favorite people meant an overload of squeals and shouts and giggles.

“Padfoot—“ James began only to be cut off by Sirius’ hand swiping through the air.

“No, James, I didn’t expect this from you of all people,” he took a deep breath and Lily was startled to see the emotions play out on his face. “How could you?”

Lily decided to enter the conversation then before things could devolve any further.

“Er, what’s going on here?” In any other situation, the way in which both their heads swivelled to look at her, coupled with the surprise on their face, would’ve been comical but Lily was too distracted to care about that right now. She couldn’t even remember the last time James and Sirius had had a disagreement. Those two just didn’t do that.

Which was another issue all in itself and if she focused too long on it, it made her head hurt (how can two people who spend as much time as they do together never have any tension?? she didn’t get it, didn’t think she ever would). But for now, she had more important things to tend to.

“Well?” She asked again, seeing the expressions change on their face. James was making a face, not unlike a child who’d been caught with their hand in a biscuit jar whereas Sirius had doubled down. His brows were furrowed, lips pressed into a straight line, and the most stubborn expression Lily had ever seen on his face.

“We, er, that is—“ James tried, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “It’s nothing, hon.”

Lily snorted in response. She could see Sirius staring incredulously at James and really, this was just getting weirder by the second.

“Evans,” Sirius said, curtly. She didn’t even bother correcting him knowing it was a lost cause at this point. “Will you please remind your husband that we had an understanding and I won’t stand for him breaking it as he pleases?”

“Sirius—“

Lily doesn’t let James finish his groan before cutting in. “What understanding?”

“Did you and your husband not name me Harry’s godfather for a reason?”

“…yes?”

“And does that not entail certain responsibilities and obligations on my part—“

“…Yes.”

“—as well as yours?” Sirius finished, speaking over her uncertain agreement. Now she was a bit stumped.

“Ours?” She blinked at him, wondering what he was on about. A quick glance in James’ direction showed no help from that side. Her husband had the most resigned expression of exasperation on his face, which was really saying something, considering how often he looked like that.

“But of course!” Sirius said, “You are aware that James has the mirrors, yes?” This time he didn’t even bother waiting for her to nod before continuing. “Which means instantaneous communication.” He stressed the last two words, eyes squinting and a stern wrinkle appearing on his brow.

“Si, stop being so dramatic,” James cut in. “You’re confusing the dragonshite out of Lily.”

She grimaced lightly. “Very elegantly put, darling.” Her dear, dear husband only sent her a cheeky wink in return.

“Fine,” Sirius sneered. “Let me ask you this, then.” He pointed one long, pale finger in her direction, her eyebrows raising at the attempt at intimidation.

“Is it or is it not true that Harry, my godson, crawled on his bum across the living room exactly eight days and three hours ago as of right now?”

She opened her mouth to say—not sure what, exactly, but something. Before she could, though, Sirius had already cut in with an overemphasised, “And. Is it or is it not true that James, once my dearest friend—“

“Once?” James yelped.

“—and you, fellow co-wife—“

“You can’t be serious right now,” James groaned, clearly distressed if he wasn’t considering his egregious word choice.

“—did not even bother to use aforementioned mirror to inform me, post-haste?” Sirius finished dramatically, with the air of someone throwing down the gauntlet. He stared at them with a ridiculous air of triumph around him, daring them to disagree.

Lily could only stare in bemused disbelief at her husband’s best friend, nay, brother. One of her closest friends in his own right. Someone who, by all accounts, was incredibly smart and articulate.

Perhaps his bloodline was making more of an appearance here?

“He really has gone off his rocker, hasn’t he, Lils?” James’ spoke what she dared not say out loud. “Should’ve considered this before putting him in charge of the sprog.”

The words had the intended effect. In front of her wide eyes, Sirius basically puffed up in outrage, reminding her terribly of a charm-dried duck. He leaned forward to wrap a possessive arm around Harry, as if James could’ve been anything but joking and they’d take his precious godchild away from him, keeping him plastered to his chest. Harry, for his part, was as overjoyed as ever. He happily wrapped his chubby fingers around two of Sirius’ and prompt tried to insert the whole thing in his mouth, drooling and chewing gummily.

And Sirius, who was notorious for not even deigning to shake hands with strangers (and on one unavoidable occasion, had actually cast a cleaning charm on his palm the moment they’d stepped back from the handshake), someone who applied three different kinds of purifying charms on anything before using it, barely even spared a glance in his direction beyond pressing a kiss to his crown.

“Well, nothing for it then,” Sirius sniffed, nose slightly in the air in a way that reminded Lily entirely too much of Narcissa Black—not that Sirius would appreciate the comparison, of course. “I’m afraid I must take my godson out and away from this dishonourable institution then.”

And in front of both the Potters’ disbelieving eyes, Sirius actually swept out of the room with their child happily lounging in his arms, neither of them looking back even once.

“James…”

He made an answering squeak, still looking at the doorway through which Harry had basically been kidnapped by an over zealous godfather.

“What just happened?”

Her only response was the sound of his head landing on the table with a thunk.

[themculibrary]

Bonding Masterlist

5 Times MJ Made a Friend (+1 Time She Wanted More) (ao3) - juurensha mj/peter G, 3k

Summary: It’s hard moving to a new school, but maybe hanging out with a bunch of nerds is exactly what MJ needs. Also, she tells Spiderman to call her MJ because really, who does Peter think he’s kidding?

A Special Bond (ao3) - Capsicle2013 G, 2k

Summary: When Tony needs to leave for a few days on a business trip, Steve watches Peter and promises they’re going to have a lot of fun. What he doesn’t expect is creating a special bond with the little boy and officially being welcomed into the little family he’s come to love.

Circus Tragic (ao3) - xWitchAlchemistx T, 188k

Summary:

Thor's 'overpowered' fight with the Hulk on Sakaar leads the Grandmaster to regress Thor back to being a child.  Loki decides he has to rescue his brother, the child Thor thinks he needs to rescue Loki, and Thor's best chance of a cure is in Asgard.  Where Hela has taken over and Loki has no desire to be, so he decides to detour in Alfheim. Valkyrie and Bruce think Loki has bad intentions and that Thor needs to be rescued from Loki.

Incidentally, Loki's heart is increasingly a giant soft spot for his doting little!big brother.

Sakaar-Alfheim-Asgard.

Fireside Chat (ao3) - Rosie2009 T, 2k

Summary: Kate successfully drags Yelena into something that she never expected. However, to her surprise, Kate flourishes in the situation and Yelena is left strangely proud of the kid.

Go Now (ao3) - Sunflower78 G, 1k

Summary:

”I am sorry,” Groot said.

But he had long since learned that all they heard was: “I am Groot.”

The prisoner cursed and spat before turning back around in his hard metal bed. Groot stopped his scratching. He couldn’t blame him; Groot knew they couldn’t understand. That was a part of his life he did not enjoy. The loneliness.

-

Groot meets Rocket.

Honey, Honey, Nearly Killed Me (ao3) - StarksKiddo G, 3k

Summary: Peter never suspected that helping out with Tony’s beehives posed any risk of danger to him. It was just a fun way for the two to spend time together. But while helping to harvest honey from the hives, he discovers that he should probably refrain from any bee related activities in the future.

It's Only My Everything (ao3) - STARSdidathing loki/tony T, 31k

Summary: In order to save Anthony Stark's life, Loki performs a powerful spell. Although the mortal consents and is willing to suffer the consequences of whatever it entails, Loki knows it will be a burden difficult to bear. Because, the only way to save the life of his friend and the mortal he loves, Loki had to bind their lives together.

live, laugh, loki (ao3) - dante_baby G, 5k

Summary: Thor took Loki for some shopping and while they were lying on one of the display beds, they had a very heartwarming conversation.

questions for the universe (ao3) - qui_nn T, 3k

Summary: So, when Mr Stark asks him if he wants to take an eight-hour road trip to his lake house, what is Peter supposed to say? No?

Turns out road trips are much harder than he remembered.

or, peter and tony go on a road trip. an eight-hour-long road trip. in the middle of nowhere.

or or, tony drives, and peter is totally not trying to bond with him. definitely not.

ready or not (ao3) - blondsak pepper/tony G, 3k

Summary: Tony turns back to the group, looking at Morgan. “Okay kiddo, you’re in charge here. Who’s the seeker?”

“I want you to be the seeker, Daddy!” Morgan says, pointing at him.

Tony stifles a groan. “Are you sure, honey? What about Auntie Nat, or Uncle Thor, or--”

“No! It has to be you.”

Tony sighs, resigned to his fate.

--

AKA The entire team plays a giant game of Hide & Seek, with Tony as the unfortunate seeker.

Sleep and Dream of Me (ao3) - airas_story tony/stephen G, 9k

Summary: Once was an incident, twice was a coincidence. Three times was probably a pattern, but in Wong’s defense, he hadn’t been looking for a pattern. Four times… four times was a pretty solid indicator that Wong needed to start paying attention.

5 times Tony helped Stephen sleep, +1 time that Tony helped Stephen wake up.

Swimming (ao3) - von_gikkingen G, 1k

Summary: “Look,” she starts before he can continue with what no doubt would have been quite the self-congratulatory monologue, “we established Mantis can manage a decent metaphor some weeks back now. Can we maybe just say what we actually mean? You suck at being single – and now you’re marginally better at it. Good for you. If I wasn’t star systems away I’d give you a pat on the head.”

The terran rolls his eyes at that. “Are you just mad because you finally have some competition? Because that is adorable. There’s no one in the galaxy that can come close to your impressive record for being… You know, I don’t think single even is the right word in your case.”

“You sound just like Mantis.”

“So she did have a talk with you before she left,” he says. In a very I knew it tone that succeeds in reminding Nebula why she used to find him so puncheable back in the day… “Knew I couldn’t have been the only one.”

The Candy Hunt (ao3) - endlesstwanted bucky/sarah G, 1k

Summary: Sarah and Bucky come back from a Halloween party in Delacroix to find AJ and Cass still awake from trick-or-treating with friends.

there's a starman (waiting in the sky) (ao3) - djinnandtonic G, 2k

Summary: She didn’t think she could come back before she managed to end all of it, but having the others on board with her made everything felt so.. lively. Unlike anything she has experienced.

—

or, in which carol realizes she’s not alone

Unofficial SI Lemonade Business (ao3) - happyaspie pepper/tony G, 4k

Summary:

Morgan's teacher read a book about a boy running a lemonade stand. Morgan is sure she can do it better. After all, she's a Stark! She knows all about, analyzing, marketing, profits and how to propose a good business deal.

“Does this mean we have a deal Mr. Parker?” Morgan asked, emulating her father’s cadence as she spoke. Her hands were on her hips, and her head was dipped down as she looked him over with scrutiny. 

Rather than answer, Peter held out his hand for Morgan to shake. Apparently that wasn’t enough. He had to sign a binding contract as well. The second he scrawled his name at the bottom of the crayon inscribed document, Morgan snatched it up and laughed maniacally.

“You need to start working on product development! I’ll work on marketing materials!”

Vents (ao3) - StepOnMeYosano clint/tony G, 1k

Summary: Hissing under her breath as she felt the vent panels rattle beneath her, Wanda wondered why on earth she had listened to Clint today of all days.

aka

Family bonding :)

While They Were Gone (ao3) - Jadeys_World N/R, 36k

Summary: A glimpse into the lives of the Avengers during The Blip Years

Wing and a Prayer (ao3) - Sholio T, 32k

Summary: Bucky and Sam fall out of a HYDRA plane into the Canadian wilderness. Nothing like a hundred-mile walk to civilization while severely injured and being hunted by HYDRA, right?

[semper-legens]

147. The Fall, by Robert Muchamore

Owned: No, library Page count: 330 My summary: James Adams is in trouble. His last mission went south, culminating in the deaths of his partners and an inquiry being launched into his culpability. Meanwhile, Lauren is offered a last-minute mission to try and get some details from a girl who has been trafficked into the country. Just a simple information-gathering job...until everything gets real dangerous, real fast. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Even after rereading this many CHERUB books, I still have absolutely no idea what to make of them. They're younger than I remember, being a bit more plain in their writing and less subtle than I, an adult reader, would like. I also know the word 'copaganda' now - I feel like part of the reason this series persisted was a vague attempt at realism when portraying its subject, but when a series is going for that it's really noticeable when the authorities are almost never in the wrong. Child spies are fine, abusive training tactics are fine, CHERUBs aren't brainwashed, everything's cool. And this one, sadly, was no exception.

James' half of the story is about a mission gone wrong - he was spying on a Russian mob boss with two adult spies, but the adults murder the mob boss against the plan and are promptly killed themselves, James has to go on the run, and then he's under suspicion for being part of the conspiracy. There's this suspicion that he's being set up by the mission controller, but it turns out that there was a sting going on to figure out what really happened, and James was only being thrown under the bus a little until they could gather information. Once again, the secret services doing something fucked up and underhanded (James is kept in the dark even when the mission controller knows that his information is sound) is handwaved by them doing the right thing the whole time, even if they were doing it in the least ethical way possible. It's gross, particularly because James is clearly under a lot of stress and is in great distress over the whole situation - it'd be a lot to put on an adult agent, never mind a teenager.

Lauren, meanwhile, ends up helping the girl after she returns to her trafficker and gets both of them kidnapped. This was written in 2007, before immigration and the small boats controversies and trafficking were constantly in the news the same way they are right now. As such, while it's noteworthy to me that the girl (Anna) is a white Russian rather than being trafficked from Africa or the Middle East as is sadly common, in all fairness I am looking at this from sixteen years in the future. I like that Anna wasn't exactly demonised for wanting to return to her trafficker and trying everything to get to England; she's suspicious and paranoid, but she has very understandable motives and her plight isn't moralised in a bad way. And Lauren and Anna getting trafficked into the sex trade wasn't treated as salacious or erotic in any way, it was treated with all the horror that situation should entail. There also wasn't any demonisation of sex workers that I remember, either. Sure, there's the perpetuation of the 'helpless trafficked sex worker' stereotype, but on the other hand these things do happen and it is worth highlighting them when they do.

Overall, I think the conclusion I'm coming to about CHERUB is that it's very safe. Sure, there are corrupt cops and bad people in the secret services, but they're always portrayed as being single bad actors, rather than there being any systemic problems going on. It's too realistic to get away with portraying the police and secret service as being the Good Guys without much examination, and it's not silly or campy enough to be able to justify those decisions with it being a story. The kids are heroes, CHERUB is in the right, and any nagging ethical questions about just what the organisation does are completely ignored. That doesn't mean that the books are uninteresting or have no merit. But it does make them disappointing to return to.

Next, a ghost and a laundry, with another look at a graphic novel.

[collectivedirective]

JatH Characterization Masterpost

Jerrica

-Eldest daughter 4.2 gpa syndrome

-She was raised believing she would be a foster mom and has come prepared for all that entails; that means she is responsible and disciplined, but pushes herself to always think of others before she thinks of herself

-She loves music, but that comes second to her parental responsibilities, so even though she and her sisters are very skilled she never thought music would be a viable option for them

-So when Synergy offers her services, the first thing that comes to her mind is to start a band!

-The rockstar persona was a spur of the moment idea, though it came from a subconscious desire to escape her responsibilitie. Jem is everything that Jerrica represses in herself

-Since Jem is more outgoing, she feels more confident around Rio. I personally think Jem is drunk when she tries to kiss Rio during the yacht scene, she wouldn't put Rio in that position while she was sober

Aja

-Middle child syndrome 01, subcategory eldest daughter syndrome

-She is the most emotionally intelligent, and the best at reading the room. She is always the one that distracts Rio when Jerrica needs to transform.

-In the rare scenario that Jerrica isn't taking charge, it is Aja who picks up the load

-Aja, like Jerrica, thinks about others needs and desires before her own, though Aja has this to a lesser degree.

-She sympathizes with Jerrica for taking on so much burden, and so she is not critical of Jerrica for wanting to keep her identity a secret from Rio, and will defend her when her sisters criticize her.

Shana

-Middle child syndrome 02

-I just checked the wiki and it says shes the bass guitarist and thats basically all you need to know about her characterization

-Shana is reserved and shy, and I am 95% certain she has RSD.

-She is more easy-going, allowing her sisters to make the big decisions

-She and Kimber are closest with each other, and she'll go to her first for advice. These two are the creative masterminds behind JatH, generating 75% of their music while Jerrica and Aja edit the drafts

-Shana quietly agrees with Kimber that Jerrica should rip off the band-aid already and tell Rio that she is Jem. No dick is worth his cheating ass!

-But shes too nice to confront Jerrica directly, and too empathetic to Jerrica to back up Kimber during an argument. But once the dust settles she will validate Kimber and reassure her of her logic

-Shana knows that her advice will only make Jerrica feel worse. She knows from experience that RSD hits like a bitch and she doesn't want to inflict that on Jerrica.

Kimber

-The youngest of the Bentons, her whole life she's relied on Jerrica for behavior inhibition. Also tutoring, thats the only thing keeping her grades up

-Kimber is the Anna to Jerrica's Elsa

-While the lack of behavior inhibition makes her more distractible and impulsive, it also allows her to explore paths that would have otherwise been dismissed by Jerrica

-Winx Stella syndrome: Kimber is very blunt in her relationships; she will tell you exactly what she is thinking about if you ask her, and she will tell you even if you dont ask

-Regarding Stormber: Stormer will always let Kimber take the lead in their adventures. After Kimbers decisions for both of them wind them up in trouble, Kimber will FINALLY gain some much-needed behavior inhibition

Raya

-Winx Aisha syndrome: she is the only hologram that isn't a Benton foster girl, and thus has known the rest of the band for the least amount of time.

-She is afraid of being left behind, of losing her place in the band because she is so new, so she does her best to be kind and sweet and appealing and low-maintainence

-This would make her quick friends with Shana, and instinctively reach out to her when searching for companionship. Unfortunately Shana is frequently with Kimber

-Kimber bluntly tells Raya that she would rather Raya be upfront about herself and her values; after all, Raya knows much more about them than they do about her

-Of course, if Raya decides to open up to Kimber about her fear of abandonment, Kimber would immediately empathize with Raya. She might see some of Shana in Raya.

-This communication would not be made directly; rather, Raya would tell Shana and Shana would tell Kimber

Pizzazz

-Owns the netflix account

-Her father gives her money instead of love and attention, so she looks for those things elsewhere- ie stardom and lawsuits

-She and Riot are very similar in this way, though I imagine they would bring out the worst in each other. In the scenario where they team up, these two would be a formidable opponent.

-If she were ever to team up with the Stingers it would not be by Riots invitation. Either Minx or Radish whatever her name is would have to take an interest in Pizzazz.

-Eventually she graduates to hanging out with the Stingers, and by proxy Riot, who eventually warms up to Pizzazz. Think TommyInnit and Wilbursoot.

-Maybe she one day joins the polycule who knows. This is an alternative ending to the "Lovesick" arc, and here Pizzazz would not rejoin the Misfits

Roxy

-Shes the smartest of the Misfits, but doesn't realize it because she is blinded by her insecurities: she didn't finish high school and is illiterate. Dyslexia?

-Roxy also has RSD, though where Shana recoils inward, Roxy lashes out in defensiveness

-My hc is that Roxy meets Pizzazz while skipping school. She sneaks into Pizzazz's old money debutante ball and they become fast friends.

-Roxy is probably the one who sets up the gear for the Misfits. Not because shes selfless like that, but because shes the only one who knows how.

-Stormer tries to help out but this irritates Roxy more than anything, because she has to give Stormer instructions and its more distracting than helpful

Stormer

-Too nice to be a bad girl and too spineless to be a good girl

-She is a borderline good guy, but when caught between an objectively moral choice and the Misfits, she will choose the Misfits.

-Do not mistake this for loyalty.

-She might object to a lot of what the Misfits do but her inaction enables it (compare to Aja?)

-Stormer subconsciously understands that the things she does as a Misfit are harmful, but she can usually frame herself as a victim to peer pressure and thus dodge the blame.

-This charade only holds up so long as she is in proximity to the Misfits validation; without their reassurance she cannot deny the awful things she has done.

-Cue Stormber!

-Kimber would be a good influence on Stormer. She openly condemns things she disagrees with, and will criticize what Stormer has done in the past. This will be a harsh confrontation, but paired with healthy communication it will make Stormer a better person.

-She will learn that its okay to vocally disagree with the people you care about (ie the Misfits), and that conflict doesn't mean the relationship is over

Jetta

-british

Rio

-He is a hothead and posessive over those he loves, which works as both a protective instinct and a destructive one

-When Rio reciprocates the kiss to Jem he establishes himself as a huge jerk, because he is technically cheating but not really??

-Because in his mind he is under the impression that Jem is a different woman than Jerrica, so he believes that he is cheating. In another world the mistress would have actually been a different person.

-The solution to this is not my own idea, I saw it somewhere else:

-Jerrica and Rio were never dating, but have been pining for each other since they were in high school.

-Jerrica feels confident enough to court Rio as Jem, but Rio feels like he is betraying Jerrica by accepting Jems advances

-The love triangle between Jem and Rio and Riot is very much like Malina versus Darklina: does the female lead choose her childhood friend and longtime crush, or follow the mysterious seductive stranger?

Riot

-" The Perfect Man"

-Headcanon poly relationship with Minx and Radish. Weaponize the evil power of friendship you manwhore!!!

-I am skeptical of his backstory. Yes I know the show's tone indicates that he is telling the truth just hushshh shhhh shh.

-To refresh, his claim is as follows: he comes from humble beginnings, and his passion for music was suppressed by his abusive father. The Stingers struggled financially for a long time, and it is implied they became homeless. They reached the top purely by hard work.

-What we know about his backstory is purely of what he tells us: it could very well be that he was lying about his rags to riches journey

-The reason I think this is because of the Stingers behavior in the show: their frequent destruction of property, their sense of entitlement to everything and everyone, their scams, their mind games and manipulations, and other irresponsible, destructive behaviors that could only have been enabled by old money paying off the lawsuits.

-That is my first interpretation: Riot is a narcissist and lied about his backstory.

-Second interpretation is that Riot is only pretending to be a narcissist, and is telling the truth. He may be compensating for his jealousy of old money with faux self-importance. He frequently states that he is the "perfect man," after all. He might be trying to convince himself.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

One thing that has always bothered me about the magical system in HP is how much it... doesn’t exist? No one questions anything, there’s almost no theoretical exploration, and Hermione Granger (someone I’ve always found to be of average intelligence at best) is the brightest witch of her age.

Some characters seem to be inexplicably more powerful, but I wonder if it isn’t simply a matter of discipline and will-power.

What are your thoughts on magic? We never really see what light vs. dark entails, so fanfic authors tend to make it up as they go along, but do you have any head-canons about how magic works in HP?

I mean, to be fair, it wasn’t really the point of JKR’s series. She just wanted to write about a kid going to a magic boarding school in Scotland with this quirky witch aesthetic. 

No need for her to placate us uber nerds who demand a sensible explanation to the minutia of her magical system. 

Right, but yes, it clearly bothers me too. No one questions anything, there’s no understanding of why wands and spells even work, or why it has to be in this weird pseudo-Latin. No one even bothers to learn Latin, for that matter, and you think they would given the damn spells. 

Hermione Granger is the brightest witch of her age given that “her age” is either around 30 people (the amount of people in her year) or else around 300 (the population of Hogwarts at a given time) which is a pitiful amount. She also is an extremely hard worker and actually reads her textbooks, sadly I think this gets you ahead of 95% of the population.

Part of the reason I think the Wizarding World thinks like this is that they’re this incredibly tiny, cut off, insular society. Generally, when you have a small society cut off like that you tend to lose innovation or even understanding of technology you have.

But that’s not what you asked. Right.

Personally, I think there is no light and dark magic. Magic is just this part of the natural universe that muggles, for whatever reason, are not able to directly access. It’s neither good nor bad, it just is. For that matter, I don’t think spells themselves really exist, or rather, they’re not what magic really is in its purest form but instead a way that humans can easily access and control magic to perform a certain task. Kind of a glorified API if you will. 

So, dark magic and light magic are instead arbitrary labels that wizards apply to their own tool box based on the functions of that tool. If you have a tool that is only designed for/can be used for the murder and torture of sentient beings: well, that’s bad, we’ll call that dark. That said, do I think the spells themselves are inherently evil? No. It’s like if you open up your tool box, pick out a sledgehammer, and go, “This, my child, is an instrument of pure evil and you must never touch it.” Well, that’s a bad comparison, it’d be like taking a handgun out of your tool box and saying “this is a dark weapon”. Now, this gets into a debate I don’t want to get into, but to me dark spells are a lot like handguns (they’re designed for only one purpose and there’s no squirming your way out of what that purpose is).

Now, I think wizards have forgotten this (mostly because they don’t understand what spells or magic is), and so they get very hung up on the labels of spells or even just your odd genetic trait (i.e. parseltongue). So, we have these weird moments where someone uses, say, the severing charm to cut somebody open in the middle of the street. And it’s less bad than if they had used the killing curse to kill them painlessly and easily, because the severing charm’s not dark magic. 

It’s like... If someone were to walk out and bash someone over the head with a sledgehammer until it kills them it’s less evil than if they shot them in the head with a handgun.

Wizards seem to miss the point of this. 

As for what magic is, I believe it’s... direct energy that wizards are able to access in a way that muggles (thus far) cannot. What do I mean by thus far? Well, look at electricity. In ye olden days, I’m sure that if you asked a wizard they would say that making artificial light without flame is a property solely done by magic and muggles are not capable of it. Well, muggles then did it, and suddenly the definition and parameters of magic change. Wizards are kind of like chess grand masters who suddenly lose to your AI du jour, who say that it doesn’t count because the AI didn’t really do it like a human would. It’s not real intelligence.

I don’t believe people have magic in and of themselves, any more than anyone else does at any rate, because we see too little differences between powerful and mediocre wizards. You’re either a squib or you’re not, there doesn’t really seem to be a spectrum, and those who struggle with spells appear to do so for other reasons (Neville has severe confidence issues and is traumatized, Harry’s an idiot, etc.) 

I think what separates the great wizards from the rest is hard work, the ability to read books and learn from them, even an inkling of understanding of how spells really work and how to create them (and this makes you Voldemort level right here), and a good ear to be able to pronounce your ridiculous pseudo Latin.

The wand is a tool specifically designed so that, with repeatable easy to understand steps, you can perform a whole array of tasks and even use them as building blocks to develop a new spell (combine swishes, flicks, and various garbled sentences together in such a way and BAM new spell).

Your wand, in other words, is your API to direct and access untold amounts of energy from the universe.

But people have forgotten that so instead what you memorize are very specific function calls that will prove useful in your daily life.

As for the wand and spells themselves, well, here’s my hokey ridiculous theory on how that came about. A long time ago, a brilliant foreigner enters the Roman Empire with a revolutionary idea that puts him on the level of Einstein/Newton/Feynman Name Your Stupidly Brilliant Physicist. He says, hey, how about instead of doing these time consuming magical rituals we develop a tool that, in a matter of seconds, allows us to perform truly complicated and powerful magic any time we want. No more relying on having the right ingredients about, virgin sacrifices, the full moon, etc.

Everyone probably laughs at him, but then he goes off and designs a rudimentary wand, and through probably some uber ritual that was dangerous as hell implements this system by which by flicking your wand a certain way and saying basic commands like “levitate”, “repair”, etc. you can perform these tasks.

Only, the guy’s foreign and Good Will Hunting (no formal education in the empire), so he doesn’t actually speak Latin. So what you have instead is this weird half-Latin like, “Leviupwards Fly”, “Repair-o”, etc. 

It sounds dumb as hell, but goddammit it works, and more it gives Roman wizards an unheard of advantage against their enemy wizards who are all stuck doing these stupid rituals. They suddenly have a vast military might, so long as they use these wands and spells this guy came up with.

Everybody who’s anybody, who wants to win a fight, is now using wands. Wandcraft becomes a huge deal and people specialize in fine tuning these things exactly so as to get the maximum efficiency for a particular user.

And they probably go up to our guy and say, “Hey, buddy, can you make this in actual Latin? I can barely remember what it is I’m supposed to say to get this to work” and after the hours, and hours, and hours he spent making this thing that nobody helped him with he goes, “DO IT YOURSELF, BITCH”. And they never do because they’re too damn lazy/have no idea how he actually did it and any attempt to recreate it ends up with something that’s pitiful and doesn’t work. 

So, they’re all stuck with it, and thousands of years later they forget this guy even existed and while there’s a recognition that not all magic has to be performed by wands there’s just this feeling that the wand is the magic. And so no one will ever come up with an English/French/Whatever version where when you say “Up” the thing goes up. 

And that’s “The History of Magic” as brought to you by The Carnivorous Muffin.

[sebastian-thibodeau]

E U R E K A  T A S K  0 0 2 // FINDING YOUR ROOTS

SEBASTIAN THIBODEAU’S FAMILY.

Where was your muse born?

Bash was born Sebastian James Thibodeau in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Were they the first born, middle or youngest? Are they an only child? Adopted?

Sebastian is an only child, as his parents weren’t exactly up to the task of parenthood or the responsibility entailed.

Does your muse have a favorite memory with their family?

Bash was, in essence, raised by his paternal grandmother. He and his grandmother spent a great deal of time together, particularly in her green house, which had a great deal of exotic flowers. He loved to spend time with her there, often losing track of the hours as they chatted and tended to the plants.

Does your muse get along with their family? What is the family dynamic?

Bash has a very strained relationship with his parents, particularly because they weren’t exactly parents. Both of his parents worked in the foreign service, and spent much of his life abroad, with him constantly being plucked from one country to another and then subsequently being sent back to live with his grandparents in Toronto. As an adult, they’ll speak on someone’s birthday or a holiday, but that’s the extent of it.

Does your muse have a favorite family member? Why?

His grandmother by far — she taught him of unconditional love and acceptance, and has always encouraged his dreams.

What are the names of your muse’s parents? Siblings?

Sebastian’s father is James Alexander Thibodeau, and his mother is Ronit Mofaz Thibodeau. His father is of English descent and a native-born Canadian, while his mother’s family was Mizrahi Jewish and she was raised for some years of her life in Cairo, Egypt. He was more-so raised by his paternal grandparents, though, whose names are William James Thibodeau and Emilia Jane Thibodeau.

Who does your muse take after more? Any habits?

Bash shares mannerisms of both of his parents, but in terms of his temperament and interests, he is likened more to his paternal grandfather. They both enjoy a good morning tea and to sit quietly and read the paper, a pastime they typically enjoy when he comes back to Toronto to visit them.

[amiedala]

SOMETHING MORE (the mandalorian x reader)

CHAPTER 28: You Wanted Proof

RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!)

WARNINGS: sexual content & descriptions of violence

SUMMARY: “Where the hell did you go, you scared the life out of me—”

And then you’re done talking, because Din pulls out a ring. You gasp, choke back a sob, and stare at it. It’s a simple silver band, but the structure and strength of it looks exactly like the beskar his armor is made out of. You inhale again, staring at it, and when you get close enough, you see that there’s something carved on the inside. It’s a star, the same one you embossed into your necklace, and around it, the words “ni kar’tayl su”, light but intentional. You try to breathe, but all you’re doing is sobbing, looking frantically from the ring in Din’s palm to his open face, and when you cross the divide between the two of you, seizing his glorious cheeks between your hands, he meets you in the middle.

“You wanted proof,” he says, again, and everything feels dizzying and starry and huge. You feel your heart rush with the feeling of belonging, that something more that started right here, in this same spot, on this barren planet, months and months again. “Last time, I didn’t have a ring. But I do now, and I’m never leaving your side again.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: HELLO MY LOVES AND HAPPY SOMETHING MORE SATURDAY!!!! i had such an emotional time writing this chapter, and i hope y'all love it!!! this chapter is dedicated to Brittany Broski (yes THE kombucha girl) because she recommended SM to all of her followers?!?!?! i am still in shock!!! Brittany if you're somehow seeing this, i love you <3

more notes at the end angels!!! enjoy!!

*

When your consciousness fades back in, everything is starry and dreamy. Kicker’s design has a lot more open windows than the Crest did, so you open your eyes to the blurred galaxy slowly traipsing by, an ache deep in your skull, the feeling of prolonged sleep heavy on your bones. You rub at your eyes with your fingers, shifting to find Din, because even though there’s light in here, he’s still good at avoiding it. When you turn your head to where he’s sitting, faced away from you in the pilot’s seat, you see the Darksaber hanging out of his hands, his head low, his vision intense.

You skip by it at first, cataloguing the way he looks—haunted, exhausted, hungry—and then your eyes find the wicked beacon again and something clicks into place. You shoot upwards with a gasp, rocketing your aching body up by the heels of your hands, wild and shocked.

“You’re awake,” Din remarks, quietly, and you point at the saber held in the palms of his gloved hands.

“I just had the craziest dream,” you say in response, heart still hammering. “We—we were in a city, getting shot at, and after you patched me up, you told me you were the ruler of a whole entire planet and then just…let me go to sleep.”

That gets a smile. Just a little one, his pink mouth quirked up at the edges, his eyebrows still hesitant. You’re not used to seeing Din’s full face, watching his bare skin shift and change in real time, even though you’ve catalogued every inch of it, it still feels off. “I hate to break it to you,” he starts, lowly, “but none of that was a dream. And the bacta knocked you out, so you needed the rest.”

You laugh. It’s not full, it comes out disjointed and too loud, but it’s enough to coax you to sit up straighter and stare at it. “What…does being the ruler of Mandalore entail, exactly?”

Din stares at you, down at the Darksaber, and back at you. “Bo-Katan didn’t tell me,” he sighs, finally, and you can tell he’s reluctant, but you also know he’s been keeping this in for two weeks, maybe more, and so you scoot closer to where he’s sitting on the floor, trying to show him you’re attentive, that you’re listening. “I—she told me about the saber, when I went on that mission with her and her…Mandalorians.” He grimaces at the word, like it tastes rancid in his mouth. “You were there on Nevarro when I told her I didn’t want it. I have no interest in it. What do I need a weapon like that for, anyway? I just wanted to get it out of Gideon’s hands.”

You nod. “I remember.”

“Well,” Din sighs, looking back at the weapon in his hands, “she didn’t tell me why she wanted it. She gave that whole speech about wanting to—to have it returned to the rightful leader of Mandalore. I didn’t care, honestly, at that point. All I wanted to do was protect you and the kid and kill Gideon. But when we…we asked for her help, when Cara and I were going to attack Gideon and save Grogu, Bo-Katan told me again that the Darksaber was hers. I agreed. But she didn’t tell me that the weapon has to be won in battle for it to…belong to someone. Gideon had the Darksaber. I fought Gideon. I defeated him, so I took it out of his hands. I tried to give it back to her,” Din exhales, low and long, dragging a hand over his face and stubble, “but she wouldn’t take it. I told her she could fight me for it, even, that I’d roll over for her and let her have whatever ceremony she wanted, but she just stared at me like she wanted to kill me. Eventually, I just let her take Gideon back to Mandalore, because I didn’t…know what else to do.”

You nod again, slowly. “So…so you can’t challenge her to a duel or something?”

Din looks at you, incredulous. “I tried—”

“What about a thumb war?” you ask, and you’re not trying to make light of the situation, but a laugh starts bubbling up in your throat and you press your lips together. “Like, a real one, with a ring, Cara as the referee. You just…let Bo-Katan win, and that’s it. No harm. No foul. Just sore thumbs.”

The look on Din’s face is totally unreadable. Just as quickly as it started, your laugh evaporates back down your throat, and you lean in closer to him, immediately wanting to apologize. You’re not sure why, you just know that there’s something deeper to all of this, something more. “Apparently, I’m a zealot,” Din says, finally. “My…my clan, who raised me—they’re descendants of purist, extremist group from back on Mandalore. Before it was sieged, before—” he cuts off, abruptly, and you know he’s frustrated. “I wasn’t born there. I don’t even know the history of the planet,” Din continues, tiredly. “And it seems that I don’t know what it means to be a true Mandalorian. How am I supposed to be anyone’s ruler?”

You bite your lip. You lean in closer, and when you lift your hand to touch his face, you feel him relax under your fingertips. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough. “For what it’s worth,” you whisper, cocking your head to the side, stroking your thumb across his cheekbone, “I think you’d make an excellent one.”

“I don’t know the first thing about being in charge—”

“You’re a father,” you interrupt him, quietly. “To the strangest, strongest, alien baby in the galaxy. You’ve protected us—and countless others—from certain death. I’d say that’s more than enough credentials to be deemed a fit leader.”

Din stares at you. “Except,” he says, hollowly, “I don’t have my kid anymore, I’ve shown my face, and with the way Bo-Katan and her group hate me, I can’t imagine Mandalore would ever accept me as their ruler.”

You swallow. Your breath hitches in your throat, caught on words that aren’t there yet. “Din—”

“I just—” he starts, then cuts himself off, eyes drifting from yours down to the Darksaber in his grasp. “I don’t want to,” he admits, his voice low. “I—I miss being a bounty hunter. I miss not having the fate of the galaxy in my hands. People relying on me—you, the baby—having to do this all—I want to go back. I want it to stop.”

It’s your turn to stare. “Wow,” you say, quietly, dropping both of your hands away. “So taking care of your family is a burden to you.” And you don’t mean it, because you know that’s not what he meant, but your fiancé begging and hoping to go back to a time before you were in his life, before his child was either, cuts deep. And it stings, the more you look at him.

“Nova,” he starts, “cyar’ika—” and then Din cuts himself off, hands dropping the saber to the floor, leaning earnestly towards you. “I don’t want to go back to that. I never—I never want to be without you again. I’d be the ruler of ten planets if it meant I go to keep you by my side. I just—”

“It’s a lot,” you finish, quietly, hands fumbling at your collarbone for the necklace that isn’t there. Immediately, you feel horrible. “I know.”

Din looks back at you, hooks his finger under your shin, gently forcing your gaze to return to his. “For what it’s worth, I’m going to help you save the world,” he whispers, and you know he’s exaggerating, but his promise, free and so gentle, makes everything in your body quiet. “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

“For what it’s worth,” you repeat, the words so quiet that they’re barely air, “Mandalore would follow you anywhere, too.”

Din’s gaze is complicated, complex. You don’t know what he’s going to say, and when he does, you have to strain your ears to listen. “I didn’t mean it, when I said I miss being a bounty hunter. I don’t miss anything from before I met you. I—I just want my life back. The one with you, and our kid, and the ship we called home.”

You lick your lips, looking slowly out the window at the crush of space. Even without looking, you feel Din’s eyes follow yours, tracking the luminescence, and just for a second, you hold the two of you there. “I’m here,” you remind him, finally, “and this is a new ship, but I think we can make it into a home. And…” you trail off, grabbing both sides of Din’s face gently, gravitating his eyes back to yours, “Grogu might not be here, right now, but he’s always ours. And I think we both know that between the three of us, there’s nothing in this entire damned galaxy that can keep us apart. What was it that you called us back on Dagobah? A clan of three?”

That small smile works its way back onto Din’s face. He nods, just once, resolute.

“Clan Djarin,” you whisper, leaning in to kiss the man you love, “is pretty resilient, you know.”

“Oh,” Din mouths back, and you let him come the rest of the way to you, meeting you in the middle, “are we now?”

“You’re a Mandalorian bounty hunter, I’m the Force sensitive punching bag of the new Empire, and Grogu, our child, is older than the both of us and off with the greatest Jedi Master we know of,” you murmur, feeling the weight of your foreheads bumping together, “I kind of think we have to be.”

When you kiss Din, you let everything run out of you backward, trying to clear your mind. And when he pulls you onto his lap, guiding you as close to him as physically possible, you feel your knee crash up against the saber before it skitters away, back under the dashboard, into the darkness. You kiss him, letting the thing roll away from the both of you, too preoccupied with the security you feel to care about where it lands.

*

Hours pass. The two of you doze, on and off, and when you wake up for good, you check the nav system built into the dashboard to just see where you are. You’re not in much of a hurry to dock anywhere, truthfully, because you’re enjoying the uninterrupted coast through space, and the last time you were on a planet, the both of you nearly died, but there’s something pulsing under your skin. It’s alive in the same way your worry has been, the anxiety of knowing something big and scary is coming. It’s restlessness, you realize, everything about your fight or flight activated in both directions at once. When you get up for good, you slip away to the fresher, letting the hot water roll over your face, your aching shoulders, your tired muscles in your legs from always running. When you’re clean, you step out of the shower, studying your reflection in the tiny little mirror. You press your fingertips lightly to your face, puffy from sleep, trying to decide if you still look like you used to, or if the past year of love and fighting and loss and everything in between has settled permanently in the ridges of your face.

When you dry off, slipping back into fresh clothes, you take extra time to catalogue all the pockmarks of scars drawn into your skin. As always, you spend extra attention on the jagged, lightning bolt shaped thing running across your stomach. No matter how many years pass, none of it fades away. The skin is still raised slightly, a memory of the ache, and every time you press on it, you can feel it, residual. The other battle scars you’ve accumulated since are smaller, each one trackable, quantifiable. This one—and the way it catalyzed the rest of your life—stands triumphant, eternal. You let your shirt drop back down over it before you spend too much time staring at it.

The second that you climb back up the ladder, you realize something is off. Din is half-clothed, and you’re ready to lay back down on the floor with him and let him undo all the cleaning you just did, but he stands and turns around at your reappearance.

“What’s wrong,” you say, immediately, voice catching on its way out of your mouth.

“Someone called,” Din says, and his voice sounds off. “Tried to reach you through the comm system. I couldn’t tell who it was, or what they wanted.”

You stare at him. “Did you pick it up?”

Din looks from you to your commlink, his gaze skipping back over to you, his full eyebrows furrowed in concern. “I…tried to,” he answers, finally, “but it seemed corrupted. Listen for yourself,” he continues, pressing the microphone into your hand. You fold yourself down into the pilot’s chair, squinting out at the space slowly streaking past the window, knowing neither of you are currently under attack, but no one’s told the anxiety bubbling back up into your chest.

Slowly, you press the playback button. Din’s right—the voice is scrambled, tinny, off-putting. It sounds like random, grotesque grunting. The rhythm of it doesn’t sound much like a language. Even though you can’t understand it, you’ve heard the natural cadence of dozens of different languages, and the sounds playing back to you are warbled and disjointed, and you can’t get anything viable out of it.

“Weird,” you mutter, under your breath, sliding your fingernail between your teeth. You press the button again and again, let the voice spin down to nothing until you’re sure you’ve listened to it enough to gain any kind of insight, and you give up, letting the noises warble and stomp their way to their incongruous end, seconds of loud screeching building up until it cuts off. The feedback makes both of you cover your ears.

“Did you get anything?” Din asks, lowly, and you shake your head. “I—I thought you had the contact system disabled.”

“I do,” you whisper back, bringing up a knee to your chest, resting your cheek against it, gaze flipping from Din to the comm to back to Din. “I can only make outgoing calls right now. My tracking’s off, too, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of traffic out here in this part of the galaxy.” You hesitate, scanning the space around you frantically, making sure that your guess is accurate. It is. There’s no one out here except the two of you and the small asteroid fields that flux and flow, and the silence that was once comforting is now unsettling. You stare again at the commlink before you attach it back to the dashboard, pulling up your exact coordinates, trying to locate the two of you. You’re coasting through the bridge between the Mid Rim and the Outer Rim, a vast no-man’s-land. The planets are scattered haphazardly, and you check the fuel gauge, trying to see how much longer you and Din can stay out here, floating, unnoticed.

“Nova.”

You barely recognize your name’s been spoken until Din asks it again. You spin back towards him, biting down on your lower lip. “Yeah?”

He hesitates before moving a step closer to you. Maker, he’s so tall. The two of you have been in this exact position countless times, you sitting, him standing over you. It doesn’t intimidate you anymore, how large he is, how present his body is, but it’s still exhilarating to have him eclipse you. “How are we doing on fuel?” he asks, and something deep buried inside of you tells you that wasn’t the question he was initially going to ask.

“We need more soon,” you answer, softly, trying to figure out what his original point was going to be. But Kicker starts beeping, and you turn your attention back to the dashboard, trying to figure out what she needs. And, right on time, the little lever built into the fuel gauge has shifted to empty, and you sigh, setting the course to the next planet in the nav system. “Have you ever been to—” you squint, trying to sound out the name in your head before speaking it aloud, but you’re not in much luck, “—Khubeaie?”

Din stares at you blankly.

“Yeah, me neither,” you say softly, letting Kicker navigate her way down into the planet’s atmosphere. It’s night, so everything is cast over in deep blue shadow, but the city seems to glitter even in the silence. You park in a nearly empty landing bay, and when you stand up, Din’s already almost completely dressed. He stares at his helmet, and you pick it up off the ground and press it into his hesitant hands, nodding at him. “I know,” you whisper, “but remember the last time we were on the ground without you armored up?”

He looks at you to the visor on the helmet, his deep brown eyes intent and wary. “It still feels wrong,” Din manages, and his voice is still so unsure that you feel your heart ache in your chest.

“I know,” you repeat, reaching your hand up to graze against his face, thumb tracing the pattern over his groomed mustache, letting him settle into your touch. “It’s safer this way.”

Din nods as if he’s steeling himself, and then he inhales, pulling the helmet over his head. You offer him a small smile, the corners of your mouth upturned and reflected against his armor. You pull on your jacket over your nondescript clothes, adjusting the shawl you got back on Cantonica over your shoulders to pull up over your hair if you’ll need it. The atmosphere here is sultry and shifting, the darkness cast over the tall buildings amorphous. You’ve never heard of this place, but with its proximity to Tatooine, you’re not surprised that the people here a mix of the same locale—mostly humans, some Twi’leks, a Rodian or two. It’s easy enough to blend in, and when Din falls into step with you, you slide your palm into his, squeezing, to reassure him that everything’s okay, but when you go to drop it, he just laces his fingers through yours even tighter, the two of you silent, walking hand in hand.

“Here,” Din says, quietly, and you look up at a glowing sign that indicates a fuel source in the back. You follow him into the market, looking around for the exits. The second you step into the light of the store, you pull your shawl up over your head, trying to disappear between the aisles as you restock some of the nonperishable food and the bacta the two of you have burned through since the last refuel, and you pull out your small bag of credits to pay.

Din doesn’t come back. It takes a minute, and then another one, and you’re starting to get nervous. The clerk and the other customers don’t seem to be paying you much mind, but after the events on Cantonica, and Takodana, and Ryloth, and Tatooine, you don’t take passivity as innocence anymore. After a few more minutes, you exist the store, shoving what you can into your pockets, peering down the alley that Din disappeared in.

Something about it is off. It give you that same uneasy feeling that kept running cold through your veins back on Kicker, the same anxiety rush that the Darksaber comes with—powerful and intense and not entirely yours.

“Mando?” you call out, quietly. You step gingerly down the cobblestones, trying to keep your footsteps as light and intentional as you can. It’s dark down here, darker than the shifting streets, and it’s a longer path than you would have imagined, but when you turn around to check that you’re not being followed, the street is open and clear in the dim moonlight. “Hey,” you call again, not daring to use Din’s real name, “where’s the fuel?”

Still nothing. The toe of your shoe catches on a cobblestone, and you go down to the ground, hard and fast. You groan, cursing under your breath, pressing your scraped hand to the street, trying to regain your balance before you haul yourself up, but the alley disappears. You gasp out in the darkness, and at first, you think it’s just because the moon is hidden, but the way that the blackness pulses and swallows you doesn’t feel like it’s from natural causes. You’re plunged into another vision, so quickly you get motion sickness. You’re on the ground. When you look up, there’s that violent clash of red and blue again, and that version of yourself that’s running to get in the middle, to blast apart the energy sources—or the lightsabers, you can’t make them out from this distant—is heavy and laden with desperation. You can feel it, wet and hot, muscle memory from something that hasn’t happened yet, and then you hear a noise behind you, so you turn. Suddenly, everything is raining, the ground soaked, your clothes pooling in rivulets all over the ground. You can’t even see two feet in front of you, and when you get plunged underwater, you struggle against the sinking tide, trying to find the right way up. Your name is called, once, then twice, and you scream against the current—and then you’re on solid ground again. It’s like this vision, this type of premonition, doesn’t have anything specific. Everything feels huge and thematic rather than predicting glimpses of what it’s about to happen, like you’re in a dream state and everything is vivid and garish and loud and will slip away immediately when you get pulled out of it.

And then you see him. The baby. He’s sitting on a rock, maybe, or a cliff, you can’t tell, and his little fuzzy head is tousled in the wind, his big bug eyes closed shut, his tiny green palm raised into the open air. You yell out Grogu’s name, and you start running. He doesn’t look like he’s in any danger, it looks peaceful, but that same exact dark feeling bubbling up in your chest says otherwise. You’re running and running as the ground falls away, and you scream out, trying to get to the baby, trying to get there before you fall through the cracks again, and the second you make it there, within an arm’s reach of his glorious little body, something dark and dangerous spits through the air, slicing into you. You yell, thrown backwards, as the shadow completely engulfs you, and, horribly, you get thrown back into the present. You can feel the cobblestones under your hands, the ground hard and weighted underneath your touch, and when you feel yourself come into reality again, Din’s there, standing over you.

“Nova,” he says, his voice low and concerned, “what just happened?”

“Vision,” you manage, gasping, eyes fluttering as your face gets dragged upwards so Din can inspect you. You shake your head back and forth, trying to clear your mind. “I—it was a weird one. Where the hell did you go?”

Din shakes his left hand, the one not on your face, and you register the sloshing of the fuel can before your eyes adjust to the point of recognition. “I was getting us fuel,” he says, gloved hand grabbing at your chin.

“You were gone for a long time,” you manage, finally sitting up fully, your breath catching in your chest. “How far does this alley go on for?”

Din cocks his head at you, visor looking out at where you are. Right in front of you, not even a full foot from your touch, is the end of the alley. Frantically, your head flails from side to side, and then you realize the fuel is a few feet away, a market stand in the dark. You swallow, embarrassed, when you see the owner and his patrons stare over at you.

“Weird,” you mutter, rubbing at your eye, the one still starry and disjointed from your premonition. You get the same unsettled feeling that you did when the feedback from Kicker blared out. “I could have sworn this went on for miles—it doesn’t matter. Did you see me come out here? Did you see me fall?”

Slowly, Din shakes his head back and forth. “No,” he answers, finally, and the gentle, bracing way he’s talking makes your heart accelerate again. You nod, slowly, trying to keep yourself under control, but you’re panicking. Between the odd, screeching message back on Kicker and completely misinterpreting the alleyway, you’re shaken up. Not much, because you don’t scare easy, but enough to feel like you might slightly be going crazy. Eventually, Din pulls you to your feet, and you follow, keeping a close eye on the shifting city around you, intentional about where you plant your strides.

The refueling process is easy. It’s the one procedure on Kicker that she doesn’t fight, and she takes far less gas than the Crest ever did, so it’s much easier to spend your credits on more fuel. Din offers to do it while you start programming in where you’re going next, and you climb the gangplank and scale the ladder, biting your nail as you ponder where to go next. You miss Hoth. You miss Nevarro. Honestly, you miss Kashyyyk most of all, and that’s where you want to go, but you don’t think that the isolation of being there would give you any favors. You have to call Wedge and tell him about what happened on Cantonica, and some part of you really wants to call Cara. She’s not as cut and dry as the Alliance is, but she’s big and strong and every time you’re in her presence, you’re not on high alert. You know Din’s probably not in any hurry to get back to Nevarro now that he’s the one being hunted, but, selfishly, you want to go there.

“Hey, cyar’ika,” Din says, startling you out of your reverie. “Are you okay?”

You nod. Hesitantly, at first, and then stronger. “I’m just trying to decide where we go next.”

Din sighs, long and heavy, and then his fingers are hooking under the rim of his helmet and pulling it off. “Do you have any idea what to do from here?”

You shake your head slowly. “No,” you admit. “I don’t like being aimless, but I also don’t think running wildly around the planets in our closest proximity is the safest thing to do, especially after Cantonica. I know that was our initial plan, but with how much we’ve been attacked, I think it’s safer to let the rest of the New Rogue Squadron poke around for evidence because they’re less likely to be detected. I hate it. I…” you trail off, looking out the window, and your eyes catch on something. You think it’s just the strange, shifting darkness around the both of you, but something feels off. Din calls your name, and you snap out of it, back into your conversation. “I think we need to find out what the Order is,” you continue, even though it makes your heart hammer in fear. “I…I don’t know how. I wish I did. I’m sorry. I feel a little out of my depth.” Admitting it feels like climbing a mountain, but the second the words are out of your mouth, you feel like you can exhale a little better.

Din looks at you, and then he pulls you, gently, to your feet. “I’m not scared of them,” he says, cradling your face between his two big hands. “I don’t know what they want with us, and I don’t know how to stop them. But I also know,” he says, sighing, “that between the two of us and the people standing in the sidelines, we can take them on.”

You give him a small smile. Your heart aches in the same way it did way back on Yavin, back when Din took you home, when he proposed. It feels like a lifetime ago, but it’s so vivid and so clear. That same tug is pulling on your heartstrings, and you can’t place it until your hand goes to close around your necklace that isn’t there. You swallow.

This is how it felt. When you were a teenager, when the Alliance was on the brink of collapsing the Empire. Your parents held each other like this, a warm and steady constant through such turmoil. You close your eyes, just for a second, and imagine them here with the two of you, ready to fight back.

But when your eyes flutter open again, Din’s gaze isn’t on you anymore. It’s locked on the window, behind you, and as you spin around to see what he’s staring at, you see it. You weren’t imagining a figure earlier, and it wasn’t the smoke and mirrors of the darkness. Someone’s out there. You gasp as Din’s eyes narrow, and before you can stabilize yourself, his helmet is up and over his head and he’s descending the ladder, lowering the gangplank.

“Hey!” you call, racing after him. “Din! What are you—”

A blaster shot rings out over your head, and you scream. It isn’t your finest moment, you have to admit, but you’re shell-shocked and you have no idea why Din is racing towards the figure, into the dark of the night, on an unfamiliar planet, running away from you again even though he promised you the rest of your battles would be fought together. You stare as he runs, and then you’re getting shot at again, and you duck and cover, rolling back up into the ship and accelerating the lift of the gangplank. You swear, catapulting yourself up to the cockpit, maneuvering Kicker around, because you have no idea who’s shooting at you. It’s not stormtroopers. It’s not the smaller force of Gideon’s troops, either. Whoever’s sending you the blasts, you’ve never seen them before. You punch in the sequence needed for liftoff, praying to the Maker and the ship gods above that Kicker listens to you. She does, and you breathe sighs of relief as you navigate into the air.

Again, you’re being blasted at, and anger sets in. You’ve lost sight of Din and the figure, and you don’t want to abandon him here, but you’re getting shot at from somewhere in the darkness, and you don’t know what the hell else to do.

And then your comm buzzes again. You’re expecting the weird bleeping, so you roar a very uncharacteristic “what?” into the mouthpiece, forcing Kicker straight upward.

“Whoa,” Wedge’s voice comes through the line, and immediately, you buckle.

“Don’t get me wrong, Wedge, because I am so thankful to hear your voice, but how the hell,” you pant, dropping out of the artillery range of whatever—or whoever—is shooting at you, “did you get through to me?”

“Your callsign was reinstated,” Wedge says, confused, and as you get shot at again, you scream out of sheer frustration. “Nova, what’s going on?”

“If I knew,” you pant, scanning the shadowy grounds for where Din disappeared, “I’d tell you. Have you gotten any—weird calls, or anything? Scrambled radio waves? Anything like that? Strange things keep happening to me,” you admit, voice slightly lowered.

“No,” Wedge answers, but there’s an edge to his voice. If you weren’t so preoccupied with trying not to die, you would interrogate him, but whatever’s volleying blasts at you is so persistent that you can’t even ponder why he sounds so strange. “Listen, Nova—”

“Do you know anything about the Order?” you yell, punching in the code for the thermal tracking sensor. The ground is covered with life forms in the shadows, so it’s hard to identify where Din ran off to, but you squint and scan it, looking for a heat signature that matches his.

“The…the Jedi Order?” Wedge asks, his voice crackling.

“No,” you interrupt, immediately, “definitely not. We ran into some…unsavory people on Cantonica that mentioned it to me. Apparently,” you say, swinging around to inspect your creaky artillery, “they want me for something. The man, the one who—it doesn’t matter. He told me ‘What died didn’t stay dead’.”

On the other end of the line, Wedge is quiet. “What did he mean?”

You sigh, frustrated, exhausted. “I don’t know,” you manage, and you hate the way the words taste in your mouth, heavy and stonewalled. “And now I’m getting shot at. Again. Every time I think we know what we’re up against,” you say, firing a round of blasts off into the general direction of the other ship, “something new unfolds.”

“Nova—”

“What were you going to say earlier?” you say, and when you realize you’ve cut Wedge off again, you wince. “I’m so sorry,” you apologize, genuine, “I’m—I’m not on my game.”

“I heard from Luke,” Wedge says, and then you catch glimpse out of the corner of your eye. It looks like a green lightsaber flash, even though it’s not, even though it can’t be. You squint, and then the full weight of what Wedge just said hits you, and your attention is immediately snapped back to the comm.

“What?” you ask, voice wobbling with something you don’t entirely understand.

“I heard from Luke—” Wedge repeats, and then whatever’s screeching in your commlink cuts him off entirely, and you scream out into the noise before you realize the connection’s lost. The ship in the darkness is shooting at you again, and this time you’ve had it. You yank up on the controls, hard, and Kicker groans as you accelerate her into the sky.

“I know,” you whisper, voice too jittery to be placating, “but you need to work with me, Kicker.” Reluctantly, she does, and when you roll over into your signature move to shoot back with all the artillery you can muster, something shiny flies up in front of you, obstructing your vision. You yell out, slapping your own hands away from the controls before you can shoot Din and his jet pack out of the sky. “What the fuck!” you call, and you know he can’t hear you over the ships’ engines, but with how loud it is, you think he might be listening anyway. Din flaps his hand at you, and you move backward, away from the city, landing just on the outskirts on a pile of gravel. You pull your blaster back into the holster, hand outstretched to the Darksaber, which flies back into your hand as if it’s being called. You stare at it for a second, still so conflicted about the sheer power it radiates, and then your grip tightens around it, storming down the ladder and lowering the gangplank. You don’t have your shawl draped over your head, you’re not being nearly as safe as you should be, especially since you don’t know who was trying to ground you, but you’re rattled and on edge and scared, and you hold both weapons in your hands, preparing.

The other ship blasts out of the darkness and shrouding of the city, and you stare. It’s such a strange shape—a flat back on the rear end, the cockpit round but menacing—and you glare at it, eyes following it all the way to the ground. You start to storm forward, and then Din lands in front of you, stopping you in your tracks.

“Din Djarin,” you say, so low that anyone outside of a one-foot radius can’t hear you, “you better have a good excuse as to why you’re stopping me from fighting back against the ship trying to shoot me out of the sky—”

“I do,” he says, and his voice is low and urgent. “I know them.”

You stare at him as two figures emerge from the ship, and Din steps in front of you as they break into a run, shielding your body with his own.

“Stop,” he says, and both of them do. It’s dark, and you can’t see very well, but you see the long, multifaceted black braid hanging off one of the silhouette’s shoulder and you realize with a jolt that it’s Fennec Shand. Your eyes refocus on the stockier, set figure next to her, and as he steps into the light, you see his face and your heart jumps. He’s older, and he’s marred and scarred from the time he spent in the Sarlacc pit back on Tatooine years ago, but it’s Boba Fett. Your heart jumps in your chest. “It’s us.”

“Why,” Boba Fett starts, his voice low and dangerous, “are you in that ship?”

You stare at him. “Because the Razor Crest was blown up and we needed another vehicle? Also, if you know him,” you continue, voice shaking slightly, pointing to Din, “why are you shooting at us?”

“Where is the Jedi?” he asks, staring at you.

“No Jedi here,” you say, voice still unstable, “unless you mean the untrained one with the weapon of ruling Mandalore in her hands, and then here I am.”

“He must be here,” Fett continues, and you look back and forth between everyone, trying to understand what the hell he’s talking about. “I saw his lightsaber. I saw the ship.”

You look back at Kicker. “Who?” you ask. Your heart is beating so fast, feeding on your adrenaline. You inhale, the breath rattling in your chest. “What are you talking about?”

“Luke Skywalker,” Boba Fett seethes, and your heart drops. You step forward.

“You saw him too?” you ask, voice small.

“No,” Fennec Shand starts, and then Din steps forward at the same time.

“I did too,” he admits, and you look up at him.

You swallow, looking between the three of them, brain working furiously to try and keep up. “I just talked to Wedge,” you say, voice small, “and he said he heard from Luke again.”

Din whips around to face you. “Where’s Grogu?”

Your eyes widen as you shrug. “That’s all I got from him. Then my commlink went haywire again, and the connection dropped. What the hell,” you say, inhaling sharply, “is going on?”

Fett stares back at you. “You know Skywalker?”

“I—I know him in passing,” you say, and you drop down to the ground, exhausted. “I’m in the Rebel Alliance, and he’s training our kid! What do you want with Luke Skywalker?”

“To pay him back for sending me to certain death,” Boba Fett says, his voice measured and angry. Your eyes try to track the differences between him and Din, because in the dark, the similarities are startling. They stand at about the same height, Boba Fett’s armor is older and greener, but right now, it’s nearly impossible to tell. You shiver. This planet is weird.

“Looks like you escaped certain death,” you say, and a small smile curves across Fennec Shand’s face. You look at her, and for the ruthlessness her reputation carries, she has a warmth to her you didn’t expect. “Why were you shooting at me?”

Fett’s face changes. “I thought I saw Skywalker,” he admits, and his voice is less confrontational. I could have sworn it was his X-wing.”

You want to retaliate, and then the shifting shadows of the city in front of you catch your eye, and you understand. Something about the atmosphere seems to be playing tricks on the both of you, so you just exhale and nod. “And you,” you say, turning to Din, “what happened back there? Why did you just leave like that?”

Something in him shrinks.

“You’re in trouble, Mando,” Fennec smirks.

“I thought I saw Luke Skywalker,” Din says, and his voice is just as honest and tired as yours is, and you let him pull you back to your feet. “Something about this place…it isn’t right. We need to get out of here.”

You nod, fervently. Boba Fett and Fennec Shand follow suit.

“That weapon,” Fett says, guarded, eyes locked on the Darksaber hanging from your closed hand, “doesn’t look like it belongs to you.”

“It doesn’t,” you say. Fennec looks at Din, and back at you.

“Belongs to him,” she smiles, and Din sighs, low and heavy, through the modulator.

“It,” Din says tiredly, “does not. You know how hard I tried to get rid of this thing back there. I’m still working on it,” he says, and you feel his gaze on you underneath the visor, “but right now, I think we need to regroup on Nevarro.”

Your heart flips over, half in excitement, half in dread. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Fennec grins again, equal parts venom and warmth. “Not as dangerous as us,” she posits, and both Din and Boba nod in agreement. You shake your head, but the smile on your own face is furious and determined. You split up, Boba and Fennec heading back to his strange, deadly ship, and you and Din return to Kicker, punching in the coordinates for Nevarro. You’re exhausted, and when your eye catches sight of the Darksaber again, it’s in Din’s palm. That colossal, colliding feeling of belonging to each other and belonging to something more sparks up in your chest like a supernova. As you jump into hyperspace, you watch him turn it over and over again, and a small, tiny, sparking part of you imagines him ruling Mandalore with it in one hand and your own in the other.

*

You missed Nevarro. It’s a wasteland, a strange volcanic desert that spits up lava whenever it desires, and there’s always a weird edge to it, but landing in the same spot as Fett and Shand, knowing Karga and Cara are close by, it gives you a small, strange fortification. Safety, you realize, as the four of you are walking into town, that’s what you’re feeling. You feel safe here, in the presence of people who you know are on your side, even if half of them were just trying to shoot you out of the sky.

Din makes friends so strangely. As the four of you walk into town, over the ashen dried magma, you learn a little bit about how they joined together at the last moment to try and defeat Gideon. Fennec, you realize, is another enemy-turned-ally. She met Din on Tatooine weeks before you did, and she crossed paths with Toro Calican. She says it so freely that you don’t understand at first, and when you remember who they were dealing with, your stomach flips over. They reunited back on Tython, right as Grogu got whisked away by Gideon’s dark troopers, and formed a wary alliance. But the way the three of them are talking now, it seems like every moment of dissonance has been smoothed over, now that everyone’s on the same side. Cara and Din became friends like that, too—guns to each other’s skulls before realizing they were on the same team. It makes you smile as Boba and Fennec talk about Din on your way into Nevarro City. He doesn’t say much, but you can tell he’s at ease, which is a very hard thing for either of you to come by these days. And this is how you know he’s going to be a good ruler. Every single person you’ve met through Din recognized his goodness under all of that bounty hunting and beskar. He’s strategic, and he’s levelheaded, and he can speak more languages than you can. He’s great at both descalation and escalation, at rushing into battles and playing mediator. It doesn’t matter if Mandalore doesn’t accept him straight out, because they’ll see the man he is and the ruler he can be, and every single one of them will fall in love with him, too.

“What’s your plan after this?” Din asks, and you fade back into the conversation, still wearing a small smile in the shape of a badge of pride across your face.

Fennec and Boba exchange looks. “We have business on Tatooine,” Boba says, lowly. “But if there’s still something to be defeated out there, if our job wasn’t finished, then we’ll help you again.”

Din nods. “And after?”

“You know I’d rather have you on the throne than the Kryze girl,” Boba continues, his voice quiet but intense. A small smile snakes its way across Fennec’s face. You think maybe you’ve read her wrong. She doesn’t seem outright malicious. She’s dangerous, and she could easily cut you down if you tried her, but she doesn’t seem to relish double-crossing or killing like you’d heard in the rumors. She just seems to crave chaos, and if that’s what she wants, you’re glad she’s here.

Din sighs. “I don’t want it,” he says, but there’s a reluctance in his voice that you haven’t heard before.

When you look up again, you’re at Nevarro City. You breathe a small sigh of relief, the outcroppings of the familiar buildings stand tall over the horizon. As you cross over into the gateway, you see more stormtrooper helmets on the pike than you thought you saw last time, and your tummy flips over at the knowledge that you might be bringing danger here. You swallow as the four of you make your way to the cantina, and the second the door closes, something shifts. You lift your chin higher, scanning the room for familiar faces. And while you’re preoccupied, Cara comes out of nowhere and punches Din on the arm, in an unarmored spot beneath his pauldrons.

“You know,” he says, “a simple hello could suffice—”

“I’m mad at you,” Cara retaliates, her eyes glinting when she looks over at you. “I put it to rest while we were trying to get the kid, but don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

You quirk your head, trying to get her to explain, and she folds you into a gentle hug for a second before appraising you at arm’s length.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says, genuinely, and then her hand snaps back out to jab Din on the same spot on his arm. “When he told me he just left you somewhere, I could have killed him with my own two hands.”

You smile at her. “I’m honored.”

“I had a plan,” Din mutters.

“Not a good one,” Cara responds, but then she smiles at him. You watch how it lights up her rough face, how pretty she is, especially when her eyes sparkle. “If Nova’s forgiven you, so have I.”

“Well,” you say, looking up at the man you love with a little fire of your own, “about that—”

“Mando!” Greef Karga’s booming voice cuts through the static, and you drop it for now. He walks over to you, cutting around customers and Guild members, weaving a clear path to the five of you. “Welcome back to Nevarro City. I’m sorry about the kid,” he continues, genuinely, slapping a large palm down on Din’s pauldron. “But if I know anything, I know you can get him back.”

You feel Din shrink, just a little, and then he stands up straighter. “We’re here because we have a problem,” he says, lowly, “and we need your help.”

*

Everybody starts drinking except you and Din. You refuse the spotchka, because it’s daytime on Nevarro, and mostly because you’re too on edge to drink anything, especially if the usual pattern follows suit and you get into some sort of altercation today, but while the rest of them are drinking, you hatch a plan. You and Din will tell Wedge everything you know about the Order, the Alliance will search for information across the galaxy. Karga will stay here on Nevarro City and hold down the fort in case anyone unsavory comes by. Cara will split her time between being the Marshal, traveling with you and Din, and joining forces with Boba and Fennec to keep the six of you connected and up to date. Boba and Fennec, while not with Cara, will use their skills and abilities to act like they’re still in league with the Empire’s leftovers, try and scour of any information they can. As the conversation comes to a close, you realize that you and Din don’t have anything to do immediately other than notifying Wedge.

“What’s our plan?” you ask, lowly, looking over at Din in the low light. “What do we do in the meantime?”

Din looks over at you, then to the other members of your recently forged alliance as they talk and drink. “Did you really think you saw Luke Skywalker back on Khubeaie?”

You stare at him. You blink once, twice, and then nod. “I thought it was just my vision playing tricks on me,” you murmur, fingers flapping around where your necklace used to live. Din, under the visor, tracks the movement, but you don’t pay it that much attention. “And I don’t think—well, the planet was weird. It was playing tricks on all of us. But if you saw him, I saw him, and Boba Fett saw him, then…”

“He was there,” Din finished, lowly, the second half of the sentence raised up as if he meant to ask a question but didn’t go all the way.

“I don’t think he was physically there,” you manage, brushing a way a loose piece of hair, “but I think we all saw him for a reason. Either Khubeaie’s haunted,” you breathe, “or something there is connected with the Force.”

Din stares at you. You can just tell, especially here and now in the cantina. “For you, maybe. But if I saw him, and Fett saw him—”

“Then maybe the planet’s haunted,” you interrupt, and you don’t entirely mean it, but the memory of the comm system warbling and screeching twice makes your blood seep cold through your veins. “Or, at the very least, something weird is going on. But when I talked to Wedge—” you breathe, sharply, “he said he heard from Luke again. And I don’t know about you, but I—”

“Don’t believe in coincidences,” Din finishes, his knee knocking up against yours under the table, “I know. These days, neither do I.”

When you part ways for the night, it’s temporary. Tomorrow, you and Din will hail Wedge and fill him and the New Rogue Squadron in on everything, and Boba and Fennec will head to the places in the galaxy where there’s still affiliates of the Empire to dig for more information. Cara will go interrogate some of the prisoners she’s brought in, offer them reduced sentences if they can fill the rest of the team in on anything related to the mysterious, dark Order. Karga will stay on Nevarro, speaking to the Guild members to try and fish for information about what the Empire leftovers are planning, and how they’re communicating with one another.

You and Din walk back to Kicker, hand in hand, in silence. You can feel sleep calling at you, edging in from the corners of your eyes. It feels like forever since you’ve gotten a full night’s sleep without being knocked out from the bacta, and as much as you love its anasthetic properties when you’ve lost a lot of blood, you want to fall into sleep on your own tonight. Neither of you shower, just undress and strip down into whatever you’re wearing to bed, and crawl into the nest of blankets you’ve made on Kicker’s floor. For hours, it seems, you lay there, together, in the dark, before Din speaks.

“Nova?”

You sigh, halfway into a dream. “Mmm. Yeah?”

He’s quiet, again, and you think you’ve imagined it, so you just burrow down into his warmth, feeling your skin brush up against his. His hands tighten around your waist, just for a second, and you feel so secure that fighting sleep doesn’t really seem like a favorable option. “I love you,” you hear, and then as you drift off into sleep, you hear him whisper, “I meant it. I’m never leaving—” and then you’re gone.

*

You wake up, and Din isn’t there. Panic floods into your chest, wet and heavy, and you flail around in the blankets, even though you know he’s not cuddled up in there with you. You get up, redress frantically into your only pair of clean clothes, swinging your jacket around your shoulders. The fresher’s empty, and he’s not in the cockpit, and when you slide down to inspect the gangplank, you see it’s been lowered in the last hour.

“Fuck!” you yell, slapping at the thing, which doesn’t do anything except lowering it again. You grab your blaster and shove it into the holster, holding your arm out for the snap of the Force to let the Darksaber fly into your grip. Your heart still hammering, you race down the gangplank, comm on your wrist, yelling the whole way into the city. “Where are you?” you ask, and you realize you sound angry, and you are, because Din keeps promising he’ll never leave your side and then whisks himself away to fight a battle that would be so much easier to win with the two of you in it together, but you’re also terrified. Nevarro isn’t the safest place, especially since Gideon and all of his troopers found Din, Grogu, Cara, and Karga here before, and even though Din’s wearing his armor, you’re scared.

And most of all, you’re upset. You want him here. You promised, a year ago, that you wouldn’t run from him again, and even when you’ve wanted to bolt for your life, you stayed. You don’t go back on your promises. And for Din assuring you he’s a man of his word, he hasn’t kept the most important thing he’s ever sworn to you, and it hurts. Grief and anxiety are two burning pyres in your chest, and as you haul yourself over Nevarro’s rocky, barren surface, heading towards town, you can feel the tears threatening at the corners of your eyes.

You’re tired. You’re so tired. You just want to be back on the ship you call home with the man you love and your child, and you’re so sick of fighting against the people who are trying to either steal you for themselves or make sure you die and stay dead. You know that this wasn’t Ahsoka’s fault, that she didn’t intend to send you on such a draining mission, but some small part of you is angry at her for letting you leave, for spearheading the chain of events that amounted to one huge loss after another. You flutter your hands around your neck, tears streaking down your face once you realize that it too is gone.

You step forward, trying to not let the big, raggedy sobs out into the open air. You duck behind one of the buildings so you can cry in peace, exhausted and strung out, worried for Din and heart still aching with him leaving. You know you should pull it together, go all the way into town and tell Cara, but right now, you can’t move. You cry, quietly and completely, letting the tears build and fall until you’ve run dry.

“Hey,” a voice from behind you says, “I’m looking for a pilot.”

You whip around, hand on your blaster in its holster, ready to fire if needed, but when you spin all the way, it’s not a stranger. It’s Din. He’s down on one knee, helmet off, in the exact place that you met here a year ago.

Your heart flies into your chest. “What are you doing­—” you hiss, but no one’s here. And you seem to be frozen to the spot in the same way you were back on Yavin when he proposed the first time, everything rushing through you, exhilarating and confused.

“Preferably a Force sensitive one. Used to be in the Rebel Alliance, and recently reinstated to her previous rank. Can fly anything. You wanted proof,” Din shrugs, and your eyes roam hungrily over his bare face. He doesn’t look hesitant. There’s no trace of him rushing to put it back on, so you step forward, heart in your throat, thrumming and beating like an erratic butterfly. “That I’ll follow you anywhere. I have proof.”

“Proof of what?” you breathe, still walking towards him. Even on his knees, his head comes up to your chest. “Where the hell did you go, you scared the life out of me—”

And then you’re done talking, because Din pulls out a ring. You gasp, choke back a sob, and stare at it. It’s a simple silver band, but the structure and strength of it looks exactly like the beskar his armor is made out of. You inhale again, staring at it, and when you get close enough, you see that there’s something carved on the inside. It’s a star, the same one you embossed into your necklace, and around it, the words “ni kar’tayl su”, light but intentional. You try to breathe, but all you’re doing is sobbing, looking frantically from the ring in Din’s palm to his open face, and when you cross the divide between the two of you, seizing his glorious cheeks between your hands, he meets you in the middle.

“You wanted proof,” he says, again, and everything feels dizzying and starry and huge. You feel your heart rush with the feeling of belonging, that something more that tarted right here, in this same spot, on this barren planet, months and months again. “Last time, I didn’t have a ring. But I do now, and I’m never leaving your side again.”

“Din—”

“I tired to make it back before you woke up,” he whispers, earnestly. “I left a note on the dashboard. I just had to make it down to my—to where I used to live, to forge this.”

You swallow. “That’s where you went?”

“I’ve been kicking myself ever since I didn’t give you a ring in the first place,” Din continues, “and I know promising to never leave you again and then waking up must have been—I’m sorry. It was going to be in and out. But I ran into someone down there.”

Your heart flips over. “Did they hurt you—”

“No,” Din shakes his head, the ghost of a smile dancing across his face. “No, it was the Armorer. I thought she was gone, but she’s still alive—it’s a story for another time. But I told her about you,” Din says, lifting his hand to stroke a line down your face, “and she made you something, too.”

Your eyebrows furrow down the middle, and then he pulls out something else made out of the same metal as the ring was—a simple, secured chain, with two charms hanging from it. The symbol of the Alliance, and Din’s signet of the mudhorn. You cry as he loops it around your neck, tears intense and filled with disbelief and magic. “You did this for me?”

Din stares at you. “I’d do anything for you,” he says, finally, voice so soft. “You wanted proof I’d follow you anywhere, right? This is me trying to prove it.” He takes in a shuddering breath, and you smile at him. “You don’t have to forgive me, yet. I know I need to earn it. But, cyar’ika, I’d really love it if you’d agree to marry me.”

“You,” you start, taking a huge, shuddering breath, “always surprise me. I love you.”

Din smiles. “Is that—”

“Yes,” you scream, nodding frantically, “yes, of course, I’ll marry you, I love you, I love—”

And then you’re cut off, the ring slid on your finger, and Din’s on his feet, picking you up and dragging you backwards, down the alley towards a wall, and when he lifts you against the concrete, you sigh out into his mouth. “Ni kar’tayl su,” he starts, and then you pull him in closer, his mouth latched onto yours.

“Darasuum,” you agree, between kisses, “forever.”

He’s pulling at your clothes, and the part of you who knows this is a bad idea is silenced by the way his teeth sink into your shoulder, leaving marks all up and down your upper chest. You kick down your pants, not even bothering to take them off, and when Din rests your feet back down on the ground, immediately, he dives in between your legs, tongue wet and warm and full for you. You moan out, loud, too loud, but you don’t care who hears, not now. His tongue slides up and down, finally locking on your clit, licking swift little circles. You moan, hands seizing into his dark, messy hair, running your thumb over the metal of the ring. He licks into you like he’s been hungry for years and you’re the only thing standing between him and starvation. When he pushes a single finger inside, still eating you like his life depends on it, it’s enough for you to see stars. It feels like forever since you’ve been touched like this without interruption, and you lean into it, breath running ragged, moaning out his name.

“I want to touch you—” you manage, voice high and breathy, “please, Din, let me—”

“Not here,” he says, roughly, pushing another finger inside you. It buckles you over, right on the edge, and you moan into his shoulder, “I’m taking care of you. Don’t argue with me.”

You close your mouth, nodding. His tongue finds you again, his hands on your hips, digging slightly into the flesh there, voracious and insatiable. When he makes you cum, it’s three orgasms in a row, and your legs shake. “Din—Din, I can’t stand up—”

He’s on his feet quicker than you can imagine, like a lightning lash. “Then I’ll hold you here,” he says, and both of your legs are being hiked up. Your bare back scrapes against the concrete, but you barely even hear it sting as you’re being hoisted into the air. “I’m going to fuck you now,” he breathes, something low and lustful in his eyes, “and you need to try to keep quiet, or everyone in Nevarro City will know my name. You can do that for me, can’t you, cyar’ika?”

Your eyes widen, wet heat seeping between your legs. You feel like you’re buzzing. “Yes,” you manage, syllable broken down the middle, and when you feel the head of his cock start to push its way inside of you, wet and ready, you have to clap your own hand over your mouth to keep the very unsavory noises from leaking out into the open air of the town.

“Good girl,” Din manages, and then his mouth is on yours, his hips fucking into you hard and fast, a staccato rhythm punctuated by both of your muffled moans, burying himself into you. You let yourself be held there, hands tangled up ferociously in his hair, using as much gravity as you can to get him to pound you like you’ve never been pounded before, writhing with your hips, everything starry and alive, wanting him to get to whatever universe you’re in. His breath hitches, and you know he’s close, already, he’s close, and it feels like you’ve barely started, but you grab at his bare face with your hands and nod, giving him permission. Your comm warbles, but Din’s muttering sweet nothings in your ear, telling you you’re so fucking wet, sweet, pretty girland I can’t wait to have your pussy forever, and right before he climaxes, he moans out your name, and then a breathy I love you, and whatever your comm is yelling out, you don’t hear it, because you’re too preoccupied with letting the man you love mark you as his, over and over and over.

When you finish, you feel how puffy and wet you still are, and if it wasn’t for the incessant bleeping and blinking on your wrist, you’d beg him to fuck you again. And then your head registers it’s Cara, hailing the both of you, and you and Din make eye contact in a panic, both frantically redressing.

“It’s me,” you manage, voice still fucked from going to heaven and back, “are you okay?”

“You both need to get here, to the cantina,” Cara says, and her voice is clipped and short. You exchange looks with Din before he slips the helmet back on, and you run your hand over your messy hair, hoping the braid isn’t beyond repair, and both of you bolt towards the cantina. You toss Din the blaster, he tosses back the Darksaber, steps matched up, hurrying toward the center of town.

“I want you to know,” Din says, lowly, right before the door opens, “ regardless of what’s waiting for us in there, I’m not done fucking you.”

Despite everything, you grin back at him, brazen, chest still heaving. “Better not be.”

When you break through the vestibule, it takes your eyes a minute to adjust. When they do, you realize who’s standing there, Cara’s eyebrow lifted, staring over at you and Din intently. The other woman turns around, and your feel the smallest bit of panic flood into you as you take in her chiseled jaw, her short red hair, the way her eyes lock onto you holding the Darksaber.

“Bo-Katan,” you start, and she steps forward, not aggressive, but intentionally.

She looks both you and Din up at down, gaze landing on the Darksaber, and then back on your face. “I’m not here for that.” You watch her face, looking for a bluff. It isn’t there. “We need to talk.”

*

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I HOPE YOU LOVED IT!!!!! it's so bittersweet, because so much of this chapter feels like the prelude to the end none of us wants to come, but i want you all to know that even though SM is coming to a close, there is so much more going to be in the sequel. if it doesn't feel like everything is resolved, please remember MORE IS COMING!!! i needed to leave some loose ends to make sure i had enough content for the second one ;)

with that being said, i anticipate SM will be ending with one or two more chapters. likely two more, because there's so much content planned, but as soon as i start writing, i will update you all on tumblr (amiedala) and tiktok (padmeamydala) to give you a definitive answer. if it is just one more chapter, it will be LONG!!! i don't want any of this to end, but this part of the story is coming to a close, and i cannot wait to share the sequel with you all <3 i love you all so much!!!!! thank you for taking this journey with me!!!!!

CHAPTER 29 WILL BE UP AT 7:30 PM EST SATURDAY, JULY 10TH!!!

xoxo, amelie

[herstroywritten]

For All Her Colors

Does Alfea have a ballroom? I’m going to assume it does. 

This idea for this fic came to me in the middle of the night and I just had to write it. And by that, I mean that I knew I wanted Riven to simp over Musa in a bunch of different outfits and colors and had absolutely no plot for it. Can’t say it’s my best work, but I enjoyed writing the banter. And thus, I present you Simp!Riven and Flirty!Musa.

And just for research purposes, what colors do you guys classify as “sexy”? My friend and I have had this conversation multiple times and it always gets more and more interesting.

YELLOW

Bright. Brighter. Brightest.

That's what Riven thinks of Musa's smile. He thinks this same thought each and every time he sees her smile.

He likes her shy smiles, the ones where she bends her head downward and plays with the straps of her backpack, the ones where her lips pull up and she tries desperately to hide the blush that frames her cheeks right after he's told her he's particularly fond of her current swim attire.

And he likes her mischievous smiles, the ones that spark to life as her eyes sparkle with understanding and hidden messages. Those ones he has the privilege of admiring right after she's made a joke that isn't quite as innocent as it seems, or when her and the girls are planning something he can only assume will land them all in some sort of trouble, or (and this is his personal favorite instance) when she makes a not so sly pass at him from across a room with just her eyes in a way that he knows will land him in a load of trouble.

And don't even get him started on Musa's wide smile, the one that she currently sports as she throws her head back laughing at Bloom's lame attempt to stay afloat after her not so coordinated cannonball into the lake.

Her hair is loose, a rare occurrence at any time, and he watches as she swims to the shore and walks to where he is sitting pretending to admire the sunset and fooling no one in the fact that he's just staring at her. She's all curves and  bare skin as she steps out of the water, droplets grazing her body. His eyes follow their way downward with each new strip of skin that is revealed as she makes her way out of the lake, fully aware of the fact that she knows he's watching.

"My eyes are up here," she jokes half-heartedly as she plops herself down next to him in a very unladylike manner. Stella would be horrified.

His lips twitch up at her words, but he makes on effort to look up, focusing instead on the way that yellow bikini top lifts and falls as she breathes in and out. Breathing was never something he'd thought of often before her. Sure, a living, breathing human being was a must in any partner. But before her, there had been no long drawn out thoughts about how deep breaths and hitches in a someone's breathing pattern made him want to just… snap. But, now, as he looped his arm around Musa's waist and brought her onto his lap, hearing her breath catch somewhere at the back of her throat, he wondered if breathing could be a kink.

"You going to speak? Or do you just plan on staring at me for the rest of the time I'm in this swimsuit?" She shifts herself on his lap so that they're face to face, and pokes his cheek with her index finger. "Come now, you can do it. You can form a coherent sentence and speak it for me. You're a big boy."

And at that line, how could he not give her what she was asking for?

"You would know." He all but growls in her ear and she throws her head back, flashes the sky one of her wide smiles, bares her throat to him. He leans his head down, presses his lips to her neck, feels her vocal chords vibrate through him as she laughs.

"You're a child. You know that?"

"Not my fault my mind can't control itself."

"Actually, I think that is your fault?" She cocks an eyebrow at him, gives him her mischievous smile.

"Let me correct myself then, love." He makes a show of leaning in as close to her as he can get without actually touching her and says, "Not my fault you're unavoidable in that bikini."

Her eyes darken as she wraps her arms around his neck, "Hmm. What about this bikini is so appealing to you?"

"All of it."

"Would you," she taps a finger to her chin. "I don't know. Would you say the color is particularly attractive?"

That's an interesting question. "Huh?"

"You heard me. This color. The yellow. Do you like it?"

"What?" He tries again, looking at her all perplexed because really, where is this going?

"Riven, I know you're struggling with words at the current moment. But really, this isn't that hard a question. Yes or no. Do you like the yellow?" She huffs lightly and he has to remember to take in air and let it out as he feels her hot breath against his bare chest.

"I can manage words just fine. I just don't know what exactly that question entails?"

"Oh, you know, the usual. Do you think this color is attractive? Does it make you want to strip me naked right here, right now, and fuck me senseless?"

He chokes on his own spit at that response. "Okay, first of all, there is never a time when I don’t want to strip you naked. Second, I am not answering that question because I know there's no way this conversation isn't somehow related to the rest of your little pixie friends and I… I don't even wanna know."

"Oh, come on," she whines. She leans down then and kisses his jaw. "Humor me," she whispers to him.

Her breath tickles his skin, carving a path of wanting as it travels through him. And fuck, , is it really possible to be turned on by someone's breathing?

She's trailing her lips over the parts of his skin that are available to her, not quite kissing any part of him but present enough that he's about to lose his goddamn mind.

"Hmm?" she murmurs in question, pushing him to answer her ridiculous question.

And though he's sure that his answer is about to make him the popular talk of the Winx suite, he answers her anyways, "Yeah. Yeah. Fine."

"Fine, what?" Lips brushing past his cheeks, past him jaw, against his mouth.

Fine, dig my grave right now, why don't you? he thinks. Instead he answers with a grumbled "Fine, that's a very attractive color."

Quick as his words come out of his mouth, Musa's lips are off of him and pulled back into her wide smile as she shifts herself around and hollers over her shoulder, "HA! Stella, you owe Bloom money! He's totally into it!"

Good gracious fucking God. What in the devil's name did he just get himself into?

LILAC/LAVENDER

Turns out, what he got himself into was a game of circling rounds. Riven's not sure of the details, not sure he wants to be sure of the details quite frankly. But, the main idea is this: there came a night when Bloom decided the girls needed a good old-fashioned "slumber party" and in between the late night snacks and movies, the girls had found themselves in a heated game of truth or dare. Aisha had dared Terra to start leaving a plant in Dowling's office every day until she noticed, Terra asked Stella for some very juicy information about what was going on between her and that newly-appointed bodyguard of hers, Stella paid forward the embarrassment by asking some very detailed information of Bloom concerning the girl's current relationship and that had led to the conversation of… lingerie? This is where stuff gets a bit fuzzy for Riven. Really, Musa's explanation had all but gone down the drain once he's heard that word. He truly wishes the story had ended there. He would have been fine with that. But no, the pixies had somehow managed to stir the conversation to the topic of… colors? Sexy colors? Again he's not too sure of the details here.

What he is sure of, however, is that Musa now wears a different color every day just for the sake of testing his reactions. And yeah, he's got plenty of reactions.

Take now for example. All of Alfea is crowded into the greeting hall, a raging party is in full swing, and the only lights that can be seen are that of the moon through the large French doors that surround the school and the occasional lighter from a student who doesn't care all that much about getting caught. The whole Winx suite is crowded by one of the round tables situated in the middle of the room, no doubt Stella's choice of seating. Let it never be said that Stella of Solaria was anything but the center of attention even on her worst days. And attention is what she is getting, as she sits ever so daintily on the edge of her seat, leaning forward so that she can graze those perfectly manicured nails of hers across the biceps of who Riven assumes is the bodyguard Sky (and everyone else in their little group, for that matter) won't stop talking about. She's fluttering her lashes at him, whispering something Riven knows for a fact is not very ladylike of her, because the more she speaks, the farther forward the poor sap leans and the deeper his blush grows.

Whipped, Riven thinks to himself. Someone should warn the clueless sap he's in for a hell lot more than what he thinks he's signing up for.

And someone should tell Sky to stop with the heart eyes before they become a permanent fixture on that pretty face of his. Bloom has somehow managed to get him on the dance floor, but from the looks of it, there is very little dancing being done. More stumbling and tumbling across the floor and toward a corner of the room. Riven has to stop himself from laughing out loud as Sky almost tramples over a poor freshman girl in his rush the follow Bloom.

You're not as smooth as you think you are, Sky.

He's not really sure where the rest of their gang is, but he can't really bring himself to care either. The only person he really cares to track down is sitting cross-legged on top of the table that Stella and bodyguard guy are feeling each other up under, and he spotted her the second he walked into this lame party. She's draped in lavender silk, or something akin to it. He's not sure, but he (again) couldn't care less what the material is. The color though, that he is wildly interested in. He knows it's a game. He knows she's looking for a reaction. And he told himself he wouldn't give her one, but far be it for him to deny her anything when she's all long legs and tan skin in just a tiny lavender dress that he swears makes her look like a goddess from the heavens.

And then she curls her lips his way, and he stands corrected. Not from heaven, but hell. Because the pure lavender of her dress cannot possibly match all the thoughts that must be running her mind, all the thoughts running his mind.

She's worn that color before, and his brain has memorized the exact shade of it without him knowing. It's the color of the sweater she wore when he first spoke to her. For days after, Riven hadn't been able to get that exact hue out of his mind. He would see flashes of it in the sky as the sun set, would notice flowers of that color around campus (had they always been there?). He would even see it when he closed his eyes at night.

Still smirking at him, she makes her way over and reaches to clasp her hands at his shoulders when she finally stands before him.

"Thought you might be into this one," she whispers in his ear. They both know she means the color. 

"Can't say I don't appreciate it," he chuckles into her ear, the diamond-dipped earrings she wears tickling his lips as they sway. 

And then she's tugging him to the middle of the dancefloor.

"Hey, I-"

"You don't dance. I know," she smiles up at him. Her wide smile, the dazzling one that makes him forget to breathe. "But… come on, just one song? For me?"

The way she pushes the strap of lavender off her shoulder in a very intentional manner does not bypass him.

In the end, he lets her have as many songs as she wants.

BLACK

Musa wears the color lavender a lot more often for the next few days after that party. Riven knows she likes that it riles him up, likes that she can do that to him, but it's getting to the point where he can't think straight whenever she's around him. And the teachers are noticing his lack of attention during classes, mainly swords training, which Musa has decided to add to her daily activities. Meaning, of course, that she has decided to make an appearance to each of his training sessions, sit on the grass just beyond the training grounds with all her friends, and bat her eyelashes his way as she shows off all the lilac and lavender her closet possesses. 

"You need to stop that," he mumbles to her as she comes to meet him at the boy's lockers after one of those training lessons.

"Stop what?" Her voice drips in innocence, sweet as honey. If he were facing her instead of stuffing gear into a bag, he knows she would be giving her best angel eyes and he would likely let her seduce him into a corner somewhere (or maybe let her strip him right here in the middle of the locker room… he's a man of few requests) and drop the subject altogether. 

"I just let Boris have a win because of you. Fucking Boris. The guy can't even walk a straight line without tripping himself."

"Not my fault you can't stop looking my way."

"That's a lie and you know it."

"No. No, I think it's the truth."

"Musa-" 

"Riven." 

He huffs in mild annoyance. "Seriously, as much as I want you to seduce me into every corner of this stupid school, I can't be letting Boris and all the other wimps of this school keep winning. The other day, Silva asked me if I needed medical attention. Medical attention, Musa! He thought I had hit my head or some shit because I kept tripping!"

"Who's to say you didn't hit your head?" She's laughing at his expense and as much as she loves her laugh, he's a man verging on the edge of insanity with her around him.

"Are you even hearing me?" He takes off his shirt and runs a hand through his hair miserably. 

"Oh, alright." He feels her run her hands up his back before they land on his should blades and she pushes against him, pulling herself to her tippy toes so that she can press a kiss at the top of his spine.

He shivers at the feel of her lips and she laughs against him.

"Tell you what," she says, her lips still brushing his spine. "I'll wear a different color on our date tonight."

"Date?"

"Yeah, you know, that thing couples go on so they can spend time together?"

"You're not as funny as you think you are, Musa."

"Oh, I'm hilarious."

"Did we plan something I'm forgetting about?"

He finally turns around so that he can face her, and she's forced to let go of him.

"No, we did not plan anything. But you've been training all week and I've been watching you train all week. And I've decided you need a break… and you're not wearing a shirt right now, which has reminded me that I need attention." She shifts her eyes across his whole form, stopping just above his waistline as her hands come up to his abs. 

"Well, then. No inhibitions there. Straight to it, are we?" But he has to chuckle at her statement.

"I spend all my free time living in inhibitions, Riven. Biting my tongue. Dealing with other people's emotions and what not. Mind fairy, remember?" Her eyes come up to meet his, but her hands stay where they are. "I know where to place my inhibitions and reservations, and it's not here."

He stares into her eyes, noticing the way they shine under the dim light of the locker room. He thinks they color resembles the darkest toffee, or maybe those caramel chocolates she so loved. It's another color that haunts his dreams. Has he ever told her that? 

"No, baby. You're right. Keep those inhibitions for the rest of this school." He leans down to kiss her, feeling her smile beneath his lips. 

She's doing things with her hands, making them dance across his skin as gracefully as he knows she can dance across a dance floor. He's just about to suggest that they go find that corner and she can continue to corrupt him, but before he can find the words, she's pulling away from him. 

"I'll see you at 8 when you come to pick me up," she says as she walks backwards, aiming for the exit. 

"Wha- You tease!" 

She laughs again, and damn it if the sound doesn't send his heart soaring. Fuck, he thinks to himself. Maybe Stella's bodyguard and Sky weren't the only whipped ones in this rather large group they had formed.

"Don't hate the player. Hate the game," she states with a wink.

"Where are we even going?"

"You'll see!" And then she just walks out the locker room, leaving him staring at the door and surrounded by a million pieces of gear that he was meant to have finished packing ten minutes ago. 

Hours later, he's standing in the Winx suite and watching Terra reorganize every plant in the living room as Bloom and Aisha argue about which Harry Potter movie was the best.

"The first one!" Bloom screams from the kitchen as she waits for her tea to boil.

"What? No! The first one had too many introductions and too little action," Aisha screams back at her from their room.

"You're just saying that because you don't appreciate true art."

"True art?! I'll have you know-"

He's just about to lose it when Musa finally walks out of her room. He hears her door open before he sees her and he has just about thirty second to thank the gods for finally putting him out of his misery, and then he turns around… and his jaw drops.

The dress she wears has long sleeves, a low cut V that leaves very little to the imagination, and hangs off her shoulders just enough so that he can see where the curve of her clavicle meets the lines of her neck. It's shorter than the lavender dress she wore to the party last week. That alone could have been enough to end him, but Musa liked to push her boundaries. She liked to test the water. True to her word, she was not wearing lavender. No, instead she was wearing black. 

Knowing with absolute certainty that his favorite color was black.

"Pick your jaw up off the floor, Riven." Stella's heavily judgmental voice snaps him out of it. She's leaning by the doorway of Terra and Musa's room, watching him with a cocked eyebrow and a smirk on her face. 

"You're one to talk," he shoots her way. "You almost jumped that poor bodyguard during Alchemy class the today."

"Key  word there would be almost," she shoots back at him, no shame whatsoever in her voice. "You two, on the other hand, have actually jumped each other in the middle of almost every event we've been to since you started dating."

"That's not true! They were jumping each other even before they got together. I once-" 

"Terra!" Musa shoots her roommate a poignant look as her cheeks flush bright red. "We said that would stay between us, remember?"

Well, this is interesting, Riven thinks to himself. Honestly, watching these girls interact is like watching a train crash. A very synchronized one where each cart would willingly crash to try to protect the other carts, but a train crash nonetheless. There's always something interesting going on in this dorm.

"Oh, oops! There was no once. I never once saw anything. Nothing, nothing at all." Terra shuffles back to her plants, but it’s too late.

"No, no!" Stella commands. "Please do tell us what you once saw." 

"Yes, please do." Aisha encourages, eying Musa with a wicked smile on her face.

"Yeah, Terra. Come on, tell us!" Bloom's tea is forgotten as she makes for Terra, tugging at her hand and pulling her onto the couch where the rest of the girls go to join them.

"Well-" Terra starts.

"Nope!" Musa all but shouts. "Nope! Nope! Nope! I am not going to stand here and listen to you tell this story. We're leaving. Goodbye!" 

She's tugging him out the room as Stella's voice rings into the hallway, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

And as she pulls him through the hallways and into the courtyard, Riven gets a great view of Musa's dress from the back. The back is so very low that he's honestly amazed that it's able to stay on her body without completely falling off. The tip of the V that shapes the back of the dress reaches the bottom of her spine, and as his fingers accidentally brush the sleeves at her wrist, he notices that the dress is velvet. Soft. Warm. And so willing to bend and curve into the exact shape of her body.

In the darkness of the coming night, even her hair looks like velvet black. And when she turns those chocolate colored eyes to him, and the shadows make their color darker too, Riven remembers exactly why he loves the color black so much.

RED

Black has always been Riven's favorite color, and he doubted it would ever change. Well, he used to doubt it would ever change. Currently, he's having a lot of doubts as he watches Musa descend the stairway of Alfea's ballroom in a dress of red color.

The fabric clings to her body and flares at her feet, moving with her as though it was a part of her. Her hair is up and away from her face, and from all the way down here, he can see the bright red of her lipstick. It's the exact same shade as her dress.

A siren, he thinks. She is a siren. And he is just as big a fool as every other man in the stories of sirens, because he would lay down his whole life for a chance to be closer to her. He would follow her anywhere, and he does for the rest of that night. He doesn't even pretend to complain about the dancing. 

Later in the night, they're swaying back and forth with her hands tracing the hair at the nape of his neck and his hands at the back of her waist. He hasn't stopped looking at her since she approached him at the beginning of the night, and she hasn’t complained.

"I knew you would like this one best." She says softly, as if she knows he's in a trance and doesn't want to break him out of it.

"Mmm?"

"The red. I knew you would like the red best. It's my favorite color. Did you know that, Riven?"

He smiles slightly.

"Of course I know that. Why do you think I always have a red pen on me  when we're studying together?"

"You don't study, Riven."

"No, I don’t. But you do. And I like to watch you study." 

She laughs softly, still not wanting to break the daze they're in.

"You seem to like to watch me do a lot of things lately."

"What can I say? You're a little bit enchanting, my dear."

"I have the girls to thank for that, I suppose. They placed bets on what colors you would like best."

"Do I want to know who suggested what?"

"Probably not, but I'm going to tell you anyways. Terra suggested lilac because she noticed how much liked the color on me. Stella said black because she assumed correctly that it was your favorite color, and Aisha sided with her because it seemed like the winning argument. Bloom said yellow because she wanted to go for something different."

"And red? Who said red?" He shouldn't entertain this game if he wants to live past this school year, but he figures he can manage one or two heart attacks. He's been through worse.

"I did." Her eyes sparkle up at him. He laughs at her answer, because he should have guessed.

"I should've known."

She beams up at him with her wide smile. "So, did I win? Is this your favorite color on me?"

His palms brush the bare skin of her back as he dips her, and then pulls her close to him as fast as he can because he craves her closeness like a drunk man craves liquor on his loneliest nights.

"You're my favorite."

And when her eyes glaze over and her gaze wavers as she gives him her shy smile, he knows for a fact that he is further gone than Stella's bodyguard or Sky or any other fool in this fractured world that claims to be in love.

Red becomes his new favorite color.

[imherongraystairstrash]

De-age Will Part II

I just realized I’m incapable of writing normal-sized fics ✌️

Part 1

(I just realized how weird the word “part” is lol)

...

Henry was walking past when he heard Charlotte’s voice speaking softly. He poked his head into the room and saw that she was reading a storybook, little Will pressed to the side of her body yawning tiredly and rubbing his eyes with his small fists. Henry leaned against the door and watched as Charlotte smiled while she read, not able to help keeping the same smile from spreading across his. 

Her voice was vibrant and fluctuating in tone as different characters spoke. Her eyes widened when she put extra empathizes on a word and whenever she turned a page, she would plant a kiss on Will’s forehead or cheek. She would also periodically rub his back or stroke his cheek, which never failed to make Will nuzzle closer to her, enough so that he rested his tiny fists on her abdomen. 

Henry’s heart yearned for Charlotte, so much so that each day he seemed to love her more and more. His Lottie. She may not love him the same way, but being able to call her his wife, to wake up every morning next to her, was the greatest blessing he could receive.

As he watched her reading to Will, it struck him how much he wanted a child. One with Charlotte. They had Jem, Jessamine, Will, Sophie and Thomas, but a baby would be different. A little child they could hold at night a fuss over and teach all sorts of things, like how to walk and talk. Henry knew, however he could never ask that of Charlotte, for she did not feel the same, and perhaps she didn’t share the same feelings over a child… Or, maybe she didn’t wish to bear his child. They could always adopt, but that would still require a certain level of affection towards each other, affection Charlotte didn’t hold for him. It would be easy for Charlotte to file for a divorce, if she wanted one, however, it got more complex once there was a child in the middle.

So, Henry just watched as Will’s eyes slowly closed and soon he was asleep against Charlotte’s shoulder. She kissed his forehead and gently tucked him into bed before following Henry out the door.

Henry cast a final look at little Will before closing the door behind him. 

Charlotte’s smile remained on her lips the entire walk back to their room. 

Henry wanted to put his arm around her, to hold her close as they walked through the empty institute halls. But, he loved her too dearly to ever do such a thing as make her uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and Charlotte looked up.

“You were wonderful with Will.” he said, blushing.

She blushed too as she replied. “I didn’t know how much I adored children until I had to take care of one.”

“I feel the same way.”

She glanced up at him, surprised. He looked down at her, tilting his head to the side.

Charlotte turned a dark shade of crimson as she spoke again.

“Do you wish to have a ch—” she cleared her throat. “A child?”

Now it was Henry’s turn to blush. “I guess I would, if you want one too.”

Charlotte looked up at him in wonder. “You would want a child?”

“A child with you, Lottie, would be a blessing.”

She turned her head in an attempt to hide her smile, but Henry already saw it.

“Likewise.” She whispered.

They reached their room and Henry opened the door to let her in. As she walked inside, Henry couldn’t help but think that sometimes, it felt as though Charlotte truly loved him.

She turned on her heels. “Do you want to try tonight?” she asked quietly.

“Try what?” Henry asked.

“To…Oh, never mind.” She said, clearly embarrassed.

“What is it Lottie?” Henry said, eyebrows furrowed worriedly. “What did you want to try?”

Charlotte looked at him, took a deep breath and spoke quickly: “To conceive a child.”

Henry was appalled and must have looked it, too, for Charlotte appeared to be horrified.

“Henry, no, I was—”

Henry crossed to the room and held her small hands in his. 

“Of course. Of course I want to.” He whispered. 

Charlotte looked up at him in wonder, a piece of hair escaping from where it was tied back. Henry took out the pins that held it into place. Her hair cascaded down to her shoulders, framing her lovely face.

“You’re beautiful.” Henry whispered. “Lovely Lottie, my angel from heaven.” 

Her lips pressed against his and for a moment, they seemed to forget. Forget that they thought the other didn’t love them, because that moment, and what was to follow, was nothing short of glorious.

… 

The next morning, Jem woke up to find a pair of dark blue eyes hovering over him. He yelled. Will put his small hands on Jem’s face and stared intently into his face. 

“Good morning, Will.” Jem said gruffly.

Will giggled and put his arms around Jem’s neck. Jem’s head fell back on his pillows and he closed his eyes, still very tired from tossing and turning all night, worried for his parabatai and the fading rune. It’s not that Jem needed the bond; Will would always be his other half, as though, before they came into this world, their souls made a pact that they would keep a part of the other, so that they would have find each other again in the mess of the earth, to give back what belonged to the other. But, Jem couldn’t imagine never getting to see Will as an adolescent ever again. Will was still Will, but Jem couldn’t lay beside him at night and speak of his worries. His Will was like his twin brother, not a little child. 

Jem sighed. This was too strange. He put an arm around Will and let him rest on his collarbone until Charlotte came inside.

“Oh, there he is, that little minx. He got away from me.”

Jem sat up and held Will out to Charlotte, but Will didn’t seem to want to be parted from Jem just yet, and made a fuss over the whole exchange until he was back in Jem’s arms.

“He’s much more spoiled, as a baby.” Jem said, regarding Will, who was smiling wide and embracing Jem furiously. For a toddler, he had a surprising strong grip.

“Yes, well.” Charlotte said. “I suggest you get dressed, Jem darling. Ragnor has agreed to come.”

“He has?” Jem asked, appalled.

“Yes, though he made it very clear that his schedule was busy and that he couldn’t stay for long.”

“In that case…Will,” he said, turning to the boy.  “Why don’t you go with Charlotte? I’ll be right down.” 

Will looked sad, but acquiesced, stretching his hands out to Charlotte. She took him in her arms.

“We’ll be downstairs.” She said, closing the door behind her.

Jem sighed and slowly got out of his pajamas and dressed in day’s clothes, trying (and failing) to not think too hard about Will. 

…

What entailed after Ragnor arrived at the Institute was simple. He deemed that Will would be fine and that the spell was temporary. Should Will not be back to normal in three days time, they could message Magnus Bane, who was not nearly as busy as Ragnor was.

“You’d think he’s the emperor.” Sophie said to Jem, “With how busy he is all the time.”

“I really wish he would just say he doesn’t enjoy our company.” Jem said. “It would require so much less effort.”

“I suppose he is being diplomatic.” Sophie said with a shrug. Will ran up to her and hugged her legs. “Oh,” Sophie said to Will. “What do you want, then?”

He put his fist up and Sophie held her hand out. Will dropped a piece of yarn into her palm and ran away.

“Why does he keep giving me these things?” Sophie asked, holding the yarn out in front of her.

Jem shrugged. 

…

Charlotte cursed in her head. Why is it that everybody feels the urge to pay the institute a visit when it’s the least convenient to her? 

“Mr. Lightwood!” She said pleasantly, as he came in. “What a surprise to see you here; we weren’t expecting you.”

“Let us skip the pleasantries, Charlotte, I have business to discuss with your husband and yourself.”

He walked past her and strode to the direction of the institute study.

…

Jem watched as Charlotte and Mr. Lightwood walked up the stairs and Sophie sped away to fetch Henry. Will was standing next to him and Jem didn’t know whether to hide him, or just pretend like it was normal to have a small replica of Will at his side. He decided that the latter might lead to questions he couldn’t answer, so he nudged Will towards the direction of the kitchen, where hopefully Agatha would keep an eye on him. 

Jem then watched as Gabriel strode over to him and, when he came to a stop, Jem couldn’t help but notice a bruise on Gabriel’s cheekbone. He must have been staring because Gabriel scowled and cleared his throat just as he was going to inquire about it. 

“Where’s the other idiot to your duo, then?” Gabriel asked. 

“He’s…out.” Said Jem.

“Out?”

“Yes, he’s having an…erm…episode?”

“Why am I not surprised?” said Gabriel dryly.

“Don’t say something you’ll regret, Gabriel.” Said Jem, darkly.

Gabriel side-eyed him. “What are you going to do? What with your debilitating sickness, I would assume—”

Miniature Will, like his older counterpart, seemed to know the exact worst timing to appear.

He ran at Gabriel and hit his leg with a spoon. Gabriel’s face softened but then quickly hardened into a grimace. Jem couldn’t help but wonder if Gabriel was fond of children and was trying to hide it.

“Who is this brat?” He spat. “By the Angel, the poor child looks like Herondale. How unfortunate for him.”

Jem stopped breathing as Gabriel took a closer look.

“Actually, he looks exactly like Herondale. The resemblance is quite uncanny.” Gabriel stopped and then a delighted smile stretched across his face. “Wait a moment. Is this Herondale’s bastard?”

“No!” Jem said, picking up Will—who was still attacking Gabriel with his spoon— and shoving him behind a door. Jem knew Gabriel wasn’t going to be so easily fooled by the Cartwright story so he improvised the best he could. “He’s Will’s cousin. His…sister brought him here.”

“His cousin?”

“Yes. And as a matter a fact, he is very territorial and doesn’t like meeting new people, so I suggest you leave.” 

Gabriel scrunched his eyebrows in confusion. “His sister brought him here?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, how I pity that sister.” Gabriel said. “Imagine Herondale being your brother. And the poor fool who marries her. What if the children look like William? Oh Lord, now that would be a curse.” Gabriel shuddered. 

Jem was about to say something when Benedict Lightwood and Charlotte came back.

“Get in the carriage.” Benedict snapped at his son. “We’re leaving.”

Gabriel’s shoulders hunched ever so slightly as he trailed behind his father without so much as a wave goodbye to Jem. Hopefully, Gabriel was too preoccupied with his life to further inquire about this the next time they met.

Just as the Lightwoods were leaving, Will (somehow) managed to open the door and began chasing after them. Charlotte had barely managed to grab the collar of his shirt to keep him from running off. 

Benedict Lightwood must have heard the commotion and turned around. Jem tried to move in front of Will in an attempt to cover him up, but Benedict had already seen.

“Why is it that every time I come here, there’s more children? You’d think they’d created a cloning machine and activate it every time they realize their current children are failures.” He grumbled to himself.

Once he walked out, Thomas shut the heavy door closed with an air of finality and, everybody’s ramrod straight backs, relaxed.

Charlotte whirled around to face Will. “You better turn back into your old self again before you get us into any more trouble, do you understand me, young man?”

Will blinked at her. 

Charlotte sighed and turned around, perhaps too stressed to deal with this problem at the moment. Henry walked in and Charlotte pointed to Will.

“Jem, why don’t you take Will to the park or something. Benedict came in to give Henry and I a lot of work to do and it should take all morning.”

Jem nodded and held his finger out for Will to grab. The smaller boy gleefully wrapped his hand around his parabatai’s index finger. 

…

Will’s eyes darkened. “Duck.” he spat out.

Jem looked at the ducks that were standing idly by the pond. “Will, they’re not going to do anything.”

Will still looked mutinous. 

Jem sighed. Why couldn’t Will be like normal children, who could stare at ducks for hours on end? Better question yet: How is it that Will’s hatred for ducks ran so deep that even as a child, he despised them?

“Come here, Will. How about we sit down?” Jem crossed his legs and Will followed suit.

Jem had brought a biscuit for Will, and gave it to him while he stared out at the landscape in front of them. 

Jem sensed that there was something strange in the atmosphere, and it wasn’t London’s normal, filthy, city air. It was like the calm before the storm; something was brewing and it was about to explode. 

Before Jem could order further, a duck suddenly came from behind them and quacked before Jem could stop it. Will screamed and ran away, which caused the duck to chase after him. 

“Why do these sort of things always happen to me?” Jem grumbled, chasing after Will and the duck.

.....

Tagging some people who enjoyed the last part:

@autumnangel20 @heronstairs2014 @hitheresomeoneusingthus @itsdaughterofthemoon @carstairstessa @minaxcarstairs 

[haravath0t]

parol (with filipina!reader)

Warnings: angst (if you squint), immense fluff, and a big word count (sorry)

Summary: The holidays are approaching and reader shares some of her favorite Christmas traditions with Bucky as they decorate, but a little incident happens. To lighten up her spirits, James surprises her on Christmas Eve. 

A/N: Hi everyone! I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year! Now with time in my hands I was able to complete this work! I rarely see any Filipina!Readers so I wrote this, as Christmas and my heritage is something I hold close to my heart. It is my first one shot, so bear with me! I hope you all enjoy!

*italics indicate flashbacks!

Today was not your day. You wanted to go home after doing reports and paperwork, surprise Bucky with a nice dinner and pumpkin pie, video call your family that lived in the Philippines to open the gifts you shipped over to them, and call it a day. However, luck was not on your side. Oversleeping, last minute additional reports, agents that were slacking off during training, misplacement of papers, everything you could never dream of happening all in one day happened. You walked over to Bucky, who was leaning against the black car waiting for you as he toyed with the car keys. “Hey, sweetheart, come on why don’t we- you okay?” He asks, concern apparent in his voice as he watches you angrily open the door. “Swell.” Bucky knew better than to push you into talking based on the way you slammed the door and did the better option as he drove you two out of the headquarters to your shared apartment: wait till you talk. “It’s been a bad day,” you sigh in frustration as you look out the window, relaxing when Bucky nods in understanding. “It’ll be alright, sweetheart, talk to me.” And so you did, which led to you both agreeing on having take out for dinner to save yourself from more stress. The two of you were carrying bags filled with take out and lovely desserts as you went into the apartment, leaving you to close the door behind you with your feet. Unfortunately harder than you had intended to. The laughter had died when you heard the sound of something breaking not too far from you both, causing your whole face to drop. The once brightly lit parol, had shattered into pieces, leaving the lights inside to flicker. That did it for you. The tears that have been threatening to fall from your eyes all day have started to drop. “Y/N…” Bucky starts softly, cutting himself off when he sees you quietly and carefully approach the now broken parol, trying to pick the broken pieces up. “Y/N, careful,” Bucky says worriedly, putting his set of bags down to stop you from hurting yourself. “It’s… it’s broken Buck…” you say in disbelief and disappointment, sniffing as you wipe your tears. “Hey. It’s going to be alright, sweetheart. We can work something out-” “It’s my only parol.”

“It’s okay, hey we still can video call-” “My family had opened their presents by now.” Bucky was stumped for you to say the least. He couldn’t even figure out what to say to you over the quiet dinner table when you barely picked up your food and when you immediately retreated to the bedroom, quiet sniffles echoing. He knew that feeling all too well, having something so connected to your identity be taken away in a moment’s notice. He knew one thing though. He wanted to make you feel at home, and he was going to do something about it.

---

“What do you have there, baby doll?” Bucky questions as he watched you open a square shaped box. He smiled when you didn’t respond, a little habit of yours that he has loved knowing that you could not contain your excitement. “A parol!” you squealed, revealing a carefully crafted ring with a star shaped piece in the middle. It was made of red, white, green, and yellow dyed capiz shells. He had never seen anything like it before. 

He continues to look at the parol, blush forming on his cheeks in embarrassment when you laughed at his curious gaze. “Parols are pretty much Christmas lanterns back in the Philippines. They normally are shaped as stars and they light up at night! It definitely shows the Filipino Christmas spirit,” you explain to him as your excited eyes meet his. Bucky loved hearing you explain your culture, especially since you have been quite homesick since joining the team and having a place of your own. You did not want your family to know too much of what your job entailed. With that being said, whenever you got a chance to immerse yourself in the culture you grew up with, you always took the chance. 

“Want to help me hang it?” You ask, already finding the right spot for it. “Of course doll, let’s go” he replies with a smile, following you to the window to help. Bucky had to admit, the parol looked wonderful. He watched the lantern in satisfaction as it lit up in wonderful patterns, a sight he can’t wait to become accustomed to. “Must really take long to make these,” he remarks as his eyes admire the lantern. “It does… especially these, but they’re all beautiful.” You sigh happily hugging your boyfriend as you watch the parol, twinkling bright as the snow slowly fell gently outside the apartment’s window. 

“God I missed this. You wanna know something?” Bucky’s eyes turned away from the lantern and looked at you intently. 

“Yeah?” 

“This has been around since I was a kid.”

“Really, now?”

“Mhm! I always grew up being surrounded by the culture and my family and I always loved showing it off during the Christmas season. Of course not like in the Philippines though, but we always tried to remember home here. I hope you don’t mind. I asked my parents to bring it over, so I can have a piece of them with me.” The way your face fell in melancholy and embarrassment did not come unnoticed by Bucky. “I don’t mind at all, sweetheart. This is our place, right? Besides, it adds a little flare to our little place doesn’t it?” he questions with that charming smile, making you reciprocate it back in relief before you kiss his cheek. 

“It does… thank you.”

--- 

A knock sounds through the now quiet apartment, making Bucky immediately make his way to the door. “Oh, Mrs. Y/L/N. Thank you for coming.” He says, gently taking your mother’s hand and bringing it up to his forehead just like you taught him. “Ahhh, bless you, bless you,” your mother responds while giggling, making her way into your apartment and sitting down on a couch. Bucky watched in surprise as she took out several simple materials from one of her plastic bags: string, small string lights, bamboo sticks, colored cellophane sheets, rubber bands, and colored tissue paper. 

“That looks different from the one she hung up a few days ago.” Bucky commented in surprise, only for your mother to look up at him with raised eyebrows. “You don’t expect me to make one that expensive looking, do you? No! I’ll buy one for you two later. But for now, let me teach you how to do it the traditional way. Come here.” Your mother beckoned, making Bucky smile as he took his seat next to you, excited for what’s next. 

“Yan! (There we go) What do you think? Pretty good right?” Your mother smiled, clapping quietly as Bucky smiled proudly at the simple parol he had just finished making. It was a simple one for sure unlike the incredibly detailed one you both hung, but he desperately hoped you would enjoy at least a substitute for the meantime. “Wow..it’s nice… thank you…” he started, only to have your mother wave her hand nonchalantly. “Ayyy… it’s no problem. I’m glad you made the effort to do this for her. Thank you.” She laughed when Bucky’s cheeks started to turn red and pinched them before standing up and taking the rest of her bags to the kitchen. Bucky was then confused, from the additional bags in the kitchen, the urgent sounding phone call in what seemed to be Tagalog, and your mother’s quick paced actions. “Is there a way I can help?” He asks, shyly. Your mother couldn’t help but laugh once again, dragging him into the kitchen with her. “I called her father so we can do this.” 

“What are we going to do, exactly?”

“Bring home to her!”

You sighed in relief as the door of your apartment was getting closer and closer. It was luckily a better day, just training and meetings before you were able to go home. You were very much ready to be greeted by your lover’s arms and wind down. However, that wasn’t the case, for when you closed the door, a familiar scent filled the air. “Wait a minute,” you whispered in disbelief, hurrying to the kitchen and saw several foods that you have terribly missed: pork barbecue, chicken afritada, bibingka, and rice cakes. You squealed with joy when your mom and dad yelled surprise, not hesitating to hug the both of them excitedly as joyful tears ran down your cheeks. “I’ve missed you guys! How did you come here?! What?!” you question in awe and denial, which made your parents smile. “You have to thank your boyfriend for that one, anak (child)” your dad replies to a smile.  “I called them over. To hopefully cheer you up.” A shy voice says. You turned around in surprise to see Bucky walking shyly to you with his arms behind his back. “That’s not the only surprise he has for you anak! Bucky, show her! Show her!” Your mother beckoned, resulting in yet another confused look from you. Bucky smiled shyly and revealed to you the parol that he had made earlier, causing another gasp to leave your lips and more tears to fall. 

“Buck… you made this?” Bucky smiled shyly “I did… I remembered you mentioning that people were able to make them, so I asked your mom to teach me, so we can have this for the meantime. I know it’s not much but-” His words were then cut off as you tightly embraced him, then went up on your tippy toes to shower your boyfriend with thankful kisses. “Oh, it’s more than enough, Buck… thank you. Thank you, so much.” You truly were grateful. You were aware that it may have not been easy for Bucky to call them up, let alone build a parol, and you were amazed beyond belief. The two of you hung the small and simple parol that lit up softly in the dark night, admiring the cute sight as your parents took pictures of the two of you with smiles beaming on their faces. “Come on then, you two, let’s eat!” your dad exclaims, laughter filling the walls of the apartment.

 “I can’t believe you,” You whispered to Bucky, holding his hand as you both walked to the table. “Couldn’t let my girl go through her favorite holiday being sad, can’t I? What kind of boyfriend would I be? I figured you could have a piece of home with you for the holidays, so I wanted to give my girl a surprise..” You giggled and nodded and kissed his knuckles, your eyes meeting his wonderful blue ones. 

“I love you so much, Buck. Thank you. But my home wouldn’t be complete without you in the picture, couldn’t it?” 

“Neither would mine, baby doll.”

You took a final look at the parol and back at Bucky, smiling in content as he led you to the dinner table. You held that parol close to your heart, as it showed the efforts and the simple actions that you two took into making each other happy. The fact that Bucky would do this for you was remarkable to you, and that alone proved to you that it didn’t matter where you were, for James Buchanan Barnes was now always there to proudly remind you of home.

Tags: @world-of-aus​ @whew-oh-em-gee​ @lordyitsjordy​ @tomholland-96​ @letstalkaboutsebbaby​

If you’d like to be part of my tag list let me know! 😊

Main Masterlist

[extremelyblackandwhite]

handmaid - 29

PAIRING: mob!sebastian stan x ingenue!reader

WARNINGS: age gap

A/N: when you quote west side story you do know things are not about to get any better *nervous laughter* hope you enjoy this chapter x

NEXT CHAPTER

The environment was calm with baby blue and white walls. The only sounds existing in the room being that of the machines beeping and the small breathing sounds coming from the two people in the bedroom. It was quiet, very quiet, but the quietness only contributed to the peaceful nature of the hospital bedroom. 

The slight beeping of the door being opened caused the attention of the French woman to leave from her newborn daughter to the man who had just came in holding a bouquet of white lilies. 

     - I didn’t know what type of flowers would be suitable for someone who just gave birth. - he smiled, taking a seat on the cushioned chair by her bed. - How are my girls?

    - I am alright. Ella’s just been sleeping, I think that’s all she does. - the baby sleep peacefully against her chest, lightly suckling on her mother’s pinkie finger without a single care in the world. - Do you know when we can go home? It’s becoming a bit tiring to be in here. 

   - Robin. - the man sighed. - It’s safer for you to be here than to be home. We cannot return home until we’re certain that no harm can come to you or to Ella. 

   - But we got extra security besides ... I sense something bad is coming.

   - That is just your “momma bear” coming out. You’re safe here, there’s staff and security everywhere. 

   - I hope you’re right. - she sighed, looking at the baby. - I really hope you’re right. 

Y/N stared at him with the sort of curiosity one does whenever confronted with a hard choice. She could just end it, she could just put a stop to it and spare Gwen the pain and shame of being cheated on before she even got married, spare Sebastian and her the childish illusions that everything would be okay. She could just end it, she could just run away and start somewhere new but something always stopped it. Turns out, she couldn’t just end it, she couldn’t just stop falling more and more in love with him, she couldn’t just pretend she could just leave and things would be alright. So once again, she’d rather pretend that everything is alright, everything’s fine. 

She took a step towards him, her shoe front hitting his ever so slightly before she wrapped her arms around him, hiding her head in the space between his shoulder and neck, inhaling his cologne. Sebastian relished and relaxed in her embrace, kissing the crown of her head in means to comfort her.

     - Stay. - he mumbled through her hair, holding her tightly in his arms as if she would fade into air if his grip loosened. Y/N on the other hand was again trying to convince herself that there was a place for them, somewhere in time a place where there could be together without any other external factors. Nevertheless, that place filled with quiet and open air seemed to be nowhere near as breaking through those thoughts were the distant sounding laughter and chatting of people inside the dinning hall celebrating his engagement. Her gaze moved from the room to his face, to his beautiful eyes who stared into her with a look of pure naive hope. - Angel, I ...

    - Mr. Stan? - the two of them left the embrace as someone got closer to the balcony, calling out for him. Her gaze left his to stare at her shoes, shifting her weight from side to side as one of his lesser associates came into the balcony, giving the handmaid a dirty look. - There are some people inside trying to congratulate you. 

   - I’ll be right with you, I just need t ...

   - No, it’s alright. Go. - Y/N interrupted him, giving him a simple characteristic smile. She didn’t want to be the reason why he got himself in trouble and she also didn’t want to make it seem like they were intimate to the rest of the world. Sebastian, however, took a double take, wondering if he should stay and finish his sentence but the associate keeping on calling made him leave her there in the balcony.

The handmaid just sighed, leaning against the railing of the balcony, head heavy with various concerns that probably should’ve weight on her decision back when she decided to get together with him. Before she could decide what else to do, Mr. Dubois had joined her in the balcony, offering her one of the champagne flutes that seemed to float around the party. Despite not being in the mood to drink, she decided to accept it anyway. 

    - So, a handmaid? Pardon my curiosity, I have never met one in my whole life. What does it entail?

    - It’s the same thing as medieval time handmaids. You’re by the heiress’ side making sure she’s happy. - it was an over-explanation of what her job truly entailed but Y/N didn’t have enough time to completely go through what being a handmaid truly was like. - You mentioned the Deschamps. Excuse me asking but I’ve been in this environment since I was younger and I never heard about that mob family.

   - Oh they’re not a mob family. The Deschamps aren’t part of the mob however they are rich, they had money even after the French Revolution. They own more New York real state than the Stans so they normally make an appearance at every single event. 

   - I thought the Stans owned all of the Upper East Side. 

   - They wished. - he scoffed. - I remember a time when one of the mob families tried to get an engagement with a Deschamps. Can’t remember her name, though. Rosemarie, maybe.

   - Never heard of it. - Y/N shrugged. - Enjoying the party so far?

   - I didn’t expect Genevieve Forrest to be that frivolous. It’s nothing like her father. 

   - She’s young. 

   - You can only blame so much on age, Miss Y/N. 

The talk was mostly void of interest, just a polite dance she used to do with anyone and everyone who spoke to her. Once the part became too much for her to handle, she took back to her bedroom sitting down in her bed with various questions going through her mind. Her eyes quickly gazed over her laptop laying on top of her suitcase. She shouldn’t, this was just putting herself deeper and deeper down a hole that kept bringing her more sleepless nights. Yet, as per usual, Y/N did not stop herself and soon enough she found herself with her laptop on her lap, Google on as she typed that very spoke about name. Deschamps. As she finished typing that name and pressed enter several pictures showed up along with a bit of information. Turns out Mr. Dubois was right, they were rich, filthy rich and by the look of it, mostly based in Saint-Nom-La-Bretèch. As she went through the pictures, one of them caught her attention as in the picture stood quite a big crowd of people but one woman in particular standing at the front shared a significant resemblance to the Robin woman that had kept showing on Sebastian’s and Mr. Forrest’s attic. However, the golden necklace that now laid in the middle of Y/N’s collarbones was missing from the woman’s neck in the picture.

Curiously, Y/N clicked the link connected to the photo which led to an article about the acquisition of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The picture on the article had a legend and as she went through, she reached the name of the only woman in the figure; Rosemarie Deschamps, the eldest daughter of Michael Deschamps. Surprised, Y/N closed her laptop forcefully, hiding behind her duvet like a scared child. It was just in her mind, it was just in her mind, she didn’t need to know, why did she need to know. Even if she was related to the Deschamps she was probably a bastard child whom the Forrests took pity on. 

With those thoughts, she dozed off to sleep. Between all of this and her relationship with Sebastian she didn’t exactly know how she could sleep peacefully and throughout the night she kept somehow waking up in cold sweats. When she finally managed to have more than just a few minutes of sleep around sunrise, a loud knock followed by her name being screamed in a high pitched female voice took her right off her sleeping state. Great. Through her sleepiness, she mumbled for however it was at the door to come in. In came Gwen dressed like a Givenchy model in a harsh shade of green and white. 

    - Y/N, I need a favour. - she sat on the edge of her bed. - I have my wedding dress fitting today but I really can’t be asked besides Christian and I were thinking about going for brunch. 

    - We’re not the same size. - Y/N mumbled against her pillow, sleep trying to fight through her awareness. 

    - Just check if the dress is okay. C’mon Y/N. - Gwen pulled the duvet away from her. - Please, I covered for you.

   - Okay.

Gwen clapped in excitement before pulling the handmaid up to her bedroom which was filled to the brim with people carrying needles and threads along with various swatches of fabric. Before Y/N could question what was happening, she was brought by one of the woman to stand in front of the mirror while another one opened a white box pulling out Gwen’s wedding dress. Gwen was nowhere to be seen, probably already left and before Y/N could even check for that, the dress was being pushed down her, sitting a bit too loose. Her eyes glued to the mirror as she saw herself in the wedding dress, the white fabric almost glistening with the light. It was a beautiful dress, mostly made out of fabric.

  - Genevieve, we need to spe ... - Y/N turned around at the different voice that came from the door. Sebastian was leaning against it, almost sure his eyes were playing tricks on him as he observed Y/N dressed in bridal fashion. - Angel, what are you doing here?

  - Gwen asked me to cover for her. - she didn’t even lie anymore, instead facing him with the truth that he would probably hear from everyone else. - Is it important?

  - PR bullshit, if you ask me. - he took a step towards her, fully inspecting the gown wrapped around the handmaid. - You look stunning.

  - It’s not my dress. - she forcefully smiled, not sure if she should cry or not. It wasn’t everyday that you get dressed in the wedding dress belonging to the woman who’s about to get married to the man she was hopelessly in love with.

Yet again, she kept digging herself a hole which she wasn’t sure she could ever come out from. 

tag list: @lilya-petrichor​​ @xoxohannahlee​​ @irespostthingsiwanttoseelater​​ @nikkipea​​ @madisonpillstrom​​ @cevans98​​ @thelostallycat​​ @sideeffectsofyou​​ @anxiousdreamersworld​​ @captainchrisstan​​ @lookiamtrying​​ @sarge-barnes-sir​​ @stuffforreferences​​ @thebadassbitchqueen @sebastianstansqueen​​ @nsfwsebbie​​ @strangerliaa​​ @emzd34​​ @everything-is-awesomesauce​​ @dreams-in-blxck​​ 

[itsclydebitches]

YYH Recaps: Koenma Appears

Welcome to episode two, everyone! Before we get to the recap proper, I want to continue down Nostalgia Lane for a moment. Remember how last time I mentioned a Hiei bookmark I used daily back in middle school? Well, I tore through an old "treasure box" I created as a kid (a collection containing everything from a shark tooth to a small book on witchcraft. You know, the important things every child needs) hoping to find it... but I didn't. It's a hard life we lead.

However, I did find some other YYH relics that I thought you all might enjoy seeing. Behold — and, if you'd like, laugh at — my collection:

First up is a picture of young Toguro and Genkai that I wanted to use as my bookmark, but found that it was too wide. For the record, I didn't (and still don't) care about Toguro much, he was just the byproduct of finding a cool Genkai picture. Not shown is the back of the image with the names of my classmates because I made them all sign this along with our yearbook.

God bless my friends for putting up with me.

Second is a collection of very pretty trading cards that I ordered from god only knows where. I have vague memories of not finding any at my local comics shop and convincing my mom to let me order on The Olde Internet. Did I want the trading cards to trade them? Absolutely not. They exist to sparkle and make my heart happy.

Finally, I've saved what is perhaps the best for last. Now, you have to understand that grade to middle school age Clyde did not have the education that she would receive later on, which includes a knowledge of the ephemeral nature of fanworks and the importance of accurate record keeping. What this means is that I have absolutely no context for this. No author, no explanation... just the image itself.

Was this a standalone fanart? A part of a fic? Some specific request or just the will of the artist? I cannot answer these questions. I tried a reverse image search (which is, admittedly, the extent of my tech skills) and you know what the single hit I got was? "Fiction." Thanks, google. So yeah, I can only assume that my child self considered Kurama giving a de-aged Hiei a bubble bath adorable enough to save, but the artist wasn't important enough to jot down for future viewing. Sorry about that, mystery artist. And, as should go without saying, if anyone does know where this came from please let me know! Though I suspect that this is a case of a YYH-specific site closing down and the fanworks getting lost along with it. That happened a great deal before the age of AO3 when volunteers decided to put their time and talent towards saving fanworks of all sorts... 

But enough of all that. Let's get to recapping!

As we established last episode, Yusuke and Botan are on their way to the spirit world to kickstart Yusuke's ordeal. Watching this after over a decade of consuming other media, I really appreciate that Yusuke acts like a human person and asks lots of questions about this. When Botan is cryptic for the sake of the audience — we're going to see "the person" who can explain everything — Yusuke is justifiably like, and what person would that be?? I mean, this is also a way to establish basic facts for the viewer and it simultaneously feeds into Yusuke being someone who is difficult for the sake of being difficult — "If someone wants to say something, they should come to me!" — but it's just nice to see a character who doesn't accept cryptic BS because the story needs them to. If Botan gives an unclear, but ~dramatic~ explanation, Yusuke is going to call her out on that.

So she explains that they're going to see King Yama and Yusuke is all whoa whoa whoa, there's royalty involved? Suddenly, he's not so adamant that they come to him. 

Botan tries to reinforce this rare spark of humility and demands that Yusuke be on his best behavior from here on out.

Pff. Yeah right.

But “he can send you to oblivion forever if he wants to!” is a suitable enough threat to cow Yusuke for now. Which is interesting considering that a few hours ago he was happy to accept hell as his rightful ending. Granted, we could argue that there's a big difference between hell and oblivion — a character may not be afraid of punishment in the same way they are a lack of existence — but I'd say this ties more into Yusuke's development at the wake. Now that he's accepted that people care for him and that he should strive to return to them, the threat of having it snatched away actually means something. Even if that line is otherwise positioned as a comedic moment.

Botan flies them through a portal where we see the River Styx below and Yusuke comments on how big everything is. At first I was like, "What are you talking about? You were just flying over some major city in fictional Japan, wasn't that big too?" but this line makes more sense when they reach the palace and you realize that yeah, it's big. As in, the camera blurs while tilting down its length to show how insanely tall it is. Yusuke and Botan are tiny gnats at the gate's entrance.

"Oh man, what a pad!" Yusuke says and sure, that's one way to look at it lol.

Botan announces that she has a "new arrival" and the gates open for them, but so far there's no one else around. One part of me wants to question the time and budget put into this scene because shouldn't there be, like, thousands of people? Even just waiting outside? The idea that this is the hub of the underworld and that Botan is responsible for ferrying all the souls, yet she is guiding just this one (1) dude for a solid day is, from a world building perspective, kind of nuts. But beyond the need to develop Botan as a character (she can't be a part of the story if her job is treated realistically, with all the endless work that entails), I think this choice functions rather well from an atmospheric perspective too. Meaning, this moment is supposed to be rather tense for Yusuke. He just died, just found out the afterlife exists, just discovered a desire to get his life back, and is now about to meet a King who can toss him into oblivion if he's rude — which Yusuke always is. So this is a Very Dangerous Moment and their relative isolation feeds into that. As does the setting. Yusuke flinches back from the hallway, saying that it looks like a giant throat, so he is now literally walking into the belly of the beast. 

Suddenly, the size of the palace isn't an indicator of awesome wealth, just general intimidation. Also, check out the spikey purple mountains in the background and the harsh reds of the scene, especially compared to the soft yellow of the river. All of it is designed to create an, "Oh shit" reaction in both Yusuke and the audience.

Yusuke's image of King Yama matches these surroundings:

Oh wait! Wrong character ;)

He's massive, red, shadowed, and poses a formidable threat. And how does Yusuke deal with threats? By fighting them! Even those he can't hope to beat. Remember, this isn't a situation where Yusuke has any power here, but he still desperately holds onto the possibility that he might. What if he gets off a punch on King Yama's nose? Then goes for his eyes? Yeah, that'll work! 

Overlooking the fact that it absolutely would not — Yusuke's fantasy conveniently skips how he escapes Yama's clutches — what exactly is Yusuke hoping to accomplish here? Somehow take over the entire underworld? Escape as a ghost and live out his afterlife in hiding? We don't know and that's because Yusuke doesn't know. He doesn't think ahead, he just obeys this instinct to fight. An instinct that, crucially, overrides everything else. Botan has already told him that all Yusuke needs to do is be polite and everything will be fine, but it's not even that Yusuke believes that he can't achieve that; that he knows himself too well and, fearing a slip, starts planning for a potentially inevitable confrontation. There are simply no plans outside of battle plans. Yusuke just hears about someone vaguely intimidating and his brain jumps straight to, "How do I beat him in a fight?" no matter the odds, or that other options are readily available to him. Again, much of YYH's characterization occurs though its comedy, so outside of the general humor of witnessing this fantasy, it actually does a stellar job of reinforcing precisely who Yusuke is. In life the only thing he had going for him was his ability to fight. It was his one joy, his one skill, arguably the one good thing he did if we frame those reflexes as "saving" the kid... so is it any wonder that fighting dominates his every thought? It's all he knows.

And, as we'll see down the line, that single-minded obsession is very useful to the spirit world.

For now though, Yusuke finishes his absurd plans to take down King Yama and Botan asks what in the world he's muttering about back there. Which is an unintentionally hilarious line because by the end Yusuke is not muttering, but full on shouting. Botan. How did you not hear him?

Not important. They reach the next door and we get our first inkling that all is not as Yusuke (and we) expect when Botan leans into an intercom to say that they've arrived. Tech in a fantasy spirit world? This feels not only out of place, but rather... mundane? That's the point. When the doors open Yusuke expects his super scary monster, but gets... a whole lot of monsters that aren't scary at all!

The underworld is run by various demons (or ogres), though their looks are contrasted with the harried office worker personalities they've got going on. Someone is running by with a comically tall stack of papers. Someone else is shouting into a cell phone. The first two demons we see cross paths, looking like they're about to punch one another, just as Yusuke expects... except they're just dramatically getting out of the other's way, worried not about the hierarchy of this realm, but the fact that someone is behind schedule. The nerve!

"This place is a madhouse!" we hear somehow shout and yeah, that's the joke. The afterlife is just as chaotic, overworked, and — ultimately — boring as any human office. For all the strangeness of seeing hundreds of demons, this is familiar.

Which, alongside Botan's bubbly nature contrasting assumptions about the Grim Reaper, is one of the first instances of YYH undercutting the viewer's expectations in terms of looks. No one entirely looks the part they play in this tale and if you're trying to teach people to look past surface characteristics... there are worse ways to do it. Horrifying creatures with horns and sharp teeth? Nah, they're just chill dudes trying to do their job. Cutesy girl who looks like she belongs in a mall reading magazines? Nah, she's the Grim Reaper. Terrifying delinquent with a spine-chilling reputation? Nah, he makes faces at kids and saves them from cars.

Of course, the "nah" isn't accurate either. These are monsters with horns, Botan is a cutesy girl, and Yusuke is a delinquent with that reputation. The message isn't so much that people look like Thing A, but get to know them and you'll discover they're actually Thing B, it's the idea that you can be A and B (and C, D, E...) simultaneously. People — or rather, seemingly simple archetypes — can, in fact, embody multiple characteristics at once.

We'll get our third example in just a second.

Yusuke makes a comment about this being the "dead people stock exchange" — accurate — and Botan leads him to a more ornate door past all the desks. It's clear they've arrived at King Yama's office, since she's bowing and formally presenting him to... someone. Yusuke looks around for the giant beast he's imagined, only for a tiny voice to hail him from the ground.

Looks are deceiving!

“This is Yusuke Urameshi and he’s honored to meet you." Botan knows what's up. She knows Yusuke isn't going to express anything of the sort without some prompting. Too bad he's busy cracking up at this apparent child running the show. Side note: Yusuke has a fantastic laugh.

He even goes so far as to accuse Botan of lying to him.

“Why would I lie about such a thing?!”

“Why would the spirit world be run by a toddler?”

It's true! That’s a legitimate question! I love that Yusuke asks questions. The "toddler" goes on to explain that he's actually the "mighty Koenma," son of King Yama, though he's lived fifty times as long as Yusuke, "so watch your mouth." Assuming Koenma knows and/or remembers how old Yusuke is — fourteen — and is good at math, that puts him at seven hundred years old. He looks good for his age!

"And in addition to knowing the secrets of the universe," he says, "I am quite potty trained."

You've gotta love Koenma.

Yusuke's attitude changes drastically once they get down to business. Koenma produces an egg, saying that Yusuke's ordeal is to hatch it and face what comes out. The hatching part isn't difficult, all he needs to do is keep it on his person. The challenge is in the fact that this egg will feed off his spirit energy and that energy in turn will change what kind of creature develops. If his spirit is wicked and cruel, so will be the beast and it will devour Yusuke upon hatching.

However, if his spirit is good and kind, the beast will become a sort of guardian, guiding him back to his living body.

Note though that throughout this conversation the egg is always a "beast." It's a "monster." It's not necessarily intentional, but there's a strong bend towards the negative here in the description that really emphasizes the whole "ordeal" aspect. Koenma briefly reassures Yusuke that he can remain a ghost if he prefers, but he's already made up his mind. Despite another threat of being lost to a void — this time through spiritual digestion — Yusuke takes the egg almost without hesitation.

He regrets it later though.

"I can't believe I did that."

Can we blame him? I'd be nervous about some egg feeding off the energy of my soul too and I'm a former, almost straight A student (damn you, math) with no life-altering regrets and a general desire to put as much good into this world as I'm able. I’m boring. But what if those occasional, mean little thoughts you have add up? What if the prejudices you're still unlearning stack against you? Does the egg care about what you do, or only how you feel about the act? This sort of test would eat me alive!

Maybe literally. 

Good thing Yusuke doesn't have time for an existential crisis!

Just as he's beginning to regret this decision, Botan points out that it won't matter if he passes if he doesn't have a body to return to. Now, why wouldn't he have a body? Maybe because his mom is set to cremate him tomorrow.

Whoopsie.

Yusuke is, understandably, distraught. We get another excellent exchange:

“Botan, is there any way for ghosts to communicate with living people?”

“Yes.”

“SO ARE YOU GONNA TELL ME?”

I swear, Yusuke is the only smart protagonist. I mean, he's dumb as a sack of bricks at times, but that's neither here nor there. Bless this fictional boy for reacting like an actual person. 

Botan explains that people are more attuned to the spirit world when they're asleep, so Yusuke can deliver a message to someone in their dreams. Seems easy enough. They first head to Atsuko, but find that she's raging drunk and nowhere near sleep. 

"You fool!" she yells. "No one gave you permission to die!" Atsuko continues to yell about how plenty of people survive car accidents, so why couldn't you? "Were you mad at me, Yusuke? Didn't I raise you right?"

Botan comments on how sad the display is. Yusuke's response?

“The only thing that’s sad is now she’s got one more excuse to act that way."

Y'all, that's some mature shit for a goofy shonen anime. Yeah, Yusuke recognizes that, while she's obviously heartbroken, his death has just given her another reason to do what she's been doing for years: drinking herself into a stupor. Toss in Atsuko putting the blame on Yusuke — "No one gave you permission to die!" — plus the belief that she did do a good job — "Didn't I raise you right?" — and it paints a rather bleak picture. This is by no means an uncommon theme. Negligent parents, whether they're framed that way or not, are pretty common in shonen series, but it's still rather jarring to re-watch this as an adult and go, "Oh. The situation’s like that." It's honestly a lot when you remove it from YYH's otherwise humorous, casual context.

Yusuke heads to Keiko's next and finds her sound asleep, commenting on how her room looks more "girly" than when they were kids. Check out that smile!

He's about to try and deliver his message, but Keiko is in the midst of a nightmare. “She’s crying… what’s wrong?”

Oh my god. Remember how I just said Yusuke is also the densest protagonist around? Example A right here. You just died, you fool! You just saw Keiko collapse at your funeral. What do you think is wrong??

We get a peek at Keiko's dream where she is — shockingly! — thinking of Yusuke. He's far out of reach, walking away and unresponsive to her calls. Keiko soon trips and Yusuke disappears completely.

Luckily, she has the real thing at her bedside. Yusuke tries talking to her and at first it's unclear if this supernatural stuff is really working. That is, until Keiko murmurs about how heavy he is.

Reassured, Yusuke delivers his message that Keiko needs to help Atsuko pull herself together and, most importantly, call off burning his body. We get this very soft and pretty background to establish their yet unspoken feelings for one another, though Yusuke gets close with, “I’m coming back. I don’t want to see you cry anymore" as he brushes her tears away. Aww.

Keiko wakes, thinking at first it was just a dream, but no, "I'm sure I felt it."

The next morning she heads to Atsuko's to explain the dream, only to first hear that Atsuko had a dream too, this one about Yusuke "living in some other world full of ogres and he kept knocking them down until he became their leader." It sounds absurd, of course, but it brings Atsuko some comfort to think of her boy in a place like that and Keiko backs down. Right, she'd only had a comforting dream too.

Now, there are two important parts to this exchange. The first is that this is an excellent example of how you let the characters drive the story, rather than forcing the characters adhere to the plot you've come up with. Meaning, in the latter situation, our cast would have needed to have their personalities twisted and the viewer's suspicion of disbelief tested to give Yusuke what he needs: a sleeping family member willing to believe his message. But it absolutely makes sense for Atsuko to be drunk rather than sound asleep, so Yusuke can't rely on her. Likewise, it absolutely makes sense for Keiko to be asleep, but not believe the dream once she's woken up. After all, how many times have we been persuaded by something in the dead of night only for things to look more logical and less likely in the morning? The characters act both like themselves and like people who do normal, people-ish things, which means that Yusuke runs into more conflicts. That's good! It not only raises the tension and stakes — now he has less than a day to convince someone — but makes his inevitable success feel that much sweeter. A less well written show (cough-RWBY-cough) would have had the characters change their personalities, behave in unlikely ways, or just come up with a sudden, contradictory solution because Yusuke needs to keep his body. Instead, Yusuke actually has to work for that within the bounds of the rules established and the likeliness of each plan succeeding. The first one fails? Move onto plan #2.

Second, this dream of Atsuko's has some cool implications within YYH's world. Meaning, we're about to learn in just a moment that some people are naturally more aware of the supernatural than others, even when they're not asleep. We'll also see down the line that spiritual awareness tends to run in families... so perhaps Atsuko possesses more than the average mother? I'm not saying it's necessarily intentional on the author(s) part, but we can choose to read this dream as evidence of spiritual awareness — true insight into the world Yusuke was just in and the fantasies he'd had about conquering it — rather than just a coincidental joke for the viewer. After all, Yusuke gets his own spiritual awareness from somewhere...

(Okay, so there's totally another, canonical reason for that, but we can have both!)

So, as Yusuke puts it, “This dream business isn’t gonna cut it.”

“There’s always the final method," Botan says.

“You always this vague?”

I am literally living for these interactions.

Botan explains that the more extreme form of communication is possessing a living person, but there are two rules attached: it has to be someone you know and the vessel has to be someone who is quite spiritually aware, as discussed above. Atsuko isn't a contender because the story hasn't acknowledged that she might be sensitive, that's just my own headcanon now. Yusuke outright says, “In that case I’m screwed. There’s no one like that!"

Cut to good old Kuwabara.

At first it looks as if he's just oh so conveniently sensing a spirit right when the audience has learned he has this power, but in reality it's Yusuke and Botan flying behind him that sets it off. Again: this show is pretty good about keeping things internally consistent, rather than making choices because That's Just How Stories Work, I Guess. Kuwabara's friends note that he's acting strangely and I love this detail that apparently one of the guys is new to their group because the other two need to explain that this is the "tickle feeling." Ever since Kuwabara was a boy he's been able to sense the dead around him. Some nice, some... not so nice.

He looks directly at Yusuke — even though he's not able to see him — and declares that what's following them is “A puny low-level ghost, like a haunted racoon or something.”

I'd support Yusuke's anger more if he hadn't just exclaimed his surprise that Kuwabara serves a purpose 😂

Yusuke is pissed enough though to proclaim that he won't do it, nuh-uh, no way is he possessing this guy's body. Botan's response is one of my FAVORITES in the WHOLE SERIES:

"Here's my impression of Yusuke: look at me, I’m burning!”

Literally 75% of this series is just about a found family sassing one another and I love it.

Obviously this helps Yusuke remember his priorities and he grudgingly agrees to the plan. Botan prepares Kuwabara's body somehow — idk, spiritual magic or whatever — and warns Yusuke that he only has an hour to find someone and warn them because a human body can't handle possession any longer than that. Sure. I buy it.

So Yusuke takes control and please ignore the incredible ethical issues here. The show will never acknowledge them again. 

He blurts out, “Hey, check it out! I’m inside Kuwabara, feeling smooth!"

Istg I don't remember the series being this unintentionally gay. I don't even ship Yusuke/Kuwabara and I'm digging the possibilities here lol.

Back on track, his friends drag him with, “Looks like he’s back to normal” because again, 75%. What's not normal though is Kuwabara (Yusuke) suddenly charging down the street to leave them behind. He heads straight to the restaurant where Keiko's parents work, demanding to see her. They're rightly concerned about this stranger barging in and screaming for their daughter.

Upon asking who he is/why they should tell him, Yusuke makes his biggest mistake: “Because it’s me, you guys, I’m Yusuke!”

Obviously the time limit and raw emotion of knowing who he is has outweighed the knowledge that, you know, no one would believe that. Yusuke has spent the last two days bopping around as a ghost and familiarizing himself with some of the afterlife's insanity. The knowledge of what's normal for everyone else — AKA, not dead boys appearing in strangers' bodies — is not at the forefront of Yusuke's mind.

So, Keiko's parents react accordingly! The father in particular is disgusted by this claim, going so far as to threaten Yusuke with his knife and outright insult Kuwabara's looks: “Yusuke was never ugly like you… we were close family friends with that boy!" His wife chimes in that this kind of joke is particularly heinous on the day of his funeral. Between Atsuko drunkenly blaming Yusuke for his death and Mr. Takenaka grieving for what he might have been, this is one of the few times we see someone just sad for Yusuke's passing, exactly as he was and without regrets or criticism. "We were close family friends with that boy" paints a nice contrast to the delinquent persona Yusuke was cultivating.

As he's thrown out of the restaurant he says, “We should have special passwords for times like this!” Fun fact, my family does! Well, not this exact situation lol. I was given a password as a child to memorize in case my parents ever needed to send someone else to pick me up or interact with me in any way. If the stranger didn't know the password, I was to kick up a fuss. I rest easy with the knowledge that this password would not doubt assist me if I was ever in Yusuke's position!

With Keiko's parents a bust, Yusuke starts sprinting to everywhere she frequents with the hope of running into her. Or at least he tries. 

Yusuke is suddenly waylaid by a group of nameless teens with a bone to pick with Kuwabara. And you know what? I like it. I wonder how much of my praise stems from coming off of RWBY Volume 8, but it's just so nice to watch a story where the plot — simple as it is — hangs together. We've established that Kuwabara is a street fighter. Last episode we watched him start a fight with Yusuke. Yusuke is on a time limit. Now Kuwabara's tendencies have created a new hurdle for Yusuke!

Needless to say, Yusuke kicks butt, even in Kuwabara’s body. 

As one guy is passing out he says, “Man that hurt! I didn’t think anyone could throw punches that hardcore except Yusuke Urameshi."

Yusuke: “Darn, giving Kuwabara a good name." LOL

You think this challenge is finished though? Nah. Over the course of about half an hour Yusuke encounters a comical number of people trying to get even with Kuwabara. 

As always, I like the nods towards this writing decision to help justify it, with Yusuke wondering how Kuwabara has pissed this many people off. If you want to pull off something that has a low chance of happening, it can help to give the characters a "Seriously?" moment. If both they and the audience are on the same page over how ridiculous this situation is, the audience is more likely to accept it once the character does.

By the time Yusuke escapes his hour is nearly up. However, thanks to some coincidental plotting, he spots Keiko's friends just across the street! 

YYH does a decent job of making its characters feel like they have their own lives outside of what's immediately happening on screen and we get a good example of that here. We pick up the girls' conversation partway through, both of them worried about Keiko's state of mind and, given that we'll see in a second that Keiko was in the store with them, it implies that something happened to reignite this worry. They're off enjoying their day, doing their own thing, there was an event we're not privy to, and now we catch the response to that. It just helps make the characters feel more well-rounded even though they are, at their core, one-dimensional background characters who don’t even have names yet.

Case in point: the one girl is still concerned with their image. "People are starting to say things!"

Yeah, your friend's childhood friend just died. Hopefully they're saying, "Poor thing."

Anyway, Yusuke runs up to ask where Keiko is only for both girls to run away screaming. Turns out his face is messed up from the numerous fights and Keiko's friends are easily scared. 

Luckily, Keiko comes out just a second later and Yusuke is faced with the challenge of how to convince her in, oh, about five minutes. Remember, we've already established through Keiko's parents that just saying, "I'm Yusuke" doesn't work. That's why he hesitates. It's not just drama for the sake of drama, he's stuck.

“I’ve known her my whole life, there must be something between us that only I would do!”

Yeeeeaah. About that 😬

Suddenly inspired (I suppose that's one way to put it...) Yusuke runs up behind Keiko and grabs her breasts. “Keiko, nice uniform! They’re so squishy!”

It goes without saying that, like flipping her skirt up, this isn't okay. More specifically, the problem lies in the story framing this as a joke for the audience, something to laugh at despite Keiko's discomfort, rather than the concept of two childhood friends actually be that comfortable with one another. But, as already established, this is one of the more ehhhh aspects of Yusuke's characterization that, luckily, will mostly disappear as the story goes on.

Note though that the show clearly wants us to think highly of this. Not just as a "joke," but as a smart solution to his problem and more evidence of their inevitable relationship — the background becomes the same soft, bubbly background we saw during their dream conversation. And, admittedly, it does work. Keiko instinctively slaps Yusuke hard enough to knock him to the ground and he starts laughing, saying that he doesn't care what anyone on the street says, she hits the hardest.

What I do like about this is that the assault isn't the only thing Keiko bases her faith on. Not only has she already had the dream, we get to see Yusuke from her perspective, showing all the mannerisms she picks up on by superimposing Yusuke's real body over Kuwabara's. Indeed, she says as much: “I knew it was you from the first time you spoke…and it’s not just your stupid gags, or how you laugh. There are ways you move and speak that in a hundred years I wouldn’t forget."

Catch me crying in this club!

Knowing she believes him and that he's almost out of time, Yusuke reiterates his message: please don't burn my body and also keep Mom on track. Only, you know, it's phrased far better than that lol. As he speaks, both Yusuke's and Kuwabara's voices overlap until the latter grows fainter and only Yusuke's voice remains. His body too. It's a nice touch, avoiding the awkwardness of Keiko having this moment with a stranger, even if that is what's happening on some level.

“I know I’ve been a bum to you at times, but please wait for me."

His hour up, now we can get the awkwardness! Kuwabara comes out of his weird trance thing to find Keiko crying against his chest. Wow, he thinks, this girl must be really into me! 

God, to have the confidence of Kuwabara.

Of course, Keiko quickly realizes it's not Yusuke anymore and slaps him too for cuddling her closer. My favorite thing is that when she does this a crowd INSTANTLY appears. I mean they TELEPORT in. We needed an audience for Kuwabara's shame and YYH delivered, all logic be damned.

“Um, sorry about that!” Keiko yells as she runs away, because she's a good person who recognizes that weird spirit things just went on and Kuwabara isn't actually to blame.

“No, that’s okay. I probably deserved it," Kuwabara responds because he's also a good person and I didn't appreciate him nearly as much as I should have as a kid.

Keiko runs all the way to Atsuko's place where she finds her dressed for Yusuke's funeral. She blurts that Yusuke might still be coming back and Atsuko goes, "He already has." Turns out she opened his coffin to "smack him one more time for leaving me" — yikes — and found that his heart had started beating again, just as Koenma said it would. 

Being in a shonen anime, they apparently decide to just trust Keiko's message rather than, idk, taking him to a hospital or something.

The camera tilts up to show that Yusuke has been watching all this, including that both women break down again and comfort one another. Aww. How heartwarming.

What's less fuzzy though is this mysterious egg. Yusuke takes another look and finds that it has developed a heartbeat too, presumably in time with his body's. He theorizes that he did decent things today, right? But Botan (teasingly) points out that he did beat up a lot of other kids. Rather than getting angry, Yusuke remains uncharacteristically pensive, emphasizing the magnitude of what this means for him. He's got to get it right.

No pressure or anything! We'll have to see how Yusuke balances his karmic scales in the next episode. Until then, I'll try not to put all my TV time into Star Trek: Voyager :D 

See you then!  💜

[thatforgottenbasilisk]

Something Strange To Do

So I wrote a TMA/BNHA fic in like 2.5 hours. here's ao3 link if ur interested

The click of a tape recorder being turned on is heard; the cassette inside begins to whir as it records.

It is clear that the recorder was turned on in the middle of a heated conversation, as one voice is raised and rather terse; the other seems somewhat irritated, but with a semblance of professionalism to it.

- So, what, you want me to tell you how my dead brother and my older sister were oh-so-strange when I was a kid? Really? What does this even have to do with the League of Villains? I was told that I was brought in here because I might have information on Dabi, not so I could tell a spooky little story that I dreamed up as a kid!

- Todoroki-san, we simply want you to confirm some suspicions of ours. Your memories may be more helpful than you believe, even if you think you dreamed it all up. Besides, if they were as strange as you say they were, it may help simply to talk about them.

- You know what? Fine. Sure. I'll tell you the stupid little story of their stupid little game, you'll realize this was a waste of everyone's time, and we'll both get on with our lives.

Statement of Todoroki Natsuo, regarding his older siblings' favourite game. Statement direct from subject, recorded 31 August 20XX. Statement begins.

You've met little kids, right? And I don't mean babysat-for-five-minutes or had-a-tiny-conversation-with-my-friend's-kid, I mean actually sat down and interacted with them? Or even, I don't know, watched them? It's fine if you haven't, really. You just need to have a passable knowledge of The Shining, or almost any ghost-centric horror movie, at this point. The point is, kids are fucking creepy.

I don't mean just horror movie kids, or quiet ones, or any specific category; every single child has been a "creepy" child during some point in their lives. They make up the strangest games, say the strangest things, or, at least, they'll just stare. Honestly, that's probably why my sister's so fond of them; she never quite grew out of her "creepy" phase.

When I was younger, I used to have two older siblings, instead of just one: Todoroki Touya and Todoroki Fuyumi. Yumi's a teacher now, she teaches preschool kids, but Touya "died" when he was fourteen, and I was eleven. I say it like that because some part of me believed that he didn't die. Some part of me believed that he wasn't human enough to die anymore. That's the part of me that thinks that I didn't make this shit up, though, so take it with a few hundred grains of salt.

As long as I could remember, they loved to play this stupid little game; they called it "Switch:" what the game entailed was one twin pretending to be the other, and vice versa. Touya only went by Fuyumi, and Fuyumi only went by Touya. They acted like each other, talked like each other, did everything to act like they were the other person. And, when I was really, really little, I can almost remember a time when Mom and Endeavour acted like it was a normal game that normal little kids were playing.

Except they didn't do that for most of it.

Here's a little bit more context: Touya had a powerful fire quirk, so much so that I think he burned hotter than Endeavour, while Yumi had an ice quirk that was just as strong, but, you know, in the opposite direction. Dear old dad wasn't interested in ice quirks, though, and wanted a successor with a flame quirk powerful enough to "defeat All-Might." Touya wasn't exactly what he wanted, given that he had ice resistance; he was weak to his own fire. But it was good enough for the old man to start "training" him, which he always came back from in tears and covered in various injuries, usually burns. Touya hated the beating sessions, because that's what they were, and tried desperately to get out of them whenever he could. The old man was relentless, though, and only "trained" Touya so that he could be a "great hero" who would "live up to his potential."

The first time it happened, I was about five, recently diagnosed Quirkless, and dad was fucking furious about it. So, as he did whenever he was mad about something, he went to take it out on Touya. He stalked over to where the twins were talking, and grabbed one by the arm to drag off to the "training room."

As he passed me, and I saw who, exactly, he was dragging, I couldn't help but blurt out the question,

"Why are you gonna train Yumi?"

His fire beard doubled in size, and he just glared at me, and screamed, "Do you lack eyes as well as a quirk, useless child? Your brother is training with me, and your slightly less useless sister is where I left her." He stomped off with Yumi's arm in his giant fist, while she turned around at me and smiled. It was the creepiest face I'd ever seen.

Then I looked back at Touya, who was smiling at me too. I'd never been scared of the twins before, but I burst into tears and ran through the house to find Mom. I didn't hear him follow me, but Touya must have been following me, because when I got to Mom, she said,

"Oh, Fuyumi, are you playing rough with your brother again?"

I stopped dead in front of her, then I turned around to see Touya. I remember screaming in fear, but nothing directly following that.

It kept happening, though. Mom would call one by the name of the other, Endeavour sometimes trained the wrong kid, and eventually when Sho was born he'd reach for one of them and call the name of the other. The only one who ever noticed that something was wrong was me.

I never said anything, though. I was always scared that they would give me that smile again. Whenever anyone else called a twin by the wrong name, I'd call them that too, because I thought that they wouldn't notice that I knew everyone else was wrong.

They knew, though. I think they liked how scared I got, the nagging little voice in the back of my head that whispered, "Is it Yumi or Touya? Is it Yumi or Touya? Maybe someone you don't know could steal their places. Maybe they already have. Maybe everyone else is right, and you're wrong."

Once, I told Mom everything. I told her that the twins never stopped playing "Switch," that dad trained Fuyumi instead of Touya sometimes, the way that they looked at me when no one was looking, as if to say, "I'm not who I say I am, but no one will ever believe you."

Mom just said my jokes weren't funny. Over her shoulder, though, Touya was glaring at me like he wanted to kill me right there.

The next major incident didn't happen until I was eleven, though.

That's when Touya disappeared, for lack of a better word. I remember that it was the middle of winter; January, I think. I came home from school that day to an empty house. Shouto was still in the hospital; this was right after the kettle incident, which I will not elaborate on because it's not spooky and it's none of your fucking business, so he and Mom were both gone. Dad was out doing some "hero" shit. Touya and Yumi should have been there, but they weren't. I couldn't bring myself to be concerned or anything, though. I was just glad I wasn't alone with them in a house where no one could protect me.

I realized something was wrong when I saw the flames.

Our old house was near a mountain, called Sekoto Peak. There used to be a pretty cool forest on the mountainside, one you could see from any window on one particular side of the house. I was getting some water, when I looked out the window and saw the whole place lit up in Touya's blue flames.

No matter how scared of the twins I was, they were still my siblings. They were still plenty nice to me when they weren't trying to creep me the fuck out. So, I did what any eleven-year-old would do and ran out to the forest, barely stopping to grab my coat. I ran as fast as I could to the woods, and when I was there I saw the strangest thing.

Yumi was standing there, in the middle of the hottest fire I'd ever felt, and it didn't even touch her. She was screaming, and crying, the most emotional I'd ever seen her, but I somehow knew it wasn't because she was hurt. It was because she wasn't.

You see, Touya had ice resistance, so he was weak to his own fire; but Yumi had the opposite. She had an ice quirk, and flame resistance to go with it.

I think that their game of "Switch" was trying to lead up to something, but it failed. I think it failed for Fuyumi, at least. I think they were trying to be people who weren't themselves, so they could stop being Touya and Yumi altogether.

I think they tried to stop being Touya and Yumi before they were ready - or, at least, before Yumi was ready. She was always nicer to me, she didn't try to scare me as much as Touya did. I think that that's why she survived that fire, ironically; I think she was too human to die with Touya.

Once again, I don't remember how this one ended. I do, however, remember that we moved houses shortly afterwards. I remember the other things that happened afterwards. Specifically, the way that Yumi changed.

At first, she was practically catatonic with grief. Grief, I say, but the way nobody called her Touya anymore, the way she was always Fuyumi, was a big part of it. Then, she changed. She tried to get people to notice her as little as possible, to blend into the background as much as she could.

Except for me. She made sure that I always, always, saw her. About three or four months later, I found out why.

It was April or May, when she asked me the question. It sounded innocuous enough: "Do you wanna play a game, Natsuo?"

I said that I did, because I was bored and didn't have anyone to do anything with. Then, she said the words that made my heart plummet into my shoes.

"Let's play Switch."

Nothing in this world can possibly describe how much I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be Yumi, I didn't want her to be me. Most of all, I didn't want to be like Touya. I wanted to be a human person. I knew, I knew, I knew that she and Touya weren't human anymore, and I was not going to join them in being whatever fucked-up monsters they became.

I said no, I didn't want to play Switch. That didn't matter to her.

She still decided to be Natsuo. I just wasn't Yumi.

It's very strange, not to be Natsuo, and not to be anyone else in return. It's strange, to be no one at all. I didn't quite have memories, but I wasn't unaware of what was happening, or the things that Natsuo had done and experienced. It was just... detached. I knew things about myself in the same way you'd know a factoid from a book, or something you'd learned in school. My life wasn't quite mine, I guess.

She wasn't Natsuo very much. I think it's because, even when she was Natsuo, she was still Yumi; nobody else was Yumi, after all.

Now, she never talks about Touya, nor about Switch. She acts like she's forgotten, but sometimes I'll see her... contemplate. Probably internally debating the merits of trying to be someone else again, after so long. I don't doubt that she can still do it.

I'm just terrified that she will.

Statement ends.

The tape recorder clicks off, and the cassette stops rolling, for about a second. The click of the recorder being turned back on, and the cassette rolling again, are both audible.

- Unfortunately, my assistants' research and their conclusions appear to be correct. The links between Dabi and Todoroki Touya are clear, as well as the asymmetrical feeling about Dabi - the inexplicable feeling that he is only half of a greater whole. In essence, I believe that Todoroki Touya became a fully realised Avatar of the Stranger, while his sister was unable to manage the same.

- The most advisable course of action is, in my opinion, to ensure that Todoroki-san does not attempt to join her brother once again, and realise herself as a fellow Avatar of the Stranger. It is unlikely that her activities linking her to the Stranger have ceased entirely, and as such she should be closely monitored. Unfortunately, I've no clue on how to do this when she may easily avoid normal surveillance, and the Institute doesn't exactly have Beholding avatars to spare. A solution to be found at a later date, I suppose.

- Todoroki Natsuo is interesting, though. I wonder why both twins chose him, specifically, to torture. More pertinently, I wonder why the sister attempted to use him as a replacement for her twin brother, when Todoroki Shouto would, logically, have been a far more convenient and easier option. Yet another mystery about the Todorokis, I suppose.

- Of course, the more... mundane abnormalities have been reported to the Japanese police, but I doubt that anything will be done about it, given that Todoroki Enji, the father, is also known as Endeavour, the current Number One Japanese Hero and one of the most powerful people in Japan. scoff Politics, honestly.

- Currently, the investigation on the relation between Japanese Heroic and Villainous activity and the activity of Avatars is being tentatively closed, pending more evidence - namely, evidence that it's more than just Dabi and his sister who are involved with the Entities, because in just one case, it's likely to simply be coincidence. Of course, I'd love to talk to Dabi or Todoroki Fuyumi myself and ask a few questions, but that's not exactly possible or advisable right now.

End recording, I suppose.

The sound of a tape recorder clicking off is heard, and the cassette tape stops rolling.