#a teen who had been left behind by everyone. it's hard to resent someone who is also you. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

johnsamericano · 4 years ago

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𝓓𝓪𝔂 16:

ℓєє נєиσ

23 days of NCT masterlist.

taglist: @notbeforelong @whathamelon @mrcarbonatedmilk @curieouscapt @unknown5tar @gjheaaa @ajhdr @silent-potato

warnings: oral (male receiving), jealous Jeno, mentions of drunk sex, Jeno in those tight pants skaters wear 😭

“Watcha looking at?”

Jeno jolted, his eyes abandoning the pair of skaters practicing in the ice-rink. Just as he stopped watching, he heard a loud thud. You were laying down on your back, your partner sprinting towards your giggly figure.

“Are you alright?” He helped you up, his hand holding your waist naturally. “Stop laughing, you could’ve gotten yourself hurt.”

“I’ve fallen so many times that it doesn’t even hurt anymore, Jaems.” Jeno’s blood boiled at the name. You wouldn’t even call him by his name, while your partner had the privilege of having his very own nickname. “Let’s practice the death spiral.”

Jeno’s partner looked at him with curiosity, she’d never seen that look in his face before.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning on switching partners.” Jeno shook his head, tearing his gaze off You to finish tying his skates.

“Never, I was just studying our competition.” Right after finishing his task, he extended his hand towards his friend. “We need to practice hard, we’re only a few days away from the competition.”

You didn’t even spare him a glance as they entered the rink, too focused on finding the perfect way to hold Jaemin’s hand.

“Okay, we’ve got this.” You high fived him, getting in position to start your routine all over again. “Hey, Lee! Quit staring at us.” Apparently, you had taken notice of his gaze.

“I wasn’t!” The slight blush in his cheeks said otherwise. “Ignore them, Irene.”

As much as Jeno considered training with you in the same rink a blessing, you seemed to despise him. Maybe it was because of that time he called you untalented when he was a teen, or maybe it was because of that time he left the morning after having drunk sex with you, but who knows.

Nationals were held a couple of days later. Thankfully, you didn’t have to travel anywhere this year.

You cheerfully greeted all of the people you’d met during the past competitions, wishing them luck as Jaemin called you out to get ready.

You dressed in the beautiful black dress with small diamonds around your sleeves, Jaemin wearing a matching outfit, the tight shirt making his chest and shoulders look broader. You were both provided with a thick coat to cover you from the ice rink’s cold.

“You ready?” You went out of the dressing rooms, holding his hand tightly.

“We’re gonna do amazing.”

As you waited for another pair to finish their routine, a handsome Lee Jeno approached you.

“Ready to lose?” You scoffed, looking at him in disbelief. “What? There’s no way you’re gonna win against us.”

“May I remind you who won a golden medal last year?” Now it was his turn to scoff, both of your partners looking at the scene unfolding with curiosity.

“Wanna bet?” His face inched closer to your own, breath fanning against your slightly flushed cheeks.

“Deal. If I win, you’ll have to treat me and Jaems dinner.” That damn nickname again.

“Fine, but if I win, you’ll call me Jeno from now on.” It wasn't the deal he'd originally thought of, but the sudden mention of your partner made his blood boil with resentment.

You stared at him, squinting your eyes.

“Fine.” You finally replied as your name was being called through the speakers. “Break a leg.”

You threw your coat at him before entering the ice with Jaemin holding your hand, the crowd cheering loudly for the country's favorite pair. You skated around, warming up your legs as you waited for your music to get started. You stopped at the middle of the rink, placing your hand behind the nape of Jaemin’s neck to start your routine.

The melancholic sound of violins filled the place, your legs moving backward as you started your well-practiced routine.

Jeno watched everything from outside as Jaemin lifted you between his arms, holding your waist tightly as you looked at each other with passion, almost as if thousands of people weren't surrounding you, as if you were the only ones in the room.

Jaemin threw you in the air, your body rotating a few times before you landed in his arms again.

Your routine was filled with emotions, each movement expertly performed, the crowd bursting into cheers as the end of your song approached. You both nailed a triple axel, perfectly synchronized. Jaemin grabbed a hold of your hand, your back slowly bending as he spun your body around, forming the infamous death spiral. Adrenaline pumped through your veins as Jaemin carried you once again, arm between your thighs as he gave a final spin to end your performance. You smiled at each other, proud of your nearly excellent performance.

You skated out of the rink, grabbing a few flowers the crowd had thrown at you. Your trainers waited for you, seating in a bench where you'd receive your final score.

Jeno’s piercing gaze could easily be disguised as a normal competitor's jealousy, but deep down, he knew that wasn't it. He wanted to be the one by your side, he wanted to hold your hand just like Jaemin did. He wanted you to smile at him the way you did with your partner.

As expected, Jeno lost the bet. He was frustrated, to say the least, not only because he didn't get the highest score, but because every single reporter that interviewed the golden medal winners would ask about their relationship.

‘They’re not together.’ Jeno wanted to tell them, but he knew you could handle the situation yourself, telling the reporters you were only friends.

“Just ask her out already.” Irene sat down on a bench beside him, the silver medal hanging from her neck.

“What?”

“Jeno, everyone knows you're head over heels for her. You're not exactly discreet.”

“I really don't want to think about that now.” Irene hummed, staring at Jeno while he closed his eyes, attempting to ease his turbulent mind.

It wasn't until he heard the sound of steps coming his way that he opened them again, his orbs going wide at the sight of you.

“You did amazing today.” Well, that was unexpected.

“Are you mocking me?”

“What? No!” You were suddenly regretted trying to lift his spirits. “Your routine was amazing, Jeno.”

You called him by his name. A small laugh couldn't be helped as his face turned bright red.

“Come, I have a consolation prize for you.” You extended your hand his way, your pretty fingers making a ‘come here’ motion.

“Why are you suddenly being nice to me?” He hesitantly took your hand, letting you drag him all the way to the dressing rooms, away from the curious eyes of reporters.

You didn't answer his question, instead, locking the door behind you. He gave you a puzzled look, his thick eyebrows joining in a small frown.

“I heard you talking to Irene.” You shyly confessed, playing with the hem of your black skirt. “How old are you? 10? Why didn't you just tell me instead of acting like an ass?”

“Okay, first, I acted like an ass once, and I was twelve, what were you even expecting?” He took a step closer to you, hands almost over your waist. “And second, I thought you hated me, why would I confess to someone who clearly doesn't like me?”

“Why would you assume I hate you?”

“You don't?”

“I mean, I don't even know you that well. We've trained together for years but we've barely spoken, except for that time we slept together after drinking.” The distance between your bodies was now null, chests pressing against each other. “But I would've definitely accepted if you’d asked me out. I kinda like that bad boy vibe you give.”

A smile creeped up his lips, hands settling right above the curve of your ass.

“You said you had a consolation prize for me.” You cocked an eyebrow, noticing how the atmosphere had changed in less than a second.

“Oh, really?” Your hands teased the back of his thighs, slightly tugging at the flexible material of his pants.

“Lately I’ve been having trouble remembering that night we shared a year ago, mind helping me freshen up my memory?”

“Well maybe if you hadn’t left the morning after, you wouldn’t have to be reminded, cause it would be a daily thing.” There was a pinch of resentment in your voice as you pulled his pants down, sinking into your knees to caress his growing bulge.

“Don’t tease.” He warned, grabbing a hold of your hair and slightly pulling it back. “I was scared...” he resumed your previous conversation. “Irene and I don’t have the best chemistry, unlike you and that friend of yours, so I feared not being able to skate with her anymore, I didn’t want to lose that small spark that makes us worthy of a medal, even if it’s just silver.”

“But still, you didn’t have to leave me hungover and confused in a hotel room. That was mean.” Jeno chuckled, breath hitching as you pulled out his length from the black boxers.

“I promise to make it up to you...shit.” He groaned as you flattened your tongue against his tip, the pressure driving him insane.

“You better.” You fitted as much as you could inside your mouth, massaging the rest of it with your hands as you bobbed your head.

Jeno could feel himself growing harder inside your wet cavern, length twitching at the feeling of your tongue swirling around it.

“You’re going to be the death of me.” Slowly, his hips started moving back and forth, matching the pace of your head which was now controlled by his hand. “That’s it, I’m close.” His low grunts and moans had your core aching, clenching around nothing in an attempt to relive it. “Just a couple more hours and I’ll take you back to my apartment. I can’t wait to have that pretty cunt around me.” You whimpered, sending vibrations down his cock and causing his cum to spill inside your mouth. The salty liquid painted the back of your throat, involuntarily making you swallow it. “Come on, the reporters must be waiting for you.” With both hands below your elbows, he helped you up, pulling his pants back up before leaving the room with you following closely.

“There You are!” Jaemin spotted you, Jeno immediately running away to avoid rising any suspicions. “What were you doing in that dressing room with our enemy?” He dramatically gasped. “Am I being replaced? Hold me, I might faint.”

“Stop it, you drama queen. We were just...talking.”

“Mhm.” He grabbed your hand, lacing your fingers and shooting a glance at Jeno. His deep frown made Jaemin smile. “Oh, and y/n?” You looked at him. “Wipe that drool off your chin, darling.”

#nct smut #nct angst #nct au #nct imagines #nct ot21 #nct x reader #nct #nct 127 #nct scenarios

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toomanyfandoms02 · 4 years ago

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The Wedding // Draco Malfoy x Reader

I haven't been getting requests but I thought this was SUPER cute.

Warnings - EXTREME FLUFF

Summary - Reader takes Draco to her sisters wedding

Word Count - 1.5k

Y/n knew how stressed Draco was, and he had every reason to be.

But she wasn't going to let her boyfriend wallow in resentment of his life during his last year at Hogwarts.

"Do you wanna be my plus one to my sister and her fiancee's wedding?" They were just sitting casually on the couch of the Slytherin Common Room. He was flipping through a book, as was she. He stopped reading the page he was on, placing a finger to keep his place, staring up at her with a brow quirked.

"A wedding?" He looked put off by the idea, immediately making the girl regret herself.

"I'm sorry, I know everything you're dealing with right now. I just figured-"

"I think that's a wonderful idea." He replied casually, looking back down at his book and continuing to soak in the story. She smiled with contentment, planning to keep his mind off of everything negative.

So the next few days they planned their outfits, how to get there, and most importantly, how to introduce him to her parents.

Now, they had been dating for 5 months, but it was a bit hard to introduce people when you are in school.

And there's a potential raging war. But that was besides the point now.

So they came up with the plan, the outfits, and the way to get there. Utilizing their new allowance to use magic outside of school, they decided they would apparate there. Y/n would wear a muted pink plain dress and Draco would wear a white button down with a tie that matched her dress.

They had to do a bit of searching for that.

And now here they were, getting dressed in her dorm room (which was empty because everyone was currently on a trip to Hogsmeade). Draco fiddled with his tie, not wanting to admit he had no idea how to tie it. He was always fortunate enough that his mom had done it for him.

That's why he wore a *bow* tie to the Yule Ball years ago.

"Do you need help darling?" She asked, a smirk sliding onto her lips. His face blushed furiously, much brighter than the pink of his tie.

"Maybe." He slumped down to get level with her, their faces inches from eachother. She knew he was silently asking for a kiss, but she teased. She brought him one inch closer by his untidy tie, knotting it for him all the while he stared at my face.

"Do you need something Mr. Malfoy?" She asked with a giggle, tightening the knot. Y/n looked up slowly, making eye contact with those icey eyes. He glared at her playfully, lightly grabbing the back of her neck and bringing his love in for a kiss. He nudged his nose into hers, causing her to deepen the kiss a bit and, much to her dismay, he pulled away.

"We should probably go before we get carried away." He stood to his regular height, centering the tie on his shirt. She groaned and reluctantly gave him her hand and with a whip of her wand, they were in the bedroom of her home.

He tried to peer around the room but she had already yanked him away from her things and into a hallway.

"My parents are probably downstairs. Are you ready?" She asked, holding tightly to his hands. He gave a slight nod and motioned her to walk. They clanked down the stairs next to eachother, immediately happening upon Mr. and Mrs. Y/l/n.

"Hello sweety!" Y/n slid her hand from Dracos to hug her mother. "And you must be Draco." She hugged him as well, much to his surprise.

*And to be honest the boy loved a good warm hug. Merlin know he doesn't get a lot these days...*

"You can call me Y/m/n. And this is Y/d/n." She elbowed the man who stood straight. He was quite obviously looking him up and down with judging eyes. Draco slowly brought his hand up to shake.

"It's nice to meet you sir, thank you for allowing me to come to such an event." The boys manners must have surprised him, judging by the look on his face. His hand gripped Dracos firmly with an approving smile.

"I hope you're taking good care of my Y/n."

"I think shes very capable of taking care of herself." Draco replied with a smile and nod.

"I like this one." Her father said pointedly.

"Me too." Y/n laughed, she looped her arm with Dracos and leant her head on his arm. "I take it we are leaving soon, to the venue?"

You see, Y/n's sister was quite, what do you call it.

Extra.

Her fiancee was a very simple man. He wanted to have the wedding in his backyard, very small wedding, intimate. But her sister insisted it be in a big garden of flowers. Of course he is head over heels for the woman so he agreed.

Y/n did agree with the decision of course, because along with being extra, her sister was sentimental.

The flowers that they were to be married within were a mixture of all the flowers in the very first bouquet that he had ever bought her. He thought it was the most beautiful idea.

And so did everyone else.

"Yes, I take it you two are apparating as well?"

"Yes sir." And off they were to the wedding.

It really was by accident that Y/n matched some of the flowers, particularly the Pink Asiatic Lillies. These were the biggest flowers of the bunch.

While walking to take a seat, a man holding quite the large bouquet of all the displayed flowers stopped them.

"You must take a flower to put on you." He insisted with a smile. His hands held out the lillies to the couple. They took them gratefully and began walking to their seats, which they decided they would sit in the first row. On the side of her sister.

"Here, let me place it." Draco said, taking the flower from her hands. He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, putting the lilly in its place. She smiled and took his, putting it in the same place as hers.

The first thing that went through his head was, *Don't only girls usually put flowers behind their ear?*

But was replaced by a much stronger and positive thought. *I am so in love with this girl.*

So he left it there, making them match. He took it as a silent way to let everyone know that she was his, and he was quite giddy at the thought of that.

After so long everyone had packed into the venue. Her sisters soon to be was stood up at the alter, waiting for his bride. And he shed a tear when he saw her.

They went through their incredibly sappy vows and received many laughs from parts of it. Then came the only part Y/n knew the words to.

Her head was leaned on Dracos shoulder and she poked his side, causing him to look down at her.

"Do you, Christopher take Pheobe as your lawfully wedded wife." Draco looked into her eyes with a smirk.

'I do.' He mouthed to her.

"And do you, Peobe, take Christopher as your lawfully wedded husband."

'I do.' Y/n mouthed to him.

"You may now kiss the bride." The teens made kissy faces at eachother, trying to suppress a laugh as the crowd cheered for them.

Then it was Y/ns favorite part of weddings, the reception.

"So why do you like receptions so much?" Her boyfriend asked.

"Food." She answered simply, dragging him to the assorted fruits.

They had sat for a while, eating fruit and people watching. Y/n pointed out her favorite family members and told him funny stories. She loved making him laugh, she didn't think she could love someone's laugh so much. She had taken him to meet her sister, which went expectantly well. She complimented his hair and it made him blush.

But as the night ended, the DJ announced that the last slow song would be played. So Draco grabbed her hand and pulled her away from her fruit.

"You know I don't know how to dance, did you see me with George at the Yule Ball 4th year?" She recalled the memory of tripping over his *and* her own feet throughout the night. (But George was not judgemental, so there wasn't much of a problem.)

"Just follow my lead, it's okay if you trip over me, I can hold you up." He wrapped his arms around her waist lazily and she brought her arms around his neck. "See, nothing fancy, just hugging with a little bit of movement." He laughed into her neck, kissing her there.

"This was such a good day." She whispered into his chest. He could tell she was smiling like an idiot, because he was too.

"I love you." He said so quietly that she could barely hear him, but she did. And it gave her chills. She had dreamed that someone would tell her they loved her while slow dancing, and Draco seemed to be in every one of those dreams.

Crazy what can come true when you wish enough for it.

"I love you too."

#draco malfoy x reader #draco one shot #draco malfoy #draco malfoy one shot #draco malfoy imagine #draco x reader #harry potter #draco imagine #draco x y/n #dracotok #draco tiktok

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littlemissagrafina · 4 years ago

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I want you to be happy (to see me, to hear me, to love me)

By @littlemissagrafina for @mshermia

@friendly-neighborhood-exchange

Rating: Teen and up

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark

Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Harley Keener Flash, Thompson

Summary: Peter loved his family. He loved Tony and Pepper. He loved Morgan and Harley. And they loved him as well. That was a fact.

But he still felt left out a lot when Tony had subconsciously started to greet everyone else before him or spend more time with Morgan or Harley.

Peter knew that if he asked, Tony would gladly spend time with him, or hug him, or listen when he wanted to talk about his day.

Except for the fact that Peter didn't want to ask for that because as time went on and he faded to the background, so did Tony and Pepper's attention for him. They started having less conversations then they used to, they started noticing less when he didn't speak during dinner, and they started to forget the hugs they would give him before school and at night before bed.

And that was when the hurt started. When the jealousy joined it.

A hurt and jealous Peter fic for the friendly neighbourhood fic exchange

Read On AO3

Peter knew that it wasn't on purpose. He knew that Tony cared about him just as much as the man cared for Morgan and Harley.

He still couldn't help the hurt and jealousy that would bubble up when Tony's attention and care were focused on them. It felt as if the care had been focused on them for so long, it had forgotten Peter was there to be focused on as well.

Peter hated that he felt that way towards the man who had become his father in all but blood, that he felt jealous of the little girl and resentful of the other teen.

He knew that Morgan was young and needed a lot of care, attention, and stimulation. He knew that Harley was struggling a lot after his mom and sister had died in a car crash when people had returned with the second snap.

Peter understood Tony's worry for Harley, the understanding they shared thanks to Tony's own parents' crash, even though the exact circumstances had ended up being so different from the regular crash that Tony had believed it to be for so many years.

Peter knew what it felt like to lose family and loved ones, and he hated that Harley knew that pain as well. He also knew and understood the separation anxiety that Morgan had developed for her parents.

So Peter had started deferring. When he had been talking to Tony or spending time with Pepper—and either Harley or Morgan would need them—Peter would make an excuse and then quietly slip away.

When he had first started doing it, Pepper and Tony would protest and reassure him that just as much as Morgan or Harley would need or want them, Peter could as well. He would just smile and say, "I understand, but they need you more right now."

And it hurt Peter to say those words even though he felt that they were true. It hurt because the more times he smiled and slipped quietly away, the less it was protested at and questioned. It became easier and easier for Tony and Pepper to go to whoever was calling them until it got to the point where they would eventually get up, stop talking, or leave the moment either Morgan or Harley would ask for them.

Slowly but surely, Peter drifted into the background. He stayed out of the way and tried to cause as little trouble or disturbance as he could. They were all dealing with a lot. They didn't need him added to it. He was okay with giving them space and time.

Sure, it was lonely, quiet, but it wasn't like they didn't pay Peter any attention or care at all. They still smiled and hugged him each morning, they still asked about his day during dinner, and he was still included in their movie or game nights.

He loved Harley and Morgan and Peter knew that they loved him too. It was evident in the jokes and the laughter they shared, in the occasional sleepover between the three when they would build a pillow fort in the living room. They would banter and tease each other but they never ever went too far. There was an understanding and respect between the siblings that even Morgan, as young as she was, understood.

Peter loved his family. He loved Tony and Pepper. He loved Morgan and Harley. And they loved him as well. That was a fact.

But he still felt left out a lot when Tony had subconsciously started to greet everyone else before him or spend more time with Morgan or Harley.

He felt hurt and guilty for missing Tony when he was needed so much by his other kids. Peter knew that if he asked, Tony would gladly spend time with him, or hug him, or listen when he wanted to talk about his day.

And that was when the hurt started. When the jealousy joined it.

The hurt when Pepper would fuss over Morgan's scraped knee or Harley's sprained ankle but hadn't noticed when Peter came home with a bruised wrist thanks to Flash's bullying.

The jealousy when Tony helped Harley with a school project in the lab but forgot about Peter's project when he was called up to help tuck Morgan into bed.

Tony never came back down to the lab, so Harley let Peter borrow his blueprints, but it wasn't the same. It wasn't Tony helping him, spending time with him like he used to. It sucked up every bit of joy and excitement that Peter had felt when they had first been given the project assignment in class.

Peter didn't know how long he sat at his workbench, staring at the borrowed blueprints—waiting and hoping for his dad to come back down for him.

Something inside him shattered when Friday alerted him of the late time and told him that everyone had already gone to bed.

The sketch he had been working on was crumpled up and thrown in the trash; his notebook with his ideas and half-written formulas were tossed into the workbench drawer.

It stayed there until Peter would be forced to work on it if he wanted to get it done before the deadline. Even then, it felt as if he spent days staring at the blank pages; all creativity dried up and gone without his dad to help him or spend time with him.

Eventually, Peter resigned himself to the fact that he was doing this by himself. No, Mr. Stark, Dad, Tony, whoever the man was now. Peter was on his own.

But that was fine, right? Of course, it was. It had to be.

Because Peter didn't know how to cope with the not fine. He couldn't, so it had to be fine.

There was no other choice.

---

79%. That's what he got for his project. Peter knew he could have done a lot better than that, been better, but he hadn't wanted to. Hadn't been able to bring himself to do better.

He was just glad (and even surprised) at the good score, and was happy that he had been able to put effort and work into it at all. It was with relief, and a momentary hint of pride, that he slipped his project report into his backpack after they had been handed out to everyone.

He'd done okay, and he was proud of that. With some courage that was bolstered by the knowledge of the report in his bag, Peter promised himself that he would tell Tony and Pepper about it. They still cared, right? Maybe the report would make them happy, make them proud.

Peter hoped so. Maybe if it did, then they would notice him.

---

Peter's heart soared as he walked through the front door, Tony's voice speaking from the living room.

"Kid! I'm so proud of you!"

Just as Peter was about to answer, a happy thank you on his tongue, he heard Harley respond before he could.

"Thanks, Dad." The other teen unknowingly echoing the exact words that Peter wished he could say.

With light footsteps, Peter moved to stand just outside of the doorway to the living room. Peeking around the corner of the wall, he saw a piece of paper, almost identical to the one in his bag, held in the boy's hand. This one was obviously Harley's own project report.

The paper flopped backwards as Harley moved to put it down on the coffee table, and Peter saw it.

There, scrawled in red ink, was Harley's score. A bright red 98%.

Where moments ago, Peter had been hopeful and excited to show his own report card, now it felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over him—the chill bringing reality with it.

He wasn't good enough. Not anymore. He wasn't smart enough, just wasn't enough. Not like Harley or Morgan.

Peter darted up to his room, trying to be quiet but not really caring. Nobody would notice he was home anyway.

Once his door was shut behind him, he dug his homework out of his bag, the report coming with it.

Seeing it just made Peter more hurt and disappointed so he shoved it back into the bag and zipped it closed.

For the rest of the afternoon, Peter sat at his desk doing his homework, headphones pulled over his ears.

Nobody came to his room, nobody said hello. He only left when Friday told him dinner was ready.

Tony got a tub of Harley's favourite ice cream for dessert as a celebration.

Peter's project and report was never asked about. The ice cream was finished by the time Peter went to get some.

He trudged up to his room alone, half-hearted goodnights ringing in his ears.

The voices and laughter of his family downstairs mixing together to make a bittersweet lullaby, Peter went to sleep.

A crumpled up report forgotten in the backpack on the floor.

---

Peter yelped as he was slammed back into his locker, his head hitting the metal so hard that it left a dent as he was trapped against it by the hands fisted in his shirt. He knew he could get away. It would be easy to just pull away and walk off, but Peter was tired.

He was so tired. Of the pretending, the silence, the hurt. All of it. But it was the acceptance that truly exhausted him, and how it turned into a lack of motivation to speak, to make anyone notice him, to apply himself to anything.

Peter supposed that was the reason Flash let him off so easily today. Maybe the bully had finally gotten bored of him now. It wasn't a surprise to Peter, not really.

He was unimportant, after all. Just another random kid that wasn't even good enough for a bully to not get tired of.

With a tired sigh, Peter bent down to pick up the backpack that Flash had torn away from him. His back protested, obviously bruised from the impact against his locker.

Straightening up again, the world started spinning, a dull pounding at the base of his skull, immediately making him regret bending down in the first place.

Hand against his now slightly dented locker, Peter took a moment to get himself orientated again. Once the hallway stopped looking like it was gonna flip out from under his feet, he gripped his bag and walked out towards the school’s entrance where he knew Happy would be waiting to pick him up.

At least he was predictable. Peter knew where he stood with Happy. He knew the man didn't hate him, just didn't really know how to deal with teenagers.

Peter just hoped he would be able to stop the man from noticing his very woozy state once he got in the car. He took it as a win, thinking he'd gotten away with it when he was allowed to slump against the seats without a comment from Happy apart from a slightly awkward greeting.

What Peter didn't see was the concerned glances towards him in the rear view mirror and the text that Happy sent.

His head had started to ache too much for him to care to notice things. Why should he when he was never noticed anymore to begin with?

---

The rest of Peter's day passed in a haze of pain, absent minded distraction. He couldn't get himself to focus on his homework long enough to get any decent work done. Every time he tried, the words would swim and blur, adding a nauseating twist to the throbbing in his skull.

The lab was out of the question too. Any time that Peter spent down there just served to make him more hurt, more homesick and sad for what he used to have with Tony and his family.

Carefully getting off of his bed, Peter waited for his head to stop spinning (which it didn't, it just became less violent. But it would be fine later, right?) before he started rummaging around his room, looking for something to keep himself occupied until the call for dinner came.

Eventually he stumbled across the square Buckyballs box filled with his old magnets. Peter couldn't resist a snort at the name, thinking of sticking the little, round, magnets all over Bucky's vibranium arm.

He grabbed the magnets and went back to slouching on his bed. Squeezing them in his hand a few times, Peter started connecting and building the little balls into as many shapes and patterns as he could remember.

He remembered now why he always liked them as a kid. They were perfect for calming his senses and anxiety, as well as stimulating for his mind when he tried new patterns or shapes.

Pulling them apart and allowing himself to get lost in what he was making with the magnets, he felt calmer than he had in a while.

Eventually he heard his name being called for dinner and he reluctantly put the little magnets back in their case and gingerly made his way downstairs to the dining room.

He wasn't greeted apart from a small smile from Harley when Peter sat down next to him. It was okay though. Yeah, it hurt, it always did, but with the pain in his head and his distractedness, Peter was almost grateful for the lack of attention.

As dinner progressed, the pain in his head grew worse and worse, eventually being joined by a wave of nausea that didn't leave.

Without noticing, the knife and fork in his hands started bending. Peter's control over his strength slipping a bit from the throbbing in his head.

"Peter?" Harley asked from next to him, concern clear on his face. The question had everyone else at the table pause. Their attention turned to the brothers.

Peter went to nod his head but the movement only made him more nauseous and had another stab of pain shooting through his head. He didn't realise that he'd started swaying until strong hands clasped his shoulders, steadying him.

Opening his eyes (when had he closed them?) Peter saw Tony kneeling in front of his chair, one hand moving from Peter's shoulders to cradle the back of his neck.

He saw Tony's mouth moving, knew that the man was speaking, but it was like he was underwater, the words getting lost long before they could reach Peter's ears.

The hand on his neck moved, accident brushing against the back where he had been slammed into his locker, and Peter flinched. The pain surged, reaching a crescendo that had dark spots dancing across his eyes.

The last thing Peter was aware of was a panicked shout before he slumped forward, giving in to the blissful call of unconsciousness.

---

The first thing that Peter became aware of was that he wasn't in his own bed at home. The next was the distinct smell that every hospital or clinic had. By those two things he knew that he was probably in the medbay at the now rebuilt compound.

Another realisation that came to Peter was that fact that he was mostly pain free. There was a lingering tenderness in his head, not unlike what you would experience after a particularly gruelling migraine, but it wasn't anywhere near the excruciating level that it was before.

He could vaguely hear a familiar, unsteady heartbeat, but he wasn't sure if he was just wishing for it to be there or if it actually was.

He tried to open his eyes but it felt as if they were weighed down with lead. He was aware but trapped in that weird space between unconsciousness and being awake.

It took a while but eventually Peter started to wake more, his senses and mobility returning. His surroundings confirmed when he was finally able to open his eyes.

That was when he realised that it wasn't just his imagination when he heard the off beat thumping of Tony's heart. Sitting up in the hospital bed, he saw that the man was really here, and he was sitting in a chair at Peter's bedside.

Seeing him sitting there was what did it. Peter knew that man cared, he did, but dammit if he wasn't angry.

It felt like he had missed his family, his dad, for so long and the thing that finally made them pay attention to him was when he passed out at the dinner table.

"Where were you?" Peter croaked out, throat dry and voice still thick from sleep. It startled the man next to his bed. He obviously hadn't noticed that Peter was awake yet.

"Peter!" Tony sat up immediately, but something in the teenager's expression stopped him from getting closer to him. "What did you say?"

Peter took a breath, voice raising a bit more than the croaky whisper it had been. "I said, where were you? I needed you, I needed all of you, but you weren't there." Traitorous tears started welling in his eyes. He wished they wouldn't.

Tony didn't say anything. He had frozen slightly, face twisted into an almost horrified expression before it dropped to sad resignation as he took in the anguish that was clearly written across his kid's own face.

"I wanted my Dad, I wanted my family and I needed you to care, but you didn't, " Peter continued, the words building up to join his tears as the both spilled over.

"I know—I know I made it easy to let me go, to let all of us go. I know that Harley and Morgan needed you, that they need you. I know all that but I miss you, Dad." Peter's words were rushed and a bit stilted from his steadily increasing tears.

"I miss you, and I let you all go, but I thought you wouldn't let me, and I don't wanna go. I don't want to be alone like I have been, but I don't know how to get you to see me." With the words he had been holding in for so long finally out in the open, Peter sobbed. Tears welling and spilling over his cheeks

And for the first time in what felt like forever, Tony stepped up and wrapped him in a proper hug.

It almost shattered Tony's already broken heart when the kid just accepted it and melted into him.

"Oh, kid. I'm so sorry. I screwed up, and I—" Tony hesitated, the realisation of the cheap and easy way he took in the situation finally hitting him. "I did all that, we all did, and I will never be able to tell you enough how sorry I am and how wrong we were. I'm not gonna sugar coat it, Pete. We both know that this can't be excused. I screwed the pooch big time, and there is no denying that."

He pulled away, lifting Peter's chin to look him in the eye as he spoke. "We shouldn't have let you drift away, we didn't want to in the beginning, but it became easier with what we had to do for Morgan and Harley. We shouldn't have let it take you from us, not for a second.

"I have no excuse. I took the easy way, the coward's way because I didn't want to face everything that had changed, hoa we had changed towards you, and I will apologise to you and work at fixing this for the rest of my life if I have to."

As Tony had spoken, tears that had slowed started up again, falling over Peter's cheeks and Tony's own as they both finally got their words out into the open.

"I'm jealous, and I'm hurt, but I don't want to be. Please, help me. Please stay and don't let me be alone."

Tony knew that it wasn't just physical isolation that Peter was talking about, but the mental as well.

Instead of speaking straight away, Tony picked up one of Peter's hands and linked their pinkies together.

"I promise you, Peter, that I will not leave you again. I will do my damndest to fix this and to change what we've done to you because you don't deserve this.

"I know that it isn't going to be easy, that there is a lot of love and trust that needs to be gained back, but i'm not going to take the easy way out again. Not ever. I promise." He gave their pinkies a little squeeze before letting go and pulling his kid in for another hug.

Peter didn't know how to react to his dad's words apart from the two words that came to mind. He knew the man was sincere, but he would have to see it all happen for himself to truly believe it.

"Thank you," he murmured into Tony's shoulder, exhaustion suddenly weighing him down.

"You never have to thank me for this, kid, but I understand, and you are so welcome."

They didn't speak for a while again, not until Peter's head shifted, and he flinched from the sudden return of pain at the movement which Tony immediately noticed.

"Whoa, hey, you’re actually supposed to take it easy there, bud. You almost had a cracked skull, which we'll talk about how you got another time, but it's just a mild concussion at this point thanks to that metabolism of yours."

"Oh." Peter's voice was a bit small at that revelation. "I didn't know it was that bad."

Tony shook his head. "Didn't—you know what? We'll get to that later okay, for now I'm gonna call Cho and see if it's fine for you to go back to sleep. If you can, you're gonna take another nap and then when you wake up, I'm sure Pepper and the others will be awake by then and I can call them down for us to all talk this through, okay?"

With a mumbled agreement, it was only then that Peter saw the digital clock on the table next to his bed, the neon red numbers displaying a bright 04:17 AM.

"You can go to sleep. I'm sorry for keeping you up."

"You didn't keep me up, Roo, I needed to be here, make sure you were okay. Your swan dive at the dinner table gave me a few more grey hairs than I'm willing to admit, you know," Tony quickly reassured him.

He spoke again before Peter could go on target of apologies he knew would happen. "I'm gonna get Cho. We'll talk later, okay? I promise, bud, I'm not gonna leave you alone again."

Peter relented and Tony only left to find Cho once he had heard an "Okay" from the teen.

He came back with Helen in tow, the doctor glancing at the monitor and checking him over before announcing that it was fine for Peter to sleep

He drifted off with Tony once again in the chair beside him.

Maybe things would change from now.

---

Things did change. It took far longer than any of them had hoped for, so many habits had to be changed, trust had to be earned.

It took months of communication and even the occasional therapy session. It was draining and there were so many setbacks, slips, and mountains to climb.

It took misunderstandings, arguments, hurt and confused feelings, and so many more that just those two. With each rift that the family repaired, it felt like another would take its place but dammit if the end result wasn't worth it all.

Peter wasn't sure of the exact moment that it changed for the better. If he was being honest, he didn't think there was just one single moment where they all just clicked back together.

There was one thing, however, that he knew would stay in his memory for the rest of his life, and it happened when Tony picked him up for school one day.

Peter had walked out of school, calling out a goodbye to Ned and MJ as he did, when he caught sight of Tony's car in the parking lot.

He darted towards it, excited that it was Tony, his dad, picking him up and setting this time aside for them.

When he opened the car door, he paused. On the seat was a McDonald's paper take-out bag and Peter could see a drinks cup in the holder next to the seat as well.

"Hey, kid. C'mon, get your butt in the car. I have the seat warmer on, but I know you don't like takeout when it's sat for too long, so if you want it fresh, you better get a move on." Tony smiled at him, the corner of his eyes creasing at the smile and "thank you" that Peter shot back at him.

Peter shrugged his backpack off to the floor in front of the seat and picked up the takeout. He slid into the seat and pulled the door closed before eagerly tucking into the McDonald's waiting for him.

When he opened the bag, he was momentarily stunned. Inside was his favourite chicken burger meal. He took a glance at the drink and saw it was the same Starbucks drink that had become his favourite ever since the moment that Tony had first convinced him to try it.

Not saying anything, Peter turned slightly in his seat, watching and waiting as Tony drove them away from the school, eventually stopping at a red light. He quickly lent over the console and hugged Tony, his dad squeezing him just as tight and only pulling away when the light turned green and Tony had to drive.

It was in that little moment that Peter knew he was truly cared for, that he wasn't just forgotten. It was then that made Peter feel so incredibly loved because his dad had remembered his favourite takeout. He had remembered .

There were many other moments as well, which allowed Peter to see the work and care that he and his family had put into growing and changing, but none of them would ever be remembered just as clearly as this one.

And things were okay now. Peter had his family back.

He wasn't jealous anymore, wasn't hurt or lonely anymore.

He was okay. They all were.

#irondad #spiderson #irondad and spiderson #peter parker #tony stark #spider-man #iron man #ironman #marvel #mcu #irondad fanfic #irondad fanfiction #the friendly neighborhood exchange #fanfic #fanfiction

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mystiika · 3 years ago

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re; adrian clarke

h i s t o r y ( tw childhood emotional neglect )

adrian can’t say he had a bad childhood, not really anyway. they lived in comfort & looked like the perfect family from the outside. but he always felt like a stranger in his own home, like he didn’t belong. & it was his family dynamic & childhood is what shaped almost his entire personality. his father died when he was young, & he was left with a single mother who loved him but wasn’t around enough for adrian to ever really feel it. he was a tv kid, he remembered watching & seeing all these people, wishing he could be like them.

she remarried pretty soon after & for a time, things were better. he had two parents again, who played with him & spent time with him. but it didn’t last long before his half-brother & sister came along & suddenly he was the outsider all over again. & that’s when his obsession really began. driven by a backdrop of emotional neglect, he saw all the people on tv being happy & laughing & he wanted to do whatever it took to become like them, to be inside the tv where everything was good.

growing up, people always wanted to be around him. to be friends with him, had crushes on him, people hang around him because he was instantly deemed "popular" & they wanted to improve their standing in the social hierarchy that is school. & he just accepted it because at the end of the day, its better than being alone. he was depressed all through his teens, not knowing the name for how he was feeling but feeling like his whole life has kind of just been boring. waiting for something, anything to change. its also why he gets so obsessive internally & grabs onto anything he thinks will make him happy even if nothing seems to last.

he's consumed by the idea of becoming a celebrity because he thinks it'll fix everything. he puts on a cool face, as if he didn’t care about anything at all. but behind the scenes he took acting classes, dance classes ( even singing classes despite having a remarkably average voice ). how hard he works just for the chance to reach his dream was a secret he’d keep to himself as long as humanly possible.

eventually, he secretly entered himself into a dance contest, even making it to the finals before being the first one cut. it started to shake his standings in school, & he couldn’t help but feel like all eyes were on him, & that everyone would slowly realise that he wasn’t anyone special. but someone who saw him compete hunted him down for a modeling contract. it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but he grasped onto it all the same. after that he gets one job after another, slowly rising up & making a name for himself, but for what? despite the growing attention, he finds that it's not enough. but still moves on that path anyway because he doesn't know what else to do.

& so adrian becomes rising star, skipping out on college & going full time into entertainment after high school graduation. he’s finally achieving his dream. but he almost resents the industry despite having worked so hard to get into it at all. it’s all fake. fake smiles, fake friends, fake everything. he’s finally one of those people smiling & laughing inside the tv. but he’s still not happy, it’s just better than being alone.

i n f l u e n c e s

idk man sad boy vibes meets every celebrity plot you’ve ever seen. strong influence from one piece of media in particular ( if you know, you know ) but it’s got some problematic themes so imma leave the name out of it for now. he probably has some type of anxious attachment disorder too but are we really surprised

#adrian tag tba.#still working out some of the kinks but the boy is here !! and sad !!!

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reversecreek · 4 years ago

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MEET THE NPCS...

BOBBY YANG, “BIG BOB” .

1. how old are they and what do they look like?

thirty-four. implausibly tall. the day magda first saw a sketch of slenderman she thought of him. when her aunt shelly pulled up the dirt road to abernathy creek magda remembers seeing him through a dusty back window with his head bowed to avoid getting tree leaves in his eyes, joint between his lips, dungarees dirty and half unbuckled. one side of his hair is buzzed with no apparent style intention and he has a weed leaf tattooed behind his left ear. an elephant on his thigh. a name on his ankle he often wears a plaster over. once it soaked through and fell off in the creek and, newly glossy in the sun, nine year old magda reached to give it a blunt and shameless prod. big bob never explained who the name belonged to, he only reached to thumb at the minari growing by the water bed and talk about the fact it was a "versatile little sucker”.

2. if applicable, where and when did they meet your muse?

big bob introduced himself as such and magda raised her eyebrow in disbelief, the soul of a disgruntled pensioner in a seven yr old’s body. magda didn’t rly talk to anyone when she first arrived in her new home, verging on mute. she was angry at the move, angry that her dad hadn’t called her when she got there, angry that she didn’t know her mother’s voice to imagine it telling her everything was okay. the world made her so angry she didn’t want to acknowledge it. she sat outside in silence for a long time letting a ladybug crawl over her hand, and big bob didn’t ask anything of her, he only schlepped closer and presented her with a buttercup. she looked at it like it’d spat in her face but took it nonetheless. it was strange having an actual bed, if you could call a bare mattress that, used to sleeping on the sofa in shelly’s old trailer, and the springs nipped at her like a dog demanding treats, so she wandered outside in one of shelly’s big tie dye shirts like a nightdress, searching for the moon. big bob was standing out there already in the overgrown grass, stark naked, chin lifted to gawk at the moon himself. magda didn’t disturb him. this is when she first discovered his habit of naked sleepwalking. abernathy creek felt like a bird house overrun with all kinds of eccentric, squawking parakeets. it was a lot for a seven yr old to take in. this was a strange reality she’d never signed up for, swallowed by the commune to overheat inside it’s belly.

3. what kind of a presence do they have in your muse’s life? do they have a positive or negative relationship?

bob’s definitely a character. three times now he’s slipped hallucinogens into magda’s tea without her knowing under the impression that this is just harmless fun and he’s actually helping her by pushing her little boat to bob along the ocean of enlightenment, once at as young as 16. every time she realises he’s like “y’just got bobbeddddd!” and magda’s like here we go ig. told her the raw earth has healing properties to explain why he’d dug up the grass just to rub his hands in the soil and lay there like a panting, overheated dog. he’s an important component to abernathy creek and oversees a lot of the agriculture there. rigged up the irrigation system himself using copper pipes that magda suspects were stolen. the beat up camper van that’s usually parked up behind abernathy and hidden under leafy branches appeared when he did, apparently, although he insists it belongs to everyone. he leads the crusades to drive it up to the mountains and take a group of abernathy creek residents shroom picking. he’s in charge of drying them for selling, too. jack of all trades, really. magda claims not to care for him (or anyone) but she still walked out onto the grass, took his hand and lead him inside whenever she found him sleepwalking at night in her teens. once a group of kids were daring each other to get closer when he was out there and magda threw a stone so hard at one of their shin’s it split it open and made them scatter. but again, magda “does not care about him”. the jury is not convinced.

4. are they revered in irving? do they have bad blood with anyone?

honestly everyone in irving probably thinks he’s a rly strange guy and i won’t fk around. he kind of is. wears many necklaces around his neck n one is just a pouch that has a prehistoric mosquito encased in a little piece of amber inside. sometimes magda wonders if he likes to play up to his reputation by putting it on a little bit. once she saw him suddenly jerking his head like a pecking chicken and saying “g’warn GET” to scare a random middle aged hiker into galloping in the opposite direction in the trees near abernathy. has a masterful knowledge of bird songs and can imitate them all impeccably. sometimes does this instead of replying with words. never cares about the holes in his shoes where his toes poke out. always seems to be turning a rusty coin between his fingers like it helps him think. he makes moonshine that will knock u off ur feet tho which is always a good time if ur lucky enough to try it. he has a very rich n warm voice like a log fire or a gooey chocolate brownie. even with all of his oddities he sounds kind. he’s very unconventional n doesn’t abide by rules of society a lot but he’s quite funny n a good time. makes engaging smalltalk if u treat him with respect. weird but admittedly a tiny bit wonderful.

OTIS WOLFE.

1. how old are they and what do they look like?

forty-six but he looks older. the skin beneath his eyes is subtly purpled like it’s been dyed by a lick of beetroot juice. he has a very charismatic walk which doesn’t sound like it makes sense but it does to look at him. he walks everywhere buoyantly and with purpose. very high energy in his good days. lives everything in large quantities, good and bad. always used to wear a tan leather bomber jacket when magda was growing up but he forgot it w her one visit n it’s the only time she’s known him to call up two days after leaving to ask if she’d seen it. magda lied and said she hadn’t. she still has it to this day. sleeps in it on her bad days. otis has a smile so big it shines like live wires are sparking in his mouth. magda’s fingertips prickle like she’s an hour recovering from shoving a fork into a plug socket whenever she sees it. she used to think that’s what excitement felt like. that used to be true.

2. what kind of a presence do they have in your muse’s life? do they have a positive or negative relationship?

it’s very complicated. magda knows her dad isn’t a good person but she knows he isn’t a bad person either. sometimes it’s more frustrating to see things in grey because you just want something solid to take shape that u can actually put ur finger on. she finds herself perpetually stood at a fork in the road between believing in him still and deciding he’s no good. sometimes she’ll start walking in one direction only to realise it loops back on itself and she’s right back where she started. otis has given her a lot of fun “adventures”. taught her how to juggle. they stayed in a hotel on someone else’s credit card once and racked up a gargantuan tab ordering every form of room service and renting godzilla and the matrix on pay per view when she was 11. sometimes he’d use her in gimmicks where she had to lie and pretend she had a health condition so they could get a few bucks off charitable strangers on a street corner and under the veil of youth magda found playing up these roles funny because who would ever believe that? wasn’t everyone in the world so stupid except them? it was nice being part of his team. his “little wolfie”. but then a lot of things weren’t nice either. he’s left her stranded on the side of the road with nowhere to go on more than one occasion. he’s passed out in motel corridors and she’s had to lug him into a bed. he’s forgotten almost every birthday apart from one where he sent a card with five dollars inside and handwriting so squiggly she could tell he was drunk when he wrote it. he doesn’t know she likes to sing because he’s only ever listened when he’s fallen asleep. otis is all of magda’s heart and that’s why sometimes she likes to forget that it’s beating.

3. are they revered in irving? do they have bad blood with anyone?

he’s very flighty n rarely in irving any more tbh but was more when magda was younger n his visits were a little less sporadic. probably owes a bunch of people money for some reason or another. smashed up fannie’s recently when he turned up drunk and got ahead of himself on a giddy n frenzied rampage in the name of “fun” n “just having a laugh”. magda’s aunt shelly really doesn’t get on with her brother n thinks he’s a complete deadbeat waste of space n resents him a lot for the impact he’s had on magda. magda remembers being little and peeking through a crack in shelly’s trailer door when he turned up drunk one time to collect her for a visit n shelly wouldn’t let him in. something along the lines of “you don’t give a rat’s ass about that little girl” and “she worships you, y’know that? most of the time, you don’t even remember her name”. magda crept back onto the sofa and pretended to be asleep by the time she came inside.

4. if your muse is no longer in contact with them, how did the relationship end? did your muse get closure over this?

magda slowly stopped trying to keep in contact over the years. it got embarrassing trying so hard when she didn’t get much back. like pushing a boulder all the way up a hill only to watch it roll back down again. it’s probably contributed a lot towards magda’s inability to really try with people like she should, especially when her heart’s involved. she doesn’t want to be humiliated again. magda hasn’t spoken to her dad in person in almost a year. they had a phone call about seven months back but it turned out to be a butt dial and he hung up because he was in the middle of a conversation at some bar about the moon landing conspiracy. magda’s playlist that i have for her is called “a rodeo clown in a revolving door” which is basically the role otis serves in magda’s life. always in and out. never constant. gone more than he’s there, especially lately. idk if magda will ever get closure over that. she certainly hasn’t now. pouts my fuckable lips to the side w a hand on hip and triple f’s prominent.

#irvingtask002 #magda | muse #drugs tw #alcoholism tw #i said i was gna do hunter too but i simply just dnt have the energy i wont lie. so big bob n otis are all i have to present...... holds ban #omg. bang.#mayb i do more editions of this task for magda in future bc #i have hunter n shelly tht i wna write up....

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dreamsister81 · 4 years ago

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Jeff and MI:

By age, you fit in the G.I.T generation, but you obviously are not one of them...

These facilities are a mystery to me. There they tell you only one thing: hurry up! This leads you nowhere, afterwards your own children run away from you. Through these trainings you get to know women, you get to know men, music is inoculated into people who have no feeling for it; then they can only scare other people or insult them...

I was in this terrible place too, by the way-G.I.T That was a complete waste of time, apart from the theoretical lessons and the friends that I had there. Otherwise: an absolute wrong decision.

How long have you studied there?

One year, the normal program. They give you tons of material, you have to absorb everything, you practice, you are tested and you go to the next course. An intensive support with development is simply not possible. I did so many things: theory, single string technique, jazz class, rock class, all sorts of genres. My friend John was teaching bass there, and he once said that there is not a single teacher at the institute who says to the students, "OK, you're learning all this stuff here now, you're learning how to entertain people and you're learning to learn. But do you even know that there is no one in the universe other than yourself who plays the music you play? " John left the school then. For me it was all a joke that cost me $ 3,900. People interested in music should take private lessons somewhere, start a band, do something with people who like them and have what it takes. These schools are a scene in their own right, a very small, secluded world-the music, on the other hand, is gigantic and open. If you don't notice it, you miss a lot of magic, pain, development...(thinks) and rock! Apart from Paul Gilbert, there was no one there who really rocked. Session musicians are bred there; and at the end of the year you get a piece of paper that says, "Now you have the skills to become a professional musician." Well, congratulations! And then you look for jobs and play what other people want. But that's not all the music, there's something else isn't there? Where's the music coming from? From your own head or stomach, or the concepts of the people you work for?-Gitarre & Bass, October, 1995

I had a friend named John Humphrey. I went to this really crappy guitar school for a year, and he used to teach there, he was a bass teacher. And then he left, and we ended up being roommates later on, after I graduated. This is the kind of school where you give them a shitload of money in order to spend a year learning their curriculum.

What was it, G.I.T. (Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles)?

Yeah, it was G.I.T.. They give you their curriculum, and it's not too comprehensive, but it's just enough, and then you can [snaps his fingers] move on to the next thing. And pretty soon you have all this shit inside you and then they give you this paper that says you have what it takes to be a professional musician.

It's a rock-oriented thing, isn't it?

In the end, I think, the only true product of that kind of learning is to get you gigs on the studio circuit and to get you gigs on the session guy circuit.

So, Lee Ritenour went there or something?

G.I.T. was started by Howard Roberts, the guy who played the wah-wah guitar on the theme to Shaft. And this other guy named Pat Hayes. I don't know. It just seemed like a racket, really. John said a lot of things to me that stuck in my mind. He said that there was nobody who stopped you, sat you in a room and said, okay, we have all these artists that you're learning the licks from, you have your guitar heroes, your virtuoso lust objects. But there's nobody who can make the kind of music you can make now except for you. And you can make it now. You don't even have to know how to go fast. And that makes all the sense to me in the world. It's also kind of an unseen process, that concept, originality. It's like that in all the education systems; there's never any real...identity education, self-generative identity art sort of thing, to be yourself. If everybody in Melbourne had a Wurlitzer organ and had the passion to sing something or make something, you'd have hundreds of thousands of different styles, if they were coming exactly from only their DNA, only their makeup, and their emotional percepts, their idea about what art is. You could have way-removed genres from what is already accepted, avante-garde country-rock-punk-folk-whatever. It's unlimited. But for some reason, the conventions always take over and there's a very ready and powerful formula to step into...

Those are the type of [formula-derived] players who can say, "Well, I was listening to the radio in 1967 and I heard the guitar solo in Jimi Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower,' and that guitar sound, that tone, would work perfectly for this television commercial."

Yeah. See? "Stealing from the greats, that's okay." That's right. Once I stopped in [at G.I.T.] years later, when I was on tour going through L.A., just to see what it was like. They've got a completely high-tech, multi-million dollar facility...

More so than when you had been there?

Way more. When I was there, it was just a ragtag bunch of teachers, and they had all left by then. They had video facilities and a class for stage moves and all kinds of things. And I saw this guy who was working the desk, the guy who watches the door. He had a bass on, and he was practicing his Nirvana chops! He was playing "In Bloom" on his bass, way up on his chest, jazz-fusion style, to the Nirvana song. I thought, oh shit--he was practicing his grunge riffs! He was getting his grunge down! Best fucking thing you can do, if you have the interest, is go to a private teacher, go someplace, some college, and learn theory. That was something I really enjoyed, actually, something that wasn't totally pointless. Theory meaning the meaning of the musical nomenclature. I was attracted to really interesting harmonies, stuff that I would hear in Ravel, Ellington, Bartok.-Double Take, February 29, 1996

Once the site of a seakeasy and a bra factory, the 30,000-square-foot quarters were now the home of Musicians Institute, a vocational school for anyone who considered himself or herself a serious musician. With its wooden desks and chipped-tile hallways, MI resembled any other urban school, but at those desks, student guitarists and drummers studied scales and power chords in hopes of becoming the next Eddie Van Halen or Neil Peart, the flashy drummer with Rush. On their way to class each morning, flaxen-haired guitar gods in training could be spotted holding their guitars and practicing licks as they walked down Hollywood Boulevard.

Jeff had heard about Musicians Institute (and its subdivision, the Guitar Institute of Technology) while in high school and told everyone it was his one and only destination. However, potential superstardom did not run cheap. The school charged $4,000 for its one year course, and by the time Jeff Graduated from Loara High School, Mary Guibert was beginning to fall on hard financial times as she went in and out of jobs. In need of money for herself and her two sons, she prematurely broke into a $20,000 fund earmarked for Jeff, but only after he tured nineteen. Once Mary proved to the courtsthat Jeff needed it for his education, he and Mary received it a year early. In a deep irony, the father Jeff had barely met and increasingly resented would be paying his son's way through music school.

On graduation night, September 15, 1985, at the Odyssey in Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley, Jeff, Stoll, and Marryatt closed the ceremony by playing Weather Report's "Pearl On the Half Shell."-from Dream Brother

With its 30-odd thousand feet of floor space and row upon row of "labs", where hopeful guitar heroes could jam with such shit-hot players as Scott Henderson, LA's Musician's Institute must have seemed like nirvana for someone like Jeff Buckley, trapped as he was behind the Orange Curtain. According to his buddy Chris Dowd, that's exactly why Buckley enrolled there, arriving just before autumn, 1984, bankrolled by $4,000 that Mary managed to squeeze from a Tim Buckley trust fund.

Originally known as the Guitar Institute, which in itself says plenty, the school was opened in 1977. Drawing on the educational philosophy of journeyman guitarist Howard Roberts, it was co-founded and managed by Los Angeles music businessman Pat Hicks, "a real shyster opportunist", in the words of Tom Chang, an expat Canadian who would become very tight with Jeff Buckley during their two years at the Institute. In 1978, thr Bass Institute was opened, followed by the Percussion Institute two years later. Desppite Hicks' questionable business ethics-amongst other things, he'd hire students as cheap labour to do essential maintenance work on the building, which led to Buckley being hired as an electrician's assistant soon after graduating-he did manage to persuade well regarded players and bands to lecture, and play alongside, the hopefuls who'd enrolled there.

What Buckley lacked up in "front" he clearly made up for in ambition. That was proved, in spades, by Buckley's graduation performance which was played out on September 15, 1985, at a venue called the Odyssey in Granada Hills. While the sonic crush and enviable chops of Rush and Led Zeppelin still rocked the world of this Orange County teen, Buckley had also developed a real taste for such "noodlers" as Weather Report.

The number chosen by Buckley for graduation was their "D Flat Waltz" (not "Pearl On The Half-Shell", as documented elsewhere, which they'd performed at a previous event), a typically complicated few minutes of Weather Report neo-fusion-a "really cool piece, very involved", according to Tom Chang-and a standout from their 1983 set Domino Theory. But Buckley, accompanied by Stoll on drums and Marryatt on bass, didn't just play the piece, he also wrote the individual parts out beforehand for the band.-from A Pure Drop

MI pics by me

#jeff buckley #MI #Musicians Institute #GIT #mylove #supremebeing #favorite #music #jeff places

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vampiresuns · 4 years ago

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How Will It Matter After You’re Gone

For Anatole’s day 13 of @arcana-echoes��: Aftermath.

Title: From Disenchanted - My Chemical Romance (Nana was an MCR teen, it’s only fair).

Quick guide: Here you can check on the Cassano-Radosevic family tree. Medea Pryce & Leonore Kaur are Anatole’s best friends, I owe them a post. Medea is a community organiser, and Leonore a therapist in training. Althea is his twin sister, and Navneet his eldest sibling (there’s seven Kaurs: Navneet, Sashi, Althea & Leonore, and Isha, Vaishnavi and Ashok). Navneet and Anatole end up together in one of his timelines.

Dear Vesuvia,

It is with the greatest regret that the Cassano of this City inform to the public that Aelius Anatole Radošević De Silva, Of The Cassano of Vesuvia, has passed away in the Lazaret on the date —.

Taking this time to mourn, while the Cassano and the Consul will remain in the city, striving to find a cure, we inform the city that Consul Valerius has taken the decision to close the doors of the Palazzo.

Due to sanitary measures, no funeral will be held.

Milenko & Amparo

Amparo sat in the middle of the stage of the closed theatre. She wanted to be alone, everyone’s energy threatening to drag her down and never bring her back again, down to a place where the sun does not rise. Not that it matters. The sun could rise a thousand times over, and she feels like she will never notice it again. Losing Anzano, her grandparent, was hard enough. Losing Anatole was unbearable.

Her Anatole deserved the brightest of requiems, and he will have silence, in a bitter city which will probably not mourn him. Not that she can hold it against them — but it still hurts, just like it hurt to feel him die. She always knows when people die.

“Vesuvia lost it’s last honest lover,” she tells no one.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there, but she knows she must head back, and for the first time in forever, she dreads Death itself.

When she comes back, she finds Milenko sitting on Anatole’s piano, crying.

Valerian

Valerian Cassano spent three days siting in the winter garden of the Palazzo after his great grandson died. He knew the biggest loss would always be for his parents, he had gone through that long before they had to. Losing a child was something one never truly recovered of.

He remembers so clearly the first time he met that child: golden before his hair caught up with his personality, avid to learn, curious, ambitious, resolved, more intelligent than most people he’s met. He reminded him of Vitale, his father in law.

Sometimes, if you spoke to the dead, they would listen, so he tried his luck: “Elysian, my dearest friend, take care of him. Do what we could not.”

Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia Cassano considered herself a lot of things: dedicated, passionate, fair, reserved, thoughtful. Brave... bravery was something she was beginning to doubt in herself. Seeing your parent die of a disease as invasive as the plague could do that to a person — seeing someone like Anatole, with his vitality of a thousand suns, could cement it a little deeper in oneself.

Cassiopeia didn’t like endings, they were predictable and inevitable and, sometimes, unfair. At least Amparo was back, and she didn’t have to worry about wherever she was and if she would be safe.

A door opened and closed behind her. She turned to find Iris, her spouse.

“How is Lele?”

“She’s eating, at least.”

“And Lenko?”

“Lenko doesn’t want to see anyone.”

“How... how is...”

“Louisa and Vlad? Please don’t make me answer that.”

“And Va—”

“Don’t.”

Her eyes swelled with tears. Holding her own forehead, she began to cry. Iris sat with her, holding her free hand and kissing her knuckles.

“He rearranged the filing system for the Council by himself— he—” a hiccup, “he had so many plans—”

“I know.”

“He was drafting a social reform for—”

“I know.”

“I’m never going to see him walk around with his coffee, nor terrorise the Praetor. I’m never going to see him— I’m never—”

“I know, my love, I know.”

“He would’ve been a wonderful Consul, Iris.”

Iris’ voice trembled. “I know.” They held Cassiopeia closer. The only thing they could think about was how that could’ve been Amparo.

Mircea & Florentino

“Florence?” Mircea Radošević said, looking and sounding lifeless. “Do you want something to eat?”

“No.”

Mircea understood. He didn’t either.

Medea & Leonore

She’s cried too much to be properly angry, but no matter what she does, no matter how much she pets Leonore’s hair she keeps silently crying, snot threatening to make her unable to breathe alltogether. She’s tired, exhausted, and miserably, dreadfully alone. She feels alone in this world like she hasn’t in years. Leonore has his forehead on her forearm, and a hand on his third glass of spiced whiskey. The only reason why he stopped drinking was because he began crying again.

Medea used to think nothing was enough of a hit to fully break Leonore. He had that quality about him: feelings came, they went, and he sat with discomfort running rampant, only to build up after it was gone with a smile on his face.

Not any more.

Leonore sobbed pitifully, choking on his own cries.

After he finally managed to calm down, he looked at her: “How the fuck will I tell Navneet? How am I telling Althea.”

She began crying again. “I don’t know, Leo — I don’t have the slightest fucking idea.”

“Fucking— How the fuck am I going to wake up tomorrow if he’s, if he—”

“I don’t know, Leo... I really don’t know.”

Antupillán

Antu searched the entire city for Anatole, only not to find him anywhere.

He had gone where Antu couldn’t follow, so he did the only thing he could think of: he went back to Anatole’s room, made himself a lair in his wardrobe, and feel asleep.

If you paid enough attention, you could hear him weeping.

Vlad & Louisa

Aelius Anatole, his son, had come into the world at dawn to seal the lesson that Louisa had brought into his life: that if he knows what love is, it is because they exist. He had nicknamed him Lily because he had always been little, shorter than the other kids, yet somehow stood taller, brighter. He figures all parents think the same of their children.

His son came into the world at dawn. Vlad will never know at what time he left it. He will never know if he was scared. He will never know if the fever kept him lucid. He will never have a body to hold, just like he used to before, when Anatole still asked to be tucked in, demanding to be given a hand to tug on while he fell asleep.

He will have no stories to tell him, he will have no more hallway dances to see him dance, no more dreams, no more smiles.

Death has taken so much from him, all he feels is rage. For the first time in years, he wishes he had died too, but he has a wife, and he can’t leave her alone.

Louisa De Silva never expected to have any children, nor she expected her only son to be taken away from her. She thinks, no, she knows she will feel hollow for the rest of her life, that nothing ever will be the same: happiness will be a ghost of what it used to be. Food will taste blander than before. Joy will be watered, and laugh will take a long vacation never to return.

That Anatole is now with her sister is no consolation at all. She’s always loved Paris, but right now, she’s envious of her. Wherever it is that they are, if there is such a place, her sister will get to hold her son while she didn’t have a chance to even see him die. She holds the arm of the chair she’s sitting in until her knuckles go white. She feels like fainting.

Incompetent and despotic rulers have taken so many things from her: her family home, her parents when they sent her away, and now, while a different tyrant, the offence is the same, worse even, because they too have taken her son.

Louisa De Silva, mother of Aelius Anatole, is a doctor: she doesn’t need to be told all of this was preventable, but it was her son the one who paid the price.

Valerius

“Uncle! Uncle! Look at what I learnt today in my fencing lessons!” Anatole was 8 then.

“Uncle? Was that your boyfriend?” Anatole, aged 9, hanged from a tree branch to ask him that question.

“Uncle!” He had screamed of joy at 11, running to him in the Palazzo after Valerius moved permanently to Vesuvia.

Dearest Uncle, he had written at 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

“Valeriy,” he had called him not two weeks ago, still so sure they would endure this. They are Radošević’s, they are Cassanos, the are Vesuvians but also Balkovian: that meant whatever life threw their way, they survived it.

Or they were.

Valerius feels a knot on his throat: he doesn’t have Anatole’s resolve, his progressive ideas, he doesn’t have his hope, and whatever amount of those he had himself, they died with him. They died with him, giving his life away for a city which would never appreciate him, which would never value him like he did. They did not deserve the soil of Anatole’s shoes and now he’s dead. The boy had given them summer without them asking, a summer which was snatched away from him: Anatole had slipped from his grip like sun-rays between his fingers.

The world should stop without him. That it didn’t was an act of cruelty Valerius would never forgive, even if resentment poisoned him. No amount to lying to himself will change the fact his Aelius died, that he failed his brother in protecting him, that he will have no successor, no one to pass the Consulship to, and that no one will ever be worthy.

A year later, he will watch the Count burn in his bed, and he will smile: Good, he will think, If Anatole did not get to live, then neither should you.

#arcana eotp #the arcana #echoes of the past: anatole #one day i'll catch up but this came to me and i had to hurt my feelings with it #my writing #milenko #amparo cassano #valerian cassano #mircea radosevic #florentino cassano #vlad and louisa #beautiful powerful and stubborn as a ram #leonore #medea #cassiopeia cassano #iris ravella-cassano

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stray-inu-writes · 4 years ago

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Ko Murakami : Character Analysis

Despite being a secondary character (like most characters in WT), Murakami is part of the few chosen ones that got an actual backstory and a whole lot of defining characteristics, which lead him to be one of my favorites !

A Side Effect whose influence is more than a side effect

One thing I love about World Trigger is how Ashihara always shows the downside of what could be considered as a superpower, and Murakami is no exception to that rule. His enhanced sleep learning allowed him to rise to the top of Border without having to train as much as the others, a capacity that most students would love to have (me included). Earlier in life, he’s shown to improve quickly in every sport his friends introduce him to, and this ability was probably helpful in his academic cursus. He just needed to take a nap after class, and the lesson of the day was ingrained in his brain ; same goes for soccer tactics, volleyball moves…the list goes on. Heaven, right ? Except one little thing : social bonds are often forged through common struggles, especially during childhood and teenage years.

At this age, not struggling the same way as your classmates and friends translates to being unable to relate to them. How could Ko Murakami, 12 years old, understand why the others had to study hard to get a good grade, or forget things the teacher said in class ? It was obvious, he just remembered everything, so why weren’t the others the same as him ? When I read Ko’s backstory, my mind immediately linked it to a lot of gifted kid’s experience, where they feel isolated from their classmates. It’s explicitly stated that he lost a lot of friends to jealousy : every time they tried to teach him something (another popular form of bonding), he quickly surpassed them. Such a situation can easily take a toll on a young child or teen, and I believe that it’s exactly what happened, damaging the relationship he had with his Side Effect. Despising something that causes you isolation is perfectly normal, even though it gives you an advantage in other fields. Success doesn’t equal happiness, after all, and that was especially true for him.

The search for a purpose and a place where to belong is a central theme of everyone’s teen years and this belonging is usually found in friendship groups. For Ko, this search resulted in his enrollment in Border, most likely so as to put his talents to good use, since he had to deal with it anyway, but not in the big, shiny HQ in the middle of the city, no, in the Suzunari Branch. Ashihara mentioned in a Q&A that Murakami didn’t care to where he would get assigned to and I think he was even relieved to be sent in a newly created branch. New means that everyone is into unknown territory and it’s a very comfortable situation for someone like Ko.

However, the same thing happened : he got a mentor, Arafune, who taught him how to fight and use Attacker Triggers. In six months, the student surpassed his teacher and Ko found himself in a situation that seemed in all ways similar to what he went through during his childhood. In his mind, everything was going to repeat itself : he had made new friends, forged new bonds, but these bonds were at risk to be tainted by jealousy. As a matter of fact, this could have very well been the case, had his mentor been someone else than Arafune.

The path to acceptance

Fortunately for him, Arafune goals were very different from his disciple’s or really, anyone in Border, as he looked for a way to produce perfect All-Rounders. Ko’s experience with the effects of his ability mixed with a terribly bad timing and probably a lack of communication between them played an important role is the misunderstanding. We can see Ko completely breaking down, crying alone because thinking he lost another friend to his Side Effect was unbearable. It’s very likely that he kept this possibility in mind since the day he joined Border, and even the smallest sign that his fears may be true again was probably too much. That’s when the usual course of events suddenly shifts when he discovers that Arafune doesn’t resent him in the slightest and that Kuruma and Taichi don’t hesitate to comfort him. I can only imagine the relief he felt : for the first time, the people he let close to him didn’t reject him, in the contrary.

In Border, while there may be a rivalry between squads, everyone is working towards the same goal : protect Mikado from the Neighbors. In times of crisis, all teams come together and cooperate, because that’s what they trained from. This is even truer for the members of the same team, whose success depends on every one. Ko’s teammates don’t see his particularity as something disturbing, but as something they can all benefit from. It’s a very different perspective than his previous friends’, because another dimension was added. In organizations like the Border, people with unusual profiles and exceptional capacities aren’t seem as “too much” like it’s the case in others social situations where deviating from the norm is frowned upon.

Hence why Murakami’s own point of view of his Side Effect changed : he was no longer the weird kid, but someone who supported his team and helped others. Enhanced sleep learning went from factor of exclusion to a useful talent. Of course, Ko’s change of heart was probably gradual, because reevaluating something you believed most of your life isn’t done overnight, but that’s what made him into the Murakami we see through Yuma’s eyes.

A selfless and patient fighter

Ashihara could have gone the easy way and made him this super mysterious and edgy character – and with his backstory, he could have very well become a lone wolf ! - but he chose instead to create maybe one of the most human characters in World Trigger. Plot-wise, Murakami represents a turning point : he’s the first opponent to represent a challenge for Yuma. Our white-haired prodigy acknowledges that if the match had gone on, the losses and victories would have evened out, which is a very rare thing for him. However, Murakami is honest and doesn’t show any signs of arrogance when he gets to defeat his opponent, probably because he knows it’s because of his Side Effect and not entirely thanks to his personal skills (which raises the question : does he consider his ability to be entirely part of him or something he can separate himself from ?)

In general, the readers can see Murakami as a very humble young man, always polite, someone who could very well brag openly about his ranking but doesn’t in any way. More importantly, he’s defined by his undying loyalty to his teammates : he could have left them to get in a A-Rank unit with more prestige, but I believe the idea never came to his mind and for a very simple reason. He isn’t looking for glory, he’s looking for somewhere to belong and somewhere to be useful, and his skills fit perfectly into Suzunari-1. In a way, his new perspective on his Side Effect is that he has a responsibility, which explains why he often chooses the hardest tasks and takes the more risks : for his team. Murakami doesn’t think too highly of himself and wouldn’t mind to take a hit on his pride if that meant victory for them, something that others would be unable to do. That’s also why he trains relentlessly : he doesn’t satisfy himself of his current level, not because of his ego but because he knows he can do better for the others. (his hard-working nature has been confirmed by Ashihara himself in a Q&A !)

This unit is one of the few that consider themselves as more than teammates, as every interaction between them we get to see resemble a family’s. They all know they would be nowhere as high in the ranking without Ko, especially Ko himself, but he never belittles them. Even Taichi the klutz, who can be more of a burden than a help sometimes, is treated sweetly by him, while others may have snapped under the pressure. Other examples of Murakami’s patience are shown by his friendship with Kage. Kageura obviously isn’t an easy person to get along with considering his outbursts and his irritability.

That’s where we can notice a pattern in Ko’s friendships : they all are honest (sometimes to a fault) and simple people. He probably wouldn’t enjoy that much the company of someone like Jin who often hides his true feelings. Murakami likes real people, and it’s extremely coherent with his backstory. In the past, he had to deal with friends that let him down when something didn’t work out the way they planned, and now tends to befriend people who are unapologetically themselves, meaning they don’t conceal their true personality and thoughts behind a mask they use to be liked or well seen by the others (Kage couldn’t give more a shit about people’s opinion of him).

And of course, Murakami isn’t all serious ! He’s shown various times to be amused by his friends’ behavior or to mess with people in a harmless way, like the time when he makes Yuma believe Kage’s Side Effect is to read minds.

(does my crush show through this analysis ? Absolutely.)

I could have gone into some points in a little more depth, but that will be all ! Also, there are some moments where my limits in using the English language are blatant and I apologize in advance. Next one will be Reiji ! It will probably be shorter, since I’m always more proficient in analyzing my favorites, even though I like Reiji very much 😊

#world trigger #ko murakami #wt #character analysis #i spent too much time writing this

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

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MLAWeek Coda: The Lore Post

Sorry this is a few days late! To the surprise of absolutely no one who has read some of my longer meta posts, I just don’t know how to shut the F up. (Spoilers: this post is only a few hundred words away from being as long as everything else I wrote for the week put together.)

Anyway, hit the jump for, in order:

A quick breakdown of the Liberation Army’s general structure.

A list of members, broken down by broad generation, including the ones we have gotten explicitly IDed in canon, the ones I based on figures we see in canon, and the ones I completely made up.

The basic tenets of the MLA and some discussion about their views on quirk supremacy. (feat. fandom salt)

An overview of the way the Advent shook up the political landscape in Japan and the Hearts & Minds Party’s place in that landscape. Pretty much the same material Trumpet’s victory speech from Day 4 covers, but modestly more in-depth, removed from the need to play well to a crowd, and with some added explanation about the structure of the Diet for readers who are less familiar with it than Trumpet’s audience would be.

A timeline (with only moderately arbitrary dates!) covering the birth of the glowing baby up to the first year of the manga. Mostly concerned with detailing the events the MLA would care about, but with a few other points of reference to contextualize things for the rest of us.

Bonus Fun Facts: discussion of the considerations that went into the timeline, a look at All For One’s actions re: the MLA, and some miscellaneous blurbs on terminology, worldbuilding and characterization.

A smattering of asides in the form of footnotes.

Note that while this material is based in and accurate to canon as much as I could remember at the time that I was doing my notes on my fills for the week, there’s a lot in here that is based entirely on supposition, interpretation and, at times, just plain-old guessing.

Thanks to @codenamesazanka and @robotlesbianjavert for their assistance in naming, brainstorming, and just generally putting up with me while the Liberation Army was completely devouring my attention.

@red-the-omnic Somewhat belatedly, here’s that list of MLA members you asked for back during the middle of the week. Sorry to make you wait so long!

Enjoy!

———– ———– ———– ———–

ORGANIZATION

Grand Commander: Destro and Destro’s line of descendants.

The First Families: Those who fought at Destro’s side and escaped to continue the fight, and their descendants. Veritably all high-ranked within the MLA, their tie to the original incarnation of the Army marks them as elites, whether or not their quirks would do so otherwise. The elders of the First Families do a certain amount of collective decision-making when and if the Grand Commander is unable to do so and has left orders otherwise.

Sanctum: “Sanctum” is a special position in the Army. The name denotes the person who’s tasked with remembering the MLA’s history, practices and lore—the position is considered contiguous, so even when someone is new to the name, they’re still considered “the longest-serving member of the Liberation Army.”. When they’re getting on in years, they select an appropriate protégé, to whom the name will pass upon their death/capture. The name must always go to a member of the First Families (though in truth, they’re only on their third one, so it’s more of a pattern so far than a hard rule).

Commanders & Lieutenants: People in charge of major operations, liberated districts, etc. Frequently, though not always, members of the First Families. Have discretion over their own assignments, but may not have much influence in the Army’s operations on the whole, depending on who they’re connected to otherwise.

Advisors: This title denotes those who are specifically tapped to give advice and aid to the MLA leadership. Levels of authority vary depending on who they’re advising. Advisors of lieutenants, if any, are a step above the rank and file, advisors of commanders are about on par with lieutenants, and advisors to the Grand Commander are considered commanders in their own right, regardless of any other rank they may hold.

Rank and File: Pretty much everyone else.

———–

KNOWN MEMBERS [1]

The original MLA—

Destro: Yotsubashi Chikara. Established the Meta Liberation Army in his mid-30s in response to the development of what he felt were overly restrictive laws on the usage of meta-abilities. Having observed evidence that meta-abilities grew stronger generationally, he was particularly concerned that no oppressive laws could be enforced by the generation that established them because the next generation would always be more powerful. Thus, he believed that establishing the use of meta-abilities as a fundamental right was the only way for society to avoid indefinite intergenerational strife. He was particularly incensed by the government co-opting the message that got his mother murdered to put a pretty, self-congratulatory sheen on laws that did the exact opposite of what she wished for. Allegedly committed suicide after some months in prison. The MLA is highly suspicious of this claim—they’re correct to be, but not for the reasons they think. His quirk, which his entire line would inherit, turns a key emotion into enhanced strength and resilience in the form of a characteristic ink-blot marking. While it would develop over time, the basic nature of the quirk remained the same. Chikara’s driving emotion was resolve.

Fathom: Destro’s lover, she dedicated a decade of her life after his capture to building up the survivors he’d left behind. It’s said her son got his drive from Destro, but his anger from Fathom. Had a large hand in raising her son to be the sort of man he was, particularly in her decision to commit what many considered to be suicide-by-hero when he was in his teens. A large part of that choice was wrapped up in her never-fully-assuaged grief over Destro’s loss (and, she believed to the end, his murder), but there was also a cold calculation to it—her making a big show of it would lead the police to believe that her attack was the last gasp of the Liberation Army, ending their investigations into MLA activities. It would also stoke the fires of her son’s rage, honing him into a stronger weapon against their enemies. Her judgement in both cases proved broadly on-point, though her death did serve to make her son more cautious than she might have hoped. Meta-Ability: Antennae. A pair of insectile feelers emerging from her forehead that give her a passel of sensory boosts, particularly in the taste and smell categories, and which also make her able to detect shifts in the air from quite some distance.)

Cascade: A man whose meta-ability lets him turn body parts into loosely controllable masses of water. Can’t transform fully. A quick-thinking type able to make hard calls.

Sweeper: A woman with a radio-scanning quirk. Caught by police in the same fight as Destro.

Sanctum I: The first bearer of the codename. Had a protective ability of some sort.

Sanctum II’s father: The same quirk as his daughter; see below. Known for getting some eight people safely out of a police raid by carrying them all out at once despite not actually having superhuman strength of any kind. (Probably tore several muscles in the process, but adrenaline is a hell of a thing.)

The Second Generation—

Destro’s son: Raised to deeply resent heroes and the government that put them in place, but he was also very cautious of them. He was profoundly aware that his death would mean the end of the dream that his father had begun and his mother had cultivated, so he was very meticulous in spreading the MLA’s influence underground, rebuilding their numbers before he even began to consider starting to make attacks again. Destro’s army had been a guerilla force; his son’s would be something much more dangerous. His driving emotion was anger, and he had two children before being killed by a cerebral aneurysm at 43. Was able to use his power to make his body larger.

Sanctum II: A woman with an unusual fondness for the traditional Japanese arts, particularly tea ceremony. Meta-ability: Stride. Teleport to any location she can directly see by taking a single step forward. Can take whoever she can carry under her own power. (First Families lineage)

Anchor: An advisor to Destro’s son. Prominent bull horns. Meta-ability: Immobilize. Similar to Lock Rock’s Lockdown quirk, except it only works on his own body. Very good at wrestling holds (and holding his breath), he tends to fight with backup that can deliver finishing blows to opponents once he has them pinned down. (First Families lineage)

The Third Generation—

Yotsubashi Kyouyuki: The elder child of Destro’s son. Deemed an unsuitable Grand Commander for his driving emotion of joy. Always presented a façade of being cheerful and upbeat, but the ever-present rhetoric that the MLA pushes about the ongoing suppression of quirks and the misery and injustice it leads to left Kyou always struggling with guilt. In college, it finally got so bad that he resolved to run away, enlisting the help of a friend with a swap-based teleport quirk to get him out of a party undetected. His fate thereafter is a secret that’s been taken to the grave by the MLA members involved in it, but given the typical reactions of illegal underground cults to members wanting to leave, it’s unlikely that he’s living somewhere in happy anonymity. (Name means Unyielding Happiness, following in his grandfather and nephew's patterns of having characters in their names meaning power/strength.)

Yotsubashi Yukie: The younger child of Destro’s son, and Rikiya’s mother. With a driving emotion of sorrow, and having been steadily losing family her entire life, Yukie wrestled with depression for most of her life. The presumptive heir to the title of Re-Destro, she spent considerably more time in training than her older brother, but she never much had the temperament for it. When her father died only a few scant years after Kyouyuki’s disappearance, she expressed her fears that she was incapable of being the leader the Army needed. This led to her becoming a mother at a relatively young age, continuing the bloodline rather than picking up the banner. For all her struggles with her grief, Yukie was very determined to at least be there for the son on whom the weight of leadership would fall. The world of My Hero Academia is a dangerous one, however, particularly before All Might established himself as Japan’s pillar, and Yukie was a casualty of the chaos of a villain attack when Rikiya was ten. (Name means Glittering Conqueror, ditto the note above about the family pattern for name kanji.)

Rampart: Guardian and general caretaker for Rikiya in his younger years. Hand-picked for the role by Yukie, who had considered him a close friend since their school days. Meta-Ability: An earth manipulation power akin to Pixie-Bob’s, though less powerful. (First Families lineage)

Shinseigi: Trumpet’s uncle, unspecified code name. Also in politics, though of a more local variety. Meta-ability: His speaking voice makes listeners suggestible. (The phonetic pronunciation of his name sounds like “New Justice,” but the kanji are “Sleeping Voice Technique.”)

The Fourth Generation—

Yotsubashi Rikiya: The current Re-Destro (42); CEO and President of Detnerat. He took up the former title when he was only 6 years old. With the succession of losses that were his uncle, grandfather and mother, the MLA has been fairly careful with him, grooming him with care and rarely leaving him without some form of supervision, be it Rampart when he was young or Trumpet in college. An extremely dutiful child grown into an urbane man whose good humor disguises a morose—and occasionally volatile—inner character. Always under a lot of stress (his MRIs are clear so far, though, haha!), but there’s only so much effort dedicated to mitigating that, since stress is his key emotion. The first in the family line to be able to separate his power from his own body, in the form of his Stress Bomb attack.

Trumpet: Hanabata Koku (44). One of Rikiya’s advisors and party leader of the Hearts & Minds Party (see below); has known Rikiya since their preteen years. The Hanabatas were a political family of old, but largely saw those fortunes crash and burn when they started manifesting quirks a few generations into the Advent. They’ve been clawing their way back into politics ever since and were an early target for the MLA’s project to infiltrate and/or start their own political party. It was decided very early on that Koku’s quirk and his family connections made him a good choice to groom for leadership of the HMP, so he and Rikiya bonded over their similar positions. They would go on to attend the same university, during which time they became romantically involved. In truth, Koku’s university was functionally chosen for him on the basis of which one Rikiya would be attending; the First Families were not about to lose another Yotsubashi to college life. Koku is more aware of this particular fact than Rikiya. Still a little wistful about their college days, his opinions regarding Re-Destro’s big starstruck crush on Shigaraki are borderline unprintable.

Sanctum III: Twice’s No. 1 advisor, the dude with the big imperial handlebar moustache and what looks an awful lot like a dress uniform for the Japanese navy. A few years older than Trumpet. (First Families lineage)

Curious: Kizuki Chitose (36). RD advisor and Shoowaysha Publishing Executive Vice President.[2] From a relatively small liberated district up near Sendai; the MLA connections plus her own profound ambition got her moving very quickly up the MLA chain of command. Daughter of a wlw couple; got her blue skin from her bio mom. One younger sibling, a sister. Masterminded the dinners we see the group having in Chapter 218, originally to make sure Rikiya was getting at least one well-apportioned meal a week and a chance to socialize with the closest thing he has to peers, but also because it proved to be an invaluable opportunity to swap information and rumors.

Skeptic: Chikazoku Tomoyasu (31). RD advisor and Feel Good Inc. board member. On the bottom end of the generation age-wise, a prodigy in every sense save his broadly terrible people skills. Recognizes Rikiya’s stress tells because he shares several of them himself, and is also the only person of Rikiya’s generation with the confidence to verbally push him around a bit. It’s regarded as borderline scandalous by their elders, but Rikiya himself finds it bracing, and anyway, Skeptic’s ability to organize a schedule for maximum efficiency is nothing less than miraculous. Got Rikiya onto fidget toys.

Toryu: Toryu is the family name of Galvanize (aka Taser Face aka Kaminari’s Dad). Mr. Compress’s No. 1, the dude who strolls out onto the lawn after Cementoss rips the hotel a new one and immediately gets his smarm repackaged and returned to sender by Kaminari and Edgeshot. Great for morale before that, though! In Rikiya’s age group, his mother’s side of the family (from which he gets the electricity powers) has been in the Army for at least as far back as her school days. (The name comes from the characters for leaping/rising and current/flow.)

Slidin’ Go: Tokoname Tatsuyuki (37). He’s Slidin’ Go! Skeptic’s No. 2, possibly because Slidin’ Go strongly resembles the puppets Skeptic is so used to barking orders at and there’s comfort in familiarity.

Aozono: Family name for another of Rikiya’s childhood peers, nothing is known but that green skin runs in the family as far back as her father. May or may not be related to Curious’s family.

The Fifth Generation—

Geten: Real name unknown. Family status unknown. Age unknown, but I’d peg him in the 18-23 area. Seems to be allowed to attend the weekly dinners without contributing anything but his incredibly terrible table manners. Can talk an impassioned game about the Liberation Army’s goals (though he pushes the quirk supremacy line a good deal harder than anyone else in the Army is shown to; it’s not even close), but it’s fairly clear that he’s more personally dedicated to Re-Destro than he is the MLA’s cause in and of itself. I’ll be honest; I have no idea what Geten’s deal is. My tentative headcanon is that he’s an orphan—the English meaning of his name, Apocrypha, refers to sacred writings of uncertain authorship/authenticity—who’s in some kind of Batman-and-Robin guardian-and-ward situation with Re-Destro, but I didn’t wind up writing enough about him to come up with much beyond that.

Nimble: Spinner’s No. 1, the woman with the weird paper-strip-esque hair who doesn’t seem to be in possession of a nose or mouth. (She absorbs air through her skin like a frog, which is why no one has ever seen her with that sweater covering both of her shoulders.) Nimble is a friendly sort, though she regards her outgoing good cheer as being a simple matter of social networking. Ambitious, but sensible about it. Meta-ability: Sky Write. Allows her to project letters and pictures into the air around her, giving her a way to communicate she would have otherwise lacked. She can create words in air she can’t see, but it takes some concentration, and the closer the better.

Scarecrow: Spinner’s No. 2, 21 years old. Born with amelia (see link in Day Two’s author’s notes) that disfigured his face and severed his arms in the womb. His quirk-based forelegs—a pair of spider legs emerging from his shoulders—can do a certain amount of basic object manipulation, but it tends to wig people out, so they push him to use his prosthetics like he’s “supposed” to (see Stray Notes section for more on this). He was viciously angry about it even as a kid, and his parents were frustrated, making them easy pickings for cult indoctrination. A family friend recommended that they look into Detnerat, where it wasn’t long before Re-Destro himself took an interest in their situation (or at least in making a good impression on them). Scarecrow joined the Army as quickly as he was allowed to—16. Meta-ability: Webbing. The bug legs can project silk like a webspinner (the insect on which he’s based), allowing him to do anything you might broadly understand Spider-Man to be able to do with his webbing, though he certainly lacks Spider-Man’s strength.

Red: Named in passing in the manga, he’s the laid-back dude with the fluffy hair who serves as Skeptic’s No. 1 post-merger. Probably invaluable in helping Skeptic maintain what bare vestiges of chill he can muster. (First Families lineage)

The Sixth Generation—

Every child currently under the age of 10 being raised in MLA households with a picture of Destro over the mantle. It’s not a small number, representing a group that neither the fandom nor the Hero Commission seem to have even realized exist.

———–

CORE TENETS & THE MATTER OF QUIRK SUPREMACY

Re-Destro is not (contrary to popular fandom belief) in favor of full-throated, might-makes-right, survival of the fittest Quirk Darwinism.[3] Destro’s will was for people to be able to use their meta-abilities as they saw fit to the extent that that freedom did not interfere with the freedoms of others. He was against the regulation of meta-abilities, but he was not—to the best of our knowledge—against the regulation of crime. His belief was that one murderer with a fire ability killing people did not justify barring everyone else with fire abilities from using those powers to fire clay, start campfires, engage in fire-themed performance art, use fire to char wood in artistic patterns for money, help park rangers set and direct controlled burns, coordinate explosions for the movie industry, light cigarettes in public, or any other of dozens of possible uses for a fire ability that don’t involve burning people alive.

The MLA do believe that meta-abilities have an impact on one’s personality, but they also believe that that’s okay; that it should be understood and accepted, not feared and repressed—Curious would not have wanted to turn Toga into a tragedy about the consequences of repression if she didn’t think that a spree of bloodletting murders was a tragedy. Their belief as an organization is that people should be free to use their powers as they see fit in the same way that they would any other natural talent or cultivated skill. They believe that people will, if free to do so, naturally gravitate to ways of improving their own lot in life via use of their meta-abilities.

Freedom from regulation and freedom from discrimination—these are the core tenets that the vast majority of the rank and file hold to. A great many of them are laborers, blue collar types who just want to be able to better support themselves and their families. Many others are those who suffered discrimination because of their quirks and want better for both themselves and their children. Of course, the further back their connections go, the more likely they are to both be higher-ranked in the cult (with attendant greater resources) and to have grown up soaking in generations’ worth of resentment, groupthink, and radicalism.

Geten, a particularly virulent and single-minded MLA attack dog, has parsed the tenets to mean that people with strong, well-trained meta-abilities will naturally be able to use their powers to do more and raise their status in the MLA’s ideal society, and thus that those who can’t or don’t choose to will not be able to live lives that Geten personally thinks are worth living. Likewise, Trumpet doesn’t fault Spinner only for his weak ability, but also for his anti-social tendencies. Of course a politician who’s deeply invested in a narrative of people uniting to throw off their chains and better themselves would be disdainful of someone who locked himself in his bedroom for years and emerged only to violently lash out at society. (Spinner’s right to call Trumpet a huge hypocrite on this, mind; terrorist cult members have no business lecturing other terrorists about the correct way to violently reform society.)

The MLA does have a problem with quirk supremacy, but it’s not quite the problem fandom thinks they do, and it’s certainly more nuanced than fandom thinks.[4] Frankly, I could write a whole post dissecting this, but rather than analyzing the canon at length in a post intending to be about my fanon for a series of slice-of-life MLA fics, let me just lay out some issues I think the MLA have. Note that these opinions may vary member to member, particularly as you work your way up the chain of command.

Many in the MLA believe that people with poor quirks are less capable of asserting their will and becoming whatever they want to be. They are not, notably, alone in that that sentiment—we hear versions of it not only from villains like Trumpet and All for One, but from the paralleled parents of Midoriya Inko and Shimura Kotarou, the would-be hero Bakugou, and even the iconic hero paragon All Might. While it’s not universal, My Hero Academia’s Japan is full of people who believe to some extent or another that people with weak or no quirks are inherently less capable of making their mark on the world. The MLA is just more blatant about it than most.

The MLA are, as a group, not concerned about the fate of the quirkless. My suspicion is that this is because they think quirklessness as a trait is on its way out—that the touted 20% of the world population that’s quirkless is hugely weighted towards the elderly, those who are from generations when quirklessness was more common. Think about it: 20% is two out of every ten people. Statistically speaking, that’s a huge portion! You only have to look at Deku’s middle school classroom in Chapter 1—thirty kids, exactly one of whom is quirkless—to begin to suspect that there’s something a bit off with the 20% figure.

Further, the MLA follows Destro’s beliefs, and we know from Destro’s manifesto that he believed meta-abilities were growing stronger over time. So to their mind, not only is quirklessness becoming a thing of the past, but so are weak quirks in general. While their clear disdain for both is damning—and certainly discredits them as a group suited to decide how society should be structured!—please understand that, “We’re not very concerned with the rights of the quirkless because we think that there won’t be any such thing as quirkless people within a few more generations,” is not the same statement as, “We are A-OK with 20% of the world’s population being second-class citizens for the entire rest of human history,” and it is really not the same statement as, “People with no quirks, or bodies that can’t handle their quirks, need to be proactively removed from the gene pool and we are actively advocating for a systemic, organized culling.”

That said, their disdain, if blown out to society at large, would absolutely lead to discrimination and, undoubtedly, incidents of the same sort of violence that the MLA themselves were forged from. That they haven’t thought or don’t care about this is one of many things that make them villains.

Further, there is an ugly strain within the MLA that still recognizes quirk marriages. Because the MLA values freedom, they’re not as ubiquitous as you might think (at least if you think the MLA is a bunch of quirk supremacists with no other goals or values)—“freedom” does nominally include the freedom to marry who you want rather than let your own meta-ability trap you in a life you hate. However, it’s equally true that in a group that believes very strongly in the value of quirks, the power of quirks in the future, and the necessity of fighting a war to bring about that future, there will obviously be members who support the practice. There are absolutely men and women who have been bullied and guilted by their families into loveless marriages for the sole purpose of producing children with powerful, desirable quirks. How likely this is in any given location mostly depends on the commander’s opinion on it, though it’s a very rare one indeed who would go so far as discouraging it entirely.

———–

THE HEARTS & MINDS PARTY

(Considerations on Japan’s political landscape.)

The current monolith of the Diet, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, managed to hold onto power for a full century after the Advent, but their grasp grew shakier and shakier over time. Initial measures to bar meta-humans from voting proved increasingly unpopular as the percentage of the population with meta-abilities grew both larger and older. People with easily-concealed powers gained office, sometimes being outed, sometimes not, but on the whole, decades of oppression and violence led to an ever-more-popular opinion that the LDP had mishandled the whole mess. They lost their supermajority in the Diet when their longstanding alliance with the Komeito party splintered, regained it again for a few electoral cycles, lost it again when Komeito itself fractured, and so on, their once implacable numbers shrinking year by year. Still, they managed to hold onto a coalition majority right up until Saneki Yuuichi was elected to the House of Representatives.

Saneki headed up a small party based almost entirely on the issue of meta-human basic rights. Like many meta-humans of the period, he believed that the best way for meta-humans to attain those rights was to live like so-called “normal humans,” to show that meta-humans were just like everyone else. His party advanced the ideology that meta-humans should only use their powers to help others or better society, not to advance their own self-interest. They pushed stringently for metas to be allowed equal recognition under the law as any Japanese citizen, but also supported measures such as requiring licenses for the use of meta-abilities and limiting those licenses to those actively engaged in assisting police. Deeply tied to respectability politics, Saneki’s party contained virtually all emitters, a scant number of transformers, and no heteromorphs, who the party felt were an impediment to reaching their legislative goals, but whose particular needs could be brought back up at a later, more receptive time.

Saneki’s politics gained him many supporters, but also drove many into the arms of the Meta Liberation Army, who vocally loathed him and everything he stood for. The confluence of public dissatisfaction with the spike in violence represented by the MLA, Saneki’s coalition gathering popular support among both metas and non-metas, and the rise of named, organized hate groups trying to roll back what few advances had been gained in meta-human rights finally spelled the end of the LDP’s majority.

The LDP falling apart prompted a scramble for power that would stretch on for nearly half a century. Old alliances whose only common ground had been opposing the LDP found themselves free to seek groups with more compatible goals. Young single- or dual-issue parties leapt at the chance to address their issues with more fervor. New parties sprung up across the country. Not only meta-humans, but minority groups of all kinds saw new avenues to press for substantive positive changes that had been dead in the water under the LDP. Voting numbers surged as they had not for decades.

The old, conservative elements of the Diet were not gone, of course—they remained a substantial powerhouse!—but no longer could they muster the undefeatable veto-proof numbers that they had once enjoyed.

Like everyone else, the remnants of the MLA saw opportunity in the new, ever-shifting status quo. With the place of metas secured for the time being, there was no longer a need for metas to form coalitions in the Diet merely to get their basic needs addressed. A single-issue party from its inception thirty years prior, Saneki Yuuichi’s party was fragmenting, unable to decide on a single direction now that their uniting issue had been resolved to their satisfaction. In recognition of meta-humans reaching population parity, the MLA launched a project to begin seeding the ideals of Liberation at the highest levels yet—the Hearts & Minds Party.

Beginning as a local party in a prefecture in which the MLA had gained significant underground support, the HMP campaigned on a platform championing individual freedoms and a wide range of improvements to Japan’s battered and overworked social safety nets. They made an effort to showcase diverse representation in their leadership and gave impassioned speeches promising to reach across party aisles in searching for nuanced solutions to the various difficulties facing the country.

It’s impossible to say exactly how large the Hearts & Minds Party is compared to the Meta Liberation Army, which is claimed by Re-Destro to have 116,000 action-ready warriors (the “warriors lying in wait, ready to rise to action” description presumably indicating that his count does not include uninducted children).

On the one hand, one can presume that everyone who’s a member of the MLA is voting for the HMP on every ticket they can, but not every member of the MLA—who induct combat-ready warriors as young as 16—is old enough to vote, and many probably live in districts or prefectures where the HMP has yet to establish a campaign-ready foothold. On the other hand, while the HMP certainly serves to funnel people towards the MLA, it doesn’t require membership—indeed, it’s far better for their goals for them not to do so. Therefore, it’s also probable that the Hearts & Minds Party has many supporters who are not (yet) counted among the Liberation Army’s number. Thus, for the purposes of ballparking estimates, I opted to simply suppose that the two areas lacking overlap (MLA members who can’t vote for the HMP and HMP supporters who aren’t members of the MLA) are relatively equal.

That established, we’re working with a party that has 116K voters/supporters/members. The closest thing to that number that I could find numbers for is the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which counted 300K members as of 2017. Using their total membership compared to their representation in the Diet (as well as a willingness to viciously bastardize anything resembling reliable political math), I plugged in my estimate for the HMP’s membership and wound up with the Hearts & Minds Party holding four seats in the House of Representatives, five seats in the House of Councillors, and sixty-odd assembly members in various prefectural positions.

For some context to those numbers, the House of Representatives (more powerful, but more vulnerable to sudden electoral shifts) has 465 members, 233 of which are required for a majority, and 310 of which are required to override vetoes imposed by the House of Counsillors. The House of Counsillors (less powerful, but serving longer terms and unable to be dissolved for general elections like the House of Representatives can be) has 245 members, with 123 required for a majority.

As you can see, the HMP holding a handful of seats isn’t going to tilt the My Hero Academia world on its axis. Still, it’s more seats than any number of real-life Japanese political parties hold, and right up until the one-two punch of Shigaraki taking over the MLA and Hawks outing Trumpet’s allegiances to the Hero Commission, the Hearts & Minds Party was well on-track to continue growing its power and influence.

———–

TIMELINE

(For ease of calculation, most dates are rounded to the nearest five years.)

1980: A glowing baby is born in Qing Qing City, China, heralding the Advent of the Age of the Extraordinary. For almost two decades, meta-abilities remain rare and poorly understood—incidents are widespread and show huge variance, so most people write them off as anomalies or hoaxes. As the years go on, however, meta-abilities become more widespread, moving out of the realm of the odd headline that many people think is an elaborate hoax into an alarmed spotlight as it gradually becomes apparent that this is a thing that all humanity is undergoing. Most major technological development pivots to trying to understand, undo, document or control this new phenomenon.

2030: The child who will become All for One is born. By this time, society is breaking down into chaos. Across the globe, measures from outlawing all meta-ability use to internment are seen. Eugenics laws are discussed or put in place. Communities attempt to run out metas and, in response, groups of metas attempt to form their own communities. Infanticide rates are rising alarmingly.

2060: Yotsubashi Chikara and Ujiko (original name unknown) are born. Japan is in complete disarray, awash in mob violence, with organized groups of both metas and non-metas attacking victims indiscriminately. Developing an ability can get you disowned. Divisions among the meta minority are developing a noticeable strain of respectability politics rhetoric.

2065: AFO forces an ability on his younger brother, unintentionally creating One for All. Chikara’s mother is murdered by an anti-meta mob for attempting to speak out in defense of the normalcy of her child’s ability.

2085-2090: Saneki Yuuichi becomes the first meta-human to attain a seat in the Diet. Despite nearly a century of violence, meta-humans are becoming a larger and larger percentage of the population, and the people of Japan are tired. The prevailing sense is that it’s time to make peace; however, the peace that is being forged involves laws sharply restricting the use of meta-abilities for those who haven’t been formally licensed. These restrictions see markedly mixed reactions from metas. Chikara rallies the most vehement dissenters to create the Meta Liberation Army, calling himself Destro. Disagreement over how to handle the MLA finally finishing the job of rattling the Diet free of the death-grip of the LDP. Many years of fractious elections will follow as new coalitions form to try and seize majority power.

2095: Japan signs an international accord acknowledging the fundamental rights of meta-humans. This gesture begins to splinter both internal support and public sympathy for the MLA.

2097: Destro is captured by police and their newly designated Quirk Unit. Other surviving members of the MLA are hunted down or go into hiding.

2100: The term “Hero” is formally adopted, having been casually in use for some time. A Hero is one who is licensed to use their power to fight quirk-based crime in accordance with local and federal laws, assisting the police when requested. The Hero Commission is established as an agency with oversight in the licensing and regulation of Heros. Destro dies in prison. Though the matter is questioned, no proof of foul play is ever brought forward, and the death is ruled a suicide.

2110: Ujiko presents his paper on the Paranormal [5] Singularity Theory. The paper suggests that the power of quirks is continuing to grow with each generation and will, in time, become more powerful than the human body can control. His evidence is inconclusive, however, and his citation of some of Destro’s observations on the phenomenon becomes a particular sticking point. In a country that is finally beginning to get its feet back under it, no one wants to see another widespread panic. Ujiko is stripped of his position; having been living on campus at the time, he’s left functionally homeless and is approached by All for One not long after.

2120: The population of those with quirks and those without reaches parity in Japan. Seeing an opportunity, the MLA launches the Hearts & Minds Party as a local political party, intending to grow it over time.

(2125: Yagi Toshinori is born.)

2138: Yotsubashi Rikiya is born.

(2148: Debut of All Might.)

(2165: Shimura family tragedy.)

(2174: All Might “defeats” AFO.)

2175: Hanabata Koku is elected to the House of Representatives. He’s not the youngest party leader in the Diet, but he’s close.

2180: The events of Deku’s freshman year at UA lead the MLA to turn their attention to the League of Villains.

———–

STRAY FACTS

Why 1980/2180?—

It’s an even number for ease of calculation, triangulated between a few considerations.

Firstly, tasers are mentioned in the One for All dream, so the events of the dream (which themselves are happening far enough into the Advent that society’s had time to slide into all-out chaos) must post-date the invention of the taser, which was in 1993.

Secondly, Spider-Man’s silhouette is seen amongst the group of characters who represent the “fantasy” that became reality. If we assume that those media properties existed in-universe (since the narration is delivered by Midoriya) and were assumed to be fantastical at the time, they must predate the Advent—Spider-Man is the newest of them and his first appearance was in 1962, his material being translated into Japanese by the 1970s.

Lastly, technological and societal development crashed to a halt with the Advent. The world of My Hero Academia generally reflects a modern-ish Japan, so I wanted modern technology—and modern social reforms—to still feel modern to the characters. Thus, the point at which society stopped developing needed to predate the Digital Revolution, which really began to hit its stride in the mid-80s. Hence, 1980.

The opening period is, admittedly, fairly generous on my part, and does assume a certain amount of modern advances were probably underway, but then were lost, sidelined or rolled back as the chaos spread. You could probably trim off twenty years by stepping up how quickly quirks begin to appear and spread, but the very beginning is the best window to do so. I’d still peg the Advent at 1980 based on the calculations above (again, it has to fall somewhere between the mid-70s and 1993) but, for example, maybe All for One is from that first generation, and society only takes 30 years to reach the lowest point of its collapse instead of 80.

As to the 2180, the older characters introduce several requirements for the post-Advent timeline. Ujiko was 50 at the time that society was beginning to stabilize, while AFO dates to its days of utmost chaos. AFO also needs to be running on at least one anti-aging quirk prior to meeting Ujiko; if the only one he were running on was Ujiko’s own, then based on his appearance and the mechanics of Ujiko’s quirk, I’d peg AFO at merely 85, and he needs to be not only over 100, but far enough over 100 that he’s described that way rather than as “a century-old evil” or something to that effect.

Meanwhile, All Might can’t really be any younger than 50, and seven generations of OFA bearer predated him, even if they did all die relatively young. Destro’s mother was killed in those early chaotic days, while Re-Destro (himself no spring chicken) is told as a child that the MLA has been in hiding for generations. “Generations” implies at least two; I further suppose that Rikiya needs to be at least the original Chikara’s great-grandson for him to describe himself simply as Destro’s descendant, rather than use a more specific relationship term. All of this points to a fairly lengthy stretch of time, much more than is glossed over by Midoriya’s series-opening narration.

AFO and the MLA—

I mention in the very first story of this series that the MLA’s contacts all go “mysteriously missing” after the capture of Destro. While the police certainly did their own measure of work in tracking down the Liberation Army’s members and allies, there was another figure with a significant hand in the MLA’s downfall.

All for One, then in his early sixties, had watched the rise of the MLA in some interest. On a personal level, he admired Yotsubashi’s charisma and resolve, and, of course, he wholly supported the free use of quirks (well, his own free use of quirks, anyway)! On the other hand, All for One also sought to restore order to society, albeit order as he himself envisioned it. While he was confident that there was no one who could stand up to him no matter whose ideals won out, Saneki Yuuichi’s way promised a more stable society, and bribable and/or blackmailable bureaucrats seemed easier to manipulate than ideal-driven zealots ready to give their lives for the cause. Thus, AFO decided to help the police a bit behind the scenes, offering a few tip-offs and hints to guide their efforts to end the threat of the Liberation Army.

Of course, as long as Destro was alive, the cause of Liberation still had its focal point. And AFO was still a bit curious to meet this man, who’d inspired so very many loyal followers. It was an easy thing to arrange. An interesting man, and an interesting quirk.

Destro did commit suicide in prison. A man who had always embraced his meta-ability for motivation, and whose ability transformed that motivation into power in turn, AFO stripped him of in the same moment. Isolation from other contact, separation from his lover, his friends and allies, and his cause, a gap in his psyche like no pain he’d ever experienced--all of these piled up on one another into a fatal despair. After AFO’s visit, there was no need for anyone to arrange a convenient death for Destro.

(And if in later years, the monstrous Noumu, who are driven entirely by pre-programmed, single-minded resolve, are flint-skinned from head-to-toe, well—who would ever even think to connect those dots?)

The Mother of Quirks—

An interesting thing I observed from Re-Destro’s confrontation with Clone!Shigaraki is that, based on their exchange, it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge that the Mother of Quirks is the mother of the Meta Liberation Army’s leader? Re-Destro’s apology for assuming Shigaraki wouldn’t recognize the story suggests that it’s a matter of fairly basic historical education, but he then goes on to explain her connection to Destro at some length—if that connection were taught at the same time her story was, surely he’d see no need to do this? Clone-a-raki’s response backs this up—unlike the general existence of the Mother of Quirks, which was such basic knowledge that he was insulted that Re-Destro thought he wouldn’t know about it, her connection to Destro was unknown to him.

Re-Destro describes the connection as “an inconvenient truth.” This, in turn, suggests that the connection has been actively obscured. The MLA’s place in history is taught; the originator of the term “quirk” is taught, but the two are not connected to each other. Kids in school aren’t taught that the very child whose mother was murdered for her words hated what his country was using those words, that message, to do. It’s naked appropriation that continues to this day, and it’s no wonder that the MLA is furious about it.

The Quirk Unit—

An early term for the group that would, in relatively short order after their formation, officially be dubbed Heroes. Composed of both meta-humans already on the police force and vigilantes willing to remit themselves to legal oversight, they fought quirk-based crime in many forms, from the common mugger to the terrorists of the MLA, and even former allies in vigilantism. Well-regarded by history thanks to their efforts in reining in crime and disorder, but quite a controversial group in their early years.

MLA Age of Induction—

Being raised in the MLA means being raised with the goal of eventually being assigned a codename and tasked with supporting the Great Cause in whatever fashion your superiors think you best suited. The minimum age for this is 16, though 18, being the age at which students graduate from high school, is more common. At no point is there really a safe way to leave once you’re involved; they are, after all, a secret army. There’s no aging out of the MLA—it’s a lifetime tour—but disability, injury or general decrepitude can get you assigned to work that generally won’t expect you to see open combat. The Army is composed of a great many lifetime-of-service families, after all, which means they need teachers and caretakers; another option is dedicated work for the Hearts & Minds Party, who always have room for community organizers.

Liberated Districts—

Settlements that are at least 85% MLA-inducted. At their largest, they’re small towns; rural villages are far more common. Without exception, they’re isolated or out of the way. Tend to have unusually good access to city services compared to similarly-sized settlements. Deika was one of the largest districts the Army had, chosen for the Revival Celebration due to its combination of a sizable population and a particularly closed-off location. The MLA knew they’d need many warriors to fight the League of Villains, but they also needed a site that was not merely remote, but that had controllable points of access.

It can take well over a decade to hit the 85% saturation mark in even small villages; Deika and the MLA’s handful of other full-fledged towns are the work of generations. They begin by moving people into an area and setting up gatherings on some useful pretext or another, enthusiastically welcoming newcomers and very, very gradually indoctrinating people further into the ideology. Financial support, an accepting environment for difficult quirks or those with patchy legal histories, the odd homeless shelter or food kitchen, a robust presence in the foster care network—the MLA is very, very good at making themselves a warm, sincere, reliable presence in peoples’ lives, a group that encourages everyone under their banner to be their best selves. They think everyone deserves that kind of support!

They are also willing to shed quite a lot of blood to make sure that everyone can get it.

On the Intersection of Disability and Quirk Suppression—

There are a few factors contributing to why Scarecrow can’t use his quirk to do things others would. First, his quirk is the kind of off-putting that gets Gang Orca ranked third-most villainous-looking hero and leads Shoji to wear a mask because his face disturbs people. So Scarecrow’s quirk is already the kind of visible that makes people look at him askance. Compounding this, his prosthetics are obvious, visible to any old person, and people have a very ugly tendency towards bootstrap, “you can do it if you try” mentalities around people with disabilities. These two factors mean that people who are disturbed by his creepy articulate bug legs would much prefer that he use his significantly less-creepy prosthetics, to the degree that they’re willing to suggest that he’s being lazy if he doesn’t. They cite the quirk-use laws as a deflection tactic, but Scarecrow—whose pattern recognition functions just fine, thanks—is keenly aware of the underlying mindset.

Nimble is in much the same boat—she literally can’t talk without falling back on a visual representation of some kind (sign-language, a text-to-speech reader, etc), and why on earth shouldn’t she be able to use the fastest and most convenient one without people getting up her ass about it?

None of this is the kind of thing that would likely get either of them arrested (though Scarecrow’s creepy enough that the odds are higher for him, “villain quirk” bias being what it is), but the laws-as-written, nonetheless, are discriminatory, and that makes people justly angry. Angry people are easier to radicalize, and the Liberation Army has been working that angle since their very inception.

Re-Destro and Trumpet’s College Days—

RD’s an Engineering major with a focus in Manufacturing; Trumpet’s in PoliSci. They’re two grades apart, with Koku being the older. Those two years of greater experience shift the power balance between them significantly when Rikiya arrives for his freshman year, facing a new place, a new workload, an entirely new rhythm to his life. For the first time, Koku is not merely a friend in similar circumstances who is still—as they’re both reminded near-constantly—subordinate to Rikiya’s every word. Rather, he’s a senpai, someone with specific experience in every aspect of this new stage of life—and someone who’s had two years to become more eloquent, more well-studied, more confident, more mature.

Removed from the immediate supervision of the First Families for the first time in his life, Rikiya allows himself to lean on Koku in ways he never would have back home. Koku, for his part, has had his responsibilities here impressed on him by the First Families at some length, and has spent his entire life being groomed to devote himself to his Grand Commander. Having said Grand Commander looking to him with such glowing esteem in his eyes—well, there’s no denying that it’s pretty enticing. The two of them enter a romantic relationship that will endure for several years until Rikiya gets his head back around the idea that Koku’s ability to say no to him is fundamentally compromised.

The Bindi Connection—

I had no reason to develop them any, and thus I don’t have names to assign, but it seems that Twice’s No. 3, the smiling old woman with the gingham dress and the rough-and-ready attitude to combat, and Geten’s No. 2, the short-haired woman whose face is being devoured by her out-of-control sweater neck, are related. Note the bindi on both of them, as well as the similar hair color, particularly in the page introducing all the advisors. Mutual connection to Dabi’s No. 3, the guy who got into a fight with a hole punch and lost, is uncertain but possible based on the confronting-the-heroes page spread in which Hole Punch dude’s hand lays familiarly on Grandma Bindi’s back while Big Sis Bindi turns partly towards him as if to whisper some sarcastic observation about how lame Cementoss’s ponytail is.

———–

FOOTNOTES

1: Regarding codenames, the first generation of the MLA tended to have names that reflected their meta-ability in some way. From the second generation on, at the behest of Destro’s son, the codenames have become less literal, and thus less revealing.

2: Viz renders the job tile “Executive Director,” but having checked the raw, the Japanese term, senmu, is associated with a fairly specific level of executive authority, and it’s lower than I would peg “Executive Director,” which to my ear sounds synonymous or slightly below Chief Executive Officer. Executive Vice President is wikipedia’s translation; Google returns Senior Managing Director. In any case, she’s near the top, but not at the top.

3: At least, he wasn’t prior to meeting Shigaraki. Now he’s pretty much in favor of a very organized and coherent belief structure that can be summarized as, “Watch Shigaraki tear down the world ‘cause he’s beautiful and I love him,” and honestly, mood.

4: I’ll just come out and say it: fandom blew Geten’s words way out of proportion because a bunch of people got mad that he was being mean to Everyone’s Favorite Serial Killer Dabi.

5: An archaic term by this period. Even “meta-human” saw more use in academic parlance, while the term “quirk” had become much more widespread among the general population since its official adoption during the period of legislation twenty years prior.

#MLAweek2020 #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #bnha meta #so much meta #my writing #my hero academia

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tedtonksfm · 4 years ago

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⋆ INTRODUCING... 𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎𝐍𝐊𝐒 .

— ϟ › ( rahul kohli, cis man, he/his ) ⋆ you know , the gossip in london is insidious , and gossip about a MUGGLEBORN like EDWARD TONKS seems to constantly be afloat. what i know for a fact , though , is that they’re a TWENTY-NINE year old COLUMNIST FOR THE DAILY PROPHET who graduated as a HUFFLEPUFF from HOGWARTS. someone they went to school with told me that a sunny day in the peak of winter, coming home after work with your every bone feeling exhausted, fingerprints smudged on a pair of glasses sitting by the table, homemade pasta, a single bird chirping in the early morning & THE TEN OF CUPS always reminded them of HIM. maybe that’s why the WIZARD has privately declared their allegiance to the ORDER ?

REVERSE AMORTENTIA:

someone in love with Ted Tonks would smell in Amortentia: the old, tattered suede of the jacket he's been wearing for the past decade, strong black tea with heaping spoonfuls of sugar in it, and bark.

CARD CORRESPONDENCE:

THE TEN OF CUPS, upright — family, stability, reunion, caring, soulmates, destiny, creativity, fulfilment, harmony;

( read the full app for more info here )

THREE HEADCANONS:

1. MEMORY: born in 1952, Ted was one of the unfortunate souls to be taken from his family when he was already nine years old. He was old enough to remember, but young enough that he hadn't even known the magical world before he was taken. He clings to the memory, to this day; he makes sure he doesn't forget anything -- his loving parents, their little house with a garden, their dog. So many things were taken from him, ripped away with no explanation, and he was thrown into a world he knew nothing of. He wrote his parents' names in notes that he hid around his room, he made silly drawings of his dog and his family and hid them under his bed. He wouldn't let himself forget. He couldn't. To this day, he can still tell you a plethora of things about his original family, he can still draw a map of his old house by heart, he still feels the aching tugs of once fully belonging somewhere.

2. NEW HOME: at nine, he was placed with the Bones. They treated him fairly, all things considered. He's heard worse and best stories than his own, when it comes to being fostered. Ted had a bed of his own, food when he was hungry, and other kids in the house to talk to. They never treated him like a son, never one of his own, but it was fair. He didn't make a grand effort to become a part of their family tree; he wanted love, of course, what kid didn't want to be tucked into bed every night, or coddled when they got sick? But he grew up too fast. His parents were not the Bones. His mother wasn't there to tuck him in, his father was too far away to bring him soup when he felt ill. They were gone, living their lives somewhere without a single memory of him anymore, and he refused to let anyone replace them.

3. NAME: the Bones family refused to call him Ted. That was the first impression he got from these magical families -- how stuck-up and too fancy-sounding they were to his ears. He loved his nickname, his mother had given it to him when he was still growing in her belly, and it had stuck for nine years. He barely even remembered his full name, always introducing himself as Ted, Teddy, even Ed felt better than the full thing. The first day he stepped into the Bones house, he was greeted before he could introduce himself, bony hands that beckoned him in and a forced smile: Edward, it's a pleasure to have you. It felt like hearing nails scratch a chalkboard, at the time. He only got to reclaim the nickname when he got to Hogwarts, where he finally introduced himself again, as Ted, to everyone he met. Nowadays, he's gotten used to hearing the full thing.

BOGGART:

his boggart is ever changing, as if often is. sometimes, he sees his beloved wife, his heart, his home, holding the hand of their daughter -- but their faces are covered by silver masks. if he's not fast enough to spell it away, dromeda will raise her wand and a green burst of light will spew out of it, towards him. he feels embarrassed of this one, because he doesn't mistrust andromeda, he doesn't think she will ever turn against him. and yet. it's the fear of abandonment, fear of betrayal, of losing the one feeling of belonging he ever found in the world ever since he was a kid. he knows she'll never turn to the other side because he knows her heart, but on his weakest days, when he questions everything, that is what he would see.

other days, and more often now, he see andromeda and dora, dead. not dying, per se, but already dead, their bodies frozen, cold, their skin turned pale blue. his biggest fear is that he'll lose them without ever being able to do anything about it, before he even knows it, before he can be with them.

FULL BIOGRAPHY:

ted was born into a loving home. he never had to miss anything, everything was at the reach of his fingertips. sure, he didn't have the newest pair of shoes, his clothes were all hand-me-downs and his toys were barely functioning, but he had so much love. his parents were simple people, but kind. at nine, he lost them. at nine, he lost everything.

it wasn't easy to put himself back together in a completely new world he didn't understand. the bones were nice to him, and tried to accommodate, but it was nearly impossible. he didn't want to be accommodated. for the first few months he was devastated, so deeply upset that it was hard to find the strength to do anything else but cry; as a child, an emotion so cuttingly strong wasn't easy to process. he was whiny, angry, he threw tantrums and he locked himself in his room for days on end. he was labeled as difficult.

but kids are resilient. he never forgot his parents, he made sure he remembered them, but he knew he had to move on before the bones had enough of him and threw him out on the street. even if he never created a true familiar bond with his foster parents, he was grateful for what they could do to help him.

hogwarts was… confusing. he didn't belong in there, either. he was a muggleborn, and people knew immediately, because gossip traveled fast and the bones were well-known in this world. with a title that he did nothing to earn, he felt thrown into a lion's den on his very first day, encountering people who would twist their nose at him for no reason. the sorting hat sorted him into hufflepuff after only a second or two of thought.

things were better as he grew older. he still didn't feel as if he belonged in the castle, still always feeling this pull towards his real parents, a sense of home that he never found anywhere else. but he loved a lot of his housemates, he learned to keep his bad feelings in the back burner and move along.

somewhere along his late teens, he met andromeda. that's when things really changed. if you asked him now, he'd tell you with sparkling eyes and a silly grin that his life can be easily divided into two chunks: pre-dromeda, post-dromeda.

when he fell in love with her, he didn't know things were gonna be so hard for them. they were young, and innocent, and love bloomed inside of him like it never had before. before they even married, before they even shared a first kiss, he'd say -- she was his home. he was smitten, painfully so. his friends would tease him for it, but he couldn't stop the way the smallest mention of her name would bring a grin to his lips.

it was difficult, watching her separate from her family to be with him. not that he liked them, by any means -- he mostly hates them, nowadays, for making her suffer like this --, but they were her family. he knew it wasn't so easy for her to leave everything behind. he knew it had meant so much strength of her, and so much love, too, that she had for him. he didn't even think himself worthy of it, at the time.

for a while, before they really married, he was scared she would regret this, or resent him, or just wake up one day and realize he wasn't what she really wanted. he loved her, he loved her unconditionally and endlessly, and he just wanted to see her happy. he still finds himself immensely lucky that her happiness is with him.

he always had a way with words, so the job at the daily prophet seemed like a safe way to go. a different perspective, they said about him when he first joined. he can't know for sure what they meant, but he'll take a guess and say it's because of his muggleborn lineage. he writes a small column about random news that no one else seems to care about, but it brings him great joy. a new sign at flourish & blotts, the new ice cream flavor at florean's, the weeds that are growing rapidly around the tiles of diagon alley. silly things that he gets to wax poetical about -- somehow they've left him keep the spot on the paper for a good few years now.

when nymphadora was born, ted found out his heart could still grow. he found out he still had more love in him to give, more room in his heart, no matter how full it already felt. love, love, love, his whole life was so full of love. after never feeling like he belongs anywhere, after pushing through everything the world had managed to throw at him, he finds himself at peace. he has his two girls -- nothing else should matter.

#i should've made a pretty graphic but im so tired today and just wanted to put the intro out soon #so u just get his pretty face in a gif instead #( intro . )#( muse . )

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butterfly-winx · 4 years ago

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its probably the helia stan in me but id love to read an origin story! idk if youre planning one for all of them but i really like your worldbuilding so id read them! and i know others would too! 💞 (also that fairy sketch was beautiful and if youre planning on it id love to hear more about him 👀)

Aahh ugh, I don’t actually have a lot fleshed out for Cyanox, except that he is the Guardian of Prometia and neutral to a fault. And also unintentionally the reason for why/how Layla gained the ability to modify Sirenix into Crystal Sirenix to adapt to cold and high pressure environments.

I am far too disorganised to make one collection post for the backgrounds of all characters I messed with, so I guess, here goes nothing. *cracks knuckles* Buckle in for the ride! (content warning for death and lethal illnesses)

Helia was born on Lynphea in a middle sized settlement in the moderate-warm Eastern Forests of Lynphea. I talk about the zones, culture and dangers of Lynphea here, so I don’t want to repeat myself too much, but Helia’s village was much closer to the borders of the Death Zone the virus has claimed for itself than what would have been advisable. Back then, they thought Viaj would exhaust the surrounding natural resources and its people would move on long before the spread of the virus would become a danger to them. Oh how wrong they were. All it took was the change of the wind one summer.

Helia had been only five and then some and the world was still too vivid in his eyes, lights filtering through leaves a spectacle every day he accompanied one of his caretakers on a simple errand. He was the one who found the earliest warning sign, a fungal growth on a long leaf of gras that was the manifestation of the plague befalling its plant hosts. Not quite comprehending what that meant in his young age, Helia struggled for a long time with guilt about the terror his discovery brought, wishing he would have never played in the prairie. Like that would have avoided anything.

The inhabitants of Viaj actually gained a head start through his discovery though that potentially spared other communities, however it couldn’t help theirs. They quarantined immediately, drew up a magic barrier to protect everyone from the airborne spores that carry the virus from plants to humans. But doing so they gave up hunting and gathering and were entirely reliant on the rations the other communities would send with the quarantine workers. Though even those trickled to a stop when the first person fell sick with the cough and the tell-tale black spots formed on their mucous membrane. People saw no use in wasting resources on people who were damned to die. The best they could do now was limit travel to the edge of the Eastern Forest and set more scientists on recalculating the projected spread of the virus.

Lynpheans practice a philosophy of “live and let die” not hanging onto things beyond their lifespan, so this was seen as neither cruel or unusual, but show me one person who is truly prepared to die such a horrific, slow death in order to upkeep the natural order. The people of Viaj didn’t want to die, and they certainly didn’t deserve to die. But people fell like flies, until about three months later only Helia, Naoqi, the last adult, and Tsilla, the very last baby born in midst of all that, were alive. Naoqi cared for Helia and the baby as best as he could and in doing so became a replacement parental figure in Helia’s eyes. He did everything he could to make the horrible experience slightly lighter to bear for the children, but when the magic barrier keeping the wind away fell, there was little he could have done to stave off the inevitable.

Helia was left alone, with a not even five moth old baby and no way of feeding himself or the baby. With nothing else left, he braved the forest and looked for the quarantine workers who were no doubt overseeing the area, which marked the last time Helia ever walked in the forests of his home. The quarantine workers were more than surprised by the tenacious boy with a baby in his arms and finding out he was still alive after what they thought was final exhaustion has set in.

The next thing after that that Helia actually remembers is waking up on Magics with Saladin greeting him, introducing himself as a distant relative. The truth was a lot more complicated than that. The quarantine workers have taken Helia to the nearest hospital to treat him for the effects of starvation, because miraculously, the disease had still not taken hold of him after five months of exposure. Hermetically locked in a wing of the hospital, he was the most prised and most dangerous person and study artefact on the whole planet. His comatose slumber was watched from behind plexi glas and every then available humoral test was run on him to find out why he of all people had proved to be immune. If he was immune at all.

Meanwhile Saladin arrived on planet as he heard the news of the demise of his hometown, of his family. Even back then he had not been the pride of the planet and his relationship with his family had been strained because of the wars he had chosen to be involved in. All of that didn’t matter the instant lives were on the line and Saladin wanted nothing more than one last exchange of letters he would never get to make everything alright again. No power in the world would ever grant him that, but having powerful friends in the right circles granted him something else. Information, that a young Viaj boy was still alive in the Epidemiology Research Centre. He may be the future, the solution to all of their problems with a DNA hiding the secrets to immunity. Saladin immediately inquired, dug deeper demanding to see the boy, but the Council denied him visitation rights. He had to strike an underhanded deal with the co-leader of the research project under a false name to find out Helia wasn’t even awake, but held in a magically induced coma for observational purposes. The scientist talked on and on about the possibilities and what they would do after they go the genes needed but Saladin blew up at that point. How dare they treat this boy like an object, like his loss wouldn’t be felt by anyone, should one of the procedures go wrong. Like all his life could hold from now on was an ultimate sacrifice for the benefit of the many. He wouldn’t even be able to comprehend that if told. With Saladin blowing a fuse, the research centre blew up too and he fled the planet that night with an unconscious Helia in his arms.

So what felt like a night of knocked-in-the-head-by-a-horse sleep to Helia was actually close to four weeks in real world time. He has no concrete memory of what Saladin saved him from, but enough peripheral perception of what transpired planetside to make sense of the ramifications. Technically, Helia’s DNA is public property of the Lynphea Council, and technically both him and Saladin have an arrest warrant hanging over their head for the destruction and property damage caused. If Helia were to ever set foot on Lynphea again (or even go to a country that has an extradition treaty with them) he would be taken back to the Research Centre to be dissected to the smallest molecules until he yielded answers.

While Helia was able to grow up in Magics in relative safety, the virus was still wreaking damage on Lynphea. Saladin (and to a lesser extent Helia) made the incredibly difficult decision to reject the experimentation on Helia and thus deny the population of their home a potential treatment to an otherwise lethal infection. It is an incredibly heavy burden and no day passes that they don’t question the rightness of their choice.

Helia can certainly appreciate the moral conflict now, but as a child he was much more difficult to manage. The switch from a huge nurturing family to one primary carer to rely on was harsh on Helia, who was already traumatised and needing love and affection. Saladin did the best he could, but running a school and otherwise being a Universe-wide known hero didn’t help. After they grew close on the tail end of Helia’s childhood, they explosively drew apart during his tweens, Helia not able or reluctant to understand the restrictions Saladin placed on his life.

First, he was unwilling to share as much about Lynphean culture and way of life as Helia wished to know, saying that he wouldn’t be able to apply it there on Magics anyway. The deeper reason for that is more likely buried in his resentment for Lynphea rejecting him as harshly as they did after he helped save the Universe from the Ancestresses, but Helia of course knew nothing of that. Then when he moved over to adapting to life on Magics “in the Magics” way, he begged to be taught magic for which he had developed a budding talent. Saladin refused again for related trauma reasons. He didn’t want Helia to wield a power that could potentially make him a weapon in someone else’s crusade. Being his only personal student would only paint a target on Helia’s back.

Helia was having none of that, fiercely objecting to the treatment. He had his own trauma to deal with. Like death by illness. (People falling ill was a lasting trigger he has been continuously working to overcome, but the first time Saladin came home with a cough Helia immediately worked himself into a panic attack so severe he couldn’t stop vomiting and had to be taken into a hospital himself. ) He shouldn’t have to shoulder the repercussions of Saladin’s problems too!

People who say old teens and their wilfulness are hard to deal with, haven’t met twelve year old Helia yet. To think he actually mellowed out by the time he hit Red Fountain. In any case, Helia and Saladin weren’t really speaking civilly with each other anymore by the time Helia met Krystal. (More on her side of things here) Krystal, ten and absolutely blind to seeing obstacles, offered Helia her books on basic witchcraft and with that the opportunity to take his magic learning into his own hands. After all, sorcery required a lot of detailed instruction, but witchcraft was available to any odd fool who could set up a passable reaction equation. It took half a year of trials and encouragement for his efforts to yield a result and for Krystal and Helia’s friendship to bloom. It took Saladin much longer than that to catch on to Helia’s secret tinkering. The old man should have suspected something to be up after their disagreements magically disappeared after Helia and Krystal met twice. The aftermath was ugly and lead to Helia and Krystal reluctantly parting ways.

Helia was inconsolable an dedicated a large part of his life to making it as difficult for Saladin as possible. His grades dropped, his art got angry and choppy and he had to be escorted home by peace keepers for having snuck into places he shouldn’t have been in. Year fourteen and fifteen of Helia’s life have been by far the most difficult to deal with with no improvement in sight. Under pressure from his school and Saladin to choose a path for higher education after his year nine exams, Helia thought it would be most spiteful to chose...nothing. He would simply stop going to school at 15 years of age and just become whatever. Maybe a full-time artist or a busker. “Hah, that’ll show Saladin!”- he thought, but he severely miscalculated.

Saladin had often threatened with making Helia enrol in his school if he didn’t behave and Helia never though he would make good on his words until he was dropped off at the main entrance with all his bags like the other freshmen filtering in through the gates. Being the headmaster, Saladin allowed Helia some liberties, trying to demonstrate to him that he shouldn’t see this as a punishment, but as an opportunity to further his life. Cue Helia’s biggest pièce de resistance, showing just how much he didn’t think so. As mentioned a few asks ago, he was given the liberty to chose where he lived and which team he chose, but not like that goddamit! He took shameless advantage of the loose wording Saladin used and hopped between rooms and teams completely ignoring conventions. He was the bane of the school, found on the roof, in supply closets and in the middle of hallways. Teams feared him, because they knew if Helia was assigned to them they might as well have been one person short, his flaky nature making it hard for them to work with him. Codatorta wrote as many warnings for Helia in that one year as he did in his whole career before that. Students at Red Fountain tended to be disciplined and dedicated to becoming Specialists, but Helia was the absolute antithesis to them. At the end of the year no amount of Saladin’s half-hearted excuses could save Helia from the overwhelming force of the teaching staff getting him sacked. Not that Helia minded, though. It was exactly what he wanted.

Saladin more or less gave up on him then. If he wanted to be on his own then fine. Saladin would help him with finding an own apartment and give him his first moth of rent, but after that Helia could go and find himself a purpose in the world alone. Fine. Fine. Alright!

It was not alright at all, but it was buried under a very thick layer of “I’ll show ya” which made Helia want to live his best liberal artist life. He enjoyed creating as much art as he wanted, but he craved social contact and being engaged in something with a common goal, so he started getting involved with local pacifist groups. He had always preached a path of non-violence, which was about the only thing that had been ingrained in him from his Lynphean upbringing. There he started to expand his horizon beyond what his gut feeling taught him about pacifism and got into reading theory seriously. He was surprised how many of those books shared around had originally belonged to the Red Fountain library and even more so that they have ben written by the founders of the Red Fountain Cavalry. And that was when Helia bust down Saladin’s office door.

“All of this theory was in the school’s library the whole time!!?? And all everyone was ever talking about was warfare!! Why was I never told the best pacifist philosophers of the century were all Red Fountain members???” “You never showed up to any of the philosophy lectures! How am I to blame?” A deep breath from Helia, re-evaluating all of his 17 years of life choices. “Dada Saladin, you have to let me back into your school please.”

And Saladin refused. To let him back without repercussions that is. Helia had to prove that he took his education seriously and was ready to commit by taking the entrance exam like everybody else to earn his place at the institute. He scraped the bottom of the scoreboard with his first results, but took the first year foundation course with a mile long stride. He was allowed to skip quite a few modules and ended up in the same year as the protag specialist boys with quite a reputation to his name. In the process of reacquainting himself with the school and its philosophy, he learned humility, respect, and when to keep his head down and mouth shut. The upperclassmen from his original year group barely believed he was supposedly the same person they got to know as an absolute menace . There are many rumours about twin brothers, brainwashing and Saladin’s terrifying magic might turning him into this new person.

Helia has come an extremely long way becoming the well-tempered and balanced person known from the show’s timeline. It is almost as if he compressed a lifetime of angst into three years, thus min-maxing his character development coming out more adult in the end at 18 years old than many people at 30. He lived through a lot of things and it shows in how he behaves and what he cares about. He is a passable fighter, but his main aim is always to protect and to avoid conflict if possible. He is a trained negotiator for that purpose and prefers to act as tactical support for his team. It all changes however once Riven and Sky both decide to quit the team leaving Helia, Brandon and Timmy with a very difficult decision on how to go on after that.

(Aand we have arrived at present day for my AU timeline with this. I hope you made it this far, I‘ve never written this much for a tumblr post before)

#winx club #winx helia #asks #see this is why I can't make a nice neat summary post about my headcanons because as soon as I start talking it becomes a word vomit #helia #butterfly fic #Anonymous

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thisentertaining · 4 years ago

Text

Instinctual - A Spirit’s Instincts

Aang should be the one taking care of a sick Katara and Sokka, not Zuko, but the airbender insisted that he be the one to find the medicine.

Now it's been hours, and Zuko is painfully aware that there is a Fire Nation Stronghold nearby that he hadn't been able to warn Aang about.

When the lights of Pohuai light up in victory, he knew what happened without having to be told that Aang had been captured.

Now Zuko has a decision to make.

Could he allow his maybe-friend to be captured by the Fire Nation?

Or was he ready to be the traitor his father had branded him as.

Read on Ao3

“Water.” Katara rasped as Momo stared at her with large, green, uncomprehending eyes. The lemur held up another, distinctly non-water, offering and the girl shook her head wit ha cough. “No, water. Wa-ter.” She enunciated, and the critter chirped at her before darting away once more to grab some other type of useless junk.

“Wait, Momo don’t-“ Zuko cursed as he stalked across the campsite, full waterskins and cooking pot in hand. He groaned. “Katara, stop sending the lemur out for things. I literally left five seconds ago to go to the stream.”

The girl blinked at him, deliriously repeating “Wa-ter.” As though she hadn’t realized that she was not still talking to the lemur.

Zuko sighed heavily and shoved the waterskin into her hands. “Yeah, yeah. Water.”

He then made his way over to Sokka, who was yelling about how dare they treat royalty like this, he was the king of all earthbenders and demanded respect to be shown. Zuko just rolled his eyes and forced a new water skin into his hands as well. At least the other boy wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t recognize that. Instead, he upended the skin, practically dumping it on himself in his haste to drink. Zuko groaned and refilled the waterskin with one of the extras and dunked a few pieces of cloth into the cookpot before laying strips across the Water Tribe teens’ foreheads.

He signed heavily as they finally settled down, slipping into a light doze. Aang should be the one doing this, not him.

“But noooo,” Zuko spoke aloud to himself, a nasty habit that he had picked up in the cave, when some days that was his only chance to hear a human voice. …which had honestly been preferred to the days when the freedom fighters actually talked to him. He’d managed to mostly hold back during their travels so far, but with Aang gone and the other two incapacitated, he didn’t see much reason to hide his frustration behind pursed lips. “Aang just had to go to the apothecary.”

The teen’s voice went high, mocking for a moment. “‘Oh Zuko, I can go much faster cause I’m an airbender and can fly around, we need to get them medicine right away bla bla bla, watch me twirl around on my stupid ball of air.”

“Aang, is that you?” Katara rasped drowsily, but Zuko ignored her.

Zuko resumed his normal speaking voice. “Well how did that work out for you, Aang? Cause that was HOURS AGO!” He shouted to the sky. He collapsed to the ground with an indulgently dramatic huff and tried to ignore the fact he was only so angry because he was worried. Aang should have been back forever ago, the apothecary was literally close enough to see, even if he had to get ingredients for the medicine it shouldn’t have lasted past the time that the sun set. Something was wrong. Something was very very wrong.

But Aang was the Avatar, what could honestly be a threat to him?

Aang was horrendously untrained and naïve to the ways of the current world. What wasn’t a threat to him?

Zuko glanced uncertainly at his companions. They were adamant that the Fire Nation was after them. He knew that Father would want to stop the Avatar, especially one so clearly aligned against the Fire Nation, but in the week or so that he had been travelling with them, he hadn’t actually seen any evidence of that. He half thought that they were more biased and paranoid than actually in danger. They weren’t exactly lying low, if the Fire Nation were actually after them, they would have seen them before, right?

He should have told them about the stronghold.

He’d forgotten, okay?

“I haven’t had geography classes in years.” He argued to the empty night sky. “And Sokka hoards the maps, I didn’t know we were this close. Why doesn’t Sokka’s map have anything important on it.”

He knew why. It was an old map, not from before the war, but not much later than that. And it focused more on trading routs, hunting grounds, and good fishing spots rather than towns and buildings. The Pohuai stronghold was one of the first Fire Nation territories built in the Earth Kingdom, but it still wasn’t old enough. It also wasn’t big, and that was by design. If the Earth Kingdom didn’t realize it’s significance, then the Yuyan archers could practice in peace before being sent to wreak destruction on the battlefield. Regardless, it hadn’t even been mentioned on the map, if Zuko hadn’t finally recognized the shape of the apothecary university, none of them would have had any idea.

It wasn’t his fault.

Was it his responsibility?

Zuko groaned and dramatically kicked at the sky. This… this would be a turning point, wouldn’t it? This wasn’t a few traitorous thoughts whispered to himself in a cave. It wasn’t a burning resentment for the man who led his nation (who had led his family). It wasn’t helping a collection of refugees that the Fire Nation probably didn’t even actually really care about. It wasn’t blabbering potential state secrets about the inner workings of the Fire Court to a peasant on a sinking boat. It wasn’t even tagging along with the Avatar, an enemy of the state.

If he actually did something now, it would actually be treason. He would actually deserve the sentence that had been given to him. He would deserve his banishment, be a criminal.

Was he willing to do that, for some kid he barely knew?

He didn’t want to be an enemy to the Fire Nation. He loved his people, their passion and drive. They were his, his by right of birth. They always had been, even back when he though he had no chance at being Fire Lord. He wanted to protect them, had always wanted that. That was why he was in this mess in the first place.

Unease stirred within him. It was hard… nearly impossible to protect his people in a war such as this, when it was an entire world against them. The purpose of the war was good. If the Fire Nation were truly the most advance amung the Nations, it was good of them to spread their culture and technology, but was it worth all… this?

He thought to the refugees fleeing from their home with all of their belongings strapped to their backs. He thought of a blacksmith who didn’t question the thought that he had been captive and tortured by the Fire Nation as a child. He thought of the tremor of Katara’s voice as she spoke about her mother and her struggle to work her bending without a master to so much as offer advice. He thought of how Sokka told him about the men leaving him to protect his village when he had been barely trained. He thought of how sometimes, Aang would go quiet, petting Momo or Appa with eyes a million miles and a hundred years away. He even thought about Jet, living in the trees to protect dozens of orphans whose parents his people had killed.

He knew the answer.

Nothing was worth this. Even if his people had won there would be no peace. The other nations would not actually benefit from their advancements in technology, their culture. They would be cowed and afraid, hateful of the new ways of life simply because they came from their oppressors. This war could not share the Fire Nation’s greatness, only destroy it.

Could he betray his Nation in order to save his people?

Zuko cursed, punching at the ground and accidentally hitting one of Momo’s ‘offerings’ and sending it flying with a clatter. He looked up to find it and froze when he saw a mask by the light of the moon. The Blue Spirit. One of Mother’s favorite characters.

Suddenly, a flare of fire from the direction of the Stronghold tore his attention away from his thoughts. He eyed the torches, and knew with a sinking feeling in his stomach that they were a sign of triumph, of victory. It was a display put on to celebrate something amazing.

Something like catching the Avatar. Like capturing him. Keeping him trapped and scared, away from the sun in a dark hole somewhere.

Without thinking, Zuko pulled the mask over his face and grabbed his dual dao. His earlier musing and doubts had fled his mind completely, overtaken by one clear thought. He would not let Aang go through what he did. No one would be held captive on his watch. Not again.

And if it was the Blue Spirit committing treason and not him, maybe he could convince himself he was still loyal.

_____

Zuko sincerely hoped that the Fire Nation’s most secure stronghold was harder to sneak into on a normal day, because if not he had no clue how they had not lost the war decades ago. It was the speech, right? Everyone was listening to whatever general or official had orchestrated the capture of the Avatar and that was why it had been so simple to sneak in, right?

He really really hoped so.

Honestly, he shouldn’t be complaining. He’d wanted to get in without detection, and he had. He had just… expected it to be much more difficult, but with a single rope he’d managed to safely scale the walls, and now he was in the ventilation system, and other than the distant roar of a speech being made, he hadn’t seen a single person.

If he actually thought anyone expected him to sneak in like this, he would have thought it was a trap. However, as it was he doubted anyone in the Fire Nation thought he was alive, much less helping the Avatar.

He made his way through the fort, uncertain at first where to go until he found some guards at the entrance to a hallway. Considering they were the only guards he’d seen, it was pretty reasonable to guess that they were protecting something important. Someone important.

Zuko took a deep, calming breath, almost like one of his meditation exercises. These men would be firebenders, and he wasn’t anymore. He only had his swords. He had training though, and hours upon hours of practice. He could do this.

The teen maneuvered himself above their heads and, with a final steadying breath he silenced the part of him who was screaming at the thought of attacking Fire Nation citizens who were just doing their jobs. Then, he dropped. As always, he was grateful to have studied the dual blades. He dropped in the middle of the two men, one sword in each hand, and managed to hit both men simultaneously on the back of their head, sending them to the ground with gentle thumps.

His heart pounding, his breath racing, the teen looked at the two unconscious guards. It was too late now for second guessing. He found a closet a few yards away and began the arduous task of dragging the heavy men inside, hoping that no guards would be less suspicious than unconscious ones. He didn’t expect them to wake, but gagged and tied them up regardless before looking around the supply closer. Huh. Supplies.

The teen grabbed a length of chain and a bucket of mop water, just in case, before rooting in the men’s pockets. Most firebenders wouldn’t be caught dead with a secondary weapon, it was considered a sign that your bending was too weak to be relied upon. Luckily, the Pohuai stronghold was one of the few exceptions. One did not become one of the most secure forts in the world by sacrificing practicality for pride.

They didn’t have swords, but the men had throwing knives tucked into their belts and Zuko took those as well. Looking around the closet, he didn’t find much else that was useful but, remembering a scene from a play that used a similar trick, he grabbed one of the helmets before he shut the door.

The teen tip toed through the guarded hall. Whenever he came to an intersecting hall or turn he lay on his stomach and stuck the blade of the knife out far enough that the shiny metal reflected the hall. Finding no one, he continued on until finally the flat of the blade showed four men standing guard at a door. Nodding to himself in satisfaction, Zuko prepared the trap. He hid the bucket of water behind a decorative pedestal and identified a pipe in the wall strong enough to support the weight of several people.

Then, with a nod to himself a scowl behind his mask, the teen gently rolled the stolen mask into the hall. He held his breath, hoping against hope that act IV, scene 4 of The Spirit’s Boil was accurate. He had to fight not to cheer as soft footsteps came his way.

Finally, his knowledge of Fire Nation theatre was coming in handy.

He crouched behind another pedestal and waited, listening to the steps growing closer as the guard neared. Finally, he turned into the hall. Zuko immediately jumped up, dodging to the side to evade a flash of flame, winding the man with a punch to the stomach and knocking him unconscious with another hit of the sword hilt when he folded over. Working quickly, Zuko chained the man up so that he was hanging by his arms on the pipe, but by then he heard a pair of footsteps coming his way. They were no longer risking coming one by one.

He scrambled up the wall to sit crouched in the crook of the ceiling, chains in hand. These men were much more prepared than the former guard, rushing the hall as a team, firebending stances at the ready.

They were shocked, however, by their dangling companion and dropped their ready poses. Holding himself to the wall by three limbs, he used the other to wrap the chain around one man’s hands, then pulled and dropped, sending the man careening into his friend then crashing into the ceiling. The move had knocked both men unconscious as well.

Three down, one to go. Zuko grabbed the bucked and started into the hallway, deciding that the risk was worth going on the offensive. It was good he had, for the man had grabbed a warning horn and was prepared to give warning of the danger. Zuko pulled one of the throwing knives out of his pocket and sunk it into the horn, with the man dropped with a cry of horror.

He was much better than the others though, and quickly worked past his shock and moved into a stance that sent fire flashing at Zuko. The masked teen flung water from the bucket, dousing the flames. He was upon the other Firebender before the man could counter and spun in a move designed to break someone’s root. Traditionally the move would have been performed with a blast of fire, but the bucket worked well enough.

The man landed flat on his back and, unable to get his root back, could not fight with fire as Zuko knocked him out as well. Zuko breathed deeply as he eyed the fallen man. If anyone was on the other side of this room besides Aang, he had lost any hope at the element of surprise. He could only hope that the fact that no alarm had been raised meant that he was alone.

The banished prince slipped into the room, swords raised and Kata started to intimidate any enemies left in the room.

Aang started screaming.

Zuko hadn’t thought this through.

“Shut up!” He hissed, then finally took in the scene in front of him. Aang was chained to the walls far more securely than Zuko had ever been. His limbs were stretched out, preventing him an inch of freedom to be used to bend. Zuko felt his hear beat erratically, eyes locked onto the bits of metal digging into the younger boy’s wrists. Trapped, unable to bend, surrounded by enemies, away from the sun. It was- it was too much. (It was too familiar.)

Zuko gripped his swords, wanting nothing more than have an enemy to fight, something to defeat. The torches once stuck in the walls had mostly burned out and the room was too dim. (It was too familiar.)

Aang kept babbling, kept screaming, a grating noise. It was enough to break him from the fear pounding in his heart. (It was unfamiliar.)

“I said shut up! Do you want to get caught?” Zuko asked harshly, parched lips making his voice even raspier than normal. He yanked his mask half off to reveal enough of his face to set Aang at ease. The boy immediately brightened.

“Zu-“

“Shut it! Don’t say my name.” He commanded, finally having enough control of himself to stalk towards Aang. His heart was pounding again as he neared the chains, but with the swords in hand and facing someone else, he was able to do for Aang what he had never had the tools or the angle to do for himself and smashed through the chains, freeing his frien- freeing the Avatar. “Now lets go, we don’t have much time before someone realizes somethings wrong.”

“Got it! Wait! My frogs! Sokka and Katara need to suck on them to get better.”

“That… sounds fake.”

“That’s what the healer said would work!”

Zuko growled. “We can get new frogs Aang. We need to go.” Zuko grabbed the back of the boy’s cloak and, tugging him along like a cobra-cat carries her cobra-kits, dragged him past the bound and gagged guards that were slowly starting to awaken.

“Woah…” Aang breathed as he saw the guards. Zuko said nothing. What was there to say? He had betrayed these men, his people, for Aang. He didn’t want to talk about it.

The speech must have ended at some point, as guards were once more starting to patrol. Zuko and Aang had to move silently through the ventilation/sewage system. Zuko was grateful for the mask that hid his identity. Even if he was spotted, at least there would be a few moments before anyone knew what the former prince had stooped to.

He watched for a break in the guards and nodded Aang through, saying nothing as he pointed at the rope that had miraculously not been spotted. They started climbing and Zuko allowed a single, hesitantly hopeful thought that they had actually done it.

That was, of course, the moment that everything went wrong.

Alarm bells sounded when they were halfway off the floor, and a guard quickly spotted them and commanded that the rope be cut. Zuko soon found himself plummeting to a ground that was too far away. Aang created a cushion of air that saved them from a gristly fate of broken limbs in the center of their enemies (his people. When did they become his enemies?)

Zuko’s feet softly hit the ground and he rose with his swords ready. He pointed one blade at the door, an obvious exit but any attempt at subtlety was long past. A voice overlooking the battleground called out news of the Avatar’s escape.

Zuko’s heart went cold and he nearly turned in response. He knew that voice: Zhao. A minor noble whose family money had bought him a fancy naval position, and whose ruthlessness and aggression had maintained it. The man was ambition in the worst way, whats more he was favored short term solutions and did not care about the costs it took to achieve his goals.

He was cruel.

He’d been at the Agni Kai.

He’d smiled.

Was this the person who was after Aang? If so, their caution, their hatred, was warranted. Zhao exemplified the worst traits of the Fire Nation, and held none of their best.

Apparently, under his father’s rule that was enough to rise to Admiral.

He almost paused then and there, ready to face a man he remembered as a cruel bully, but Aang had run past him as he slowed. “Follow me!” The younger boy crowed and Zuko brought his mind to the matter at hand. This was the important thing, not a three-year-old personal rivalry. He had to prioritize rescuing Aang, anything else could wait until he had more time to think things through.

Well, if the opportunity presented itself to do something he would take it of course, but for the moment…

The pair fought towards the door, Aang with bursts of air and Zuko with furiously flashing blades that fought weapons and bending alike. Unfortunately, the stronghold was staffed with a literal army, and while Aang had supernatural speed, Zuko’s stamina was still lacking from his time in the cave.

He found himself surrounded as Aang ran towards a closing door.

Zuko grunted as his blades bit into spear after spear, mowing down the weapons of the mob who surrounded him. He didn’t dare cry out to his friend. He had started this, and he would see it through. Aang would get out, regardless of what happened to him. That was what he came here to do, if Aang got out then he was successful, regardless to if… regardless of whatever happened to Zuko. The teen did feel a stab of bitterness as yet another person apparently deemed him undeserving of help.

Suddenly, a bust of wind as powerful as a tornado sent the men in front of him flying. He jumped just as another burst sent the men behind him flying back as well. With yet another burst of air, Zuko found himself flying onto the stronghold walls, barely biting back a yelp as he stumbled to his feet. Okay, he wasn’t sure he liked that.

No, he knew. He didn’t like that.

… he did kinda want to do it again though.

Men surrounded once more and he slashed with his blades, holding them off until Aang could airbend over the wall as well. The younger boy wrapped his legs around Zuko’s waist and spun a staff- where had he gotten that- furiously above them, which somehow allowed them to hover in the air.

“Thanks.” Zuko grunted as he slashed at the spears thrown their way. He was glad the Yuyan archers hadn’t made an appearance yet. If they did, this rescue would immediately become an arrest.

Or an execution.

“We aren’t out yet.” Aang said with uncharacteristic grimness as his makeshift form of flying faltered and the pair stumbled onto the secondary wall. Immediately they were besieged by more soldiers, and the pair fought side by side once more, one with bending one with blades. Zuko was frantically trying to think of plan ‘B’ when Aang ran past and handed him a pair of ladders with the command to jump on his back. Zuko followed suit without thinking.

He definitely didn’t want to ever do the ladder thing ever again.

It worked though, at least until a firebender caught wise enough to set their ladder on fire, mere seconds before they cleared the final gate.

The pair ended up sprawled at the floor of the final gate, imprenetrable feet away from freedom. Firebenders surrounded them, attacking as one with their flames. Zuko moved into a useless blocking pose, but Aang pushed him back and sent a protective wall of air around the pair of them before the blow could land.

“Hold your fire!” A voice shouted, and Zuko looked over Aang’s shoulder to see Zhao walking towards him. A lifelong petty dislike brought a bad taste to his mouth as the man approached. “The Avatar must be captured alive.”

Now, Zuko had a lot of bad ideas in his time. The decision to rescue the Aang may have even been one of them. Putting his blades to his potential-ally-maybe-friend’s neck was undoubtably one of the worst. He’d acted without thinking, the man’s command triggering in his subconscious before his mind even connected the dots.

They wanted the Avatar alive. Maybe they even wanted him alive more than they wanted him in their possession. It was the only chance they had.

He was going to take it.

Aang shot him a terrified look. “Uh, Zu-“ He began to whisper. His voice was far too quiet for any but Zuko to hear, but the prince cut him off just in case.

“Trust me. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.” The words were barely a breath, completely hidden by his mask so Zhao wouldn’t even know that he spoke.

After a moment, Aang gave an almost imperceivable nod as Zhao watched them with an ever-deepening scowl. After a stare down that seemed to last for hours, Zhao commanded, “Open the gate.” Every word seemed to be torn from his lips, filled with reluctance and simmering hatred.

One of his men questioned him, forcing the man to repeat his command, just as reluctant and angry. “Let them out. Now.”

Slowly the doors behind them started to open, and Zuko walked backwards, careful not to actually place his blades too close to the airbender’s neck as he pulled Aang with him. Zuko’s heart felt like it was pounding out of his chest as he pulled the boy behind him down the path leading away from the fort. “Hold on.” He breathed. “Just a bit farther and I think we’re in the clear.”

“Okay.”

Okay. The boy just said, Okay, As if it was that easy to trust someone with swords held at your neck.

As though it was that easy to trust Zuko.

The boy saw a dark something in the air shooting towards him, had the barest thought, oh, there’s the Yuyan archers, then there was a brush of pain before the world went dark.

___

Zuko tried to meditate as the two water tribe teen choked on the frogs. He didn’t see Aang get the frogs, but apparently the Avatar had dragged his unconscious form around half the forest after one of the archers had knocked him out. At least he’d had the presence of mind to grab the swords and mask.

He never wanted to be weaponless again and the mask would be necessary if he planned to continue…

To continue being…

To be a traitor.

He had done it. There was no denying it: he was a traitor to the crown.

But then, did a man such as Ozai deserve a loyal son?

No. But the people of the Fire Nation deserved a loyal prince, and he would be one. He just had to figure out what that meant.

He looked at the child who had willingly risked his freedom and safety many times over to get his friends the frogs. The boy who had come back for him when freedom was in his grasp. At least it seemed like he had a good teacher.

Though, that could have been the concussion talking.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #atla #Aang #Zuko #Pohuai stronghold #The Blue Spirit #Sokka #Katara #Zhao #Fanfiction #My Fanfics

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maruzzewrites · 5 years ago

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Can you write a Risotto x reader with Abbi cura di me - Simone Cristicchi please! Umm can it be something like Riz doing everything he can to kee reader for himself. And his descent from sweet love to yandere-ish love! Instead of reader being afraid of him , they grow to love him a lot. It’s ok if you can’t or don’t like this request!

Content warnings: yandere content, possessive behavior, obsessive behavior, description of violence, gore, death.

Life was, is andwill be important for Risotto. Despite how idealistic this ideal sounded tounknowing ears, the dark man was anything but. He knew life, and he knew death,held both in his hands and transformed one into the other. His line of workdealt with both, and much more, making him stare into the eyes of dying men andwomen to strangled every last ounce of energy from their bodies, until theywere merely limp husks to dispose. Yet, Risotto knew the value of life; afterso much time spent with corpses, one starts to appreciate the animation ofliving beings.

The first timehe faced life, it was the day his aunt run to his grandmother’s home. Therushed steps, the steady tears, the hushed whispers and the ready pleas; theychoked the voices of the two women as they wailed, and moaned, a young Risottosimply witnessing the scene as a play of pathetic emotion. Yet, it laid in hismemory with vivid colors, like a painting in a museum, distant in time. And hefaced death soon after, at the funeral; the warm, shining sun illuminating acrowd of people burying a young teen, a face he knew and grew up with. His facestayed cold, muscles unmoving, but a frown adorned his forehead as hisgrandmother gripped his arms tightly to keep herself up through the pain.

That day,Risotto faced life and death for the first time, and he learnt something abouthimself. He couldn’t process emotions the same way others would; when he wassupposed to mourn and cry, he could only feel bubbling rage, white-hot anddripping blood. And when he saw the man who caused this revelation, his cousin’sbutcher, he couldn’t feel satisfaction or relief at his sentence. Yet, he wasmerely a young boy, still in school, with his duties and years in front of him,with all his life stretching on the path of his future. Life, after all, wasimportant and it was essential to cherish it until you could, until death camealong.

Soon enough, hebecame fixated on this thought, on this idea. And people, those he loved,needed to cherish life with more attention, more care, more caution; he becameapprehensive in his usual stoic way, as he ordered and nagged those around himwith silent tugs towards watchful behavior. His ways, from worried, becameprogressively more aggressive, until they distorted into almost violentoutbursts of intimidation. And Risotto learnt another, important lesson:friends, family, loved ones didn’t appreciate him intruding into their livesuntil they feared him more than any other threat outside the secure cage of hisaffection.

Everyone triedto wriggle their way out of his grasp; everyone, but a single person. Achildhood friend, one he didn’t think much of after they both grew anddistanced themselves from each other’s social groups. In his quest to keep, tohoard, to protect, they were caught into superficial warnings and pressuresthat meant very little near the ferocious intimidation he offered hisrelatives or closer friends. Nonetheless, they just smiled and thanked him witha thoughtful tone, and he felt time freeze for the minute you continued on yourway.

Everyone pushedhim away, suffocated with too much of that love, and that care, and that devotion.Yet, you just acknowledged his efforts, giving tender care back at him, a sweetsmile complimenting the glint in your eyes as you thanked him once again forthe warnings, notices, advices. And he found himself bashing into the light oflife, following your steps to seek that important element he wanted to protectso much, so dearly. He started to direct all his attention to you, an ignoredpart of his life until that moment, and you just accepted his consideration asif it was kindness.

For the firsttime since the day his cousin died, Risotto was feeling warmth in hisbloodstream and tightness in his throat as he spoke to you, as he spent timewith you. Most people were starting to disappear from his vision, and he couldonly see you with your light steps, bright smile, shining attitude. Whenever hetalked to you, you closed your eyes slowly as if to concentrate all yourattention on your hearing. His heart shuttered in his chest when you started toask him for concrete ways to keep safe, when you confirmed you didn’t want himto worry or concern himself with you more than he needed to.

After so muchtime, he learnt how to be his age again, not plagued by the ghost of a deadteen whose word were distorted by his mind. Maybe, just maybe, he could relaxfor a minute just to relish into the fond embrace of normality, of love andcare. You were delightful, listening to him, clinging to him, asking for him;feeding his own need to have control and protect those he cared about, withoutawakening his more violent side until you hated or feared what you summoned. Itwas just wonderful affection, young fondness, and perhaps any shadow of doubtwould gone from his mind if he waited enough in your glow.

However, lightcan make the shadows harsher just as much it can dim them under its strength.

Despite hisnewfound apathy towards anyone else and heightened affection towards you, hestruggled to keep his darker thoughts under control, around your sunny attitudeand lovely behavior. He would imagine himself hold you so close that your bodycollapsed together into a puddle of blood, flesh, bones; but he limited himselfwith taking your hand in his, enjoying the timid smile to offered him as yourubbed your thumb over his fingers. When he saw other people talking to you, hecould only imagine his fingers keeping their jaws in place as he pressed, andpressed, until the bones would creak and crumple under his ministrations; buthe simply greeted his teeth when you returned your eyes to him, after a quickchat with someone else, still centering your thoughts around him.

Fifteen,sixteen, seventeen. The years passed, passed and didn’t subside those murky contemplations,with you locked away in his arms as corpses clung to his ankles in a futileattempt to ask for forgiveness. He needed an outlet, somewhere to lash outuntil he was empty of that darkness and he could rebuild himself under yoursun. Hurting you, physically or emotionally, it was the last of his thoughts,the thing he didn’t wish for; but who could be the victim of his pent-upaggressiveness, buzzing under his skin and clouding his mind? Risotto knew, hewas aware: the cause of his anger, of his resentment and wrath, out so soondespite his crimes thanks to a corrupt system who couldn’t grant him justice,or rest.

It was chilling,frightening even, how easy it was to end a man’s life. Risotto didn’t findhesitation or indecision when his hands wrapped around that man’s neck,squeezing until he was wheezing and imploring without voice. For Risotto, hedidn’t have a name or a face, just bloody hands and a sin, and his anger flaredup where pity or regret should have been. With boiling strength guiding him, heshook that body and slammed the back of the man’s head on the ground, again andagain, with increasing force. It wasn’t a raptus, or madness, and Risottostayed lucid and in control for the entire time. When he felt the man’sheartbeat slow down and wither under his fingertips, still grasping his neck,he stood up and walked away as if he didn’t have blood under his nails.

The followingdays, they were fast and chaotic, but never blurry. The corpse discovered, theinvestigation, with suspects and interrogations, the city falling into chaos asyou clung to him for security. He didn’t reveal you anything, scared to taintyour relationship, yet he could only grow worried when the dark thought stayedand worsened as he watched the fear swirling, simmering inside your eyes whenyou looked at him to find safety. His mind was screaming with fury to keep youaway from people, from your own freedom. If you knew who he was, what he haddone, would you still look at him as a savior? If he was to take you away, keepyou to himself, would you resist? Be scared? Or, perhaps, fall into his arms?

The questions hewanted to answer were too many, too shaky the foundation you were standing onto really consider confessing to you his deeds. But all the same, you came toknow the moment he was accused of the murder, and your gaze couldn’t containthe surprise and the fear, breaking his heart, his spirit, his soul. Even if hewanted to stay or bring you with him, he just fled his hometown at the youngage of eighteen, with the outrage and sorrow he left behind following after him.Until he couldn’t hear the cries anymore, until the pointed fingers were out ofhis vision, until your steps couldn’t be heard anymore. And he drowned into thepit he let fester inside of him, the dark thoughts he tried so hard to containfor years, suddenly becoming his very mean of survival.

In the world ofillegality and crime, no one cared if he was violent or destructive, if hecould rip someone’s to sheds or if he wanted to suffocate someone liberty forhis own personal gain. Nonetheless, he felt like sand just slipped through hisfingers, as you became a memory of a past he looked at without regrets. Theonly thing he wanted to go back to was the careless way you looked at him, thegentle love you would display when he would simply stay silent and stoic, withardor in his eyes that others couldn’t see. You were precious to him, youbecame essential in your own, quiet way. Yet, restrained man he was, Risottonever bothered to go back to drag you under his shadow, focused on keeping upthe front he needed for his new life. Or maybe, he had always been this cold,this unfeeling, under the pretense of being a normal person.

The only timeshe felt closer to others were the times he was around someone who fed into hisattics, his suspicions, his paranoias. Never really forgetting the way youfitted perfectly into his being, Risotto went on. Yet, every day reminded himof those moments, of that light; the way he had to see death approaching histargets, the way he felt those people life slithering away under his hands and,later, with the help of Metallica. The contrast of this deadly existence, withthat simple life, made of words and no actions, clawed at the deepest parts ofhis mind until he could only come back to satiate his need to see you.

A part of himwanted you cage you, bring you with him somewhere you couldn’t escape, yet hismore rational brain wanted nothing more than you loathing him and what hebecame so that he could bury those memories deep inside his brain, never to be recreated.His mind couldn’t phantom any other option; it was either hate or possession,both sentiments tainted by his actions that could only lead to your contempt.So, meeting you couldn’t be something he did normally, just bumping into you casuallywhile walking around the streets of his own city.

It took no timeto learn your current address, not far away from your parents’ home, all alonein your room as you got ready to sleep. With an oversized pajama that drapedover your body as if you wanted to hide it from prying eyes, he sneaked in andwaited for you to notice the menacing figure looming in the corner, as soon ashis invisible mantle slipped from his shoulders. With a new blur of colorappearing in the corner of your vision, you turned around with lazy disinterest,replaces soon after with terror and wide-open eyes. There was a beat, silenceveiling this encounter while Risotto watched you with a stony face, coldnessemanating from his attitude.

“Risotto,” yourvoice came out small, and fragile, making something tremble inside of him. Hesupposed it was meant to be a question, but there was enough resolution insidethose words that he doubted his own assumption. He stayed still, in his owncorner, looking down at you in an attempt to intimidate you into submission. However,you stood up from your bed, your steps tentative as they hit the cold floorunder your bare feet. You tiptoed slowly towards him, and somehow he felt likebacking off as a scared animal despite your smaller size. You blinked at him,incredulous, speaking with caution, “Are you really here?”

He kept silent,still, almost lifeless, for a moment, before nodding and admiring with a sloweddown heartbeat that your lips curled up just slightly. You tiptoed closer again,and stopped at less than a meter from him, hugging your arms around your ownbody to protect yourself from the cold, chilly air of February. Risotto remainedmotionless, but his muscles tensed suddenly at the closeness he didn’t expect.His face didn’t betray any sort of emotion, though, if the probing look yougave him could indicate anything. There was relief in your voice when you spokeagain, a note of happiness too, “I missed you.”

Missed him.Risotto never really contemplated the possibility of his object of devotionreciprocating his feelings or his dedication, he was ready to harbor those emotionsin the intimacy of his mind while deciding the actions he would carry on whenhe saw you again. But seeing you with your insignificant frame, curled up tokeep warmth, looking up at him as if he was someone who came to rescue you froma miserable life; something settled inside of him, not quite adjusting hisdarker thoughts of possessing and devouring every part of your life, but hecould sense something softer hatching.

“I came back foryou,” he spoke with an even tone, striding to you with few steps to close the distance.He rested his hands on your arms, holding you while pinning you with his gaze,but you smiled all the same. He continued, encouraged by your wordless serenity,“I have nothing left here but you, so we can run away,” his voice didn’t letout the emotions gripping his throat, the apprehension at your rejection. Heraised his hands once again, to hold the sides of your face with much moredelicacy he first assumed he possessed. Your lack of fear at his action gavehim the push he needed to complete his train of thoughts, “Where do you think Iwill take you?”

You looked athim, studied his eyes with the expertise of someone who could read an ancient,unknown language. Your blinks were slow and measured, your breath was soft asyou sighed, a caress of your nails over the back of his hand signaling him youwere listening still. He could see the comprehension, the absence of loathingbehind your eyes, only the desire to understand and go back, if only to be keptunder his wing to flee somewhere. Then you talked, and Risotto had to restrainhimself from gripping your face with more force, “With you, I don’t care.”

This man, soimposing, dangerous with his bloodthirst and violence pumping under his skin;he didn’t scare you for you knew he never wished to harm you, you didn’t gainany contempt from him. He understood that in that moment, and from the firsttime he faced life, he felt like he was holding it in his hands. For the firsttime in his life, Risotto’s voice faltered as a low whisper reached your ears, “Ilove you.”

Your smile wasenough to cement his next move.

#jjba #jojo's bizarre adventure #risotto nero #risotto x reader #yandere #yandere x reader #gore ///#Anonymous

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sabineelectricheart · 4 years ago

Text

The Last Page of a Forlorn Love's Chronicle

Summary: It is the night after the Archbishop’s wedding, and Dimitri is summoned into the Star Terrace.

Rating: T - Suitable for teens, 13 years and older, with some violence, minor coarse language, and minor suggestive adult themes.

Words: 2700

Notes: I was on a bit of a dramatic mood today. I hope you like it.

He follows the length of the quiet corridor as the sound of the wedding reception fades behind him with every step. From the well-lit halls of the monastery, through the humid and dark stairwell leading to the third floor, to the quiet bedrooms reserved for him and the Archbishop, it all seem very momentous, as if he is navigating the dungeons beneath Enbarr once more.

Dimitri is unsure of what he will find when he turns the corner, but he replays Dedue’s words. A nervous chill works its way up his spine.

“Your Majesty, Her Grace wishes to have a private word with you, before the festivities tonight.” His vassal informed him. His cold monotone seemed even harsher when it comes to that woman.

The young king is plagued with merciless nerves and his heart hammers in his ears. Suddenly, all he can see, hear, and feel is the memory of her warmth, of her very presence against him. The enchanted fairy lights set throughout the monastery’s gardens twinkle in front of him, shining through the slitted windows, left open to refresh and dry the air inside the buildings in preparation for the Summer season to come.

He tries to catch his breath. Dimitri tells himself at that moment he needs to capture the memory forever. When the sun shines over this place again, he will never have the opportunity to repeat this trek.

A nervous sweat begins to form on the palms of his hands and he clenches them in a poor effort to steady his breathing.

Dimitri swallows shakily. He suddenly feels exposed and an anxious breath ripples through him when Sylvain’s aggressive words ring through his mind.

“You might fool everyone else here, you may even fool her… But you will never fool me.” His sneer is clear in his mind. “You have my loyalty, Your Majesty, you shall have it forever, but there are things I will never sacrifice. My marriage included.”

The margrave is right, of course. He would not, either. Yet, the monarch could not help but hold out to hope that the former skirt chaser has not abandoned completely his old ways, that he would make a mistake, that Byleth would reassess the situation and come to the realization that he is not worth the hassle.

Those are traitorous thoughts, no doubt, and Dimitri scolds himself for letting his emotions get the best of him. The times he has given in to the long-suffering looks makes him feel pathetic when he is alone at night. It frustrates him further when he gives into the feeling and plays the pitiful game of “What If?”.

He wonders if Byleth knows, he wonders if she is not fooled by him, as Sylvain puts it, but there is no time to entertain the thought because the blond man peers into the terrace garden, where he was summoned by the Archbishop. He spots the bride sitting on a bench staring out into the night.

Byleth hears Dimitri’s presence, her eyes, soft and wise eyes as they were, and lovely yet hardly expressive face light up at sight of him.

The pit of anguish in his chest yields for a fleeting second. The dreams of insatiable kisses under heavy wolf pelts engulfs him. Dimitri’s hands pressing her into the cool stained glass of the cathedral’s windows. His name on her lips once more.

A harsh jolt of reality that feels much like regret returns and Dimitri clears his throat.

“Oh good, you are here.” Byleth gets up and quickly moves to stand in front of the king.

The Archbishop takes both his hands in hers and calmly leads him back to where she was seated. Thankfully, she was spared the fashionable crinoline and silver corset by Seteth, as it would be deemed profane for the religious authority. As such, they were able to sit side by side, and he could enjoy her presence in such proximity one last time.

“I was worried Dedue would not pass on the message. I have always felt he did not care too deeply about me ever since we encountered him on Myrddin.” She muses, mostly to herself.

He, in all his unwarranted loyalty, resents you for not loving me as much as I love you. As much as you love Sylvain.

It was, however, all his own fault. He looks over to the Goddess Tower, standing tall above the complex, and is reminded of that Ethereal Moon night, when they talked on the stairs that led to the top, when he confessed his truthful feelings but took it all back in cowardice.

Had he stayed true to himself, he is certain that he would be able to have her with him. She was receptive to his attention before. Damn, if only he had managed to cling to his sanity those years that she spent asleep, she would not have a reason to bond with Sylvain for support, and he would still have a chance.

He even considers the right for prima noctis. While it would be a much-appreciated blessing for him, it was an outdated custom, and he is certain that neither the nobility, nor the Church would stand for it. Alas, he considered. He spent many, many shameful nights considering it. Considering how he would demand it of them, what he would do as the sun sets, and whether he would manage to convince her into an annulment.

The words die in his throat because he is too busy taking her in again in that white silk dress. Women in Faerghus wed wearing dyed furs or velvet skirts, never white silk, but then again, never has one of their noblemen marry an Archbishop, and the House of Gautier was more than willing to make any concessions necessary to placate the Cardinals.

Her hands are cold from the night air and he stops himself from warming them in his own.

A chilly breeze sweeps past the two and Byleth finds a seat. Dimitri shivers at the loss of contact and quietly finds his place next to her.

“What is it that I can do for the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros?” A kind smile blooms on his face and Byleth smiles back at him.

A pang of jealously rumbles deep inside. She is so full of light she practically illuminates the dark corner of the palace they occupy, but he is not sure what else he was expecting. It is the same Byleth he has always known.

The same Byleth, Dimitri admits to himself every night, he is still foolishly in love with.

“I am glad you have asked.” She says.

Byleth fumbles with a box at the foot of the bench and presents it to Dimitri. Confused, his eyebrows knit as he slowly accepts it from her. Silver-coloured wrapping paper lines the box and a navy-blue ribbon ties into an elaborate bow at the top.

“I am not sure I understand.” Dimitri holds the box delicately as if it at any moment it might crumble under his touch. His eyes flicker from the beautifully presented gift to Byleth.

“It is a gift…” She chews on her lower lip nervously, the smile on her face slowly faltering. “This is a gift for you, Dimitri.”

“A gift?” He stares at the box and places it gingerly on his lap. “It is usually the bride and groom who receive gifts on their wedding.”

The green-haired woman fidgets in her seat before clearing her throat.

“Yes.” The confidence in her voice wavers. “I wanted to get you something to say thank you for, well, everything. Ever since we met, in Remire, you have been a constant in my life, and I wish for you to know how much I appreciate it.”

A ‘thank you’ present.

The stab of jealousy inside him morphs into an uneasy sorrow that reminds him of mourning. It’s as if the gift on his lap solidifies the role the former teacher and student, commander and soldier, should take.

An uncomfortable silence falls between them. Dimitri’s fingers play with sides of his present. He cannot find the courage in him to look at her.

Byleth shifts closer to him and he tenses. The blond can feel the heat radiating off her body and he prays she cannot hear the hammering of his heart in his chest.

In one fluid motion, the monarch unravels the intricate bow and makes quick work of the wrapping paper. The woman watches anxiously from where she sits, lower lip still tucked between her teeth, observing carefully for his reaction.

Alas, in all its glory, standing in front of Dimitri is the very proof of his nightly worries. The doubts and anxieties that haunt him when he asks himself if he will ever love someone the way he came to love Byleth.

Would he ever have the chance to let someone know him as he did with Byleth.

Dimitri’s eyes widen at the sight of the historical tome lying on the bed of tissue paper. Delicately, he picks it up and runs a finger down the spine.

“This is … Byleth, I am sincerely at a loss for words.” He begins to gingerly flip through the pages.

“It is a manuscript of modern Faerghusi history. Your father and grandfather’s reigns.” She offers excitedly. Her eyes search his face hungrily for a reaction. “I am not sure you remember, but when your father was still alive, he hired a chronist to write about his life and reign. When he passed, Cordelia fired the man without pay, and he ended up selling his book to the Church. I came upon it by happenstance in the library, and I thought you would like to have it.”

Dimitri smiles up at her. “This is truly remarkable. Thank you.”

Byleth beams and shifts to close the distance between them, she turns her attention to the book and flips to the last section of the book.

“Look here at the final chapter.” Byleth says and flicks through the last few pages, but he is finding it hard to focus.

The monarch is transfixed on how close they are. She stops on the page she was looking for.

“It is…” He looks at the empty pages. “…Blank?”

Byleth moves away slightly and her eyes lock with his for the first time that evening.

“The chronist never finish his book, but I think it says something deeper about you, about us.” She smiles softly. “You should see it that the future of Fódlan is in your hands now, Dimitri. Its next chapter is yours to write.”

The Archbishop’s words sink in and the familiar dread of Duty and Desire resurface.

“Thank you, Byleth. Truly.” He said, earnest. “I shall cherish this thoughtful present and I can only hope that I may fulfil its purpose.”

Another span silence falls between the two, this time they welcome it as they settle into the bench. Another chilling breeze blows past them, ruffling the wrapping paper and tussling his hair.

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, the reality of his future without Byleth settles in his mind once more. Dimitri wants to focus on her happiness. Today is meant to be her day, but somewhere in the back of his mind as he watched her walk up that aisle, he wonders if there could have been a chance that it could have been their day.

The words are on the tip of his tongue. A rush of adrenaline courses through him when he entertains the idea of saying it to her, but he knows nothing good could come from it. What use would it do to hear the affirmation of his unrequited love?

“Is there something on your mind?” Byleth’s voice is soft and cuts through his reverie.

Her brow is knitted and a small, brief surge of happiness fills him at her concern.

Dimitri offers her a weak smile. “I am just tired. It has been a long day for all of us.”

“You are lying.” She interjects confidently.

Dimitri’s chest swells. Byleth sees him and he would be a fool to think he could convince her differently.

He chuckles half-heartedly and shrugs his shoulders. “I should know by now it is pointless feigning anything around you.”

Dimitri leans back into the metal bench and stares down at the delicate antique in his hands. The weight of the book unnerves him and it reminds him of the weight of his own responsibilities.

“It is really not something worth worrying yourself over.” He dismissed her concerns. “Tonight, it is all about you and your future. Your happiness. You should not spend time on the troubles of some dejected king.”

The heat works its way up his neck, past the suffocating collar of his formal military uniform, and warming candidly his face.

“You once told me, far back when we first met, that I helped you to think about the man you want to be, not the terrible circumstances that led you to the disastrous path you trailed for so long.” Byleth’s voice drops nearly to a confessional whisper. “I still often think about that conversation.”

He shrugged, dejected. “Perhaps it is easier to not think of myself at times like these.”

“What do you mean?” Her brow creases and his heart plunges.

“You might fool everyone else here, you may even fool her… But you will never fool me.”

Stupid.

Foolish.

Dimitri knows he should watch his tongue and he knows better than to pull this stunt on her wedding day. He tries to say something, anything, that would relieve the tension that is slowly climbing.

However, the words he wants to say are threatening to burst free from his lips, wanting to take a life on their own. He meets her worried gaze.

“Byleth, I…”

He is interrupted by a boom of thunder rolling over the Oghma Mountains and both holders of the highest ruling authority in Fódlan snap their attention to the sky. Angry dark clouds have taken over and another clap of thunder follows.

At first, the monarch feels a cold drop land on his cheek and soon, faster than either one could expect, the night sky opens above them.

Quickly, Dimitri and Byleth rush indoors, the blond ushering the Archbishop in before closing the terrace door behind him. They stand in the corridor, shivering from the icy downpour of rain as a giggle escapes her.

Her teeth are chattering, her skin is marred with goosebumps and her hair is slightly matted to her face. He would not want to imagine what he looks like, what he resembles on that moment.

Dimitri chuckles, shaking his head and his prized gift safely clasped in his hands.

“You shall catch a cold this way, Byleth.” He points out, concern seeping through his voice. “Best not stand around in a soaking gown.”

The holy woman laughs, shaking her own head. “I really should. I remember that Annette has mentioned once or twice that rain on a wedding dress is bad luck. Here is to hoping that is all superstition.”

Here is to hoping.

Dimitri clears his throat and shakes the ruthless thought away. Ashamed and disappointed in himself.

“Will you let them know I have gone to get changed?” She asks, softly.

Dimitri nods and, before he can tell what is happening, Byleth leans over and captures him in a warming hug that makes him forget the chill of the rain. She plants a chaste kiss on his cheek and smiles up at him. He relaxes under her embrace and regretfully feels her pull away.

“Save me a dance, Your Majesty?” The Archbishop requests, her expression earnest, and he is reminded of that fateful ball once again that evening.

He stands, watching her disappear around the corner of the corridor, with the book tightly clenched in his hands.

He exhales loudly. “For you? Anything, Your Grace.”

Had it not been for the rain…

Dimitri shakes his head.

Maybe he had the rain to thank. Maybe he had the rain to blame.

If one thing was certain, it is that his list of late-night ‘What If?’ musings just got longer.

*_*_*_*_*

Fire Emblem Masterlist

Three Houses Masterlist

#fire emblem #Dimitri Blaiddyd #Sylvain Gautier

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