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the-kingshound · 3 years ago

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Just wondering what are your favorite wips or if? Any recommendations?

Finally, my time has come.

Listen, I breathe IFs, I read basically ALL of the ones I follow and every time someone updates something I drop everything else to go read it. This answer is going to become very long, (and I'll probably split it in more parts) so it goes under the cut!

Part One

TWINE WIPs with DEMO

Ascendance by @ascendance-if

Although I promised myself to remain impartial, I can’t with this one. Lou is not only my spiritual soulmate but also an amazing person and a talented, creative author. Ascendance holds a special place in my heart, the game makes me feel soft and fuzzy, with its amazing characters and a themed aesthetic that is just right. One of the only IFs I found focused on aliens, the main plot is something to slowly enjoy one paragraph at at time. I also promise you that you will love the ROs with all your heart (I have a huge soft spot for Elya but that is only because I have a type and Elya is it).

Life of a Savior by @legend-of-a-savior-if

You will not regret reading this one, or maybe you will, but only because this is just the right amount of dark fantasy and pain you were searching for. Nikki has a way with words that cuts right through your heart, for better or for worse. This is the story of a quest, with a mysterious MC and secretive companions, with an onorable mention to the Queen (and if you read the Demo you’ll know what I’m talking about). As for the ROs, they are all delicious, Ranvir is the cinnamon roll I’ll simp for but go for the Angel if you’re a sucker for pain.

Frostford’s Mystery by @nemowrites

If you haven’t read this already, do it. Here you’ll play as a Detective in the quiet and ever calm city of Frostford. Nothing ever happens here, just until something important gets stolen and you overhear what could possibly be the most bizarre conversation on earth. What’s magical about this IF is Nemo’s lovely visuals and her hilarious writing style, with inside jokes that will make you burst out laughing and truly cute characters we’re all waiting to interact with (I’m looking at you, Jesse).

Crosshollow Foundations by @townofcrosshollow

It’s not romance based but you play as an otherwordly being stuck on Earth with truly fascinating costumization options for your appearance and a companion you have to keep safe while hiding from an ancient enemy. I really don’t know what more could you desire from a story. Highly recommended, if only to bask in its stunning visual, a high class example of what you can achieve with Twine on the aesthetic side.

The Woods Hungers by @thewoodshungers-if

I’m beyond excited for this one. The Demo absolutely leaves you craving for more, with a pressing plot and characters you need more of. You play as a knight accused of tearson and on the receiving end of a witch-hunt that will force you in the depths of the woods. A single scene and I was a goner for the Prince, Caine, but I will play every other route because yes. Go play it, it’s absolutely worth it.

Ballad of the Judgment Night by @nikkefort-dev

Ok, this one is special, in the sense that you’re about to unleash the apocalypse with zero fucks given. You’re a ruthless fallen angel who plays the villain and just wants to see everything burn. It’s no wonder I read this like 0.01 seconds after the Demo was released, for once the romance’s not even what I’m looking forward to (although I’ll say that the undead seer stole my heart and never gave it back so there’s that), I just want to cause mayhem. Oh and you can have a scythe as a weapon, how cool is that?

All paths lead to the underground (18+) by @pol-writes

Pol is an amazing writer and you’ll see it for yourselves in this sci-fi dystopian beauty of an IF. The atmosphere here is incredible, the aesthetic terribly on point and the plot feels almost frenetic. You play as a genetically-modified mercenary and dispite your apparent strength you’ll have to be careful because your obscure past is just around the corner. So recommended.

Red Sugar Society (18+) by @redsugarsociety

Your role here is to bring down your city’s corrupted elite, so infiltrate and have fun in the creme de la creme of society. The Demo gives you the right amount of informations to leave you craving for more when it ends and the ROs are all cuties, I’m so undecided I think I’ll go for all three. I am also very intrigued by the endings... all in all, I’m really keeping my eyes open for this.

Swan Song by @swansong-if

The Demo just dropped and I. Need. More. Loosely based on Tchaikovsky’s ballet, in this IF you'll play the White Swan and reshape the original story. This alone should give you a reason to read it, not to add the MC’s costumisation options with four different personality type (I’ll play all four, watch me) and the two ROs, Leir and Odile. I’m incredibly attached to them both and the story just started, that’s how good the Demo is.

Out Of The Blue by @vahnyawrites

A Regency Era story told by the MC’s prospective as a modern day university student thrown into an England you don’t recognize anymore. The Demo is a delicious appetizer of what’s to come, with a lot of costumisation options for MC I can’t wait to try just to see the characters reactions. Maybe it’s my weakness of time-travels and Regency Era England talking but my excitement for this one IF is HUGE.

The Ballad of Devil's Creek by @devilscreekballad

With a catching plot and even more catching characters, this one IF will take you in the Wild West for the ride of your life, literally because you’ll have to stop a weird cult to bring the end of the world. What I like most are the characters, the cast is ample and very well written to the point I’ve given up on picking only ore or two ROs. It’s porting to Twine so it’s possible you’ve found this also on Dashingdon.

Villain’s Promise by @villains-promise

Read this one just after the Demo dropped (also, the prologue has just now been updated so I know what to do after I finish this post) and all I want is to read more. You wake up seven years before your execution and you just want to survive this time around. Unfortunately, the gods have other plans. I’m going to romance the heir, really no surprise there... Do I have a weakness for heirs and kings? Not at all (said Kal while hiding Arthur behind them).

A Knigh’s Heart by @knightsheart-if

Another one where you’re executed and you come back (although here it was all in your dream), because I’m weak for those. Here you’re accused of summoning demons in spite of the fact that you’ve got like zero magic and no death wish. I’m very much looking forward to the magical world and creatues we will encounter, as well as the MC’s role as a peacekeeper or warbringer between kingdoms. And oh look, there’s a prince RO AND a heir RO... tough decision.

Water to Blood (18+) by @veirsewrites

You are an ancient vampire owner of a nightclub for supernaturals and humans alike. You heard right, and what’s even cooler is MC’s personality, I really love this one and the first chapter, I’m (im)patiently waiting for more. The same very talented author has also published From Within but that’s been put on hold for now. I wish them all the best with WtB!

Thieves of Divinity by @isa-writes

Truly a fascinating Demo, with a deep dive into the plot from the beginning with Gods deeply involved in it. You plas as the Senseless, an unfortunate bearer of the Faceless One’s power forced to form alliances to survive the God’s wrath. What I’m most curious about are the endings and routes, I mean, you can literally kill the Gods and take their place!

We All Bleed Red by @lost-kiwi-dev

The Demo left me hollow like it sometimes happen after you experience something beautiful but painful, because not only do we have to deal with our own grief but the scenes with our parents are simply heartbreaking. Our sister gets murdered at the start of the game, we’ll have to discover who did it while still mourning her. I’m keeping my eyes wide open for updates.

Crimson Rose & White Lily by @crimsonroseandwhitelily

Ok so, in this one you wake up in a place you don’t recognize with people you don’t know. You soon discover you’re a noble about to marry a Prince (guess who I’ll romance?), so not only do we have the amnesia trope (always delicious) but also the arranged marriage one. Oh and you have a voice in your head. These are all more than valid reasons to go read it right now.

Exiled from Court by @beeanca-writing

I am enamoured of this IF for two main reasons. One, the setting: a country named Albarzia based on Brazil in the 19th century. Two, The Hedonist, wich is the main character you play as with a semi-set personality. Oh, boy do I love this one. I enjoyed the demo so much I played it multiple times and I’m totally set on doing the very angsty romance with Harry (your sister’s husband). I’ll enjoy life and no one will be able to stop me.

A Sky of Stars by @skyofstarsif

Apart from the very beautiful Twine UI, this If will offer you the opportunity to play as a potential mage who just received their letter for the Goldwell's Magical Institute. A personal take on a classic that will let your dreams come true. The ROs are also a treat and all in all I can’t wait to see where this project will bring us.

The Overtaken by @theovertaken

I literally threw myself to the itch.io page when the demo went up, because in this one you live in a world where everyone is tethered to a ghost. Unluckily for you, your ghost is very much a danger for yourself. Expect also a plot twist in the Demo that will make things even more interesting. If that doesn’t do it for you, I don’t know what does.

Entropy by @talesfromvalaan

You can spot this IF’s potential from miles afar. A thrilling tale of investigations in a fantasy setting with a deep dive into religious lore. You play as a newly initiated Acolyte tasked to investigate with a cast of companions on the disappearings that took place in the city. You’ll also interact with a very recent cult and its charismatic leader. I am very much waiting for the next chapters!

Advenio by @adveniogame

The Demo is soaked with bittersweet nostalgia, with the main conflict being the MC’s return to their childhood home, just the place where your parents and half of your community were murdered. The absolute best thing about this IF is the main protagonist, a mercenary who’ll have to fight for revenge and recognition, having been assigned female at birth in a world that does little to understand. It’s also incredibly well written; very recommended.

The Alchemist by @darielivalyen

Here you’ll play as an alchemist and you will have to manage your shop, your friends and the very difficult task of bringing your new client’s grandson back from a coma. Oh, you also have a very cool familiar and four elements to choose for your magical affinity. The cute thing about this IF is the mini-game to brew a potion, go try it out!

Hybrid by @heart-forge

The setting here is post-apocalyptic (a plant-based apocalypse where plant underwent an overnight evolution and took over the planet) and you’ll play as someone born and grown up after that. What I really enjoy about this If is the protagonist, with a set name, Zed, and a semi-set personality, forced to explore this world after their only family disappeared one day. Go play the demo because you won’t regret it.

#I will probably update this post later when I'll found IFs I missed #if recs #ignore the typos please I'll correct them later

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ginwalt · 4 years ago

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Will you consider writing Diana Prince x Fem!Reader who has anxiety, and she frets endlessly over Diana when she’s away on missions? Diana constantly assures her she’s fine and even jokes it off to seem like missions are no big deal, let alone a threat, to her. But, then, there finally comes an instance where the news or something announces no one/or very few of JL survived some unbelievably dangerous, world saving mission. Reader, of course, believes it and her anxiety takes over from thinking Diana is gone. Basically, I’m asking for angst that ends in a whole lot of comforting fluff! Sorry this if this is long and too much detail!

A/N: Heyyyyy,,,, sorry this took so long. Writer's block is a b*tch to deal with ;/. Hope you still enjoy though!

Word Count: 2k

When you first started dating Diana, she quickly grew fond of calling you her "little worrier." You were always flitting and hovering around her before and after a mission. Even after she insisted she felt completely fine, you would drag her into bed and make her rest after a battle. Amazonian or no, your girlfriend still had her limits. You were both yet to see a said limit; however, you were not keen on finding out what it looked like.

Currently, you were pacing a hole in the living room of your shared apartment. Your hands were clenched into fists at your side as you frantically looked between your girlfriend and the window.

"What could Bruce possibly want you for that requires you to be gone for a week?" You asked, running a hand through your hair.

Diana gave you a sympathetic, if a touch amused, look before making her way over to you. She cut your frantic path short by wrapping her arms around your waist. Her nose burrowed into your hair as she squeezed you closer. "My love, I'm not made of porcelain. If I was concerned about my safety, I would make sure to bring extra backup. I promise you this mission will be no different than the rest of them."

You groaned and hid your face in the crook of her neck. "But what if it isn't?" You melded your body impossibly closer to her own as countless gruesome scenarios rattled around your head.

You felt two large calloused hands cup the sides of your face as Diana tilted your face up. Begrudgingly, you complied and met her soft gaze. "My little worrier, I promise I will not take any unnecessary risks. I will be back home before you know it. Okay?"

You sighed and fell into her once more. Your cheek rested against her collarbone, and she traced circles up and down your spine. "Just come back to me in one piece, okay? I like your scars but not enough to add to the collection."

Diana grinned and planted a soft kiss on the tip of your nose. "I promise, my little worrier." The two of you clung to one another for a moment longer before the demigoddess finally pulled away. "I have to leave now, but I will be back before you know it. I promise, my darling."

You huffed and pressed a kiss to her jaw, "You better. After having sex with an Amazonian for two years, it would be nearly impossible to replace you with anyone else."

Diana chuckled and lifted you into your arms. You yelped in surprise and wrapped your legs around her waist as she pulled you into her. Your lips met in a slow, melting kiss. "I will see you soon, darling." With one last lingering look, she left.

You were certain they had added new days to the week. It had been three days since Diana had left for her mission with the Justice League, and you felt as if you were about to explode. The confidentiality of the threats that the League faces meant you were left entirely in the dark. No status updates, no calls, not even a damned text was allowed. Time had a funny way of making the complete severing of communication even more painful.

The four days remaining felt like an entire century as you spent most of your time flipping between news stations just in case one of them had something- anything - of use. Sighing, you scrubbed your hands over your face and shut off the TV. It was around three in the morning, and even though you had work in four hours, sleep evaded you. Rest was not an easy thing to come by when Diana was away. The combination of a cold bed and the unknown danger she faced was enough to keep your eyes stapled open.

Still, that didn't mean you couldn't give it a shot. After taking well above the recommended dose of Melatonin, you opted to wear one of Diana's hoodies to bed. The sweatshirt fell down to your lower thigh and wrapped you entirely in the familiar scent of her perfume. A soft smile settled on your face as you buried your face in the collar of her hoodie.

Ironically, Diana had bought the hoodie more for your benefit than anything else. After you complained that all of her clothing was too fancy to steal, the demigoddess went out and bought one. After it started to smell like her, you snatched it from her closet as often as possible. The comfort provided by the well-worn cotton was what finally managed to lull you to sleep nearly an hour later.

Hours later, your fitful sleep was abruptly cut off by the feeling of your phone violently vibrating beside you. Groaning, you cracked your eyes open and peered over at the alarm clock. Who the hell was calling at 5:30 in the morning? Cursing, you fumbled for your phone and peered up at the caller ID. Your heart dropped when you saw who it was: Diana.

Your girlfriend only risked calling you while on a mission for one reason; something horrible had happened. Quickly, you slammed your thumb against the accept call button and lifted it to your ear.

"Diana? What's wrong? Did something happen?" You sputtered, sitting up.

"Y/n I don't have much time. I just wanted to let you know that this job might take a bit longer than I originally thought," your girlfriend sounded uncharacteristically rushed. In the background, you heard the sounds of panicked shouting and something gut-wrenchingly similar to gunshots. "Everything will be fine; just stay safe for me. Okay?"

"Diana, what's going on? Is everyone alright? Are you alright?" Your fist clenched the sheets as you kicked the comforter off.

"I don't have time to explain. Just stay safe. I love you." You opened your mouth to protest. However, the call ended before you had a chance. Cursing, you threw your phone to the side and rushed to the living room. Scrambling around in the dark, you finally grasped the TV remote and flicked it on. On the news was a concerned-looking reporter standing behind a battle-torn field. Bodies, both alien and human, were strewn across the ground lying in charred craters with billowing smoke.

"Just hours earlier, a rogue alien fleet attacked a small village just on the coast of western Italy. The Justice League confronted them in a gory battle. Unfortunately, two members, the Flash and Batman, were gravely injured during the fight." You gasped as a video of a bloodied Barry Allen in his now tattered suit was rushed away on a stretcher. Your chest clenched painfully as you paced in front of the television screen. "The location of the rest of the Justice League is unknown at this time."

You blindly slammed your finger against the power button on the remote and chucked it against the couch. Diana was okay. She had to be. How else would she call you if she wasn't? These thoughts did little to soothe your fears as your legs gave out from under you. Your knees collided with the solid wood floorboards as you tried desperately to keep your sobs at bay.

For the first time in your relationship, you had no clue where Diana Prince was. Was she still in Italy? Were the others with her? Had she been kidnapped? Was she okay? The thought had you heaving out wheezy breaths. You had to calm down; you refused to have a panic attack at 5 in the morning. Squeezing your eyes shut, you roughly dragged yourself onto the couch. A clenched fist was pried open as you rested it over your stomach. Breathe. In. Out. Repeat.

After the oxygen returned to your lungs and your vision was no longer blurred with tears, you shakily stood from the couch. Diana would be okay. She had to be. If Diana was okay, you were okay.

Nothing was okay. It has been a month since your girlfriend's ominous phone call, and there was neither hint nor mention of her anywhere. It was hell. The whole world mourned the death of the Justice League while you clung desperately to a glimmer of hope that grew dimmer every day. As the idea of Wonder Woman being alive started to diminish, so did you. You had lost quite a bit of weight over the month. Your clothing was smelled of weeks worth of unwashed grime.

Since your work allowed you to work from home while you got your life back together, there was no point in leaving your apartment. For the first time in your life, you allowed yourself to be completely consumed by grief. What else was there to do when the love of your life was either never coming back or lying face up in a ditch somewhere? The process of living was more of a day-to-day chore that you forcibly dragged yourself alongside. Not quite alive, but not nearly dead enough for it to be a relief. You were simply there.

This was still the case when your friends decided to drag you to the mall. After not hearing from you for nearly three weeks straight, they had decided that it was about time to get you out of the apartment. You hardly gave a shit either way. Currently, you were scrubbing dry shampoo into your long-abused scalp. You rubbed your nearly used up deodorant on and decided on which almost clean outfit to wear.

After settling on one of Diana's old hoodies, you threw on some sweatpants. The clothing you stole from your girlfriend had long stopped smelling like her perfume so, you reapplied it yourself. Your phone buzzed with a message from your friend's group chat, letting you know they were outside. With a resigned sigh, you forced yourself out the door.

Nearly three hours later, you finally pried yourself away from your friends. You refused to let them give you a ride home as you opted to take the bus instead. The mall had been agonizing. Every high-end clothing store was like a painful reminder of who you had lost. She seemed to be everywhere these days in billboards, mall food courts, and in crowds. Her memory seemed to follow you like a phantom limb. After nearly falling asleep on the bus, you stumbled up the stairs and into your apartment.

You were nearly halfway to the couch when you heard an odd noise coming from your bedroom. It sounded like... shuffling? Furrowing your brows in confusion, you grabbed the pepper spray Diana had insisted you buy from your bag. Carefully, you crept down the hall. Your heartbeat hammered in your chest as you slowly opened the door.

Time stood still. There, sitting on the bed so casually you could have believed she had been there all along, was Diana Prince. The pepper spray in your hand hit the carpet with a soft thud as you gaped at your girlfriend. She looked up at the sound and nearly leaped to her feet at the sight of you. "Y/n, you're here!" She cleared the space between you in two long strides. Her hands were cupping your cheeks with a familiar sense of love. "When I got home, I saw that you were not here, and I feared that something had happened," Diana explained as she cocooned you in her arms.

At the familiar sensation of her strong arms wrapped around your abdomen, you finally broke. You crumbled into her chest as sobs wracked your body. Your hands grasped at the back of her shirt as your tried desperately to get closer to her. Diana tutted quietly and cradled the back of your head. "You- you were dead," you heaved hysterically. "Ever-Everyone thought you were dea-dead."

Your girlfriend carefully guided the two of you onto the bed. She lounged on her back, allowing you to lie entirely on top of her. Frantic hands clung to her. If you didn't hold on tight enough, she would crumble to sand and dust, like a castle on a beach. Diana ran her hands up and down your back, quietly shushing you whenever you gasped or cried. "Shhh, you're alright, everyone's okay, my love. I'm here now." You felt a gentle kiss being placed onto the crown of your head.

A long beat of silence stretched between you two as your cries died down. "Where were you."

"I will explain everything later. For now, all you need to know is that I'm here. I'm here, and I'm never leaving you again."

#diana prince x reader #wonder woman x reader #wonder woman #diana prince #dc universe #justice league #reader insert #writing prompt

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fandom-junkie2020 · 4 years ago

Text

Unbreakable

Draco Malfoy x Reader

Summary- Y/N, sister of Cedric Diggory, once hated Draco Malfoy with a burning passion. Well, that changed and when tragedy strikes the Diggory family, Draco is there to comfort her.

Unedited

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Hogwarts had always been a dream come true. Every day was filled with magic, friendship, and best of all conflict. It was never a dull year at Hogwarts, which meant that some catastrophic event had to occur. Although nothing damaging had happened so far, there was still one thing that made this year different than most.

The Triwizard Tournament.

Y/N sat at her house table, the Slytherin table. Being in Slytherin was something to be proud of--being in any of the houses was something to be proud of--yet most looked down upon Slytherins because of the stereotype that came with the house. The pure hatred that most had for the Slytherins made it difficult for those who were in the house to make friends beyond their group.

Not one had expected Y/N to be in the Slytherin house. It wasn't because of her unusually bubbly attitude or her determination. It was because of her brother.

Cedric Diggory.

Cedric was a year older than Y/N and belonged to the Hufflepuff house. Everyone, including the Diggory family, had expected Y/N to follow in Cedric's footsteps. However, she unexpectedly was chosen to be in the Slytherin house. Even though her family was disappointed by this outcome, they supported her nonetheless. Making friends was more difficult than earning her family acceptance.

At the start of the year Y/N was subject to bullying. She stood by her brother's side and often chatted amongst his friends instead of trying to make her own. This worked out nicely for a while, but like any older sibling would, Cedric got annoyed. Why did she have to always hang out with his friends? She was in first year for God sake, making her old enough to find her own friends. She didn't need to latch onto his life just so she didn't feel lonely.

Although this was somewhat harsh thinking on Cedric's part, this benefitted Y/N.

The astronomy tower was dark. The moon was shining and there was a light drizzle outside. The air nipped at Y/N skin as she sat against the cool metal floor. She sat there with her knees tugged toward her chest. Her hands clung together, desperate to hold onto something. Tears slowly streaming down her face.

Her brother had turned her away. Her only friend, the one person that is supposed to be there for her, told her to leave. She didn't know where else to go. She didn't want to go back to her dorm. The other girls continually picked on her, stole her robes, and even poured water on her bed so she couldn't sleep in it. She could head back to the common room, however that might be worse then the dorms. Most likely, the Slytherin prince himself, would be sitting in one of the armchairs, his goons close by to defend him. If she went to the common room she would be subjecting herself to an even worse fate than that of the girls dorms.

Malfoy was always good at tormenting every student he deemed necessary. Y/N was someone that Malfoy deemed inferior, worthy of torment. Although their paths had barley crossed, the boy still decided to pick on the poor girl. She was an easy target. He got all the information he needed from the gossip smothering the school halls. Anything he didn't know, or needed to know, could be easily at his fingertips with one order to Crabbe and Goyle.

Going to the common room wasn't an option.

Going to the dorms wasn't an option.

Going to her brother wasn't an option.

Going to the astronomy tower, however, was an option.

She had been sitting there for quite some time. Alone, wondering if her time at Hogwarts would get any better. How could it? Everyday she was tormented. How could the life she was living possibly get any better? Life always disappoints doesn't it? Everyone says life is going to get better. That one day, you won't be sad anymore. How can that be? There are always going to be people who want to destroy you, to rip apart your happiness.

"It sucks here," Y/N said to the stars. The stars, of course, remained silent.

"Yeah for you."

Y/N whipped her head toward the stairs that entered the astronomy tower.

There appeared the Slytherin prince. He stood at the entrance and leaned up against the railing of the stairs. His arms crossed and his eyebrows were tilted downward, forming a frown. Y/N looked and took in Malfoy's appearance. He was in his night clothes--not the ones provided by the school of course. These looked to be of a soft material and the stitching was done tightly and neatly. On his left breast was an embroidered Malfoy family crest. The details were delicate and precise.

"Easy for you to say, Malfoy," Y/N sneered. Normally she wouldn't dare to speak to Prince Draco in such a negative tone, for this would cause her to be in more trouble then she normally was in. But tonight, exceptions were made.

Malfoy scoffed, "Well maybe if you weren't such a baby about everything then you'd actually understand the importance of the Slytherin house and embrace who you were meant to be, a Slytherin. Then--and only then--will you actually have some here at Hogwarts."

As Y/N sat, looking over at Malfoy, she pondered why she didn't stand up for herself. Cedric always stood up for her no problem. Why did she have such a hard time with it? What does she have to lose?

She rose from her seated position, took a few steps towards Malfoy, clenched her fists, and spoke.

"Well, Malfoy, if you weren't such an outright wanker then I wouldn't be alienated by my own house!" Y/N yelled.

Malfoy thought tactically about his text words. He paused, looked Y/N up and down and said, "If you weren't such a disappointment to Slytherin then maybe I wouldn't have to be a twat all the time."

Much time had passed since that awful night and Draco had gotten over his irrational bullying. Now things were much different. As the years progressed so did Y/N and Draco's relationship. Instead of being enemies, the two had grown closer than anyone had ever imagined. No one expected Y/N Diggory, sister of Cedric Diggory, to start dating Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin Prince. Even though the two had become good friends before they started their relationship, no one could understand why a Malfoy would date a Diggory. The two of them were good at ignoring everyone else because at the end of the day all the pair cared about was

However, after the start of the Triwizard Tournament, there was more attention on the couple than there ever had before--Rita Skeeter was a lovely help with that. Cedric was consumed in the “celebrity life.” He was being showered with attention from dozens of girls from multiple different houses. His friends were the epitome of the name “Chad.” Altogether, Cedric time was being consumed with studying for the torment and trying to catch the perfect date for the Yule Ball that was scheduled for the winter time. Since Cedric was dragged into the spotlight, his sister was as well. The usual great hall buzz shifted from that evening's outlandish happenings to Y/N and her relationship with Draco.

“Such things are unnatural. No Slytherin should be seen with the like of a--a Diggory.”

“I can’t believe that he chose her. Did you see what she was wearing last week.”

“Diggory and Malfoy? Ugh that whole relationship is disgusting. At least they’re both pure bloods right?

“He’s gorgeous. Maybe slippin’ him a love potion or two will make him forget about Miss Y/N Diggory.”

To say that their comments were rude would be an understatement. Despite the harsh tone fluttering about the Great Hall, Draco and Y/N were able to discount the murmurings. They would sit quietly chatting with each other while Crabbe and Goyle sat across from them, engulfing their time with the freshly baked pastries. While those around them would be projecting hate onto their relationship, they would be avowing their love for one another.

“You’re so beautiful.”

“You’re so pretty.”

“You’re amazingly smart.”

“You are everything I’ve always wanted.”

“You are worth everything in my life and more.”

While the two were together, everyone around them disappeared. No one else mattered. It was them and only them. They could spend hours defying the expectations of their fellow classmates. While they were together, nothing could touch them. They were unbreakable.

The final task, the most important task out of the three. The area was filled with hundreds of students, staff, and family members of those who were entered in the tournament. There were dozens of flags representing that of whom the individual wanted to win. Trumpet blasted its music through the area as the crowd cheered for the entering contestants.

Out of a doorway, hidden beneath the audience, appeared Cedric, Fleur, Victor, and finally Harry. Cedric, accompanied by his father, looked into the stands in search for his sister. They had been growing apart in recent years, however, he wanted to know that she was there. That she cared. His eyes weaved through the Slytherin crowd. The search didn’t last very long. All he needed to do was find the boy with the platinum blonde hair. His sister, Cedric knew, would be right next to the boy.

Once he locked eyes on his sister, he smiled and waved. For half a second Cedric would have sworn that she wasn’t going to wave back. Then he saw his sister’s eyes light up. She stretched her arm high up into the air and shook her arm back and forth. Her smile stretched from ear to ear. Then she turned to Draco, excitement flooding her expression. They exchanged a few sentences with each other before she turned back to continue waving at her brother.

In that moment, hope filled Cedric’s heart. Maybe--just maybe--he could mend the relationship he broke long ago. Maybe he could talk to her and tell her how much he loved her. Maybe they could forget the countless arguments between them. Then Cedric began to wonder if his sister had meant to react with such excitement. Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly. She was obviously having her fun with Draco. Surely she didn’t mean to acknowledge him with such energy.

Regardless, I’ll talk with her later, he thought.

Y/N sat next to Draco, her hand intertwined with his. Fleur and Victor had already been illuminated from the tournament. Surely, Cedric and Harry would be done soon?

“I’m worried,” Y/N looked towards Draco.

He looked back at her, his eyes crinkling downwards, “Why?”

“Well,” Y/N paused as she gazed at the center of the arena, “they should be back by now. The task couldn’t take that long.”

Draco rubbed his thumb along the top of Y/N’s hand, “Probably working extra hard to ensure Potter doesn’t win the cup.”

Y/N let out a puff of air, “Ya you’re probably right.”

Just then, out of thin air, Harry and Cedric appear in the center of the arena. The crowd cheers, the trumpets let out load notes of upbeat, champion music, and everyone stands. Including Y/N and Draco. At first she cheers, glad that her brother made it out of the maze with the cup, even though he and Harry were together. Then she looks closer (as close as she can from the distance she’s at). Harry lays on top of Cedric, an arm wrapped around his shoulder. Cedric, positioned on his back was unmoving.

“Draco,” she reached over to her boyfriend who, like the others, was immersed in cheering.

He glanced over at her, continued to clap, and asked, “What?”

“Draco.”

Then someone let out a strangled cry.

Dumbledore ran towards Harry, pulling him away from Cedric.

“No! No!” Harry cried as he continued to latch onto Cedric’s body.

Everything stopped.

The music.

The cheering.

Everything.

“Draco,” Y/N whispered, her eyes grew watery. Cedric hadn’t moved from his supine position.

Y/N like many of the professors pushed past the crowd of people, attempting to reach her brother. A hand grabbed hers but she yanked it out of the grasp that was trying to keep her from moving forwards. She reached the bottom of the stairs.

“He’s back! He’s back! Voldemort’s back! Cedric, he asked me to bring his body back! I couldn’t leave him, not there!” Harry yelled frantically as Dumbledore attempted to console the distressed boy.

Y/N paused, listening to what Harry said. She felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to look, saw Draco, and continued walking forward. Her feet carried her faster the closer she got. Everything moved in slow motion. The sounds around her were barely audible. She could only focus on her brother laying in the grass, lifeless.

She reached Cedric’s body just as Harry was being pulled away. She kneeled down, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Ced--Cedric,” she said forcefully.

This must have been another one of his stupid pranks. He was no Fred or George but he loved to pull a quick joke on his sister, no matter how cruel.

“Cedric, this isn’t a joke, come on,” she insisted. She shook his shoulder.

Nothing.

She shook harder.

Nothing.

“Y/N,” a voice behind her said softly, “Y/N.”

She turned around slightly, her eyes still trained on her brother.

“Y/N,” a hand was placed on her shoulder. She whipped her head around, her watery eyes overflowing. Draco stood above her. His blonde hair glistened against the light from the torches. His eyes were filled with sadness. He knelt down, grabbed the hand that she had placed on her brother's shoulder, and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

“Y/N, come on, we should go.”

She looked at her brother then back to her boyfriend, “But, Draco, he--we can’t leave him here, Draco. He--he--I need him--we have to--” Draco looked sadly at his girlfriend as her voice began to crack. The tears that were streaming down her face were getting heavier.

“Come on, love. Let’s go somewhere else, ya?” he suggested, voice slow and carefully punctuated, almost as if he were talking to a child.

He carefully grabbed her upper arms, lifted her from her knelt position, and engulfed her in a hug. Her arms quickly found themselves around his waist, her head tucked downwards in his shoulder. The tears seemed to be forever flowing as they soaked into Draco’s robes.

“Let me through--that’s my son! That’s my boy! My boy!” Y/N’s father’s agonizing screams burst through the crowd as he too pushed through the sea of people. He reached his son, sobbing as he kneeled down. His screams penetrated the ears of everyone in the arena.

Y/N moved her arms from around Draco and placed her hands over her ears, eyes shut tight. Draco squeezed her shoulder with one arm and raised his other hand to cradle the back of Y/N’s head. Her sobs, much like her fathers, were cut off by harsh breaths.

“He’s dead, Draco. He’s dead,” she whispered continually into Draco’s chest.

Draco pulled away momentarily, cupped Y/N’s cheeks, and brought his forehead to hers.

“It’s going to be okay, love. I promise.”

One thing was for sure, she was broken,

but they were unbreakable.

#draco #Draco Malfoy #Harry Potter #Ron Weasley #draco x reader #fanfiction #fanfic #imagine #cedric diggory #draco malfoy x y/n #draco malfoy x reader

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funkzpiel · 4 years ago

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Today on this episode of "I promise I didn't disappear off the face of the earth I've just been busy and totally lacking creative energy (or brain cells, for that matter) it's terrible, but hello, I did a thing" - I present this:

The Little Deaths of the Pining Flowers

For the Hades Big Bang, in collaboration with kowaiyoukai (their beautiful illustration featured here).

Fandom: Hades Game Pairing: Zagreus/Thanatos Featuring: Pining, Off-Brand Hanahaki Summary: “Does it ever get easier?” Thanatos finally asked one day.

“No,” Achilles said, the gentle hush of his words like the breath of the breeze through meadow reeds, “But it does get easier to hide.”

Death cannot die. No blade can pierce him, no hand strong enough to steal a final breath from the powerful column of his throat, no disease potent enough to mar his flesh. Death, like Time, was fathomless and unending. So long as there was Life, there was Time to observe it and Death to spirit it away.

And so long as there was love, there was pining – and all of its little maladies that follow. Death knew of them, these maladies, these “little deaths” that come before the final breath. Some fleeting, some spanning decades. The gods, in all their brilliance, creativity and cruelty, created love. Love, the painful precipice between life and death. Knit tightly between the two so that from the depths of it might bloom a beautiful, wretched thing: pining flowers . Life sprung from the ashes of despair, fertilized in love and hope unrequited. In doing so, pain became love and love became pain, death and life a reflection of one another more intimate than the eternal dance of the sun and moon itself.

Thanatos had watched these slow, curdling little deaths before. Had watched them ferment into heavy, cloying things that stole the breath from mortals’ chests. Flowers making beautiful wreaths of their lungs, thick with life borne from a love so fierce it could suffocate. Thanatos had watched men and women alike grow frail with it, their bodies made into gardens as they coughed fragile bulbs and blooms from their lips. Thorns were always the worst: roses and the like. Lips turned red, and yet these mortals who simply loved and feared too much could not find it in themselves to cure their aching chests. Could not simply let go of that impossible love – or confess it – to end that prickling, weed-like pain.

He had heard, once, that the gods could fester such illnesses; though flowers could not create homes of their flesh as they did in mortals. Rather they instead bloomed from the excess of the wealth of their power made unstable by their want. Made helpless to the source of their own gifts. But Thanatos had never seen such a thing. Thanatos had never understood. Not until Zagreus left without so much as a word of warning. All at once, it was like the Underworld had been snuffed of some great light. There was no sun beneath the surface of the earth, and yet the darkness and chill felt suddenly so much sharper, keener, without the warmth of Zagreus’ smile. Everything darker, every mercy suddenly harder to reach for, every hope dashed across the rocks like the surf wrecking a ship to ruins against the coast.

Zagreus was gone. His home, his family, his friends – Thanatos – none of it had been enough to keep him here. Thanatos had not been enough.

When the next death bell tolled, Thanatos did something he never did: he hesitated. Struck suddenly frozen by the realization. He had not been enough. Of course, he hadn’t. Zagreus was born of the Underworld, but he was also born of the surface – of life and blood and all things that breathed . Of course, death and darkness had not been enough.

Of course, Thanatos had not been enough.

He slipped from the Underworld to collect the soul the death bells tolled for and as he did, he felt something slip deep into his chest. Some foreign, alien thing; so unfamiliar as to be written away as imagination. Like a seed splitting the soil and roosting beneath.

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Thanatos did not know what was worse - trying to cast Zagreus from his mind, or being constantly reminded of the man every time the death bells tolled for him. For every toll, whether Thanatos went to him or not, was another failed escape attempt and the beginning of yet another. He knew Zagrues must think his plight for the surface cursed - it was he after all who kept experiencing the relentless grip of the river Styx - but it was Thanatos who felt truly cursed. For every escape attempt was another reminder that Zagrues desperately wished to be free of them: his home, his family, Thanatos.

But the bells tolled and tolled, singing a symphony that drew Thanatos a little nearer and a little nearer each time. Like the moon, he found himself in Zagreus’ orbit - at first not at all, then from a distance, and finally passing him by, feeling the warmth of Zagreus’ being shining upon him, lighting him up. Even now, lighting him up.

He watched from the edge of the clearing as Zagreus dodged the molten depths of Asphodel, his weapon of choice - this time Varatha no doubt to spite his father - cleaving through the various shades hellbent on keeping him here per Hades’ bidding. The prince was tired. Not yet strong enough to survive his fight with Megara and continue on at full strength. But it would come, Thanatos suddenly realized with the same casual understanding of fact as one might recognize that the lava around them was hot .

But he would not survive this run much longer. And unassisted, he might not even survive this chamber. With a weight growing in his chest, Thanatos realized he might witness Zagreus’ fall for himself this time. Not second hand through rumor or one of his brother’s reports or the tolling of the bells, but first hand with his own eyes.

Thanatos couldn’t have said what made him step forward to help - not because he didn’t know, but because he couldn’t admit it. He blocked all thought out, pursuing just one goal: I can’t watch Zag die...

All he knew was that when the death bells tolled his reveal from the shadows of death into the realm of awareness in which all could now see him, the sound caught Zagreus’ attention and time stopped for just a moment - giving Thanatos the luxury and agony of seeing first the surprise on the prince’s face, then the relief that followed. Relief, as though Zagreus had been waiting at some fathomless horizon for centuries, simply hoping for Thanatos to rise above its edge and greet him.

“Zag,” he growled - voice rough around a strange feeling in his throat. He couldn’t find it in himself to dig for any other words. He barely pried the man’s name out as it was. It was easy to hide that fact between a cleaving swing of his scythe, cutting the battlefield down into a group of straggling shades that were much more manageable between the two of them.

“Than,” Zagreus wheezed, the name cut short beneath another shade’s attack.

Zagreus sounded bad. Even with Thanatos’ help, this particular escape might not last much longer, Thanatos mused. He could hear the man’s breath. A thready, wheezing thing that slowly but surely worsened. Loud, almost in Thanatos’ ears, in his very chest and he could not take it. Not here. Not from Zagreus, who would have been safe and whole if he had simply stayed home. He ground his teeth, cleaving shades with a growing eracticism unbefitting of the quick, efficient stroke of Death. Felt every swing release a little of that anger and confusion into the depths of Asphodel and the flesh of its shades.

His gaze tore to Zagreus as the last shade fell, the fire-tongued soles of his feet simmering against the punishing stone floor of Asphodel as he leaned against his spear like a crutch and caught his breath. Those feet duller than they should have been. In that moment, Thanatos felt an urge to follow Zagreus to the end. If he saw the surface, would it slake his thirst of the unknown enough to satisfy him? To draw him back? It was a weak thought, one that made Thanatos bristle madly at himself. It was becoming increasingly obvious it had been a mistake to draw this near to Zagreus. Death was obviously not as strong - or as unbiased - as he thought he was.

Zagreus had just managed to turn to Thanatos with a smile and a thank you when that expression fell - like sunlight disappearing beneath a cloud - for Thanatos was gone, a bell moaning in his absence, and in his place: a centaur heart.

“Oh Than…” Zagreus murmured softly, eyes locked upon the heart.

Alone, Zagreus hobbled his way to the heart, stopping short of grabbing it when he saw something strange on the ground beneath its floating weight. Here - in the fiery grip of Asphodel - a single petal simmered on the ground, curling fraily against the heated stone. The prince grabbed it with shaking fingers, thumb brushing over petal’s delicate length. Red as blood, thin and reaching. Soft as velvet and utterly lost here in this world of fire and death.

How in the world had anything grown here, Zagreus wondered, as he slipped it into his tunic above his heart, red like his eye and his feet and so much of his namesake. Flush against his skin, as though it had belonged there all along.

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Persephone walked amidst her garden as she often did, greeting the great flush of her gift upon the soil with gentle hands and a smiling heart. At her touch the foliage seemed to bloom all the brighter. As she neared, it appeared to lean toward her like a flower reaching for the sun, following it’s daily axis.

Everything was much the same. The trees, the bushes, the crops, the flowers. Everything, she realized, but one. A new bloom, there much without her design or intention. Slender stalks rising up from the ivy and shade of a nearby willow, unfurling into magnificent red tongues and curling petals.

“My, my, what have we here?” She mused, tender and kind as she greeted this new bloom, just as she would have an old and familiar friend.

A spider lily, she realized with raised brows. Here, in her garden. Slim fingers stroked the nearby bloom - only a few and yet startling all the same. She had not planted these. Had it been her heart that drew these lovely blooms? Her unrequited regrets beneath the simmering hurt of her past? The red spider lily - the final goodbye. A blossom said to guide the dead. No, this wasn’t hers. It had been too long, the scar of that time too old, for it to have suddenly appeared by her doing.

Strange, to say hello to the final goodbye here amongst her carefully tended garden. She watched it shiver in the spring breeze, frail somehow in its little wind-drawn dance. With a frown, she felt something heavy stir within her heart. A longing and a worry.

Somewhere, she realized, someone was mourning. She watched a petal drift upon the wind and disappear. She wondered who the goodbye was for or if, like many things, it was even a goodbye at all…

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The first full blossom that appeared grew in the hair of a young man’s corpse. It had not been there when he arrived. It had not been placed by the loving hands of family or kin. It had not been until he reached for their soul that it grew, crimson petals splaying out like a corona - thick and full. There, among death and the dying, Life grew as Life often did: against all odds, rebellious and unapologetic.

He wondered if this human had been watched or favored by some god or goddess. It was easy enough, back then, to think nothing of it.

Easy to miss that it had not grown until he had thought - quite by accident - how similar the man’s hair had been to the prince’s.

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Death’s chamber - moreso a place of enforced rest rather than necessary rest - was a cool, dark place carved out of the fabric of reality. A place made for him by the Night herself, speckled with twinkling starlight and furnished with all the trappings of comfort any entity might desire. It was not, however, a place of light or Life. There was no facsimile of sun, no warmth. It was a reflection of his very identity, and therefore the opposite of Life; and yet when he opened his eyes after a short, restive doze, it was to petals on his pillow. Not just petals individually, but a blossom. Stalkless, and yet full and lush. Large enough to fill his palm with curling petals, reaching like red tongues from its core. Death blinked and rose upright, staring down at the bloom.

The same bloom that had wreathed that corpse.

What might have been the favor of a god upon that human felt decidedly less possible now. Had it been a trick from Hypnos? From some other shade or god or goddess? But from the bloom, he could sense himself . As though it were a part of him as much as his room was a reflection of himself.

Which just… couldn’t be.

Death could not make Life .

He brushed the flower away with a faint, confused frown, only to turn to rise from his chaise and find more blooms. One atop a nearby book. Another on the floor, in a blanket, on the rug, beside a goblet. Flowers. Life. All grown here in the dark grip of Death.

This, he finally accepted, was a problem.

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It was definitely a problem.

Death did not know who’s idea of a sick joke this was, but he found the flowers blooming positively everywhere now - slight at first, but growing. It had begun as something almost ignorable. A blossom tucked in the crag of a stony wall. Red petals peeking out from the centerpiece of a table. Once, appearing what would have been a shade’s hair, were they alive.

But now they trailed him in obvious patches, suddenly crowning the heads of nearby shades and growing atop the slender rails of passing balconies. No one suspected him. It was a miracle, but it was hard to assume Death had any hand in Life. Yet still, the sudden growth of spider lilies among the courts of the dead was on everyone’s lips. Where were they coming from? Why had they appeared?

Was Persephone somehow responsible? How could she not be? Yet… she was not here.

It made the Lord of the Underworld more brittle and eruptious than before, a feat no one truly thought possible. It fostered an even greater divide between father and son as well, for the more the court wondered about how the flowers might be tied to Persephone, the more Zagreus asked after her. And the more he asked, the more the prince realized he needed to leave if he was ever to get answers.

The more he tried - and died - in the pursuit of being anywhere but among the dead, the more the flowers grew.

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Even knowing that every attempt took Zagreus further from him, Thanatos found he could not stop thinking of it - the attempts, Zagreus’ failures, the repeated destruction of his- His prince. That was a safe term, yes. His prince.

He laid awake in his rooms, crimson flowers rising like the depths of the river taking Zagreus all too often, and found he could not spare his mind of thinking of him. Zagreus bleeding, pale flesh bruised like soft fruit, yet so determined to be gone.

Just because he was no longer part of the equation of his prince’s happiness, could he truly continue to just watch this happen? Or perhaps true devotion, true service, was assisting even when it reduced his existence in the man’s life to irrelevance.

He’d help, he decided, because Zagreus was his prince, and Death was nothing if not faithful and reliable. No sooner had he decided it, a blossom appeared over his heart. Large and heavy, every petal weighted like stone, driving the breath from his lungs.

Yet he didn’t have the heart to move it.

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The prince of the Underworld was special in many ways, no one could argue that except, perhaps, his father. And one such way was that when the bell of death tolled for Zagreus, it was rarely with the intention of taking him away. Thanatos arrived, his motives hidden beneath a well placed challenge of who can kill more shades here in the depths of Asphodel?

A game, just a game. No one could get hurt, if it was just a game. And goodbye would not hurt so much, if it was on Thanatos’ terms… Or so he hoped.

Death’s blade swung, cleaving shades in two. Souls upon souls, ushered back into the depths by his hands, just to spare one man the journey home. It was illogical. It went against his lord’s wishes. And yet, Thanatos knew there was no other option, not for him.

He could not be an instrument in caging Zagreus if it meant having him near would only make him unhappy. He cleaved men from their families, wives from their children, mortals from dreams left unspent and unfulfilled. Here, he had a choice.

Now, he wanted to see someone grow.

“That was something, Than,” Zagreus said as the last shade fell, wiping his sweaty brow with the back of a one bloody hand - making the mess on his face worse. Yet it did nothing to diminish the sheer Life of his smile as he turned to him. That smile - so full and unapologetic - was like the sun turning its face upon Thanatos, reaching his skin in a way it never had topside. Warm, making his belly flutter. Foolish and childish, he scolded himself. Made worse when that smile suddenly faded before Thanatos could answer and Zagreus said with a soft, perplexed frown, “What’s that?”

He followed the gaze of his prince to the ground at his feet - or rather below his feet - and there mere inches beneath the floating drape of his toes, a bed of flowers began to bloom. Spears of grass rising and charring in tandem to the merciless heat of Asphodel, and yet the flowers heartily remained untouched among the thicket of rising and dying green. Bloody red flowers, reaching up - not to Thanatos , but to Zagreus - as though he were the sun.

Lost in his grasping for explanations he simply didn’t have, all Thanatos could do was quickly retreat a few floating steps when Zagreus suddenly started forward and, using his blade as to help himself down with a grown, knelt to observe them better. He had one thick, tanned finger delicately beneath one of the lilies reaching tongues as his brows raised and he mused, “I’ve seen these around my father’s court but I didn’t ever imagine I’d see them out here . What could they possibly be?”

But when he looked up, Thanatos was gone. Gone, leaving nothing but a sudden crown of blooms in Zagreus’ hair to remember him by. Gone, because that touch - so delicate and gentle beneath the petals’ reach - had felt as though Zagreus had touched him.

And it hurt down to Thanatos’ very bones, stealing the very breath from his lungs, to know it was a touch he’d never feel for himself. Not when Zagreus wanted nothing more than to leave.

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It got worse. Much worse. He stopped visiting his brother after Hypnos once woke - bewildered - in practically a carpet of red blooms, right in plain sight of their lord. He made his reports as brief and efficient as possible after he once saw Zagreus dash by during one of them and the feeling that had arisen in his breast at the sight of him caused Cerberus - right at Hades’ side - to suddenly tilt each massive head as all three were suddenly crowned in thick, growing lilies. Hades had erupted, his gaze cast upon the shades, looking for a culprit. It was luck alone, or perhaps the heat of the god’s rage, that prevented those blooms from growing on him as well. But Achilles had seen.

With eyes so old, and so lonely, he had seen.

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“If I may be so bold, Master Death, I am here if ever you need a sympathetic ear,” Achilles once said, somehow managing to sneak up on him at his balcony. By the skin of his teeth, Thanatos managed not to startle visibly. But he could not hide the spider lily that was in his hands, the very cause that had left him so lost in thought as he had braced himself over the balcony that hung above the river - waiting, though he refused to admit it, for Zagreus’ return.

“There is nothing to be sympathetic for,” Thanatos forced himself to say simply, turning back to the river.

“There is always something to be sympathetic for,” Achilles had said in that soft way he said most things - so soft in death for a man so coated in blood in life - and came beside Thanatos to deposit something on the rail before he left with a gentle, “The offer stands, when you’re ready.”

Thanatos waited until the warrior’s quiet footsteps receded before he looked. There, upon the glittering marble of the balcony, was a tiny flower. Purple and plain, easy to hide.

A forget-me-not.

“Does it ever get easier?” Thanatos finally asked one day.

“No,” Achilles said, the gentle hush of his words like the breath of the breeze through meadow reeds, “But it does get easier to hide.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

“Than, wait!”

The pleading urgency in those words were the only thing that stayed Thanatos’ retreat. More and more, Thanatos realized he could deny the prince nothing. His only hope was to remove himself before Zagreus could ask anything of him. Today, he failed.

He turned only so much as to peek at Zagreus from over one cloaked shoulder, waiting. It was much as he could offer without that telling pang marching through his heart and wreathing them all in flowers. But he was learning, at least, thanks to Achilles.

“Yes, Zag?”

“I… I know there’s a lot unsaid between us. A lot to make up for. I… I know,” Zagreus said, elegant, and yet stammering. Endearing in that earnest way of his, so much so that Thanatos could not prevent the single bloom of red that began to grow in a nearby crack in Elysium’s walls, hidden in plain sight by the moss and tiny fragile flowers already native to the place.

Zagreus’ words slipped to silence, broken only by the sound of glass settling gently atop a nearby grassy, broken pillar. Thanatos turned slowly to regard it. A bulbous bottle, bottom heavy and filled with glittering amber liquid: Nectar. His gaze turned from the bottle to Zagreus, a frown so easily slipping onto his face to hide behind as he said, “Really, Zagreus? Nectar? As though that suddenly fixes all that lies between us? This is, what… a parting gift? The goodbye you never bothered to give me?”

His scorn made Zagreus wilt - the soft sunshine of his demeanor fading as though behind thick clouds. In the craggy wall, the spider lily wilted somewhat, shivering delicately.

“No, of course not. I simply found this and thought of you. Think nothing of it,” Zagreus said, his tone carefully masked and distant now. Further from him, just as Thanatos had planned, and yet this climb to their eventual final goodbye felt hollow, forced. Forced, because Thanatos had forced it.

“I never do,” he said, the death bells tolling his retreat as the flowers he left behind - spotting the walls of that chamber Zagreus lingered in - mournfully wilted around him.

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“You are hurting, my son.”

Nyx’s voice was always a balm to him. Gentle and cool, like twinkling starlight. Not too harsh, not too loud, as living things were. Cold and distant, like himself, because he had been carved from her.

“I am fine,” he longed to say - but when had he ever been able to lie to her. But he couldn’t admit it, either. He merely looked away, hiding his grief behind sideways looks and long lashes. She reached for him. Her hands chill and welcome against the stony arch of his jaw and cheeks. Nyx’s thumb ran a smooth line over his cheeks, her face still and poignant, but her eyes telling.

“Just because you are Death, does not mean you cannot host Life within your heart, dear one. None of us are spared from feeling. It is perhaps the strongest force on this world - the bit of Life that nothing can wring out.”

“I do not wish to feel it, when it changes nothing,” Thanatos croaked, furious as his lashes grew misty without his consent. He had accepted what was to come, damn it, so why did the grief still feel so smothering?

“Grief changes nothing,” Nyx nodded solemnly, “But… It lets us know that if something can be changed, it is worth trying to change it.”

Thanatos leaned his jaw into the cup of her hands with a conflicted little frown.

“And if that change is not good for everyone?”

Realization bloomed in Nyx’s face like the flowers he could not prevent from growing to crown her starry head.

“Ah,” she said softly. “I see… Sometimes love is letting go…”

He wilted in her hands. A final confirmation, until her fingers went to pinch his chin lovingly and draw his gaze up to hers. Her eyes long and fathomless like the night sky, twinkling and watching.

“But usually... love is asking first, before those pains that go unsaid smother you both.”

Her pale hands rose to pick a red-tongued blossom from the crown that had grown in her hair and placed it delicately in the bowl she made of his hands; as though it were a baby bird. It glittered with fresh dew, with the tears he couldn’t quite stop from falling. Not here, in the safety of his mother’s arms. His tears were always safe in the cloak of night.

“Spider Lilies… It is said they grow at the site of final goodbyes,” Nyx intoned gently, “Others say they help Death guide spirits that have just passed into new lives.”

“The death of the past,” Thanatos said, each word carefully clinical and cold, as though distance could blunt their meaning.

She curled her own hands beneath the bowl of his and said, “They are also a symbol of rebirth, my child. Or perhaps more importantly, they are an opportunity, as everything is.”

Thanatos frowned lightly, his gaze rising to meet hers once more.

“I don’t understand.”

Nyx smiled a soft, tiny smile - as bright as any moonlight - and leaned forward to kiss his forehead tenderly, lips brushing against his skin as she spoke onto him, “Life, and all its decisions, are merely a matter of perspective, my son. It is not too late to change yours.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Before, it felt naive to hope. Hope was a foolish, mortal feeling; Thanatos knew better. Hope always faded in Death, so how could Death ever possibly foster it? And yet, his mother had never once lied to him. Beneath the light of her moon and her stars, all was made plain.

So when he tolled the bells to go to him, Thanatos allowed himself to look at Zagreus the way he had not allowed himself to before. With hope.

Zagreus had grown. As they faced off in the halls of Elysium in a quest to one up the other in battle, Thanatos found himself willingly distracted by the developed grace in Zagreus’ fighting. His posture had changed. He no longer zipped blindly across the field in a rage, trying to win by brute force. He was calm, calculated. He had changed.

Zagreus marked every trap in his mind. Every swing of his blade - new, now, one he had unlocked and partnered with - brought the shades of the underworld to heel. He marched them where he wanted them, whether that was to a swift death beneath his swing or onto a trap. He fought with a tactician’s coolness. He no longer wasted his energy. He no longer showed up to these battles covered in foreboding wounds.

He was growing. Getting closer to his goal. Which meant Thanatos, of course, was running out of time. And no one understood the gravity of the hourglass’ shifting sands quite like Death. Time, as always, was of the essence.

“Zagreus,” Thanatos said, hovering near the heart that he normally tended to simply leave behind as a parting gesture ever since Zagreus’ attempt to treat him to a gift. It was obvious the prince had not been expecting him to stay, reaching as he had been immediately for whatever god’s boon had been promised in this chamber. But the moment the prince heard his voice, the man had all but sprinted to him, and the eager warmth that had inspired in his chest caused a red blossom to bloom at Zagreus’ feet when finally he stopped before him.

“Than? I wasn’t expecting you to stay,” Zagreus said, all eagerness. Always eagerness to move on - to the world above, to a world beyond their fight.

“I wasn’t either,” Thanatos agreed, overwhelmed by the discomfort that immediately began to rise in him. He had known it would come. It had fueled many of this retreats. But nothing would ever change, if he continued to allow it to smother him. He just had hoped knowing that would make it easier , somehow. Yet he felt he could barely breathe, let alone cherrypick the words he wanted. Silence hung between them. Flowers pebbled the ground that separated them. But patiently, Zagreus simply waited. As though time were no burden to him. As though the hourglass of fate was not an enemy, but a friend.

“I know you intend to go to the world above,” Thanatos said, searching desperately for the words and finding every single one lacking. “I… I know you intend to stay there. You need answers, I know that… But before you do, I just wanted to say… She abandoned you, Zagreus. But we never have. We are your family, if you ask me. I won’t stop you from going, but… I just felt it needed to be said.”

“Than,” Zagreus started slowly, and Thanatos waited for the blow: you are not my family. You are not important. You are my past. This is not my home.

He had told himself to hear Zagreus out. He had told himself that this closure - however painful - would make everything easier. Clearer. Yet faced with this final stroke of fate, he found he couldn’t bear to hear it. Before Zagreus could collect his thoughts, Thanatos placed a crystal butterfly upon a broken stone pillar just as Zagreus had once done and said in a quick murmur, “Let it never be said that I don’t repay my debts,” before he left, like a coward.

Death, cowed by the thought of love spurned. Or perhaps, cowed by the thought of living. His offered keepsake framed in a lush bloom of red spider lilies, kept company by Zagreus’ soft, regretful sigh in Thanatos’ absence.

“Oh, Than…”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Zagreus made it topside. Thanatos could feel it in his bones, a soul that had forever been below the earth suddenly above - in his domain, among the fields of souls he was meant to reap. He felt him there, fragile after his fight with his father and yet soaring like an inferno with his victory.

Thanatos pulled down the bottle of Nectar he had kept for this moment. It had felt right to save it for this occasion, the gift a goodbye and yet also a salute to his prince’s victory. A victory he had helped the man achieve. He poured an ample glass, the liquid shimmering like a child of sunlight and starlight both, but as he rose the glass to toast Zagreus’ achievement, a soft and confused frown began to mar his lips.

Above, with every step and every second spent there, Thanatos felt that fire waning. The glass of nectar trembled lightly in his hand as his gaze became distant, his awareness fully above. Zagreus, stumbling through the world of Light and Life. Zagreus, reaching another soaring source of power - Persephone. Zagreus, waning. Zagreus, yearning, straining. Zagreus, breath stuttering.

Zagreus, dying.

The glass crashed to the ground without a hand to hold it, shattering, Nectar pooling.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Dead, as the boy had been dead. Thanatos did not wish to go to him. Did not wish to see him dead, here, among the place his prince had so dearly dreamed about. Did not wish to see him still and pale as only mortals deserved to be. Zagreus was a being of light and power and determination. He could not bear to see him beaten down to nothingness, just a husk of flesh and nothing more. Not here. Not in his mother’s garden, so close to the answers he had sought for so long…

But to love was to suffer.

He went to him. Kneeled beside the prince, allowing his own body to touch the earth, unheeding of how it killed the very grass he touched. His fingers went to cup Zagreus’ face. To prepare him for the journey home again, and as he did, the man’s body became haloed in deep, crimson flowers. Sprouting, uncontrolled and thick. Thanatos could not stop them, could not be bothered to stop them. It was effort enough to see him like this, let alone hide his own weakness.

He had forgotten there were still eyes there to witness it.

“Thanatos,” Persephone said, appearing from around the corner of the house with a death shawl for her son and coins for his eyes. She froze, her eyes not on him or her son, but on the flowers that surrounded them.

“Oh Thanatos ,” he whispered thickly, brows twisted. Looking upon them mournfully - she, the woman who had abandoned her son and then somehow enticed him away from his family below.

“Don’t worry, I won’t touch your garden,” Thanatos said stonily, thinking she feared the spreading of the dead grass from his knees.

“Thanatos, wait--”

But they were gone, he and Zagreus both, leaving nothing but a patch of dead grass and the outline of her son in bloody, crimson flowers. The blossoms trembling in tandem with the spatterings of red that had begun to grow uncontrollably throughout her garden.

“It was you,” she whispered to no one. “They’re yours.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Once, of course, was not enough. There are still questions that need answering, and Zagreus has nothing but time to throw himself at the mercy of the gauntlet between the Underworld and the mortal realm above again and again and again. Every victory means only one thing: another tragic death so close to his goal above. And yet, Thanatos cannot help but assist him. Even if it means cradling that larger-than-life body suddenly made so small by death and escorting him back down below. Even if it means being the very vessel that takes his prince from his goal, he will help him get there once more, once more, once more.

The hourglass has been refilled, if only for a while more. If anyone can figure out a way to stay among the Living, it will be Zagreus. Zagreus, who did the unthinkable and escaped the underworld. Zagreus, who found the mother that had abandoned him. He’ll do it, Thanatos knows it just as keenly as he knows the last beat of a mortal’s fragile heart.

But he’ll gladly cherish every extra grain of sand in the hourglass he’s been given.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

“I’ve missed this,” Zagreus says after one of their dual bloodbaths in the halls of Elysium. This level of the Underworld is his favorite one to go to Zagreus in. It means their momentary glimmer of peace after the fight is flush with soft grass and pleasing greens and all the Life that Zagreus deserves. And perhaps, when Zagreus is gone, Thanatos can enjoy a sip of the river to forget. He never will, he knows. It’s selfish, foolhardy and probably impossible for someone like him. But sometimes, he likes to entertain the idea that he could forget, and be free of the blossoms that constantly remind him of what he cannot have.

Thanatos turns to him, taking his time to take in the lines that make up the nostalgic expression of Zagreus’ face as he catches his breath there, sitting among the white flowers of Elysium’s fields. White and nearly like his own.

“Missed what? We do this all the time, how could you have missed this?” Thanatos asked.

“Not the fight. This . Us,” Zagreus said. “This just reminds me of how we were before I began my escapes.”

“Simpler times,” Thanatos frowned, unable to swallow the bitterness that suddenly rose in his throat. “But you chose to complicate them, Zagreus.”

He understood why, now; but that didn’t mean he didn’t resent it in his weakest moments. He waited for Zagreus to defend himself. For that bitterness to rise in Thanatos to ruin the moment, as it often did. He’d flee, and he’d waste his precious remaining grains of sand - he could see it all already, unfolding, until Zagreus brought a halt to his spiraling thoughts as only he could.

“I don’t know why this has turned into picking who I love, Than. Wanting to find my mother doesn’t mean I love anyone else any less. Everyone acts as if I’m choosing my mother over everything and everyone else. Even you.”

“Are you not?” Thanatos asked, dreading the answer.

Yet Zagreus simply looked at him, red flowers blooming in his hair, and said, “If you’re asking me who I’d choose between you or my mother, Than, my answer is this: I never intended to settle for one at all.”

Thanatos blew out a frustrated breath even as his heart soared in a way he hadn’t thought Death’s heart could, trembling like a rabbit against his ribs.

“That’s naive to say, don’t you think, Zag?”

“Says who?”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

It’s all a matter of perspective, my child.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

One day, Zagreus went topside. Thanatos prepared to go to him, to collect him, but the moment never came. Death felt the prince’s heart begin to flatter as mortal hearts did, and yet the final throbbing beat never came. In fact, it stabilized. It stabilized and grew nearer. Nearer and nearer still, adrift on the river with his brother. Not just his brother, but another too. Life was flowing down the river to the Underworld.

The Queen was returning.

Thanatos leaned bonelessly back into his lounge, feeling shaky with stunned, overwhelming relief as spider lilies rose around him like a cushion because Zagreus was coming home with Persephone.

Zagreus was coming home of his own free will.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Life in the Underworld improves. As though Persephone were a sun and the Underworld a withered garden without her, things steadily improved with her return. Cerberus pressed eagerly into the touch of her hand. The halls seemed brighter, warmer. Even Achilles seemed a little less sad, and Hades - oh Hades - it was as though he were steadily becoming a different man altogether. A softer man, gentled by her touch. His thorns shorn short, his rough and callous words turned to roses lush and hearty; though suddenly kind was a stretch to say, he was certainly safer to speak to now.

The court was alight with how Persephone’s presence was changing everything for the better. But all Thanatos could think was that none of this would have been possible if not for Zagreus, who had lassoed the sun herself and brought her back to them against all odds.

If Persephone was the sun, Zagreus was the lifeblood of this place.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

The hourglass had been halted. There was no beginning, no end, and once again Death was no longer shackled by the wasteful ticking of time. But the flowers did not lessen, did not disappear. They trailed after him, and though he had gotten better at hiding it, he knew that Persephone knew. Flowers were her children, after all; how could she not know?

“You should talk to him, Thanatos. If nothing else, Zagreus has taught me this: what you assume will happen is never definite,” she said to him one day, cradling a wayward spider lily that had suspiciously grown in her garden - startlingly white. He wondered when that had started or why.

“Perhaps I will. Thank you, my lady,” Thanatos said gently.

She smiled at him, her thumbs so gentle with the bloom’s petals, making the little flower shiver happily, and said, “I hope you do.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Thanatos had paced the length of his balcony many times now, each with a stumbling aborted attempt to head in the direction of Zagreus’ chambers. He tried to ignore the knowing weight of Achilles’ watchful gaze by the mirrors. Tried to ignore the thunderous fear of his heart or the way the lilies just kept blooming around him in fitful bursts.

Go to him , his heart said.

But what if you ruin everything , his mind howled, Now, when things are finally peaceful.

But is peace the same as happiness? His heart asked. Is that all you wanted? Could it be enough?

It certainly hurt less than being wrong, his mind said.

If that were true, then why are the flowers still blooming?

Little Deaths, the Pining Flowers. Could he truly be content, if they still found the soil of his heart so rich to bloom in?

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

“Take it from a fool who waited,” Achilles said as a tiny purple blossom grew in the tuck of his hair behind his ear, “Nothing risked, nothing earned.”

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

This time, when Thanatos went to Zagreus in the fields of Elysium, he cleaved the souls of the dead down in one impatient stroke - knowing that if he did not act fast, he would not act at all.

Zagreus let out a startled huff of a laugh, his hand son his hips as he turned to Thanatos with a confused, if amused, “Well that was hardly sporting, Than! Have you been going easy on me all this time?”

But that expression fell, muted and worried, when Zagreus finally caught sight of Thanatos’ face.

“Than?” He asked.

“Please, don’t--” Thanatos said, holding up a hand to halt the prince’s words, “Just… listen. I… I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this for some time, but the words elude me, even now.”

Zagreus brought his blade down into the grass and let it rest then, his full attention him upon Thanatos in a way so direct, so overwhelming, Thanatos felt that urge to run rise in him again.

It was the memory Achilles’ gaze - heavy and knowing - that held him fast. Sympathetic, envious and frustrated. Frustrated, because Zagreus was within reach, and Thanatos risked nothing.

He did not want to have eyes like Achilles had. He wanted to Live.

“I hate you, when you first left,” Thanatos blundered forward. “I thought you were done with me. That I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t blame you either. What could I offer you, that you couldn’t have up there? What’s Death to Life?”

“Than--”

“Please, Zag… Let me finish or I never will,” Thanatos whispered. “I hated you. Or I thought I did… but these… All of these?”

He held up a hand, a red lily immediately blooming at his call to hold between them.

“These are yours, Zagreus. All of them, every single one. Because I missed you. Because I could not stop thinking of you, worrying for you, wanting you.”

Zagreus stilled, and something akin to paleness stole over his tanned flesh. Thanatos knew, then, he’d never have him. How could Life love Death? But he continued onward, if for nothing but closure. If for nothing but to say he risked it all, he tried.

“It’s childish, foolish, reckless even - but I… I’m utterly helpless, Zagreus. You’ve made me, made Death , helpless in want for you. In loving you, I…” his breath left him in a soft, rattling wheeze as finally he admitted - with the certainty that the sword cleaves flesh - “I love you, and… I’m glad you came home.”

He waited for the blow. Waited for the moment that would wring that last breath of hope from his lungs, and he wondered if this is what mortals felt like, waiting for him. For Death.

But he waited, and waited, and it never came. Zagreus merely stood dumbfounded, something wet growing on his sooty bottom lashes, before finally he stepped forward and did what Thanatos had always been too afraid to do.

He kissed him.

Perspective, his mother had said. He had thought she meant decisions, but it was so much more than that. This moment was a perspective he thought he’d never have - could never fathom . Life, warm and bright against his lips. Flowing through him in a circle, like a cycle that never ended, life and death and life and death. He closed his eyes and Zagreus reached up to bring him down, closer to the ground - to him - and wound gentle fingers into silver hair.

Around them, flowers bloomed in the hall of Elysium - blood and bone, red and white, cascading in a sheet to cover the chamber around them. Pushing out and out and out until nothing was left but the Spider Lilies singing brilliantly in the breeze around them. Zagreus drew Thanatos down like an anchor, floating feet brushing finally against petal softness, but nothing wilted from his touch. It was as though those flowers had always been waiting for both of them, every petal glimmering and shining now that the cycle of Life and Death had finally been made whole.

“I love you,” Zagreus said between desperate presses of chaste lips, speaking against Thanatos’ surprised mouth as though the words might possess them both, “And I’m so grateful you waited for me.”

Without Life, Death does not exist. Without Death, Life is not Life at all. For one is needed for the other to exist. Otherwise, there is Nothing.

*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*:–☆–:*

Zagreus had hidden all of his blooms in his chamber, of all things, knowing that no one went there. Not even Dusa, who was not allowed to clean Hades’ “ungrateful mongrel of a son”’s room. So there, they had remained safely hidden. Bone white blooms, ivory tongues drooping in such familiar ways to the crimson petals that followed Thanatos everywhere.

“Why did you never say?” Thanatos asked one day, as they lay side by side in a carpet of their flowers, fingers entwined together, nearly nose to nose.

“I did not want to frighten you away,” Zagreus laughed.

“And how did you prevent them from growing on me? I can’t stop the blasted things from appearing everywhere?” Thanatos asked.

Zagreus laughed again and repeated, “Because I did not want to frighten you away.”

Thanatos turned to him, arm braced so he could hover over Zagreus face with a gentle smile.

“And now that I am still here?” He asked warmly.

Zagreus reached up to brush a lock of silvery hair behind Thanatos’ ear, held back with a white lily to keep it in place, and said, “I’m glad that I was wrong.”

Thanatos smiled as red lilies bloomed to frame his prince’s head in a crown. Thick and regal, as he deserved. His mark upon the man. His prince, his love. It stirred a primal satisfaction deep in his belly as he leaned down to kiss Zagreus and say, “I’m glad we both were wrong.”

So they were reborn, there in a bed of white and red spider lilies - flowers that had guided them to new Life.

#thanzag #hades big bang #zagthan #zagreus #thanatos #hades game #pining #hanahaki #my writing #long post

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alienahellsparkle · 3 years ago

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❦ List fandoms of my heart: №3 (the last).

✯ Kuroshitsuji (Dark Butler)

This anime is my guide to the world of anime, my first of all, and the first that I liked. In addition, I have been watching it since I was 13 (omg, how old I am..).

I can say, from it I learned what anime is. It is one of my favorites and one of those that I can revisit (P.S .: And I'm still waiting for the new season or new full-length films, although no one said anything or promised anything about it).

The advantages of this anime are - interesting plots, 19th century setting mixed with the supernatural, soundtracks and a huge number of different characters for every taste. As I can tell, everyone will find their ideal 2D kun or chan here.

I could single out a lot of cool characters, but I'm afraid they could be spoilers too, so I'll just mention a few of my personal favorites.

Sebastian is a demon butler and another protagonist besides Ciel. A jack of all trades, a cool killer and one of the most real handsome men who stole many hearts from the female audience, who is in many similar tops and sometimes even has leading positions. I can say that he was my very first anime - love.

Prince Soma is an Indian prince. I don't know how many fans he has, but I think not as many as Sebastian and Ciel. Actually, Soma is the one who attracted me much more and my love for Sebastian did not last forever. This is because Soma, in addition to being beautiful and Indian (which was important to me as a lover of Bollywood films and music, and also interested in Indian culture), has a sweet and good personality. Three combos!

Madame Red is a bright woman with a difficult fate. I guess there isn't much more to say here (spoilers, spoilers, damn it).

Pluto is a devilish dog. Cutie, charming, with one cool ability and mine another anime-love (those who know this character and his unusual ability - yes - yes, I know it's weird to fall in love with characters like him).

As I said, the soundtracks are wonderful - some of the tunes have some classic notes in them, and also, the opening can be recognized from a thousand and it is easy to remember which anime it belongs to.

Also, there are elements of detective and crime, which also adds its own special shades and makes this anime even more interesting and aesthetically pleasing.

I look forward to continuing with it and begin to show interest in anime of a similar genre and setting in one (I found something similar, for example, as "House of Shadows").

✯ Dame x Prince

Another anime that became my find and I can watch it many times. I liked it so much that after I found it (in 2018 it was a spring novelty), I watched almost all the episodes in one gulp and only later realized that it ends too quickly, because I could not stop in time.

This anime contains everything that I love about the reverse - harems - beautiful drawing, bright colors, romance, elements of comedy and fantasy, attractive male characters and not a stupid main character who can be respected.

We can say that Ani is one of the few normal owners of a harem, but she can be considered a diamond among them. She is encouraged by her courage and the fact that she is not embarrassed when guys compliment her or try to flirt (I could say more about her, but these will be spoilers).

Despite the fact that here the male characters are clichéd, for example - a kind cutie, handsome womanizer, narcissistic rude and so on, they look cool and interesting to watch, it's a pity that we will never know which of them Ani chose in the end.

In addition, there is one more plus in the form of a good plot, after which it helps some characters to reveal themselves.

Even if many people do not always take girly harem animes well and consider them worthless and empty, just to please teenage girls with cute romance in a colorful wrapper, this anime genre also deserves a place to be. Who knows, maybe soon the reverse - harems will evolve even more, at least there are already some anime-worthy options. Everything has its fans..

In general, this is a good and positive anime that can bring more colors to life. And I still hope for season 2..

✯ Nanbaka

When you watch a video on the topic: "Guess the gender of anime characters", you will not think that in this way you will be able to discover a new anime. That's how I found out about Nanbaka, after which I watched the first season in a couple of days.

I associate this anime with the beginning of July 2018 and the dairy drinks Twix, Milky Way and Snickers, which at that time I was finally able to taste.

Nanbaka has several advantages - a cool variety of characters, an element of comedy, and an equally vibrant color scheme. Also, I noticed that all characters have their own special difference - they all have nails painted in a different color and have small fangs.

Despite the fact that there is no romance here and the plot is built around a prison theme, Nanbaka is quite interesting to watch, and in some episodes there are elements of drama and seriousness. However, if the first season is more comical situations, then the second season is a little more serious, at least there are more problems that the heroes solve.

Of the characters, there are not only bisonens and heroes with simple qualities including kindness, cuteness, foolishness, signs of a womanizer, hot temper and severity, but there are also unexpected specimens, such as several LGBTQ characters and even antagonists.

Unfortunately, Nanbaka is not a very popular fandom and most likely there will never be a third season... But this is another solid anime that can be endlessly watched and is one of those that drags on from the first episodes.

✯ Romance Club

This visual novel often came across to me in YouTube recommendations, in the form of walkthroughs and analysis of Easter eggs from it.

At first, I was not very interested in this, and from the video, my first impression was that this is just an incomprehensible game with characters similar to cardboard figures, but for some reason it became very popular and discussed on social networks.

After some time, I still began to watch the walkthroughs and more or less began to understand what the whole highlight of the game is, and after that, I began to play myself, though at the beginning, then, I had only a plan to while away the rest of summer time until autumn, but I didn’t notice how I began to be drawn into the RC and it became not just a game for one time, it became a habit that is difficult to get rid of.

Now, it's not just a bunch of pretty cardboard character figurines and a joke that RC is a mix of films like "50 Shades of Gray" and "Twilight", made for teenage girls.

Romance Club is - characters for every taste, from whites and Europeans, to Hispanics and Asians, both boys and girls. LGBTQ relationships have not been forgotten here either.

Various stories with any setting - vampires + werewolves, pirates, aliens, 19th-18th century, royal setting, movie stars and fame, Scandinavian mythology, ancient Greek mythology, sea and beach setting, detectives and crime, ancient Japan (geisha and samurai) , angels and demons, everyday life and much more, but the creators continue to delight us with new stories to this day, and I think we still have a lot to see.

Beautiful graphics and drawing of characters, cool design of clothes, and also, here you can learn how to beautifully compose texts and sentences (let's say this can be useful for the writing sphere), since some stories contain wonderful descriptions of some scenes and comparisons of concepts (example. "Stars as luminous points," and the like).

But besides romance, other important topics can be revealed here, such as the concept of friendship, a hard life due to many problems, courage and self-confidence, and sometimes even 18+ topics can be touched upon. In addition, some stories have instructive facts, for example, something about the history of Turkey during the Ottoman Empire.

Romance Club is scientifically enlightening!

Despite the fact that I refused to play games, since they take a lot of time, during which you can do a bunch of other useful things, RC is the only game (besides the Sims) on which I do not regret wasting my time and it is always interesting to watch new stories and how the old ones will end.

(P.S.:

here is part 1 https://lenahellsparkle.tumblr.com/post/650656683336548352/list-fandoms-of-my-heart-1

part 2 https://lenahellsparkle.tumblr.com/post/655103141583470593/list-fandoms-of-my-heart-2)

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diyeoracha · 4 years ago

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IwaOi Fanfiction Masterlist with 90+ Works

Hello! In celebration accumulating over 290 bookmarks on my AO3 account featuring IwaOi, Haikyuu S4 part 2, and @haikyuuweek2020 (Day 7 - Free Choice), I decided to create a masterlist of all of my favorite Iwaoi fics in order to keep myself organized as well as contributing to more traffic for those works! Works are split up into genres such as alternate universe (either not childhood friends or set on Earth), angst, canon compliant (post timeskip with spoilers), canon divergent (childhood friends but divergent timeline post timeskip), high school, and university au

Formatting update: Jan 13, 2021 (spacing is wonky on the mobile app!).

Fic update: Jan 7, 2021

This is incomplete as I got distracted while re-reading a lot of these and have only gone through half of my bookmarks, but feel free to check my own page here for the rest of them! I really do hope you guys enjoy reading these and leave comments and kudos! Please reblog and like so more people can enjoy

Titles marked with (♡) are my absolute favorites and there’s a chance I cried while reading them but otherwise they’re in alphabetical order

Alternate Universe

an allegory of all the things we could’ve been

Word count: 16k

Summary: “I don’t know anything about some red string,” Iwaizumi murmurs into the cracks of Oikawa’s skin, “or even about lifetimes or fate. But no matter where you are, I’ll find you. Gods or otherwise.” Reincarnation AU

And All the Prince’s Men

Word count: 65k

Summary: “Father only loves that which he owns, and I am the one thing that can never truly be his.” Royalty AU

Built a Temple in Me

Word count: 55k

Summary: Up the mossy mountain steps, past the komainu guardians and the faded red gate, and beyond the boundaries of the green shrine—that’s where the forest and the spirit world within it lies. That’s were Hajime met him, and where their story began.But intertwining of destinies can be ugly business, Hajime finds, when their first meeting begins with blood and the too-human eyes of a beast. God Oikawa AU

Quote: It fills his heart anyway, heals the hole in his chest that had been bleeding since he cut Tooru so forcibly from him.

Cotton Breathing

Word count: 13k

Summary: Long-distance and summer only but childhood friends AU

Conquering the Great King

Word count: 105k

Summary: Oikawa's lips twitched into a smirk and he brought them hovering just over Iwaizumi's, "One time thing, Two time thing, what's it matter as long as it's not a Relationship thing?"

Quote: Oikawa's eyes twitched wide for less than a second, his knee pressed in hard against Iwaizumi's thigh, "I may be gorgeous, but I'm not a doll."

dear diary, i met a boy

Word count: 15k

Summary: Iwaizumi's first impression of his upstairs neighbor involves getting woken up at two in the morning to the sound of Oikawa singing along to trashy pop music. He'd thought it would get better, but it all just goes downhill from there. Modern AU

Desperado

Word count: 82k

Summary: Clearly Iwaizumi had a checkered past. Kyoutani has never asked about it, nor has Iwaizumi ever brought it up. He knows it’s a sore spot for his mentor, just like the gorgeous Monte Carlo he keeps hidden away is, so he leaves it alone. Out on the streets, you learn a little something about when to turn a blind eye in order to survive; Kyoutani knows better than most to leave the past of men like Iwaizumi well alone. Heist AU

Even Heroes (have the right to dream)

Word count: 20k

Summary: Oikawa Tooru, ace reporter of the superhero beat of Asahi Shimbun, hates superheroes. Or maybe he just hasn’t met the knight one yet. Superhero AU

♡Infinite Risks

Word count: 8k

Summary: “It’s my fate,” Oikawa responds slowly. He’s crying. “It’s too lonely,” Iwaizumi’s heart sounded broken. “And I’m not there with you. Not really.” Edge of Tomorrow AU

In Defense of Reptiles

Word count: 9k

Summary: In their seventh year, Oikawa is chosen to be the Hogwarts champion in the Triwizard Tournament, and Iwaizumi suffers. Harry Potter AU

Quote: “You are so spoiled,” Iwaizumi tells him, but lets him shuffle down until Iwaizumi’s hand is now running through Oikawa’s hair instead of rubbing his shoulder.

In the Telling

Word count: 6k

Summary: Muggleborn Iwaizumi could not be less impressed with pureblood Oikawa Tooru. Harry Potter AU

♡Lockdown

Word count: 72k

Summary: Within the first few months of his stay, Oikawa gets caught up in a war between cellblocks, becomes a prime target, and must decide just how far he's willing to go to protect Iwaizumi Hajime. Prison AU

♡long nights, no peace

Word count: 18k

Summary: It's the steady knowledge that Iwaizumi Hajime will always be someone that he can rely on, that no matter what the world throws at the two of them, they share in a piece of each other's soul. Pacific Rim AU

Quote: Quiet settles between them softly, like the warm pressure of the blanket, or Iwaizumi's fingers curling to lightly hold the fabric of Oikawa's shirt.

The Long Light

Word count: 36k

Summary: Iwaizumi Hajime's seventh year at Hogwarts begins, and begins, and begins, and begins. Somehow, Oikawa Tooru is always there. Harry Potter AU

Magic Man

Word count: 12k

Summary: Oikawa is named the most desirable wizard in France. Iwaizumi is not impressed. Harry Potter AU

Quote: You keep saying partner or them. Is it rude of me to ask you to clarify?

Meet me in the grey area

Word count: 24k

Summary: Set in a hero/villain AU with Iwa as our trusty hero and Oikawa as our charming villain

Saw You at the Fish Market

Word count: 14k

Summary: In other words, Oikawa befriends hot part-time worker Iwaizumi and tries to impress him both off and on the court, in hopes of more.

♡♡ (sing with me) A Song of Conquest and Fate

Word count: 26k

Summary: When Seijou receives a missive from Aobajousai to discuss a potential peace, its emperor Oikawa Tooru could not have foreseen the series of events that would follow. Historical fantasy AU

Similar Creatures

Word count: 53k

Summary: "What's your name?" "Whatever you want it to be."(Or, Oikawa gets directions from an attractive stranger on a street corner.). Escort AU

♡Something Like Us

Word count: 28k

Summary: Friends since childhood, Oikawa and Iwaizumi now live together, both playing for the National Team. It's no secret that athletes who are bonded perform better. So if the two of them happen to bond...It'd be for the good of the team, right? A/B/O AU

Space

Word count: 44k

Summary: Tries not to think of his rooftop garden, or the apartment he used to inhabit, or Hajime’s broken expression on the night they whispered their goodbyes before Tooru’s launch, attempting to push it all to the back of his mind behind visions of this alien world terraformed. Astronaut AU

Stop the Time

Word count: 10k

Summary: Iwaizumi Hajime, 27, E.R. nurse at University of Tokyo Hospital. Hospital AU

♡♡The Loyalty of A Traitor

Word count: 76k

Summary: Iwaizumi Hajime was an undercover officer with a single objective: Infiltrate the Seijoh Syndicate of the Yakuza and tear them down from the inside out. His primary target was the boss, Oikawa Tooru. The job itself was simple enough, until Iwaizumi got in too deep and absconded not only from the mission, but from the city itself. Yakuza AU

These Flowers I Stole For You

Word count: 3k

Summary: ANBU don't cry. They tear themselves apart, bit by bit, and then they stitch themselves whole again. Naruto AU

on shipwreck shore

Word count: 8k

Summary: “I’m going to murder you in cold blood and feed you to the basilisks,” Iwaizumi says conversationally. “You can’t do that, I’m your boss,” Oikawa sings, positively sparkling. “Also we’re partners, which means,” he points at Iwaizumi and leans in, “you’re stuck with me.” Detective AU

Page 305 of 304

Word count: 53k

Summary: “…she called you ‘papa’,” iwaizumi managed. oikawa just stared for a moment longer before relaxing in a smile. “yeah. cute, right? but you can call me ‘daddy’ if you want.”

Temporary fix

Word count: 12k

Summary: “And you’ve shampooed his hair how many times now? Hmm. Yeah, that’s not technically a bromance.” A/B/O AU

Tokyo Boy

Word count: 16k

Summary: He has feelings for Iwaizumi Hajime, who probably has casual lovers just like him in every major city he visits on business. Oikawa is just his Tokyo Boy, just another pit-stop on Iwaizumi’s travels. Businessman AU

Trial by Fire

Word count: 78k

Summary: (lawyer!AU - in which Iwaizumi loves his objections, Oikawa is beautiful, and they have more chemistry than two opposing attorneys probably should.)

Watch Me

Word count: 32k

Summary: Oikawa's a cam model. It’s been a month since Iwaizumi first spoke in his chat. When they meet in person, things get complicated. Cam model AU

Angst

open when

Word count: 1k

Summary: Iwaizumi knew it was coming, but it still hurt. It still hurt when he opens one letter and drowns it in the tears he cannot keep at bay.

Chasing Paper Suns

Word count: 10k

Summary: Post-high school, Oikawa makes it to the national volleyball team but Iwaizumi doesn't. The next three years become an exercise in growing up without growing apart

Quote: “ ‘it’s just—I’m just trying so hard—’‘What, and I’m not?’

Timeless (We Have 30 Days)

Word count: 12k

Summary: Or AU where you're branded 50 days before you die. But Oikawa doesn't tell anyone so now there's only 30 days left.

the weight of water

Word count: 6k

Summary: “Again,” he says, the smallest tremor in his voice, and Oikawa blinks at him a moment before smiling, soft and sweet. “Iwa-chan,” he replies, and Iwaizumi closes his eyes. “Again.” “Iwa-chan.”

Canon Compliant

Are You Listening?

Word count: 4k

Summary: 30 times oikawa said i love you and 1 time he didn't have to

Quote: “Iwa-chan, watch out for the log—!” Oikawa looked on in horror as his best friend tripped and fell flat on his face.

Edge of the balcony

Word count: 8k

Summary: Iwaizumi looks older, he realizes. Oikawa knew he had aged as well, and so did everyone around him, but the thing was when you see people often, you don't notice the subtle changes in appearance. And Oikawa hadn't seen Iwaizumi in four years.

How can this loser ever win

Word count: 2k

Summary: everyone is in stupid love with Iwaizumi Hajime and he has no idea

♡♡♡Lost in Translation

Word count: 9k

Summary: Because misfortune come in threes, Iwaizumi Hajime starts his Thursday having a screaming fight with Shittykawa, spends his lunch break listening to the UCI women's volleyball team gossiping about how Ushijima Wakatoshi had gone public about his longtime love affair with Oikawa Tooru, and closes out the day by drunkenly dropping his phone into a sewer grate.

maybe we could be enough

Word count: 9k

Summary: iwaizumi hums in reply as the car goes silent, frank ocean crooning from the speakers. they stop at a red light when iwaizumi feels eyes at the side of his face, and turns to look at oikawa.

Most people never even get a single high school rival

Word count: 5k

Summary: Team Argentina gets to know Iwaizumi Hajime (27) Athletic Trainer.

Primavera

Word count: 8k

Summary: They say it takes twenty-six years, for certain breeds to fully bloom.

Quote: Did you know that distance is only me, growing towards you?

♡♡♡rest on your laurels

Word count: 4k

Summary: In Iwaizumi’s heart of hearts, untouched by time, they are young and alive, burning with the hearth of home and bright as winter light. Unbreakable. Invincible.

♡♡♡Something Borrowed

Word count: 16k

Summary: In which Oikawa and Iwaizumi have always been a foregone conclusion to everyone else, but a massive, unanswered question to one another.

‘Til Infinity

Word count: 2k

Summary: “Hey,” he says, “that cloud looks kind of like a dick.”

Quote: “I got you ladybug”

♡♡♡ You Set Off a Dream In Me

Word count: 15k

Summary: In which Oikawa is 41 and ready to retire. He's at the top of his game and ready to find a new challenge. Turns out his new challenge is pretty familiar. It's high school, round 2.

Quote: A past with an Iwaizumi that wasn’t on the opposite side of the net, monsters on all sides, guiding a setter that had lived the dream left behind in the ruins of Tooru’s past self.

Canon Divergent

a world alone

Word count: 60k

Summary: Iwaizumi has his medical books on the musculoskeletal system. Oikawa has his research papers on parallel universes. It isn't until much, much later that they realize they have each other.

♡Almost a Stranger

Word count: 16k

Summary: Iwa-chan's leaving Kapan. Tooru's not sure he can forgive him, but he's not going to admit his long-held feelings, either. A trip to Miyajima complicates everything.

Quote: There are only two things that have ever broken Oikawa Tooru’s heart. Iwa-chan would say Tooru has no heart to break, but that’s simply untrue.

Count your blessings, it goes 1,2,3, me

Word count: 7k

Summary: He's unsettled by the undefined boundaries of their relationship so it's all his luck that he accidentally wins three wishes to be granted just for him, and all that comes to mind is Iwaizumi.

Quote: Now, as an adult, past convenience of circumstance and the haze of hormonal lust, exactly none of his feelings have worn off

♡♡♡the courtship ritual of the hercules beetle

Word count: 66k

Summary: Tooru is pretty sure he could manage the mating habits of a mosquito. It’s the mating habits of people he can’t seem to get right.

♡days fall away

Word count:17k

Summary: Except now he’s back home, so close to his old haunts and to Oikawa himself, and it's—weird.

Quote: “You and Tooru,” he begins, and then shrugs. “I was just thinking, you look at each other a lot.” And he walks away, leaving Hajime winded, and sort of aching, somewhere deep in his chest. Whatever that means.

♡here comes your man

Word count: 8k

Summary: Iwa-chan, it reads, Have a good day today! Good luck! <3 <3 <3 Suga chokes. It’s hard to imagine anyone calling the scowling and fierce Doctor Iwaizumi “Iwa-chan.” But marriage probably comes with all sorts of liberties. Doctor AU

♡♡In damp earth my body

Word count: 15k

Summary: Onscreen, the nation’s favorite setter has arranged himself so that he’s bowing, forehead pressed to the court, like he’s thanking everyone for their kindness thus far, like he’s asking for forgiveness. Hajime thinks: shit, it’s really happening

In the Business of Love

Word count: 22k

Summary: Meet Oikawa Tooru: He's a best-selling shoujo manga artist, a hardcore romantic and you won't believe where he's getting his lovey dovey fodder from...Enter Iwaizumi Hajime: He's Oikawa's best friend, a realist who also happens to be a wedding magazine writer despite not believing in romance...

Quote: A flare of pride lit in Oikawa as he watched Iwaizumi's eyes crinkle with mirth and in that yawning second, it bloomed into a warmth that bordered on a burn, forcing a bittersweet inhale.

it's been so long (nobody knows me the way you do)

Word count: 8k

Summary: Tooru hums, only half-listening. Somewhere along the way, Hajime’s palm has settled itself over the curve of Tooru’s cheek, thumb tracing over the line of his jaw.

Quote: Iwaizumi blushes even more. “That you’re here, I mean. I’m happy that you’re here. With me.”

♡♡♡Mint

Word count: 19k

Summary: It's the December after Iwaizumi’s last year in university when Tokyo welcomes him with a new ad campaign for Bright Days toothpaste, and Oikawa Tooru—fresh off a run at the 2016 Summer Olympics—has decided to grace the city with his signature grin, a flip of his wayfarer sunglasses, and the most irrepressible tag line for the signboard above.

Quote: "To be able to tell him, in the new year." This comes under Oikawa's breath, so low that Matsukawa and Hanamaki can't hear, and the game continues.

Six-Month Lover

Word count: 89k

Summary: Iwaizumi barks out a laugh. “I’m still trying to get over the fact that you made a PowerPoint presentation about why we should date.” Oikawa doesn’t tell him the file has existed for the last twelve years, constantly receives updates, and that the original copy contained almost a hundred slides before he forced himself to get a grip.

Special Relativity

Word count: 22k

Summary: Time moves differently for people in different inertial reference frames. Oikawa goes on a two-year exploratory mission in space. Iwaizumi's been waiting for a lot longer than that.

♡♡sunset towns

Word count: 33k

Summary: In the summer of 2020, Oikawa Tooru returns home from his first successful stint as captain of Japan’s national volleyball team. In one hand, he holds the undisputed weight of an Olympic medal, and in the other, his unresolved feelings for a childhood best friend.

♡♡Thirty Years and Change (the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad)

Word count: 19k

Summary: It’s July 10th, 2024, and Oikawa Tooru is an Olympian. His smiling face airs on an NHK promo every 45 seconds. He’s captain of the national men’s volleyball team, reigning star of the professional leagues, and he hasn't spoken to Iwaizumi Hajime in two years.

Quote: Oikawa’s grin in the last set of the morning’s game. Oikawa’s grin as they sat on their asses on a golf course. Oikawa’s grin when they were in college. When they were in high school. When they were twenty-two, seventeen, fifteen, twelve, six.

High School

Bet On It

Word count: 13k

Summary: Hajime knows exactly how shitty Oikawa's personality is, and has no scruples whatsover about betting Oikawa six thousand yen that he can't be nice for an entire week.

Quote: The whole instant-compliance thing was seriously creeping him out. Oikawa from a week ago would have made a crack about how if he'd wanted something cold, he could have just put his face on Hajime's shoulder.

Betweens

Word count: 2k

Summary: Iwaizumi is asleep in the club room. Oikawa is blindingly awake in the club room. The sun moves slowly across the sky, and Iwaizumi’s skin is gold underneath it. Oikawa watches the changing shadows on Iwaizumi’s face and thinks about nothing in particular.

Don’t think too much

Word count: 6k

Summary: In which Oikawa and Iwaizumi have a confusing, drunken encounter and then deal with the (sticky) consequences.

Quote: As soon as that thought crossed his mind, though, Oikawa did what he always did: exactly the opposite of what Hajime wanted

Gates

Word count: 12k

Summary: The day after their graduation ceremony, they drive to the beach at Shirahama. Iwaizumi drives, because it’s his car, and as he has told Oikawa on multiple occasions, he’d rather die than let him touch the wheel.

Quote: ‘Yeah,’ he says, because they’re on a beach, and they’re supposed to be on a metaphorical journey, and they’re supposed to be growing up, and completing rites of passage, so it’s honesty, today - just for today, at least.

♡♡i sing the body electric

Word count: 8k

Summary: It was never part of the plan, falling in love with his best friend, but then again, most things in Iwaizumi’s life that involve Oikawa rarely unfold the way he thinks they will.

Quote: But Iwaizumi thinks about Oikawa laughing with that girl in the low light of the gym, a particular kind of quiet intimacy that Iwaizumi’s only ever read about in books hovering in the air, and all it makes him feel is small and petty and spiteful.

it’s better than words

Word count: 3k

Summary: [ or : oikawa makes iwaizumi participate in three bonding activities for new friends, and iwaizumi just wants to know why oikawa's being so weird about this]

Make sure you cross the line

Word count: 4k

Summary: With graduation just around the corner, Iwaizumi knows he has to gather the courage to really ask Oikawa out.

Quote: He’s been asking Iwaizumi to go out with him every single day this past week, increasingly panicked about getting his time and attention now that they’re nearing the end of this season of their lives.

Only the jellyfish know

Word count: 6k

Summary: Their third and final year at Aoba Jousai has come to an end, and the guys decide to go to the beach the day after graduation. That day, the ocean water is salty, the watermelon is sweet, and the people are sweeter.

static

Word count: 6k

Summary: Being snowed in with all of Seijou volleyball in his childhood home brings back a lot of memories for Iwaizumi, because it's kinda Oikawa's childhood home too.

Quote: It's fate that brought them together and choice that keeps them that way. The closest description in Hajime’s vocabulary is partners, but only because Oikawa taught him what its true definition is.

Told before and told again

Word count: 3k

Summary: This is how Hajime and Tooru fall in love, through the accounts of those around them.

Quote: When Oikawa lets out a long, heavy breath, Iwaizumi looks up at him and frowns, and flings a towel over Oikawa’s head to cover his face. Then, he tugs, once, on Oikawa’s fingers, and leads him down the hallway, Oikawa walking quietly in tow.

♡we can do better than that

Word count: 16k

Summary: Oikawa and Iwaizumi go on a road trip during the summer after their high school graduation. It doesn't go as expected, but maybe that's not such a bad thing after all.

Quote: Because Iwaizumi’s known Oikawa nearly all his life and never felt anything more than vague affection usually followed by intense irritation for him. But then suddenly at eighteen years old and nearly two weeks into a very badly planned road trip, it’s like someone flipped a switch somewhere inside Iwaizumi

♡when it starts to rain, they go inside

Word count: 33k

Summary: “Where?” starts Iwaizumi.“ My parent’s old lakehouse, silly, didn’t you hear me the first time?” OR: Oikawa takes Iwaizumi to his lakehouse for two weeks, post-graduation.

reassemble it

Word count: 15k

Summary: When Tooru was six years old, he discovered—unbeknownst to him at the time—two of the most important things in his life: volleyball and Iwaizumi Hajime. It was ironic that he had stumbled upon them hand in hand—quite literally, too.

♡things that change, things that stay the same

Word count: 8k

Summary: Oikawa realizes he's in love with his best friend; it sucks for a while. (But only a while.)

Quote: Iwaizumi’s expression right now is less terrified than it used to get back then, but he’s tight-lipped with concern, and his broad body blocks out other passengers as if their stares might be a danger to Tooru too.

University AU

An Archaeology of Affection

Word count: 23k

Summary: For Hajime, it is a riddle and simultaneously so evident. It fills his chest, surging like water, paints heat up his neck. In retrospect, it eats up his days, makes them its own until it feels like his heart has always been in his throat at the smile thrown over Oikawa’s shoulder, the stilling of his fingers on Hajime’s sleeve.

closure

Word count: 22k

Summary: In his first year of university, Oikawa builds a new friendship and upgrades an old one. Or: Ushijima is not a great wingman, but he tries his best.

Quote: “On the first day of his university career, Oikawa Tooru walks into his dorm, spots his assigned roommate, and turns one hundred and eighty degrees and walks right back out. He dials a familiar phone number - the first one he ever memorized - and starts complaining before Iwaizumi even gets the chance to say hello. “Iwa-chan,” he says, “tell me why Ushiwaka is in my dorm room.”

♡♡♡galaxies, within you

Word count: 21k

Summary: Hajime and Tooru move in together at the start of university. Too bad they’re stuck with the two gremlins that haunt their apartment.

Quote: I AM A HEADASS

Hands to yourself

Word count: 11k

Summary: He missed his parents, and he missed Takeru, and Takeru's badly behaved puppy. He missed Aoba Jousai, and he missed the volleyball team. He even missed Karasuno and Shiratorizawa, just a little.

Home, and how we made ours

Word count: 3k

Summary: “No, I like it here.” There’s a rustling as Iwaizumi shifts, inching closer. “I like it here, as in this crappy apartment—with you.”

Quote: “Do your fights end up being like—you know, about actual things and then extending into toddler days and suddenly you’re accusing Iwaizumi of kissing the girl you used to like in preschool?”

in progress to you

Word count: 6k

Summary: The eventuality of Oikawa and Iwaizumi falling toward each other is dramatically lackluster. Still, it's a process to go through.

Quote: “But what if you didn’t eat my pudding all the time?” Iwaizumi asks flatly, ignoring the way Oikawa is slapping his thigh to get out of his chokehold. “Do you think I buy them for you, huh? I buy them for me, you turd.”

Like we’re made of starlight

Word count: 6k

Summary: (a look into iwaizumi hajime’s journey of falling in love with oikawa tooru, from when they’re babies meeting for the first time to young adults moving in together.)

Ninety nine percent

Word count: 14k

Summary: more than anything, oikawa tooru wants to be with iwaizumi hajime, but he's only ninety nine percent of the way there.

Quote: Their ace was lining up for the ball, knees bent and arm pulled back, just as Tooru tosses the ball……to Hajime.

no sleep in the city

Word count: 7k

Summary: Along their journey to find Tokyo's best ramen, Iwaizumi finds himself asked again and again why Oikawa is still single.

Quote: “I was only telling Hanamaki literally yesterday that your personality isn’t as vile as before,” Iwaizumi informs, slightly stiff from the way Oikawa’s got an arm looped through his own. “Why do you make me such a liar to people I care about?”

Out of nowhere

Word count: 8k

Summary: They move in together after graduation and it's doing weird things to Iwaizumi's heart. He's a little in denial about it.

Quote: Oikawa excitedly ran up to him when Iwaizumi came home with groceries the other day. Not about the food but just to say how boring everything is when Iwaizumi's not there, eyes shining, and he couldn't meet his gaze after from blushing down to his neck. He doesn't know how much more he can take.

♡♡shiver

Word count: 16k

Summary: Oikawa was always the brave one. Hajime just followed two paces behind.

Quote: “I’m in love with you,” Oikawa tells him three days after they graduate junior high, head in his lap and hands gently folded over his chest and completely and totally unconcerned that he’d just shattered Hajime’s world.

Terpischore

Word count: 38k

Summary: They’d ended up going to different universities, Tooru and he. The distance was good for them. The confession Hajime dropped in both their laps wasn’t. That’s how it’d ended – a lifetime of friendship crumbled to dust in the space of five minutes. (Or, a lesson in learning to move on from things you can't have, in finding old loves in new ways and in understanding that life is never truly simple... till it is.)

terrarium

Word count: 11k

Summary: At this point, is he really happy with just staying best friends forever? Will he be writing journals and collecting rocks forever (he will, he knows, but that is aside from the point)?

these foolish things (remind me of you)

Word count: 3k

Summary: Oikawa helps Iwaizumi move into his new college dorm.

Quote: He’s desperate for something to happen. It must show on his face because Iwaizumi blushes and looks away. The thing is, Oikawa always looks at him like this when Iwaizumi isn’t paying attention.

They say it rains diamonds on Jupiter

Word count: 35k

Summary: "You're in love with him. "Hajime considers denying it. "Yeah," he says instead.

Quote: “Share the weight of your feelings with me, Hajime wants to beg when he hears Tooru's first hitched breath. Let me carry some of your burdens”

to be first, to be best

Word count: 26k

Summary: Hajime is apparently something of a masochist, and as he stares down at the tie-dyed AREA51 T-shirt in his hands, he thinks “I’m totally in love with this asshole, aren't I?”

Undecipherable

Word count: 4k

Summary: "Koi no yokan," he says. "The sense one can have upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love."

Quote: Because for all the bravado, for all the flaunting Oikawa does, he wants Hajime by his side, and no one else.

♡we shine like diamonds

Word count: 26k

Summary: "You know Abe-kun from class?" they snicker, hands cupped around their mouths like they're passing along a filthy secret. "I hear his older brother is... gay."

Where you are (I’ll be)

Word count: 6k

Summary: Theirs is a love that starts out like a seed and it takes two sets of hands tending it for a shoot to appear. There are no dramatic declarations of love, only a pair of hands that find each other again and again and again.

Quote: Oikawa broke off into giggles as Hajime slowed the descent of his hand from a slap to the back of Oikawa’s head to a gentle ruffle of the taller boy’s hair

♡♡with every second that you could give

Word count: 9k

Summary: The journey of Iwaizumi and Oikawa going for gold.

Quote: He knows they’re too close. Iwaizumi knows it too, and they both decided to move in together anyway.

Your love is sunlight

Word count: 6k

Summary: It's Iwaizumi's birthday, and they have a talk about the future.

Quote: But Hajime doesn’t think any present could top this: them, kissing in a sun-dappled bathroom, Oikawa’s skin warm under his hands, and the promise of a life together stretched out before them.

#haikyuuweek2020 #iwaoi #oikawa tooru #iwaizumi hajime #i spent more time on this than all of my edits combined pls appreciate this

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pyrrhiccomedy · 4 years ago

Text

Heretic update

[previously]

So Andreas was stripped of his title, land, and his betrothed by Edward, Black Prince of England, and was thrown into the dungeon of the palace at Poitiers. Tomassin begged the Order of St. Agnes to send help; but the Order, struggling against the onset of Plague, could not come.

So the Abbess of the Order called upon a fragile and wary alliance, and bid the infamous Murnau family to send a party of their hell-touched inquisitors. Sir Anderlyn von Murnau, the knight-detective, unorthodox and grieving; Margaret von Murnau, a wayward byblow pagan girl; and Sylvain, a man-at-arms with a dark and occult past in France, arrived in Poitiers and plucked Andreas from Edward’s clutches with the use of their baffling and miraculous powers.

They joined up with Tomassin and fled Poitiers, leaving Edward occupying Andreas’s city, palace, and throne.

The world Andreas emerged from the darkness into was one gripped by the throat by the Plague. His first thought was to join up with his other surviving friends: especially Philippe, his best friend who, alone of his closest allies, could do nothing to protect himself from the Black Death. Philippe was imprisoned in the fortress-town of Niort, waiting for his ransom to be paid. Niort had been under English occupation for nearly a year, but Andreas would not let another of his friends die because of his blunder in underestimating Edward. And Philippe has always been his best friend.

But Niort, when they arrived, was in anarchy. The townsfolk had succumbed to bacchanalian madness, in the face of the great dying, and the English had shut the gates of the castle, as much to keep out the rioting peasants as to keep out the plague after the rioters had broken into the prison and dragged the prisoners out.

Philippe was somewhere in a town that was now divided into the Revel, and those who slunk from hiding place to hiding place in fear of them. The horrors Andreas saw during those days shook him free of the last vestiges of his narcissistic belief that he might be the son of Satan: if these were Satan-worshippers - if all this blood and violation pleased Satan - then Andreas wanted nothing to do with him.

If the Black Captain is Satan, He is not the Satan worshipped by the Revel.

It was by the spare, strange favor of the Black Captain that Andreas found Philippe: by cutting a blade into his own arm, and following the blood as it flowed from his fingertips and turned, in spits and gushes, into boiling saltwater. Philippe was astounded to see him; clutched him, begged Andreas to take him from this place; but not without Nina.

Who is Nina, Andreas wanted to know. Philippe had never cared about - anyone, except for Andreas and himself.

Who is Nina remained the question even after they rescued her from the black mass of the Revel. It was the question when she flew at Philippe with a knife, screaming murderer, and had to be restrained from killing him. It was the question when they crept away from the rest of the group that night, and made love. It was the question when they avoided each other every daylight hour, and Philippe informed Andreas that he intended to marry her, and that she intended to accept.

Nina, Andreas would learn later, was the instrument of Philippe’s soul’s subjugation to the Sunflower King, the god of the Revel; as he was hers. They damned each other. They had no choice. Without their ritual circle of two, they would be driven to damn everyone around them.

Andreas had reached the vaster question: Who is the Sunflower King?

What if you don’t have to sell your soul to the Devil, Philippe said, broken in his arms. What if just seeing him is enough? He cursed me through my eyes. He stole my soul through my eyes.

Do not let me drag you into this with me, Philippe said. I know I will try.

The group reached La Rochelle, where Princess Blanche was sequestered in Castle Vauclair. La Rochelle, an independent commune, hidden behind the impassible Forest of Argenson, its harbor protected by the great Chain and Lantern Towers, maintains a fragile neutrality in the war between the English and the French by raising no flags and sustaining no army. Blanche is its lady; and the plague-ridden townspeople of La Rochelle who crawl to the walls of Castle of Vauclair to be nearer to their princess, last child of the Capetian line of kings, favored by God, do not die.

They do not die.

Blanche was a prisoner within, of her lifelong guardian, Sir Tristan, last of the old shattered Templar Order. Wracked with a terrifying vitality, she vomited insects, did not eat or sleep, and woke the dead by her mere proximity. Anyone spending more than an hour in her company died, burst open by twitching, erupting cancers. She did not know what was happening to her. It started when the Plague began. (The Plague that she foretold.)

And she had been sleepwalking, into the forest. In the direction of the Roman shrine where Sir Tristan, 16 years ago, had slept one night, and had a vision of Holy Mother, telling him to go to Blanche, and protect her.

With no other options, Andreas decided to sneak her out of the castle and let her sleepwalk to the shrine, in the hopes that something could at least be learned. With dread, Andreas, Sir Anderlyn, Margaret, and Tomassin ventured into the wood, following a sleepwalker who found a path through the black and frozen twisting mire unerringly.

And then the bugs came. And the wolves. Or they were something like wolves. And the wall of eyes, reflected in the torchlight, that undulated as the earth breathed beneath their feet. And the stars began to swim like fireflies.

Shredded by a two-headed abomination of a wolf, moments from death, Andreas realized that something was close to here, something that would protect him; something that had been left for him. While the animal nearly tore off his arm, Andreas pushed a boulder loose from a stony hollow (while the others screamed what are you doing, and fought for their lives) and found, hidden there, a dagger.

A Roman pugio, its hilt rotted away. Inscribed on the blade in Latin were the words even a god has his duty. It slew the horror-wolf in two blows.

He was separated from the rest of his party. They stayed behind to fight more of their wild, unnatural attackers; Andreas had to pursue Blanche, who was disappearing between the trees, even while the wood became more and more alien and wonderous.

He saw a stranger whose face he could not remember, who told him he could ask it three questions. It called him the Boreal Knight. It told him (obliquely) that his powers, which had brought him so much suffering and terror ever since he was six years old, were the result of being knighted by the Black Captain, to protect the world from the rupture caused by the division of the hours. It told him that Blanche was a part of that rupture. It told him he had to stop her.

He was not, then, her fated ally, or lover, as they, in their adoration, had assumed. His purpose was to stop her by any means, and to kill her if he had to.

And it told him that if she reached that shrine, Holy Mother White would wake up, and they would all be lost. Andreas ran deeper into the Wood.

(What to say about the other visitor he had, in this last, awful leg of his flight towards the shrine? The woman standing amid the trees, blindfolded, pretty and distorted and grey-haired, small and as tall as the trees, fragile and made of the same bones as the world? He touched a flame to his heart when he saw her, wondering, and she touched her hand to her lips and extended it to him. The way to Blanche opened up ahead of him, and her moths kissed his cheek.)

He reached Blanche. She could not be woken. She could not even be touched. She dissolved into insects whenever he reached for her, reforming in a swell of flickering wings. The shrine was close. Blanche’s eyes were white, and when he begged her to see him, a locust leapt from her mouth and tried to sting him.

And then, waiting at the shrine, was Bernadetta, and her accuser-turned-knight, Vauquelin. Bernadetta knew this place had to be protected, somehow, and knew that he would come. She knelt upon the shrine and erupted into a pillar of flames. The unclean children of Mother White burned.

But Blanche was still coming. White-eyed, implacable, while spores and locusts whorled around her.

Andreas heard the Black Captain’s voice for the first time since that night in his cell. It said, the Boreal Knight knows what to do.

And he did.

He took the dagger that had been left for him a thousand years ago, scratched a line into the dirt at the foot of the shrine - no further than this - advanced to meet Blanche, the woman he loves, and plunged the dagger into her heart.

Blanche woke up. Met his eyes. Coughed up blood, and slumped to her knees. And Andreas, using the purifying fire that had earned him torture and condemnation his whole life, tore the knife free from her chest and healed her before she could almost-instantly exsanguinate.

Bernadetta and Vauquelin defended the shrine, as Andreas and a sobbing Blanche fled.

The blind forest-woman’s silvery moths formed a storm behind Andreas and Blanche as they ran, blocking the way to the tidal wave of furious, biting locusts that pursued them. The moths died by the thousands; one, resting on Andreas’s cheek again, fluttered its wings to urge him to run faster.

They emerged from the Wood, back into the forest. Blanche’s hideous malady relieved; her connection with Mother White, at least for the moment, quieted.

These strange and dark saints now stand together in La Rochelle; alive, and intact, doomed by varying degrees. They have to find their place over unsteady feet, put from their mind their thousands of questions, and face what’s in front of them:

The Plague, held at bay by Blanche’s terrible vitality, is about to arrive in La Rochelle in full force.

Edward, the Black Prince, knows that they are there, and will do anything to return Andreas to his power.

And the young man Andreas hired to spy for him - a young man he had liked - has gone missing. The only explanation is that the English have taken him. And he knows where they can find Andreas.

#heretic #dice matters

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gospacegay · 5 years ago

Text

Updated Master List

I’ve been abandoning, editing, or pulling down materials I’m not happy with lately. Along with general inactivity on Tumblr, I realized my post history is inaccurate. Thus, I present all completed material I have written and still actively have up. Note this is Hetalia content unless otherwise stated.

Fake It Until You Make It: Ivan fakes a relationship with Alfred to get out of his miserable marriage. Clean-ish human AU with rusame and rochu. 13 chapters.

Heart Of Hearing: An entire universe of FACE interaction that begins around Matthew as a deaf child. This is a massive domestic story, being released weekly until it’s conclusion. Nedcan, rusame, denpru, and much more. 55 chapters and counting.

Landing Off Course: Alfred’s plane crashes into the sea, but he miraculously survives. Clean human AU rusame created for MerMay. 6 chapters

Fuck And Burn The House Down: Title says it all. Dirty rusame. 1 chapter.

A Bunny’s Tail: Alfred and Ivan do pet play. Dirty rusame. 1 chapter. For Family: Sad historical Canada in WW2. Clean with no ships. 1 chapter.

A Fairy Big Problem: Fairy prince Alfred is sent to Earth as disciplinary punishment. Cleanish rusame and nedcan. 14 chapters.

The Spy That Stole My Heart: Spy Alfred is forced to work with reformed super villain Ivan on a dangerous mission in France. Very violent spy AU rusame. 11 chapters.

Hopping Mad Over You: Lars loses his beloved pet rabbit in the apartment, magic ensues. Clean human AU nedcan. 1 chapter.

Birds Of A Feather: Matthew, god of birds, has chosen a new mate. Clean gods AU nedcan, prucan, and rusame. 1 chapter.

Friendship Is Magic: Matthew is the unhappiest village member of friendship village. Violent dirty My Little Pony/Hetalia mix with nedcan and rusame. 1 chapter.

Crazy Love: Matthew’s alien crazed father is set up with eccentric recluse Ivan. Cleanish human AU nedcan, rusame and amefra. 7 chapters.

His Song: Matthew sings Lars a song. Clean canon nedcan. 1 chapter.

Learning Her Way: Matthew escorts his transgender girlfriend to school. Clean human AU nedcan. 1 chapter.

Matthew, The Worst Demon Ever: Matthew is very bad at tormenting Lars. Lars doesn’t seem to mind. Very violent demon AU nedcan and fruk. 8 chapters.

Love Is For The Birds: Matthew is a Canadian goose in a zoo. Clean zoo AU with nedcan. 1 chapter.

Two Terrible People In Love: France and England are assholes watching TV. Clean canon AU fruk. 1 chapter.

Eyes For You: Canada slips Netherlands a note during a meeting. Clean canon nedcan. 2 chapters.

Hot Canadian Pizza: Lars delivers a saucy pizza. Dirty-ish human AU nedcan. 1 chapter.

Till We Part: Ivan’s wife dies, and Alfred comforts him. Clean human AU rusromano and rusame. 1 chapter.

Giving Chase: Wolf has feelings, and he is not great at expressing them. Dirty-ish Nu Pogodi! fic (soviet cartoon give it a chance). 7 chapters.

Cut Above The Rest: Alfred commits suicide. Violent canon implied rusame. 2 chapters.

I Choose You: Alfred and Ivan are roommates in the complicated world of pokemon. Violent Pokemon/human Hetalia AU with nedcan and rusame. 26 chapters.

Paternity Testing: Sweden gets a surprising paternity test result. Clean canon with no ships. 1 chapter.

Curses And Gifts: Follow Natalia as she moves beyond suicidal mental blocks. Clean-ish human AU with hunbela lesbians. 2 chapters.

Love, Magic, And Insurance Fraud: Toris’s life falls apart after he buys a fridge off a shady polish website. Cleanish modern fantasy AU with poliet, prucan, and rusame. 15 chapters.

Shut Down: Alfred hides at Ivan’s house while his government is in turmoil. Dirty canon rusame. 1 chapters.

Curiosity Killed The Cat: Detectives Ivan and Alfred team up to solve a grisly crime. Dirty human AU rusame, aushun, and more. 17 chapters.

Happy Birthday: Russia goes insane in his apartment. Violent canon with implied rusame. 1 chapter.

From The Web: Alfred gets a spider obsessed new roommate. Apocalypse AU with rusame and geripan. 20 chapters.

Learning From My Mistakes: Grow with Toris as he stumbles through the hard lessons of school, friendship, and what love actually is. Dirty human AU with poliet, lietbel, and rusame. 15 chapters.

Fortunes, Folly, And Vodka: Ivan, a Russian gypsy con artist, can suddenly see ghosts. Dirty modern fantasy AU with spamano, gerita, and ruscan. 11 chapters.

The Founding Of Kievan Rus: Ivan is a young nation that is willing to get his hands dirty. Historical canon with no ships. 1 chapter.

Life Debt: Alfred rescues Ivan from himself after the USSR dissolves. Violent canon rusame. 11 chapters

Far From Home: Lost cosmonaut Ivan is rescued by alien alfred in deep space. Dirty space AU with rusame and packed with aliens. 19 chapters.

Bottled Emotions: Alfred loses his temper on the job. Violent canon AU with implied rusame. 1 chapter.

Hetalia Monsters Universe Series: This is three connected stories about Alfred loving Ivan, who has been a secret sea monster for centuries. It is domestic canon rusame, but also has heaps of tentacle sex. Part one is 9 chapters, part two is 7 chapters, and part three is 2 chapters.

His Amazing Grace: Alfred sustains massive brain damage, and Ivan helps him heal. Cleanish canon rusame. 15 chapters.

A Life Of Glitter: Alfred and Ivan raise Matthew in the glory days of the 1980′s. Clean fluffy human AU. 5 chapters.

Madness And Profits: A poem about mad scientist Alfred seducing business man Ivan. Cleanish human AU rusame. 1 chapter.

Lost And Found: Monster hunter Alfred attempts to rehabilitate insane wizard Ivan. Dirty fantasy AU rusame. 11 chapters.

Life Is Not A Sitcom: Alfred is seduced by Belarus, but it backfires hilariously. Cleanish canon rus/ame/bel poly. 10 chapters.

Ambitions Beyond The Stars: Alfred asks Ivan to kill someone for him, and their relationship grows from it. Violent canon rusame with sappy ending. 47 chapters.

The Oops: Ivan accidentally becomes pregnant. Dirty canon rusame. 6 chapters.

Branding The Future: Ivan and Alfred take over the world. Clean canon rusame. 2 chapters.

Weapons Of Mass Distraction: Italy has secret weapon technology that Ivan and Alfred want. Clean canon with implied rusame. 1 chapter.

Feeling Feline: Ivan is a sexy cat. Cleanish canon with humour. 1 chapter.

Fate Follows: Russia discovers a deadly secret about America. Cleanish canon rusame. 10 chapters.

Dark Destiny: Necromancer king Ivan takes prince Alfred hostage. Clean fantasy AU rusame and fruk. 3 chapters.

Beauty To Die For: 1920′s Assassin Ivan desires mafia wife Amelia. Clean 1920′s crime AU. 1 chapter.

#rusame #hetalia #aph #THERE IS 100's of POSSIBLE TAGS #read me #this took 3 hours #formatting is hell

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lovelyirony · 4 years ago

Note

Parkner for the OTP thing??? I like your others ones but I’m curious about ideas for this now that you’ve added on with PeterNed (god Tier ship)

coming right up!

Coffee shop AU: Who is the barista, and who frequents the coffee shop?

Harley actually owns his own coffee shop, and he is fairly sure that the guy who always comes in around his age is half the reason Bean There, Drank That is still open. (Well, that and Tony won’t stop name-dropping it casually in every interview.)

Peter comes into the shop at first because Tony recommends it as a great stop before his job, and then...

Listen. He’s not even that big of a coffee guy. Occasionally he’ll have one when he’s in a mood, or he’ll drink tea instead.

But he gets so flustered around the guy who works in the mornings that he’s been ordering a black coffee with no room for cream or sugar for about a year now, and he always tips three extra dollars.

Harley has been saving all of his tips to use when he finally gets the hints that are all over his coffee cups.

Highschool/College AU: Who is the straight-A student, and who’s the backrow slacker?

It’s not that Harley is a slacker, it’s just that he prefers to have other skills outside of school. You know, cool stuff. Like working on his motorcycle, or doing literally anything math.

But...the decathlon team needs another member after Betty gets the flu and Flash is on some weird boycott that he’d rather not ask about.

So he’s paired with Parker, who is very school-oriented and is the subject of most of the bragging rights with the school’s staff and administration. He is also the subject of most of Harley’s dreams.

(Not that Peter will ever know that...)

Rivals to loves AU: Who takes their rivalry seriously, and who is half in it just to push the other’s buttons?

Harley absolutely does not take it seriously at all. He thinks it’s cute that Peter keeps trying to “prank” him, but he has the most obvious tells in the world.

But he humors him, because honestly if they were rivals, Harley wouldn’t pay him the time of day. That’s just the kind of person he is. Besides, it’s kind of cute to see Peter’s cheeks go all red like that.

Enemies to lovers AU: Which one switches sides?

criminal au: Peter’s been a thief since he was twelve and stole a woman’s wallet back for her, but in the process maybe took five dollars. Hey, it’s only fair. He saved her the hassle of having to wait in line at the DMV for three hours.

People tell him he has a cute face. A trusting face. A face that screams that he’s the one who gets pick-pocketed, not the other way round.

Enter in Harley, society’s newest socialite, and one that Peter is assuming is going to be an easy mark. He doesn’t know his own reputation, requested “pigs in a blanket” at his inaugural ball, and talks with a slight southern twang that is truly adorable, and...

Misleading.

“I saw you take my ring, sugar,” Harley says to Peter as they’re dancing. “And, well, I’d like it back, if it’s not too much trouble. If it is, I can always launch you out of a window.”

Peter gives the ring back, although he tends to hang around far more often. Not every day someone as cute as Harley Keener catches onto his tricks.

Soulmate AU: Who is eager to meet their soulmate? Who absolutely does not want to meet their soulmate?

Harley is absolutely not going to meet his soulmate, he’s decided. It didn’t work out for Mama, and he’s learned from a very young age that you don’t really need a soulmate. All he needs is a job at a mechanics shop, and then maybe a second job. He’s not sure yet.

Enter in Peter Parker, who is very cute, and very much so his type. As in, the type to have his mark right on his neck.

He’s screwed.

Single parent AU: Which one is the single parent? (Alt. if they’re both single parents: Which one is open to starting a new relationship from the start? Which one is never planning on finding love again… Until they meet the other and are instantly smitten?)

Harley always takes his little girl to the library every Saturday morning, approximately at ten o’clock. He never deviates from the time, because that is when Mr. Parker, the children’s librarian, starts reading a story and Harley can pretend he’s actively listening (which he is...mostly) and not staring.

Then his daughter picks out her books, he talks with Peter, and is slowly getting the courage to ask out the nice librarian.

Doctor AU: Which one is the longsuffering doctor? Which one is the patient?

Peter is honestly amazed at the “regulars” of the hospital. Usually it’s old people like Gladys, who he swears broke her hip on purpose in order to talk with Dr. Watson-MJ-about the newest romance novel they’ve been reading.

A regular should not be a cute guy his age. Really and truly.

This time, he’s been hooked up to a heart monitor, and Peter doesn’t really want to say anything, but Harley’s heartbeat speeds up each time he enters...

Bodyguard AU: Who is the bodyguard? Who are they protecting? Which one is secretly pining for the other?

Peter doesn’t need a bodyguard. His aunt and Mr. Stark are being paranoid. (After all, sure he’s in the public eye. But it’s not like he didn’t escape out of that moving car.)

Harley Keener doesn’t much care what his client wants or doesn’t want. He will be following him.

And he finds out about his little shortcuts.

And a bit more. And more. Until eventually, he knows what Peter likes in the morning, and his imagination shouldn’t be running as fast as it is.

Pirate AU: Who is the pirate? Who is the member of the royal family who did not sign up for this?

Harley doesn’t have a need for a prince, really. They don’t do much besides threaten you with warfare, and he’s been over warfare for the last three years.

He wasn’t expecting their newest prince to be so...fierce. He’s escaped restraints three times, improved the chef’s soup recipe once, and is currently sitting in Harley’s chair in his office in a way that has only been dreamt about.

This should be...fun.

Childhood best friends AU: Which one was super obviously in love with the other the whole time? Who was oblivious until they were older?

Peter is very surprised that Harley hasn’t noticed that he’s had a crush on him for a long time now. Everyone can tell, and everyone makes fun of him for it.

“Just go for it!” Ned cheers. “That’s how I asked out Betty!”

“As I recall, Betty asked you out,” Peter grumbles. “And he’s...himself. I can’t compete with that!”

“Love isn’t a competition, idiot,” MJ comments. “Now shut up about it, love is disgusting and only for the weak-minded.”

“Then I want to be as weak-minded as possible!” Ned cheers. “But seriously, Peter. What’s the worst that could happen?”

An alien attack on the night of prom.

That’s the worst that could happen.

#parkner #they amuse me #peter parker #harley keener #lovelyirony writes

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atinytokki · 4 years ago

Text

Across the Night

iii. The Truth

“It all began when I was hired on as Prince Junhee’s nurse years ago,” Mother began. Seonghwa tucked up his legs and tried to get comfortable in the chair. This would likely be a long storytime.

“As you can imagine, the process was grueling and intense and I was trained even from adolescence as a courtier to care for small children in the hopes that I could land the job,” she went on with a sigh. “I was, of course, ecstatic when I did, and even more so when I met the handsome, noble, powerful man that was— is— the King.”

Here she glanced down at her lap and shook her head before finding her voice again. “It was just one of those things, a moment you wish later that you could change, but at the time it occurred I had no control. My heart drowned out my head and behind the Queen’s back, the King and I grew close. Too close. Two children were born to him the same year, one was the Queen’s and one was mine. But instead of making me a concubine, the King decided instead that to keep me quiet he would send me and my child— his child— here to live in the city, strangers to him even as I raised the princes and maintained a professional relationship with the royals. To this day, the Queen knows nothing.”

Seonghwa caught his breath at the implication of all this. Some of the details were beyond his understanding but it sounded like what Mother was saying was that the King was his father.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she snorted, cracking a small smile. “That this explains why I never speak of your father, and that all this means you’re part royalty.”

Again she could only shake her head and avoid his gaze, tears welling in her eyes and scaring Seonghwa.

“But it gets worse,” she confessed. “While I nursed both infant sons through five years, I began to notice a difference. My boy was deformed, misshapen, poor and neglected while we starved on the King’s meagre pay. The Queen’s second son was lovely, sweet, and perfect in every way. I tried so hard to move on and to just love my son but every day I saw that little prince and his beautiful face and jealousy stirred within me.” She gave him a fragile smile but her voice cracked as she went on. “So I stole him, and I raised him as my own, and now here he sits at my kitchen table when he should be sitting on a throne.”

Somewhere along the way, Seonghwa’s eyes filled with tears as well and a strange sort of calm settled on him.

This woman was not his mother.

“Yes, Seonghwa,” came the tortured whisper. “The boy they call the second prince is my child, and you, sweet boy... are hers.”

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but not a word would leave his lips. Memories swirled around in his head.

The beautiful room where he grew up, Mother feeding and teaching him, the older boy that came and played sometimes, the smell of perfume and the taste of delicacies...

He had grown up in the palace, not just a fancier house that he had later left. That boy had been his brother and moving to another house hadn’t been a move at all... it had been a kidnapping.

Seonghwa tried to breathe through the shock, getting to his feet and going to the window, leaning on the frame for support. The distant silhouette of the palace was bold against the stars and his head began to pound from the ferocity of flowing memories.

“You know this already, don’t you?” Mother’s voice floated after him.

But she wasn’t his mother, and everything was all wrong.

The feel of satin and the twinkle of crystals in his deepest most turbulent dreams was real.

“Why?” He finally uttered, pure raw emotion coursing through him. “And why tell me now?”

Mother scoffed and came to stand beside him, reaching out to touch his face but thinking better of it when he flinched away.

“I was there for your first steps and your first words. I was the one who fed you, changed you, put you to sleep, taught you everything you know. Why shouldn’t I be your mother?”

“It was wrong!” Seonghwa yelled through tears, moving even farther away from her as everything unravelled— past, present, and future dashed to smithereens all around him.

“I know!” She shot back before closing her eyes and dropping her head into her hands. “I knew even as I switched you, while I lured you away to my house and every day since when the royal family went on with their lives unknowing and I realised the consequences of what I’d done.”

Her voice was softer now, and Seonghwa clung to the hope that she was repentant, that she could set things right somehow, but she continued to speak and dash his hopes with every word.

“I’ve made a grave mistake. There I was, idolising you and wishing you were mine instead, but despite all I had already done for you, there was something I could never teach you. I had no idea how to train a prince. What I failed to realise was that even with you as my son, I could never be uplifted to a higher status or lifestyle. Swapping the two of you did nothing at all but make your life worse. My poor, sweet Seonghwa... you don’t know how to do anything.”

Seonghwa raked his hands through his hair and fought back tears even harder. He could be preparing to help lead a kingdom right now, and instead he had run wild through the city for five years behind his Mother’s back. She hardly knew him, no matter how much she had done to make him hers.

“I-I’ve failed you as a mother, thinking your perfect looks and sweet voice could survive in this harsh world of work and more work and death. You’re completely unprepared and it’s no one’s fault but my own. To be disciplined in the palace and then expected to live as a peasant... it’s wrong and I don’t know why it took me so long to confess it to you but now that I’ve told you the truth, I see only one way forward.”

Seonghwa held his breath and finally turned his head to look at her. Her face was stone cold.

“You can never be a prince again. You must learn a trade and forget where you came from.”

“What?” He cried. “And refuse everything that is rightfully mine?”

She had washed away his early years with constant lies and constant manipulation, and now she expected him to continue on as if nothing was wrong between them?

“No!” He refused. “No, I have to go to the palace, I have to see the King. Maybe my true family will recognise me, five years isn’t that long—”

“They will not,” Mother insisted without so much as an eyelash out of place. She was completely certain. “In all this time, they have never once realised that their second son is the wrong child. No matter how deformed he is, no matter how ill suited for princehood, your real parents have never so much as suspected that he was switched. Royalty spending time raising their children is simply not the custom. You have no claim to the throne, going there would be a waste of time. No, you must never visit the palace again.”

Seonghwa couldn’t believe it. With all the lies she had told him, surely this was just another, some desperate ploy to keep him from running and leaving her.

“I’m to go on living a lie then?” He asked hoarsely, feeling so very beyond his years.

“Seonghwa,” Mother sniffled and finally drew him in close. “This is your life. I love you, don’t you know?”

Out of force of habit, he let her embrace him. When the alien feeling inside grew too strong, he pulled away and walked outside, sinking onto the garden bench and trying to regain control of himself.

Mother followed him out at a distance, probably to make sure he hadn’t fled, before handing him a slice of bread left over from dinner and retreating to the house.

Seonghwa needed space to work through everything he’d just been told.

As much as he tried to hold it back, the floodgates overruled him and he ended up trying and failing to rub the wetness off his face.

He couldn’t help but feel like his life was poisoned now.

Every feathery light kiss to heal a bloody scrape, every tune he learned to sing himself to sleep, even the knowledge that baked the bread in his hands— it all came from her.

And it seemed there was no escape.

He clutched the bread so tight it left a hand print and finally let the tears roll down his cheeks.

There was one more thing his mother could teach him.

When the candlelight in the window was snuffed out, Seonghwa peeked in to check that his mother had gone to bed and then made his way into the kitchen.

He could dig up the past or make his own way in the world. And deciding to make his own way, he began with making his own bread. He followed the recipe he’d learned the week after his birthday and kneaded all his frustrations into that dough.

The moon was obscured by the time he was done, but still feeling awake, he snuck out to Chaeyoung’s house and rapped on her window until she came out to meet him.

“What’s this?” She yawned, accepting the bread as they walked down to the fountain together.

“I just felt lonely,” Seonghwa shrugged, trying to disguise his shaking voice. He needed someone who wasn’t his mother to talk to, even if it had nothing to do with his recent discovery.

“In the middle of the night?” She laughed, taking a bite and making a sound of satisfaction. “This is still warm, did you just bake it?”

Seonghwa nodded and sat on the lip of the fountain, pulling off his shoes and dangling his feet in the water. “I couldn’t sleep,” he told her, and it was more or less true. “But I suppose Chan and Donghyun will be jealous we came here without them, won’t they?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Chan anything,” Chaeyoung snorted, brushing off the crumbs into the water and joining him. “And Donghyun is busy, remember?”

Seonghwa sighed wistfully. If only there was some master that he could impress that would sweep him away from all this confusion with Mother. “I don’t blame him,” he said quietly, sitting back to look at the stars that came in and out of focus between wisps of cloud. “We both have to grow up soon, too.”

“And will you be a baker?” Chaeyoung inquired, looking as if she wanted more bread.

“Maybe,” Seonghwa couldn’t help but smile at the way she was looking at him. “Apparently it’s one thing I can do.”

“You’re great at it,” Chaeyoung insisted and nudged him playfully. “You could probably expand your repertoire to cook as well.”

Seonghwa wanted to roll his eyes at the big word but decided to take the focus off of himself for awhile. “What will you do when you grow up?”

She was silent for awhile, looking at the faint glow that came from the palace lights.

“You know, I think it would be wonderful to be the Queen,” she decided. “Living in the lap of luxury seems much more appealing than it did last week, now that I’ve been on the palace grounds.”

Seonghwa furrowed his brow. “But I thought you wanted to be a soldier?”

“Maybe I’ll just do both,” Chaeyoung shot back, sticking her nose in the air. “Riding into battle with a crown on your head is a very glorious profession.”

Even while he laughed along, Seonghwa began to wonder if Mother had fancied herself a Queen too and the creeping thoughts brought his mood down again.

“So what is your tutor teaching you these days?” He asked as he pushed his legs back and forth through the water, making ripples that drifted lazily to the other end of the grand fountain.

In typical Chaeyoung fashion, she rambled on and on about school and her various interests and soon Seonghwa was feeling better, content to chat candidly until the pair of them became sleepy.

Eternally grateful for her unwitting encouragement, Seonghwa walked his friend home and bid her goodnight before climbing into bed himself and forgetting everything for a few hours.

The next day brought an uncomfortable atmosphere but Mother agreed to teach him to make dumplings. The next week it was streusel bread.

By age twelve he had mastered baking. Donghyun had moved away to Namhae to live and work as an artist with master Kwangsuk. Young Chan was enrolled in boarding school, and his and Chaeyoung’s father was deployed to the colonies, though she stayed behind in Doljeon to train to be a lady in waiting.

Seonghwa didn’t really know what that meant, but it was a job in the palace with the Queen that required combat knowledge for security purposes, so he approved. As much as she wanted to sneak him in to see the palace with her on days when she was working, he always refused. He didn’t need to catch any glimpses of the royal family— his family.

More and more he began to feel lonely, and when Chaeyoung was busy he had no one to talk to other than the bread.

He decided to move on to cooking.

Mother was tired and worn down most days and by the time Seonghwa was fourteen, he had learned all of her favourite dishes and perfected them.

Days blurred together. From the moment the morning tutor left to the moment Mother returned from work, Seonghwa dropped his perfect façade and tried to be himself. He wasn’t really sure who he was now, with his honest work on one side and his shrouded lineage on the other.

Wandering the streets gave him no answers, although a cute little stray cat followed him around from time to time, and cleaning the house until it was spotless didn’t help either.

“Do you want to belong somewhere, son?”

Seonghwa looked up from his bowl of stew at the guest sitting at their table.

His name was Mr. Hwang and he was an acquaintance of Mother’s.

“Yes,” he admitted, gauging Mother’s reaction. “It would be nice to get out of the city.”

Mr. Hwang was apparently a cooper who worked on a merchant ship, making the barrels they transported goods in. “My wife is terrified of water so she won’t join me, and I don’t know the first thing about food,” he proposed, sitting back and motioning to his empty plate in approval.

Seonghwa had cooked the lettuce wrapped fish with expensive ingredients from Kon. Only the best for Mother’s guests, because by sixteen he knew they were all apprenticeship candidates.

Even better, he was resourceful enough to save the bones and make broth out of them, lopping any other fish remains into a spicy soup. He was the perfect candidate for a seafaring culinary position. And even better it was away from the palace, away from Doljeon, away from Mother.

“How would you like to cook for me, and learn to be a cooper as well? You’ll be able to see the world.”

That last line was dangled tantalisingly in front of him, and without a second thought, Seonghwa agreed.

When he looked out his window at the palace that night, shutting out Mother and her anxious prattling, he didn’t feel crushing doubt for once. He felt hope.

And if he had his wish, he would never see that palace again.

...

A/N: Surprise! A big timeskip happened and you might be wondering why, but stay tuned and you'll see ;) Thanks for reading and as always don't forget to kudos and comment!

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keyofjetwolf · 4 years ago

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Pitch Me your thing!

HELLO HELLO MY SUNBEAMS. For most every category, there was an impressive turn-out for pitches, so I thought we’d utilize the weirdness of this year’s GIFTENING to give something new a try. The popular vote winner for each category will happen on the first day, but on the second, the winner will be chosen from YOUR PITCHES. Mostly those pitches will be to me. The exception is in Miscellaneous, where you’ll be pitching to my family, because what I want to do and what is most entertaining isn’t necessarily the same thing.

So! How will we do this thing? GLAD YOU ASKED. I’ll link you to a form in a minute with space for one pitch. Once you fill it out, you’ll be asked if you want to do another. There’s no limit to the number of pitches you can send in! But remember that if you submit multiple entries for the same category, you’ll basically be competing against yourself.

NOW WE’VE GOT SOME RULES FOR DOING THIS (which I mostly stole from Holligay, because I have no creativity this year). Please read them carefully! I’ll toss pitches that break any of these, and I’d rather your hard work not go to waste.

Pitch Me is open for your submissions from RIGHT NOW (22 December) through the very last day of this hellyear (31 December) at 11:59pm MT.

The thing you pitch must have come from what was nominated for THE GIFTENING 2020. (Full list of those nominations in every category below the cut on this post.)

Entries must be unsigned! I’m looking to chose based on the pitch alone, regardless of who submitted it.

The pitch itself must be 100 words or less. HAVE PITY ON ME I CAN ONLY CONSUME SO MUCH.

If you’d like to get some help, ideas, feedback, all that good stuff, the Discord is a FANTASTIC resource I encourage you to use.

HERE IS YOUR PITCH SUBMISSION LINK

And, as promised, below the cut you’ll find the list of all the nominees in every category you guys sent in this year. IT’S A LONG LIST HAVE FUN WITH THAT

Anime

A Place Further Than The Universe/Sora Yori mo Toi Basho Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban) Action Heroine Cheer Fruits Aggretsuko Aho Girl Air Master Akuma No Riddle Alien Nine Angel Beats! Angelic Layer Appare-Ranman Aria Aria the Animation Arrietty/ The Secret World of Arrietty (Ghibli film) Ascendance of a Bookworm Azumamga Daioh Baccano! Beastars Black Cat Blood + (the series) Bloom Into You Blue Drop/Tenshitachino Gikyoku Bodacious Space Pirates (starting right where you left off) BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense Boku no hero academia Bubblegum Crisis Card Captor Sakura: Clear Card Cardcaptor Sakura Castlevania the Animated Series Cells at Work Chaos; Head Chihayafuru Code Geass cowboy Bebop Cyborg 009 Death Note Death Parade Deca-Dence Demon Girl Next Door Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba) Diebuster: Aim For the Top 2 Dog Days dorohedoro Dot Hack//SIGN Dr. Stone Elfen Lied Erased (Boku Dake Ga Inai Machi) Escaflowne Excel Saga Fantastic Children Fate/Zero Flip Flappers Fresh Precure Fruits Basket 2019 Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Ga rei Zero GaoGaiGar gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex Ghost Stories (dubbed) Girls' Last Tour Great Pretender Hoseki no Kuni/ Land of the Lustrous House of Five Leaves/ Saraiya Goyou Inari konkon koi iroha Interviews with Monster Girls Inuyasha Isekai Izakaya "Nobu" Jellyfish Princess/ Kuragehime JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable Kaguya-sama Love Is War Kaleido Star Kannazuki no Miko Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! Kemono Friends Kiki's Delivery Service Kimi ni Todoke: From Me To You Kino's Journey/Kino no Tabi (2003) Land of the Lustrous (Houseki no Kuni) Little Witch Academia Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files EP0 {"A Grave Keeper") Love is Hard for an Otaku Love Live! Sunshine!! lupin the 3rd part 4 Madoka: The Rebellion Movie Magic knight rayearth Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha March Comes in Like a Lion Mardock Scramble Master of Martial Hearts Mawaru Penguindrum Megalobox Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid Mob Psycho 100 Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) Monster Mushishi My Bride is a Mermaid (Seto No Hanayome) My Love Story!!! My Neighbor Totoro My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom My Roommate is a Cat NANA Naruto Natsume’s Book of Friends Neon Genesis Evangelion (hateblog) New Cutey Honey Nichijou Ōban Star-Racers One Piece Ouran High school Host club Outlaw Star Paranoia Agent Perfect Blue Please Save My Earth Pop Team Epic Pretty Cure Fresh Princess Jellyfish/ Kuragehime Princess Mononoke Princess Principal Princess Tutu Project A-Ko promised neverland (/yakusoku no neverland) Psycho-Pass Ranma 1/2 Re: Cutie Honey Re:Creators Read or Die (OAV) Red Garden relife Revolutionalry Girl Utena Rose of Versailles Ruroni Kenshin Sailor Moon Sailor Moon (viz dub) Samurai Champloo (english dub) Sarazanmai School Days School-Live! Scum's Wish Senki Zesshou Symphogear (listed as just "Symphogear" on Crunchyroll.) Serei no Moribito (Guardian of the Spirit) Shin Sekai Yori (From The New World) Shirobako Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle Smile Pretty Cure (Japanese original)/ Glitter Force (english adaptation) Snow White with the Red Hair Sound Euphonium Strawberry Panic (yuri) Sweetness and Lightning The Devil is a Part-timer The Devil Lady The disasterous life of saiki k (saiki kusuo no Sai Nan) The End of Evangelion (movie) the Promised Neverland The Twelve Kingdoms Tiger & Bunny Tokimeki Tonight ToraDora Tsubasa Chronicle Umineko When They Cry Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid Vinland Saga Violet Evergarden Whispered Words (Sasameki Koto) With a Dog AND a Cat, Every Day is Fun Yona of the Dawn Yu Yu Hakusho Yugioh Duel Monster Yuki Yuna is a Hero Yuri Kuma Arashi Yuri On Ice!!! Zoids: Chaotic Century Zombie Land Saga

Non-Anime Animated

Adventure Time Amphibia Animainiacs (Original) Animaniacs (Reboot) Archie's Weird Mysteries As Told By Ginger Barbie Life in The Dreamhouse Batman the Animated Series Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot Big Mouth Bob's Burgers Bojack Horseman Bravest Warriors Captain N: the Game Master Carmen Sandiego (1994) Carmen Sandiego (2019) Castlevania (Netflix) Cats Don't Dance Coco Courage the Cowardly Dog Craig of the Creek Cyber Six Daria Darkwing Duck Dragon Booster Dragons: Riders of Berk DuckTales (2017) Exo-Squad Fern Gully Fillmore! Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends Futurama Gargoyles Glitch Techs Godzilla: The Animated Series Green Lantern the Animated Series Hedgehog in the Fog (Ёжик в тумане) Hey Arnold Hilda Infinity Train Iron Giant JEM Kim Possible Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts Legend of Zelda animated series (1989) Legion of Super-Heroes Liberty Kids Magical Girl Friendship Squad Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart The Legend of Korra Moominvalley Motorcity My Little Pony (Classic, NOT FiM) My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks Onyx Equinox Over the Garden Wall Over the Moon (2020 film) Owl House Primal Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure Redwall Rise of the TMNT Roco's Modern Life Rugrats RWBY Samurai Jack Seis Manos She-Ra (1985) She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) Sonic Boom Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse Star vs. the Forces of Evil Strange Magic Super Mario Brothers Super Show Superman: The Animated Series Teen Titans The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo The Animals of Farthing Wood The Dragon Prince The Hollow The Legend of Tarzan (TV series) The Magic School Bus (1994) The Mysterious Cities of Gold The Pirate Fairy (Disney Fairies) The Powerpuff Girls (1998) The Real Ghostbusters Thundercats (1985) Thundercats (2011) Transformers: Prime Tuca and Bertie Twelve Forever Undone Venture Bros Wakko's Wish Wakfu Wander Over Yonder We Bare Bears (TV) Winx Club Wreck-It Ralph (2012) X-Men Evolution X-Men: The Animated Series Xiaolin Showdown

Live Action

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 28 Days Later 3rd Rock from the Sun A Series of Unfortunate Events American Horror Story: Asylum Babysitter's Club (2020) Batman (the old Adam West version) Better Call Saul Black Mirror Blackbeard's Ghost (Peter Ustinov) Boston Legal Boy Meets World Boys Over Flowers Bromance (Taiwanese tv series) Brooklyn 99 Buffy the Vampire Slayer Cadfael Cagney and Lacey Charmed (2018) Chopped Cleopatra 2525 Cloak and Dagger Clue (1985) Community Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Dead Like Me Dead To Me Deadwood Death Note (Netflix) Derry Girls Dimension 20 - The Unsleeping City Doctor Who (New) Doom Patrol Dracula's Daughter (1936) Escape to the Chateau Farscape Fingersmith Galavant Godzilla (2014) Gokushufudo (2020 Japanese TV drama) Golden Girls Good Omens H20: Just Add Water (somewhere in seasons 1-2) Happy New Year Harley Quinn movie Hateblog a REALLY STRAIGHT soap opera. Haunting of Bly Manor His Dark Materials (HBO series) Holes Hot Fuzz House Inception Inside No. 9 Iron Chef America Joan of Arcadia Julie and the Phantoms Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Kamen Rider Build Kamen Rider Ex-Aid Kamen Rider Fourze Killing Eve Knives Out Letterkenny Leverage Little Women (2019) Lucifer Matlock Majisuka Gakuen MASH Merlin Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol Money Talks (1997 film) Motherland: Fort Salem Murder She Wrote Mythbusters Nailed It! Never Have I Ever Once Upon a Time Orphan Black Pen 15 PGSM Pi (1998) Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018) Pride and Prejudice: A New Musical Puppy Bowl Pushing Daisies Rome (hateblog) Russian Doll Sabrina Sense8 Sera Myu: Un Nouveau Voyage Shameless Sierra Burgess Smallville So Weird Star Trek: TOS (or their films) Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Star Trek: Voyager Stargate Atlantis Suckerpunch Supernatural (out of context speedrun the last three episodes) Sweetheart Switched at Birth Tall Girl Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles The Addams Family (1964) The Big Flower Fight The Booth at the End The Bride With White Hair The Crown The Fresh Prince of Bel Air The Good Place The Kissing Booth The L Word The Librarians The Magicians The Muppet Show The Pregnancy Pact The Room The Steve Harvey Show The Stranded The Untamed The Witcher The Wolfman (1941) Torchwood Twilight Zone (original) Twin Peaks Ultraman Nexus Umbrella Academy Van Helsing Warehouse 13 Warrior Nun What We Do In The Shadows (tv show) Will & Grace Wynonna Earp X-Men 2: X-Men United Xena: Warrior Princess

Miscellaneous

Alpha Flight #41-62 Anime music dance party, the logistics of which are to be determined! Ask Hot Pocket and/or Mina-pup AskSharknado: Giftening Edition Attempt to make French macaroons Commentary on old Goggles Critical Role Crowdsourced: A Black Mirror-style day where Jetty has to ask what her choices are of the audience for everything! I give you a menu, you decide what she has for dinner? What does she wear? Does she walk on the track or do the eliptical? Does she go to a movie with Doc or play a video game with Mike? Can be done alongside other stuff. Doodle Day Dramatic readings of fan fiction! Drunk History (or whatever your favorite subject would be) with Jet Wolf! Drunk Sailor Moon Exorcising Closet Ghost Fic Prompts Day Figuarts Day! (Not specifically freeing anyone, just various fun poses and such) Guess the plot of a show based on its opening Her Shim-Cheong (manhwa) House of X/Powers of X Hubby's Choice IDW Jem comics liveblog Intros Only (watch show openings, give commentary, guess what show is about, etc.) Jackbox Games Jet Wolf paints along with Bob Ross Jet and Doc go to Heaven/Hell, respectively: Jet gets to write reams of words about the awesomeness of Rei Hino and Doc has to read all of them and say ONLY NICE THINGS. Jet does Tiktok dances Jet Liveblogs Holligay: A Nature Documentary Jet Ranks Sailor Moon Image Songs Jet Reads Goosebumps Jet Reads Legion of Super-Heroes Jet redesigns the Wolf and Gay offices! Jet shows off her knitting Jet Wolf attempts to recreate scenes from Sailor Moon with Mina and Hot Pocket and/or whatever is in the house Jet Wolf reacts to Sailor Moon tiktoks (in blog form) Jet Wolf reads Love and Rockets. Jet Wolf reads the Jem comics by IDW Jet Wolf reviews her old top 100 Sailor Moon moments list Jet Wolf talks about Archie Comics Jet Wolf talks about each cel she owns and why they are so awesome. Jet Wolf writes Poetry Jet Wolf's Top 5's Jet, Hubby and/or family play board games Jetty Rants and Raves Jet Wolf tries to crack the Gravity Falls Codes Kiwi Blitz on Hiveworks Let's Play on Webtoon Liveblog: Favorite X-Men comic book arcs Livestream Pathfinder one-shot LOONA (Collection of music videos with an ongoing story/universe about GIRLS who are FRIENDS and SAVE THE UNIVERSE) Lore Olympus on Webtoon Mike regales us with "the story of your love" while you get increasingly embarrassed Mina and Hot Pocket day - liveblog like a nature documentary Mister Tsukino Does His Taxes and the Household Budget (Sailor Moon fan comic by Shadowjack) Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake Not So Shoujo Love Story on Webtoon Pitch Mishaps for Untitled Senshi Game (it is a lovely day in Juuban, and you are a Horrible Minako.) Pitching hubby's favorite media at (readers/holligay/jill/momigay) Playing with dolls (because how could 3 women not have any dolls between them) Re-Take By Studio Kimigabuchi (All Ages Version) Real or Fake Anime (people submit descriptions of anime you guess if it is an anime that actually exists or not) Reviewing succulents Scavenger hunt! Not entirely sure how it would work, maybe folks could send in asks for you to show things like your favorite Rei Hino object, or the thing that's been with you the longest, etc. sewing/knitting/baking tutorial Share or rant about a Roman history topic Sleepless Domain on Hiveworks Talking to Docholligay 2: Doc Harder (basically you talking to Doc's future womb evictee while still in there and telling them stuff like say the greatness of Rei Hino) The Monster Duchess and Contract Princess (manhwa) The Polar Bear Plunge--I take Jetty to our finest Lake Elmo in January, and she jumps in! Note: THIS IS NOT DANGEROUS, WORRYWARTS. I'll bring a life preserver, I've done it before, and I would do it with her if I weren't pregnant. The Senshi Helpline--The Senshi, taking your advice questions, here and now! The World of Moral Reversal Virtual knitting/crafting circle! Let us craft and chat with you! What-If #24 Gwen Stacy Lived Worm the web serial Write an explanation for a drawing we send you! Yuri Hell's Kitchen

#THE GIFTENING 2020 #THE GIFTENING 2020 admin stuff

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softstarfire · 4 years ago

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Secret Apprentice: Chapter 7

Our Last Chance

Chapter 6 - (AO3) (FF.NET)

Summary: The Teen Titans deal with the aftermath of Starfire’s betrayal. They decide to give her one last chance. When her friends arrive to talk to her someone else joins the party only to ruin it. Will a kiss save her last chance?

Starfire was almost falling down. Her powers were lacking because of the emotional stress and her endurance was significantly affected by it. She was about to pass out when Red X came in. “She is Starfire!”, he said as he pulled the mask off Starfire and he fell back to the floor in front of her. Robin backed away shocked.

Starfire was breathing heavily, trying to gather her strength back. She looked at Red X, he was bleeding from his arms, the wounds had gotten bigger and he couldn’t stand anymore. He just held her mask on his hand tightly. The alien girl let her head down. “Starfire? Are you working for- “, the door was opened up by Cyborg’s sonic cannon, cutting off Robin’s question. Is that what he noticed first? The rest of the team entered, and they froze at the sight of Starfire in the Red S suit. “Star!”, Beast Boy yelled out loud. “Starfire! Tell me, why are you working for Slade? Is it because of that picture of Blackfire?”, Robin insisted. Blackfire, she had to stop her. She couldn’t lose any more time. “Starfire!”, Cyborg yelled. “What is going on?”, Raven asked horrified. The princess let herself fall to the ground, just steps away from Red X. “Star, please, tell me why you are working for Slade. Did Red X put you up to this?”, Robin tried asking once more. Starfire lifted her head up slowly and took her gloves off. “Is Red X using you? I can- “, Robin slowly moved closer, trying to reach Red X with his hands. Was Slade that important to Robin?

She stood up, extending her right arm with a starbolt ready to blow on her hand. “Leave him alone”, she spoke firmly. The Titans looked scared as they stood there frozen, not knowing what to do. “Starfire, I am just trying to catch Slade and if Red X is working for him then I have to take him down”, Robin tried to explain himself. “You have already done that”, she responded, her eyes were glowing, and her hand had finally stopped shaking. “But I have to take him in to question him about Slade”, Robin tried to come closer once more. “Do not touch him”, her tone was firm again, no cracks even if she felt like crying. “But Slade-“, she cut him off. “Robin, I need you to let him go. Can you do that for me, please?”, she spoke softly, putting her hand down again. “You know I can’t, Star. I have to catch Slade”. His voice cut through her hope.

She closed her eyes.

“Then, I am sorry”, she opened her eyes fully lit up. She groaned as she gathered all her strength and built a green energy force field around herself and the masked thief. She walked in front of Red X and released her power in an explosion. Her teammates were pushed away because of the blast. She quickly grabbed the utility belts, carried Red X in her arms and flew out of the building.

The door automatically opened letting the Teen Titans into the main area of the Tower. They walked in silently. Cyborg and Beast Boy sat on the couch. Raven stood by the window, looking at the dark city in front of her. Robin was the last one to enter. He walked to his teammates and stopped in front of them, trying to get his thoughts in order so he could say something, but it wasn’t working.

“What was that?”, Cyborg was the first one to speak. Nobody replied. “It shouldn’t have happened”, he continued, letting his head fall into his hands. “I should’ve known. I felt her energy. It had changed since that night when Slade poisoned Robin. But I just thought she just felt sad like she said”. Beast Boy stood up after Raven spoke. “Well, I told you all that she was Red S. And what did you do? You didn’t believe me. So there, it shouldn’t have happened because I told you about it but you didn’t take my word for it”, he yelled at the others. “We didn’t believe you because you are not a reliable source”, Raven replied, turning her back to the rest of her team. “And you are?”, the shape shifter clapped back immediately. “Well, they had just stolen the T-Ship I thought that you were just shocked and-“, the green teen cut her off. “You thought that I made it up because I went all coocoo because they stole our T-Ship”, she turned back and walked to him.

“Stop it both of you. We didn’t believe it because it’s Starfire. She could never hurt us”, Cyborg stood up, pushing the empath and the shape shifter away before their argument got more heated. Robin didn’t know what to say to everything that his teammates where discussing. His mind tried to stay technical, to think critically but there was one thing that didn’t make any sense at all. If she was being forced to work for Slade, why did she kiss Red X? “But she hurt us”, he meant she hurt him, but he couldn’t bring himself to accept that. “And we have to stop her”.

Beast Boy laughed. “May I remind you that we didn’t “stop you” when you were working with Slade”, he sat back on the couch. “I wasn’t working with Slade”, the leader angrily replied. “Maybe she isn’t working with him either”, Raven sat beside Cyborg.

Robin was about to speak when his communicator started ringing. He opened it up and saw the major’s face in his screen. “Robin, turn on the news. Jump City is under attack”, the call ended. The leader immediately turned on the TV and tuned in a news channel. On their large screen they saw a video in which Blackfire spoke to the citizens of Jump City declaring that she would become the new ruler of the city and will be taking Earth soon. Slade stood next to her and behind them there was an army of tamaraneans.

“Do not try to stop me. I will not have mercy on anyone who tries to defeat me. I will be announcing the new rules of Jump City, or may I say of this new Tamaranean colony”. The video ended.

“I can’t believe it”, Beast Boy said. “She wasn’t just working with Slade, she was working with Blackfire to take our planet”, Robin stated as he walked to the screen. “Was this her plan all along?”, he continued. “Are you hearing yourself?”, Cyborg stood up and walked to Robin. “Cyborg, Tamaran is taking over our planet. Don’t you see it?”, the leader asked angrily. “The only thing I see is that you are getting Slade obsessed again. You are not making sense. Starfire didn’t come to Earth to take it, she came to ask for help and we helped her”, the half robot replied. “He’s right. We helped her, we helped you when Slade took you, we tried to help Terra when he took her, but we were too late. Maybe if we stop fighting, we can help Star once again before it’s too late for her too”, Beast Boy stood up, slowly getting closer to the pair of teens. “Come on, Robin. You know Starfire, she is our friend. I know you are hurt, but she’s your best friend”, Cyborg calmed down. “You said it before, she’s been there for all of us. We have to be by her side now if she needs us”, Raven also walked to the leader. He sighed. “Well, we know where to look”.

Starfire sat on the edge of the couch of the leaving room in the lodge. She hid her face in her hands, trying to keep her tears from falling, trying to keep herself from sobbing, trying not to break. So many thoughts, so many questions. Why did Robin react like that? Why did he get so obsessed with Slade? Would he able to hurt her just to get to Slade? She shook her head. He wouldn’t, this wasn’t him. Did Slade poison Robin again? Why else would he be able to hurt her? Why didn’t he care about the kiss? Why did she do it?

“Are you okay?”, Jason’s voice interrupter her tangled thoughts. She looked up at him. “I should be the one asking. Are you okay, Jason?”, she moved away just a bit when he came to sit beside her. “I feel better, thanks for patching me up and giving me whatever those pills were”, he smiled at her, she did too but the tears in her eyes made them sparkle with sadness.

“I am sorry”, she apologized, hiding her face again as her tears started falling down. “Hey, Star, don’t say sorry. We had a rough day, it’s okay”, she looked back up as he said that. “Slade called, he said we must wait for his order to get the diamond to him”, she tried to hide a crack in her voice, but she couldn’t, and she bit her lip to keep herself together. “I am so- It is just too much and-“, again she bit her bottom lip. “Do you wanna talk about it?”, he asked moving closer to her. She shook her head, breaking down once more, trying to hide herself again but Jason stopped her, wrapping her arms around her waist in a tight hug. She put her arms around his shoulders, her face buried in the space were his right one met his neck.

Starfire’s body was shaking as she cried her heart out. Jason held her firmly, trying as hard as she was doing to keep her from breaking. She felt so fragile in his arms, so vulnerable and so shattered. He tried his best to keep her pieces together, but he could feel her breaking again and again as a new wave of tears hit her.

She cried for a while and he waited patiently, caressing her hair with one of his hands, pushing away her guilt with reassuring words and listening to her mumbling about how sorry she was. Maybe 10 minutes after that, they had moved around. Jason was sitting with his back on the backrest of the couch. She sat beside him, her head on his chest, with her face still trying to find a hiding spot, and her arms were around his waist. He was still caressing her red hair softly, playing with it from time to time and then just brushing it with his fingers.

“Jason?”, Starfire looked up. “Hey”, he replied his voice sounded soft like a whisper. “I am grateful for your company and understanding”, she was still looking up at him. “Anytime”, he replied in his regular playful tone. “I feel ready to talk about it”, she moved away from him. The warmth of her body was no longer on his and he missed it immediately. The alien princess sat by his side, closer to the edge of the couch.

“I do not like lying to my friends. I do not like lying to-“, she caught a sob right before it made her break again. “To Robin?”, X asked, and she nodded. “But I feel hurt by him too. I know I am the one who is wrong, I am the one lying, and I am the one who betrayed them, but I am hurt too”, she sighed. “It hurts talking about him”. Jason moved forward so his face was closer to hers. “Then forget about him. I wanna know more about you. Who’s this mysterious alien princess with those amazing powers?”, Starfire giggled at his question. “What do you want to know?”, she played along. “Do you fly everywhere you go just because you can?”, she nodded. “Do you use your powers for mundane things like frying an egg or baking something?”, she looked away. “I am not good at cooking Earth foods, but I do make the best Tamaranean dishes. I shall prepare them for you sometime”, she smiled again. “Is your body always that warm?”, she pouted as she thought about her answer. “Well, the cold only affects me when it is very strong. I do stay warm even in the snow”, she nodded. “You are amazing”, the words slipped out of his mouth but the smile on her face made him feel better.

“What about you, Jason?”, she moved closer to him, pushing him a little bit when she bumped her shoulder on his. “What do you want to know, miss warm princess?”, she looked away. Her eyes looking around as her mind tried to come out with an interesting question. “Where did you learn French?”, she asked, and he moved his head to the side. “When did I tell you about French?”, she shook her head. “You did not. I received it through the lip contact. I noticed when I read a sign in the museum and I could understand a word in French”. The lip contact, he thought. “My adoptive father taught me. I am also learning Chinese, German and Russian”, somehow he hoped she was interested in learning any of those languages. “What is an adoptive father? Is it a different father?”, Starfire looked back at him. “Well, when kids lose their true parents, sometimes they will get adopted by another father or mother, those become your adoptive parents”, he explained looking away, thinking about his own ‘true parents’. “Are they not real? Why are they not just your new parents? Or are they your k’norfka?”, Bruce wasn’t his real father to him, but he was to Dick, he thought. “I guess they can become just your parents with time, but we are not there yet. What is a k’norfka? Can I learn Tamaranean through lip contact?”, Jason frowned, and Starfire giggled.

“Jason… About the lip contact”, the alien princess looked down at her feet. “I am sorry”, he looked back at her when she said that. He wasn’t sorry. “It’s okay”, no it wasn’t just okay. “I was scared, and I just wanted to…”, she moved her head to the other side, away from him. “It’s okay”, no, again, it wasn’t just okay. “I do not even know what I wanted. I just felt scared and alone, but then I did not feel alone anymore”. Both teens stayed silent for a couple of minutes. “Starfire?”, she turned her head back and looked at him. “Yes, Jason”, he looked into her emerald eyes. He felt trapped in them. “Did you-“.

Before Jason could speak a loud noise broke the mood. Jason groaned, as he took his mask from the coffee table and put it on. He looked through the glass wall in front of them while he stood up. “There’s an elephant in the patio”, he announced. Starfire stood up. “My friends. We can’t let them take the diamond or know about the plan”, Starfire put on her utility belt, which was on the coffee table too. Red X put on his too.

The Titans walked to the door and knocked on it. “They are very polite”, Jason joked around. “Starfire, we want to talk”, Cyborg yelled. “That seems worse”, X replied. “Do you want me to make them go away?”, Starfire shook her head. “We have to get to Slade and give him the diamond. Take it, it is in my room. Then drive to Slade, I will distract them and then I will go with you”, Starfire pushed Jason. “Starfire, open up!”, Beast Boy yelled. “Are you sure?”, Red X asked and she nodded.

As Red X ran into Starfire’s room, she walked to the door and opened it. “Star, can we talk?”, Robin asked as he stood in front of her. “I do not wish to talk. Please, I need you to leave”, her voice was soft like it usually was. “We won’t leave, Star. We are your friends. If you need us, we will be here for you”, he continued. He sounded more like her Robin than he did back in the museum. “Come on Star, we know about Blackfire and Slade. We can take both down together?”, Cyborg tried to get her to let her guard down, but she refused once again. “I am warning you, stay away from me”, she stated firmly. “Starfire, you don’t want to hurt us. I can feel it. Whatever it’s going on, we will help you”, Raven tried to touch her arm, but the alien princess pushed her away. “You do not understand. I am not on your side anymore. I am- “, evil?

Once again, a loud noise interrupted their conversation. This time, the cause of it made Starfire shiver. Blackfire landed behind her teammates. “Hello, little sister”, the Titans got ready to fight her. “Don’t worry Star, we’ll take care of her”, Cyborg. “Didn’t you kids hear the news? I won’t have mercy on you”, the purple haired girl walked to the Titans, playing with the red emerald shaped diamond she wore in a necklace. “We won’t have mercy on you either”, Robin declared as the team got ready to fight her. “This will be fun”, Blackfire caressed the jewel but before she could fight the teens, her sister stood in front of her.

“Star, come on, we can take her”, Beast Boy said. “What is it, sis? I thought you wanted to be on the right side of history”, Starfire’s hands were shaking. “Are you trying to disrespect your queen?”, Starfire shook her head. “Are you and your human friend traitors?”, Blackfire’s eyes burned through her sister’s. “You mean Slade?”, Robin asked as he moved closer to the purple eyed girl. “Yes, do you want me to kill him after I kill them?”. Again, all eyes were on Starfire. “It is not that, I just wish to assist you. You should not waste your time with petty fights”, the red-haired princess explained, trying to sound as calm and collected as she could. “Interesting, sister”, Blackfire playfully smiled at the thought of what was about to come. Starfire looked back at her friends, they were confused. “Does that mean you are giving up?”, Beast Boy asked. “No, ‘dude’, that means, she is taking you down”, Blackfire laughed as she lifted herself up. “Come on, sis, show time!”, the older girl announced watching from above.

Starfire turned around, her powers weren’t ready to use, she didn’t feel anger, she felt fear, just pure fear. Red X saw her from inside the lodge as he was about to go to the basement. He couldn’t leave her alone, she looked like she needed help and she was there for him before, so he decided to be by her side now.

The door opened and Red X walked out. “Starfire remember the X”, he said, pointing to the clocking device in his utility belt. “Who is this? Is he your new boyfriend, sis? You are really into capes, aren’t you?”, Blackfire asked, still looking at the scene like it was some twisted horror movie made just for her. Red X stood back.

“I got it, get to Slade”, the Tamaranean princess stated. “Wait”, Robin yelled in his regular commanding tone. “What is going on, Star?”, was he finally asking what she wanted him to ask? “Why are you two working for Slade together?”, the masked hero asked, walking up to her. “Sister, I’m getting bored”, Blackfire booed. But lucky for Starfire, she felt the fury she needed building up slowly. “What did Slade offer you?”, Robin continued approaching her. “Why do you want to protect him?”, Starfire chuckled. She didn’t want to, but she did. “Robin is there anything else you want to know?”, the Tamaranean teen firmly asked. “Yes”, Robin finally stood in front if her, just a couple of steps away. “Have you been working for him ever since you came to Earth? Is that why way became a Titan? Did you help Slade get to me?”, the shock that appeared in her face while he made his questions quickly turned into anger. “How dare you insinuate that? I would never hurt you, Robin”, she quickly answered, her eyes fully lit up. “Well you have already done that”, did he mean the kiss? “How?”, she asked, her eyes going back to normal. “You are working with Slade, aren’t you?”, his tone, his frown, Slade.

Her eyes lit up once more and another explosion of green energy sent the Titans flying away. Red X, covered behind his cape and his mask hid the horror in his expression. He had never seen her like this.

“Yes, I am. I am working with Slade and serving my sister to take this planet. But the only thing you care about is Slade”, Starfire angrily yelled out her words. Robin and the rest of the team were getting back up slowly. Raven was the first one to approach Starfire, who had a Starbolt ready to blow in her hand. When the half demon touched it, thinking the alien would let it go, it hurt her. Starfire stood still, fear trying to break her again and many emotions did the same but for the first time she couldn’t allow herself to feel them.

A birdarang pushed her hand away, when Starfire tried to reach Raven’s. She looked back at Robin. “Starfire, this is your last chance. Stop it or we will have to take you down”, the leader of the team declared. The alien princess didn’t answer, she just looked at him, trying read his eyes, trying to guess if there was any way things could go back to how they were before. When did she care that much about him asking about the kiss? The real question she wanted to hear from him was the one was about to ask back at the lodge, at least she thought he would say what she wished for. But this was her last chance and also their last chance.

She could feel the tears building up and the fury flying away. No, no, no. Don’t. Not right now. She tried to focus on the anger, on the fury, but no amount of fury could wash over the pain she felt for just thinking about losing him. No, no, no. Don’t leave. Who was she asking to stay? Did she want him to stay or did she want the fury to stay? Too many emotions, her powers were getting weaker and she let her arms fall to the sides of her body.

“Star-“, Robin walked to her but a purple blackbolt pushed the masked hero to the ground. “Well, sister, if you are not taking the trash out, I will”, Blackfire announced, her eyes lit up and her hands glowing with energy ready to shoot. A birdarang flew to the older sister and before it touched her, Starfire blasted it with a starbolt. “Do not worry”, Starfire’s eyes started glowing up again as she flew to her friends and started shooting starbolts again and again.

Red X stepped back, shocked at the scene that was evolving in front of him. Starfire was winning the fight, her abilities combined with the the Red X suit were too much for the Teen Titans. One by one her friends fell to the ground, trapped in sticky Xs, electrocuted, out of order or just hurt. The last one standing was Robin, the one who she had been avoiding. Jason knew that this was a changing point for her but didn’t know if she would come out fine from it. He tried to join her, but Blackfire shot him a couple of blackbolts that he didn’t get to avoid.

Starfire turned around to see Red X wounded, she whispered her name in despair. Her eyes going back to normal. “No sidekicks for this one. Robin gets a pass”, Blackfire laughed at the expression on the masked teen as he groaned. Starfire’s anger was back, she was angry at Blackfire for hurting Jason and Robin caught it. He threw one of his smoke pellets to run away but Starfire followed him.

This wasn’t like him; he would never let his teammates on the ground and run away. The anger she felt for Blackfire was covered with worry that she now felt for Robin. What was he trying to do? She went after him, running just like he did.

Something hit her ankles and made her trip. Robin had made her run into the woods, used his Bola to trap her and she fell to the ground as she lost balance. “Starfire, what is this?”, he asked, and she looked up at him. “Why did you hurt our friends? Why are you letting Blackfire control you?”, he stopped himself, she noticed he was struggling to say something. “Why do you care so much about Red X?”, the question hurt more than anything she had taken to this day. And it hurt because she could feel the pain in Robin’s voice. “Do you care about him?”, she sighed when he asked her that. “I do”, she answered, freeing herself from the weapon he had used on her. “And…”, again he was struggling to talk. “Do you care about me?”, again, she felt like he had just shoot her straight to her heart. She couldn’t answer, she couldn’t fall for it. Not now.

“Star, did you become closer to me to help your sister and Slade?”, the pain she felt made her step back. If only she could say what she really felt. “I don’t understand what is going on. I wanna ask you so many questions. One minute we are hanging out on our first date, then you are kissing Red X and taking Earth. It doesn’t make sense”, he continued. “Make it make sense, Starfire”, she shook her head. “No, what? No, you don’t care about our team? About me? About us?”. Us? Again, he was referring to them as a couple. But they weren’t and now she felt like they never would be.

“I have to do this, Robin. It will make sense later”, she spoke up finally and he only grew more confused at her statement. “What does that mean?”. Starfire continued shaking her head. The teen boy got closer to her, close enough for her heart to start beating faster than it normally would and for her cheeks to blush. “Look, Star, I am not good with words. I am not the right one to ask you to open up, but I need you to. Please, Starfire”, his right hand went up to her cheek, caressing it softly with his thumb. “Robin, I cannot”, he put his other hand in her other cheek. “Yes, Star, you can do it”, she shook her head once more. “What can I do to make you trust me again?”, Robin was whispering, and it made her shiver. She knew what she wanted and finally she got it. His lips softly landed on hers and she immediately closed her eyes.

Time froze, or at least that’s how it felt for her. How soft, she thought as her lips danced with his. Sweet, she thought next as their mouths opened up just enough for them to taste each other. Warm, she thought as his arms wrapped around her waist pulling her closer. No, she thought as both let go of the kiss panting. He smiled, looking at her blushing face. “I am sorry for getting so obsessed with Slade. It’s just that he’s put you in so much danger and then he made me hurt you. I still can’t forget about it. I can’t forgive him for that”, his words healed her wounds and her teary eyes reflected how much she needed to hear him. “I trust you, Star, I will help you take Blackfire down. I will follow your lead and we will get our home back”, Robin’s voice sounded so reassuring, so calming and so safe. “Do you trust me, Star?”, he asked. “I do, Robin, I trust you and I-“, as she was about to pour her heart out a purple blackbolt shot Robin on the back, making him fall into her arms.

A/N: hey! hope you like the 7th episode. so blackfire’s finally in the story and she will be even meaner next time they see her. let me know your thoughts for this episode, any guess on what’s next? hope you are having a nice day/night.

Episode 8 spoiler: The Teen Titans were waking up, slowly sitting in their pods. Robin was standing up, holding his body against one of the pod’s walls. She quickly ran to her friends, followed by Red X. “Friends”, she whispered as she stood in front of Beast Boy’s pod. “I am getting you out of there”, she joyfully spoke, walking to the next pod: Cyborg’s. “I promise”, she moved to Raven’s pod. “We will have one more chance”, she stood in front of Robin’s pod. He came closer to her, his hands trying to reach hers through the glass, but they couldn’t touch. On the glass she also saw Red X’s reflection.

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kuratoki · 5 years ago

Text

Changes 08

I have nothing to say :) I hope you guys are enjoying this!

Do you agree that things change in time? Well four years abroad would tell wouldn’t it?

Pairing: dancer! Reader x dancer! Jeno ft. NCT

Words: 2886

Warning: Mild swearing/health issues?

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 06.5 - 7

“I think today should be our last session.” Jeno said as he and Yeeun began what he was deeming their last workshop. There was nothing more he could help her with and the rest was now up to her own practicing.

“Are you sure? I still think I need..” Yeeun started but Jeno cut her off.

“Your moves and timing are fine Yeeun.” Jeno said, “You just need to have more control. For someone who spends a lot of her time with a dance club outside our academy, your control seems to be the most lacking. That’s something I can’t fix.”

She wasn’t going to admit that it hurt but it did. To hear something like that from someone she liked a lot hurt just as much and she frowned.

“So this is it then?” she asked and bit her lip, “Is there…”

She was cut off by the sound of a phone ringing and she watched Jeno run to the stereo to answer it, “I thought you said we had to keep our phones on silent.” she commented.

“I set my phone so that Y/N’s calls ring every time. I trust her enough not to call me during class or when she knows I’m busy unless its an emergency.” he said and quickly picked up, “Hey, what’s up?”

“Sorry to bother you...Seol and Nal got out.” he heard you say over the line.

“Crap.” Jeno said facepalming, “Where are they?”

“My house...” you said innocently and Jeno groaned.

“You stole my cats again? What about Bongsik?” he asked, preparing for your answer.

“Oh, she actually got out. Hana’s looking for her around my yard and I’m looking for her around yours.” you said and Jeno rubbed his temples, “When did she become an outside cat? She used to hate being close to open doors.”

“I got a leash and started taking her on walks cause she was getting too fat. Anyways, thanks for telling me. Text me when you find her and don’t forget my clothes. I’ll kill you if you can’t find her.” Jeno fake threatened and smiled when he heard you giggle.

“Would you really kill me though?” you asked innocently.

“Nah, then I wouldn’t have anyone pretty to sit behind in English.” he responded automatically not knowing the effects of his words on both girls that heard it.

After a moment of silence you cleared your throat, “Anyways, I’ll let you get back to your workshop. See you in like an hourish.” You hung up before he could even say goodbye.

“Sorry about that.” Jeno said, turning to Yeeun, completely missing the hurt in her eyes, “Shall we get started?”

“So is this...really our last session?” she asked Jeno once the two were done. Jeno was reading your text about how you found Bongsik sitting on one of the chairs on your patio and was now safely back in his house. Seol and Nal however, were apparently in your napping and you didn’t have the heart to move them.

“I have to give my progress report to our instructor next week and I see no reason why you need more help. It’s all on you now.” Jeno answered and froze when he felt arms wrap around his waist, “Yeeun…”

“I just thought...we’d get closer…” she said, her voice shaking from the nerves, “I’ve had a lot of fun with you these last few weeks and figured we had a connection.” her grip tightened and Jeno looked to the door. If anyone walked in at that moment they would probably get the wrong idea. Little did he know…

Gently but forcibly removing her arms, he turned around and gently pushed her back by her shoulders so there was a distance between them, making her squirm under his gaze.

“I’m not sure what gave you that message...and I’m sorry if it seemed like I led you on. But Yeeun, I never felt that way about you.” he said and saw the hurt in her eyes.

“But you could try right? Even if we don’t continue the workshops, we could always just hang out. See if somethings there?” she tried and Jeno sighed.

“I wouldn’t be able to feel that way about you when a part of my heart is already with someone else.” Jeno stated and Yeeun froze, her mind going to the one other person she knew.

“It’s that Y/N girl right?” she asked with furrowed eyebrows, “How can you say that when you’ve only known her for a few weeks? You probably don’t even know her past.”

“Is that what you really think?” he asked, confused, “Everyone knows that Y/N and I grew up together.”

“Y-you grew up together?” Yeeun stuttered, surprised, “So that means that your childhood love that everyone talked about was…”

Jeno nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets knowing he had to be completely with Yeeun and himself, “I’m sorry if it seems like I led you on or anything it was never my intention, but I can’t be with someone else knowing that I still have a chance with her.”

A knock on the door interrupted their conversation and you peeked your head in, noting Yeeuns red face.

Clearing his throat, Jeno made his way over to you, “Hey did you just get here?”

What he didn’t know was that you and Hana had arrived quite a bit earlier and saw the whole confession. When you saw Yeeun wrap your arms around him, it took a lot in you not to run in there to rip her arms away but another part of you wanted to see what Jeno would do. You were surprised by his own confession and how he handled the situation as a whole...just maybe...

“Was I interrupting?” you asked quietly motioning to Yeeun who looked uncomfortable in your presence.

Jeno let out a sigh and shook his head, offering you a tired smile, “I’ll tell you later?”

“Throw in hot chocolate and you have yourself a deal.” you said smiling, making the tiredness in Jeno decrease significantly and handed him the bag that contained his change of clothes, purposely brushing your hand against his, catching him by surprise.

“Thanks.” he said looking at your hoodie and leggings combo, his eyes narrowing, “That wasn’t the hoodie I gave you earlier…”

“I found this one in my bedroom when I was changing. Not my fault you’re leaving clothes all over the place.” you retorted, “Plus, this one looks better on me.” you stuck your tongue out playfully making Jeno chuckle.

“Shall we get going then?” Jeno asked and you nodded “I’ll get changed after. The guys are probably fooling around and waiting.”

“Are you guys going out?” Yeeun asked suddenly, noting Jeno’s hand that was resting on the small of your back, ready to lead you out.

“Yuta rented out a private room at some restaurant so a large group of us are getting dinner,” you said, even though you didn’t like her, you liked seeing the way she reacted when you were kind to her, “Do you want to come with?” you asked with a smile before Jeno could stop you.

Wanting to see if what Jeno said was real or not, she agreed.

“Cool, why don’t you get changed and then meet us at the NCT practice room?” you suggested just as your phone went off and an all too familiar name popped up, “On second thought, I have to take this. I’ll meet you guys at the practice room.” you said and quickly left the room to find a private place.

“My dear Jongin, how are you?” you answered and heard the person on the other line chuckle.

“I’m fine my lovely Princess, do you have time to chat? I’m actually on my way to Korea right now and I’d like to meet with you and the alien when I finish a few meetings.” Jongin said and you could hear the sound of the airport through the line, “How do you guys like SMAA?”

“I have a bit of time. I’m meeting a few friends for dinner and Renjun’s probably on the phone with Mia.” you answered, “SMAA is exactly how you described it to be. It’s just...a clash of the past and present and I’m not sure where I stand in all this.”

“Right, Mia told me something about that. Childhood friends meet your camp friends meet your boarding school friends.” Jongin said, “Anyways, it’s that time of year again for the Selects Junior team and if I recall, after this year, you will no longer be considered a junior.” Jongin started.

“That is correct, as long as I pass the year that is.” you confirmed, “What does it have to do anything?”

“The board was talking about what ballet they wanted to showcase for the season and someone mentioned Swan Lake. As you recall, you were our lovely Princess two years ago and before I continue, this is from the board, I had nothing to do with this.” Jongin disclaimed and for some reason, you had a feeling you weren’t going to like what he was going to say next.

“Anne-Marie has requested that instead of having auditions at the various schools again for the lead roles, she’d like you and Renjun to return to reprise your roles as Odette and the Prince.” he finished and when he didn’t hear you speak for a few minutes Jongin got worried, “Y/N?”

“Yea, I’m still here.” you said taking a breath, thinking about what Jongin had just suggested, “Why us?”

“Request from the Board.” Jongin said, “I’ll explain more when we meet up but I just wanted to let you know just in case she contacts you first. I gotta catch my plane but I’ll call you in a few days on where to meet. Think about it.”

“I will...it’s just...wow. She wants us again? Even after all the mess ups?” you asked, leaning against the wall when you felt yourself get light headed and you slowly sat yourself down.

“You were still one of the best and she knows you put your all in despite the injury.” Jongin reasoned, “Like I said, think about it okay? Enjoy your dinner Y/N.”

“I’ll see you in a few days.” you said and hung up quickly before putting your head between your legs in order to get rid of the dizziness and let out a breath.

“Y/N? Are you okay?” you heard Hana’s voice come from down the hallway and you looked up to see Jeno, Jaemin, Hana and Jisung walking towards you, they must’ve been ready to leave for dinner and had come to look for you.

It only took one look for Jisung before he started running towards you, knowing exactly what the issue was.

“I’m fine.” you said, shaking your head quickly to get rid of the dizziness, “I was just on the phone.”

“Lie to someone else please.” Jisung stated kneeling down next to you and took your hand in his. Despite the layers you were wearing, your hand was still cold, “You’ve been neglecting your health again haven’t you. When was the last time you took your supplements?” he nagged and went into his backpack, taking out a package of pills, “At least if you end up in the hospital this time, I won’t have to fly eleven hours to care for you.” he muttered, completely forgetting who he was with.

“What’s going on?” Jeno asked, sitting next to you while Jaemin and Hana sat in front, watching Jisung check various parts of your upper body as if he’d been doing this his whole life. He noted your pale complexion and the pill package, “You were fine earlier.”

“I am fine. Jisung’s overreacting.” you said but took the pills and water bottle Jisung offered you anyways knowing the dancer wouldn’t take no for an answer, “I can’t believe you still have these.”

“I carry them around in my bag for situations like this. I learnt my lesson after the hospital visit.” Jisung stated and looked at the other three, “She has a major iron deficiency that she has to maintain with supplements because what she eats doesn’t absorb enough. If she doesn’t, she’s prone to fainting.”

“So that’s what happened during competition season last year. Is that how you got your concussion?” Hana asked, completely forgetting that Jeno and Jaemin were still in the dark about your past.

“Concussion?” Jeno and Jaemin asked looking at you with concern and you waved it off.

“It was my first year preparing for the season alone since Renjun left at the end of the previous year and I guess I neglected my health a bit. I fell off the stage during my performance and apparently hit my head really hard.” you admitted sheepishly, “I woke up two days later and found Jisung by my hospital bed looking like he just got off the plane.

Jenos eyes snapped to Jisung who looked like he was holding something in when the boy puffed his cheeks out and bit his lip before letting out a shaky breath. This was obviously a memory that was tough for him and the way that Jisung shifted close to you to touch your hands again to ensure that the supplements were indeed doing their job told him that he was wary even now.

“I wouldn’t have found out if I didn’t call you after your competition was supposed to finish. To see how you did.” Jisung said with a huff, “The nurse answered your phone and I just remember talking to Tae and booking the first flight out. I couldn’t even think.”

“So thats why you disappeared so suddenly after regionals were over.” Jaemin finally said after a moment of silence, “Why didn’t you tell anyone? We would’ve been there for you.”

“I wasn’t thinking straight.” Jisung reasoned, leaning his head against your shoulder,“ She was alone while her parents were on the other side of the world. So I stayed with her till we had to leave for camp. There were a few people that came to visit her from time to time but they never stayed long.”

“I was grateful for him being there though. Sicheng wouldn’t stop nagging me after he found out when he saw us show up together at camp.” you said with a sigh, “Are we ready to go? Everyones probably waiting.”

“They all left already and we sent Yeeun with Yukhei.” Hana said, as Jeno helped you up, holding your small backpack in the process.

“You good?” he asked, his hand securing you by the arm.

“I’m good.” you said with a reassuring smile and turned to Jisung and gave him a hug, “Thanks for always having my back...Chicken Little.” you whispered, laughing when he playfully pushed you away.

“Why did you have to kill a moment like that for?!” he whined, waving his arms to the side.

“Is he okay?” Jaemin asked as you continued to laugh while Jisung rambled about what you could and could not call him in front of people.

“Probably called him Chicken Little again.” Hana said giggling behind her hand.

Jeno tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes, “Don’t see it.”

“Wait till he wears his glasses.” Hana said, “I think Y/N has a photo of him in character. You should ask. Same shirt, shorts and we even styled his hair a certain way.”

Hana’s last comment seemed to catch both yours and Jisungs attention and the two of you looked at her with mouths agape.

“YOU TOLD ME YOU DELETED THE PHOTO!!!” Jisung exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at you, “Delete it!”

“We...should be getting to dinner now right?” you asked, pretending you didn’t hear Jisung, “Don’t want to keep everyone waiting.” you said and grabbed Hana’s arm as the two of you took off down the hall, a frazzled Jisung chasing the two of you at almost the same speed.

Jeno and Jaemin watched the three of you with amused smiles and Jeno leaned towards Jaemin, “Hana has a copy right?”

“Nope, just Y/N. She showed me one time and I couldn’t stop laughing. The resemblance is something else.” Jaemin said as the two of them trailed behind you all the while listening to Jisungs frustrated rants about how he regrets being your friends but also doesn’t because everyone else around them were a variety of things.

This caused the duo to walk faster and smack the boy in the head simultaneously.

“You know in a typical situation like this.” Jeno stated, getting close to Jisungs face so you and Hana wouldn’t hear.

“You would be considered the fifth wheel.” Jaemin finished doing the same.

Pushing the two away, Jisung rolled his eyes. “Yea, when Jeno actually mans up and asks Y/N out officially. Times ticking dude.”

“I know, I know. Gosh, I feel like you guys are more invested in my relationship then I am.” Jeno said as the tables turned on him.

“We are. That’s the messed up part about it.” Jaemin deadpanned, “But Jisungs right, times ticking.”

“Soon.” Jeno said with a nod, watching you whisper something to Hana making the two of you giggle and you turned your head to look at him with a bright smile,

“I promise.”

It was time to set his plan in motion.

20 notes · View notes