#age: ❝ you can’t have peace without a war ❞ [ young adult ]

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

Nowadays I find Mustang and co’s whole thing to be faux-deep. Like it’s supposed to be a compelling story about guilt and how we’re all messy and terrible, and anyone who hates this just can’t handle protagonists being flawed people.

But in practice it’s about how PoC’s brutalization and misery, often at the direct hands of white people, is ultimately meant to be the backdrop behind the white character’s growth and maturity so they can better understand the world now. And if they keep stumbling then PoC have to patiently, passively accept their continued brutalization for the sake of the white character making the right choice for THEIR agency and development.

It’s demeaning as hell, it’s like their victims don’t actually exist other than to be perfect victims without feelings or thoughts who are just punching bags for the white character to feel sad over and maybe wonder about the perspective of, but the narrative itself doesn’t actually wonder.

As an addendum to my ask; I hate how the brutalization of their entire lives and culture is just the price that PoC have to pay for the self actualization and development of a few white characters. Jeez it’s cool that Mustang found a new purpose and meaning in life, too bad his peace of mind came at the cost of so many innocents who deserved that more than him! Like why is Mustang’s growth prioritized over Ishvalan lives, how many had to burn just so he could get the hint?

Very well said. The characters of colour are backdrops both literally and figuratively. The white characters won't worry about the suffering or personhood of the (in this case) Ishvalans. At best they (and the narrative) will project whatever is most useful for the betterment of the white/light skin characters onto the Ishvalans. All while dearly protecting the pro-military-under-correct-leadership message of the manga/show.

-

This is going to be a side tangent, but bear with me here:

No doubt you've noticed the phenomenon of tumblrinas flocking to defend USAmerican soldiers and other military personnel the moment anyone (rightfully) disparages the armed sector of the American empire. They'll cry "You don't understand! These non-billionaire young Americans join the military because they were preyed upon by recruiters! They're poor and they were promised an education and a career in exchange for their recruitment! Our education system is bad and never taught them about the military industrial complex! They had no idea what they were getting themselves into!"

Which is all such bold-faced horseshit for one too many reasons.

1) The USA is a military state. It's infamously exorbitant funding towards its various military branches and projects eclipse the GDPs of entire nations. Even the most ignorant American ever knows their military is a big deal.

2) Their entire entertainment industry, particularly the mainstream movie industry, is bankrolled by the American military. All anyone is fed is either at-home copaganda (police) or abroad copaganda (military). It valorizes itself, yes, but it's not hiding that you're going to commit violence on others in order to police the world.

3) American culture is deeply, deeply, DEEPLY nationalist. It exults its own military forces as their true protectors, and the protectors of "freedom" the world over. ('Freedom' is America's fave euphemism for its global dictatorship.) You ever hear a diehard military bootlicker/active duty pig/veteran talk about their time as a professional murderer? Most are pretty stoked to do what they obviously signed up for. I'm not remotely convinced that your average USAmerican teen/young adult has never once encountered this form of jingoism. Many themselves are just are pro-invasion, pro-war as their elders.

4) They train you in combat and the use of drones, firearms, armoured vehicles, etc. Put two and two together. You don't need to be an aged academic to grasp what the fuck the weapons are for. You're signing up to kill people, even if its coated in a paint of "protecting your own people". Generations grown on shit like CoD aren't left scratching their heads about what they might potentially do to people when they sign up.

And the most important, glaring point that every single apologist just can't seem to grasp: why in the goddamn should anyone outside of the USA and the West give a flying rat's fuck about whether an American youth can afford college or not based on whether they take up arms against the Global South and SWANA? They think their lives, their nation, their lifestyles trump the lives of the rest of the fucking globe.

To them, everyone else should be ok with having their resources, their land, their people, their labour, and their lives ruthlessly extracted and mass slaughtered because it helps ignorant American cunts afford to be better capitalists/workers (go to school and have a career)! Your average American is convinced they're more oppressed (and naturally more important) than the people in the countries they sign up to subjugate! Slandering the very cogs who sign up to be cogs, who are key to allowing the war machine to continue churning black, brown, and Oceanic lives into mulch for USAmerican prosperity hits American psyches too hard.

Americans are real people, complex and pitiable, noble but exploited. Everyone else are cold hearted barbarians who could never ~understand~ The States (nevermind that the entire world can't go 5 seconds without encountering American marketing, products, news, entertainment media, aggression, etc etc etc, but I digress).

-

I bring up this real world example not to equivocate fiction with the very real, deep horrors of unending American atrocities (let us not lose perspective). But rather to illustrate the threads of imperial and military propaganda so imbedded in the mass consciousness of imperial citizens. The logic of existing societal structures informs the stories that get produced by workers, embraced by audiences, and then reinforced by fandom and merchandising. Mangahood fans are very precious about maintaining the illusion of criticality against militarism and genocide because it offers them comfort in being cogs in these real world systems too. (There's blood on the hands of everyone in the West. When it comes to tech, the blood of mining and factories is on the hands of the entire world.)

It's tooootally fine that mangahood dwells only on the humanity of Amestrian pigs for the price of painting a lousy caricature of the Ishvalans on thin paper that backdrops this lousy attempt at an "anti-imperialist" narrative. Because soldiers are people too! And yes, they are. So why are they exempt from from the direct culpability of their actions, their patriotic dogma, their ignorance that "allowed" them to carry out the extreme violence bought them security in their fascist nation's hierarchy? Why should we swallow what fma wants, that the Ishvalans ought to "know their place" and accept that their extermination will better their exterminators? Why should Ishvalans, especially Scar (and whatever other radical/anti-Amestrian Ishvalans that are implied to be around but never seen), be ok with that? Mustang, Riza, Hughes, etc needed to commit ethnic cleansing in order to feel like maybe Ishvalans are people too? That this shit is unethical? That they should have never signed themselves to become professional murderers simply because they "didn't know it would come to this"? Because they were too idealistic and self-serving?

Obviously we want flawed characters. We want narrative tension. We want to explore stories about imperialism. We don't want to pathologize war criminals in such a way that its abdicates the citizen class from their key role in agreeing to commit these acts, or back imperialism more broadly. And I'll never be the sort to champion the wretched notion that "certain topics must never be written about or depicted". But we sure as hell can point out when something that's passed off as anti-racist is in fact the total fucking opposite, especially in the ways it defends dominant racial/national/ethnic groups against the groups they thrive off of oppressing. We need to see through the sleight of hand excuses baked into media, and the ways that fans regurgitate the logic of racist systems as a way to comfortably enjoy said media without grappling with hard truths.

Many want to convince us that the hard truth in mangahood is that fascists and war criminals are human. That your ideals can lead you to do tremendous harm (it does such a lopsided job of this). These stories fail this goal when they strip the humanity of people of colour. And the fans who can't handle critique of mangahood avoid the hard meta-critique that gets made in regards to mangahood's execution of such a story. It wants to present challenging themes but flubs the execution because it always opts for the framing that grants the most grace to the people within institutions that commit genocide.

The truly difficult truth for most fans is everything you wrote so well, anon. Racialized people exist to be the dominant race's personal development. That mangahood plays this trope straight, with greater criticism against the agency and actualization of racialized, oppressed classes. Ishvalan deaths are not a tragedy for Ishvalans, but a tragedy for the Good Real People who carried it out. Killing those teary-eyed Real People in retaliation is a more grave act than killing anyone who refuses to be amalgamated into the nation. (The fear of violent resistance against an imperial nation is core to mangahood.)

Mangahood does everything it can, as a story, to conjure these rote defenses of its primary military figures. Their mass slaughter led to guilt which led to resistance against Bradley, the council, and Father. So why should the Ishvalans be seen in any other light besides a glib plot point? They'll be made anew by their killers soon anyway. Because their killers have grown, as People.

[burningflametm]

❝People make the wrong decisions. And sometimes they decide to go away for a little while. And sometimes it takes time to understand why.❞

Hope is for Suckers? || Meme

abby almost let out a bitter laugh, she looked up as the other spoke, running a hand through her hair. “oh believe me i know that. far too well.” she told her, shaking her head a little. she gave the other a curious look now though. “but why bring this up? you have someone leave you or something?”

[okdeedee]

had i known you better

cassian andor x gn!reader - ch 1. of latch

an: hello everybody i hope you are all well! this is the second / first instalment of whatever this cassian stuff is. how they met. the title comes from had i known you better then by hall and oates. beautiful song.also i just love to make stuff up and star wars is so vast i get the licence to do that.

warnings: none. just fluff and meet cute stuff. regardless, minors you cannot be here. thank you. one use of the word ‘ass’ so you could say we’re getting super profane in this one.

wc: 2.3k

The first time he sees you, Cassian is in a foul mood. 

Not for one glaring reason, but for an amalgamation of annoyances that have presented themselves to him over the course of the day.

He sat up from bed too quickly this morning (after a mere three hours’ sleep) and hit his head on the bunk above him. Two different meetings ran half an hour late each. He tripped over a fuel hose on his way through the lower hangar, and now there is a dull, throbbing pain in his leg. K-2SO’s acerbic wit; usually something Cassian enjoyed or at least tolerated hearing, was getting on his last nerve. 

By now, it’s 1600, he has missed lunch, he is behind on admin, and the beeps and whips of the droids that buzz past him in the corridor are making him want to peel off his own skin. One wouldn’t be able to tell that by looking at him, though. His sullen resting face is infamous, and it’s as still and steady as ever.

He walks as quickly as possible to the mess hall and plans to make a beeline for the little cabinet in the corner that holds things like ration bars, and portions of tinned fruit. 

An easy in and out operation. 

There is a group of new recruits sitting around one of the tables in the mess hall. Cassian thinks they’re some of Melshi’s - he’s seen a few of them following him around like lost cubs for the last couple weeks. Melshi himself isn’t around - he’s doing whatever it is that non-commissioned officers do between missions - which is a shame, because Cassian feels like he might get through the day if he sees a steady, friendly face like Melshi’s. 

He walks past the squad’s table without much further thought on them, but as Cassian is reaching for a dubiously-jogan-fruit-flavoured ration bar, he hears his name mentioned on their side of the hall. Then a few laughs. Then a louder mention of his name, and raucous cackling from the entire table.

It’s been many years since he’s been subject to the likes of schoolyard teasing, and he knows it’s below him to interact. Logically he knows that they may not even be laughing at him, but he’s feeling paranoid and he’s at the end of his tether. If he can’t enjoy the peace of seeing his friend, the next best thing is to get his anger out in an argument.

He grips the ration bar a little too tightly, and turns to face the group, anger simmering. 

Before he can say anything, one of them half-stands, smiling, and waves at him. He’s young - a Twi’lek with faint purple skin - his lekku are adult-length, but thin in the way they are for Twi’leks in their early twenties. The fierce frown on Cassian’s face morphs just slightly into disgruntled confusion. 

“Captain Andor! Hi! We didn’t see you!” 

Stars. Cassian isn’t sure if he ever had that much energy. Or familiarity with strangers. He bristles a little.

Another one of the recruits beckons for him, so he raises the hand that’s not crushing his ration bar and gives a short wave. He walks over in a sort of dissociative trance. 

The rest of the recruits are a mix of ages, from what he can tell. The oldest is an elderly Tholothian female with a sharp gaze and a loose smile, who is cutting up fruit and forcing it into the hands of her fellow soldiers. He remembers Melshi describing her in some level of awe. Cassian searches for her name as he approaches. 

Braza. Brayya. Basal? 

Something. 

A couple of the recruits scramble to make room at their bench for him, but Cassian’s mind is still moving a mile a minute trying to assess whether he’s about to get ridiculed or not, so he doesn’t quite notice. 

Plus, he just remembered he won’t get much sleep tonight because he’s taking some other Captain’s place on a mission at 0400 tomorrow. 

So, he’s sort of pondering, sort of falling into a pit of furious despair about the fact that he hasn’t once caught a break in his entire thirty years of life. He is never this self-pitying, nor is he particularly introspective, so he’s contemplating that as well, with abject alarm. 

The longer he stands there frowning, making no move to greet them, the more awkward the group gets. Cassian realises this a little too late, but decides he’s been standing there in silence a little too long to make an introduction, but he can’t quite walk away, and stars he just wants to sleep-

“Sorry if we startled you, Captain Andor. Bassa was just relaying a story she heard from Melshi about you saving his life on Ord Mantell.”

Bassa. That’s right.

Cassian looks for the source of the voice and sees you at the furthest corner of the table from him, waiting for his response with a friendly smile. There is a softness in your eyes, like you’re coaxing a frightened animal out of its hiding place, and Cassian’s first instinct is to baulk at it. 

While he is a bit of a lone wolf now, he was raised to have some manners, so he huffs good-naturedly and says, “We stank of Mantellian Savrip mucus for weeks.” 

The table dissolves into badly-concealed giggles. 

“Pretty brave of you to go back for him, then,” you joke. 

Cassian feels like he’s actually breathing for the first time today. “Yeah, well, he’s my brother. I couldn’t leave him there. Even if it meant knocking him unconscious, getting covered in mucus and dragging him five klicks to the ship.” 

Now that it’s been established that these green soldiers aren’t making fun of him behind his back, Cassian’s fury from the day leaves him in a rush. He is almost knocked over by a tsunami of bone-deep exhaustion. 

Everyone at the table is still giggling and chatting amongst themselves. The young Twi’lek man is leaning back so far he’s about to fall off the bench, and the Ithorian is making resonant grumbling sounds, which Cassian is pretty sure is their equivalent of a laugh.

Everyone, except you. You have been openly staring at him, concerned, and when you see him sway on his feet, you stand up and quickly make your way over to him. 

“I was about to turn on the kettle to make caf. Do you want some?” You offer your arm to him.

Cassian is used to not showing weakness these days, but his vision is a little blurry and his head is pounding, so he nods and takes your arm. 

When you get to the kettle, which is a quaint word for the metal canister about half Cassian’s height and double his breadth, full of soon-to-be-boiling water, you click the ‘on’ button and lean back against the wall with a sigh. Cassian is grateful for your discretion and the chance to rest his weight without alerting anyone to the fact that he should probably be in the med centre right now. 

“Forgive me for saying it, but you look tired.” You don’t look shy anymore, you look in control. 

The part of Cassian’s brain that makes him a keen observer notes that you are probably very good in a crisis. He looks away from you, stares at the ground. “Yes.”

.

“Is there anything I can do?” You reach out to touch him, and then you make a funny abortive gesture that ends with your hand in your pocket instead. You don’t have any real reason to be here; you’ve never spoken to him, only heard of him in passing and have seen him maybe a dozen fleeting times around base since you got here. 

But something about the coldness of his dark eyes and the set of his face, contrasted with that one time you saw him smile wide and genuine at someone as he walked past you; it makes you want to know him. 

Sometimes he leans against something - a wall, a shuttle, with his arms folded. You like the lines his body makes when he relaxes like that. He looks a little arrogant, or smug, maybe, but in a good way that makes your face feel warm.

Right now, he’s leaning against a wall, but he looks like he can barely stand. You want to do something stupid and completely inappropriate, like hold him or ask him if he wants to talk about his feelings. 

You’re waiting for the kettle to boil, fiddling with your pockets and dealing with the internal battle of it was weird to try to help this man who is effectively a stranger and if I didn’t, no one else would have and he would collapse from exhaustion, or something. 

.

While you’re thinking you’ve made things awkward and wishing you’d never tried, Cassian Andor is looking at you and thinking you might be the loveliest person he’s ever met. Very few people just offer their help without condition these days. War erodes compassion.

He takes a breath, about to say something, and your eyes dart to him. He’s still disarmed by the openness of your face. 

Is there anything I can do?

“Ah, thank you. But I don’t think so.” 

The kettle whistles. You turn to it. “Will you have much of a chance to rest tonight?” 

He sighs. “A couple hours’ sleep, hopefully.” 

“Hm.” You grab two carry-cups. “How do you take your caf?” 

He tells you, you make his first and then yours, and two minutes later you are both cradling the cups, feeling the steam on your faces. 

The two of you make eye contact, and it is at that moment that Cassian knows he wants to see you again. Often. 

“Before I joined the Rebellion, my boss used to tell me that a half-hour nap was supposed to be the perfect time limit to leave you well-rested with plenty of time to do what you need to do.” 

Cassian yawns. “I wish. Where did you work?” 

“I grew up on Onderon, but I moved to Coruscant and worked in one of the lowest-level cantinas. I saw too much of the Empire's impact there. Tax increases and poverty, homelessness, people dying of perfectly curable illnesses. Stormtroopers beating up people in alleyways just because they could. I had to get out, and I figured I may as well try to do something useful with my life. So I’m here.” 

Cassian is befuddled by the amount of information you have freely given him after knowing him for such a short time, but he finds himself warming to you, to this. He has the brief and startling thought that Maarva would like your sense of purpose. 

And then he squashes it down because he’s getting ahead of himself. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, but he qualifies it with, “the more people we have, the more chance we have of changing things.”

You nod. “One day, we’ll win. Even if we aren’t there to see it.” 

Something in Cassian’s chest expands and fills with light for a few seconds at that. He takes you in, the smell of you, the little sniffle you do when the steam from the caf starts to clear your sinuses. The way you keep fiddling with your hair.

There is a comfortable silence. Your foot taps on the ground a couple times, not in impatience. Then, your fellow recruits at the table start to stand up and get moving. One of them yells what Cassian thinks is “Oi, Wompy!” which he doesn’t understand. You groan quietly. “Oh, force. Back to the chaos.” 

Cassian huffs a soft laugh, and you give him a rueful grin. 

“Well, Captain Andor, enjoy your caf. Please get some rest. If not for me or Sergeant Melshi, for the sake of the rebellion.” 

“I’m sure the rebellion would keep going without me.” 

“Let’s make sure we don’t have to, sir.” you scull the rest of your caf and wince at the taste. Cassian’s face feels hot, but he’s not going to interrogate it. 

“Half an hour. That’s all you need, Captain.” 

You start to walk away and Cassian calls out, albeit softly, “Just Cassian is fine.” 

You turn, biting your lip for just a second. Your eyes are shining as you say, “Cassian. Alright.” 

“And your name?” He’d ask Melshi, but he really doesn’t want to be interrogated. 

“Wompy! Get your ass over here!”

You roll your eyes and shout, “Yeah, I heard you! I’ll be there, just go without me,” and you don’t break eye contact with Cassian the whole time. 

“Your name is Wompy?”

Your eyes widen. “Oh, stars, no. It’s a stupid nickname. Bassa likes to joke that I’m a pest, so, a womp rat, which is apparently too much effort to say, so it’s just Wompy. Which is worse, I think.” 

Cassian hums. He can’t keep the smile off his face. 

You tell him your name. He shouldn’t be as thrilled as he is to know it. 

With that, you turn again. “Sleep well, and preferably now, Cassian.” 

“You too,” he says, on autopilot. 

You laugh, and he listens to the sound of it as it echoes in the mess hall and follows you out into the corridor. 

.

A few days later, when Cassian is trudging through the upper hangar as a shortcut to get to his bunk, he sees you and your fellow recruits gathered around Melshi, who is pointing out the armaments of one of the shuttles. You happen to turn at just the right time, and catch Cassian out of the corner of your eye. You wave excitedly at him, and Cassian waves back, because the sort of joy you have is infectious and he is learning has no choice but to bask in it. 

Your squad catches on to your distractedness, and a couple of the younger ones start to shove and tease you. Cassian feels vaguely like he’s won something as he hears you burst into laughter.

He can still hear it as he lays his head on his pillow, as he sets his alarm.

There's a faint smile on his face as he drifts off to sleep. 

[robininthelabyrinth]

Qingheng-jun is a good brother to Lan Qiren

When Lan Qiren was younger, he didn’t think much of it – of course his brother was good to him. Wasn’t that what big brothers were for?

His brother was always there for him. No matter their age difference, no matter how many duties he had, no matter how busy he was, he always had time for Lan Qiren and whatever nonsense he was busy with, always. That, too, seemed natural: their father had already died by then, a tragic accident, and Lan Qiren barely remembered him, but he didn’t really need to – his brother was always there.

It was only later, much later, that it occurred to him that it was a little strange, actually.

His brother was always there.

Wasn’t he sect leader? Didn’t he need to focus on sect matters?

“Nothing is as important as you, didi,” his brother said with a smile. “Family first!”

Lan Qiren accepted it. He was a teenager at the time and selfish with it, so it didn’t seem that odd. Just as it didn’t seem odd when his brother stayed that way, always attentive, even after he got married to a nice young girl, a rogue cultivator who liked to stay indoors and not be disturbed but who always smiled when she saw him – after all, his brother explained with a smile, she might be family, but she wasn’t family the way Lan Qiren was.

It wasn’t until later, when Lan Qiren was practically an adult, that young Madame Jiang found a way to see him in private.

“You have to stop him,” she said, and Lan Qiren stared at her blankly, not understanding. “What he’s doing – surely you know? About the upcoming war, I mean?”

Lan Qiren did not know.

He had always been at home, safe, under his brother’s supervision, cultivating in peace without thought of the outside world – he’d never needed the outside world, and his brother always spoke of it as a place of burdens and sadness, a place he wouldn’t like very much, a place he didn’t and shouldn’t want to go.

He didn’t know about any war.

“Your brother is mad,” Yu Ziyuan said, her eyes flickering from side to side in her anxiety at getting caught. “He built up the Lan sect forces long ago and has been either subtly or not subtly forcing other sects into your banner – and now he’s coming after sects that belong to others, a road that will inevitably lead to war. Nothing anyone does or says can stop him.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Lan Qiren said, astonished.

“Of course you don’t! You’re his precious treasure, his shining jewel to keep safe from the rest of the world – anyone who tries to talk to you about the outside world dies.” Lan Qiren’s eyes widened even further. “He’s always here, just to keep an eye on you, or else he find other people to watch you. You don’t know what I had to go through to get here, to find an opportunity to plead our case…you really don’t know? He personally assassinated Wen Ruohan, stabbing him in the back and crippling him, and said it was for you. They say he’s forced that wife of his to marry him on threat of death in order to give him the children he needs just so that you can have nephews to spoil and cherish, that he’s locked her up in some room somewhere and told her that he’ll crippled her friends if she so much as frowns at you. They say he even murdered your mutual father for being neglectful of you!”

What? Wen Ruohan – He Kexin – their…father?

“You can’t think that’s normal, can you? He’s a monster…he helped arrange my marriage with Jiang Fengmian, which I’m grateful for, genuinely. That’s the only reason he let me even stay in the Cloud Recesses, he doesn’t think that I’ll do anything or say anything – but he has to be stopped. At this rate, there won’t be any cultivation world, just the Lan sect!”

Lan Qiren didn’t understand.

Still less did he understand when his brother showed up, having rushed home upon hearing that Lan Qiren was upset – it was something he always did, prioritizing Lan Qiren over everything else, and Lan Qiren hadn’t realized that that was unusual. Just as it was unusual that Lan Qiren need only to express a mild desire in something to get it. Just as it was unusual that they still slept in the same courtyard, with the window to Lan Qiren’s bedroom clearly visible from his brother’s office, letting him watch over him at all times…

“She told you, didn’t she?” his brother said abruptly, turning suddenly fierce in the middle of their peaceful conversation while Lan Qiren had been trying to figure out what to do next. “That bitch…well, at least we don’t need her much longer.”

A chill went up Lan Qiren’s spine. “We – don’t?”

His brother smiled. It was just the same smile as he always had, ever since they were very young, and maybe that was why Lan Qiren had never noticed the traces of madness in it. “No, we don’t,” he said. “She should already be pregnant, actually, if I have the dates right – He Kexin is already in seclusion to have little Wangji, which means that her Jiang Cheng will be born towards the end of the year. You always liked Jiang Cheng…I mean, you will like him. He’ll be a good student. I think you once told me that the only problem with him was how messed up his parents had made him, so obviously once he’s born, we don’t need the parents, right?”

Lan Qiren didn’t understand.

“He Kexin, too. I was thinking we might want to keep her for a few more years, to help with Xichen and Wangji – she’s so much better behaved this time around – but every time I look at her, I get so mad, thinking of what she did to you, to both of us…maybe it’ll be better if we just raise them ourselves.”

Lan Qiren didn’t understand.

“Don’t worry about it, Qiren.” His brother pulled him into a hug. “It was inevitable you’d find out eventually, now that you’re all grown up, even though it breaks my heart to make you have to worry about these things…I’ve tried to reduce your worries as much as possible. That’s my job, you know, the job I should have always fulfilled – I should reduce your burdens, not add to them. And this time, I will.”

He kissed Lan Qiren on the forehead, just like he had when Lan Qiren was a child. “My little brother,” he said fondly. “Just remember: family first!”

[depressedhatakekakashi]

Kakashi Retsuden - Chapter Two

Nanara insisting that Kakashi go to the palace with him, as if Kakashi’s a giant guard dog he can’t leave without. I love this kid so much he’s so attached to his tutor.

Kakashi staying up late to read a book instead of getting the sleep that would be beneficial to him.

Kakashi has known this kid for two weeks and can already read him like an open book.

Nanara turning down the throne so he doesn’t end up cooped up in an office like his father is so sad but also so refreshing. He doesn’t hate his father but he doesn’t want to end up with the same life as him.

Nanara thinking of his father while he’s speaking to Kakashi. This man really does give off kind father vibes to all the kids huh?

Kakashi’s reading the book about him!? 😭😭😭

I’m going to fight this man. I’ll fight him and make him understand he is heroic and kind and worthy of every bit of respect that book and the people around him give him.

Awkward i’ll give him, but pathetic? Fists up boy i’m going to fight you

He still regrets not being able to save Obito 😭😭😭

Kakashi thinking about his father and just how human he was while legends ignored those aspects of him. Was his son the only person who saw Sakumo for who he really was? Did everyone else forget he was just as human as them?

‘He wasn’t even ten’ HE WAS BARLY FIVE WHEN HIS FATHER DIED!!!

Sakumo’s end was horrible and Little Kakashi was so very broken by it. I wish he could have had a different life, he did not deserve to be burying his father at such a young age.

‘His dad’s dead and the kid’s cool as can be. It’s a bit creepy’ i was going to fight kakashi, but now i’m going to fight this random POS instead 🤬🤬🤬

Hated Sakumo’s teammates already. Hate them even more now. What trash.

Minato catching Kakashi when he almost passed out was so cute and Kakashi pulling away from his kindness because all he has heard for days is cruelty and hatred. Ahhhh

‘With no one to blame for these feelings’ i want to plaster this everywhere. I need people to understand that one of the main reason’s Kakashi never lashed out is because he has no one to be angry too. There was no specific person to hate and instead he internalized it all and hated himself. I just want him to be ok.

Kakashi thinking about how Obito and Minato were the reason’s he could find pride in who his father was again. Them showing him that what his father did was right and that he deserved praise and kindness, not hatred and judgement.

Manari going quiet and having her face clous over when she hears the prime minister. This is not a girl who is chummy with her right hand. She hates being around this dude.

Nanara wanting Kakashi to accompany him to the noon lunch was so cute and sweet. He really just wants to feel safe and Kakashi gives him that sense of safety.

Kakashi being a little shit and making requests for his room acter the prime minister tried to say he couldn’t stay in the castle XD so cool and calm but such a devious shit.

The adults eating before even inviting Nanara into the lunch like a bunch of rude bastards.

‘Senior officials A,B, and C’ no names. They don’t deserve those XD

I hate that the prime minister looks down on Nanara and treats him like a child, but i love that Nanara stands up for himself and demands answers.

They’re going to attack the land of fire!? They have ZERO CHANCE

Kakashi was at a conference so the prime minister didn’t meet him XD bout to get that meeting soon and he won’t like it at all.

Nanara has heard Kakashi yalk about war and peace and it gives him a chance to truely understand what this pos prime minister is saying. I love that Kakashi prepared him for this conversation without knowing it was going to happen.

Fifty rouge shinobi ain’t enough at all. They must know this, they can’t be this stupid.

‘In a mere decade or two, the land of fire accomplished astonishing technological development. This is courtesy if the might of the sixth hokage’ NO! It’s courtesy of his kindness and intelligence! He didn’t force the land of fire to grow with brute strength because that doesn’t work!

‘The sleep chakra point that he learned from Iruka’ i love this for so many reasons. One: Iruka gets a cool mention and got to teach Kakashi something super useful. Two: the shippers potential to use this info for Kakairu is sweet three: Iruka teaching Kakashi something without Kakashi being treated like an idiot (like in fandom) is top tier good content.

He disguised himself as the maid! I love this man

Kakashi’s trying to get info about the Shuigu and the sage of the six paths. Instead hems getting gossip… about himself 😂😂😂 i adore the fact he can’t understand why people are so obsessed with him.

‘Is he married?’ Yes :) his husband is awesome (ignore the shipper brain shhh)

Kakashi ‘they’re asking about ke so my cover must be blown’ Hatake

Doesn’t even need to be told who the army is made up of XD he can tell just from their movement’s and i’m loving the display of his intelligence.

Play dumb get answers! Sure fire way to get what you want and i love when Kakashi uses it.

Kakashi changing his face last minute so the maid won’t get into trouble for being where she shouldn’t be. It’s such a sweet gesture he didn’t have to extend to a stranger but he did anyways because he cares.

Kakashi playing helpless maid to get info is so much fun to read about. He does this so well.

‘He was sure Sakura or Shikamaru would be able to decipher it’ two things. love his confidence in the kids. Delightful. He can’t be there to help but he’s confident they can do it in his absence.

Nanara going to Kakashi for Guidance after hearing the plans to attack the land of fire is so… ahhh, i love how attached he has gotten to Kakashi. he trusts him so much already.

Nanara giving the girl his father’s gem in hopes of helping her even just a little bit 😭😭😭

Kakashi may not have a lot of good things to think about himself, but at least he’s secure about his skills as a shinobi XD ‘instant death, i expect’ ‘for who?’ ‘The fifty nobodies’ he didn’t need to insult them like that but it was delightful.

‘A country developes faster and better by having friendly relationships instead of fighting over countries’

Kakashi’s hate of sweet things gives me so much life for no good reason, and his non-chelant attitude to ‘being in trouble’ is perfection

‘Did you

Put water in the cistern?’ ‘No sir i did not’ 😂😂😂

‘ Kakashi knew in his bones the weight of the recovered bodies of comrades-‘ ouch. OUCH!!!!

Kakashi pushing for change in Konoha so they’d never have to repeat the days of war, even though he got scolded for ‘insulting the old way of things’. I love this man and f*** the old way. He was right to change it.

I love that Kakashi mentions a future without a Hokage. Like, he’s not looking to the future thinking the role will always be necessary. Change is good in his mind and he’d be completely ok with the title of hokage disappearing and i love that for him.

Wanting to live a good life that his friends can be proud of killed me. It killed me with its sweetness T.T

Nanara wanting to help just one person with his father’s jewel and getting them hurt instead wounded my heart and i feel so bad for him when he realized what he’d done.

Final notes: i love that this chapter really delved into Kakashi’s skills as an undercover operative and his ability to get information any way he has to. I also adore the nodds to Obito, Minato, Iruka and Rin (though Rin certainly got ignored compared to the others, as always.

I also really enjoy seeing Kakashi’s skills in action. His medical ninjitsu which isn’t anywhere near shizune or sakura but is still helpful when someone is hurting. How soft and kind he is to other people, abd how he goes out of his way to help in any way that he can, even just by supplying water.

I adore how close Nanara has gotten to him and how much he clearly trusts him. It’s such a sweet bond and i want to see more of them. I wish Kakashi would be nicer to himself but i also understand how he feels. Seeing people celebrate you when you feel like nothing but a failure is hard.

I also really love how they highlighted his reign as Hokage and gave us a peek into all the things he did. How Kakashi pushed for change because he grew up in a broken system and realized it wasn’t working. I would call him the best Hokage because when he was given the opportunity to do better for his village he did. (tsunade is close second because she helped her village and kept it going in such hard times, and she simply didn’t have the time to make the changes kakashi had time to make (which is fair. She wanted to return to being retired and i support her in that decision)

[gffa]

Last time I went about five months between doing a set of STAR WARS fic recs, this time it’s only been three months! Hurrah! It helps that, as always, this fandom puts out an incredible amount of excellent fic, so I feel like I’m never hurting for fics I want to yell about and shove at people, which is something I continue to appreciate as it often feels like so much of the world is such a huge tire fire. It helps to be able to find fics to retreat into, to have fun with, to express joy and creativity with, and so many of the authors in this fandom are just so good at this! To the point that these sets sometimes take awhile because there are always more fics I want to add, until the post starts threatening to be overly long instead of a decent length–in my defense, no seriously, you guys are just too good! Also, I forced myself to stop at 69 fic recs, because yes I do think it’s funny. (Nice.) STAR WARS FIC RECS: PREQUELS RECS: ✦ a comedy in four acts by jesuisdeux, obi-wan & dooku & yoda & qui-gon & cast, time travel, 4k    This was what time-travel is: staring at the dark sockets of skulls everywhere your gaze lands on. Being haunted by ghosts long gone. The apprehension of the slow yet sure approach of the inevitable which is sending chills down your spine. ✦ No Rest for the Weary by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin & jedi & ocs, 61k    Needing a break from life at the Jedi Temple, Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, visit a Jedi AgriCorps settlement on the Midrim planet of Helia. There they encounter new friends, new enemies and have new adventures, all while attempting to navigate their sometimes turbulent relationship as Master and Padawan. ✦ Stars of Tatooine by Be_Right_Back, ahsoka & kanan & mace & rex & obi-wan & cast, 10.5k    After the end of the world, Ahsoka more or less kidnaps a child, has to air some old grievances, and tries to find whatever peace the universe can still offer. All paths in the Force lead home, eventually. ✦ Festival of Light by dendral, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & rex & cast, 8.7k    During his first year at the Jedi Temple, Anakin learns that even the Jedi celebrate holidays. ✦ the master, the padawan, the Force by skatzaa, depa & caleb, 1.4k    Caleb expects things to be different after Master Depa takes him as her padawan, but really, it feels like nothing really changes. ✦ desecrate my lungs by loosingletters, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & padme & cast, 16k wip    Time-travel fix-it in which Mustafar haunts Anakin decades after it happened and years before it would. ✦ Grace by dismantlingsummer, obi-wan & anakin, 2.3k    Shortly after Mustafar, Anakin realizes what he has done. He finds Obi-Wan to beg for death. ✦ Fifth Migration by wrennette, yoda & mace & obi-wan & ki-adi & yarael & coleman & plo & palpatine & cast, 2k    How about an AU where the Sith’s Grand Plan accounted for everything -everything that is, except the fact that the Jedi temple is actually an very ancient spacecraft and the second word got to the Jedi about there being clones on Kamino, all Jedi are called back inside and they take off immediately? Just imagine the dear chancellor’s face… ✦ fill pages with scribbled ink by magneticwave, obi-wan/padme & sabe & mace & quinlan & cast, 9.8k    A year after the Invasion of Naboo, Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi is invited by Queen Amidala to return to Naboo and participate in a rite known as the Night of Fireflies. Things kind of snowball from there. ✦ Mind Your Words by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin, spanking, 7k    Obi-Wan reminds Anakin that there are consequences for careless behavior for young Jedi on missions. ✦ (you taught me) the courage of stars by grumpyhedgehogs, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & cast, 5.1k wip    Ahsoka Tano flees after a warrant for her arrest is issued, but not before receiving aid from an unexpected ally. (Ahsoka proceeds to go on a road trip filled with a bunch of strangers who all say the same thing: Obi-Wan Kenobi is much more than he has ever appeared to be.) ✦ they faked it (guess everything’s complicated) by katierosefun, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, 4.5k    Ahsoka temporarily loses memories of the events of Obi-Wan’s fake death. To help with the healing process, Anakin and Obi-Wan have to pretend that they’re okay. ✦ programed to dream by ghostwriterofthemachine, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, body horror, 1.3k    The spaceship Comet-rider is the fastest, most efficient vessel in the galaxy, and is crewed by Separatist-funded pirates. Anakin Skywalker is missing. Unfortunately, these two things are connected. ✦ Unpleasant Truths by hellowkatey, obi-wan & anakin, 2.1k    Obi-Wan and Anakin are stuck in a room with one another while waiting for truth serum to wear off. ✦ moment’s silence by skatzaa, obi-wan & owen & beru & luke & leia (pre-obi-wan/beru-owen), 2k    Owen had long since resigned himself to trouble, whenever Beru got that particularly stubborn set to her jaw. ✦ hold gently and let go by shatou, obi-wan & anakin (pre-slash?), 1.7k    A troubled Anakin comes to Obi-Wan to discuss attachments. ✦ sun child by Ro29, obi-wan & anakin, 2.1k    (or; sometimes being so tied to the Force causes problems, Obi-Wan helps his Padawan as best he can) ✦ A Dinner Out by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin & cast, 1.6k    Obi-Wan can’t get his young Padawan to eat much, so he tries something new. But trying something different has unintended consequences. ✦ Shades in the Desert by loosingletters, obi-wan & anakin & luke & owen/beru, 10.8k    Not even from a certain point of view did Darth Vader kill Anakin Skywalker. He wished he did, but the specter of the Jedi’s light escaped before he could finalize his fall to the dark. Meanwhile, Anakin is raising his son on Tatooine. ✦ somewhere along in the bitterness by CallToMuster, obi-wan & anakin, major character death, 3.8k    It was probably the twelfth day floating alone in space that Obi-Wan and Anakin realized no one was coming for them. ✦ Songs for Little Jedi by soft_but_gremlin, mace & younglings, ~1k    The initiates are having nightmares, so Mace sings a lullaby to comfort them. ✦ atmosphere level by softredscrunchie, obi-wan/satine & qui-gon, 1k    As a joke, Satine tells Obi-Wan she thinks Mandalore is flat. He doesn’t take it well. ✦ on sith holocrons and misunderstandings by billowypants, obi-wan & anakin & mace & yoda & cast, de-aged!obi-wan, 7.2k    or, de-aged!Obi-Wan has the same Force bonds as adult Obi-Wan, and he does not react well. ✦ Perseverance & Resilience by loosingletters, obi-wan & anakin, 1.1k    In the aftermath of Naboo, Obi-Wan realizes he needs strength to protect his new Padawan. Growing up, Anakin needs peace. ✦ A Delicate Balance by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin & yoda & jedi, spanking, 9.6k    As Anakin’s skills grow, so too does his penchant for getting into trouble. After a training mishap, Obi-Wan struggles with his role as Anakin’s master. ✦ mirror, mirror by CallToMuster, obi-wan & anakin, 5.4k    Obi-Wan has been rescued by Anakin after being rather embarrassingly kidnapped on the remote planet of Ilnuria during his investigation of rumored kyber crystals deep beneath the planet’s surface. …But is all as it seems? ✦ Mace Windu Appreciation Week by Redminibike1, mace & obi-wan & anakin & ponds & cody & jedi & cast, 12.5k    Set of unconnected ficlets for Mace Windu Appreciation Week, because he deserves it :) ✦ begin again as a quiet thought by skatzaa, obi-wan/quinlan, d/s, ~1k    Cool, smooth leather touched his jaw—gloves. Because of course Obi-Wan had thought of that as well. ✦ Drunken Lullabies by Siri_Kenobi12, obi-wan & anakin & siri & quinlan & aayla & garen & bant & ferus, 6.5k    “Do I really have to go to this thing?” Fourteen year old Anakin Skywalker dramatically sighed. “It’s sooo boring!” ✦ heaven knows how I love you by the_13th_battalion, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, 1.2k    Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka are stranded on an unfamiliar planet overnight. They spend their time exploring the community- and maybe they get a little closer to each other along the way. ✦ A Reckless Padawan by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, spanking, 3.9k    When Ahsoka upsets Anakin with an act of reckless disobedience, it falls to her grandmaster to help her see the error of her ways. OBI-WAN/ANAKIN RECS: ✦ Too Hot by secretsolarsystem, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 4.8k    Too Hot: A game where two players kiss without stopping and without touching each other. If one player touches the other, that player loses. The winner gets to do whatever they want to the loser. ✦ Nostos by intermundia, obi-wan/anakin & padme, NSFW, 17k    Or, how Obi-Wan and Anakin discover that there are many ways to come home. ✦ to touch the light, darkest by treescape, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 1.9k    Obi-Wan begins to fuck Vader back to the light ✦ encode by loosingletters, obi-wan/anakin & padme & handmaidens & cast, 26.3k wip    Instead of being accepted into the Jedi Order at the age of 9, Anakin Skywalker became a ward of Naboo. ✦ Hunting the Homeward Light by GreenQueenofClubs, obi-wan/anakin & mace & ahsoka & shmi & padme & cast, 31.9k wip    When Anakin Skywalker was nine, he left his whole life and mother behind to follow Qui-Gon Jinn to Coruscant and the Jedi Temple. When Anakin Skywalker was twelve, he left his whole life and Master behind to follow Mace Windu to the Outer Rim and away from the Jedi Order. When Anakin Skywalker was twenty… ✦ use my body to break your fall by tennessoui, obi-wan/anakin & cast, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, 44.7k wip    Obi-Wan Kenobi is too good at being a Sith Lord general of the Separatist army. The Jedi Council approaches Anakin with an offer he can’t refuse. These things are, actually, related. ✦ Over and Over by obiwanobi, obi-wan/anakin, 1.4k    “I love you,” he blurts out, loud and impossible to miss. Obi-Wan blinks once, twice. And freezes. The first time Anakin tells him is a mortifying experience. ✦ Exceptions by rinverse, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & mace & quinlan & cast, NSFW, modern au, 23.4k    Young and brilliant, Anakin is the mind behind JEDI Tech’s latest innovation. Obi-Wan is the company’s perfectly composed Director of PR & Marketing. And last night, they were just two strangers at a bar, looking for something quick and easy. But life had other plans when it crossed their paths again the very next day. ✦ Here There Be Dragons by Ghost_Owl, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka, 10.1k    Anakin knows why he can’t shift into his animal form like every other Jedi. It’s because he doesn’t want to, it’s because he’s had a vision of what he would become, and he doesn’t want it. ✦ Waiting in a Sea of Stars by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan/anakin, ~1k    Stranded in deep space, Obi-Wan and Anakin wait for rescue. ✦ Tristitia by JSwander, obi-wan/anakin & cast, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, 5k    An alternate timeline where Palpatine focuses his attentions on Obi-Wan Kenobi instead of Anakin Skywalker after the attack on Naboo. ✦ Prompted - Chapter 11: Communication, What Communication? by intermundia, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, modern au, mobster au, 7k    a 7k obikin PWP that is somehow a prompt mashup of a mobster au, an accidental sugar daddy au, with a soupçon of an anakin never left tatooine au, and a pinch of qui-gon was anakin’s dad au ✦ who a person truly is cannot be seen with the eye by RexIsMyCopilot, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, d/s, spanking, 3.6k    Anakin purposely avoids doing what Obi-Wan tells him to do. ✦ Prompted - Chapter 12: Potidaea, 432BC, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, historical au, 4.3k    Here is a short smutty scene inspired by all those classics asks, Alcibiades praising Socrates in Plato’s Symposium, and this vase c.490-480 B.C. depicting standing, face-to-face intercrural intercourse between a bearded man and a youth, which as far as we can tell was the most common and accepted position for it in Ancient Greece. ✦ Prompted - Chapter 13: Minikin and Tiny-Wan by intermundia, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 5.4k    Happy May the Fourth! In honor of this happy day, I have written the fluffiest, crackiest, vanilla-flavored smut imaginable. Based on long discussions on discord with tomicaleto about her adorable Tiny AU. ✦ to hold until brightness by treescape, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 1.4k    Obi-Wan feared that it drew out the darkest in him, to bring Vader to these flashes of light, but it was a trade he would make again and again without hesitation. ✦ May Be Found, If Sought by ghostwriterofthemachine, obi-wan/anakin & mace & quinlan, magical academy au, 2.3k    In which Quinlan, Mace, and Obi-Wan teach Non-Traditional Magical Philosophy in an institution rampant with academic snobbery and discrimination, something dark is stirring in the nearby forest, and no one is ever prepared for Anakin Skywalker. A small story about first meetings in magical academia. ✦ infinitely varied by loosingletters, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka, modern au, 2.2k    Also known as Obi-Wan and Anakin teach a tiny program called A.H.S.O.K.A. how to be something more than lines of code via the power of linguistics. ✦ recipe for disaster by tennessoui, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka, modern au, 9.8k    When Ahsoka tells Anakin she doesn’t want to learn piano anymore, Anakin is heartbroken. He doesn’t care about the instrument, obviously, but he’s practically in love with her teacher. Obi-Wan offers up a solution to their impending separation, and it’s not dating like any normal person would suggest. Instead, he’s gonna teach Anakin how to cook. Except Anakin’s a pretty well-known chef, and Obi-Wan is absolutely awful in the kitchen. ✦ Pretty Kitty by GayCheerios, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 2.2k    “Master, you always take such good care of me,” Anakin says, a little chirp coming after his sentence, as his thumb rests on Anakin’s plump bottom lip. ✦ As One, Into Eternity by Pseudonymoose, obi-wan/anakin, force ghosts, 3.1k    Death comes, but the man who was, and is, and will be Anakin Skywalker is not gone. And in the Force, he will never be alone again. ✦ does he make you laugh? by y0u_idjits, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & cast, fusion fic, 3.6k    “Tell me it’s not about screwing the guy who’s screwing your husband.” ✦ Rotten Work by secretsolarsystem, obi-wan/anakin, 2.8k    Obi-Wan: I’ll take care of you. Anakin, with bloodshot eyes and a broken back from hours of terrible posture: It’s rotten work. Obi-Wan, who needs to bathe this man for his own sanity and health: Not to me. Not if it’s you. ✦ afterimages by shatou, obi-wan/anakin, 1.3k    Mustafar is nothing but a bad dream. ✦ understanding is honoring the truth beneath the surface by RexIsMyCopilot, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, d/s, 7.3k    Anakin asks Obi-Wan to take control. ✦ The strongest stars… by Tomicaleto, obi-wan/anakin & beru & cast, NSFW, 7.4k    The war’s end seems to be close, with everyone looking forward to it. And when Anakin is doubting himself the most, an unexpected visit arrives at the Temple. ✦ home has a heartbeat by izazov, obi-wan/anakin, 5.6k    Or: Anakin and Obi-Wan are together, but there are still some things left unsaid between them. ✦ turn back now (i’m haunted) by tennessoui, obi-wan/anakin & padme & quinlan & ahsoka & cast, modern au, ghosts au, 25k wip    Anakin Skywalker’s house is haunted. Luckily for him, Padmé knows a ghost hunter. Unluckily for him, it’s the hottest, most english-professor ghost hunter he’s ever seen. And extremely unluckily for him, he’s starting to get the feeling he understands maybe ten percent of what’s actually going on here, not to mention what’s at stake. ✦ game plan by treescape, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 11.2k    Or, Vader keeps capturing Obi-Wan during the Wars. Obi-Wan keeps escaping. It’s kind of a thing. ✦ Provocation by ToolMusicLover, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 4.9k    Or: Obi-Wan and Anakin attempt to navigate their complicated relationship with barbed words and wilful ignorance. It wasn’t going well. ✦ Languages by Crowgirl, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 6.5k    So Anakin pulls out a map and makes a list. REBELS RECS: ✦ The Scent of You by ambiguously, kanan/hera & cast, a smidge of nsfw, 2.9k    Everything changes after Malachor, and Kanan has trouble finding his balance. ✦ Heard It in a Love Song (Can’t Be Wrong) by ambiguously, zeb/kallus, 2.7k    Kallus can’t quite figure out what makes Zeb tick, but he keeps trying. ORIGINAL TRILOGY/MANDALORIAN RECS: ✦ A Discussion of Choices by Peppermint_Shamrock, luke & mace, 2k    Mace Windu has traveled the galaxy since the fall of the Republic, keeping out of the Empire’s sight and teaching where he can. Upon the request of a ghost of an old friend, Mace finds himself instructing Luke Skywalker, who is still reeling from the truth of Vader’s identity. ✦ staring down the barrel of the hot sun by magneticwave, luke/din & obi-wan & grogu & mace & cast, 25.7k    “Gone to a Child of the Watch, the Darksaber has,” Grand Master Yoda announces in his creaky little voice. “Peace, there is not, and yet peace, there must be.” ✦ Released by Peppermint_Shamrock, cody & rex & luke & cast, 6k    Nearly two and a half decades late, Cody’s chip is finally removed. Adjusting to having his mind returned to him after so long takes time, and Cody struggles with questions of his purpose of the past, present, and future. Fortunately, he does not have to struggle alone. ✦ A Tatooine Rainstorm by skatzaa, leia & luke & shmi, 1.7k    Leia meets a ghost. ✦ Dealing with the Darksaber by Peppermint_Shamrock, din & bo-katan & cara, 1.3k    After her recovery, Bo-Katan contacts Din to challenge him for the darksaber. Din is still very much not interested in the whole affair. FULL DETAILS + RECS HERE

[scott-mccall-the-hot-girl]

my ultimate guide to thiam fic !!

( as a new teen wolf stan )

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the classic post war, long ass (multi chapter) fic !!with great development that genuinely made me laugh out loud, they have the best friendship in this & i love it very much. ( like theo teaches liam to drive and i just *happy sobs* ) a fundamental in thiam fanfiction !! all stans have probably already read it but if you haven’t this is in fact a threat ,, go show this vv iconic story some love !!

Airplanes - Captainmintyfresh

Summary: After the Anuk-ite and the hunters are dealt with Liam needs a break. Cue Theo and a road trip that Liam should know better than to think will be peaceful.

Not Rated, No Archive Warnings Apply, Completed, 43/43 Chapters, Words: 236,875 (236k)

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okay okay so this one is also post 6B !! but ,, now we introduce fighting monroe & the hunters again ,, so we get the boys & a new mission !! so if you like an intresting plot 11/10 would recommend !! just to be clear this ISN’T complete ,, if that turns you off i understand but definitely give this one a read !! it litterally have theo doing crossword puzzles & fighting zombies

Vacancy Signs - LovelyLittleGrim

Summary: Theo and Liam are in Manhattan negotiating a pack allyship when the zombie apocalypse breaks out. Now, the two of them have to find their way back to Beacon Hills without getting eaten by zombies or killing one another.

Rated: Explicit, Graphic Description of Violence, Not Completed, 15/17 Chapters, Words: 89,605 (89k)

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Royalty AU !! I REPEAT ROYALTY AU !! a fantastic au where i stan their moms more than i stan them !! genuinely so good at the childhood rivals to lovers trope !! i’m genuinely obsessed with this one. has made me cry more than once ,, hurts in a good way <3 the ending is just *chefs kiss* also one of the tags is genuinely: # theo and liam make bad choices for over 130k straight !! if that doesn’t sound appealing i don’t know what does !!

Artificial Love - songbvrd

Summary: Prince Theo and Prince Liam are forced to spend every Summer together from age five onwards. They hate each other, and usually find ways to make each other miserable as much as possible in their six weeks together. But when they're reunited because of intended unions as adults, things change. They're both supposed to be married to noble women, but neither of them is as interested in anyone else as they are with their childhood rival.

Rated: Mature, No Archive Warnings Apply, Completed, Chapters: 32/32, Words: 172,935 (172k)

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so if you are in the mood for a crack fic that’s not explicitally a crack fic this is for you !! okay so i’m really hit or miss with AU’s ,, sometimes i feel like they don’t quite capture the characters right but this story have the BEST dramatic liam i have ever seen in my life !! basically they all live in the same apartment building & it’s fantastic !! i saw this one floating around a lot but the summary didn’t really unrest me until i have it a shot !! so go read it rn !! also nolan & brett are genuinely fantastic and make me wheeze ,, LIKE ACTUALLY VERBALLY LAUGHING !! all i’m gonna say is that my fav characters are scott & the beetles but that won’t make actual sense until you read it !!

The Neighbors Song - TheodoreR

Summary: “I always hear you singing on your balcony every morning, but suddenly you’ve stopped?”

Or the one where Theo annoys Liam every morning with his awful singing until he doesn’t anymore and Liam is even more annoyed. Liam hates every single thing about his mornings -the fact that they happen in the morning alone is enough. The thing Liam hates the most about his mornings though is the terrible voice of the guy who lives below him. He can’t sing for shit and Liam tried to politely let him understand that by throwing flour and water on his balcony, and also by shouting it to him, you can’t sing for shit!, and then by writing it into a note he proceeded to attach to his door, but this Raeken guy just keeps doing it, every single morning, like a fucking rooster. Liam did nothing to deserve this. He probably didn’t do anything to deserve better either to be fair, he doesn’t expect to open his window and be welcomed by some angelic voice singing him good morning, he’d just be happy with nothing. Silence. That’s something Liam can appreciate in mornings. Just some bark from his dog and the sound of his misery and that’s it. But no, god forbid the new guy lets him have that.

Rated: Explicit, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Wanrings, Completed, 8/8 Chapters, Words: 42,814 (42k)

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me: i’m not a big fan of AU’s ,, proceeds to talk about ANOTHER au… OKAY BUT THIS ONE !! it’s not complete but the author has been updating regularly ,, vv slow burn !! but in a REALLY intresting way !! i lOVE LIAM IN THIS SO MUCH ,, he is such a diaster of a person and it’s wonderful !! they have a great dynamic & i’m sucker for general puppy pack content ( and erica reyes being a badass ) !! also theo plays lacrosse in this & i really like it ahhhhh ,, also liam is just being an artic monkeys stan the whole time & theo is like *que confused repressed gay noises*

Inglorious Roommates - honeyscape

Summary: A roommate is defined as “a person with whom one shares a room.”

Theo would say a roommate was more along the lines of, “The person who's the bane of his existence. The weirdo that sleeps for days. The spaz that exercises at 3am. The guy with a revolving door of annoying friends. An insufferable human being that Theo has no control over living in his room.”

Example: Theo hates his roommate Liam.

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okay okay i hate myself but i have another WIP for y’all !! this one is jUST FANTASTIC. i’m genuinely so upset it’s most likely not going to updated again *incoherent screaming ensues*. for this story ,, it’s very theo-centric bUT thats bc it ends right before liam becomes a concrete member of the story !! ANYWAY: basic plot = theo & acquiring not one but two children ,, so #dad theo but he is still crusty & homeless and i love him very much. it’s just so GOOD !! just read if you want to experience my fav theo coming out story & him etching high school musical

Look who's talking - Captainmintyfresh

Summary: Theo had been labeled many things in his life. Evil, failure, monster. He'd never thought Father would be one of those things but as he looked across the table to a six year old with blue smears of bubble gum icecream across her face trying to coax the first words out of her sister. Finger jabbing towards Theo's face as she repeated 'Daddy' again and again he couldn't bring himself to dispute the label.

(Theo accidentally adopts two young werewolves)

Not Rated, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings, Not Completed, Chapters: 16/?, Words: 48740 ( 48k )

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so here me out: post-canon ( poetry like angst ) summer get away !! just the boys doing cute little domestic things together whilst pining !! theo’s guilt in this is just so powerful & aGjffkgkkfkvkdlv !! i think it’s so interesting to see how they interact in this one, it’s just very heart warming !! and it features one of my favorite niche teen wolf tropes of theo being great with like seven year old girls- it’s just so good ,, very much a wonderful little one shot that just makes your heart happy.

(next time i see you you'll show me) a hundred different ways to say the same things - cherrysprite

Summary: “...You deserve good things,” Liam says eventually. He makes sure not to look at Theo even though he can feel his eyes turn on him. Somehow he can already tell that Theo doesn’t believe him.

Liam instantly makes that the goal of this summer - making Theo believe him.

Rating: Teen and Up, No Archive Warnings Apply, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 28875 ( 28k )

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okay so this next section of fic recs is a bit different !!

two of my favorite authors !! and a compilation of fics i’ve read by them both !!

for context: these two have written some genuinely gorgeous fics, like pure poetry, they explore the real gritty & scary side of our boys relationship in such a wonderful way. they’ve both used some of my favorite tropes & i love them very much !!

whenever i need something soothing but so genuinely intresting & enticing these are my go to !! ( also they both write a lot of good nolan angst & some vv good fics with hayden )

go check out:

eneiryu

as well as fallingforboys

here are some of my favorite fics by them ~

darling i want you here in my arms (kiss the pain away, i know you can) - fallingforboys

even before you touched me, i belonged to you (all you had to do was look at me) - fallingforboys

memories linger like tattoo scars (but your touch on my skin is just as permanent) - fallingforboys

skin, bones, a stolen heart, and an ugly creature lurking underneath -fallingforboys

i don't know how to breathe in the place i called home - fallingforboys

whisper your gossamer truths into the shadow, maybe you'll find the answers you're searching for - fallingforboys

between the mountains and the valley we built a monument to our regret - eneiryu

cracked the hinges of the cage and waited for you - eneiryu

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okay and finally: since i am a self centered whore

my own fic: an rendition of the # elevator scene

it’s basically my version of post canon if we did get the kiss in the elevator. we got a classic liam pov in which he is has 12/10 for extreme bi diaster energy even whilst being shot at !! so go him ig…

Fuck Off, Fuck This & Fuck It! - nefelibata_peach

Summary: Liam thought to himself heart rate climbing, they were bound to be dead by morning. So he thought with everything but his brain and he kissed him.

Where Liam Dunbar is very confused, slightly traumatized, and just a bit scared but hey, aren't they all! Bad decisions ensue as two boys fight in a war they never did sign up for.

Rating: Teen and Up, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 3558 ( 3k )

[sirikenobi12]

War & the Jedi

This will be a long meta rant, FYI.

The Jedi Order, specifically the Prequel era Jedi Order, gets a lot of hate these days particularly regarding their involvement in the Clone Wars. Accusations are tossed at their feet constantly ranging from corruption all the way up to warmongering. 

Let’s first look at the Oxford English Dictionary definition of these two accusations, shall we?

Corruption - having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain.

Warmonger - a person who encourages or advocates aggression towards other countries or groups.

The definitions of these two words are so very misunderstood when it comes to relation to the Jedi. If the Jedi are truly “corrupt” then where are the examples of their dishonesty for wealth or personal gain? In fact, I’d argue that canon (and Legends) makes a point to show us that it is the Sith who are in it for personal gain, not the Jedi. The Jedi have absolutely NOTHING to gain from this war on a personal level, in fact they are losing members in terrifying numbers.

The Jedi are also not advocating aggression towards the Separatists, in fact what we see instead is the Jedi DEFENDING against the Separatists. I have yet to see in either canon or legends an instance where the Republic forces invade a Separatist planet who doesn’t have an army or some military involvement (i.e. weapon factories). However, time after time we see the Separatists forcing peaceful planets who want nothing to do with them to either bow to their cause or die (i.e. Ryloth, Lurmen planet, Kiros, Mandalore) the Jedi and Republic Troops will then follow the Separatists to these planets, but they try to do what they can to liberate the planet from the Separaist invasion and then they give the planet the OPTION to join the Republic for safety and economic reasons, but they never force them, as is super evident with Mandalore.

Yet people don’t seem to see this and continue to drag the Jedi through the mud. 

Here are the top 5 other “woke” takes I hear - 

Jedi are peacekeepers and should not have gotten involved:

 First things first, let’s look at the definition of Peacekeeper - a soldier, military force, etc., deployed to maintain or restore peace. 

I’d argue by that definition the Jedi were still peacekeepers, it’s true that they weren’t a 3rd party as they normally were before the war, but their position was trying to maintain or restore peace. Peacekeeper is not the same thing as a Pacifist, the Jedi were skilled warriors (training from childhood to wield a lightsaber), the difference is Jedi used their skills for defense not attack which is what we constantly saw throughout the Clone Wars. 

With regards to the idea that Jedi “should not have gotten involved” I ask you then what exactly were they supposed to do instead?

 We see at the beginning of Attack of the Clones that the Jedi are worried things will escalate to war, they have obviously gone to the Chancellor hoping that a diplomatic solution can be presented to avoid bloodshed. Or if that isn’t possible then that the Republic have some way to defend themselves other than relying solely on the Jedi (i.e. an army). The Separatists are the ones pushing them to a breaking point, were the Jedi just supposed to stand back and let innocent people be invaded/killed because they didn’t want to get involved? The Jedi were “Guardians of Peace and Justice” which means it was their duty to help bring about peace in the galaxy while also enacting justice. 

Then after Geonosis (where they lost approx. 187 members mind you) they learned that the Sith are leading the Separatist army - the Jedi are duty bound by their code to fight the Sith, they had no choice but to join the war. 

So, I ask again...what were they supposed to do instead?

2.  Jedi used a slave army for their own purposes:

 Okay, I can (and probably will) write a whole argument based on just this accusation alone. There are so many fallacies I don’t even know where to begin but I’ll try. 

I guess my first question is the same as #1, what were the Jedi supposed to do instead with regards to the Clones? 

Technically speaking the Clones didn’t “belong” to the Jedi, they were “property” of the Republic (as stated by Lama Su in Attack of the Clones). In fact, the Jedi Council not only didn’t know about the order, they had vehemently denied Syfo Dias’ earlier request to raise an army in the first place. The Sith KNEW the Jedi would be against it, this was all part of their plan to trap the Jedi (as was EVERYTHING about the war) - they clouded the Force, they literally deleted Kamino from the Archives so the Jedi wouldn’t discover it until the Sith WANTED them to (i.e. Jango just happened to use a Kamino dart?? Come on people). Yoda even states “blind we are if creation of this clone army we could not see” he fully admits they missed it because the Dark Side was clouding their vision. 

Regardless, the army was created, there was no changing that fact. Had the Jedi not taken command of the army do you think the Clones wouldn’t have had to go to war? Do  you actually believe that the Republic who couldn’t get their citizens to give 2 craps about the war would’ve taken up the mantle and fought instead? Do you think if the Jedi were like “thanks, but we didn’t order this” that the Kamioans would’ve just let the Clones go free? 

The answer you’re looking for is...no. 

So, like absolutely everything about the Clone Wars the Jedi did the best they could with the cards they had been dealt. They chose to lead the army on the front lines, putting themselves in just as much mortal danger as the men they were leading. They even sent a member of the Jedi Council to oversee the creation of future clones/training to ensure they were being treated humanely (something the Kamioans thought was ridiculous). They were the first to tell the clones that they were individuals, they constantly put themselves in front of their men to protect them (i.e. season 7 Obi-Wan deflecting the rocket from blowing up his men). The Jedi did what they could, just because we didn’t see on screen Jedi stopping to grieve every time a clone died did not mean that they didn’t care - real life Generals can’t stop in the middle of a battle to grieve over their fallen soldiers either, so why is it we consider it a moral crime if the Jedi don’t?

Another thing I’ll add is once the Jedi had evidence that the Clones were actually ordered by Dooku, did they immediately stop and say “oh hell no, these flesh droids can’t be trusted, we should just have them decommissioned”?? NO! They defended the Clones, stating that they were good men and should be trusted (and look where that trust got them in the end).

The Jedi were forced/coerced to fight this war as much as the Clones were!! Why are we willing to forgive the Clones, but not the Jedi???

3. Ki-Adi-Mundi killing Geonosians was the same as Anakin’s slaughter at the Tusken camp: 

This is another moment where context is everything because there is a HUGE difference between Ki-Adi-Mundi on Geonosis and Anakin in the Tusken camp. The fact that I have to even spell it out makes me wonder how people can even dress themselves in the morning. 

The Geonosians were an opposing military force, attacking Ki-Adi and his troops. Anakin slaughtered unarmed women and children out of vengeance. 

Now, had Ki-Adi turned to his men and screamed “to the catacombs!” brandishing his lightsaber with a murderous glint in his eyes and proceeded to cut down the unarmed bugs below the battle then you’d have an accurate comparison on your hands and I’d be appalled right there with you.

But, as it stands this is not the same thing...not even close.

4. The Jedi sent children to war: 

So, this is a tougher one and I can even understand the concerns behind it, and I even share some of those concerns. The thing I will say to this is, given what we see throughout Star Wars, what constitutes a “child” seems to be different than our own real world definition. 

Padme, for example, was 14 when she was elected Queen, and she wasn’t even the youngest ever elected. She (and her handmaids) were trained as children to defend themselves and their people both politically and in battle (much like Jedi), but you don’t hear people condemning the people/traditions of Naboo the way we see the Jedi being condemned for theirs.

Jedi children arguably mature faster than your standard person, and with regards to Star Wars there are also species’ age ranges to keep in mind. Grogu for example is still a baby at age 50, could it be possible that Ahsoka at age 14 is on the same maturity level as a human in their early twenties due to her Togruta DNA?? We don’t know, it’s never stated other than Anakin saying something about because of her advanced skills he forgets how young she is. 

Obviously Boba Fett is treated like an adult by other Bounty Hunters - no one even questions when he picks up a job and is placed in charge of a group at age 12 or 13 (and he is placed in an adult prison without anyone questioning it). It could be that by law according to Star Wars that 13 is actually considered an adult. Throughout history (and in many different cultures) 13 was when people were considered to be “coming of age”, So, once again we’re placing our cultural biases onto a fictional space fantasy world without realizing it might not even be an issue in that world.  

But even beyond all of that I ask you again - what else should the Jedi have done? 

Their young Padawans would eventually have to grow into Jedi Knights, even before the war by the time they are teenagers they usually followed their Masters on missions (often very dangerous missions) in order to get real world experience. At the time of the Clone Wars the real world they were living in was one at war. If they hadn’t brought their Padawans onto the battlefield how else would they have learned how to strategize, or how to cope with the emotions of battle? They would’ve been ill prepared if the war had continued on for years and years as it had looked like it was going to do...once again, the Jedi had no real choice in this. 

5. The Jedi lost their way because of the war: 

Did they though?? I’d argue they actually didn’t. We first have to ask ourselves what is a Jedi - well, according to the very first time we hear any type of a description about a Jedi they are introduced as the “Guardians of Peace and Justice for the Republic” I don’t see how the war took that away from them. 

The Oxford definition of Guardian is a defender, protector, or keeper. I fail to see how the Jedi stopped being any of these things because of the war.

Here’s the bottom line, the Jedi’s biggest mistake was that they fell for a plot 1,000 years in the making. The Sith spent over a millenia perfecting/hatching this plan, there was nothing the Jedi could’ve done to prevent the war by the time the trap was sprung. As always, I’m not saying the Jedi were perfect (I hate that I have to always specify that when I argue that the Jedi were good), all I’m saying is they tried to do the most good that they could with the situation they fell into - few groups/characters can claim the same thing.

Everyone seems to forget that the Sith controlled BOTH SIDES to that war, there was nothing - absolutely NOTHING the Jedi could’ve done that would’ve changed or won that war. So, instead they saved as many innocent lives as they could and to me, that’s very Jedi. 

[sullustangin]

Who’s Your Daddy?:  Tasiele Shan and Her Lover(?)

Does Satele look more like her father?  Or her mother, Tasiele Shan? 

The relationship between Jace Malcom and Satele Shan is pretty epic:  two great leaders of the Republic, the future Supreme Commander and the future Grand Master of the Jedi Order.  Their son, Theron, is an obvious SWTOR fan favorite and a hero in his own right (though as a spy, his accomplishments can’t be as publicly acknowledged).  Theron did not know who his father was until he was 26 years old, nor did he speak to his mother openly as her son until that age.  This makes for complex, adult connections.

One thing that several people in fandom have discussed is Satele’s decision not to tell Theron about Jace or Jace about Theron.  While I was ruminating over the question, I came across the point that Satele likely didn’t know who her father was.  Satele had gone through life without a father; if you’ve never had it, how can you miss it? Jedi!Theron wouldn’t have the worst life if he didn’t know who his father was... but then he turned out to be not Force Sensitive, and there went all of Satele’s well-intended plans.

There are a lot of unknowns about Tasiele Shan, Satele’s mother.  Nothing is known about her father.  Tasiele first appeared in a sentence on Satele’s Holonet entry, coded in Aurbesh: ‘Jedi exiled her mother.’  In the SWTOR encyclopedia, it was revealed that Tasiele was a philosophical revolutionary who advocated for attachments among the Jedi.  (Yes, in our world’s psychological sense, they do have positive attachments to those in the order, in the Galaxy, and at Temple; ‘attachments’ in the negative sense for the Jedi run along Buddhist lines, per George Lucas himself.  Attachments lead to desire, which leads to suffering, which leads to the Dark Side, in a nutshell.)  These teachings were disruptive enough that Tasiele was indeed exiled.  When the Jedi went to retrieve her from the remote planet she’d been left on, Tasiele was gone, leaving her writings to Satele, who is describe as still “young.”  I’ve speculated in my fics about how all that went down, but there’s no canon consensus. 

So what do we know? 

Satele was born on Brentaal IV.  Brentaal IV in Legends is a commerce-driven planet.  It is an intergalactic marketplace, sitting at the crossroads of two major trading routes, the Perlemian Trade Route and the Hydian Way (which was still being created when Satele was born in 3699 BBY; it was complete in 3694).  As a result, the Brentaal system has become increasingly war-torn, as it is highly desirable for both the Republic and the Empire.  At the time of Satele’s birth, however, the Sith Empire was about 18 years from returning, so the planet was at peace and thriving, the Hydian Way being established right nearby. 

Based on what we see in comics and mentioned in Legends novels, Brentaal IV  was an active, bright planet with lots of entertainment and a grand variety of products.  As a crossroads between two trading routes, if a person had the money, no desire could be left unfilled.  Based on the description on Wookieepedia, I’m personally viewing this as almost a space Renaissance Venice; those with money run the government, and unhappy citizens make for bad sales -- the government still needs to keep the people happy.  The buildings tend to be bland because of corporate interests, but then people insist upon trees and organic features in their environments. 

That’s where Satele was born.  That doesn’t mean it’s where Tasiele met Satele’s father or became pregnant. 

Briefly, I considered whether Tasiele might have done Revan’s tradition of found family:  whether with the Exile or Malak or with the crew of the Ebon Hawk, Revan created his family not by blood but by choice of association.  Who says Tasiele didn’t adopt a baby girl, and then only later discovered that this child was Force-Sensitive?

Revan, that’s who.  In Shadow of Revan, he identifies Satele and Theron as his bloodline; their biological connection enabled him to watch over them and their forebears for centuries while the Emperor’s prisoner.  So as intriguing as the adoption angle is, Revan puts the kabosh on it.  

Tasiele wrote about attachments in a positive way, but we don’t know what sort of experience Tasiele has had with them. We know Tasiele named Satele.  However, beyond that, there is nothing explicitly said about the nature of their mother/daughter relationship.  Depending on Satele’s age when her mother was exiled, she could have already been at the Temple; Satele was found to be Force Sensitive early, so her education as a Jedi may have started very early.  Alternatively, she might have been removed from her mother’s custody if she was under a certain age or if Tasiele objected to her child being parted from her, based upon their attachments.  Again, Tasiele’s ‘revolutionary’ stance adds a lot of baggage and complication to how we try to read the relationship -- if there was one.  If Satele and Tasiele were close before Tasiele’s exile, then maybe all of Tasiele’s writings were rooted in her attachment to her daughter and how the daughter thrived. 

That leaves the obvious biological question of how Tasiele became pregnant.  Star Wars takes place long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away.  Most writers in Star Wars are mute about getting pregnant and how not to get pregnant; it’s only recently that we have canon evidence that women menstruate in SW universe (a good Padme novel).  Likewise, there’s not much about birth control other than “taking precautions.”  Could Tasiele have just gone to a clinic and picked a specimen that had potential (assuming we have sperm donors in the Old Republic)?  Would she have screened for potential Force Sensitivity?  Or did Tasiele cruise the bar scene and have a one-night stand, purposefully?  One does not need a relationship or a connection to someone to get pregnant; if Tasiele just wanted a child, there are a lot of ways to have a kid without getting into an involved relationship with someone.

Or did Tasiele get attached?  Were her writings initially about someone she felt something for?  Obviously, she would not name names, but speaking about attachments to individuals would have likely been in her journals.  Did Tasiele Shan have a relationship that resulted in her pregnancy?  If so....

Does Satele’s father know he is?  Or did Tasiele hide it?  Satele hiding it from Jace has a different context; Satele had signed onto the Jedi way, without her mother’s ‘deviant’ philosophy -- there was no room for Jace and a baby in her attachment-free life.  In Satele’s mind, it was better for all parties to be unaware and parted from each other, especially if Theron became a Jedi himself.  In contrast, if she was in an attached relationship, Tasiele may well have told her lover about his child.

So far, what I’ve written above sort of revolves around the idea that Tasiele was out in the galaxy, away from the Jedi Order, and that whoever the father was, he was not a Jedi.  After I gave this to Spouse to read for the first time, he reacted positively and wondered aloud, “What if Tasiele got exiled because the father was a Jedi master?”

And that’s yet another scenario to consider (and this is technically the last paragraph I wrote, ha). Tasiele Shan was on the edge, philosophically, but there is no mention as to how powerful she was.  We know Satele is very powerful; she’s actually been toned down in-game compared to some of the mind-reading/mind-control powers she had in novels.  If a Jedi:  was it a love affair?  A passionate night?  Something unsavory?  Was it swept under the rug for him, but not for her (pregnancy as evidence of misconduct)?  Or did Tasiele take the fall for someone she was very attached to? 

If Tasiele was pro-attachments and she was in a relationship with the father of her child, Jedi or not, then what happened to him?  Was it a hostile break-up?  Did he die?  Did Tasiele intend to tell Satele about her father when she was old enough?  Was all of that thwarted when she was exiled?  The exile itself sounds as if it was done against Tasiele’s will rather than mutually agreed upon, so it probably looked more like an arrest than an amicable “go sit on this planet, please.” 

Again, where Satele was during this entire process is not known.  There is no mention of her father in any of the information we have, so we assume he was either not involved ....or that what he did, said, wanted -- none of that ultimately mattered or affected what happened to his daughter. 

How all of this affects Satele is not known.  We know she does not inform Theron or Jace of their connections.  That may be prompted by the situations discussed above.... or that might just be Jedi teachings about attachment at work and the perils for a Force-Sensitive child. We only know she’s reading her mother’s works after Zakuul.  Satele was Grand Master of the Jedi Order; she was viewed as a paragon.  However, when we dig a little bit into who Tasiele Shan was and why she is not around, this reveals, potentially, a far more complicated Satele with, maybe, a troubled childhood; Echoes of Oblivion feels even more hollow to me after writing this.  This post offers no conclusions, only speculation and perhaps a springboard for other fanworks.

[generalobi]

What if Obi-Wan stayed on Melida/Daan after their war was over to help them piece together peace. As a foreign advisor, he’d have plenty of time to read up on his nerdy interests, like maybe the only Mandalorian Jedi. How would Jango react to a warrior poet former Jedi who speaks in flowery ancient Mando’a?

It was never Obi-Wan’s intention to become a politician. But, things being as they are, he didn’t really have much of a choice.

In the beginning, it was fine. He was appointed Minister of Education, after helping Cerasi and Nield form a government. He enjoyed being Minister of Education. He got to help shape the next generation of children, and watch them grow up in a world without war. It was great, actually.

But, of course, nothing good ever lasts. MelidaDaan needed to rejoin the wider galaxy, and who better to lead that project than Obi-Wan? No one, because no one else had ever left the planet. No one else speaks another language, and no one else knows how trade deals work. So, Foreign Minister Kenobi is born.

¬

When his buir tells him he’s considering reaching out to MelidaDaan for a trade deal, Jango nearly laughs. Not only does MelidaDaan have nothing of value, nothing is known about them. The planet only recently emerged from centuries long isolation. 

He does laugh when his buir tells him that Jango will be the one to head this negotiation.

¬

When Jango brings the ship into the atmosphere, he understands. MelidaDaan resembles Mandalore. The planet is a wasteland, remnants of towns and cities amongst barren fields and bomb craters. A civil war tore the planet apart, every continent and city ravenged by it. That’s why Jaster wants this deal. Their planets are similar.

Next to him, Myles whistles lowly, “Fuck, they destroyed this place. I reckon the Manda’lor’s got a point. They’re not so different from us.”

“Maybe,” Jango says, still scanning the surface.

They’re approaching a city, and the coordinates his buir gave them. Like everything else, the city shows signs of war. But progress too. Buidlings have been fixed, and strengthened. They fly over a street market, and a school, before their stop comes into view. A small landing platform.

“I think they found peace in a very different way,” Jango points out, jerking his chin at their welcoming party.

Myles stares at the group of barely adults that awaits them, “Shit.”

¬

“Olarom,” Minister Kenobi greets, accent strange but the word undoubtably Mando’a, “We welcome you to our city.”

“We thank you for your welcome,” Jango inclines his head, “You speak Mando’a?”

He shrugs, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth, “Oh, only a bit. I’ve had some time on my hands recently.”

Next to him, the woman (girl, really) who has yet to introduce herself rolls her eyes.

Jango has no idea what to make of these people. The three members of their welcoming party can’t be older than twenty. And that’s being generous. Jango himself is young for his position, at twenty-five. How have these... children ending up in charge of a planet? And why?

“Your accent is good,” Myles says gruffly, when Jango has been silent for too long, “For a beginner.”

Minister Kenobi laughs, “Thank you, Ser Myles. I try my best. Would you like to see your rooms? Negotiations start tomorrow, as I’m sure you’re aware, and dinner is in three hours. I’m sure you want to relax before then.”

Jango trades a look with Myles, “Thank you, we would appreciate that.”

Unlike Sundari, MelidaDaan doesn’t have a palace. The girl, who introduces herself as Dari, explains that this is the Fortress. At Myles’ raised eyebrow, Minister Kenobi explains that the building was one of the few that still stood at the end. He doesn’t specify at the end of what, but he doesn’t need to. 

The third member of the welcome committee is presumably a guard, as they offer no introduction and remain at the back of the group.

As they walk, Dari and Minister Kenobi point out things of interest and explain the next two weeks itiniery more thoroughly. The latter is mostly Kenobi. The building is mostly duracrete, wood and some strange material Jango can’t identify. It’s clearly designed for practicality more than anything else. Apart from tapestries lining the walls, the decoration is sparse.

Frankly, Jango would be hard pressed to find his way without the tour. All the corridors look similar, and the doors have no sign to differentiate one from the other. How Dari manages to point out each one baffles him. 

“And these are your rooms,” Kenobi stops at an unassuming wooden door, “Someone will bring your bags from the ship, and fetch you for dinner. Please, rest. You might need it.”

¬

“This place is strange,” Jango groans to his buir, when the only person to witness his lack of decorum is Myles.

Jaster sighs, “And why is that?”

“They’re kids,” Jango says, running a hand through his hair.

“What?”

Myles pops his head into view, “He’s not lying Jaster. They’re off age, but only just. This is an elected government, and for some reason they’ve chosen to elect children. Scary children, sure, but I swear I saw a twelve-year-old in a guards uniform.”

Jaster frowns, “I’ll look into it. But other than that?”

“Minister Kenobi speaks Mando’a.”

“Okay,” Jaster nods, “That is weird. I have to go, but I will look into it. I’ll talk to you tomorrow Jan’ika.”

The call disconnects and Jango is left staring down at his comm. 

“Come on,” Myles slaps his shoulder, “Let’s get ready for this dinner.”

[demonologistfucker]

Free Angel GN! Angel MC x Obey Me, Part 1

Summary: You are the third Angel to be welcome in Diavolo’s exchange program. This is the first time in your life that you are free from any Angelic codes, and you’re interested to indulge. You can’t explore hell alone though, so you’ll be given the Avatar of Wrath as a guardian.

This is my writing out the AU i had for my own mc, but as an MC insert. This first chapter is SFW, but if I continue, there will be NSFW smutty chapters. This Angel wants to have some fun in hell, and is Poly so ✨

Word Count: 3459

“Are you excited?” Simeon looked down to Luke. Who was fussing over his own clothes. Making sure everything was neat and presentable. 

“Of course not,” Luke huffed. “This is going to be the worst year.”

“I don’t know about that,” MC grinned as they rocked back onto their heels. “We’re going to learn quite a lot.” So much about the Devildom had been kept away from the angels. MC was created by God after the revolution. All they had ever been told was what to fear about the devils and their land. However, MC knew there were gaps in the story. Noticed the longing that flared in Simeon’s eyes whenever The Morningstar and his family were brought up. Which is why, as the magic circle began to glow, MC felt a great excitement. Luke watched the magic circle glow with wide eyes. While Simeon continued on as if nothing was changing.

“Try to keep an open mind, Luke. The Devildom is not all bad.” Simeon patted Luke’s head. “You might even make some friends.”  just as the magic circle completed. Reality spluttered for a second, and then everything was dark. 

“Absolutely not!” Luke’s shrill voice was all that MC could sense. Then they tasted the air, cool and tinged with sulfur. “Make friends with Demons? I could never!” Luke prattled on while his eyes adjusted. After several blinks, MC could see the palace they stood in. The grandeur was almost repulsive. Gold trim and deep red walls. It was the beauty of wealth and statues. 

“I hope you’ll be able to make friends during your stay.” A deep voice said from behind. MC spun around, and then had to crane their head upward to see who was there. His broad smile was so warm that it clashed with the royal regalia the man was dressed in. The red jacket  with a medallion on the shoulder. MC scrunched their nose, wondering why Hell would choose to continue earths obsession with war decoration. “Thank you for joining us.” The Man continued, and he bowed his head to the Angels. “I am Lord Diavolo, Prince of the Devildom. As well as the head of the exchange program.”

“Thank you for having us,” Simeon smiles as he walks over to the prince. Without hesitation, the two embrace in a familiar hug. 

“I’m just so happy the program worked.” Diavolo rubs the back of his neck. “The humans will be coming this evening. So I’ll be able to help you all settle in and still make it for the humans.” Simeon and Diavolo continued to talk about details. Mainly the excitement over the humans. While Luke looked on with a fury. 

“I can’t believe Simeon is being so familiar with the Demon Lord.” Luke crossed his arms. “We cannot befriend the enemy.”

“Yah.. Enemy.” Mc can feel something tighten in their stomach. Instead of processing that, the angel turns to look about the palace a little more. Now that they knew what the Prince looked like. Some portraits on the walls made more sense. The one that caught the angel’s eye was of a young Diavolo. He stood alone in a field of red. A skull of a dragon under his foot, and a toy left in the distant background. It had been commissioned to show the great power Diavolo had ever as a child. Unintentionally, it spoke some truth. A small child alone in a field. Left with death at his feet. 

“I won’t be able to be around much in your day to day, I’m afraid.” Diavolo was now standing to face the whole group. So MC turned their attention back to the conversation. “But I do want to do my best to keep your stay in my realm as comfortable as possible. If there is anything we can do, please let us know.”

“Is there a way we can go back?” Luke asks with great seriousness.

“Luke!” Simeon gasps. 

“That is what would make me most comfortable,” Luke huffs and crosses his arms. 

“Luke, you can’t just-.” Simeon rubs the space between his brow.

“It’s fine,” Diavolo shrugs it off. “We all process homesickness in our own way. The spell to move between heaven and hell is a powerful one. So we truly won't be able to do this till next year, but if there is anything else we can do. Do ask and I will try to accommodate. Lucifer should be here soon, and he will bring you to your dormitories. As well as go down the basic rules of staying here.”

“Rules?” Mc asks, finally speaking up. 

“Not much but briefly - Michael requested that you three still follow your codes, but there is no way for them to actually check.” Diavolo puts a hand on his chest. “One of our realms defining features is that your god’s awareness cannot reach here. So the rules you must follow are the rules of the devildom and whatever you personally value. Our rules you’ll find are much more lax.” Luke gasps in horror, but excitement only brewed within MC.

Two men in uniform walk into the Palace hall. One walks directly to Lord Diavolo’s side. Dark hair falling into a shock of green that followed framed half his face. They were stiff and despite the collected look. MC could see the anxiety running through their spine. The other kept a distance from the Angels. A cool dark look, judging each of them openly. 

“My Lord we must be going.”

“I don’t have any more time?” Diavolo’s face falls. 

“No, your next meeting has already begun.” They kept their voice rather calm, but their eyebrow twitched. 

“Alright,” Diavolo sighs, but turns back to the angels quickly. “I truly hope you enjoy your stay in the Devildom. It’s an honor to have you here.” With that, Diavolo is ushered away. 

“Now who could that brooding gentleman be,” Simeon was once again walking up to the strange demon. Though the man looked as disagreeable as before. He did let Simeon hug him. Only adjusting his jacket the moment he was free. 

“You know who I am,” 

“I am asking for the children,” Simeon looks back to Luke and MC. While Luke gets all huffy about their age. MC is truly an adult by the fact that they can just roll their eyes and get over it. 

“My name is Lucifer,” He bow slightly to the three angels. “Avatar of Pride, and right hand to Lord Diavolo. When you need his help, come to me.” Lucifer sharpens his gaze on MC. “Diavolo is very busy, and I would prefer you to bother me than him.” Then his glare moved to Luke. Who paled and shuffled towards Simeon. “Now, if you will follow me. I’ll lead you to your housing for the year.” Lucifer walked briskly out of the Palace. “ Compared to the celestial realm, the Devildom functions much more like earth. The city is based on a money exchange. We will provide a small allowance once a month, but if you want to indulge, you’ll have to get a job.” Lucifer says all of this while walking briskly out of the Palace. Luke grumbles about nearly having to run, and MC has to fight back a laugh. “If you stay within the Devildom your life will be remarkably like that on earth. With a key distinction that there will be demons who lust for your blood every so often, and there is no sun.” Lucifer swung open the front door of the palace. Exposing the dark courtyard beyond, and the block void of the sky. Illuminated on the horizon was The Devildom. The glowing sector of Hell where Demons and spirits lived their personal lives. It glowed beautifully, and illuminated the Palace like a setting sun. 

Normally, this effect was made greater by the fact that the courtyards had no lights. If one was to see, it was their own gift, or from the light of the city. The angels broke this by having their own innate glow. Casting warm shadows against the cool nature of hell. Lucifer glanced at the glow with mild annoyance. Normally, the walk from the palace to the road was his moment of peace. Now each step he was reminded about the great task this year would be.

“To help with the exchange, we have enrolled you three in the local university. There you can learn about how the systems of hell truly function, as well as our magical training programs. We have some of the most skilled magic users training with us.” Part of Diavolo’s plan was to show what Hell was truly worth. The eons didn’t pass without change, and under Diavolo that change was being brought to its most refined point. Lucifer himself had led many of the projects to start translating Hell’s data into deeper means of understanding… Books with narrative instead of strings of numbers or archaic runes. 

“So you won’t be making us torture humans?” Luke snaps. 

“Only if you want to.” Lucifer doesn’t even look back to Luke. He knew enough about the little angel to know it would start on a rant if provoked. He was already battling a headache and couldn’t stand the thought of being lectured by a child. 

“I could never!” Luke brings his hand to his chest.

“Then you won’t.” 

“What will we be learning then?” MC asks. 

“Standard education for someone new to our system. History of the Devildom, Grimm economics, Devildom literature, Alchemy and potions 101, art, athletics,” Lucifer twirls a hand around. “The basics,”

“Oh that sounds… Fun” MC grimaces.

“Did you come here to have fun?” Lucifer glances back at the angel. 

“So what if I did?” MC tries to be defensive, but can’t help cracking into a smile. It was rather funny seeing the confused look on Lucifer’s face. 

“MC! We are not here to have fun, we have to learn and do as much research for our arch-”

“I know Luke,” MC groans. “We’re allowed to have Some fun.”

“Indeed,” Lucifer nods. “None of the classes should take all your time, so you’ll be able to have your own time. If you want to explore the Devildom please go in pairs. While you have Diavolo’s blessing, not all demons listen to authority. There is no promising what a rogue demon would do to a lone angel.” 

MC scrunches up their face, which makes Simeon laugh. Meanwhile, Luke is actually trembling. 

“Oh Luke, you look like a scared puppy.” Simeon tries to keep his voice sympathetic, but the hint of laughter is clear. 

“A little chihuahua,” Lucifer smiles. 

“I am not a chihuahua!” Luke shrieks! 

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

Purgatory Hall was a lot more comfortable than MC had expected. The interior was surprisingly bright and cozy. Though still favoring the overly ornate and plush. MC was wandering aimlessly through the halls. Luke was still hurt from the chihuahua incident by the time they were done getting situated. So Simeon had taken Luke out to get something sweet to make up for it. While at the time, MC had said they wanted to stay here and explore the house. They were now realizing that was a foolish choice. After looking in the rooms once,  MC was more than satisfied with exploring the house. So now they were draped across the couch. Flipping idly through their D.D.D. When MC opens the messages to pulls up Lucifer.

“You said I shouldn’t go out by myself. Simeon and Luke are often a pair without me. I could just risk it?” Dots appear quickly.

“No, let me find you a guide.” 

Lucifer leaned back. Thinking about which of his brothers, he wants to make baby sit an angel. No one who might find it enjoyable like Asmo or Beel. He already planned on having Mammon for the human...

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

“Satan, would you be a guide for one of the Angel exchange students?”

“Are you actually asking me?” Satan looks over the top of his reading glasses.” Or are you just telling me in a passive manner.”

“It’s not passive,” Lucifer crosses his arms.” Answer my question.”

“No,” Satan leaned back into his chair. Lifting his book up to block Lucifer from view. 

“You are just saying that because I am asking you.”

“Yes,” Satan smiles. 

“Which is why I am going to make you do it.” Lucifer smiles back. “I think it will be an informative experience for you.” 

“Informative?” Satan can feel the fires in his stomach boiling over, but his keeps his composure calm. It was centuries of practice. “As if I don’t hear enough about the celestial realm from you?”

“You hear our side of it, and now you can learn another.” Lucifer looks so sure of his convictions that it made Satan want to lift his chair and throw it through a wall. Instead, he took a deep breath for seven seconds and let it out in ten. 

“How do you intend on making me do this?” Satan propped his elbow on the armchair, and then his head in his hand. 

“I will tell Diavolo you refused to use your strength and knowledge to help his exchange program. If the angels are to learn the best qualities of Hell. Who is better informed than you? No harm would come to that angel with you near.” Lucifer has pride in many things. Not just himself, and that was one of his worst qualities. The way he looked at Satan with such knowing. Then how it could vanish into cold apathy. “It’s lazy work, really. You could have an audiobook in your ear if you truly needed it.”

Satan looked from Lucifer and down to the floor. Then he switched which way he was leaning in the chair. Fidgeting as he thought. Trying to find a way to accept that he will have to do this. Without having to agree with Lucifer. 

“Fine, I don’t want to be lectured by Diavolo as well as you.” Satan begins to read his book again. “When do I start?”

“Now, they want to explore.” Lucifer’s face was full of mirth. If Satan showed that he was irritated, that would only play into what He wanted. So Satan sighed as he picked up the bookmark and wedges it in. 

“The angels will be living in Purgatory hall, correct?” At least Satan could show he’d be competent in the task. 

“Indeed.  MC is an Angel a little younger than you and will not know what to expect in the Devildom.”

“That we’re not all monsters or that monster’s still exist?” Satan slowly took of his glasses. Cleaning the lenses before tucking them away. 

“Bit of both. Which you’re a perfect example of. ” Lucifer ignore the scowl that rips across Satan’s face. Instead, tapping his watch. “They asked me for a guide an hour ago, so I would appreciate it if we could hurry up.” Satan stands up and again takes a deep breath. Then many more. A deep breath each step of the way to purgatory hall. Asmo was hanging out in the hallway, but the moment they saw Satan. Asmo found an excuse to leave. 

It was right up to the moment that Satan knocked on the door. That’s when he took one final breath and let the tension fall from his shoulders. Suddenly the portrait of composure with a grace in his eye. The door opened easily, and there stood MC. Satan was shocked to see that, despite being an angel. They had changed out of any holy robes and into something more comfortable. There wasn’t the annoying level of arrogance Satan had come to expect. Off to a good start, it would seem. 

“Hello, My name is Satan. Lucifer sent me to be your guide.” Satan bowed slightly and smiled brightly as he stood up. His green eyes were glowing with genuine warmth. 

“Oh, awesome,” MC rocked back on their heels. “I don’t really know where to go. I just want to see… stuff?” MC shrugs and smiles sheepishly. Satan felt something new in his chest. This Angel was genuinely curious about the Devildom. 

“I know lots of lovely spots. Do you want some history or a bit of culture?” Satan raises a brow. Looking at MC as if they were co conspirators on some great plan. MC’s heart pick up the pace. 

“Why not both?”

“Good choice,��� Satan offers an elbow to the Angel. With flushed cheeks, the Angel accepts. “A friend of mine commissioned a new branch in the museum nearby. It’s full of artifacts that were destroyed by invades. Now in the Devildom we can restore the artifacts and get first-hand facts on the culture.”

“An accurate history or ones written by victors?”

“Accurate, of course,” Satan looks almost offended. “We are not on any side of humanities battles.”

“You like their military regalia.”

“I don’t. Those in charge think it’s pretty.” Satan rolls his eyes. “One part of hell is under strict authority, and another is nearly pure anarchy.”

“Anarchy with demons must get interesting.” MC tries not to giggle. “I have the image of Demons fighting to create and making utter chaos.”

“You’re close, just throw in some packs working together, and rogues wandering around the city trying to push their chaos were ever. The principles of anarchy aren’t too bad, actually. I’ve read the literature, but in practice with magic beings, too many hot heads can ruin it for the rest.” 

“There’s so many rules in Heaven,” MC sighs and rocks their head back. “Anarchy sounds terrifying, but also refreshing? If that makes sense.”

“It does,” Satan nods. “What sort of rules does heaven have?”

“Well, the rules of angels and people are different.” Satan nods instead of saying, Obviously. “For angels, we literally have a mandated outfit. Can’t wear anything but the one holy look. We cannot stray remotely close to any sins, and must keep peace at all times. Which isn’t difficult with 1000 of human souls all wanting their own ideal conflicting paradise.” MC tenses with the anger, and then lets it slide out. “Sorry about that-”

“Don’t apologize,” Satan squeezes the Angel’s arm a little. “You got more than the right to be annoyed with such treatment. Speak what you feel.” MC looks up at Satan with bright eyes. 

“If I have to sing in another chores for God, I will scream.”

“You should! Screaming is cathartic.” The talk the whole way to the museum and through it. Both have more than enough to say, and genuinely want to hear the other. Satan has carefully made opinions and seems to be educated in every topic under the sun. The Niches of thing MC thinks of Satan can keep up with. He also seems to have causes at least half of the wars which destroyed the artifacts now on display. “Alexander was rather easy to manipulate,” Satan hums. “Just had to bat my eyes at him and ask if that’s what he really wanted. He would be up for anything after that.” Satan can’t keep back his mischievous grin. 

“Did you… Seduce Alexander the Great?”

“And helped kill him.” Satan smiles proudly. “He was an asshole, but fun to play with it.” Now Satan looks off with a distance in his eyes. Clearly lost in the past, where he could saunter about Rome. Arm and Arm with a brutal conquer. 

“How often do you accompany brutal killers?” MC asks with a sharp look. 

“This is where our working on opposite sides could come to a point,” Satan chuckles. “I am the avatar of wrath. I accompany most of the greatest killers. Push them to indulge just a bit more. If not me, one of my many underlings is probably there.”

“Funny,” MC says with a rather serious face. “I haven’t been given a title yet, but I spent the last century working with the angels in the peace department.”

“Oh that is some hard work,” Satan looks over to the Angel. MC had been prepared for Satan to look annoyed, but instead he looked more impressed. “Humans are so easy to manipulate with their emotions. Peace is going against their instincts.” By now, Satan and MC had entered the museum. Other demons milled about. Quickly commenting on the pieces of history elegantly on display. The explanations that come with each piece are at best wordy paragraphs. At worst, there is an essay attached. MC is saved from any reading by having Satan in toe. He knows all the information backwards and forwards, and the fact he’s more curious about the Angel. Saves MC from having to sit through lecture after lecture. Satan pauses to breath, and to hear the Angel’s own thoughts.

----- Rest of the museum date will be finished if people show interest in it.

A/N: Thank you for reading! If you have any requests for what Angel MC get’s up to feel free to ask! If people actually like this I’ll writing more parts consistently. If not more will just come as I feel like it.

[justfangirlthingies]

Love Story (Dad! Draco Malfoy)

This is a songfic based on "Love Story" by Taylor Swift

Dad! Draco is something I absolutely adore, I just couldn't help myself

Word count: 2568 words

Warnings: a bit of angst maybe, but the rest is fluff

The reader is a pureblood, but that's only mentioned once, so I guess if you want to change that up in your head feel free to do so, it's not like I can control your thoughts or anything

Soft draco content!

Also, this is my first time writing anything for Draco, sorry if he's a little OOC, but I guess you'll just have to deal with that. I just found this idea cute. That's it. Carry on with your reading :)

By the way, the war and all that jazz did happen I just, I dunno left it out because that would've been too much

"Darling!? Are you alright?" Your husband barged into the hospital room. His platinum hair disheveled and tie loosened. He was panting heavily, presumably from running all the way here from his workplace. "I came as fast as I could, but the minister wouldn't let me leave early, since I'd be at home for the next weeks anyways." A soft smile graced your lips as you spoke up "Draco it's fine don't worry. I'm - I mean we are fine"

His eyes flooded with guilt as a look of sorrow took over his face "I-I missed it? I'm so sorry I wasn't there..." Draco stammered quietly as he slowly started to approach you. You gave a small nod as you reached your arms out for him. The blonde didn't hesitate to engulf your smaller form into his arms as soon as he had reached the hospital bed you were sprawled out on. "It's not your fault love" You whispered soothingly while you allowed your fingers to run through his already messy hair. Soft lips brushed your temple as you basked in Draco's warmth. The male moved away from you a bit to catch a glimpse of your face. "Is it a girl or a-" but before he could finish, the door opened once again and in came a doctor with a small bundle wrapped in a lime green blanket in his arms. "Ah you must be Mr. Malfoy then."

Draco just stared at the blankets and gave a small nod, trying to make out the baby underneath. He watched as the doc handed you the small human. A smile etched onto your lips as you took the baby from the man. Your husband finally caught sight of your child. Well of the blond fuzz on the baby's head to be exact. You noticed his stare and giggled "You want to hold him Draco?" You questioned and without even giving him time to think, handed him your newborn. "He?" he smiled tenderly when he finally saw the baby-boy's full face. His icy blue eyes found a pair of identically coloured irises staring back up at him.

"Have you decided on a name yet?" The doctor asked after a few minutes. This resulted in Draco looking up from his son and throwing a questioning gaze at you. "Go ahead." You reassured him.

It's not like he had to make up a name on the spot. After all the two of you talked a lot about baby names and had decided to stay with the Black family tradition for the naming, seeing as upholding this tradition was of utter importance to him. It was a relieve to see you hadn't changed your mind about the name you had decided on beforehand.

"Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy" spoke the love of your life. Huge grins on both of your faces as Draco pulled you closer towards him and Scorpius so he could hold the whole extent of his new family in his arms.

With that the doctor left the three of you to have some privacy and to get to know your son.

A content sigh left your lips and you decided to speak up "Look how far we've come Dray. We survived my father and a war, moved in together, got married and now we're starting a new chapter. A family"

"Ah yes of course." he replied before a smirk appeared on his face "Though I have to say, your father was the greatest challenge we've had to overcome." A chuckle escaped his lips as he started reminiscing about the past "Do you remember how we met?"

You hummed in response "We were both young when I first saw you"

I close my eyes and the flashback starts

Your eyelids fluttered close as you swayed in the memory of the first time you laid your eyes on him.

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▪︎

I'm standin' there on a balcony in summer air. See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns

It was a peaceful evening. A little boring for a nine-year-old maybe, but still nice. Your family had hosted a ball and invited all the other well known and mostly wealthy pureblood families. Nothing unusual.

One thing however, was a little extraordinary. Notoriously you were the only child at such gatherings, but on this fateful night you had seen another child. A pale boy around your age, you guessed. His gelled back hair was a white-blond colour, it framed his face along with his sharp, pointed features. That's when your (e/c) orbs met his piercing grey ones.

See you make your way through the crowd

And say, "Hello"

This encounter made your evening much more eventful and enjoyable and it also gained you a friend for life.

Little did I know that you were Romeo

Had you known who he was back then, maybe you would've kept your distance. But the thing is, you didn't know.

▪︎

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From then on your friendship only continued to blossom as years passed by

Sometimes Draco would sneak out of his house just to wake you up and spend time with you in the middle of the night. Many times you woke to a tapping sound coming from your window

you were throwin' pebbles

In the beginning you were surprised to see him, standing outside underneath your window when you opened it. Occasionally you'd sneak out and go for walks.

His nightly visits became more frequent, often leading to you sneaking him into your home, up the stairs and into your room.

On some instances you spent hours on end just talking. Other times, you spent those same hours engulfed in one another's embrace, lips meeting each other halfway, limbs entangled and bodies pressed together.

Unfortunately your father had seen the light from underneath your door and heard voices talk when he woke that night. He barged into your room and as he saw the Malfoy boy sitting criss cross on your carpeted floor, the two of you deeply engulfed in conversation, he yanked the blonde up and dragged him out of your room and down the stairs

And my daddy said, "Stay away from Juliet (Y/n)"

You had followed after them as tears cascaded down your cheeks. And I was cryin' on the staircase Beggin' you, "Please don't go, " and I said, "Romeo Draco, take me somewhere we can be alone. I'll be waiting, all there's left to do is run. You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess It's a love story, baby, just say, "Yes"" His heart broke then and there as he watched your devastated form call out to him in vain. Before Draco had a chance to answer your request he was shoved out the front door by your father.

"(Y/n) (M/n) (L/n)! Just what do you think you're doing sneaking around with the Malfoy boy?!" Your father hollered, his voice laced with anger. The man you called your father could be very intimidating at times, especially when he was fuming and glared at someone, just like he was doing with you now. The adult's words dripping from his voice like venom "You won't see him again." "Bu-" You were about to cut him off and protest, but he just continued and talked over your failed attempt to interrupt him "I don't want you talking to the son of a death eater! He's probably already one himself."

Your face contorted into a scowl as you seethed at him through your teeth, tears still dropping from your shimmering (e/c) irises "You can't tell me what to do!" It slipped past your lips and your face nearly went to a look of surprise at your own words. Your eyes widened slightly, but now that you had already made the mistake of talking back to him with that attitude, what did you have to lose? You tried to keep your demeanor the way it was when you talked back to the man you called your father.

"What was that young lady?!" He scolded "That's no way to talk to your father (Y/n)!" You snarled at him before you got up from your place on the staircase and turned to retrieve to your room, making sure to slam the door on your way. Waking your mother and siblings in the process. You only knew that because you heard voices and different footsteps.

As soon as the door was properly shut you threw yourself onto the bed and hugged one of your pillows close to you as you sobbed and screamed in frustration, pain, anger, sadness, agony or however you would like to describe it. The fact that the pillow you were currently clutching to your body as you shook with tears, still smelled of the boy who had captured your heart and was with you not even 10 minutes ago just had you break down even more. That is how you went to sleep that dreadful night. Crying yourself to sleep while you held onto the pillow for dear life.

▪︎

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▪︎

It took you some time, but you found a way to meet up again. In secret.

Just you and him.

Merlin knows what would happen if someone found out that the two of you were sneaking around again.

So I sneak out to the garden to see you

We keep quiet, 'cause we're dead if they knew

▪︎

▪︎

▪︎

So close your eyes

"We should run away together Draco. Just imagine all the things we could do then." you suggested quietly, your head resting on his chest.

Escape this town for a little while, oh oh

'Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter

▪︎

▪︎

▪︎

Of course it was only a matter of time until your father found out about your little ordeal again.

And my daddy said, "Stay away from Juliet(Y/n)"

And once again you found yourself in an oddly familiar occurrence as you were crying after the man you loved. It pained both of you to see each other hurt. "But you were everything to me" Draco called out to you and he made sure your father had heard him too, for the young Mr. Malfoy was indeed completely and utterly in love with you and he wasn't afraid to show it. As soon as your pleas reached his ears again he felt his heart sink in his chest. I was beggin' you, "Please don't go, " and I said, "Romeo Draco, take me somewhere we can be alone. I'll be waiting, all there's left to do is run. You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess. It's a love story, baby, just say, "Yes""

▪︎

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▪︎

Maybe your father was right, maybe you did deserve someone better, Draco thought. At least that's what the silver-eyed boy told himself. It was his only way of staying sane and grounded. His way to cope was to hope you'll meet someone better than him, someone more deserving of your love, even though that thought hurt him, it was a comfort to think that, maybe you'd move on, but his heart still held onto the last bits of hope he had left in him. And that's when it happened. An owl landed on his windowsill. Not just any owl. Your owl and the letter it carried had your family's seal on it.

He felt his heartbeat increase rapidly, his hands clammy as he opened the window. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to smile, to cry, scream or throw up then and there because that letter could contain anything. A wedding invite maybe? He hoped not. After contemplating for a bit he decided on opening your letter. As he did so, he became more nervous with each passing second, still clinging tightly onto the last bit of hope he had left.

The letter read: "Romeo Draco, save me, they're tryna tell me how to feel. This love is difficult, but it's real. Don't be afraid, we'll make it out of this mess. It's a love story, baby, just say, "Yes""

Oh but this time he would say "Yes"

Oh, oh

For this time, he had a plan and he was determined to execute his plan

▪︎

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▪︎

I got tired of waiting. Wonderin' if you were ever comin' around. My faith in you was fading

You were on the breach of losing all your hope, but you decided you'd try one last time. So you went to the place you'd told him you'd wait for him. If he didn't show up today then that's it, you would give up. However, what you didn't expect was to actually meet him face to face. When I met you on the outskirts of town,

When your eyes met his again for the first time in so long you didn't know how to react. Was it appropriate to hug him? You weren't sure so you just stood there frozen on the spot when you asked him once again. Desperately clutching to your last bit of hope that you didn't even know you had left.

and I said

"Romeo Draco, save me, I've been feeling so alone. I keep waiting for you, but you never come. Is this in my head? I don't know what to think"

Tears streamed down your face as you poured your heart out to him and when you felt his warmth surround you, you didn't hesitate to lap onto him with all your might. After a few minutes he tore himself away from you and when his grey eyes met pools of (e/c), he saw the terror in your eyes. Did you think he didn't want to be with you? "I'm sorry this took so long love" he spoke, leaving you with a confused expression on your face "but your father is a tough man" he chuckled. This only earned him another puzzled look from you as you arched an eyebrow in utter bewilderment. You were not sure what he was about to do and you certainly didn't expect him to do the thing he was about to do.

He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring and said, "Marry me, Juliet (Y/n). You'll never have to be alone. I love you and that's all I really know. I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress. It's a love story, baby, just say "Yes""

There you stood before him. Eyes wide. Eyes that you couldn't believe. All you could do was just stand and stare.

"Umm...(Y/n)?" Draco looked up at you, his eyes holding only love and adoration and maybe a hint of fear because you were not answering. He gently reached upwards and caressed one of your soft hands. The touch bringing you back to reality and out of your trance. "An answer would be nice" he chuckled nervously. You quickly pulled him up by his hand and kissed him "Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!" you grinned and beamed up at him. You leaned in again and brushed your lips lightly against his as you spoke against the soft skin "Yes Draco. Yes"

Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh

▪︎

▪︎

▪︎

All of a sudden you were ripped from your little bubble by soft cries.

Just like that, in the spur of a moment, you were back to reality. Slowly your eyelids fluttered open, only to see your husband cradling your son in his arms to cease his crying "Shh, shhh, shh. It's alright Scorpius, your daddy is here" he cooed softly "we need to be quiet buddy because mommy is sleeping and mommy deserves her sleep after such an exhausting day." Draco smiled triumphantly when little Scorpius stopped crying "And you need all your sleep as well, your day was just as exhausting" he whispered softly.

'Cause we were both young when I first saw you

[startanewdream]

Hope (is all I have)

Summary: They never told James that being a parent meant worrying about your kid all the time.

Or how James deals with the fact that Harry is leaving for an unknown quest.

Set during HP and the Deathly Hallows.

Below the cut or over AO3 - warning for mildly swear:

____________________

'No', is the first word James says after fifteen minutes of silence while hearing Harry explain in a quiet voice how he is not going back to Hogwarts next year. 'You are not going to leave like that'.

Harry just blinks, looking at his father with an eerily calm that doesn't do anything to relax James.

His son is not even seventeen yet. He shouldn't be so at ease talking about a mysterious task set by a dead man.

'I have to', Harry says with all the conformism of someone that's been recruited for war, and James wonders at what point his son has just become that.

A soldier.

And then that lingering annoyance he had felt in the last nine months with Dumbledore increases, turning into burning anger, pure hatred for the former headmaster, and James has a mind to go to Hogwarts scream at his portrait.

How could you die and leave a mission for my son? You told me you would help protect him. You told me I could trust you. You never told me you were sending him to do your bidding.

He remembers that day, almost one year ago, when Dumbledore had called for James and Lily, had given each an Order mission - both weird, but they had trusted him as always - and then had told them he would be meeting Harry the next year.

‘You know about the prophecy’, Dumbledore had reminded them. ‘There are things Harry need to understand if Voldemort comes for him again’.

Lily had grasped James’ hand and had asked: ‘Will this help him?’

‘Everything I tell him is of the utmost importance’.

‘And you can’t tell us?’, James had asked, but he already knew the answer. Years being in the Order had taught him no one - except Dumbledore - ever knew everything, and, as Remus would put, it all would come down to the fact whether they trusted Dumbledore or not.

James and Lily had decided to place their trust in him a long time ago.

‘Will it help him to… survive? Will you protect him?’, James asked then, and Dumbledore had given him a soft smile.

‘I will’, Dumbledore had promised and that somehow had made James feel better.

No matter the secrecy, he believed Dumbledore cared for Harry too.

But now Dumbledore is dead, killed by someone he dared to trust in - Severus Snape, of course, a Death Eater never changes ways, does he, and Snape had never got over their childhood animosity - and James knows how it feels to put all your trust in the wrong person.

But he can’t allow Dumbledore’s plans to go on like this - isn’t his death prove that not even he could foresee everything? That maybe his plans were miscalculated?

'James…', Lily calls him softly, but he can pretend he didn't hear. He is angry at her too, because she heard Harry's warning that he would be leaving without a shadow of surprise on her face as if she had always known what Harry would do.

And she had not warned him before.

If she had, James could have… he could have stopped Harry's plan somehow, could have talked to his son, could have thought of another way, any other way just to Harry wouldn't be leaving them, could have prepared in advance his arguments…

Except Harry never asked for their permission, never asked what his parents thought about it.

He just announced he will be leaving.

'You are too young, Harry!', James cries and Harry doesn't even blink. A year ago he would have fought James for this statement, would have been mad and insisted he was old enough, but now his son is just waiting patiently and quietly, not wanting to fight. This does not calm him. 'There is nothing you “have to do”, other than going back to school and -’

‘Dad’, Harry cuts him off softly. ‘I love Hogwarts, you know it. I wouldn’t be dropping out of school if it didn’t matter, if it wasn’t important for all of us’.

‘Leaving school for something you can’t even tell us? That doesn’t make sense! We are in the Order, if there was anything to be done then Dumbledore -’

‘Dumbledore told me I shouldn’t tell anyone’, Harry says loyally and for once James hates this particular trait of Harry, wishes his son weren’t so stubborn.

Except he probably was the one that taught Harry how to stick to his beliefs. This thought also doesn’t calm him.

James scoffs.

‘As if Ron and Hermione don’t know’.

‘He allowed me to tell them’, Harry agrees shamelessly. ‘But only them’, he adds, looking at James, and that’s how he knows that Harry and Dumbledore have discussed this in one of their mysterious meetings and that Dumbledore expressly didn’t want James and Lily to know.

The anger burns brighter. They are his parents; they should know.

‘And they are coming with you? To whatever you are doing?’

A fierce expression crosses Harry’s face.

‘They don’t have to’, Harry says, and there is pride and love in his voice as he talks of his friends. ‘But they are choosing to’.

They are barely out of age, James thinks. How can you want your friends by your side but not your parents? How can Dumbledore think that three teenagers are better than parents who would die for you?

Why Dumbledore didn’t want, James and Lily to be there for Harry?

‘You are not going’, James repeats, crossing his arms, and Lily turns to frown at him.

‘James’, she calls him again, her voice loud and reprehensive now.

‘You can’t forbid me, Dad’, Harry says, sounding sad, as if he wishes James could actually do that. ‘I’ll be of age in two weeks - your love protection will be over then, and there will be nothing standing between me and Voldemort. That’s how it has to be’.

‘No’, James disagrees forcefully. ‘I will be there between you two. Once again. I will find him before you do if I have to -’

‘No!’, Harry cries, looking distressed now. ‘You can’t go - there are things that need to be done first - things you don’t understand -’

‘Then TELL ME!’

Lily grabs his arm now, calling for him, but James’ eyes don’t get away from Harry - who doesn’t flinch when James cried, who is once again calm and composed.

His son is so certain of his destiny - going on an unknown mission to defeat Voldemort - that he is at peace.

Somehow this makes James more furious.

‘I can’t’.

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Both’, Harry says, and James feels a sudden urge to throw things, to hex something, to do anything instead of feeling helpless like that.

Harry doesn’t want him, doesn’t need him and while James always knew this day would come - the one where Harry is an adult, where he makes his own decisions -, he never thought it would be like this.

‘Fuck, Harry’, he whispers. ‘That’s not what I wanted for you - you should be worried about school and what you are going to do after graduation and… Merlin, you have a girlfriend, you can’t just -’

‘We broke up’, Harry tells him and now James can see a crack in Harry’s coolness.

‘What? That’s why you are going? Can’t deal with a heartbreak and –‘

‘No, I – I was the one to end things’.

‘You fancied Ginny for ages, what were you thinking -’

‘James’, Lily cuts him, looking sadly at Harry. ‘He did it for her own good. To protect her’.

Of course. Doing the noble thing is so like his son.

But James shakes his head.

‘He would protect her a lot more if he were by her side! How can you think that - that leaving her alone is better?’ Harry’s face is pale now, but James can’t stop, not if he is seeing something that can make Harry doubt his mission, if it’s enough to make him stay. ‘You will just left her behind - don’t you care how she will feel not knowing what is -’

'I care, that's why -'

'If you really care you wouldn't leave!'

‘James!’, Lily cries now, her face red, making them both jump. She looks livid. ‘Harry, go to your room’.

‘Me?’, Harry asks, surprised and annoyed. ‘I didn’t -’

‘Just go, Harry. We will talk later’.

The fact that Harry looks at his mother’s face and seems to understand at once what is there doesn’t make James any better.

‘In my office, now’, Lily tells him, pushing him inside the room, and James has a mind to fight her, but he won’t for this. All his focus will be on arguing with Harry.

Lily closes the door, casting an Imperturbable Charm on the door, and turns to James with anger that immediately rises his own. She is mad at him? While she stayed cool and calm with Harry, who will be leaving them for God knows why?

In fact, now he realizes Lily didn’t say anything to dissuade Harry of his plans, almost as if she expected him to go on, almost as if she agrees with what he is doing.

He can’t believe that.

‘What the hell were you thinking?’, Lily hisses to him. ‘Playing the guilty card on him?’

James crosses his arms, refusing to stand down.

‘I will play any cards I have to, Lily’.

‘Our son already has the craziest saving-people thing I ever heard of. Do you really want to make him worried about Ginny while he is away? Do you know what this will do to him?’

‘I don’t care as long as he stays. He can’t go’.

Her eyes are on fire.

‘Stop pretending otherwise, James, Harry will go anyway’.

‘I won’t -’

‘You can’t stop him. I can’t stop him. Don’t you think I want to lock him in his room and don’t let him leave until this bloody war is over?’

‘Do you?’, James counters, seeing no reason. ‘Because you didn’t say a word about him going’.

‘Of course I don’t want him to go! But Harry will be an adult soon and he gets to make his own choices. I won’t stand in his way’.

‘Well, I will! I will make him feel guilty or anything I have to do to -’

‘Are you listening to me? Are you listening to yourself? How can Harry focus on whatever he needs to be done if he is worried something might happen to his ex-girlfriend? To us?’

‘That’s the problem, Lily’, James whispers, sitting on a chair and feeling only dread now. ‘He shouldn’t be focusing on anything, he should -’

‘I know, James’, she assures him, kneeling by his side and taking his hand. ‘I hate everything about it too. They are children, all of them, but… but so were we’. She raises her free hand to touch his face and James leans into her touch, hoping that somehow she can fix everything. ‘And nobody stopped us’.

‘Maybe they should’, James whispers. ‘Maybe somebody should have looked at us and said, “hey, these guys are just kids, they should not be fighting a war”!’.

Lily smiles sadly at him.

‘And would you have listened to them? Would you have heeded those wise words and stand aside?’

They both know the answer, just as James knows that he chose to be part of this. He never needed, not really - alone, he was pureblood, so he could have stayed quiet in his place, not taking part in anything, living his life normally.

Except that really never was an option for him. He always believed in doing the right thing.

Something he had made sure to teach Harry.

‘It’s my fault’, he whispers suddenly, and Lily looks alarmed at the tone of misery in his voice. ‘I told Harry all these stories about heroes, about being a Gryffindor and being noble…’

‘James’, Lily begins, and he sees she is almost smiling. ‘We tried to teach a lot of things to Harry and I am sure he understood all the right lessons, but being noble and brave and impulsive… that’s on him. We never taught him to go after the Philosopher’s Stone or to go search for an ancient chamber or to stay behind to save that little girl on the Triwizard Tournament. That’s who he is’.

‘I wish he were different’.

‘Do you?’, Lily asks him back, raising his eyebrows, and James shakes his head.

She hugs him, and he feels tears dropping uncontrollably, born of the guilty he really feels: how can he love so much all that Harry is - his belief, his good heart - when being like this is so dangerous for Harry? How can he be so damn proud of Harry and still fear for him?

‘I can’t, Lily’, he sobs. ‘I can’t give him my - my blessing - I can’t say it’s alright -’

She caresses his hair soothingly, but this doesn’t really help. He just feels even guiltier - they should be with Harry now, somehow supporting him even when his son doesn’t seem to need it, but instead, Lily is here comforting him because he can’t get a grip on his feelings.

‘Please’, he asks. ‘Stop him from going’.

She kisses his forehead, and he feels the wetness on her face. Lily is crying too.

‘I wish I could, James’, she whispers, and they stay embraced together for a long time.

____________________

Over the next days James hears no mention of Harry leaving, but he has planned enough pranks in his time to see all the preparation going on - how Lily spends nights crafting Polyjuice Potions, how Harry is reading about medicine spells, how Moony comes to visit him and gives him tips about concealing and safety charms.

James presses his lips and doesn’t say anything.

Instead, he concentrates on devising a plan to get them away from their house safely, now that the love protection is close to ending. There are many Order meetings until Mundungus, of all people, suggests a plan and they are discussing it when Kingsley mentions that they will also need to provide Harry with some other safe houses for when he is away.

That makes him clench his hands and grit his teeth so he doesn’t say anything; across the table Molly looks just as angry as him. Hum, he thinks. If somehow they can work to delay their plans, if they can keep Harry, Ron and Hermione as separate as they can so they have no time for planning -

It’s not an effective plan, but it is more time to convince Harry that his idea is just crazy.

‘We don’t know how long the Ministry will hold’, Kingsley is saying. ‘But we have to give Harry a good chance to -’

‘No, it’s not our job to give my son a chance’, James hears himself saying without being able to control. Lily grips his arm, warningly, and he forces himself to breathe slowly.

‘James’, Kingsley starts, in his deep voice that does nothing to ease James’ nerves. ‘Nobody likes it, we all want to do our part, but you can’t deny Harry -’

‘My son is sixteen still, Kingsley’, James says as controlled as he can manage. ‘There is no part for him’.

They all avoid his eyes now, except Remus, and James can’t fault anyone. Everyone knows he is bluffing - the Chosen One, the Daily Prophet calls him, and everyone here knows Harry is involved in that bloody prophecy they spent a year protecting.

‘James’, calls Remus, looking at him with a sad expression. ‘The last thing Dumbledore told us - Kingsley and I - was that we should trust Harry because he is our best hope’.

‘He is a child!’, James cries, standing up. ‘He is not a beacon of hope for - for you to use it - to hide behind him and let him save us all!’

‘Nobody is going to hide, James’, Remus says, trying to reach him, but for once James can’t stand him - or Lily, who tries to touch his arm in support. ‘We all care about Harry!’

‘Then stop letting everything on his shoulders!’, he says, and then the room is too full of people looking at him, all sympathetic, but all also unwilling to ensure that Harry won’t go.

He leaves the kitchen, ignoring once more Lily’s attempt to call him - he never felt so out of synchrony with her before -, to find a beautiful summer day outside the Burrow. He walks restlessly until he hears thumping sounds coming from the orchard ahead.

When he gets closer, he sees Ginny flying in the sky, but what makes him stop in the Beater’s bat in her hand, which she turns around over and over to hit a tennis ball that always comes in her direction, until, finally, she catches the ball in her hand.

‘Nice catch’, James says when she lands next to him. Her face is all sweaty from the flight and Ginny just shrugs.

‘Easy when the ball is charmed to hit your face’.

‘Training to be a Beater now?’, he asks, his voice only mild teasingly. ‘Seeker and Chaser are not enough for you?’

‘It is the best thing to relief stress’, she answers, flexing her arm. James thinks it was not very helpful, considering she clearly looks upset. ‘The meeting is over already?’

‘No, they are still discussing’, James says, frowning, and Ginny grimaces.

‘That good?’

James shakes his head, not wanting to discuss.

‘Fine, keep your secrets’, she says, and James can detect the tone of anger in her voice, the same one he has been hearing on his own lately. ‘Why tell little Ginny anything? It’s nothing like I care about - about you all’.

‘It’s not… not about secrets’, he says, somehow calmer now that he understands he is not the only one annoyed with the situation. ‘They are finishing the plan to get Harry here safe, I’m sure you will know soon - you live here after all’.

She sighs.

‘Sorry. It’s just Mom never wants to tell me nothing, and even Hermione is keeping her mouth shut lately and… I just feel helpless’.

‘Welcome to the club’, he replies grimly, making her raise her eyebrows.

‘You are in the Order, at least you get to know things’.

James rolls his eyes.

‘Big deal when the Order doesn’t seem to know anything about stuff that really matters’.

Ginny looks at him with more attention.

‘You mean Harry’, she says, and he hears the slight tremble in her voice as she speaks his name. ‘You guys don’t know about his plans either’.

‘And you?’, he asks, a pleading tone in his voice for anything she might say that can help him understand - and prevent - Harry. ‘He never said anything?’

She crosses her arms, looking away from him.

‘What do you think?’, she asks, sounding miserable and angry. ‘Of course he didn’t tell me - I was okay for a good snog, but why would he share anything important with me?’

‘Ginny’, he calls her softly, all his paternal instincts arising with a need to comfort her. 'You know how he feels about you'.

She takes a deep breath.

'Yeah, I do', she agrees in a small voice. 'I just wish he wouldn't leave me behind'.

'We all do', he replies and Ginny shares a knowing look with him. 

For a minute they stay in silence, then she says forcefully: 'He will come back. We just need to hang on'.

'What do you mean?'

She bits her lips and opens a pocket on her jacket. A Golden Snitch flies away, and Ginny catches the Snitch easily, making its wings relax instantly at her touch. Flesh memories, James knows.

'Harry, he - he wants a quiet life, you know’, she whispers more to herself than to him. ‘He is not in this for adventure, for the glory. He is doing what needs to be done and he wouldn’t be happy if he were doing anything else’.

James looks at Ginny. She is right, he knows, but the way she speaks of him…

‘You are in love with him, aren’t you?’

She blushes slightly, her eyes fixed on the Golden Snitch that she releases once more before catching it.

‘Doesn’t matter right now’, she says. ‘We are not together anymore’.

‘That was not what I asked and of course it matters’, he replies gently. ‘He misses you, you know. There are days that he just stares far away, with that pining look that is pitiful, really’.

She lets out a reluctant laugh.

‘Harry doesn’t pine’.

‘He does’, James confirms. ‘He did a lot last year even before he realized he fancied you. And now… I suppose it’s worse. I don’t know, I never broke up with Lily’.

‘Lucky you’, she mumbles, with a sad smile.

‘Hey’, James smiles bravely at her. ‘When this is over, you will be together again’.

‘I don’t know if –‘, she shakes her head, stopping herself. ‘Nothing’.

‘What?’

‘It’s not important, really’.

‘If it’s bothering you, then it’s important’.

She looks sideways at him, looking annoyed with herself.

‘I just keep thinking – I don’t know how long he will be gone, and what if – what if in that time apart he meets someone and - and he realizes I’m just… not good enough and –‘

‘You are joking, right?’, James interrupts her. ‘Didn’t I just say he misses you like if you were the only sunlight in his life?’

‘I just wish I could be there for him somehow – oh’, she pauses, opening her eyes, and he sees a sparkle of mischief there. ‘Maybe a good memory’.

‘Do I dare to ask what you are thinking of?’

She smirks, looking much more hopeful now.

‘No, probably not’, Ginny tells him, and they both hear the door of the kitchen opening in the distance and then voices talking animatedly. ‘Guess the meeting is over’.

‘Yeah, I think so’, he pauses, looking at her. ‘Will you be ok?’

She shrugs.

‘I will stay safe. Watch out you too, you know? I know Harry’s impulsive trace doesn’t come from Lily’. He smiles guiltily. ‘And maybe – could you give this Snitch to Harry? It’s – it’s the one I caught in… the last game’.

James knows exactly what happened after such game.

‘Part of your good memory plan?’, he asks.

‘Oh, not even the beginning’, Ginny says mischievously, and when James has to grin back, he decides he won’t ever forgive Harry if they are not back together someday.

____________________

Lily touches his back.

‘James?’, she calls softly. ‘We need to finish Harry’s birthday gift’.

He knows what she is talking about and it’s not them that need to finish the gift, it’s him. It’s his part that is pending.

He nods, without saying anything, and Lily sighs.

‘Do you want some help?’

‘No, I will – I will check the boxes in the living room’.

He raises, not waiting for any answer, and walks to the living room. It’s filled with boxes, all their things packed to be sent to their vault at Gringotts in an attempt to protect their belongings. There is nothing, really, of importance, but if it will keep Death Eaters busy while searching their porcelain, it’s better for them.

It’s weird seeing their house without all the things that made it their home for the last sixteen years, only a skeleton of a house that seems to lack their story. The house feels empty, something he never felt before even when Harry was at Hogwarts and Lily at work and he was alone on his studies.

And he is one day away of saying goodbye to that house until – until this is over, if the Death Eaters even leave the place standing after they search everything. He will miss the place – there are too many good memories of things that happened there – family game nights, friendly meetings with Sirius and Remus, barbecues in the garden, those lonely nights with Lily in front of the fireplace…

That’s what is not in any of the boxes. That’s the most precious thing he will take with him from their house. Memories.

And memories are what James and Lily agreed to give Harry for his seventeenth birthday.

So he forces himself to open one of the boxes, one that has their collection of photos over the years. Lily already asked and selected photos of Harry along with his friends at Hogwarts, but James was tasked to select photos of the time before.

There are thousands of photos, taken by many people along the years, and it's hard to select only a few. James takes first the one from his wedding with Lily, both of them looking so young – they were barely a year older than Harry will soon be – so fresh and smiling, with Sirius shining as his best man. It’s a picture he thinks Harry will like to revisit - to remember that there is always time for happiness.

He picks one where Lily is pregnant with Harry. Despite their fears, she had looked even more beautiful during her pregnancy, and it shows it in the photo – she seems to be glowing, smiling at a young James who is obviously smitten with her. Well, that didn’t change much, he thinks.

There is a photo taken about a week after Harry was born. James and Lily look both tired in that photo – James remembers they didn’t sleep more than three hours per night that first week –, but they are beaming at their sleeping son, watching over him as angels.

Lily is cuddling Harry in the next photo, holding the baby in her arms, and singing a lullaby that is long forgotten; it’s ethereally beautiful, James thinks, and he remembers taking that photo and somehow wanting to capture that moment forever, of the little family he was starting. Then a photo of James with Harry in his arms, holding it as if the baby were made of glass that could be broken at any moment; he remembers how much fear he always felt – he, that could jump into danger just for the pleasure of it -, how much he always wished no harm could get to Harry.

That same fear and wish are still inside him, but somehow Harry doesn’t need him anymore. James closes his fist, forcing himself to breath, trying to not feel hurt and scared.

He looks at the next photo. Harry is one-year-old now, flying on that toy broomstick Sirius got him for his birthday, while James runs after him and Lily laughs at the situation. Even when they were hiding, there were those nice good moments.

These good moments seem to shine in the next photos he selects. There is a dog and a stag with Harry, from the first time they told him about being animagi. Another of one day at the beach – Harry is three, laughing as James and Lily bury his body in the sand. The first day he went to the muggle school, looking so smug standing next to a very amused James and Lily. That time they went to an amusement park – Harry had just grown up enough to ride in the roller coaster, and James had felt strangely proud of how Harry seemed to love thrill rides too.

Strangely cropped pictures of that time Harry tried to become a photographer; he was six, and the camera was way too big for him, so they ended up with a dozen of pictures of half-legs and back of the head, that they made a game for years of guessing who it was on the photo. That waving hand is probably Remus, the lustrous hair is obviously Sirius, the pig nose is Tonks that time she went to babysit Harry, and those legs are Lily’s, he is sure. He picks those photos, hoping Harry will enjoy the game one more time.

One day at the zoo, Lily and Harry laughing with big chocolate ice creams cones (a good day, even if it got weird when they found out that Harry could talk with snakes). A photo of James and Harry flying, that first time Harry got to ride a real broom and when they realized Harry was much more fit to a Seeker than a Chaser (Harry had been a little upset until James had throw a dozen of golf balls at him and beamed proudly when Harry got them all).

Then Harry is older. His eleventh birthday, a photo of James laughing while a excited Harry appears and disappears as he is trying the Invisibility Cloak. A picture of them in the Diagon Alley, buying his school stuff – the Harry in the photo can’t stand still, clearly too excited to be going to Hogwarts. Harry with his new trunk and all his school stuff spread in his bed, while Lily helps him to fold his robes – her eyes are shining with tears there, clearly thinking Harry grew up too fast. And then a photo of them in front of the Hogwarts Express, on Harry’s first day at Hogwarts – he looks a bit embarrassed to take a photo with his parents, but since it was Sirius that suggested and Harry never denied Sirius, he is smiling.

A big smile for an eleven-years-old who only wished for a normal year at his school. That photo had been before he understood how famous he really was. Before he met Voldemort for the first real time.

A simpler time.

James watches eleven year of memories and he hopes it will be enough to guide Harry home.

‘Dad?’, he hears Harry calling and he hastily closes the box with the photographs he selected. ‘Mom is calling you for dinner’.

James raises, startled. It’s dark outside already. He didn’t realise how much time he had spent there.

‘Sure, I’ll be going in a minute’.

‘Do you need help with anything? I thought it was all packed here’.

‘No, I was just checking… But it’s okay’.

Harry looks around the living room and sighs.

‘It’s weird. Seeing everything packed. I emptied my school trunk for the first time today’.

‘Found anything useful?’

‘Just pieces of the first mirror – you know, the one I broke’. Harry looks ashamed suddenly. James just shrugs. He remembers why Harry broke it and he won’t fault his son. ‘Still sharp – I cut my finger’.

‘Do you need help?’

‘No, I… I know how to cast healing spells now’.

His eyes meet James’, and then James feels out of breath. He knows why Harry is so concerned with learning such spells.

‘You shouldn’t be casting underage magic’, he says, his voice harsher than before, ignoring the fact that at other times he never complained if Harry did some small things.

‘I know, I just – just wanted to try it’.

‘There is a course in Seventh Year for Healing Spells, Flitwick teaches them perfectly. You will learn in time’.

Harry sighs.

‘Dad –‘

‘No, Harry. You see, that’s why you are not ready – you didn’t finish your education’.

‘I don’t need to for what I have to do’.

‘You think you do, but until last week you barely could cast an Episkey. What about healing broken bones? Counter-curses? Merlin, you don’t even have an apparition license!’.

‘And you are not a registered animagus, Dad’, Harry says with an attempt to smile. ‘Sometimes we just know enough. You once told me life is not about grades’.

‘I said it when you were upset with your grade in Potions, not about leaving school!’

‘Dad…’, Harry looks pleadingly at him. ‘It’s our last dinner at home for a very long time. Can we just talk about it later?’

‘Later you will still think about going away?’

‘I’m not thinking, Dad’, he whispers and James wants to shake him - or himself. Harry's decision is already made, James can't change it, and panic rises inside him like a storm.

‘And you can’t tell us anything about it? Can’t even let us know if you are alive? Will you even care if we are alive?’

Harry flinches, but he doesn’t answer. Harry doesn’t want to fight him, James knows. This does not make him feel better – Harry likes to argue, he hates to be quiet. If he is doing that, it’s because he really believes their time together is limited.

James refuses to believe in that. He can’t.

‘I am not hungry’, he says, going upstairs and leaving Harry alone in the hall.

____________________

Harry steals glances in James’ direction, but his son doesn’t approach him. It hurts James to know there is this chasm between them, one that he can’t see to correct for once in his life.

He can’t approach Harry either. Somehow it feels that if they get closer, Harry will think that James approves what his son is doing - and he can’t. He is already too worried for Harry.

James already barely survived that night, staying in the Burrow with Lily, feeling hopeless while the rest of the Order had been gone to retrieve Harry. The plan had been logical - they would reveal themselves if they had been with Harry and they would reveal Harry - and it should have been foolproof, but somehow it had all turned bad.

The Death Eaters knew of their plans - someone had betrayed them, James had cried, angry at whoever had elapsed, whoever had broken their trust (again, he saw it happening before), until Harry, his face red from drinking firewhiskey for the first time – it shouldn’t be like that, we should drink for celebration, not for mourning -, had looked at him and said loud and clear and loyally he didn’t believe anyone there would betray them.

James had stared at his son, speechless and torn, barely hearing when Remus had sighed and said ‘you are so like James’. It had sounded both as a compliment as a lament and James could not fault Remus for that.

Harry had looked annoyed at Remus, only hearing the critic there, but James knew that Harry had been upset with Remus ever since Remus had complained that Harry only disarmed someone instead of stunning or killing.

James is not sure how he feels about it, not even after days thinking about the matter. How can he wish his son would deliberately kill someone? How can he fear Harry will not survive if he doesn’t cross that line?

There is no easy answer.

He watches Harry from a far; they’ve been talking only the bare minimum lately, though James supposes that part of it is because Harry has been helping to finish the things for the wedding and is tired. Just like he expected, Molly is keeping Harry, Ron and Hermione as apart as he can, though James thinks it won’t be enough. Harry already shares the room with Ron, after all, and Hermione seems to be much more advanced in her plans than he would like.

They will be leaving in days and there is nothing he can do.

On the morning of the last day of July, he stays in bed alone for a long time. Lily is already up, probably making the breakfast for Harry just as she did on each one of his birthdays. He tries to force himself to get up too, to leave the tent he had been sharing with Lily on the garden of the Burrow, and to smile to his son, to be happy for the fact that he is an adult now – wasn’t that what he always expected? That Harry got to grow up?

No one had told him that Harry becoming an adult would mean he would leave to face Voldemort on his own.

Except he thinks of how Harry’s patronus is a stag – his stag, Prongs – and he remembers telling Harry once that he would always be with him, even if James had died.

Guilty arises on him and he feels even worse – how can he be more distant from his son being alive than if he were dead?

That makes him get up and throw some water into his face to properly wake him up. It’s his son’s birthday. He can pretend he is not worried and hug Harry and be proud of his son for his seventeenth birthday. If only for today.

But Harry is not at the table when he arrives in the kitchen and when he finally turns up, with Ron and Hermione, they all look strangely tense as if they've been fighting. Harry seems even more distressed, blushing and avoiding glancing Ginny when she enters the kitchen too, though James can’t tell the reason. Ginny is her normal self, but Harry acts as if he feels guilty of just being in the same room as her.

James busies himself with helping prepare Harry’s birthday party, enjoying charming the lights and cooking the birthday cake. Lily throws glances in his direction and he can’t fault her – he knows he is just postponing talking to Harry.

In the middle of the afternoon, Lily calls him when he is talking to Tonks.

‘We have to give him his gift’, she remembers, and James nods, trying not to grimace.

He leaves a radiant Tonks – at her side, Remus is unusually quiet – and they go looking for Harry, who is now laughing with Charlie and Hagrid. As it happens lately when he looks at Harry, James feels a pressure in his chest watching him, a fear of not knowing if this will be the last time he sees his son.

‘James’, Lily calls him, looking at him with a gentle expression. ‘Keep it light, ok?’

He nods silently, not trusting his voice. He thinks it’s easy for Lily to be calm; Harry has been talking to her, he knows, and he saw them whispering together in the garden before lunch. Harry had looked distressed, almost as if he were pleading something to his mother, and when they had hugged, James almost had run to them.

It was only the fear of that hug being a goodbye that had made him stay still.

That’s one of the things they never tell you about being a parent. How you are always fearing something for your kid.

Harry’s expression shifts to uneasy when he sees his parents approaching him, and it’s his most primal need of comforting his son that makes James passes his arm around Harry’s shoulder, messing his hair in the process, and smile as calmly as he can manage:

‘Happy birthday, son’.

Harry blushes, looking briefly in his direction. They are almost the same size now, James notices, but Harry still feels strangely awkward on his birthday, receiving congratulations and gifts, as if even after all these years he still is surprised by the fact that people would care enough about his birthday.

‘We have a gift for you’, Lily says, her eyes shining as she gives him the carefully wrapped gift.

‘There was no need’, Harry says politely, just as Lily once taught him to be when he received a present, and James’ heart hurts at the sight of it.

Harry is his polite, gentle, kind son. Not a soldier.

He unwraps the gift and his green eyes sparkle madly when he sees the photograph album, when his hands turn the pages and he watches a hundred pictures from his infancy to adulthood, Harry with his parents, and with Sirius and Remus, and then with his friends at Hogwarts or in lazy summer days.

Harry is not in all these photos, but in those he is, Harry is not alone.

‘Thank you, mom!’, he whispers, hugging Lily.

‘Just something for you to remember us’, she whispers loudly enough, her eyes on James.

It’s a beautiful gift, and James knows what’s behind this gift – it’s to remember Harry that he is not on a suicide mission, that he has a life to go back to and that he should fight to return to it, to return to them.

It’s supposed to give him hope.

Lily breaks apart, raising on her feet to kiss Harry on his cheek and carefully wiping the lipstick mark there, while he rolls his eyes amusedly. Then she throws another look at James and she leaves.

There is a moment of silence.

‘Thanks, dad’, Harry says, sounding awkward as if he doesn’t know if he should hug James too.

‘It was mostly your mother’s idea. I wanted to give you a professional broomstick, but she reminded me it wouldn’t be useful’. For some reason, this comment makes Harry steal a quick glance at Ginny, his face reddening. ‘And Molly asked us if she could give you a watch, so –‘

Harry looks fondly at the watch on his wrist, and James smiles to himself. He was never one to care for traditions, but it seemed important to Molly and, after all, she thought of Harry as her son too.

‘I loved the album’, Harry assures him, pressing the album close to his chest. ‘It will be nice to have it while…’

His voice cuts off, suddenly unsure, and James feels the urge to argue about it once more, to somehow make Harry understand that he doesn’t need to go. It’s not his war to end.

Except somehow it is.

‘There are blank pages in this album’, James explains instead of fighting, his voice trembling. ‘For you to fill later with more memories’.

Harry turns to him and he looks a thousand-years-old when he smiles sadly.

‘Perhaps with that new broom you mentioned?’, he asks in a soft voice, urging James to believe for them both.

He nods, unable to say anything, and Harry moves to embrace him just as a streak of light comes flying across the yard, turning into a bright silver weasel that announces the Minister of Magic is coming to visit them.

__________________

 The blond woman sits across James, winking at him.

‘Look’, he begins, his voice much graver than usual. ‘I’m flattered and all, but I’m married’.

She raises her left hand to move her curls out of her face and he sees the golden ring shining there.

‘So am I’, she replies slyly.

‘Even worse. A woman like you, I am sure you have a jealous husband’.

‘Nah, he knows I’m faithful’.

James raises his eyebrows, looking at her leg that she is slowly sliding over his own leg.

‘I see’.                                                           

‘Let me tell you my idea’, she approaches him, ‘why don’t we take a stroll outside this tent? No one would notice it. We can keep it a secret’.

He looks around. She is right in the sense that no one will throw them a second glance if they vanish in the middle of the party; people are dancing and talking excitedly around them and, in the middle of the floor dance, he sees Bill and Fleur in each other’s arms.

That makes his chest feel strangely heavily with longing. He can still remember his wedding to Lily, all those years ago. It was still the happiest day of his life - they had danced for hours, full of joy and disbelief that they got to be so in love, and he remembers how his parents had beamed, how Sirius had made the best speech ever, how Remus had drunk so much that he had screamed he loved them all and even how Peter had cried hugging them.

It all had been perfect, but that was a long time ago.

He lets the blond take his hand and draw him away from the crowd, only stopping to take a look at a ginger boy who is lying against a pillar and watching wistfully the floor dance. Harry seems to be fine, though.

It's quiet outside the tent and they walk pass other couples that seem to have had the same idea as them. Finally they leave all traces of people and they stand in the shadow of a big tree; the lights from the wedding tent shine in the distance like a thousand stars.

'It's beautiful', the blond says softly, raising his hand to glance at his watch.

'Yes', he agrees. There is something eerily beautiful in the night, or maybe it's just the feeling of peacefulness of the day. It's been a while since they had a quiet day.

A normal day as if they are not in the middle of the war.

She looks at him.

'You are supposed to look at me and say I'm beautiful. What about cheesy lines?'

'I told you, miss', James sighs. 'I am faithful to my wife'.

She approaches him.

'Close your eyes'.

'Lily… it's weird when you look like - well, not like yourself'.

She grins. The face is all wrong, but her smile is the same.

'Trust me, James'.

He breathes heavily, but if there is someone he trusts in the world, is Lily. So he closes his eyes, and after a few seconds he feels his body burning slightly, growing up a bit, and then the clothes he is wearing are suddenly fitting him better than it had minutes ago; the Muggle he had impersonated was much thinner than him.

And then he feels Lily's lips over his and there is her familiar taste, and he knows she is back to herself too. Even her scent returned; it seems silly, because she had been wearing the same perfume in her polyjuiced form, but somehow her scent had been as off as her appearance. They’ve been married for almost nineteen years now and still he missed her during the wedding; it was not the same having that unfamiliar woman by his side, as if even holding her hand made him feel like he was cheating on Lily.

So for the first time in weeks, he forgets all worries and lets himself enjoy Lily’s company, losing himself in her lips, feeling her curves over the silk dress she is wearing and hearing her soft moans in the deep of her throat when he presses her against the trunk of the tree.

‘James’, she warns, only mildly scolding him when he moves his lips to her neck. He would feel more reprimanded if she hadn’t been raising her head, giving him better access to her skin. ‘We should get back’.

‘We should’, he agrees, one hand holding the back of her hair and the other holding her waist and moving up. When his lips find hers once more, hands working expertly on each other, they don’t talk for a while.

Later, he takes off his jacket, placing in the ground so they can sit together, Lily’s back pressed against his chest while he combs her hair, undoing the curls there.

‘It was a beautiful wedding’, she says. ‘It reminded me of ours’.

James nods, knowing what she means. A wedding in the middle of the war, a day of peace in the middle of chaos.

‘Did you talk to Harry?’

‘Not today. I – did he mention anything to you?’

‘About when he will be leaving?’, she sighs. ‘No, but I think tomorrow probably’.

He huffs, and Lily grabs his hand.

‘How can you be so okay with that?’, he asks, upset.

‘I am not okay, James. But I’m trying to be supportive because I want Harry to remember he will always have us to come back to’.

‘And you think I’m driving him away?’

‘No’, she whispers softly. ‘I think Harry will be afraid he is letting you down. He cares more about your opinion than anyone else’s’.

James closes his eyes.

‘He won’t ever let me down. No matter how much unhappy it makes me feel… I am proud of him’.

‘Then go tell him that’, she suggests softly, cuddling up more in his arms, and he presses her against his chest, letting her breath calm him.

‘I will – tonight, I… I will wish him good luck and –‘

‘No fighting?’

‘No’.

She smiles and for a moment they just stare at the wedding tent.

‘I love you’, he whispers. Lily turns to wink at him.

‘I know, you said it a few minutes ago’.

‘Did I?’

‘Oh, yeah. A lot of times, actually’.

‘It must be true then’.

‘I hope so. I love you back, you know’.

He grins, kissing her softly. His lips tingle after the kiss, even if it was barely a brush. That’s Lily’s effect on him.

Then she sighs, and searches in her purse until she finds two vials of potions that make him grimace.

‘Do we have to? The party is almost over by now’.

Lily just raises his eyebrows at him. He knows she is right – they have to be careful.

‘Fine, fine’, he raises, offering his hand to help her. ‘Let me turn into that guy whose only benefit is that his eyesight is great’.

She laughs.

‘I missed you’, she assures him, placing her hands around his neck to get closer. ‘So one last kiss before we change again?’

‘It may be more that just one kiss’, he warns her fairly, and he can feel Lily’s smile when he kisses her again. In fact, with the soft breeze of the night and the sound of music in the distance, James thinks maybe they can repeat what they did earlier, and Lily seems to have thought the same when he feels her hands touching his chest…

Then a scream cuts through the night and they hear sounds of people popping – the protective barriers of the Burrow had fallen. James sees the masked figures coming out of nowhere close to the house and he takes his wand just as Lily grabs his arm.

‘No, James, we have to go!’

He looks at her without understanding.

‘We have to help, we can’t –‘

‘We will only endanger people if they know we are here!’

‘But – Harry –‘

‘He is not stupid, he will be gone with Ron and Hermione’, she says, and James hears the desperation in her voice. ‘We will do no good to him if we are captured’.

He hates when Lily sounds so logical and he hates more that he knows she is right. Harry may be the type to sacrifice himself without a second thought, but he would never sacrifice a friend and especially not his parents. They must go hiding not for themselves, but for him.

But still, the idea of just going, of not searching for Harry - it feels like he is a coward.

'James!', Lily calls him again, giving him a knowing look. 'It'll be ok. We have to trust Harry. Please!'

He feels tears of anger in his eyes, feel a desperate need to go after those Death Eaters and make them pay until Voldemort himself comes for them - and then James swears he would kill him, anything to stop Harry from being in danger, anything that a father can do to protect his son.

But he can't and the worst part is he knows it.

So James looks at the wedding tent once more, hearing the screams and seeing flashes of light and then, with panic and fear dancing inside him, he and Lily turn on the spot and vanish into the night.

[Edited: The second chapter can be read on AO3]

[ibijau]

Futures Past pt16  /  on AO3

 Nie Huaisang learns more about his future self, and gets burdened with yet another annoying mission

Winter was never Nie Huaisang’s favourite season to begin with. It was cold, and wet, and grey, and generally unpleasant in every possible way. To make it worse, that year he wasn’t even allowed to head out of the Unclean Realm for a bit of bird watching, nor indeed to go alone in Qinghe to check the food, or just wander around and have fun. Nie Mingjue might not have been too upset about his brother failing his classes but he was still generally angry. He had apparently been worried sick about him disappearing, fearing the Wens had decided to take his brother from him, after having murdered his father.

After Nie Mingjue had confessed that fear to him one evening, Nie Huaisang stopped complaining against being grounded. Once, merely a year earlier, he would have called his brother paranoiac for jumping to that conclusion, and continued whining until he got his punishment lifted. Now though, with his older self’s promise of a war to come… It made him wish he could have found another way to rescue Xue Yang from his fate without worrying his brother. It also pushed him to make more of an effort to be a nice and obedient brother, though all that got him was Nie Mingjue thinking he’d gotten sick and asking the sect's doctor to check on him several times.

So Nie Huaisang was stuck in the Unclean Realm, bored beyond belief, constantly aching from all the training his monster of a brother forced him to do, wishing he could just go for a walk and do a bit of bird watching or find a nice landscape to paint. It was truly hell. Though at least, being constantly home gave him a chance to practice the guqin (he’d bought one of his own on the one and only outing to Qinghe he’d been allowed, after which Nie Mingjue complained at length about him spending too much money as always) and to keep a close eye on Xue Yang. That was nearly a full time job.

It was almost a relief when one night, his future self appeared in his room as he was preparing for bed. Unpleasant as their encounters tended to be, at least Nie Huaisang would know if his great plan had worked. So he sat cross-legged on his bed, and waited for the scolding that was sure to come.

“I should have come earlier,” his future self said with some annoyance, looking no angrier than he always did. “But my last visit drained me more than planned. When are you returning to the Cloud Recesses?”

“In a week,” Nie Huaisang mumbled, pointing at a pile of trinkets he’d just gotten around to unpacking from his previous stay. “Da-ge said to wait until after the new years celebration to start preparing, because I always bother the servants otherwise, and they’re busy enough already, and…”

“How is da-ge?” his future self interrupted. “Didn’t he hurt himself during a Night Hunt around this time?”

Nie Huaisang nodded. It had worried everyone when Nie Mingjue had returned from a Night Hunt with long gashes on his chest due to a particularly nasty fierce corpse, and they’d all made a big fuss of it. But in the end it hadn’t been anything threatening, and Nie Mingjue had healed quickly. In fact, he was currently absent on another Night Hunt, this time with Lan Xichen. That didn’t seem like a detail worth mentioning.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Nie Huaisang said, increasingly puzzled that his older self wasn’t scolding him yet. “It’s just, I’ve been wondering, you know and… well, is he alive now?”

His future self glared at him.

“What?”

“Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang clarified. “I’ve changed things, right? He’s got to be alive in the future now, right? You’re not on your own anymore, are you?”

His older self went still and stared at him with wide, shining eyes. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out. After a moment the older man regained control of himself and turned away, opening his fan with a sharp gesture.

“That’s not how it works,” he hissed. “I thought it would be, but… but it’s not. I cannot change what has happened for me. My da-ge is dead, and nothing can change what happened to him. It’s… I don’t care. I’ve made my peace with that. He wouldn’t like what I’ve become anyway, and I couldn’t bear to lose him again, not like that. But I need to know…” 

He paused, and Nie Huaisang thought he heard a soft sob. 

“I have to know there’s a place out there where da-ge is alive. Not just alive, but he’s safe, he’s happy. No matter the cost to others and to myself, as long as da-ge is well… that’s what matters to me.”

For all the dislike Nie Huaisang had accumulated toward his older self, his heart ached to know that the man would never even get a chance to see Nie Mingjue again. It made him want to take his older self to have a chat with their brother, to see Nie Mingjue smile at him. Maybe he’d be a little less of a prick like that.

But since his older self was a prick, and unlikely to accept such an offer, Nie Huaisang instead jumped off his bed and went to take his hand to comfort him.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. “Thanks for… thanks for saving my da-ge. I’m so sorry for yours, it must be…”

His older self turned around, tearing his hand free with such rage that Nie Huaisang stumbled a few steps backwards.

“I won’t be pitied by anyone!” the man hissed. “I’m not sorry for myself, and I forbid you to pity me, you stupid little brat! If I’d been smarter at your age I wouldn’t have let him die, so how dare you pity me?”

Nie Huaisang lowered his head and hunched his shoulders. His older self should have been happy: any pity he’d felt vanished instantly.

“Now tell me what I came here for,” his older self ordered. “Is Xue Yang dead?”

“He is,” Nie Huaisang lied, and he found it easier than he’d have expected, now that he knew the truth couldn't be discovered.

A certain tension left his older self’s shoulders at that answer. In fact, he seemed relieved enough that it worried Nie Huaisang a little, and almost made him confess the truth. If Xue Yang was really fated to become such a horrible person…

But he wasn’t horrible. Not yet, anyway. No more than a lot of other people were.

Xue Yang was a brat, sure. And he struggled with a lot of common decency, doing things like stealing from other kids, or stashing food away, or trying to fight teachers that disciplined him. But in those few weeks, Xue Yang had also made a lot of progress already. He’d started understanding that nobody would let him starve, so he didn’t need to hide food that would rot somewhere, and should instead eat everything that was presented to him right away if he was hungry. He was also slowly learning to accept that, a lot of the time, if he needed something he could ask for it instead of stealing it from someone. He still had a problem with authority, and that might never change, but he sometimes seemed to understand that the teachers were not his enemies, that they only wanted to help him learn.

But the turning point had happened just three days earlier. Xue Yang, with great reluctance, had finally explained how he’d lost his finger. From the defensive manner he told that story to Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue, it was likely that those he’d shared it with before might have mocked him for being naive enough to think he'd ever have gotten the sweet he'd been pormised. But Nie Mingjue, instead, asked if he remembered any names or precise locations, if he could recall when it had all happened, any details at all that might help if they decided to confront Chang Ci’an for what he’d done. In the end, Xue Yang’s memory had been too fuzzy to think of building up a case, something for which Nie Mingjue had expressed great regret, before saying he'd still keep an eye open in case he might discover who was the man whom Chang Ci'an had insulted.

The expression on Xue Yang’s face was one that Nie Huaisang wouldn’t ever forget. He’d looked… young. Like he really was an ordinary ten years old kid, instead of the tough criminal he tried to be. Like he might cry, just because someone was showing just and deserved horror over what had been done to him.

There was no saying whether Xue Yang would turn out good or not, whether the efforts of Qinghe Nie would be enough to bring him onto a more righteous path than would have been his, but they were going to try.

“This is wonderful,” Nie Huaisang’s older self said, fanning himself a little too fast, as if unable to contain his excitement. “I’ve always hated that little creep, even before he started slaughtering entire sects. Now the world is safe from that at least, and that’s one worry less for da-ge. Now, on to your next mission…”

“Are you ever going to stop giving me orders?” Nie Huaisang complained. “Every time I do something you say, you tell me there’s more to do!”

“Welcome to adulthood. Now shut up.”

But I’m not an adult, Nie Huaisang thought. He was just going to turn sixteen, there was an entire four years before he’d be considered fully grown. Even Nie Mingjue, who always complained about him being an immature brat, never actually demanded from him the things he’d have expected from an adult. After all, Nie Mingjue knew too well what it was to be forced to leave one’s youth behind too early, and he’d said multiple times he didn’t want that for his brother.

Too bad Nie Huaisang couldn’t extend the same courtesy to himself.

“I’ve had to give a lot of thought to the problem that is Wei Wuxian,” his older self said, starting to pace the room. “I still haven’t come up with a satisfying answer. On the one hand, it was so convenient to all of us when he left the established path during the Sunshot Campaign and became a horrifying master of death. But I can’t decide if it’s worth all the trouble it created after the war, when his new skills were no longer required. And it’s not like I could ask you to simply kill him after he’s stopped being useful because…”

“I appreciate that, actually.”

“I can’t ask you to kill him because you’d never be able to,” his older self dryly finished, pausing his pacing just long enough for a glare before he resumed walking. “Wei Wuxian is only the most brilliant cultivator of our generation, skilled in every martial art, a genius who has invented talismans and tools beyond your imagination. He’s already so talented you could never harm him now. By the time the war ends, the only way he could die is through self-destruction, as we’ve all come to learn.”

That sounded scary and, quite frankly, Nie Huaisang wasn’t sure he wanted to get anywhere near such a person. Geniuses tended to be difficult to deal with. Like his own brother, who was always so intense about everything, and didn’t have any hobbies except cultivation and leading their sect. Or Lan Wangji who was very intense as well, and had even less conversation than Nie Mingjue. Or Lan Xichen who…

Well. Actually, Lan Xichen wasn’t so bad these days. In fact, Nie Huaisang missed their music lessons, and he missed chatting together immensely, because Lan Xichen was one of the most interesting people he knew, along with Su She. Nie Huaisang couldn't wait to see him again. But it had taken a while to get there, and before they’d found common ground, Lan Xichen too had been boring and difficult to get along with.

The problem with geniuses, Nie Huaisang figured, was that they didn’t know how to have fun.

“Here is what we are going to do,” his older self announced, stopping his pacing and closing his fan to point it at Nie Huaisang. “You are going to befriend Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, as you were always meant to do. But you must also get closer to Lan Wangi…”

“What? But he’s awful!”

“...and make sure he befriends Wei Wuxian as well. None of that pining for a lifetime nonsense! If they become close earlier and realise their love as youths, then Wei Wuxian will probably not go dark quite as easily as he’s done from where I stand. And Jin Guangshan will hesitate a little more to antagonise Wei Wuxian if he thinks Gusu Lan too has close ties to him. Yunmeng Jiang was easy to pick on, but Gusu Lan is of a different class. Its sect leader might have been spineless, but anybody would think twice before crossing Lan Wangji. I think that’s our best course of action.”

Even more than before, Nie Huaisang became convinced that this Wei Wuxian had to be the least fun person in the world. After all, if someone like Lan Wangji could fall in love with a person, then that person had to be absolutely awful and boring. Wei Wuxian was probably a stickler for rules too. 

“Can’t I just help them without being their friend?” Nie Huaisang begged.

“Why wouldn’t you want to be Wei Wuxian’s friend?” his future self retorted, sounding puzzled by the request. “Whatever else he becomes later, I remember he was one of my favourite people when we studied together. I’ve always felt it was a shame he got kicked out so early. If he had stayed longer…”

The older man trailed off, his hand clenching on his fan, then promptly shook his head

“Nevermind,” he muttered. “Jiang Cheng was there the whole year, and that didn’t change anything to how shallow our friendship turned out to be. Just… just make sure to get them to like you, and help Wei Wuxian befriend Lan Wangji. But don’t get attached. No matter what promises you exchange with others, remember you don’t actually matter to anyone, so don’t let them matter to you either.”

“I won’t,” Nie Huaisang easily promised.

He didn’t think he was at any risk of ever liking someone who had Lan Wangji’s approval. And as for Jiang Cheng, Nie Huaisang had thought him to be a pretty interesting person when they’d met in Yunping City, but he was fairly sure the feeling was not mutual in the least.

“Excellent. I’ll cut this visit short then,” his older self announced. “Hopefully I will have recuperated enough for a brief visit in a month to hear about your progress. At worst, I’ll check on you for Qingming. Do not disappoint me.”

“I’ll try,” Nie Huaisang promised, but the older man had already disappeared.

It sounded like he had a very boring year ahead of himself.

And to make it worse, Su She was going to be so annoyed if he started hanging out with Lan Wangji.

[tanoraqui]

AU where I gently tweak character ages to my whim so that when Jame is outcast, the next time Tori sleeps and reaches out for her reflexively in his dreams...he can’t find her of course. She’s lost in the dark somewhere. But he wanders the edges of that darkness searching, crying as he can’t let himself be seen to do while awake…and he stumbles into Kindrie’s garden

Tori is seven years old and dreaming. He wanders around, admiring the many pale-flowered plants, before he notices that one of them isn't a flower at all, but a white-haired, blue-eyed toddler sitting quietly in the corner.

(I don’t think it’s at all normal to slide from dream to soulspace at the age of 4, but this is Kindrie, who is just a little bit of a prodigy - and, of course, Tori, likewise.)

Tori nearly backs away in disgust, filthy shanir ringing in his ears in his father's voice (and this isn’t even the shanir he wants to see, wants with every lonely, not-quite-guilty-yet fiber of his being.) But the toddler’s eyes well up with tears at his disgust and Tori has never interacted with a baby before but he’s always been responsible. So he wipes the sneer from his young face and tentatively sits beside the boy, and asks what's your name, is this your garden, are there any adults here? (Kindrie, yes, a shy look toward the faint impression of a woman's face in a mossy wall.) Are you lonely, too? ...Do you want to play?

Tori wakes up before he gets much farther than explaining the strategies of tic-tac-toe. He doesn't go back the next night, because he wakes up inexplicably exhausted, like he hasn’t slept at all. He dismisses it as a half-forgotten dream.

But soon enough there’s another night - when Ganth raged at dinner, when the other half of the bed felt especially cold and empty - when he goes looking for the peaceful little garden again, and finds it after only a little bewildering wandering. Kindrie is there, and lights up to see him.

Maybe they just play tag, and water the plants - or water plants and end up splashing water at each other, Tori drawing Kindrie into not flinching at the sudden movements… Or maybe Tori asks, “Do you know how to play marbles?” and Kindrie says yes but points out that that there aren’t any marbles here, and Tori, with all the confidence of a young lord, says, “Well that’s dumb,” and conjures some marbles to play with. Because it’s a dream, and you can do that in a dream! (It’s a soul and most people can not do that in a soul, but the children who will one day be Creation and Preservation don’t know that.)

And then! They just! Hang out! No less often than once every few weeks, and sometimes every night for nearly a month. When they're young, it's more effort; it takes Tori days to regain his strength each time. When they're older, they both have more nights too busy or anxious to sleep, or too hurt and weary to choose anything but dreamless dwar.

By day, Tori keeps swallowing down his father's poison, but by night - obviously he, Tori, isn't a shanir. Obviously. it's Kindrie's dream garden. But Kindrie is - well, he's just a little kid (Tori thinks from the ripe age of 3 years older). He doesn't have claws or anything; he's not dangerous like Jame was. And by mutual unspoken agreement, neither of them talks in detail about their waking lives, but if Tori were to mention his father's view on shanir - well, Kindrie has been drinking his own poison since birth. Bastard, worthless shanir brat, and all the curses of the priests and their benefactress... He wouldn't argue, I think, with anything Tori said.

(As for that benefactress..she nearly catches them once, for sure. She's surprised to see another dreamwalker, but her reflexes are good: she flings a curse at Tori that would hit most souls like a well-aimed arrow, or at least like a discreet tracker tag. It bounces off his back as he dashes away; he barely notices. Kindrie is terrified. A door has developed over the years, from frequent use, between here and Tori's Haunted Lands keep. It's always been concealed behind a curtain of vines, but after that incident with Lady Randir, he hides it so thoroughly that Tori has difficulty finding it from the other side, next time he visits.)

The first time Kindrie follows Tori back through that door is when Tori, age 12, has broken his arm falling out of a tree, and been put sternly to bed but left too restless for proper dwar. Kindrie has learned enough in his classes for young could-be-priests to realize that this isn't a dream, but (guiltily) he hasn't told Tori, because Tori - best and only friend, and something like an older brother - will freak out about shanir things, and possibly never come back. This is the worst possible outcome.

But right now, even dreaming, Tori is cradling his arm with remembered pain, and Kindrie knows that when he grows up (if he grows up), he's going to be a healer (he has already been made so exquisitely aware that his talents lie in healing, himself if no one else). So he convinces Tori to take him back through the door to explore Tori's dreadful keep, and together they gather the ladder and hammers and etc. required to repair the few fallen beams.

(Ganth roars when Tori wakes up with an arm far more healed than one night of dwar sleep should have healed. Filthy shanir, monster! But he calms without delivering more than a few extra slaps. Tori dances desperately around the truth, because his dreams with Kindrie - best and only friend, something like a younger brother - are something they've never needed to swear to keep secret. The kendar who'd examined the break in the first place says, "Lord, my eyes are growing old, and Torisen is young and strong - maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought. A fracture, not a break. And he slept well.")

(Not a lie, just barely not a lie.)

(But these are kendar who would, in a couple years, every single one of them swear to take any dishonor onto their own accounts so that their young lordan could escape this place. It's not the first not-a-lie, and it won't be the last.)

"How can I?" Tori asks, agonized, surrounded by gentle white flowers, in one of the rare times they speak explicitly about the things they endure by day. Though Tori still doesn't give his full name, nor his father's, and Kindrie's given little more detail of his location than that he's studying to be a priest. He's never named the woman against whom he sometimes locks his doors so tightly that even Tori can't get in.

"One of us should escape," says Kindrie, who's 3 years younger but plenty old enough to be bitter.

(A few days after that, waking, Ganth demands that Tori drink a cup of wine with a drop of blood in it, "To my health", and something dark and rotten will take root in Tori's soul-keep. But it's so small, and hidden for now, not to mention ineffective, that Tori doesn't notice - and Kindrie hasn't come over to help clean up since the near-disaster of that broken arm.)

Less than a year after that, Kindrie is having a particularly bad day, the sort where even in his garden, he's doing little more than curl up in a silent ball. Tori sits nearby, sketching a map of the Southern Host's camp, so as to remember his new environs better. Unprompted, he says, "You know, I don't actually mind people thinking I'm a bastard."

"That's because you're not," Kindrie says, quietly into his knees, but just a little waspish.

"Maybe," Tori concedes. "But also it's..." He waves his hand at undefinable concepts, because he'll never be good at introspection. "Everyone assumes things, about me, about Lord Ardeth - assumes the worst, assumes the least of me. But it's not right at all, it's just because they hear the word bastard and think those things - so who's to say they're right about any other bastard?"

Another day, Tori is restless, pacing, and wearing armor even here, and won't say why. He doesn't need to - he's been keeping Kindrie abreast of the events with the god-kings, Karnids, and brewing war (though not every detail - not how the high priest spoke to him). If only as a listening ear at which to talk it all through, figure it all out.

He still doesn't, truly, overall mind people assuming he's Ardeth's bastard. But he hates the stupid games around that and being a Knorth at the same time, the spying and the constant not-quite-lying - and tomorrow, they reach Ukakarn, with enemies unknown.

"Kindrie," he says abruptly, can you keep a secret on his tongue - but that's a stupid question because all of this is secret, and always has been. "Would you mind knowing my name?"

"Tori?" Kindrie says, answer and question, blinking as his attention is pulled away from the flowers he's been meticulously winding around a trellis.

"Torisen," Tori says, with that same abruptness. "Torisen Knorth, son of Ganth Grey Lord." And because he cannot bear to unburden himself without offering something - "Lord Ardeth knows - that's why he's been mentoring me, and spying on me, this whole time. But I think he did mean it, when he said he wants to help me regain my father's seat - that's why I mean it, when I say I'm quite sure he'd help me get you out of this place" (the priests' college) "if you want. He could send for a new healer to attempt Dari's rotten teeth..."

He trails off in the fact of Kindrie's odd response: avoiding Tori's eyes, a small smile that he's failing to suppress.

"What?" Tori says, maybe more sharply than he should.

"It's just...my grandmother was a Knorth. I heard someone say it, once, when they thought I wasn't listening." Kindrie's mouth keeps trying to smile, but his glance is anxious, because the last thing he wants is to sound like he's angling for something. Like he's bringing this up - or worse, making it up - because he, like Lord Ardeth, wants some in on the hypothetical future highlord. He's known this for years after all; he never mentioned it before because it was a treasure for just himself. By old, unspoken agreement, there's a lot they don't share about their waking lives.

But Tori lights up. "Really? Do you know who?"

"Her name was Telarien, I think."

Tori, who has studied his so-empty family tree, who has been alone since he was 7 - stops his pacing and turns with hands outstretched. "Why, then we're cousins!"

(Tori has offered this more than once, and each time Kindrie has declined - no politically machinated release nor clever trick, nor even (once, when Tori was in a particular Mood, and maybe thinking of his sister) some sort of rescue heist. Because the priests' college is terrible, but it's familiarly terrible, and who knows what greater disdain and torment might be out in the rest of the world?)

And then came Ukakarn.

Tori doesn't show up cradling his hands, or the blood on them, and weeping, the next night, his dire keep under siege next door. He doesn't flicker briefly in and out, as his torturer disallow him true rest. He doesn't come to Kindrie's garden at all, because he has been taken into the bowels of Ukakarn, which lie in the same shadow that consumes the land north of the Haunted Lands - the same shadow, unbeknownst to any of them, that swallowed his sister.

But he's not dead. Kindrie can tell, can feel, that he's not dead. And Kindrie is a healer (in training) and this is his best friend and cousin and rightful lord (however illegitimate the blood claim may be, for the latter two). So he doesn't hesitate a moment before plunging into the darkness that has swallowed the place where Tori's soul usually looms.

It's a little bit like swimming, through shadows thick enough to choke on. It's a bit like finding the will to get up in the morning, struggle that that often is. But Kindrie, though only age 13 or so, has a great deal more expertise than Tori, age 7 did, and more natural talent as well. Off in the physical world, the priests deem him truly comatose this time, but he breaks through to Tori's haunted soulscape - running with cracks of fire, as though about to explode. Overlapping with a grander house, a manse whose dark hallways Kindrie doesn't know. He wanders, searching desperately, pressing against not shadows but the end of his own tether.

He only finds Tori when he catches a glimpse of a slim, ghostly figure he thinks is him - but her armor is white and her hair is long, and when Kindrie follows her, they end up in a cell that's dank yet too-warm, with Tori crumpled and chained to one wall. Kindrie watches the woman break those chains - then she looks over her shoulder and meets Kindrie's eyes, hers bright silver, and he knows this must be the sister Tori has let slip mention of - older, somehow, tender and wroth at once.

The surprise breaks his focus, sends him careening back into the shadows, and to the safety of his own hidden garden.

Kindrie is a bastard, except that he has a cousin. He's a rotten little shanir - yes, the best healer in his generation, even if he has no other prizes to his name. He's worthless and useless and unwanted - except that he has a friend whom sometimes he can still make smile, who has never been just a dream, who leaves the flowers of Kindrie's soul-garden blooming a little brighter every time he helps tend them, and who has scattered the place with marbles and books and even a sword. Kindrie has cleared away some of these, and kept others, hidden as carefully as the door behind the vines, and never once mentioned to Tori that this is a weird thing to be able to do. Also, illegitimate though he may (seem to) be, Kindrie is a Knorth and Tori - well, he was scared to leave, and he did it anyway.

So, in the fashion of Knorths, Kindrie stages his escape from the priests' college that night, about seven years earlier than canon, and he makes his way as fast as possible to camp of the Southern Host.

Nothing else changes about Ukakarn, except this: Rose Iron-thorn doesn't die, because Tori's hands aren't too badly injured to keep their grip on her, because Kindrie walks, clumsily rides, and pleads his way onto illicit trade caravans going down the valley, he spends as much time as he can in Tori's keep - no longer lost in shadow, but still cracked with flames, eroding with exhaustion, dust-drenched for lack of water. Tori is no help - if he notices at all, in more than a daze - but patients rarely are.

(Rose isn't in the water to guide their boat through the sea, but Kindrie, for lack of any proper sleep himself, keeps Tori going, and Tori keeps his few people, and all together, they find the safe shore.)

Tori has told him about the Caineron commander of the host, so Kindrie goes directly to the god-king of Krothifir. Quite frankly, tfw a moderately unhinged 13-year-old kencyr with a shaved head (for not being tracked by description) bursts into your royal court and starts insisting that a precious few of your army have survived the dread fortress that captured them, and are even now in desperate need of a rescue party in the near desert. Please believe me, Kindrie begs, I know it from a dream (a perfectly normal, if rare shanir trait - though it is on the tip of his tongue to shout at the kendar guards in the hall that this is their future highlord dying in the desert out there, and why aren't they moving already.

Kroaky lets Kindrie convince him to make a royal visit to the optomancers' Eye, and they are of course just in time to watch Tori's little group straggle back into camp. Exhausted though he is, Kindrie dashes off right then, maybe with a tipsy wolver at his heels. Krothen, alas, takes longer to get down the cliff - a king needs pomp and circumstance, after all. Gendar Caineron is dead before either arrives.

Once Harn is back on his feet and in command, he quietly adds Kindrie to the lacking ranks of a medic squad. Within a month, Kindrie has picked up the nickname "Whitey", for his growing-back hair and, of course, mirror to Blackie. (I'm sure the boys try to keep it subtle, and let the story be that Kindrie just happened to have a vision of these escapees...but it's not like an ever-growing proportion of the host isn't already politely not commenting on the fact that their Blackie is clearly a full-blooded Knorth.)

...and then they lived happily ever after, the end

(except Tori still won't admit to himself that he's a shanir until after Jame has metaphorically kicked in the door of the Kencyrath and less metaphorically set multiple parts of it on fire)

[cpelise]

Headcanons on Tobirama and why I write him the way I do:

Allow me to first and foremost emphasize the word headcanon(s), before proceeding. I’ve written this out to essentially explain how I personally view Tobirama, why I write him the way I do for a series of fanfics I recently posted to AO3, and may potentially continue to write :3

With that being said~

When he was younger I feel that he had to put on a strong face for his brothers. He felt the need to protect and shield them from his father’s hard training and abuse. He observed the world around him and approached everything matter of factually not just for them, but for himself, to accept the reality that they were stuck in, as a way of coping.

As he grows into a teen-young adult, he becomes even more serious with training and his curiosity heightens for learning new techniques to further his skills. He does so to keep his only remaining brother safe and to keep their mutual dream alive. I headcanon that he trains with Hashirama often so that they both can keep their skills at their peak. When he can’t train with Hashirama because he’s training elsewhere (sage training for example), he dives into reading and studying, he trains himself harder in suiton, he trains with other clan members, or this is where the -insert fanfic opportunity- to visit a potential S/O comes in.

No, I don’t think all of his time is spent training. Him and Hashirama have other duties to attend to too- mainly politics and chores; providing resources for meals (Tobirama would excel at fishing and enjoy it), shopping at local populated towns or areas for other groceries and supplies, attending meetings with other clans regarding anything from illnesses the Senju could help with- to escorting clans, people with power, notable figures, or others, etc. Later on this knowledge and experience would provide handy for them in the founding of Konohagakure and bringing clans together, imo.

Around age 24, the time of Izuna’s death, he’s visibly shown in a clan battle scene fighting for his life. You can see the expression written clearly on his face that he’s irritated of this clan war; he wants it to be over with. The peaceful future his brother and he desires for, can never become a reality as long as this clan war continues.

Around 25-26 Konohagakure is founded.

Around 31 he creates the Ninja Training Institution that later becomes known as the Ninja Academy.

Around 34 he becomes his team’s Sensei.

Around 40 he becomes Nidaime Hokage, creates the Konoha Police, and later that year- is killed by the Kinkaku Force.

^ 24-40 age bracket are more fact-type timeline things than they are headcanons, but they’re relevant.

Time/Type:

Frankly the timeline is probably the only solid information here, as my headcanons are simply that- headcanons. Sorry admirers; he’s probably not looking for any potential love interests until after the clan war with the Uchiha is over- that’s my personal headcanon and that’s one of the reasons why I wrote my fanfics with my Original Character the way that I did. I insert as much freedom into this man’s life as I could for an S/O, but his life is overwhelming and chaotic. Not saying don’t do it or don’t try it. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ This man is 100% worth it.

I imagine this man as Demi- he’s not going to fall for you unless he knows you on a deeply personal level. He needs to trust you, and that’s something that requires building.

For his Persona:

It’s fanon- (I doubt it’s established canon, because manually who’s counting this?) that we’ve seen over 5,000 jutsu in the combined Naruto/Shippuden series, and Tobirama is responsible for inventing more than 3,500 of those.

To create so many in such a small lifespan, you’ve got to spend all of your time solely dedicated to the cause. But he has a clan to defend, eventually has Konohagakure to help establish, has missions to run, he has a team to mentor, he eventually becomes Nidaime Hokage. And without a doubt it helps that he develops shadow clones (kage bunshin no jutsu) to help with this later down the line.

The man likely uses all of his spare time pouring into the task, and forces himself to sleep. But when he finally lays his head down to rest- his mind is still left brainstorming and racing through copious amounts of information. That’s where I headcanon him the way that I do.

When he’s first introduced during the chūnin exams, he’s not exactly thrilled with the situation but  he’s shown smiling quite a bit. You can tell he enjoys battle to some extent. In my view it’s also a level of coping (or denial). Being so used to something negative, or painful, to such a degree that you let it wash over you, shrug everything off, and smile or laugh about it. I see it a lot irl. A lot of successful functioning adults carry on with this attitude.

Towards the end he tells Sarutobi that he’s sorry for causing him trouble- those words in itself hold a lot of gravity, imo. He’s taking in accountability for the forbidden technique (kinjutsu: edo tensei) and the domino effect that it has caused his former student.

In a filler episode he’s shown again helping the ‘Eternal Genin’, Kosuke Maruboshi. This time his attitude is a little more serious, but it’s still helpful and reaching. He desires to teach Kosuke skills to defend himself. ‘Give a man fish, it feeds him for a day. Teach a man to fish, it feeds him for a lifetime.’

In the Fourth Shinobi War Arc, he appears again- this time he appears a bit more aged than the first time he was summoned via Edo Tensei, and this time his mannerisms and persona seem more mature. It’s stated that he was summoned differently from the first time, so it only makes sense. Orochimaru also doesn’t blank out his personality this time around. He has more freedom to function and operate- to be himself.

What’s notable to me is how he interacts with everyone around him. He still interacts with his Brother as was shown in the flashbacks. He interacts with Minato and Naruto in a somewhat easy-going and friendly manner. I.e. they mesh well and can read each other’s abilities without having been acquainted long, and Naruto slowly frustrates him with a shadow clone jutsu explanation, lol.

He listens to Sasuke and his team to receive the full details of the situation, though desiring to make haste to the battlefield. He doesn’t have much choice and his brother makes a final call. Another +point to the ‘respects his brother’ tally card.

To me these scenes tell me that his morals are high, his need to set things ‘right’ are high. That he holds high respect for his brother, and that he has the capacity to evaluate the details of a situation and explain at length to others information they require.

Later there are several other scenes where we catch sight of him, and he’s again: smiling, or he has a grin, in most.

I’d describe him as sassy, he’s got that in spades. He’ll be the first one to call you out on any mistakes, or make a blunt assessment of the situation. Meaning he’s vocal. One of the opposite traits of ‘stoic’ (I’m tired of seeing this word being used to describe him). I’d also describe him as observant, and takes the situation for the seriousness it deserves.

When it comes to battle, sparring, or anything competitive like, he is seen to have moments of pleasure on the battlefield- he is caught with those smiles or grins. Be them from amusement, contentment, out of sass, feeling confident- they are most certainly there. And that is where I choose to write him. I will take that leap and write him playful and smiley any day of the week.

And don’t let that handsome smile fool you. He’s still cunningly brilliant, and quick, with shadow clones! He’ll catch you when you least expect it- now that’s canon. Madara said it himself in the anime.

Welcome to my Naruto-verse. And my Tobirama Headcanons \o/

Extra tidbit of Into:

In a databook it’s mentioned that his favourite words were "Mind, technique, body" (心・技・体, Shin - gi - tai).

>>>

I want to delve into this a smidge. More headcanons btw. He may have picked this up over time after studying through so much information, or maybe it was inspired by his Brother and the sage training he went through- perhaps it’s an accumulation of both. The fact that he aligned the three to begin-with signifies awareness, imo.

He’s aware when his body doesn’t have the right nutrients or isn’t properly fed- that he’s going to be subpar on the battlefield (applies to everyday activities as well).

He’s aware if he doesn’t have the right amount of sleep, when something has his head space distracted- that his thoughts are going to drift elsewhere and he’s going to be subpar on the battlefield (applies to everyday activities as well).

He’s aware if his abilities, skill, or knowledge in an area is mediocre or weak, that he’s going to be subpar or not as effective as he could be on the battlefield, potentially even a risk. And in a political environment, it could lose the trust and cooperation of peers or others.

I think he attempts his best to take care of himself to maintain that order of ‘mind, technique, body’, and to be as effective as he can for the sake of those around him; he just may fail at it sometimes with his lifestyle.

Sources:

Timeline (fandom), https://naruto.fandom.com/wiki/User:Seelentau/Naruto_Timeline

Jutsu Creation (fandom), https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-Hokages-die

 Anime (personal perception); I created a collage of screenshot some time back specifically for this (and then completely forgot to add an important scene and omitted several similar-in appearance scenes). I’m going to add that collage again (with minor edits). This collage helps to display the foundation of my thought process for Tobirama's behavior and mannerisms:

Extra Nonsense:

Repeating myself a bit; I’m not trying to start a war or begin a debate with all this *gestures to all of the above*. I just wanted to explain why I wrote Tobirama the way that I did in my Tobirama x OC fanfics before I was piled with a bunch of questions regarding it. Not that I dislike questions! This is just easier- to explain it all, in its entirety, all at once. Honestly I don’t think anyone will care enough to read the fanfics in the first place, lol. Regardless, here~ have my Tobirama headcanons~! x3

And I don’t know if it’s obvious, but I’ve been trying to repeat and emphasize the word ‘headcanon’ a dozen times. 95% of this, if not more, are headcanonssssss~