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ad1thi · 4 years ago

Note

If your still doing fic recs, could u rec any soft stevetony ones?

absolutely!! this got pretty long so ive hidden most of it under a read-more so i don’t annoy people. a couple of authors feature more than once. ive tried to avoid that as much as possible, but if an author features more than once - take that as a sign that they have rly good stuff for soft stevetony

disclaimer: don’t forget to leave kudos and comments for every author!! (a disclaimer i regrettably forgot to add to previous fic rec lists but will be adding from now on)

soda pops: @starklysteve

If anybody asks, Steve would smile and say it was very romantic. Very Tony. Because if he went into any further detail, nobody would quite believe him.

Tony, on the other hand, would laugh and say that Steve’s in love with a man in a can. So, really, it wasn’t outside the natural progression of things.

me voy pa’l pueblo: @firebrands

two times steve walks away, and one time that tony walks with him.

/ or, my very fluffy take on my bingo card prompt "farewells." steve is on vacation when he meets tony.

fill for my stony bingo prompt: farewells; also for bookworminaslump on tumblr who asked for a tourist/knowledgeable local au!

Tumblr Ficlets: @omg-just-peachy (this is 115 chapters of stevetony being soft!!)

A collection of enough tooth-rotting fluff to last a year, all in one place.

tender offerings: @omg-just-peachy

Five times Steve carried Tony to bed.

the best thing (is that it’s happening to you and me): @captainstarkreportingforduty

Or, five times the team saw Steve Rogers and Tony Stark in love.

Sweet On You: @miniblackraven

It’s the 1940’s and Tony is working as a Donut Doll for the Red Cross. His job is to go around to various military bases and offer comfort food and conversation to homesick soldiers. He’s come to expect a lot of things in this job, but he doesn’t expect to fall in love with Captain America, the hottest most awkward soldier Tony has ever met.

Bespectacled Avengers Society (Membership of One): @baffledkingcomposinghallelujah

Tony gets glasses. Glasses get a Tony. Steve loses his mind and walks into walls.

a flower crown for your love: @anthonyed

"There, there," Pepper cooed. "Tony likes flowers?" she said with a shred of doubt in her tone. But when Steve peered up, she's smiling her bright toothy smile. He squinted and she sighed, dropping her hand from his shoulder. "He does." she insisted. "Even more so than me."

if this was a movie: @omg-just-peachy

“One of our seniors is being generous with his time this year—by force of his own actions, but generous none the less—and he’d be happy to help you, I’m sure. Tony Stark? I’ll set something up for later this week. I think between the two of you you’ll be able to pull your average up enough to make it through to playoffs,” Coulson said, with that ever-hopeful lilt in his voice.

Or, Steve needs a calculus tutor, Tony is available, but how is Steve ever supposed to focus when he's been in love with Tony for ... his entire school life?

you take me higher than the rest (everybody else is second best): @firebrands

tumblr fill for adi & anthonydarling, who asked for "'Prank' war, but the kind to see who can make the other blush the most in public" from this prompt list

amore mio: @brucewaynery

Tony has had it with Steve being dumb and reckless out in the field, he has a family to think about now, Steve promises him that he'll be with him, kingdom come.

(initially based on that one headcanon about Italian Tony yelling and gesticulating at Steve but Peter thinks he's doing some weird dance and tries to copy him, but it got very fluffy very quickly)

Lost My Mind in a Coffee Shop: @betheflame

“Boyo,” Bucky muttered to his best friend. “I swear to God that if you don’t ask that man for his number soon, I will create a Grindr profile for you and you will not like it.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I am here to finish grading, not hit on men.”

“Can you not do both?” Natasha smirked. “Nearly tenured, historical genius, feels like something you should be able to multitask.”

&&&

In which Steve is a history professor and Tony's an engineering one and Bucky owns the joint where they have their meet cute.

AU-gust Chapter 7: @iam93percentstardust

stevetony, childhood friends AU

Right Up The Road: @gottalovev

The day at the senate committee in Washington DC wasn't supposed to end with Tony and Steve transformed into animals by a baby witch. That said, the 350 miles trek back to the compound to get help promises to be quite an adventure too!

(or the adventures of Cat!Tony and Wolf!Steve - and how to readjust when you're back to human!)

i’ll take care of you: @elcorhamletlive

“Hi.”

Steve blinks. The sound of loud thunder roars outside, but he doesn’t jolt, too focused on the image in front of him to be startled by the noise.

He has no idea what to say, and he isn’t sure if the shock is because of Tony’s absolutely sodden state – his hair glued to his forehead, his clothes dripping with water, forming a small puddle in front of Steve’s door – or because he wasn’t expecting to see Tony for at least three more days.

“Hi?” he says, a little tentative, before his brain catches up to reality. In his defense, he was getting ready to sleep when Tony knocked. He looks at what Tony is holding – a wet mess that seems to have been a flower bouquet at some point. “What are you doing here?”

The Tally System: @betheflame

Everyone on the team knew about the tally system.

Whenever Steve would save Tony - whether from a monster or from his own stupidity - he’d say, “tag”. Whenever Tony do the same, he’d say, “your turn”. Thor thought it was adorable, Clint thought it was ridiculous, Bruce refused to register an opinion.

Natasha thought it was something she could work with.

what’s mine is yours: @robertdowneyjjr

5 times Tony stole Steve’s clothes, and 1 time Steve returned the favor.

For a billionaire, Tony Stark really doesn't pay for a lot of what he wears.

I like Shiny Things But I’d Marry You With Paper Rings: @betheflame

Rhodey: I just confirmed with Sam that he’s going to make sure he cooks tonight and that his entire team is briefed. I’m heading over now to strategically arrange a fuck ton of ficus trees to block them from gen pop.

Pepper: They’re not getting engaged in a prison, Jimmy.

Rhodey: Tony Stark and Steve Rogers show up to Circe on a Saturday night in May and you watch every person in that restaurant turn into someone I’d rather arrest than eat with.

****

In which Tony and Steve get engaged, but they're kind of extra about it, because they are always themselves

the road to the stars: @shell-heads

Tony is seven years old when he sees the ballet for the first time and meets his future pas de deux partner.

His father is invited to sweet-talk politicians into a new weapons deal and explain his latest idea for their program, and his mom goes to catch up with old friends she hasn't seen in years, but Tony goes because his mom had smiled down at him and told him he would love it.

His mom's never wrong.

In which boy genius Tony Stark meets girl wonder Natasha Romanoff at the ballet, and they fit their broken little pieces together to make something beautiful on the dance floor.

Steve? He's just a dumb, awful, chaotic, extremely supportive older brother that really should just shut up and admit he likes Tony a lot more than he pretends, because Natasha only has five people in the world she likes; it only makes sense her two favorites would fall in love with one another.

They always were a little slow, though.

A Second Chance To Take it Slow: @omg-just-peachy

Tony loves his adopted son, Peter, but that doesn't stop him from wishing he had someone to do this whole parenting thing with. After a failed one night stand, Tony's parent-teacher conference with Mr. Rogers comes with quite the surprise.

Wake Up!: @randomstufffromotherblogs

Tony came home from a business trip and is woken up by his husband and their three-year old.

pull me closer to love: @captainstakreportingforduty (part of a series)

“A Mother’s Day card? For... Tony?” Steve clarifies, and can’t help the smile on his face as six familiar little heads nod in response.

“But... guys, Tony’s not—“ he pauses and takes a breath, any explanation dying in his throat against the excited gleam in everyone’s eyes. “Why do you guys want to do that, hmm?"

compromises: @robertpattisons (when i looked up OP on tumblr, this is the blog i was directed to - but i sincerely apologise if ive gotten it wrong)

Steve should have expected it, he really should have.

There were regulations that came with dating Tony Stark. Things that were clear and things that they needed to work through.

Things like how Steve always got strawberry ice cream, while Tony got rocky road. Or when Steve needed to get his homework done before he was down to make out - even though Tony always got his way.

Things like that were clear

all that you are is all that i’ll ever need: @natasharxmanov

Tony Stark and Steve Rogers announced their engagement on Good Morning America through Tony Stark’s previous secretary now CEO, Pepper Potts. And over this past weekend, I got the chance to sit down with them both, to visit their home and attend their gala, all to write this article about the most powerful couple in the world.

(Or, the fic in which Tony and Steve get married.)

(i won’t ever) trade my mistakes: @brucewaynery

Toddler Peter, painting a masterpiece with his dad.

aka: a dumb amount of family fluff to help you power through the week

#adi's rec list #stevetony #superhusbands #steve rogers/tony stark #steve rogers x tony stark #steve x tony #i did this instead of my exam #so i rly hope you enjoy it anon!!#there's a healthy amount of superfamily thrown in here #so apologies if that isn't your thing #anon ask #adi answers asks

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doorsclosingslowly · 3 years ago

Text

Hell is just a beat away (3/9)

Despite early promise, young Maul has turned out to be a disappointment, willfully delaying his training with secret attempts to make himself friends from scrap metal. He must be properly motivated, and so Darth Sidious sends him to a slave market on an impossible mission. It backfires. Star Wars: Darth Maul (2017) comic AU | 5.2k | warning for slavery, sexual assault of a teenager (non-graphic)

Ten to doomsday, moving fast

Eldra does not sleep. She refuses. If she has to bite her fingers bloody when her eyelids threaten to drop, then so be it. Master Fyaar would have chastened her for it—she always insists that Eldra be at her best regardless of circumstance, and staying awake for what must be more than one or two entire standard days now will help with neither her innate distractibility nor her willful emotions. Her secret inadequacy, unknown to all but Fyaar, who chose Eldra when she was ten and had yet to develop the mind that is, and she has rarely admitted to those fears even in the privacy of her own brain, the mind that is perhaps fundamentally unsuited to the noble path of the Jedi. Sure, she does well enough in her classes, though she drives her teachers to frustration with her incessant fiddling with any trinket at all within her reach and her doodling and her daydreams. Sure, she mostly behaves acceptably among people, though she does not pick up on the right cues to be a diplomat and she vacillates too often between excited talking and secret loneliness, when she, once again, finds her peers more interested in each other than in whatever she has wanted to share. Her one friend in the Order is Bayro who’s two years older, though now she’s not even sure if Bayro would see her as more than a friendly, clingy acquaintance, and—

Will Bayro even miss her? They’ve made plans to watch a holovid after Eldra’s back from Teth and Bayro aces the Advanced Test on Coruscant Sublevels 6665 through 7900. Vague plans, though, and since Eldra didn’t know how long she’d have to guard Mayor Woobudg… Bayro will probably notice in a few months that Eldra hasn’t returned to the Temple, and then watch the holovid with one of her many other friends. She’ll—

Watch your feelings, Eldra, she remembers. It hurts. The memory of Master Fyaar hurts worse than even the imaginary indifference of Bayro does, but it’s necessary. As ever, Master Fyaar’s warning is right, even if it’s only the ghost of Fyaar living on inside Eldra’s grief. Eldra almost lost her calm over a scenario of her own imagination, yet another reminder of her unsuitable mercurial temperament. Yet another reminder of why she needs Fyaar, needs her constant watch, if she wants to remain on the path of the Jedi.

And Master Zalandas Fyaar is dead.

Fyaar’s dead.

Eldra watched her murder, and the murder of everyone she was supposed to protect on this mission. Eldra watched her murder and did not reach for the dark side of the force to avenge her. Eldra watched and held still.

Eldra allowed herself to be abducted.

She does not sleep in her tiny cell, just as she didn’t sleep on the freight ship that carried her to an unknown planet far away from bloodied Teth. She didn’t sleep then as stubbornly as she does now, but even before her wide-open burning eyes the pictures will not stop. The blood. The touch. The grin of her vile captor when he said that she would fetch a tidy sum, despite being a blue twi’lek (“A dime a dozen, they are, and this one’s not even a trained dancer! She hasn’t even… look!” Her captor had pulled her upper lip away then, and she had snapped for his fingers. “She’s still got those awful sharp teeth! Who the hell lets a twi’lek girl walk around with sharp teeth? She could tear a guy’s throat out, with these!”) she would still be worth a quick sale to her captors but only because she is (was) a Jedi padawan, and apparently there are quite a few pieces of shit out there who’d like to hurt a Jedi. Or—she keeps her eyes open, open, open till tears threaten to drop, and yet the thought comes. Or fuck one. Same difference.

A toy that’s padawan-shaped. That’s why they let her keep her own robes. But at least they did.

Watch your feelings, but still, Eldra shakes to her very core. She’s never thought of herself as being anything but a person, slightly inadequate perhaps in all ways that matter to her but a person; a luminous being, a small conduit for the very force to act through in the material galaxy; but now she’s been caught and taught that what she is is actually just a twi’lek girl. Cheap. Interchangeable. Nothing but her species and her gender, nothing but her flesh: a pretty dancer, never mind she hates dancing and if she ever makes it out, if the Jedi find and rescue her, please, please, she will never ever dance not even a single one of those silly novelty dances ever again even if Bayro does it first. She’ll go to whatever lengths needed to never be appraised, judged, looked upon, perceived as anything but a luminous dutiful Jedi ever again.

To these people, she’s not a person. Not a Jedi, unless the fetish counts, not really, not to the slavers and—watch your feelings, but still, the seething disgust returns and she wants nothing more than her lightsaber through her captor’s hearts or their hands torn off by her teeth—perhaps, maybe, please no, not truly anymore either to herself.

⁂

Maul wakes up to insistent beeping. He’s never heard the noise before, except—somewhere behind the headache and the nausea he remembers—except roughly five minutes ago, and five minutes before that, and five minutes before… He’s read about those periodical noises. Snooze button on an alarm clock, they’re called. He’s never used them before. He’s never used—Master teaches that a slothful tool is a tool broken, useless, and he’s never before dared to oversleep, even with his throat swollen and filled with mucus he didn’t, but now—it is a mercy he does not deserve, that Master was not here to witness Maul fail so deeply on this mission and just because something beats a booming drum inside his head and stuffed his stomach full of eels twisting up languidly through his esophagus.

Not real eels, though. He checks his vomit after throwing up. No eels. No animals hatched inside him; it’s just an inconvenient illness. And he feels better already, after spewing out the clear oily water and half-digested bread and no eels whatsoever. He does feel much better. Definitely. Illness during his mission would be inconvenient.

He has ample time to travel to the palace of Xev Xrexus before the padawan is sold there. Time he is grateful for, because Master’s ship will not let him in, so he has no access to his stilts or anything else he prepared apart from his cloak and the vocoder mask he carried in his satchel to the convenience store like a talisman of ingenuity and pretense. He doesn’t have his finest Sith robes that he left safe inside, only to be worn in the moment of Darth Maul’s triumph, and most of his weapons, too, apart from one anonymous knife strapped to his shin, are still tidied away in the ship Master gave him that will now pulverize anyone who dares approach.

Luckily, Maul is both incredibly clever—he figured out the location of the padawan! Despite Master giving him a wrong date and location! Solely by his own superior Sith cunning!—and he is within another sucker’s ship now—he sliced the lock in minutes! Because he is Darth Maul!—and the ship is full of new tools for improvisation.

Such as the large pair of black sunglasses that helps guard him at least slightly against the sun’s sickening poking and poking and poking of his cerebral cortex. Such as the trio of black shirts that, belted with a strange deltoid strip of fabric, bulk up his frame considerably and also make him feel toasty warm. Nar Shaddaa is cold, but Maul isn’t. Yet another victory to add to his tally.

With the gloves and the vocoder mask and the Sith cloak added on top, every square centimeter of Maul’s flesh is covered, and as he struts in front of the berth mirror he decides: he looks both incredibly dignified and scary, not to himself obviously but to those forcenull denizens of the underworld who will yet learn to tremble before the almighty Sith. He looks almost as impressive as Master. He doesn’t have the pale chin lurking under his cowl, obviously the most Sithly of looks, but in a pinch the black leather covering his cheeks and the opaque gridded speaker over his mouth should do almost as well.

Before he leaves, he ransacks the ship. No point in abandoning tools he might yet use. Everything he can carry, he stuffs inside his satchel.

Then, he begins the long pedestrian march to the palace of Xrexus. As usual, while he walks, he seethes in the Sithly anger of how much faster he could go if only he had a decent speeder bike. Soon, he reminds himself. Soon. After the oncoming awesome success of this mission, Master will be impressed enough to bestow the title of Darth and gift him a CK-6 swoop bike tuned up to the limits of terrestrial speed. Soon. Besides, with how slow the nausea is to settle, it’s perhaps a tiny bit useful that he is forced to take this brisk long walk in the Nar Shaddaa morning air. Although his coat and shirts fluttering with the speed of his bike would look very cool… He loses himself in his daydreams, and before long, he spies a duo of falleen in white dress shirts and black pants before the palace that belongs to Xev Xrexor.

The most adventurous part of his mission has just begun.

“Greetings,” Maul growls haughtily with the handsome baritone of his vocoder. “I have chosen to purchase a Jedi slave today. I trust this is the location for these sorts of errands?”

“Are you on the guest list?” the left falleen asks.

Guest list? Yet another complication. But Maul must not fail. “I am Ma Goweelr,” he says, borrowing the name of the man whose ship he ransacked. He found an identification card with his name on it and wisely brought it with him. He pulls it out now.

“You don’t look like Goweelr, friend,” she says.

“Unfortunately, I had… an accident.” Blast. They cannot see his face, so tt’s the height issue again. If Maul had his stilts, he could have made his way through easily, but because Master saw fit to lock the ship—no, it’s not Master’s fault. Because Maul was stupid enough to leave his tools aboard the ship, he now falters. What to do. What to do. What to—

“He’s slow,” the other bouncer whispers to his partner, but loudly enough that Maul heard it without issue. He stares intently at Maul, almost if he was expecting a specific reaction.

The left falleen winks. “All right. A little grease in the palm goes a long way, friend.”

Grease? Necessary for the function of machines. Cooking, apparently, also. Often a type of fat, either animal or plant-based, though hydrocarbons mined on certain planets or synthesized in labs such as Corellia’s X-Tech Max nowadays are a far more affordable and controllable—

“He’s dumb, Brighta. We don’t care whether you’re on the guest list. We want a bribe.”

A… Maul’s certain he read about bribes somewhere, but—

“Cash. Money. Credits.”

Credits! Maul found some on the ship. Since they were light enough, he put them in his satchel. The force is with him! He pulls out the chits he found, rummaging in a perhaps less than dignified way—the falleen exchange a look over his head that he’s too busy to try to read, but it doesn’t seem hostile—and when he hands over five thousand credits their vague non-hostility turns to genuine excitement.

“House Xrexus is honored to host you for this auction, sir,” the male falleen says when he opens the door.

“As am I,” Maul replies with a bow. When he walks past, the female bouncer taps him on the shoulder and then bends down to whisper in his ear.

“The Jedi’s auction’s in two hours, but the preview starts in one and she’ll probably get snapped up then, so. Might wanna hurry.”

“Thank… you?” Maul rumbles and winces at the vocoder turning his slight surprise into a question, but the falleen does not laugh this time.

“Appreciative customers are rare. Come back anytime,” and she winks and pushes him with her—warm, strong, startling—hand the rest of the way through the door and then slams it shut.

Presale. Other customers. Complicating factors Maul would not even have known about if it wasn’t for the bouncer—and for the force, therefore, willing him to succeed—because he didn’t… He did not actually expect any competition. After all, there are no other Sith but the Master and his apprentice. Who, then, would have need of a Jedi padawan? Who has need of Xrexus’ auction at all when they are not sent by their Master? Their… Master. Master might compete with Maul at this sale, both as a test of Maul’s readiness and as a failsafe, should Maul not manage to succeed in his mission. Master is incredibly smart after all, and foresees any number of possible twists and turns of a scenario, as unlikely as they might be. Even such unlikely eventualities as Darth Maul not completing in his mission. Master considers everything. It’s why he’s the Master.

Luckily, Maul was forewarned, and so when he passes a fire exit plan of the palace that’s nailed to a wall in the empty entrance hall he looks for any possible… There. A server room. A small bureau. Two places where Maul might gain access to the databases of Xrexus and convince the filing system that he has already bought the Jedi, before the first competitor has even placed their bid. It’s the only surefire way of preempting a person as thorough and prompt as Master is, and besides… Maul understands machines. He can charm and bend them to his will. His confusion at the bouncers’ hints and the tip the falleen gave him when he would never have expected anything of the sort based on the way the previous part of the encounter had passed—never mind the blasted lack of his carefully constructed stilts—were a sore reminder that in the field of people Maul does not yet excel to the standard of a Sith. Something he must remedy, but perhaps not on a mission as important as this. (Perhaps not among people who are oily and stare too hard.)

Laughter peals in a room straight ahead, but the server room is one floor down a side staircase. It’s sectioned off by a dangly gold chain that Maul needs to barely duck to pass under, and no-one passes through either the main corridor he left or the dusty unlit staircase while Maul hops down, thinking I am Sith alternating with I am shadow on every step.

The hallway leading to the server room is just as deserted. The door is locked, but Maul has sliced the access pads of twelve ships now and has refined his technique to under three minutes of elegant fiddling. This lock takes two seconds.

A datapad is already hanging inside right next to the door, from the cable with which it’s plugged into a socket there. Maul picks it up. Its screen is thrice-cracked and fixed up with clear tape. The touchscreen is incredibly sluggish to react, but as much as he might love the challenge of repairing it he only has less than an hour to spare. If he must, he will, but—gloves. He removes the right one, and the datapad responds.

A login screen.

Thus-far, the security has been abysmal. Worse than what he improvised for the secret hiding space of the first functional droid he built, and so he enters root, root. It works.

Pathetic, Maul thinks. Disappointing. Embarrassing. Horrendous. Useless. Awful. You deserve this. You deserve worse. It almost takes off some of the giddiness at how well Maul has been performing on his mission, thus far. His opponents are veritable morons. It is no great feat, to succeed against people as unprepared for basic survival as these, and it does not take a Sith’s cunning—it’s not worthy of the great Darth Maul who learns under Darth Sidious the greatest creature in the galaxy—to fight them.

In the central database he changes the status of the Jedi padawan to Sold and the buyer to Ma Goweelrand types in 666666666 for the winning bid. It’s a large number, and Jedi means valuable. It should pass muster. Probably. Money: yet another area where Maul requires further instruction. There was another card Maul stole with information on Goweelr’s account with the InterGalactic Banking Clan, and he enters it in the respective field. As to the user listed as making these changes, he picks the fifth-most appearing in the database. If he wanted to arouse no suspicion at all, he would need to research Xrexus’ organization in total, but—he’d really rather not. Even glancing at some of the entries of the database reawakened the eels in his stomach.

He pettily changes the admin password and wipes the screen carefully before he logs out.

Mission almost complete.

Half an hour left until the beginning of the presale, a clock tells him, and that’s most likely when they will check the padawan’s entry and approach Goweelr as her legitimate buyer. Everything is going according to plan, as long as he is not caught down here.

Since Maul is Sith and shadow and incredibly silent and deadly, he isn’t.

He sneaks back up and then strides, with as much power and dignity as he can muster when he wants to skip giddily to celebrate a job well done, into the room where the laughter comes from. It’s—

It’s bright. Loud. Full. But more than any other adjective, it’s huge, a room that is a thousand times bigger than anything Maul has ever set foot in, with a domed ceiling rising so far above that he can’t make out any details there. Can’t see whether there are any cameras, or snipers—can’t see anything but the luster and wealth on display. Plants growing on floating bowls of silver, plants he has never seen anywhere but in holos (Most plants are plants he’s only ever seen in holos. Almost all of them. Master rarely makes him train off-planet, and there is nothing but fire on Mustafar.), plants and waterfalls. Delicate staircases that appear to hover in the air just like the tree-bowls are. It looks like something out of a dream, if Maul’s dreams were able to imagine impossible worlds and not just impossible people who’ll save him.

Below it all, there are throngs of people in various kinds of festive garb, chatting and sipping on dainty glasses. People of most species he’s ever read about. Even…

Even a zabrak. There’s a zabrak over in a corner, not an Iridonian zabrak like the ones Maul finds often in his research but a zabrak who looks startingly close to him, hairless and bright and black-marked, only he’s much taller than Maul—he’s tall! Maul always worried that his species was doomed to remain as small as he is right now but he’s tall! He won’t need stilts forever!—and he’s yellow.

Idly—or trying to appear idle but actually shivering with curiosity—he saunters closer. The zabrak, it’s quickly obvious, is not here as a buyer. He’s chained up, both manacles connected to the neck cuff, though the bonds look so flimsy that Maul could have snapped them. He’s almost naked except for a pair of trousers that barely reaches his thighs and, moreover, is made of a fabric far too flimsy and tight to fight in. His skin is weirdly shiny as well, as if he was sweating but that is unlikely, given Maul’s not too hot under his three shirts and a cloak (in fact, it gets colder the closer Maul comes to the strange zabrak), and the yellow zabrak’s not exercising either but standing completely still, feet slightly apart and arms raised in a poor imitation of a fighting pose. The claws on his hand and feet would be called neatly trimmed if Maul didn’t know intimately that this length means they’re cut so close to the bed that it irritates several internal nerves. The horns are filed too close as well, and they look blunt.

A fighting slave.

No. A pretend fighting slave.

Everything about him might look fearsome to one who does not know what to watch for, but he does not stand or dress or groom himself like a fighter.

It’s—it’s difficult for Maul to sort out his reaction. This is a zabrak, the first person like him he’s ever seen, but he’s also a mockery of the warrior he trains so hard to become. Are all other zabraks like this? Does Maul look like this to other people? Flimsy and fake? It is almost enough to be ashamed of the association, and Maul is glad that with his clothes no-one else here can guess at their shared species.

“Welcome,” the unchained human next to the zabrak shouts, and Maul cranes his neck but apparently it’s addressed to him. “What are you looking for? A nightly companion? A gladiator? A—”

“This is not a gladiator,” Maul growls.

“Ah, well, he’s versatile,” the slaver says. “Do you see his muscles?” He squeezes the other zabrak’s biceps. The zabrak does not react. “He is excellent at bearing pain as well,” and alright, Maul will give him that. From this close, he can see the faint network of scars.

“He’s truly a wild beast when you want him that way,” and if to contradict him—the first time Maul feels anything approaching pride at their kinship—the zabrak refuses to bare his teeth, even when the human slaps him in the face twice and then prods him with something bearing electric sparks. Still, the zabrak will not relent. He’s breathing and moving but somewhere deep in his eyes he looks nothing short of dead.

“I have business elsewhere,” Maul stutters out and the vocoder smooths it into a low growl. The queasy pit in his stomach must be the return of the eels, or else the force aims to reveal to him that he might be being observed by fleets of holodroids, a technological wonder he should research immediately upon completion of his mission, when he will never think of the scar-covered zabrak and his empty eyes ever again. He won’t even remember his face or his color. No, Maul will attempt to engineer holodroids and present them to his Master, who will be proud.

That’s what he thinks about, while he wanders the huge room at random. Holodroids. He doesn’t think about zabraks. In fact, he’s forgotten every fact he ever heard about that species. No zabraks exist but Maul. That’s the way it goes.

He doesn’t think of zabraks at all for several more minutes, and then a tannoy system message calls out for Ma Goweelr and his time of floating is over.

⁂

Thus far, the boy’s little adventure has been a disappointment. There were moments of fear and shame and misery, but mostly, what Sidious receives from him is bright giddy elation at being entrusted with this mission. It should have figured that Maul is not intelligent enough to see through his Master’s true plans, and yet—it was folly on his part, Sidous is prepared to admit that, but he expected more of his little zabrak.

Well. More agony, mostly.

He’ll have to be a little more patient. Someday soon, Maul’s luck will have to run out.

⁂

“This is her, Sir. Opening the cell now,” a woman says in front of the suddenly-bright cell, and Eldra’s hard-won, tattered, wide-eyed serenity dissipates.

It’s Dilar. Dilar, self-loathing traitor of a twi’lek slave. Eldra’s only known her for a day and enjoyed exactly zero seconds of it. The old woman’s hatred and revulsion at what she is forced to do, preparing slaves to be sold on, crowds out the very air. For the slavers, her utter loathing might be imperceptible—Dilar is a grudging, but polite tool—but it’s everywhere in the force, and Eldra cannot breathe. It’s hard enough keeping herself calm—keeping herself Jedi—when she knows that any time now a lecher with a Jedi fetish will come to her cell.

A lecher, or her rescuer.

Watch your feelings: do not give in to despair, Eldra, as Fyaar would say if she could. Maybe a Jedi will come.

It’s a war inside her, equal parts of hope and terror, and without her Master’s guidance how will Eldra find the strength to make herself calm again? Calm, serene, like the Jedi she was supposed to be.

A Jedi is better than this.

There is no emotion. There is peace.

There is no hatred, especially. Eldra should not hate Dilar. She shouldn’t hate every single slaver in the entire world, with even deeper depths of seething odium reserved for anyone selling or buying her. She shouldn’t. She does.

She isn’t wearing a force-suppressant collar, but that doesn’t matter. There are things far more binding than chains, than collars, in this world: Eldra promised her Master that she would be strong. She promised. She promised, and she hates these slavers. If she reached for the force now, she wouldn’t be able to call herself Jedi anymore. She would fail her Master and lose herself.

She would use her hatred to kill her tormentors. She would tear their throats out.

She would Fall.

Fear, raging and cold, has been her only companion for uncounted waking days now, that and bitter loathing. Master Fyaar died in front of her. Eldra’s been stripped of everything she thought she was and turned into a commodity, and now the only bright spot in her life is the fact that Martrey Woobudg the slaver, slaver, slaver who brought them to Teth is also fucking dead. Hopefully, it hurt.

The sudden hope is new, fragile and staggering and still too volatile to make reaching for the force safe. Hope: maybe the new arrival isn’t one of them. Eldra’s Master was in constant contact with the Temple, after all, and they must know about the ambush by now. They must have sent someone to save Eldra. (She tries very very hard not to remember that they don’t, sometimes, search for missing padawans, because of deferring to a higher purpose and the will of the force and being instruments of the Galactic Senate and not privileging attachments, including to their padawans, over the greater good et cetera et cetera, which is a code of conduct that Eldra, too, had always believed in. Until she got thrown in this cell, at least.)

Please, let it be a Jedi. Even if she gets thrown out for her hatred. Please, let it be a Jedi.

“Get up, girl,” Dilar says.

Eldra struggles onto her feet. She almost loses her balance, and that would kriffing hurt, because she’s got little chance of breaking her fall. Her hands are cuffed in front of her, encased in thin manacles she could easily break out of if it wasn’t pointless. If she wasn’t watched at all times. If she could use the force without Falling. If there was any way off this planet she doesn’t even know the name of. She could break them, but she can’t. They’re tight, and her shoulders ache from the forced immobility. (Almost, she’d told the slavers that restraining someone like this for days on end was a sure way of causing muscle damage, that they were lowering her value—were hurting her, by treating her like this, but she’d reconsidered. It would probably count as ‘helping slavers’. She hopes instead that they lose all their captives to their own bad practices. Eldra will not help them, if it kills her.)

If her visitor is a slaver, they’ll probably enjoy the sight of her helplessness. If they’re a Jedi, there may be compassion, pity, judgment—they’ll feel how scared she is, and how close to breaking—and that’ll be even more embarrassing to deal with afterwards, but at least there will be an afterwards for her.

For a second, the force floods with pain. Anger. Then, the presence hides itself again. Doesn’t matter. She’s felt it.

A force user.

A… Jedi, then?

Would a Jedi… Eldra herself would be angry, if she saw anyone else treated the way she is now, no matter how hard she tries for serenity. Eldra isn’t a good Jedi though. She’s too scared for that.

She looks up. If the visitor is a Jedi, Eldra doesn’t recognize them. But that means nothing: they’re covered head-to-toe in layers of black fabric. They’re wearing some sort of mask that covers their lower face, too, and oversized mirrored-glass sunglasses, and gloves, and a cowled cloak and what looks like at least two shirts, one over the other. They look like a black ball with legs sticking out. They look like someone decided to dress up as the platonic concept of shady. They look ridiculous.

They’re very short as well. They’re about twice the height of Grandmaster Yoda, and shorter than pretty much everybody else that Eldra knows. Well… they could be Master Piell. Would Master Piell dress up like this, though? Would he come to rescue her? Would he… well, he wouldn’t feel like the visitor in the force. Even Piell is a Master of the High Council. He wouldn’t fall prey to emotions as easily as Eldra did. He would not fail the light.

The only bit of skin that Eldra can make out is the bridge of the nose, between the jaw-mask and those sunglasses. Red.

Whoever it is isn’t human.

It might give hope, but—whoever it is has already paid and they own Eldra now, they tell the slavers, in a deep and slightly mechanic voice.

Paid.

Own.

Not a rescue, then. The Jedi wouldn’t reward a slaver for abducting a padawan.

Eldra will not cry. Not because if does not befit a Jedi, because the Jedi didn’t come for her. Eldra remained faithful—barely—she didn’t give in to her hatred and fear, didn’t Fall… and no-one came to rescue her. She will never see the temple again. She’ll never watch those holovids with Bayro, and Bayro—will she even notice? Will she mourn Eldra? Or will she be relieved that the clingy kid is gone?

She won’t cry. She will not give Dilar or this new buyer the satisfaction.

The shielding of Eldra’s cell opens. Dilar attaches a chain to Eldra’s manacles and her buyer ties the other end to their belt. They barely look at her, at least—in the nightmares she refused to allow herself to grow into images they always looked at her, excited and hungry, but this buyer seems curt and weirdly business-like.

Without another word, they start walking.

Eldra has no choice but to follow. The Jedi didn’t come. She is alone. Whatever awaits her outside, though, it can hardly be worse than this cell.

#darth maul #eldra kaitis #savage opress #savage oppress #hell is just a beat away #dimtraces makes things

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theheartchoice · 5 years ago

Text

Lonely Is The Word

teen | 2k | canonverse s6 | ao3

for @profoundnet's bi-weekly Bot Stat challenge. prompt issued: April 30th 2019

Dean needs a beer. Cas is listening to angel radio. S̸a̵m̴ ̸i̶s̵ ̸f̵i̵n̵e̷.̸ ̷E̵v̵e̵r̵y̶t̵h̷i̴n̸g̴ ̵i̶s̵ ̷j̵u̶s̶t̵ ̷f̸i̴n̶e̷..̴.

Sam knows about his soulless gap year and Bobby's having a hard time trusting the resurrected version. Even without monsters, their lives are still a shitshow. Add in warring Angels and friggin' Purgatory-seeking Dragons and Dean just needs a second to breathe.

Dean only leaves because Sam is safe. No safer place than Bobby's. He just needs an hour or two to wrap his mind around things.

With Baby back to rights he drives 'til the sun dips below the wheatgrass horizon, no destination set in stone but half tempted to find a bar just south of the border. It's the best combo there is to clear his head: just the open road, whatever's on tap wherever he pulls up, and the right kind of company for just long enough to sate this desire to scream his lungs out - at crappy circumstance, at the Winchester family curse, at his own bad choices.

He just wanted his brother back, is that so bad? Sam didn't deserve to be left behind - not in that place; no one does. He shudders to think how Alastair's torture might pale in comparison to Lucifer's. For Sam to go through that again - to re-discover whatever's left of him? Forget calling in Death for a quick-fix favour, because even Dean knows some things can't be fixed, can't be undone, unseen.

Dean lives with his memories from the pit every day. Avoids 'em, as much as it's possible to do so without some magic mind-block, but he's changed forever because of 'em. And Sam might not've been the one dealing out damnation, but if time works in a similar way down there then he was Lucifer's chew toy for over a century. And if that doesn't shake anyone to their foundations just to think about then they're either a lunatic or a goddamn liar.

Cas spelled out Dean's fear in no uncertain terms: Let me tell you what his soul felt like when I touched it: like it had been skinned alive.

But was he right? Had Dean doomed Sam to a fate worse than death by trying to do the right thing? Trying to save him?

If you wanted to kill your brother you should have done it outright.

Sam's fine - for now. But how long before his wall crumbles into Hellfire? The structural integrity's already been compromised, and no matter what Sam promised, Dean knows his brother: if Sam wants to right his own alleged wrongs then he'll do it and nevermind the cost to himself.

And while Dean holds fast that whatever Samdroid did while his soul was MIA isn't on Sam, Bobby's less convinced. Just to throw another wrench in the gears of the 'better life' that was 'spose to finally be possible after the Apocalypse was averted. Not that that was really ever gonna happen.

No Armageddon, but the tradeoff was Sam jumping into the pit. Sam gets resurrected, but his soul gets left behind. Dean gets a taste of the Apple Pie life, but hunting is his bread and butter. There's a civil war up in the clouds because (as everyone well-knows) Angels are dicks. And as if the self-crowned king of Hell trying to rip a hole between dimensions wasn't enough, apparently that little adventure is now on some dragon-dude's bucket list.

Crazy as it sounds, Dean kinda misses the ol' days. Y'know, when all they had to do was take down a couple of overzealous Archangels. They've got shit stacking up on so many spinnin' plates right now it's impossible to tell which one's gonna be the first to topple and shatter, that crap raining down on 'em in a mess of blood and pain and one gruesome smear of trouble after another - and it'll soil a bunch of innocent people too, if they're not careful.

Knowing their luck it probably won't be just the one plate, either.

But when it comes to this sorta thing all they can really do is.. wait n' see. Try to be ready to divert whatever mountain of crap avalanches at them - or try to outrun it, sidewind it before the risk catches up with them and the goddamn consequences bury them alive.

Some small-town city limits come into view just as the clouded night kisses down the last of twilight. Dean knows this place. He can get what he needs here, on a lucky night. Hell, two out of three ain't bad. Booze? Check. Distance? Check. Company?.. Guess he'll have to wait and see.

He'd kinda like some answers, too. Some goddamn direction to point himself in when he hits the road again. And there is a certain someone who might be able to help with that - or might not. But whatever the case, Dean wouldn't turn his company away. Maybe what he needs right now, more than anything, is a friend.

Baby slows to a stop in the vacant lot across the street from the bar, Black Sabbath cutting out with the purr of her engine.

"Hey, Cas.." And where the hell does he go from here? Honesty, or a passable lie? Maybe somewhere in between. "I know you think what I did for Sam was the wrong call, and.." Yeah.. okay. "..honestly, I dunno. I dunno if what I did is gonna make things better or worse in the long run. All I know is that I had to, man - I had to." There's really no more to it than that. Except maybe just, "I could really use a friend, right about now." Reckless little brother, uncle who lied to him for a year; seems he can't really go wrong seeking the advice of his Angelic best friend, right? Even if he has been out of sorts since their little reunion. Better than the alternatives at least, even if there is a year of space between them now.

Dean'd be lying if he said he didn't wonder what Cas got up to during that year. Caught himself before shooting off a prayer more than once. Maybe just to check in, maybe to brainstorm ways to save Sam. His spirit - already struggling to dry off from the shitstorm of their lives - was dampened to learn that Cas wasn't the one who saved Sam from The Cage - or tried to. Cas did try though, so maybe that's somethin'.

In the time it would take for Heaven and Hell to play out the last few bars of track seven and most of the closing number, Dean sits alone in the driver's seat, headlights lighting the way to nowhere, waiting.

Turns out to be just another mistake in a long line of dumbass mistakes, another mark on the board for his tally of bad choices. Baby purrs back to life half only half a minute before she's put to sleep again and Dean's stalking away into the bar.

"—Castiel?" Rachel's voice pulls him back before his wings denote a telltale stretch - still a reflex he must wilfully deny. "Is something wrong?"

Yes. "No, I was just.. listening."

Her eyes harden, and Castiel has been made accustomed to that look over the last mortal year as she nods. "Raphael's soldiers think blocking our channels with their rhetoric will hinder our efforts, but his numbers are not what ours are. And they can't affect our communications for much longer."

Of course. It is a tactic only effective in the short-term, for the amount of energy required to interfere would significantly drain the Angels pervading the etheric communicative transference.

She proceeds to inform him of their recent losses in battle along with how many of Raphael's soldiers were presumably wounded or killed.

Castiel dreads such knowledge perhaps most of all; knowing the extent of Angelic grace being spilled in a war that would not be waging if not for his actions, his choices alone. The only reprieve he finds from the guilt is in the belief that Raphael would have spilled more - and destroyed the Earth, as well - if Castiel and his brothers and sisters had not taken up arms against him.

He manages a tight-lipped smile, something enough to satisfy that he understands. "Have we any more news of the missing weapons?"

"Not yet."

"Then I suggest you get back to it."

In the very least, being the Commander of garrisons affords him seniority, and with it the propensity to not have to explain himself further.

She takes her leave, and once he feels her grace reach an adequate distance in the aether, in her absence, he takes flight.

The familiar silhouette of one 1967 Chevrolet Impala is almost indistinguishable from the night sky, if not for the gleam of street-lamps off the polished metal belying an impression of the sun.

The moon is hidden tonight, as are the multitudinous stars of this galaxy - a favourite among many Angels throughout the eons. However, given the events of recent times, Castiel suspects he may be one of few Angels who prefer it over other galactic creations primarily for its housing of one particular solar system, which bears one particular planet, upon which a very special species makes its home.

Dean is gone.

The bar seems his likely destination, and if Castiel concentrates, allowing his Grace to reach out and survey the atmosphere.. yes. He can feel him near: warm and alive, though not at peace. He has never known what it is to feel Dean at peace in the mortal realm. There was a singular moment - fleeting and seeming so long ago, now - when his Grace touched Dean's soul raw and exposed; it seized his fear, incentivised Dean to feel safe, to trust in Castiel's intentions.

It was something akin to peace, perhaps relief. At the time, Castiel had thought it might be resignation to God's plan. But as he came to know Dean, he came to interpret that feeling as something intensely personal and not at all connected to The Grand Plan.

Perhaps, once Castiel completes his mission, once he stops Raphael and prevents the Apocalypse for all good, Dean will know peace. He deserves that much. He deserves much more.

The inside of the Impala is cool. Not as cold as the night air outside, but enough that Dean wouldn't be comfortable if he were to emerge from the bar this instant. Castiel places a hand on the dashboard, and while the engine remains silent, the interior comes alive in light and sound and air-ventilated warmth.

The music is not familiar, despite having listened through much of Dean's collection during his time with the Winchesters. Over the past year Castiel has not regretted safeguarding Dean's chance for peace, his life away from supernatural beings and the chaos and destruction they wrought. Although, he will admit to a certain discernible ache for their foregone time together; on the road within this now-familiar vehicle, or in whatever capacity Dean would have allowed, in any way that he might have needed Castiel's help.

The war in Heaven is not going well, despite Rachel's assurances. Without weapons at their disposal, Raphael's forces will soon diminish their own and all will suffer because of Castiel's failing. Which is precisely why he cannot fail.

Castiel always knew the chance of defeating an Archangel on his own was impossible, and therefore anything that could afford him victory in this war - to end the graceshed, to save Humanity, and the Earth, and Heaven from itself - then he must take it.

But even against all reason, all dangers considered, there are times when Castiel, too, does want for a friend.

For one friend, in particular.

..been higher than stardust

I've been seen upon the sun

I used to count in millions then

But now I only count in one

Come on, join the traveler

If you got nowhere to go

Hang your head and take my hand

It's the only road I know..

If only Castiel could pray to Dean.

..Yeah, Lonely is the word

Got to be the saddest song I ever heard..

But the want of a friend is selfish, dangerous.

Drawing Dean into the skirmish of Angels would further remove him from any chance at peace. And that, Castiel decides, is not worth the win. Even if Dean wants to help, he cannot allow it. He must keep Dean safe, and far away from the destructive reach of Heaven's current state.

..Yeah, Lonely is the name

Maybe life's a losing game.

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the-digimon-tamer · 5 years ago

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Chapter 36 - It Followed Us is out now on FanFiction.Net and ArchiveOfOurOwn! Check them out with the links or find it after the break!

Title: The Tamer v2.0 - In HIs Name

Fandom: Digimon

Rating: T

Synopsis: In the next adventure of the Digimon Tamer, the lives of Juri, Rika, and Henry change forever when digimon begin crossing over into the human world. But it’s all just a story, right? Just a book series by an author no one has seen in a long time. Why are they here and can they save their world before something worse follows the digimon?

All three groups - Digidestined, Monster Maker, and Hypnos - waited anxiously atop the Tokyo Metropolitan Building in anticipation of the Ark’s return. And every single one of them was worried about what would come through. A fully armed and equipped security team was on standby - in HAZMAT suits and geiger counters despite Izumi’s insistence that they weren’t necessary.

However, Yamaki didn’t want to chance it. He knew that these things brought radiation with them whenever they came through from their side of the Digital World. The last thing he wanted was to let these kids and their pets wander the city leaking more radiation than an X-Ray machine. He didn’t want to add sky rocketing cancer rates to the list of things his organization had to deal with.

At first there was nothing, just a long silence that made them all uneasy. With how much time they spent waiting, day turned to night and the city’s lights came to life.

Then a loud crack of thunder roared and a dazzling flash of light appeared in front of them as the sky seemed to rip open - letting through the ornate ship he had seen before. The Ark as it were called - or Grani - according to Curly. The ship appeared right on the helipad where it had before - floating perfectly still in the air for a moment too long until it turned around to reveal the open door on the back.

And inside were the kids they’d spent the afternoon trying to rescue: Henry, Xiaochun, Rika, Kazu, Kenta, Juri, and Takato - along with their digimon. Several digimon, actually. Digimon who were most definitely not with them when they left - a weird robot, a floating pink thing, the white bunny thing everyone was making a fuss about, another brown bunny thing and a small imp in the fox’s arms. Yamaki groaned at the realization that they’d actually brought back more of the creatures with them.

It should have been a happy moment. It could have been a happy moment, until Takato hopped out and was greeted by several of the security personnel with their weapons drawn. He threw up his hands immediately and whimpered, “I come in peace! I promise. Please put the guns down! No? Why does everyone feel the need to threaten me with a weapon today?”

“Are you seriously asking that question right now?” another boy asked as he stepped out of the ship Yamaki definitely didn’t recognize him. He expected a lot of things from them while they were in the Digital World. He didn’t expect them to bring back another human, although he probably should’ve at this point.

Once he noticed the others getting jumpy at the guns, Yamaki called out to get their attention and explained, “It’s a standard procedure. They’re not going to hurt you. Just let them make sure you’re safe and not leaking high levels of who knows what kind of radiation into the air.”

The men with the geiger counters approached, holding their devices up to the kids as Henry added, “I was feeling pretty safe until just now. What are they doing anyway? What kind of radiation do you think we have?”

“We don’t really know. Crossing the boundaries between worlds isn’t exactly a clean business. We need to make sure you’re not going to poison anyone around you and give them cancer. Hell, the last thing we need is you getting someone sick with an alien disease. Or some kind of slow acting poison.”

“Poison? Why would we do that?” little Xiaochun asked innocently enough. When one of the HAZMAT crew approached her, she shied away behind her older brother, “You’re scary.”

“Are all humans in this world like this? They’re all quite rude apparently,” the brown bunny stated with a frown. The floating pink thing added, “I don’t know, they seem alright to me. They just seem nervous. Maybe they need hugs!”

“Don’t! They might think you’re going to attack!” Kenta gasped.

“It’ll be alright, kids,” Zhenyu called out to them, trying to give some measure of comfort to his kids. After everyone was scanned, one of the HAZMAT crew called out, “We’re clear - radiation is at normal levels.”

“Finally!” the strange boy declared, pushing his way past the guards towards the nearest exit, “Well, it’s been fun but I’m heading home. I’m several years late on my curfew and I miss my parents.”

“Hold it,” Yamaki moved in front of the boy to keep him from escaping, “You weren’t part of the group when the kids went to the Digital World. Who are you?”

The boy groaned, “Oh you’re going to love this. Have a seat. We’re going to be here a while.”

…

As soon as the all clear was given, the Izumis wasted no time hurrying over to their daughter to hug her. And the poor girl was quickly overwhelmed, trying to push the two grown adults away in annoyance, “Mom! Dad! Get off!”

“And for a moment I thought you looked almost adorable Ruki,” Renamon mused from behind her with delight. Rika rolled her eyes, but smiled in appreciation of her parents. There hadn’t really been a family moment like that in a while. Hell, they hadn’t been together like this in some time - or rather for a few weeks. And it was good to see them getting along. And of Henry and his sister were having their moment with his parents. Kazu seemed to be trying to put up a brave face about the whole thing, with Kenta following his lead. After all, neither of them had told their respective families so there was no reason for them to know. Hell, they were probably worried sick about him. However, Guardromon spoiled the whole thing by pointing out a malfunction in his lacrimal gland - something Kazu didn’t understand, “My what?”

“It means you’re crying,” Miss Kamiya explained, crossing her arms, “Still, we’re glad to see you’re alright.”

“No biggie! So how long were we gone for?” Kazu answered smugly.

“A couple of hours,” Miss Kamiya answered, making his jaw fall to the floor, “Hours? It was weeks for us!”

“Time moves differently between worlds,” she responded.

Then there was the last set of parents: the Matsudas. And they seemed almost disappointed to see only one Takato there. Or rather Tamerkato. She knew where this was going and didn’t want to watch, looking away towards her parents. But both pf her parents seemed aware of what was going on. Her dad frowned, “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t even know the guy,” she answered sheepishly. That was right, she didn’t know him. So why did it hurt to think about it?

Rika’s eyes went downward band she tried to pretend what was about to happen wasn’t. But it wasn’t just the Takato situation she didn’t want to think about. There was so much to talk the about - the danger in the Digital World, the fact that they may have to go back to prevent it from destroying the Digital and reaching this world, amid all the other things that happened. For now though, all she wanted was to be with her parents. Although she wasn’t about to admit that. Then she remembered Ryo and Juri’s situation.

Ryo just wanted to go home after what had been twenty years of travel in the Digital World. Meanwhile, Juri had to watch her partner die in front of her. Tamerkato shared some responsibility for both. And now he had to answer for the real Takato - to the real Takato’s parents after promising to bring him back. She really didn’t envy him right now.

However, it seemed he didn’t want to answer for it either - instead opting to talk to Yamaki, “Let him go home. He’s had twenty years. Let him see his parents.”

“That’s all the more reason for us to hold him,” Yamaki countered, “Who knows what kind of diseases he’s brought back with him!? He could be sick and we wouldn’t know! We can’t be too careful.”

Tamerkato glanced once at Ryo, “I think he looks fine.”

Yamaki groaned, “I’m going to take the word of a medical professional over you.”

Tamerkato sighed and held up his digivice, “Where do you live?”

“Odaiba,” Ryo answered grimly, staring at him with increasing impatience. Tamerkato nodded, pressing a few buttons on his digivice, “You’ve got maybe a ten minute head start. Move quickly and try not to be seen. And see if you can keep him quiet. Understand?”

Ryo nodded quietly. Monodramon wasn't following and blurted out, “Hey! Why should I be quiet!?”

Yamaki looked between the two boys and asked, “What are you two planning?”

“This,” Takato answered with the biggest grin on his face before pointing his digivice at Ryo, “Good luck. Digiport open!”

Yamaki realized one second too late what was going on and tried to grab a hold of Ryo and Monodramon just before he vanished in a brilliant but dazzling display of light. Ryo was gone, possibly back to his won, world leaving Yamaki to stare at Tamerkato in anger, “What the hell did you do!?”

“I sent him back to his family,” Tamerkato flicked the man’s nose and looked over at the Matsudas. Yamaki grabbed a hold of him and raised him up in anger, “What do you mean you sent him back to his family!?”

“I’m sorry, I thought I was pretty clear,” Tamerkato remarked. Yamaki cursed under his breath and turned to one of his agents, “Get a team to Odaiba now and track that Ryo kid down now. Riley, start looking this kid up - missing child named Ryo. Find his address, family, everything. Tally, get a HAZMAT team ready to intercept him!”

“Sir!” the team of agents said as they disappeared back into the building to carry out their orders. Takato turned to the Matsudas now and his smile disappeared as he made his way over to them. Rika could only imagine what was going through his head. Tamerkato would have to tell their parents the truth about their son. And she didn’t want to imagine how they were going to take that news. Her dad tried to move her so that she wouldn’t see, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so, “Ruki, you don’t have to deal with-”

“I know,” she heard herself say.

“Honey, shut up,” her mom squeezed his shoulder to silence him. If he didn’t understand the message then, he certainly did when a loud slap rang out. Rika closed her eyes, took a deep breath and finally looked back at the Matsudas to see Tamerkato on the ground with a red mark on his cheek. What she thought was a slap was actually a fist from Mister Matsuda, he was only held back from giving another one by his wife. Tamerkato’s expression was empty - not sad or hurt. Just empty. Guilmon, on the other hand, was in front of him and growling at Mister Matsuda for laying a hand on him. Tamerkato however, didn’t even try to look at them. He didn’t smile his stupid smile or frown or anything. He rubbed the sore spot on his cheek and looked away, “I’m sorry.”

“You better be!” Mister Matsuda snapped angrily. Tamerkato still didn’t look at him, quietly wrapping his hands around his digivice before murmuring, “Digiport Open!”

There was a bright flash and he was gone. Yamaki was mad now, stamping his foot on the roof, “Dammit, now we’re missing two of them.”

“Good riddance,” Mister Matsuda grumbled while his wife turned him around, “Honey! Don’t say that!”

“Our son is dead because of him!”

“We don’t know that!” she reasoned, “We don’t what happened over on the other side!”

“We know our son went missing and then he showed up shortly after!” Mister Matsuda practically screamed back, cooling when he saw his wife flinch back. He took a minute to breath deep before looking back towards her, “You, um...Rika? What happened over there!? What happened to our son?”

“Don’t involve our daughter in this,” her mom stepped in front of her, “She had nothing to do with whatever bullshit Tamer is pulling!”

“Mom!” Rika gasped in surprise at her mother’s sudden use of vulgar language. She didn’t even know her mother had it in her but there it was plain as day. Mister Matsuda pointed at her angrily and shouted, “Your daughter went with him to the Digital World. I want to know what he did. I want to know what you found out! What happened to Takato!?”

Rika cursed under her breath, unaware that Tamerkato would leave her to have to deal with explaining the truth to the Matsudas. She should’ve known this would happen. Still, she couldn’t blame him. She didn’t want to be the one to tell him. And after the temper tantrum he threw in the Digital World, she was unsure of how much anger he’d be letting loose now. Which was another terrifying thought when she dwelled on it. What would she do if Megidramon suddenly let loose in the middle of Tokyo? It wasn’t like they had the ability to deal with that! They needed Azulongmon last time. And it wasn’t like they could just pull an all powerful dragon to the human world without scaring a whole lot of people.

”Hey!” Mister Matsuda snapped his fingers to get attention.

“Don’t talk to my daughter like that!” her dad snapped back.

“All of you calm down!” Miss Kamiya cried out at the top of her lungs, clapping her hands to get everyone’s attention. She threw her hands up in frustration, “In case you’ve all forgotten, we’ve got a situation on our hands. Rika, What thee hell happened in the Digital World and is everything alright?”

“That’s a long story and I don’t think there’s enough time in the day,” Rika finally managed to find her voice, “The good news is we’re back. The bad news is we may not be back for long.”

“What!? You have to go back!?” her mom gasped, covering her mouth in terror as her eyes widened in fear, “Well not without us you’re not!”

Rika didn’t want to be the one to break that news to them, and could only wonder what was going to happen to them now. Thankfully, Renamon was able to spare her having to answer the rest of the questions, “We know now why the Devas were after Calumon and why they were so intent on coming to this world. Our world, the Digital World, is in danger from an old threat. One that scares even the Digimon Tamer. Without us, the Digital World will certainly be destroyed. Then it’s only a matter of time before it comes to this world.”

“Why is it always the end of the world with this stuff!?” Davis complained angrily.

“Well, there’s one bit of good news. We found your partners and we know they’re safe,” Henry added hopefully. This earned the attention of everyone present, “You did!? Where are they!? Are they okay? How do we get to them!?”

“They’re alright and they miss you guys,” Henry answered happily, “They wanted to see you guys and come with us, but Takeru and Tamer said it wasn’t time. Without you guys there too digivolve then, they’d be more of a liability than a help.”

“TK!? He’s alive too?” Matt jumped up at the sound of his brother’s name, his shoulders slumping as all the tension left him.

“We should’ve known. Where else was he going to go?” Ken mused at the revelation. Despite the relatively good news they had to offer, Mister Matsuda cleared his throat again, “I hate to ruin this parade but what the hell about our son!? What happened to Takato!?”

The mood soured again. Rika glanced towards Juri, “We don’t really know. The only one who would know is Juri since she’s the one who found out first. Tamer wouldn't repeat what he told her and Juri’s...not been great ever since-”

She paused again, realizing that she might have just brought up a very painful memory for Juri. However, the girl hardly seemed to notice anything was said at all. In fact, she just stood there staring ever since they first returned from the Digital World. The poor girl must’ve been shellshocked - traumatized first from finding out that Takato was dead and again from witnessing Leomon die. She didn’t know what to say to her and could only place a hand and on her shoulder, “Hey, it’ll be alright.”

“You poor girl, I’m so sorry,” her mother said, going to hug the poor girl. Juri didn’t react, continuing to stare off into space. It was unnerving. Rika has to look away because of how terrifying she looked like this. As she scanned the other adults, she realized something, “Hey, where’re her parents?”

“They didn’t come, remember?” Doctor Kido remarked, making his way to the girl and resting a hand on her head, “It’s a shame. It seems like she could use her family right about now.”

It was obvious that Mister Matsuda was still steaming though and was about to snap when Doctor Kido apologetically told him, “She’s in no condition to talk to anyone right now. We can ask her tomorrow. For now, she should be with her family.”

“Her? What about my family!? What happened to my son!?” Mister Matsuda roared with increasing anger. Doctor Kido crossed his arms and stepped up to him, “You need to relax. I understand you’re upset but would knowing actually make you feel any better or would it just make you angrier? I think what you should do is take a deep breath and take a walk to clear your head.”

Mister Matsuda paused for a second, his wife still trying to hold him back before he let loose in a flurry of anger. That moment of lucidity appeared to finally calm him down, until he lashed out in anger at the doctor by striking him across the face. It seemed that moment of lucidity didn’t last as long as it needed to. Doctor Kido fell backwards onto the roof while Mister Matsuda massaged his hand, “When you lose your only child, then you can talk to me about calming down.”

He turned to leave, kicking everything he could find in a fit of anger. His wife trailed behind for a second, hesitating to follow him - perhaps even unsure of what she should do next. After all, did it matter? She’d just been told her only son was dead and not coming back. And who wanted to hear that news? Rika looked to the digidestined present - wondering if any of them would have anything to say about it. Between the eleven of them - they’d lost parents, siblings, but never kids. Even if any of them could relate, she doubted either Matsuda would appreciate the sympathy.

“I think it’d be best if we all head home tonight and cleared our heads,” Henry’s dad finally said, “The kids had a long trip and I’m sure they all want to go home and have a good night’s rest for the first time in a long time.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Kazu agreed, putting his hands behind his head. Yamaki waved to get their attention, “I can arrange for transport to get you kids and your digimon home discreetly.”

“What about-” Kenta whispered quietly, gesturing at Juri who continue to just stare off into space. Calumon whimpered, “It’s not Juri. It’s not. Please, something’s happened to her!”

“Calm down, Calumon,” Kazu said with a scolding voice. Unfortunately that tone seemed to be it for Calumon who ran for the edge of the roof, “No. I don’t like it. She’s scaring me!”

Henry and Xiaochun tried to chase him to the edge but their dad stopped them before they could get close. Several of the guards tried to secure him but he was too small and fast for them to catch. Before anyone could stop it, Calumon’s ears grew in size and he used them like wings to glide away off the edge of the roof.

Everyone cursed the luck of Calumon getting away like that but nothing could be done about it. Kenta groaned, “Man, and we went through all that trouble just to get him.”

“Never mind. It’s not like the Devas are coming to take him again. As long as he’s here, he’s safe,” Renamon assured him, “Besides, we have other things to worry about.”

She gestured to Juri; Rika’s mom has pulled away from the hug and was trying to talk to her but she didn’t seem to respond to anything.

Yamaki adjusted his shades, “We can have an agent escort her home. It’d probably be for the best.”

“I can do it,” Kari volunteered with a raised hand, going over to her student. Yamaki nodded, “Alright. We can figure out the rest of this tomorrow. It’s been a long day.”

Rika was glad that at least her teacher was willing to be with her. She was ready to leave when she noticed Renamon hanging back, “What’s wrong, Renamon?”

Her partner gestured at the small imp laying unconscious in her arms, “What about Impmon?”

“What about him?” Kazu answered coldly. Rika understood where her partner was going with this - they couldn’t just leave him here to the Hypnos Program. Especially with what those guys did to digimon. On the other hand, helping him was a tough sell after what he did to Leomon. After what he did to the rest of them. Then again, whatever Tamerkato did to him was definitely punishment enough. The poor guy had been screaming forever, before he was knocked unconscious.

She took a moment to consider but couldn’t reach a decision. Her partner put her faith in her that she would help save the Digital World. Why not return the favor? She sighed, “Do whatever you think is right.”

“Thank you,” Renamon nodded her head and adjusted the little digimon in her arms so that she was cradling him like an infant, “I’ll meet you back in your house. Good night.”

She vanished after that. Yamaki sighed as he massaged his head, “Great, more digimon getting loose in the city. Why am I still surprised at this point? This’ll be a fun report to the Minister.”

…

Kari tried to think of what to say to her student - a poor girl who had been through as much trauma in the Digital World as she had in her time as a digidestined. Between Myotismon’s attack, her brother’s disappearance, the Dark Masters, and everything else - her brother may come in and out of her life...but she’d never lost a partner like that. Hell, she didn’t even know what she’d do if Gatomon were to die and not come back. Although she had worried about her partner for the longest time. She at least knew her partner was safe.

But Juri?

All she could do was hold the girl’s hand as she walked her home. They reached the train station and bought some tickets for the two of them, the whole time trying to think of what to say her. The fact that she didn’t talk at all wasn’t helping. She’d bought her a soda and some crackers so she could at least have a snack but the girl didn’t even seem to notice. But she hardly registered that she was holding either the drink or the packet of crackers. It was just silent staring off into space, barely reacting or acknowledging the world around her.

It didn’t get any better when they got on the train and she sat silently, staring straight ahead without saying a word with the crackers and drink in hand. Kari made sure to take a car that no one else was using in the hopes that she’d feel more comfortable with privacy. But it didn’t seem to matter. In fact, she barely even moved when the train lurched forward. It was like she was a doll - a mannequin in the shape of Juri. Kari did the only thing she could think of, “I’m sorry about what happened in the Digital World, Juri. I wish you didn’t have to go through that.”

No response.

“I understand that you’re hurt. But I want you to know that you can talk to me about it. I’m not just your homeroom teacher, y’know. I’m also one of you. A digidestined,” Kari offered. Still no response. This wasn’t going to work. She needed to change her approach. But what else could she do? She couldn’t force Juri to talk to her. All she could do was try to be there for her, be someone that Juri could feel at ease with.

“Nutritional Facts. Serving Size: One Can. One Hundred Forty Calories per serving. Zero percent daily value of total fat. Two percent daily value of sodium. Roughly forty-five milligrams. Fourteen percent daily value of Total carbohydrates. Roughly thirty-nine grams. Seventy eight percent daily value of sugars. Zero percent daily value of proteins. Not a significant source of saturated fat, transfat, cholesterol, fiber, vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium. Ingredients. Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, caffeine.”

“Juri?” Kari blinked as her student continued to read the side of the can of soda she’d been given. It seemed her whole world had become reading the side of the soda can. And once she finished, she started reading the side bag of crackers. Kari snapped her fingers to get her attention, but Juri was laser focused on her reading more than anything. Maybe this was a coping mechanism? She knew her student would use a sock puppet to communicate with others if she felt overwhelmed and had something she had a hard time saying. But this, this was something else entirely. It was madness.

Then the lights of the train started to flicker - flashing on and off. She was beginning to rethink her concerns about being alone in an empty car and grabbed a hold of her student defensively, “Hang on.”

The lights flickered repeated until finally stopping, shrouding the car in darkness. This had to be a trap. A portal to the Digital World? A digimon appearing? It had to be something. Then there was a bright flash of light that briefly blinded them. When she could open her eyes again, the lights were back on and Tamer was lying on the ground, “Damn. I hate trying to land on moving targets. Are you okay Guilmon?”

“I’m fine. My head feels heavy,” the red dinosaur said from the ground beside him, upside down in his seat. Tamer helped the poor dinosaur and adjusted himself, “That’s because you were upside down. That happens when I try to land on a moving target since it’s hard to match the momentum when I have to consider the rotation of the universe around us. Earth is spinning at hundreds of miles an hour, rotating around another star going thousands of miles an hour, while also falling through...never mind.”

“Is that a food?” Guilmon asked.

“TAMER!” Kari gasped in surprise, quietly moving Juri behind her. In Juri’s current state, she was sure he was the last person she wanted to talk to. Tamer adjusted himself, massaging his head, “Hi Kari.”

“Where’d you go?” seemed like the wrong question to ask. There were a hundred questions running through her head. And none of them sounded appropriate. Takato or Tamer or Tamerkato or whatever he was going by now shook his head, “I figured that everyone would want nothing more than me to not be there. All the punches I’ve been getting lately got that message across.”

“Punches? Tamer...I mean...no, what are you doing here?” Kari finally managed to get out. Once he finished straightening himself out, he approached the two of them and separated them, “Here to talk. Not to you, Kari. But we can talk later if you’d like. I’m here to talk to you. Where’s Juri?”

He was pointing at Juri. Kari was beginning to think he’d finally lost it. No, when did he ever have it? This was insane. He said again, “Look, I know you’re not Juri. It’s not just the behavior, which is completely off. And the dead eyes stare is wrong too. The smells not doing you any favors either. No, what gave it away was the sock puppet. Juri always uses the sock puppet when she has a hard time saying what’s on her mind. She’d be distressed over what’s been going on lately. But she hasn’t used her sock puppet once. So who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

“If you knew, why didn’t you say something sooner?” Juri replied, her eyes moving up and down over Tamer curiously. The way the two of them were looking at each other, she was certain they were going to start throwing fists. However, Tamer indulged her, “I was waiting to see what you would do. You’re in our world now. What do you want?”

“Information. The nemesis is strong in power. A tactical withdrawal was necessary. There were complications, unexpected hurdles. The tactical withdrawal has turned into an advance. A two front sat,” Juri replied monotonously, “New subjects were encountered. At this time, there is insufficient information to properly process them. More information is needed. This world may contain the key to victory.”

“Victory against what?”

“The nemesis.”

“We’re getting off topic. Where’s Juri?” Tamer demanded angrily. Juri cocker her head to the side and smiled wickedly, “The subject designated Juri is here. Surrendering control of the face.”

Juri’s face twisted from one of passive indifference to pure terror as she shrieked, “AH! WHAT’S HAPPENING? WHERE AM I!? WHY CAN’T I MOVE? TAKATO!? HELP ME! FOR THE LOVE OF-”

Her face switched back to a passively indifferent expression and her voice became monotonous, “-control of the face reacquired.”

Tamer froze, “You’re in her body.”

Something like a smile twisted on to her face: a big wide toothy grin spread wider than it should be, “Of course. She invited it. She allowed it.”

“Invited it? She’s a ten year old girl who was emotionally devastated from the death of her partner! She wasn’t in a mental state to allow anything!” Tamer snapped.

“She wanted it,” Juri answered cheerily. Something about that shook her and she growled, “What the hell!? What have you done to my student.”

“Relieved her of her suffering. Of her guilt. Of her anger and her frustration,” Juri replied. Whatever was inside Juri, was controlling her body, said it with such sickening glee that Kari wanted nothing more than to hurt it. But how? She wasn’t even sure how it was inside her body. And hurting this thing would just hurt Juri.

“Who are you?” Tamer demanded angrily. The thing that was inside Juri looked at her with an even bigger smile, “I’ve been given many designations over the time of my existence. Destroyer. Devourer. Death. The Beast. However, these designations are just words use to ascribed to some meaning to my existence in an ill conceived attempt by lesser beings to comprehend me.”

“Big words and a lot of talk, but not a lot of answers,” Tamer tapped his foot impatiently, “Who. Are. You?”

It cackled, “I am your reckoning. My existence is to purge the dangerous. The powerful. To balance the scale and give the smaller life forms a fighting chance. Until they grow too strong. The scales must be balanced. The world must understand its natural order. All life will die. All endings lead to new beginnings. I am the-”

“Bored now,” Tamer interrupted. Juri’s twisted smile disappeared and turned to one of twisted anger, “Your callous disregard for the common etiquette and shift in attitude indicates a level of cockiness or confidence not shared by your peers. Your confidence could be due to an immeasurable level of stupidity because you don’t quite grasp the situation you’re in. But we both know that’s wrong. So it must come from a level of confidence in your own ability of strength to feel unthreatened by me. And I can assure you that you should be very afraid - because my purpose is to destroy people like you.”

“You’re the computer program the others made to manage the Digital World,” Tamer concluded. Kari looked from Juri to Tamer, unsure what was going to happen next. But this was not a safe place to be. This train and everyone on it was in great danger. Juri’s creepy smile returned, “The Digital World fears me. This world will fear me too!”

“But that’s not possible. You’re a data life form! A data life form can’t just merge with organic life form. That’s...that’s not possible,” he stammered in disbelief. Juri cocker her head to the side, “It is possible. It’s happened before. It can happen again.”

“Bioemerging,” Tamer gasped, “You biomerged. You tried to anyway but you...oh...no...”

“The scales must be balanced. You are a clear and present danger to those around you,” Juri said, reaching out towards Tamer with her hands. Tamer’s eyes widen in terror at that statement and he stepped back towards Kari, “Hang on to me. Digiport Open!”

He held his digivice up in the air. Kari latched onto him as there was another bright flash of light. She closed her eyes, familiar with the sensation of falling until it went away and was replaced with the cold chill of the night air. She opened her eyes and found herself on top of a building beside Tamer and Guilmon. He dusted himself off and apologized, “Are you alright Kari?”

“I’m fine. What the hell was that?” she said, trying to gain her bearings. They were on a rooftop now, somewhere in the city. On closer inspection, they were not too far from where they’d gotten on the train. They were in Shinjuku, not too far from the Metropolitan Building. Tamer readjusted his clothes, “A bad situation. A very bad problem. The thing terrorizing the Digital World, that made the Sovereigns and the Devas freak out, that started this whole thing...it’s here. In Tokyo. And I think I’m the reason it got loose in this world.”

“What do you mean?” Kari’s voice shook, quavering with an anger for Tamer she didn’t know she’d had before. He held up his hand to calm her down and tried to massage her head, “Sorry, I need a moment to think.”

Kari was about to snap. She considered her words carefully before speaking, making sure to watch her tone so that she didn’t explode on him, “Tamer, I’ve been nothing but patient and giving you moments. Ever since you first showed up in my apartment when I was a kid. Ever since your disappeared out of my life. Three times. Talk to me! Keep me in the loop! What is going on!? What the hell was that and why is it here?”

Tamer massaged his temples, “I noticed something was wrong with Juri after Leomon died but didn’t want to cause more problems so I didn’t say anything. And I needed to be sure that whatever was pretending to be her wasn’t a threat. But I definitely screwed that up and now there’s a crazy monster that kills everything it sees and eats everything it kills running around Tokyo in the shape of a ten year old girl. And I...oh shit.”

He stopped and stared off into space without saying a word. He fell quiet and Kari felt her frustration bubbling. She cursed, “Oh shit? Tamer, tell me you’ve got some kind of a plan. Tell me you know how to beat this. Tell me it’s all under control.”

No response. She was getting really tired of that. She snapped, “TAMER!?”

Tamer turned her head with his hand to see what he was seeing. And she knew why he’d fallen silent. She wasn’t sure what to do. There was a great big red gelatinous mass in the center of the city that hadn’t been there before. In fact, now that she thought about it, that was right where the train had been a moment ago. That was where their train was a second ago. It was a lot to process how much danger they were in, “Oh shit.”

#The Tamer v2 In His Name #Digimon Tamers #Fanfiction #archive of our own #Chapter 36

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eyesaremosaics · 7 years ago

Note

Feminist film recommendations?

Hmm interesting question anon. I will list some of my personal favorites (in no particular order) hopefully you enjoy them.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

I felt like there was fire in my veins walking out of the cinema. Not only is Charlize Theron’s Furiosa a total badass, but the best thing is that it’s not just her. To have such a range of women portrayed equally and beautifully was so uplifting. Women caring for each other, lifting each other and fighting hard for what is right. We need more of that, both in Hollywood and in life.

2. The color purple (1985)

Read this book in high school, about a sisterhood of women, all standing together against the racism and sexism that they face and somehow coming out on top. It’s an inspiring story of women coming together in the face of adversity.

3. Gone With the Wind (1939)

Scarlett was the most coveted female film role of all time. Despite the films obvious flaws as a result of the time period in which it was made, overall this is a feminist parable. Scarlett is above all else–a survivor. She never gives up, digs her heels in, rolls up her sleeves and does it. She faces adversity with admirable courage. Despite the fact that she is a terribly flawed human being, you can relate to her. She sets her mind to something and she does it, whether it’s dragging her family out of poverty or eating as much BBQ food as she damn well likes. Her flaws make her human, which adds richness to the overall story. Scarlett has inspired me to persevere at the darkest of times. When all hope seems lost, “tomorrow is another day.”

4. Erin Brockovich (2000)

I love Julia Roberts, and this movie stands out as one of her best in my opinion. A single mother, fallen on hard times, but somehow holding everything together. Making the best of a bad situation, an eternal realist. Portraying a woman as much more than she appears. She uncovers some dark secrets (chemicals leaked into the sewer systems) which led an entire community to develop terminal illness. She works tirelessly to expose those responsible and find justice for those who can’t help themselves. My favorite line is when this bitchy secretary says: “maybe we got off on the wrong foot here.”“Yeah lady because that’s all you got, two wrong feet and fucking ugly shoes.” Bahahaha

5. Suffragette (2015)

Tells the story of the women’s right movement at the turn of the last century. It taught me to stand up for myself, and for women everywhere. Very proud to have that as a part of our history. Incredibly grateful to all the women who fought tirelessly, endured persecution, humiliation, incarceration to ensure my right to vote.

6. Pocahontas (1995)

Pocahontas is VERY loosely based on the true story. Disney took a lot of liberties here which mask the horror of early American history and its impact on the native Americans. HOWEVER, what I like about her characterization in this film… Is that she was strong, rebellious, bold, adventurous, and wise. She went wherever the wind took her, a true free spirit. She was graceful, and kind in ways other Disney princesses were not. The purity of her heart and the message she had to bring, stopped a war. She is a warrior, but not one that fights with weapons, she fights with love. In the end she chose herself and her duty to her people over a man. I wanted to be just like her when I was a little girl watching this in the theater, and she still inspires me today, nearly 20 years later.

7. Fried green tomatoes (1992)

I watched this film when I was in high school, with low expectations and was very surprised to discover how moved I was. A story of two women, finding empowerment within oneself. The main character listens to a story from an elderly woman and learns how to love herself. I believe it’s important to encourage other women and learn from each other.

8. Obvious child (2014)

Jenny Slate’s character has an abortion after a one night stand with a guy she actually really likes. However, she knows she isn’t prepared for it and chooses to terminate the pregnancy. There’s great friendship and family in the film and it really helps to destigmatise abortion.

9. Wild (2014)

The book is arguably better, but the film is worth watching. A woman goes out and hikes one of the worlds longest trails, on a mission to find herself and to prove that she can finish what she starts. Finding herself on the elements, and getting clarity. Very freeing and inspiring.

10. Kill Bill 1 & 2 (2003)

Uma Thurman is a boss, and everyone knows it. She is so vice tally connected to her inner life as an actress, always enjoy watching her. These films are what she is most known for nowadays, and for good reason. It’s a story of revenge. A woman is almost murdered by the man she loved, pregnant with his child. Wakes up in a hospital, having been in a coma for years. Suffered all kinds of indignities, she willed herself to walk again. Dragged herself by her fingernails until she could rise up, strengthen her skills as a warrior, and set out to settle old scores. She takes each person down one by one, yet you still find the humanity behind each character and the reasons why they did what they did and became who they were. It’s about survival, perseverance, and ultimately in the end–forgiveness. Leaving the past behind, to start over again.

11. She’s beautiful when she’s angry (2014)

It’s a documentary about the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, with interviews with many of the women who were part of it. Sure, it makes you angry to see injustice, but it’s also highly uplifting to see what these women did, and how it paved the way for equality forty to fifty years later. These women were, and still are, amazing figures who haven’t stopped fighting.

12. How to make an American quilt

A group of older women reflecting on their lives around a quilting table. Each of their stories are so inspiring, and the way they all come together to heal from their traumas is very powerful. Winona Ryder’s character (Finn) is experiencing a late twenties crisis of identity, and is unsure about wether or not to get married to her long term fiancée. Listening to the lives of all these women helps bring perspective and clarity to her. Life is never black and white, life is like a quilt. You build as you go along.

13. Frida

This Selma Hayek-fronted, Academy Award-winning biopic of the feminist icon portrays the artist in a whole new light. It’s amazing to watch the story of any incredible historic figure succeed against the odds, but double if said figure is also a woman and shot so beautifully by Julie Taymor.

14. The hours (2002)

This film follows three women as their lives weave in and around the narrative of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The multi-generational movie shows how people are connected through time by similar angst, anxieties, and personal struggles.

15. The Stepford wives (1975)

What happens to women when things are too perfect? The answer might make their husbands happy, but the truth behind what is happening in this ideal-seeming suburb is nothing short of horrifying.

16. Miss Representation (2011)

A documentary on the way women are treated and portrayed in the media, this film broke open the truth behind the images women and young girls are force fed on a daily basis. Start your watching here, if you can, and then continue on to these other films to see how much has and hasn’t changed.

17. North Country (2005)

A fictionalized account of the first majorly successful sexual harassment case in the United States, this film follows the female miners who fought for their right to work without suffering the abuse their male coworkers heaped on them because of their gender.

18. The Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel

New Argentine Cinema figure Lucrecia Martel draws connections to the country’s dark political/class struggles, transposing its “disappeared” from the mid-to-late ‘70s into a sedate, challenging story about a woman’s fractured state following a fatal accident and its ensuing cover-up.

18. Princess Mononoke, Hayao Miyazaki

A thread of feminism weaves itself through the work of Hayao Miyazaki. Perhaps his most mature film, Princess Mononoke features a memorable and tenacious heroine, San, who subverts feminine stereotypes and is written without the fanciful quirks commonly found in animation. She is serious and single minded. Grounded to the earth, living in the moment. She is totally present, and pure. Even her rage comes from a pure unadulterated place. Wolf-goddess character Moro deserves attention as an unlikely mother figure that is fierce and, well, totally pissed off (you would be too if people were destroying your home), but also wise and nurturing. Fighting for what’s right, against impossible odds. Being humbled by nature, the ultimate female reclamation. So many layers in this film.

19. Dogfight, Nancy Savoca

A rare film set during the Vietnam War and told from the perspective of a woman, Nancy Savoca’s Dogfight reveals a different kind of cruelty people inflict upon one another, off the battlefield — in this case, a group of misogynistic Marines using women in a contest of looks. Lili Taylor’s peace-loving Rose, who becomes one of the targets in this game, soon realizes she’s being courted by River Phoenix’s Eddie for the wrong reasons — though his guilt and seemingly genuine interest in Rose is apparent. Rose confronts Eddie about the game, defending the honor of all women involved, which winds up bringing them closer together.

20. Alien, Ridley Scott

She’s not a sidekick, arm candy, or a damsel to be rescued. She isn’t a fantasy version of a woman. The character is strong enough to survive multiple screenwriters. She was lucky enough to be played by Sigourney Weaver,” said Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America President John Scalzi of Ellen Ripley from 1979’s Alien. Defying genre cinema’s gender clichés (she is gender neutral, really) as the clear-minded, intelligent, and capable officer of the ship Nostromo, Ripley is more resourceful than the men who employ her and steps in to take over when all hell breaks loose.

21. Orlando, Sally Potter

Our own Judy Berman recently highlighted Tilda Swinton’s performance in Potter’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s satirical text that explores gender and artistic subjectivity, a project that was ambitious in both form and content:

“Although it’s far more straightforward a narrative than most of her work, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando still presents one major challenge for the big screen: its protagonist is a nobleman in Elizabethan England who lives a life that spans centuries, and is suddenly transformed into a woman midway through it. Tilda Swinton may be the only (allegedly) human actor equipped to play the role of such a regal, mysterious androgyne, and her performance in this adaptation — also a breakthrough for director Sally Potter — became her signature.”

22. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy

Celebrated for its vivid milieu, Jacques Demy’s sensitively characterized film is a superior look at an independent woman (Catherine Deneuve) in a romantic narrative who makes difficult choices about marriage, children, and survival that sometimes leave her alone — but she is never lonely because of that.

23. Daisies, Vera Chytilová

The young women in Vera Chytilová’s Czech New Wave farce “construct fluid identities for themselves, keenly aware of their sexuality, toying with the men who pursue them. It’s an exhilarating, surreal, anarchic experiment, framed by the turbulent 1960s.

24. Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash

Julie Dash directed the first feature film by an African-American woman distributed theatrically in the United States in 1991 — a stunningly captured look at three generations of Gullah women off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia in 1902.

25. Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren

The bar for avant-garde female filmmaking, born from personal experiences and anxieties. Maya Deren’s 1943 experimental classic builds its interior female perspective and constructs of selfhood through dreamlike imagery.

26. The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer

Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum on Carl Theodor Dreyer’s crowning achievement, released in 1928, that still painfully echoes contemporary cases of female oppression — the film’s silent context taking on an unintentional resonance:

“Carl Dreyer’s last silent, the greatest of all Joan of Arc films… . Joan is played by stage actress Renee Falconetti, and though hers is one of the key performances in the history of movies, she never made another film. (Antonin Artaud also appears in a memorable cameo.) Dreyer’s radical approach to constructing space and the slow intensity of his mobile style make this ‘difficult’ in the sense that, like all the greatest films, it reinvents the world from the ground up. It’s also painful in a way that all Dreyer’s tragedies are, but it will continue to live long after most commercial movies have vanished from memory.”

#asks #feminist #feminism #cinema #feminist film #feminist cinema

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cheapbridesmaiddressesrjda · 5 years ago

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hermanwatts · 5 years ago

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Fantasy and Adventure New Releases: 29 February, 2020

Xianxia magical protectors, infernal collections agents, and dungeon fairy assistants fill this week’s list of fantasy and adventure new releases.

Annex (Artorian’s Archives #3) – Dennis Vanderkerken and Dakota Krout

Headmaster. Exile. Gladiator.

Backed into a corner, Artorian must play fast and loose with the laws of the land. To gather what he needs to progress, he will need to sacrifice what he’s gained in order to get this far.

With his new school and friends facing their most deadly challenges yet, Artorian finds an opportunity to keep them safe. The cost of it may be access to the new home he’s built, but that was never intended to be for him.

When he can ensure their safety, Artorian will begin pursuit of his grandchildren once more. If he finds them, will they want to be saved… or will they have found a taste for the darker powers they have accrued? It’s time to make the hard choices.

Death or graduation.

Axestorm (Sky Realms Online #3) – Troy Osgood

Hall had hoped things would finally start to settle down. He should’ve known better.

He’s been trapped within the new version of Sky Realms Online for months. Mostly at peace with it, he’s started to make a new life within the game world. He’s found a woman to love, the NPC Druid Leigh, and a village to call home.

Skara Brae is still mostly ruins but he now has friends and citizens to help rebuild. But he’s still missing many of the resources needed.

A quest for one of those resources, an airship, will send Hall and his companions far away to the cold island of Huntley, home to Storvgarde tribesmen and the Dwarven citadel of Axestorm Hall.

What should have been a simple voyage by airship will become much more as Hall will face shipwrecks, stolen Dwarven artifacts, rampaging tribesmen, a blast from his past, and more mysteries from a game they no longer know.

The Players will find themselves more connected to the world of Hankarth than ever before or they even thought possible and Hall will face his greatest challenge. Fighting for his life and his beliefs.

Will Hall survive long enough to learn who or what the Champions are?

Blood Tally (Valkyrie Collections #2) – Brian McClellan

Alek Fitz is the lead reaper for Valkyrie Collections, an agency that gathers debts for the paranormal elements of the world. Bound into modern-day slavery by a contract he cannot break, sold by parents he never knew, Alek works alongside demons, spirits, witches, and even Death himself to collect on deals made with humanity.

When Alek is forced to take a job from a local vampire hunting down a run-away thrall, he is immediately thrust into a world of blackmail and backstabbing, where the Rules are nothing more than an inconvenience to ancient, supernatural predators. For the first time, Alek has more to fear from his clients than from his debtors.

But Alek is the best in the business. It’ll take more than a Vampire Lord to keep a good reaper down.

The Dungeon Fairy (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy #1) – Jonathan Brooks

All that Tacca GloomLily ever wanted to be since she was very little was a Fairy Assistant to a Dungeon Core. After her negatively portentous birth, however, she was never fully accepted by her superstitious peers and instructors at the Dungeon Assistant Preparatory School; nevertheless, she persisted in her studies and graduated at the top of her class. Unfortunately for her, the “hands-on” training she was supposed to receive from a Mentor and his Bonded Dungeon Core didn’t go the way she would’ve hoped. In fact, the stigma attached to her origins finally made itself known in the form of horrendously “bad luck”; the rotten part of her newly discovered luck was that it adversely affected Cores that she happened to be near, and not just herself. What can a Dungeon Assistant Fairy do when every Dungeon Core she gets near ends up being destroyed? Tacca had no idea, but a solution eventually presents itself – though it’s one that she never saw coming…

The King’s Man (The Zero Enigma #7) – Christopher Nuttall

The City of Shallot is on the verge of revolution. The Great Houses are mustering their forces, readying themselves for a shift in the balance of power. The poor have found a new leader and are – finally – demanding their rights. Shadowy figures and old ghosts are prowling the streets. It is only a matter of time before the unease and unrest explodes into violence, as the wealthy and powerful seek to secure themselves in a changing world. And dark forces are laying plans to take advantage of the chaos …

A newly-graduated student, the son of a proudly independent merchant, Adam Mortimer is recruited into the Kingsmen and charged with helping to track down the anarchists and terrorists before they trigger an explosion. But, as he delves into the mystery, he finds himself caught between the scars of his childhood and his hopes for the future, loyalties tested as he finds himself caught between old friends and new.

And, as infernal devices begin to terrorise the city, Adam must risk everything to save the people he loves …

Primary Target (Six Assassins #1) – Jim Heskett and Nick Thacker

The Denver Assassins Club has one rule for its members: Step out of line and you become the next target.

Ember Clarke is a nimble killer-for-hire.

She only accepts jobs to snuff out dirtbags who deserve it, like the serial rapist currently in her crosshairs; the latest of her contracts.

But when a rival Club hitman shows up to steal the contract — and put a knife in her back — she has no choice but to add another stiff to her body count.

But she quickly learns that the Club will not tolerate killing another member, even in self defense.

Her punishment?

A grueling six-week gauntlet of being stalked by her peers, starting with an eagle-eyed sniper from another branch of the Club.

Can Ember turn the tables on the first of six, or will this hunter’s next bullet have her name on it?

In Ember’s new world, it’s kill-or-be-killed.

And there are plenty who want to kill her.

Soul Bound (Dweller Saga #1) – A. J. Flowers

The gods are dying.

Thane has served his goddess for thousands of lifetimes, but even he knows that time is running out. There’s only one way to save her, to save all of Dweller kind, and it’s a suicide mission.

The host is a boy named Jakob. His ancient soul is one of the rare sources of power still recycling in the world of flesh. Thane has taken so many souls to his goddess, but this one could save them all.

It’s only when Thane learns the truth of the gods does he deny them their power. Souls aren’t recycled. They’re destroyed, and his goddess isn’t a deity… she’s a monster.

Permanently melded with his human host, Thane meets his soulmate, a woman who captures his heart like his goddess never did. He’ll do anything to protect her, and the gods know it.

Word of Truth (Buried Goddess Saga #6) – Rhett C. Bruno and Jaime Castle

The end is coming. It’s time to make a last stand…

Whitney, Lucindur and the others couldn’t stop Nesilia from returning in a new form. Many died in their failed attempt, but not all hope was lost. Sora is free and more powerful than ever, ready for vengeance against the Buried Goddess. Together, they’ll have one last shot at stopping her, but it may be too late.

Nesilia’s army tears across Pantego, killing everything in their path. The Drav Cra stand with her under Freydis, Babrak leads a Shesaitju fleet in her name. Demons and monsters from Elsewhere are slaves to her will.

In order to have any chance of fighting back, Sir Torsten Unger and Caleef Mahraveh arrange a marriage in an effort to unite their rival kingdoms. But if the people of Pantego can’t come together once and for all, Nesilia will drown all the world in darkness.

Fantasy and Adventure New Releases: 29 February, 2020 published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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