#also the risk of a small team getting captured would be less than the entire army

[talkingharrystyles]

🌌I should clarified that the “grab them and risk it” wasn’t pertaining to the stunt. That small portion of his life will revert back. The stunt will end. It has a deadline, which will be met, as agreed. It’s akin to when you’re doing a group project- that’s what the stunt is. A project in lieu of marketing. The “grab them and take the risk” was directed to his own life and personal growth.

Some still are asking why stunt, I explained this to Luna and another awhile ago - stunting is less cost effective compared to marketing. Pap pics, “blinds” “fan sights”, and articles are cheap. She shows up and fans on both sides talk about her. She colludes with a few gossip sites, plants some accounts with content, and people talk. Ironically, people also talk about their scandalous “meeting” which brings the conversation back into the *tada* the film she and him are in. Thus, weaving the film’s marketing into their tabloid drama. That is how you can tell the difference between hers and Harry’s team articles. Olivia is the meant to carry the weight of marketing DWD- not Harry or Florence or any other cast member. That’s why you’re always going to see DWD mentioned when Harry is mentioned in her articles because she’s reminding the audience of her film (marketing). Same with Ted lasso when she and Jason are printing press of them. Harry’s articles lack the significant DWD promo. But that’s made up for with his his family bizarre behavior. They’re participating because, as suspected, Harry and his team are in on the backend deal, as I discussed with Luna back in March. Were they acting like this with Dunkirk? My Policeman? Did they do this with ICarly episode? They only act like this when they’re wanting something of his or Gemma’s to financially succeed. There’s proud but then there’s the temptation of greed. Doesn’t mean he’s this wicked, soulless creature from hell. If he was, believe it he would go full throttle and do the very things some fear. It just means that he’s human and falls into temptations. As said, not much is needed with stunting. It also comes with immediate ROI, which is paid directly to Harry and his team. It is work for them, after all. Which one of them wants to work for free? Other than a few brand promotions, Olivia compensation is the press (attention). DWD would had, in the right hands, been great. The spec script was pleasant (we all told people it was a rip off Westworld meets Stepford meets Truman meets get out), the cast was talented (Dakota. Shia too despite the side issues). The crew was equipped. All Olivia needed to have done was shut the frick up and follow agreed directions. But no, she got too power hungry once Harry joined and decided to go off tangent. She underestimated his fans and the GP by thinking “okay I can do PR with him and his fans will love me and believe it’s real because they’re young and naive and believe everything he says or does and I’ll get attention for both the film and I’ll get more money”. Yeah, okay. The same fandom that has people with the skills of Anonymous. You can totally recycle literally every PR move he’s previously done and think all his fans will believe it without question. For some shippers, you really can’t fault them. They truly do care about him, as a dear friend of mines said earlier. Those are the ones now realizing the truth, as they’re looking at the evidence and asking the right questions which aren’t being met with clear answers.

You all have been seeing that DWD’s official marketing was substituted for the stunt. Consider how “cheap” the quality of the film advertisements are. That’s not what it should be. Usually film’s posters are suppose to be an entirely different photo shoot, or, at least, an high quality image that perfectly captures the films message. Remember Twilight and the cast photo shoot prior to premiere? The first film budget was incredibly low yet Hardwicke managed to allocate the funds for ads.

Harry going down on Florence doesn’t tell people what DWD is about. Neither them in the bed. You know what would had? If she coordinated for them to be pictured together with one image mirroring perfection and the next dysfunction. Alluding to all is not what it seems.

“Live the life you deserve”.

Moron, the tagline is a play on the title. Not some IG coffee mug quote.

Something eerie like “Don’t worry darling, you’ll be alright” or “Don’t worry darling, we’re together forever” should had been used. Something. Seriously, this is why crew and Dakota left because Olivia is an idiot who swears she’s right. Like damn, I honestly do want to host a debate with this woman on certain issues just to see the depths of her ignorance.

Not to mention the absent of a film, of this anticipated caliber, as said last year, trailer shown on tv. I live in America and regularly watch channels Warner Bros own or affiliated with…. I’ve yet to see DWD official trailer, or it’s teaser aired at all. Maybe I’ve missed it. But it’s odd that the film, itself, isn’t being marketed as films like it are right now.

The less money paid for official marketing lowers the overall budget. Thus, allowing for Olivia to earn more of the backend deal. Marketing is separate from film budgeting. Which is why Marvel’s cost is usually in the millions. Olivia, Harry and Warner bros have long accepted it won’t be much which is why they’ve forfeited official marketing that a film like DWD should have. Instead settling for mediocrity. I mean, the discombobulated trailer wouldn’t had been released if Warner Bros had high hopes for DWD. It’s all to keep the cost low so she and others can take home whatever exceeds the budget. Just because the budget increased, the studio’s insurance policy is covering the unexpected cost due to unforeseen circumstances (COVID). Not sure why some are thinking she’s responsible for those issues. That’s not true. It’s the cost invested into the film that she’s responsible for gaining and exceeding.As long as DWD exceeds the budget invested into making the film, Olivia gets a portion of the contracted backend deal. If it remains below the cost invested, then she doesn’t. Whatever exceeds the budget is hers and will be divided amongst Harry, his team, and whomever else is in on the deal (I’m betting Katie).

I’m going to leave this here just in case anyone wants to read more of film marketing: https://www.nfi.edu/film-marketing/

🌌

[ghostgothgeek]

Chaos.

Another for the Phic Phight! This one kinda combines two prompts and I had so much fun writing it! In this, Danny and Tucker don’t know Sam plays video games yet. 5,063 words.

"What do you mean you don’t feel the same way? We´ve had a mutual crush on each other for years." Sam says angrily after finally confessing her love to him. But Danny´s heart was beating hard for someone else entirely. Prompt by phantomfana. 

Danny wants to ask his crush to the upcoming school dance. Prompt by Rikaleeta.

-----

It was another long night of ghost hunting for Danny. Technus took up the first part of the night, trying to take over the park’s new security system. Tucker was fortunately still awake to help him out with that. Then Johnny and Kitty rolled in, but they weren’t looking for trouble, they just wanted a date night and swore they wouldn’t be a problem. Apparently Fridays were their days off for “everything but each other”. Danny was a romantic, but he didn’t know if this was sweet or nauseating. Ember had put up a good fight, though. He was proud he only had one injury to tend to. He had dodged most of her attacks, but she was still a pretty advanced ghost. And, of course, Danny had caught the Box Ghost six, count them, SIX times. How did he always manage to get out?! He wasn’t difficult to take down, he was just a pest. 

Danny sighed as he sat down at his computer chair. It was only 12:30 am, and it was a Friday. He could sleep in tomorrow and he deserved at least a couple hours of fun. He logged into his online gaming account and saw Tucker was online. Figures. He pulled up the chat anyway. 

Astrohaunt: Hey Tuck. Still up?

Technopedia: You know it. Chaos signed on about a half hour ago and I’m not passing up the opportunity.

Astrohaunt: Dude is so good it’s unreal!

Technopedia: He goes to our school, I tracked one of his IP addresses and he logged in at school a few times.

Astrohaunt: Tucker wtf. That’s creepy!

Technopedia: I just want to make sure Chaos is actually a kid and not Lancer again!

Astrohaunt: I still can’t wrap my mind around Lancer playing Doomed…

Technopedia: Same. But Chaos IP is different from Lancer, so we good. Unless more teachers play Doomed.

Astrohaunt: I hate you for putting that image into my brain.

Technopedia: Sorry dude. But quick come join before someone else gets Chaos.

Danny, Tucker, and Chaos had made a great team. Whenever Chaos was around, they were actually able to progress through the game. They played several rounds until Tucker was caught by his mom and was forced to sign off, but Danny and Chaos kept playing. 

TeamChaos: Hey, what’s up?

Astrohaunt: Omg dude you’re so awesome. 

TeamChaos: Ha, thanks. Gotta blow off steam somehow. 

Astrohaunt: Tell me about it! Between Lancer’s three projects and midterms and...other stuff...this is my only time to actually chill. I’ve been so stressed!

TeamChaos: Same. I did finish one of the projects though. I’m always here if you need to talk, you know. 

Astrohaunt: Wow, I may just take you up on that offer. I’ve had a rough night.

TeamChaos: Lay it on me.

And so Danny, sparing the ghost hunting details, stayed up chatting with Chaos until 5 am. He got along really well with the guy, they had a lot of similar interests. This was just the first of many up-all-night conversations they shared. After a few months, Danny felt a special connection with Chaos, and yet, he didn’t even know his name! 

Astrohaunt: We’ve been talking all these months and I still don’t know your name. I’m Danny. 

TeamChaos: Oh, thought you knew. It’s Sam!

Astrohaunt: Hey! One of my best friends is named Sam! 

TeamChaos: You don’t say!!!

The next day at school, Danny pulled Tucker over to him, whispering, “Dude, help. I think I might be gay....” 

“What?!” Tucker shouted.

“Quiet, Tuck!” 

“Okay, well uh...why?” Tucker sent him a weird look and took a step back. 

“No, not you. Chaos. I think I have a crush on Chaos.” Danny ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what to do! I never thought I’d be...you know. Chaos and I just have good conversations and he’s always there to listen to me when I need to vent. I thought maybe I found another best friend but...this is different. Chaos is so cool and I’m crushing and I don’t even know who he is or what he looks like! Or if he feels the same way! Maybe I’m just stupid and-”

“Dude, chill. You’re jumping too far ahead of yourself. Whichever way you, you know, swing...I’m still your best friend.” Tucker pulled out his PDA. “Let me see what I can find out. I know Chaos goes to our school.”

“Thanks, Tuck. As if being half ghost wasn’t hard enough! Oh, and he’s in our class, because he’s talked me through assignments and knows what they are and stuff. He’s almost as good as explaining things as Sam. Crap...Sam. Don’t tell her about this!” Danny started fidgeting. 

“Well,” Tucker raised his eyebrows in surprise, “I can tell you with absolute certainty that Chaos is definitely a girl.” 

“You found out who Chaos is?!” 

“What, like it’s hard?” Tucker chuckled. “I traced the IP addresses she uses. I know who she is. So do you,” Tucker smirked, “It shocked me at first, but it makes total sense! And I can totally see why you like her.” 

“Really?” Danny let out a breath in relief. “Okay that makes me feel a lot better...hey, maybe I can ask Chaos to the dance next Saturday!” 

Tucker rested a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Go for it. Ask Sam. I’m almost positive she’ll say yes.”

“Okay, I will...wait, not Sam! Chaos!” Danny clarified. “Well, actually, I think Chaos told me her name was Sam. Ha, small world. I can’t wait to introduce Sam to Sam. I think they would really get along.” 

Tucker busted out laughing, “Oh, dude. You go ahead and do that.” He left Danny standing there in the hallway, still laughing all the way to his next class.

Danny, a bit confused by Tucker’s laughter, shook his head and smiled to himself. Okay, good. He’d had enough identity crises to fill a lifetime. Chaos was definitely a girl. Now if he just knew Chaos returned his feelings, things might actually work out for him this time and he could actually have a girlfriend.

Meanwhile, Sam was having an internal debate of her own. Sitting in a class where the teacher couldn’t give two shits about what the students were doing, she had always used this class as her thinking time. Usually her thinking-about-Danny time. She nervously clicked her pen as she thought about recent events. 

She and Danny spent so much time chatting online when they weren’t hanging out in person. Danny was a little bit more bold online, probably because he didn’t have to interact face-to-face or risk his pants falling down in public again. Online, they talked about everything. No topic was off limits. Plus, Sam felt like their friendship had only grown even stronger when they could chat online and not have to worry about blushing or getting teased by Tucker. Chatting online took away all the pressure and made it much easier to connect with Danny. 

Danny hadn’t said anything yet, of course. He was probably scared. Hell, she was scared. She was already so in love with him, and getting closer online only further solidified that fact. She had never been in love before, and even though she hunts ghosts, this was more terrifying! She was fairly certain he returned her feelings, but both were too chicken to actually make that final step. They’ve been best friends forever. She didn’t want to mess up their already great dynamic or force Tucker to be the third wheel, though he did insist he was more than okay with that and encouraged them to finally get together. 

Sam stopped clicking her pen as she suddenly remembered it was senior year. They hadn’t picked colleges yet, but whether they ended up going to the same school or not, things were going to change. Danny was very attractive, and going off to college meant girls may actually approach him when they didn’t know his parents were ghost fighters. The fact had never bothered Sam, but she did kind of like how it kept most girls at school from asking him out or giving him attention. Valerie had been a challenge, especially because she was a ghost hunter herself and probably wanted to get tips from his parents. Sam was glad that relationship ended relatively early. It was too hard on her. Joyous or not, though, she was still mad at Valerie for how she broke his heart. 

But that was 2 years ago. They had all moved on and friendships were more or less mended across the board. This made Sam glance at her favorite picture of her and Danny. Tucker had taken the candid picture and it was now her phone’s background. In it, Danny was giving Sam a piggyback ride. Her arms were lightly strung around his neck, legs looped around his waist. Danny had kept going in the opposite direction Sam told him to go, which frustrated her but also made her laugh. She had rested her chin on his shoulder, her face pressed right up against his. Danny was looking at her and Tucker had captured that rare moment when Sam had a huge grin on her face, still laughing. She smiled at the picture. They would be okay no matter what. Their friendship would survive.

Anyway, Sam also realized she had already come close to losing Danny, in more ways than one. Whether it was to other girls or a ghost, there was always that anxiety stirring in her head that she could lose him entirely some day. Life was too short. She needed to take the plunge for both of them and just get them both over this hurdle, and they could finally, finally, actually get together. 

Sam made her decision. It was now or never. She was going to tell him. Today. The trio was meeting up at Danny’s house later anyway, and if she got there early enough, she could talk to him before Tucker showed up and teased them about it. Sam firmly nodded her head to herself, a confirmation of her decision. It was finally time.

After school, Danny was pacing in his room, trying to figure out how he wanted to do this. Asking a girl to the dance wasn’t a huge deal, and yet at the same time, it was. He would rather ask in person, but he still didn’t know what Chaos looked like, so asking in person seemed to be off the table. He could look in the yearbook for all the girls named Sam at their school. He could already omit one Sam Manson from that list. How many Sams could possibly attend their school? It would be easier to ask Tucker, though. Tucker already knew who she was. Sam and Tucker were on their way over right now. When Sam wasn’t paying attention, he could ask Tucker for Sam’s full name. 

Chaos Sam, not best friend Sam. God, this was so confusing. Why were girls so hard for him? Freshman year, Paulina only liked his ghost half and wouldn’t give his human half the time of day. Sophomore year, Valerie hated his ghost half and that hatred was more important to her than her feelings for his human half. Junior year, he had been denying that he was in love with his best friend. And now that he had finally accepted that he did like his best friend as much more than a friend, a new girl entered the picture and he now found himself trying to choose between two Sams. Because it apparently wasn’t hard enough for him already to make the biggest and most important change he could possibly make in a friendship, let’s add another crush to the mix and give them the same name.

Sam. Best friend Sam - that’s who he was planning on asking originally, even if he chickened out and had to ask her as a friend instead. Plus, he and Sam had somehow gotten closer recently, and he was pretty sure she liked him. Sure, it was only because Tucker told him so, but it was a possibility. The thing was, he didn’t want to ruin things. Especially because he truly didn’t know how Sam, best friend Sam, felt about him. She was a tough and courageous girl, surely she would have said something by now if it were true. So Tucker must be pulling his leg.

But he did have another option - Chaos Sam, who may actually return his feelings. Sure, the feelings weren’t nearly as strong as what he felt for his best friend, but the feelings were still there. Plus, if he got rejected by Chaos, it would be less heartbreaking than being rejected by Sam, someone he had known for years rather than months. He could deal with losing a newer friend, but not one of his best friends. Sam was too important and he knew he needed her in his life.

Danny sighed. This was really hard, but he made a decision. It was easier to go with Chaos than risk ruining things with Sam. Danny had enough drama going on in his life already, he needed an easy win. 

He broke from his thoughts when the doorbell rang. He ran downstairs and opened it, only slightly surprised to see Sam there. She was usually early for things. He and Tuck were more prone to being late. 

“Hey, Sam. Come on in!” Danny moved so Sam could enter his house. He shut the door and followed her upstairs and back to his room as she returned his greeting. She was pacing the same path he just had, muttering quietly to herself. She looked nervous. “Something on your mind?” 

Sam was startled out of her thoughts. “Huh? Oh yeah.” She noticed his disheveled appearance, also noting he was fidgety. Was he going to do what she was about to do? “What about you, you look like you’ve been thinking a little too hard about something.” She smiled softly. 

Danny chuckled, “Yeah, but it’ll resolve itself soon. I’ll worry about it after the movies. Tuck should be here any second. Oh, but I’m glad you’re early. Can you help me with something quick?” 

“Of course.” Sam followed him to his desk, smiling and rolling her eyes when he pointed to a homework problem. “I should have known.” 

Danny gave her a lopsided smile and watched as she showed him how to do the problem in her perfect handwriting. It took no more than a couple of minutes. Now, they were just waiting for Tucker to arrive. 

Sam looked at the time. He would be here soon. She needed to do this now. She needed to tell Danny. She couldn’t wait until after the movies for him to tell her. She had already waited long enough and couldn’t bear another second.

“Danny, can I talk to you for a second?” She sat down on his bed and gestured for him to do the same. 

Danny could sense the seriousness in her voice, and nodded anxiously. He was scared when Sam was serious about things. It was usually something bad.

“Danny…” She decided to get straight to the point. “I like you. As in like-like you. More than like, and more than a friend. And we’ve been doing this dancing around for at least 4 years now and I’m sick of it. I just want to be with you already. What do you say?” Sam held her breath as she waited for Danny to answer. 

He stared at her with wide eyes before nervously rubbing the back of his neck and turning his attention to his shoes, avoiding eye contact with the goth. God, why him?! He had stupidly thought, for once, things would be easier for him this time. He had already sent an offline message to Chaos that he wanted to ask her something, and then Sam had to come along and tell him what he had wanted to hear for some time now. But he couldn’t blow Chaos off when he had already somewhat asked. Of course, his life just had to be complicated every step of the way. He really liked both girls and didn’t want to hurt his best friend. Regardless, he had to be honest. He owed Sam that much. “Well, I mean, yeah, but…” 

“But what?” Sam whispered, clearly already upset. Fuck. Fuck fuck FUCK. This was exactly what he didn’t want to happen. He decided to try going with Chaos so he could avoid heartbreak from his best friend. The very thing he had been so afraid of, he was doing to her right now. 

Danny sighed again. “But I can’t. I’m so sorry, Sam.” It was hard to choke out, but he said it, and he felt terrible. He pressed his lips together and kept staring at his shoes until Sam lifted his chin up, forcing him to look at her. 

“What do you mean you don’t feel the same way? We’ve had mutual crushes on each other for years!” Sam said angrily, feeling her heart break as her best friend and love of her life rejected her confession of love. She was so sure he returned her feelings! Especially after all the great conversations they had shared online these last few months. “Or, at least, I thought we did.” Tears swelled in her eyes. Did he lead her on? “I-I need an explanation, Danny,” she quietly stated after he didn’t continue. 

Danny frowned and his heart ached. He didn’t want to hurt his best friend like this. Hell, he really liked her! Of course their crushes were mutual! And if this had happened 6 months ago instead of now, he would have jumped at the chance. But now...now he had Chaos and already forced himself to stick with his decision. It was easy with Chaos; there was no friendship to risk, no denying of being lovebirds or brushing off kisses as fakeout makeouts. Plus, he couldn’t lie to his best friend. She would know if he was lying. And he already told himself she deserved the truth. “There’s...someone else…” 

“What?” Sam whispered before turning angry again, “Paulina? Valerie? Star?” she spat out. 

Danny shook his head, “Ew, no...it’s someone I met online...I’m so sorry, Sam. I like you a lot, I really do, but I think I’ve already come to the conclusion that I like this girl I met online, Chaos, and I have to try to see that through.” 

Many emotions crossed Sam’s face as she pieced together what he just said. At first she was upset, but as he explained himself, she felt disbelief, confusion, anger, and finally, hope. He couldn’t really be that clueless, right? “Show me.” 

“Huh? I mean, I don’t actually know what she looks like, but we message every night and she really understands me! I know it sounds ridiculous, but-” 

“Show me,” Sam repeated. “Show me her profile.” 

“You’re not going to hurt her, are you?” Danny questioned cautiously.

“No, of course not. Just shut up and show me the profile.” Sam was more calm now, and that was kind of scary. Even though Sam said she wouldn’t hurt Chaos, he didn’t want to give her the chance. But he knew how stubborn his friend was, and eventually in whatever way, she would force the information out of him. 

Danny sighed and pulled up the profile to show Sam. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m still your best frien-” 

“Shut up.” Sam scrolled through what Danny pulled up for her and pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. Closing her eyes slowly, she took a deep breath. “Didn’t Chaos tell you her name?” 

“Uh,” Danny thought, “oh yeah! She said her name was Sam, because I thought she was a boy at first and I had an existential crisis, but then Tucker told me-” 

“Danny. I’m Sam.” 

“No I know, and sure it’ll be a little weird cause you’re Sam and she’s Sam, it’s confusing, but I-” 

Sam interrupted him once again. She could hear Tucker’s footsteps approaching. She was running out of time to not make this a spectacle. “No, Danny. Chaos. Sam. Me. I’m Sam. I am Sam,” 

Tucker only heard the tail end of the conversation as he entered the room. Never able to pass up a comedic opportunity, he smirked and added “I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like green eggs and ham!” 

It was suddenly silent in the room as his friends seized conversation and glared at him. Oops. 

“Oh, am I interrupting something?” Tucker could see the fire in Sam’s eyes. “Uh, oh wait I forgot my...sock. I’ll be downstairs!” He raced out of the room.

Sam turned her attention back to Danny. “No, you stupid fucking MORON. I am Chaos. You’ve been talking to me the whole time. I thought you knew that!” Danny stared at her blankly until she pulled out her phone and he watched her log into her account, proving it to him. Sure enough, it was Chaos’s profile. He could see all the direct messages between them, including his offline message about wanting to ask her something.

“Wait, you? You’re Sam? I mean, Chaos? I mean Sam?” Danny looked back and forth between the profile and his best friend. 

“UGH!” Sam shouted as she threw her hands in the air. “Yes, Danny. That’s me! Did you really not notice that Chaos was the same age as me and a girl who goes to our school? We have the same name and interests! Didn’t you wonder why it was so easy to talk right off the bat? I thought you put that all together and us just pretending to not know each other was a little bit you were trying to do or something!” 

Danny stared at her as he continued to piece it all together. He was definitely embarrassed. He felt so stupid. How could he not tell that Chaos was Sam, his best friend since 7th grade? Talk about being totally clueless. 

Wait. Clueless? Well, fuck! He got the nickname now! 

His eyes flickered back and forth as he thought everything through. Eventually, he started to crack a smile. “Wait, so I’ve had a crush on you and also you? You’re the same person! This is great! Do you know what this means?!” 

Sam slapped her forehead and began walking downstairs. “I don’t even know if this is worth it anymore…” 

“Wait, how come Tuck and I never knew you played video games! We can enter team tournaments! You’re so good!” Danny chased after her. 

Tucker watched as Sam grumbled about Danny caring more about video games than her. An excited Danny was right on her tail. 

“Tucker! Sam is Chaos! I’ve been in love with Sam this whole time!” Danny explained. 

“Tucker, I need you to refrain me from slapping his stupid clueless face,” Sam started. 

“Wait, you didn’t know Sam was Chaos? Dude! I thought I was obvious about that!” Tucker began laughing at Danny. 

“I know, so did I.” Sam crossed her arms over her chest. 

“Danny, you can calculate levels of rocket fuel and figure out how to get us to Mercury or something,” Tucker started. 

“Mars, actually,” Danny corrected. 

“But you can’t figure out that your best friend and your crush are the same person? You’re more than Captain Clueless, you’re like….Lieutenant Clueless? That’s like, bigger right?” Tucker continued. 

“I don’t think that’s how it works, Tuck,” Sam chimed in. 

“Shut up Sam, this isn’t about you,” Tucker immediately stopped his train of thought when he felt Sam glaring daggers at him. “Heh, uh. Except it does. It actually has nothing to do with me. I’m sorry I told you to shut up, please don’t hurt me!” He threw his hands up in front of himself in defense. 

“Relax, Tucker. I’m more angry with this fucking dingus,” she pointed her thumb in Danny’s direction. 

The halfa was about to protest, then closed his mouth. “That’s fair, I deserve that.” 

“I can’t even look at you right now. You scared me! I poured out my emotions to you. I thought you were rejecting me and that I would have to change my name and move to a different country! Wait, are you still rejecting me?” Sam stopped her pacing to look at him. 

“Of course not, Sammy!” 

“Oh don’t you ‘Sammy’ me! I told you I love you, you stupid fucking idiot!” Sam began throwing pillows at Danny, who expertly dodged them (though as a result, Tucker got hit in the face by one). 

“Technically, you didn’t say ‘love’ you said ‘like’”, Danny offered as Tucker shook his head and slashed finger across his neck, signaling Danny to stop talking. 

“Oh, I’m sorry! This is all my fault! I’m going to go jump off a cliff now!” Sam growled and Danny let out a small “oomph” as one of the pillows finally got him. 

“I’m out. Good luck, bro!” Tucker quickly slipped out the door, leaving Danny and Sam alone. 

Sam was about to follow Tucker out when Danny stopped her, “please don’t leave!” She still had angry tears in her eyes. He frowned. This was not how he expected things to go. She watched him for a few seconds before sitting down on the couch, refusing to look at him. “Sam I’m so sorry, this is just a huge misunderstanding.”

“No, Danny. It’s not. You were going to turn me down to go out with someone else.”

“But that someone was still you!”

“Yeah, but you didn’t know that! We’ve been friends for years, and you were more interested in someone you just met a few months ago! I don’t want to be anyone’s second choice, Danny! I’ve been standing by for years as you continuously chose other girls over me. I thought we were done with that, and that you were finally choosing me first, but you won’t and you never will and I’m so stupid.” Sam put her head in her hands as she tried her hardest not to let tears fall. 

And that was when he finally figured it out. It wasn’t just the moment of rejection, it was years of rejection, and at her biggest confession, she still thought he was choosing someone over her. Not to mention, Tucker witnessed most of the conversation. Sam rarely showed her emotions. She always had her heart guarded, and he knew this. Tucker knew this. Hell, she didn’t even tell them she was rich until after a few years of friendship. It took them a while to get her to open up to them. She was a pretty private person. She was probably already hurt like this before. And now, she was probably embarrassed.

“You’re definitely not stupid. I’m stupid. I should have known it was you. That was actually what I really liked about Chaos, she reminded me of you.” 

Sam forced a small sarcastic laugh, “Yeah, right.” 

“No really,” Danny sat on the couch next to her and grabbed her hand, placing it in both of his. “Sam, you’re absolutely incredible. How dumb would I have to be to not notice?” Sam gave him a pointed look. “Okay yeah but it’s not the way you think it is. I liked Chaos because she was a lot like you. She reminded me of you. And it just seemed easier to go with her because she was basically you, but she and I didn’t have a really great friendship that could have gotten ruined if we broke up or something. I could live without her, but I can’t live without you. You’re always my number one. Always have been, always will be. Even if I did just fuck everything up. I’m so sorry, Sam. I’m ready to be with you, if you’ll still have me.” 

Sam stayed silent and stared at her lap, processing this new information. Of course she would forgive him; she always did. She just needed a little time. 

Danny was getting nervous that he really did fuck this up for good. This was so fucking important! He couldn’t risk fucking this up! Sensing her hesitation, Danny tried one more thing to get her back. One thing he hasn’t done before. One thing he just learned how to perfect.  

“Sammy, I’m sorry,” a duplicate popped up next to her on the other side of the couch, startling her. 

“Please forgive me?” Another duplicate was floating in front of her, hanging upside down, hair flopping all over the place. 

“I know I’m a dummy but,” Sam snapped her head towards a third duplicate. 

“I’m only a dummy because I’m in love. With you,” the real Danny finished. Sam looked back and forth between all the Dannys.  

“We’re sorry, Sammy,” all the duplicates said at once. 

Sam was trying really hard to hold back a smile. “You learned how to duplicate,” she stated simply. 

Original Danny grabbed her hands. “Sam. I will make this up to you. I promise.” 

She could hear the determination in his voice and sighed. “You better.” 

Danny smiled and hugged her. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!!! I love you so much!”

Sam pushed him off of her. “I love you too, you fucking idiot.” 

“But I get to be your idiot!” Sam couldn’t hold her laughter back anymore. “Oh!” Danny shouted, “Will you go to the dance with me? Please?” 

Sam pretended to ponder the answer before saying “alright”. 

“Yay!” All 4 Dannys cheered. The duplicates on either side of her kissed her cheeks as the real Danny kissed her forehead tenderly. The final duplicate, feeling left out, squeezed his way in to give her a hug. 

Sam was now roaring with laughter before kissing the real Danny sweetly. “You know, duplicates won’t always get you out of trouble,” she warned. 

“Yeah, but they could come in handy for other things,” he wagged his eyebrows up and down suggestively before passionately kissing her, the duplicates kissing her neck and touching her in near-dangerous places. 

Sam bit back a moan, eyes lustful before smirking, “I think you just found a way to make it up to me.” She began dragging the real Danny and one of his duplicates back to his room. Fuck the movies.

[sugarmaplewings-fics]

The Price of Being A Hero

Pairing: Tamaki Amajiki x reader

Warnings: None really

A/N:

Could this be . . . angst? On my blog? Nah, I already did some/have been doing some, but I got this request a long time ago and finally finished it nearly a month later. Then took another month putting it through my system before I was able to post it . . . .

Yeah I have no excuse.

Huge thank you (and also sorry) to @why-am-i-here-please-help-me​​ for requesting!

Enjoy!

-Sugar

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

When you’re a hero, fighting is a part of your job. It was an unspoken fact that every day, when you went out on patrol, you put your life on the line for your city.

Tamaki knew this, and so did you. It was what you had trained for since high school, and simply a small downside to your dream. A dream that you were now able to live every day of your life.

Today was a day as any other; you were wandering your route with your boyfriend, Tamaki, ensuring the sector of the city was safe. You made idle conversation with him, the sounds of your moving and shifting costumes quietly accompanying your voices.

This was how the two of you had met, and over the past few years, you’d only grown closer with each other.

The both of you rounded a corner, amiably discussing plans for a day off when someone ran up to you.

“Heroes! Thank goodness.” The man must have been about ten years older than the you, and looked distressed and out of breath.

“What is it?” you asked.

“That guy over there just blew up the bank!” The citizen pointed behind him and took off running again, along with a small crowd of other people trying to get away from the chaos.

Sure enough, when you looked a little further ahead, you saw smoke pouring out of the windows from a building. You and Tamaki ran towards it, eyes scanning for a possible culprit. It wasn’t difficult to spot him, seeing as he was the only one moving in the opposite direction of the crowd. Also, he had a large bag of cash gripped in one hand.

You commenced in pursuit, hoping he wouldn’t catch on to you and your boyfriend coming up fast after him. Unfortunately, he happened to glance behind himself, immediately picking up his pace at the sight of two heroes with their focuses trained on him.

He began weaving through pedestrians and hopping over cars, attempting to shake both you and Tamaki from his tail. You, however, happened to work very well as a team together. You were the faster of your pair, so Tamaki allowed you to go ahead.

Without the villain noticing, you cut him off, skidding to a halt in front of him as Tamaki came up from behind. In a last minute effort, your culprit turned and ducked into an alley. The two of you followed him into the narrow space, noticing that within a few meters, it dead ended.

It was as if both you and Tamaki had the same thought: Got him.

The villain took one look at the wall before him, whirling around to face the two heroes who had cornered him.

“A bank? Seriously?” you mocked, knowing that he was captured. “At least try to be more original.” You sauntered closer to him, mind intent on the best way to secure the man so you could drag him back to your hero station for Fatgum and the police to deal with. “You’re coming with us.”

“I don’t think so.” The man sneered at you.

You glanced up, reminding yourself that you had to be wary of his quirk, especially since there weren’t any physical signs to clue you in as to what it might be. That civilian guy had said he had bombed the bank? Maybe it was something explosive like that Ground Zero’s quirk. His friend, Red Riot, never quite shut up about him.

Just as you began to ready your own quirk for defense, the villain before you dropped his bag. You watched as his hand transformed into a single, long katana sword, silvery and serrated. Swift as lightning, he brought it down on you, slicing from just above your collarbone to your shoulder.

Tamaki witnessed the glinting flash of the villain’s sword cut you in slow motion. He hadn’t had enough time to react. You had been too far away.

Rage began to leak into Tamaki’s nerves. How dare he? It was a hero’s duty to safely capture and secure villains with minimal damage, but for the villains themselves, there were no rules. No regulations other than their own fleeting morals in the heat of a moment. And many of them had no objection to murdering a hero in cold blood. This was the risk you took every day, and this was the horrific price of justice.

Less than a second after the man’s sword came into contact with you, Tamaki raised his hand and activated his quirk, turning each of his fingers into long, red octopus arms. He sent two towards the villain, but the man was ready, slashing at the appendages with his saber-hand. 

Tamaki’s world felt like it was shattering around him, time slowing as the metal blade sliced towards his writhing tentacles. You were everything to him, but now, because of this man, this man, you were hurt. You were suffering, and it had been all Tamaki’s fault for not stopping you from getting any closer. It should be him bleeding to death on the ground, never you.

Tamaki sent a third appendage, this one lower, at the villain’s legs. He dragged the man towards him and away from you, wrapping a shell-enforced tentacle around his manifested weapon.

You were always so cocky, too cocky for Tamaki’s comfort. The minute you felt like you were in control of a situation, you tended to exercise it, finding satisfaction in the defeat of law-breakers. Tamaki had brought it up only twice, but he guessed that it wasn’t enough to have made you stop. It wasn’t as though anything had ever come by it. Until now. And now you were both paying the price of actions already done.

Just as Tamaki pulled him within a foot of his body, the villain morphed his left hand into a second sword, slicing off the tentacle that had captured him. He took the moment of Tamaki’s wince of pain to stagger to his feet and try to bolt past him, only to be grabbed once more around his entire body. 

All Tamaki could do was ensure that you would be avenged. This man would pay for his actions against you. The only thing Tamaki could do for now was to capture him. Maybe there was still a glimmer of hope for you. Maybe the ambulance would be fast, and you would live. This man was the only thing standing in the way of that.

Tamaki pulled him in, clocking him over the head with a hard clam shell manifested on his other hand, making sure the villain slumped completely forward, solidifying his defeat.

The hero double checked that he was out cold, noting how his body had gone completely limp. Next he whirled around, ready to help you, prepared for the worst.

Except, you weren’t on the ground. You weren’t even bleeding. Your costume was torn, yes, but otherwise, you looked perfectly fine.

“Wow,” you said, removing the hand that was holding up an edge of your costume to clap. “I’ve never seen you take down a villain like that before. You made it look so easy! Your form was perfect and everything. I really—”

Tamaki cut you off, running full throttle towards you and crushing you in a hug. “You’re alright!” he said, feeling pent up tears begin to spill a little from his eyes. “You’re here, you’re okay.” Tamaki continued to whisper these words for a few moments, solidifying to himself that you weren’t lost, and were instead in his arms. Right where you belonged.

��Hey,” you said, beginning to rub at his back. His hero cape creased and smoothed with the circular motions of your hand. He noticed you were shaking a little, and that only made him hold you tighter. “Don’t you remember?” you asked gently. “My quirk?”

Your quirk . . . that had been one of the last things on Tamaki’s mind. “What about it?”

“Metal can’t hurt me,” you explained. “I can get cut, but I heal really fast. It’s kind of a weird and random side effect to the other, more hero-ey aspect, but that’s just something I can do.”

Now that you said it, Tamaki did remember you mentioning that part of your power before.

“It’s alright now,” you said, pulling back so you could place a kiss on Tamaki’s forehead, which had grown damp with cold sweat.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Tamaki said, brow furrowing with his seriousness. You placed a hand on his cheek to brush away the small tear streak that had briefly run down his face. “I want you to promise me.”

“I will.” You averted your gaze, feeling foolish and slightly ashamed of your actions. If the villain had had any other, more dangerous quirk, you could very well have been dead right now.

Tamaki placed his hand over yours, tilting your chin with his opposite so you could once again meet his eyes. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”

“Me too.”

The sound of a car pulling up a few feet away from you caught your attention. A few policemen stepped out, looking from the passed out man on the ground to your hunched figures further back in the alley.

“This the bank robber?” one of them called over to you.

You pulled apart, walking up to the men and woman dressed in blue. “Yeah.”

Tamaki let you deal with everything, just as he always did. He watched from a safe distance away as you made your statements, gave your report, and even greeted a passing journalist. 

Tamaki wanted to get going. Where there was one reporter, there would inevitably be a swarm, no matter how small the crime. Besides, he had something more important on his mind that he needed to do.

As if half reading his mind, you began to say your farewells to the policemen, making sure the villain was safely secured in the car. You came back and collected Tamaki, going about what you had been doing a few minutes prior.

“Well,” you said, looking down at your costume in dismay. It looked almost like some kind of cutoff, an almost straight line running just beneath and nearly parallel to your collarbones. “Guess I’ll have to pull out my spare. We should probably head back. A hero’s got to look their best, you know.”

Tamaki nodded and entwined his fingers in yours, happier than ever at the warm feeling.

You looped around the block in the direction of Fatgum’s agency. It wasn’t too far from where you were now.

You began to lapse back into light chatter with Tamaki at your side. It was clear you were still a bit shaken from what you’d just been through, but Tamaki was glad to see you weren’t taking it too harshly.

Even so, Tamaki was forever grateful to whatever divine beings may be watching over you. He couldn’t imagine what his life would be like without you. You were his sunshine, the one person who could light up his whole world no matter what. Keeping you safe at his side was what he intended to do for as long as he could, and there was nothing that would stop him from doing so.

The small ring box dutifully waiting in the darkness of his back pocket was enough to prove that.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

Author’s Note:

At first I was going to rewrite this one because I hated it, but then I let it sit in my WIPs for a while and finally decided to just finish it as it was. I think it turned out ok, and I hope it was what you were thinking of when you requested! Sorry it took me like 2-3 months to do. I don’t really have any excuses, but thank you for being patient!

Love you!

-Sugar 

Taglist: @basicaegyo​ @iiminibattlehero​ @katsugay​ @nabo39​ @pyrofanatic​​ @sendhelpimstupid​ @sokkasangel​ @xoxopam4​​

[conspirwbytheorist-inactive]

I am curious about what characters arcs you think are being sacrificed too much? Like I don't want to criticize or anything just genuinely curious about your thoughts

That’s really fair. Sorry for taking so long to respond. Combo of things with last ep triggered some emotional stuff for me so I needed to step back and process for a bit. Like. I might get more in depth on this later, but my issue is less “specific arcs are being sacrificed” and more that even though the team is still hitting all of the general beats and points that I’d expect them to hit, they haven’t really had the time to provide the context or fallout necessary for the emotional impact of those beats to fully land?

Like. It’s not a sign of bad writing, more a symptom of focusing on ensuring a very full plot happens within the limited space they have. But it can be frustrating for those of us who were drawn to RWBY for its characters rather than its plot. More in depth take below the cut, but I think that more or less captures the gist of it.

Because of how busy the plot has been, it feels like the writers have put its needs before the needs of the characters. And, as a result, we’ve had a lot of things that normally would have been explored in an entire scene or even over the course of multiple episodes get boiled down to a single line or plot beats happening where the characters’ actions don’t quite feel in synch with what we’ve seen from them before. Like I said, it’s not malicious or a sign of bad writing. I suspect it’s a symptom of having so much in the plot that feels it needs to be worked through in such a limited time that there really isn’t room to explore these things.

And, as a result, we get a lot of “controversial” things that can be boiled down to “the narrative did not have time to give us much character perspective and, as a result, the beat’s payoff was not as clear or impactful as it appears the team was intending it to be.”

So, like, I guess as a light example, a lot of people talking about Ren’s semblance change happening really quickly. It makes sense for his semblance to evolve this way. It makes sense that someone with such an intuitive connection to emotions that he can suppress them in others would eventually be able to use that connection to consciously see them. But it just kind of. . . happened? We got the impetus. Him being called out on pushing people away, going into the tundra to think on it. But what did he think about? What clicked for him with the Ace Ops that hadn’t before? What does he think of his new ability? How does he feel about it? What does this mean for Ren as a character?

There wasn’t really time to explore all of that and, as a result, even though it is a good beat that makes sense, it was hard to feel the deeper significance of what this meant for Ren on a personal level. Because what mattered was less what it means for Ren and more “in order for ‘x’ to happen in the plot, we need ‘y’ to happen first”. ‘X’ in this case being “Team JYR finds Oscar in the Whale” and ‘Y’ being “Ren can now sense and track people’s auras/emotions”. In order to make the plot they wanted happen in the allotted time, they could not afford to linger on the impact this had on the character.

Which, from the writers’ perspective isn’t a huge deal. Unlike us, they know where the plot is going, they know what these things mean for the characters, how it’s going to impact them. When someone is creating a work (be it creative or informative) it can be really easy to get so wrapped up in your project that you forget that your audience doesn’t have access to the same information you do. What seems like a small cut or necessary sacrifice or something that can be moved til later on the writers’ end could be very confusing/detrimental to understanding on the audience’s end. It’s not “bad writing”, it’s just a very human thing to do when running a giant production with limited time and tight deadlines and a very ambitious set of goals.

I hope that there is a payoff. Like I said, I think the writers know where they’re going with this. They say V9 has been planned from the start. I hope that this rush has been to ensure that it is as impactful as possible and that we can sit with our characters again. But in the meantime, as someone who is very character focused in how I enjoy media, it has made for a frustrating viewing experience where, even though we have still gotten some good character eps (Cinder’s backstory, “Dark” and “Risk”) the characters largely feel more “along for the ride” than driving the story themselves.

And the last episode stung a lot not because it was inherently bad, but because I was hoping they’d wrapped up the Ironwood/vault/Penny plot lines so quickly to give themselves room to breathe in order to focus on character stakes. Not introduce/reintroduce 3 more high-stakes subplots to also wrap up with only one episode to go. It’s. . .hard to be pumped when they’re gonna have to lightning round for this finale to come remotely close to wrapping things up.

If that makes sense? Nothing wrong if you’ve enjoyed the pacing or don’t feel there’s an issue, just an explanation of where my perspective’s coming from. :)

[somuchfuckingsalt]

Percy Earned his leadership

Okay, the thing is I get almost personally offended when the fandom tries to write off Percy’s leadership because that boy earned the right to be CHB’s leader.

First off, the way that RR wrote the first five books was in a way where when you combine them together, you can track one cohesive story the same way you’d do with a single story.

TLT is Act 1. It establishes the setting, the characters, and the story. While there aren’t a lot of leadership moments for Percy, because it’s the first act Percy has a lot of moments where you can see his various skills that will lead him to becoming a good leader coming through. This includes his ability to think on his feet (how he dealt with the love ride), manipulate (Crusty), and make the necessary calls needed for the good of the world (sacrificing Sally to return to the surface and stop the war).

There isn’t a lot that happens in this book that happens that changes Percy’s internally and turns him into more of a leader. Aside from the decision to leave his mom behind, every moment of ‘leadership’ that he has are small, baby step versions of leadership. This book is mainly just getting Percy accustomed to being in the situations where a leader is needed while not necessarily pushing him into a leadership position (while Percy was technically the leader of the quest he relied heavily on Grover, Annabeth, and Chiron since he was so new to the world).

SoM is Act 2. Since we know who Percy is and we don’t need to be coaxed into loving him like the first book, this book is the one where Percy probably receives the most help. This is also the ‘training montage’ portion of the story and likely the reason that the Sea of Monsters was chosen as the setting.

There are a few moments in the book where Percy takes the necessary steps to become a leader but most notably are.

Making the decision to send Clarisse on ahead.

Stepping up and confronting Luke on behalf of all four of them.

The beginning of the book where the campers poorly treat him and Tyson is also important for two reasons. The first being that Percy sticking by Tyson despite the poor treatment shows what a good person he is, even though we know he’s resentful of the situation and Tyson. The second is that part of the reason Percy is so resentful is because the last time he was at camp he was Hot Shit. Everyone thought he was the bees knees because he had completed a quest and prevented a war. By having Percy be ostracized for his association with a “monster” Rick not only prevented Percy from developing an ego but it also teaches him something all leaders need to know - which is that public opinion is extremely fickle. 

This is also the book where we first hear that Percy is an ‘unreliable weapon’. Kronos specifically does not want Percy to be the prophecy child because he knows that Percy is difficult to predict, manipulate, and control. The gods themselves would be way less scared about how powerful Percy is if he was easier to control. By Percy being difficult to manipulate, that means he’s not going to wind up pulling all the people he’s leading in the wrong direction because someone else is pulling his strings. 

TTC is Act 3 and the mid-story low-point. This is the book where Percy fucks up the most.

He lets his jealousy of Thalia cloud his judgement, which directly leads to Annabeth getting captured.

He again lets his jealousy and pride cloud his judgement which causes the campers to lose to the Hunters.

A tiny moment but he’s so upset over Annabeth possibly becoming a hunter that he nearly kills an Ares camper with a javelin.

He’s so pissed at Mr. D he almost lets his anger prevent them from getting help, which would have led to all of them dying.

All of Percy’s fuck ups teach him that he needs to not let his emotions cloud his judgement and clearly see in BotL and TLO that Percy has learned his lesson. Even when his parents are in danger or he has his own personal drama with Annabeth and Rachel, he’s able to focus on the task at hand.

(The one time that Percy lets his emotions take control is when he takes off in the Labyrinth alone because he thinks Nico is nearby and he’s extremely worried about Nico because he cares a lot about him despite what Rick and his ghost writers say).

They also serve as a humbling experience to keep his ego in check, because at the beginning of the book we’re told that Percy had become accustomed to campers looking to him and up to him after having completed two dangerous quests. His issue with Thalia is that he feels she gets all the attention because Zeus is her father (whether that’s a justified feeling or not). This shows us that not only does Percy have some sort of expectation of leadership but also that as someone who spent his whole life either in the corner or in bad light, he has enjoyed being in the spotlight even if only a little bit, and now he’s missing it. 

This is also the book where Percy accepts the prophecy and basically puts himself in a leadership position for the sake of protecting Nico. However, for me, this isn’t the most meaningful leadership moment.

Percy’s big leadership moment in this book for me is when he takes the sky from Artemis and this is the big moment for many reasons.

For one, it shows that he has learned from his past mistakes of wanting to be the one to turn to. He acknowledges he’s not going to defeat Atlas and takes himself out of the fight so Artemis can fight instead. This is a great juxtaposition to the beginning of the story when he wanted to be on the front lines during capture the flag and have Thalia instead guard the flag (even though Thalia was right about the river).

For two, it shows his ability to make sacrifices because he knows very well that he can die.

And for three, it is his idea, his decision, and he has to convince Artemis it’s also a good idea.

BotL is Act IV, the rising action. The stakes are higher, the situation is more dangerous than ever, and our protagonist is digging himself out from under his mistakes of the previous act.

This is the book that while Percy has learned most of what he needs to in order to become a leader and has even chosen a leadership role, he’s not the one in charge. Annabeth is.

This book is literally Percy being Annabeth’s second-in-command because before you can lead, you need to learn how to follow. This is important to happen here because in the previous three books Percy either didn’t want to be a leader and/or he was fucking it up and had a lot to learn.

This is the book that shows us two things: 1) Percy's ability to sacrifice his personal wants and desires for the greater good and 2) why he is the best option to lead.

He does #1 first at Mt. St. Helens when he sends Annabeth away, because in the situation she’s the one that needs to get back for the greater good. Then the second time was when he sacrificed a peaceful eternity with Calypso for the greater good (not Annabeth, which the fandom, Rick, and his ghost writers seem to have forgotten).

Everyone is going to hate me for what I’m about to say next but bear with me. The BotL is showing us why Annabeth, the daughter of war and battle strategy, is not going to be the leader of their army in the series climax. To be clear, Annabeth is not a bad leader, in fact she is a good one, my point for the next bit here is why she’s not the best option. Throughout the book we see Annabeth repeatedly making the same mistakes that Percy made in the previous book; she lets her emotions get the better of her and cloud her judgement. 

The Sphynx moment is her letting her pride overtake her better judgement and she puts everyone at risk by refusing to answer the questions over an insult to her intelligence.

Absolutely everything with Rachel is an issue. From the first moment Annabeth sees Rachel and Percy together she is jealous and she treats Rachel terribly. First off, this is poor behaviour in general (and it should have been addressed in series and apologized for) but as a leader it’s poor for a few reasons.

Firstly, that as a leader she needs to know how to put her emotions aside in order to work with everyone, regardless of her personal feelings towards them. By not being able to be at least polite to Rachel, she risked Rachel saying fuck this, I’m out (probably the only reason Rachel didn’t is because she’s chill and she knew it was a world ending problem they were dealing with).

Secondly, it shows a certain amount of immaturity. The thing with jealousy is that although it’s not a reasonable emotion, how you handle it shows how mature you are. The fact that when Annabeth becomes petty and vindictive when she’s jealous shows a lot of emotional immaturity. 

Thirdly, she doesn’t fucking learn anything as we see her behaving the same way towards Rachel in TLO, made worse by the fact that she’s also attacking Percy. This isn’t entirely her fault because these actions don’t have any consequences that make her want to change her behaviour. Leaders need to be able to learn and adapt and check their own behaviour.

(honestly, the fact that Annabeth ended the series without at least trying to get over her pride and abandonment issues makes me feel like her character arc is incomplete).

TLO is Act V and the grand finale. It’s the book where Percy is 100% the Boss. It is the culmination of everything that he’s learned and shows off all the things he has that makes him a good leader.

Leaders need to know when to make sacrifices, evident by when he leaves Beckendorf and when he takes a million-to-one chance by dipping in the Styx in order to gain a chance at winning this war.

He’s cunning and manipulative, shown when he bribes the river gods into playing for his team.

He’s incredibly good at battle strategy, shown when he manages to make a plan that allows 70ish campers/hunters to defend the entire island of Manhattan from hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers from Kronos’s army.

He’s well spoken, shown when he’s able to get the campers pumped before the first battle.

He cares about the people that he’s leading. In the previous book he didn’t know Castor’s name before he died and he felt bad about that, so in this book every time he mentions a demigod it’s by name.

He’s clever, shown when he’s able to figure out literally on the fly how to kill the pig and that the hero that dies in the prophecy is Luke. He also figures out that Typhon won’t be defeated without Poseidon and knows what to say in order to get Poseidon to abandon the ocean battle and help the rest of the gods.

(Lowkey-highkey Percy is the reason that Typhon was defeated at all, because without him Poseidon would have never joined the fight and the gods would have failed, which would have meant that regardless of Kronos dying they would have been fucked)

He’s able to focus on the task at hand despite his emotional problems. This includes the times that his parents are put in the line of fire, both when they’re asleep and awake and when the Annabeth/Rachel drama is making him all kinds of angry and upset. In all those situations he’s able to carry on and largely ignore them in order to focus on the war.

To me, his deference to Chiron before the war officially begins is Percy a) being so used to following Chiron in everything and respecting the centaur as a leader and b) not entirely confident in himself and needing that confirmation that he’s in charge. While it’s never stated in the books that Percy enjoys being a leader, we never really see Percy lamenting that he wishes someone else was in charge even when he was neck deep in danger and death and stress.

No one ever questions the fact that Percy’s in charge. There isn’t ever a power struggle. Even with Thalia and Annabeth - both of whom have their own merits to make them leaders and the ambition/pride to make them chafe under the leadership of someone else. Everyone easily accepts and looks to Percy to be their leader.

I’m sorry if this comes off as rant-y and I’m likely going to piss a bunch of people off with my opinion on Annabeth’s faults, but Percy literally went through so much shit and learned and changed in order to be a good leader that it honestly makes me angry when people write him off for the sake of uplifting someone else. 

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

“After all, who doesn’t need a friend who has dirt on everyone?”

(OOC: This is a rare time that I’m writing actual Marauders continuity instead of alt-Marauders continuity.  Let’s say this takes place shortly after Kate’s resurrection but before Emma and Kate’s ridiculous beat-down of Shaw.)

“We’re not exactly friends, though, are we Shaw?”  Pyro shifted uncomfortably in the fine leather arm-chair that Sebastian had insisted he occupy.  He was vaguely aware that there was some kind of bad blood between Shaw and Emma Frost, who was technically his “boss,” he supposed.  And why on earth would a Quiet Council member invite him for a private meeting?  Either Shaw was trying to bang him (that was a “maybe”), or he had some kind of dirty work in mind, the only reason the mutants “on high” would talk to someone like him.  Pyro’s guard was up automatically. 

“No,” Sebastian admitted.  “And I doubt we will ever be.  But we can maintain a cordial relationship that might be....mutually beneficial.” 

Pyro sighed.  This was exactly the kind of weaselly beating-around-the-bush he expected from the high society types.  Never willing to get their own hands dirty, never willing to even outright state aloud the atrocities that they set into action.  He took a generous gulp of the whiskey, and decided that it wasn’t worth staying for however long it would take Shaw to indirectly suggest that he’d like Pyro to commit just a teeny little spot of arson. 

“Let’s not muck about, Shaw.  You obviously want something from me.  What do you want?”

“I see you prefer to be direct.  I can respect that.  I don’t like to waste time, myself,” Sebastian nodded, apparently willing to ignore the rudeness.  “You are in a unique position to bring me valuable information.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.  You see, I have reason to fear that the White Queen is using the Hellfire Trading Company for her own selfish purposes.  Trust me, I’ve worked with her for many years.  The woman is a snake.  Constantly playing games.”

“I didn’t know snakes played games.  Unless you mean that one with the ladders.”

“Don’t be flip, Allerdyce, this is a serious situation, and a unique opportunity for you.”  A bit of the charm had dropped out of Sebastian’s voice as he continued.  “I know she has Kate wrapped around her finger, the poor naive child, even though Emma’s own manipulations led to the girl’s unfortunate death.  And  the others onboard are no match for Emma.  Iceman is just as naive as Pryde, and Storm and Bishop are too noble and high-minded to be able to counter the White Queen’s treachery.  But you.  You don’t have the same ideals.  You are a practical man.  You understand that the world is a dark, vicious place.  I need you to be my man inside the crew.  Pass along information about the missions.  For the sake of Krakoa, and your own crewmates.  Together perhaps we can prevent any more....tragedies.”

Pyro wasn’t entirely sure he believed any of that.  But he also couldn’t say he entirely trusted that Frost woman.  Of course, she HAD carefully arranged a psychic trick to get Yellowjacket out of his body without harm, even though the resurrections meant that it wouldn’t have really mattered if that horrid bug-man had exploded him from the inside.  Plus she’d let him burn those awful children for a sadly short time.  That counted for something, in Pyro’s book.

“If I’m so worldly and cynical as you say, surely you can’t imagine I’ll just take your word for all of this,” Pyro grinned, leaning back and finishing the glass of whiskey.  “Or that I’ll do anything ‘for the good of Krakoa.’  Even if I did believe you, you’re asking me to take on a dangerous job that’ll piss off not one, but three Council members if I’m caught.  And I’m not keen to get kicked off that boat, which would be the very least they would do.” 

“Of course I wouldn’t expect you to work for free,” Sebastian said, leaning forward to refill Pyro’s glass of whiskey.  “I recognize the risk involved, and I will see you handsomely rewarded.  Surely you can see the resources I have available.”  Shaw gestured at the impressive drawing room, just a small section of the luxurious Blackstone Keep.  “And that’s just wealth.  I have connections, political power.  The question is, Pyro - what do you want for yourself?”

That was.....a damn good question, actually.  Since coming out of the cocoon with the Brotherhood disassembled, Mystique acting distant, Blob playing bartender, Phantazia MIA and Avalanche bloody dead, he’d just been drifting with the wind.  Or rather, drifting with the ocean currents.  

“I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that the rest of the crew occupies far more privileged positions than yourself.  Bishop, a Captain.  Emma, Kate and Storm on the Council.  Iceman lacks political power in Krakoa, but has become something of a minor celebrity among the humans.  They all live in luxury on this island, where all mutants matter but some clearly matter more than others.  And meanwhile, I believe you are still spending most of your time in Krakoa at the Brotherhood compound.”

Pyro had a nice little hut in the area that they all shared.  It was all he really needed, and very convenient for game nights.  Which often turned into drinking-fighting-and-ripping-the-game-board-in-half nights, but it was all in good fun. 

“Yeah, you really seem to care about economic disparity on the island with your giant castle and all that,”

“I’ll not apologize for the wealth that I’ve earned,” Sebastian said.  “I’m offering you an opportunity to earn some of your own, with relatively easy labor.  Be my eyes onboard the Marauder, and I’ll see to it that your life is vastly improved, however you see fit.  As a reward for your service to Krakoa, of course.” 

Pyro gulped down the entire glass of whiskey again, hoping that the jolt as it hit his chest might bring some clarity. 

He wasn’t keen on betraying team-mates.  Once he was on a team, he was there for that team.  He’d only betrayed his team once, the last-minute “heroic” mistake of a dying man.

But he was also very keen on bumping Avalanche up the resurrection queue.  Surely Sebastian could flex his authority to move things along, something even Mystique hadn’t bothered to do.  He could imagine himself and Avalanche living in a castle like this, but with more fancy cars, big-screen TV’s and titty posters.

Assuming that Shaw was telling the truth about any of this.  Assuming that Shaw was successful going up against three Council members at once.  Assuming that Shaw would actually follow through on his promises and not immediately throw Pyro under the bus.  It was something the powerful mutants tended to do with lackeys.  Pyro had many years experience as a lackey to back that up. 

In the end, Pyro supposed it came down to this - who did he trust?  The corrupt businessman who might generously reward his service?  Or the squeaky-clean X-types who might kick him off the boat or even into the pit if he got a little too enthusiastic with his fire? 

Who would have his back, when it came down to it? 

Pyro made his decision, and poured himself more whiskey.

“Shaw, I think we can work something out.  Let me tell you everything I know.”

____________________________________

20 minutes later, Sebastian Shaw had learned that Iceman was cheating on Christian Frost with Bishop, who was also carrying on a passionate affair with Storm, and that Kate had come back “wrong” in her resurrection, but was hiding her ill health from crew-mates while searching for a cure.  Jumbo Carnation had been secretly captured by a human anti-mutant group and brainwashed into being a sleeper agent assassin, but had been subdued by Callisto who had taken him off for deprogramming in the Swiss Alps while also rekindling her love of fashion modelling.  “Storm” had actually been replaced by her evil twin sister “Zalastorm” who stole her powers and appearance, while trapping the real Storm in the Negative zone.  Christian Frost was somehow pregnant.  And Emma was being haunted by five identical psychic ghosts that represented the loss of her childhood innocence.

It was, quite possibly, the most obvious steaming pile of bullshit Shaw had ever heard.  Like something out of a dreadful daytime soap opera.  Downright insulting.

“You know, you could have just said ‘no,’ Allerdyce.  There was no need to waste both of our time.”

“It hasn’t been a waste of my time,” Pyro said cheerfully, drinking again.  “I’ve been having great fun.”  Sebastian reached out and snatched the glass away.  Whiskey was for people who were useful, not obnoxious “guests” now overstaying their welcome.

“You’ve thrown away a tremendous opportunity for the sake of what?  A cheap joke?  You really are as stupid as everyone says you are.”

“No, I’m not,” Pyro said, suddenly straightening up with a serious expression.  “I know who really has my back.  Those X-Men might be self-righteous pricks, but they’ve looked out for me since I came aboard.  They treated me like a team-mate.  I doubt you’d do the same.” 

“I would have treated you with the respect that you earned,” Sebastian said honestly.  “Which, at the moment, is less than nothing.  Get out.”

“Suits me fine,” Pyro said.  He snatched up the whiskey and took a long chug directly from the bottle, winking at Sebastian as he did so.  Sebastian yanked the bottle back.  Not because it was worth anything now, but because he wasn’t going to give Allerdyce the satisfaction of walking away with it.  He grabbed the Australian mutant by the collar, dragged him to a window, and tossed him down into the turbulent waters of the bay, taking some small satisfaction in the splash.  Pyro could probably swim to the shore.  Probably. 

He spun and tossed the whiskey into the fireplace, flames flaring up as it shattered.  A 25 year-old bottle of Chivas Regal, $425.  Thank God he hadn’t wasted any of the good whiskey on trash like Allerdyce.  

Sebastian needed another plan.  Pyro might run and tattle.  Emma had made it clear that she wanted his head.  And Kate had seemed smugly hostile at her resurrection party.  After some thought, he sent out a summons to his worthless son, and the slightly less worthless Fenris.  A storm was obviously coming, and Shaw would be a fool to sit alone in his castle unprepared.  And anyone who knew Sebastian - who knew him and truly understood his character - would know that he was no fool. 

(OOC again: I’m afraid this might have leaned too far in the direction of Pyro making a fool of Shaw, which really wasn’t my intention, especially after that last Marauders issue.  Instead, this was meant to be ‘Sebastian makes an offer, and Pyro acts like his obnoxious asshole self.’  Also, I stole the joke about Sebastian thinking of really expensive alcohol as something that can be ‘thrown away’ on someone like Pyro directly from your own excellent writing.)

[tsarisfanfiction]

Tremor VI

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen/Mature Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Angst Characters: Kayo Kyrano, Gordon Tracy, John Tracy

Part 6 of my contribution to Hear from @gumnut-logic‘s SensorySunday challenge. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

This was supposed to be one of the shorter sections.  Kayo had other plans.

Gordon was taking too long. Kayo frowned, casting a look around Thunderbird Four’s interior.  It was all ready for a patient – or at least, as ready as it could be.  She hadn’t got a good look at Scott’s condition, but the glimpses she had caught told her that Thunderbird Four was not well enough equipped to do much more than stabilise him.  There would be no recovery until they were at least in Thunderbird Two, with Virgil taking control, if not until they reached a hospital.

They wouldn’t get anywhere until Gordon and Scott were on board.  What was taking so long?

She crept back to the airlock, looking out of the window.  No sign of them.  Her uncle’s ship loomed threateningly and she scowled at it.  How dare he take one of her brothers and torment him?  The idea that she could be at all related to the man made her sick, and she shoved it out of her mind to panic over later in the sanctuary of her own room.

Not here.

She dragged herself back to the present, refusing to let herself spiral.  A glance out of the window showed that there was still no sign of Gordon and Scott, and Kayo couldn’t wait any longer.  She pushed out of the airlock, cutting through the water and slamming up against the bigger ship’s airlock in time to hear a muffled gunshot.

Heart in her mouth, she wrenched it open and tumbled through, prepared for combat.

The first thing she saw was Scott, sprawled limply with his eyes closed.  The second was Gordon, cradling his brother close with one arm even though his torso was twisted around to face something behind him.

The third was the gun, held at the end of a steady arm.  The fourth was the slumped body of her un- the Hood, bleeding sluggishly onto his own ill-gotten plush rugs.

“We need to move,” she said, stepping forward slowly.  Gordon lowered the gun, stowing it back inside his baldric.  “Is he..?”

“He doesn’t deserve the easy way out,” Gordon said, his voice level, neutral, even.  If not for the hard look in his eyes, she’d think he was entirely unaffected by the fact he’d just shot a man.  “I hit his collarbone.  He won’t be a problem now; we’ll leave him to WASP.”

Kayo had long since forsaken any notion of family loyalty to the criminal, but that didn’t stop a small voice in the back of her mind reminding her that he was her uncle, that they’d been close, once upon a time.  She tore her eyes away, squatting down by Scott and retrieving a discarded rebreather. Gordon took it out of her hands before she could affix it.

“He panicked,” Gordon said. “Wouldn’t let me put it on.  We’ll have to find another way.”  Kayo frowned and inspected Scott more closely.

“He’s passed out,” she realised.  “Look.” She didn’t touch him, but Gordon had no such qualms, cradling his cheek and patting it lightly.  Scott didn’t respond, and Gordon sighed, looking less military and more first responder.

“Okay, we’ll risk it,” he said.  “Let’s hope he doesn’t wake in a panic.”  Privately, Kayo thought he was unlikely to wake at all, but she kept those thoughts to herself as Gordon fixed the rebreather to Scott and stood, once again cradling his brother in his arms.  “See you in Four.”

He passed through the airlock and was gone.  Kayo looked around again, ignoring something tugging at her heart as she caught sight of the crumpled, bleeding figure of the man she was related to.  She should do something, stop the bleeding maybe.  Save him.

Scott would.  Scott refused to let anyone suffer if he could do something about it, no matter who they were.  That was what made him such a good commander for International Rescue – a strong successor to Mr Tracy, who Kayo recalled as having similar ideas.

Kayo was not Scott.  Kayo’s job was to keep her family safe – her real family, not a twisted mess of a man who happened to share her blood.  Scott needed help, and it was help she delayed every second she lingered.  With one last shaky breath, she turned her back on a man she refused to refer to as anything other than ‘the Hood’ and plunged into the ocean, towards Thunderbird Four.

Gordon had Scott on the stretcher with a medical scanner resting on his chest when she stumbled through the airlock.  There was no question what took her so long – Gordon trusted her too much for that.  He directed her to get a pair of towels from a locker, and she obeyed instantly.

“Get him dry,” he ordered, busying himself with an IV and drip.  Kayo nodded, stepping up next to him and for the first time allowing herself to see her big brother’s state.  It was so much worse up close, a body wracked with tremors that could be cold or something else.  She pushed it from her mind again, another thing to break down about later. Clinical, detached, she dabbed him dry, barely noticing when Gordon left for the cockpit.

Thunderbird Four moved, detaching from the Hood’s ship and rotating to head back the way they’d come – to Thunderbird Two and Virgil, no doubt waiting beyond anxiously to pick them up and see Scott for himself.  Kayo found her balance against the movement quickly and carried on with her ministrations, not letting herself pay too much attention to the state of the body beneath her hands.

Not yet.

She’d just got him dry when their altitude shifted dramatically, Gordon taking them back up to the surface, and she threw a foil blanket over him.  It wasn’t much, but it was something, and when she looked at Scott again, allowing herself to see, she could almost fancy he looked more comfortable. Almost.  He was still pale and trembling, cheeks hollowed and eyes sunken, and she pushed his hair back as they docked inside the module.

“Virgil will be here any moment,” she told him.  He didn’t respond, but she didn’t expect him to.  Gordon returned from the cockpit, fussing with the blanket and looking at the medical scanner with a frown.  Red and amber alerts flashed up all over his body, telling them nothing they didn’t already know; it was bad.

Heavy footsteps ran towards them, and Kayo stepped back to let Virgil take her place.

“I’ll pilot,” she said, knowing where Virgil was needed.  She didn’t wait for a response, all but fleeing the submarine.

Thunderbird Two’s cockpit was empty, Alan kept at home with Grandma despite his complaints to the contrary, but the yoke was shifting by itself.  Autopilot wasn’t engaged, so it had to be John or EOS.

“Where are we going?” she asked the empty space, slumping into the co-pilot’s chair.

“Usual hospital.” John looked tired – Grandma had forced them all to get some sleep over the past five days, but up in orbit John had been outside of her reach.  “I forwarded the medical scan results to the island and Grandma made the call.”

Kayo didn’t argue, even though that meant her job wasn’t over yet.  Off the island meant security was needed, and even if the Hood was subdued, that didn’t mean he’d been working alone.  She said as such and John sighed.

“I know,” he agreed, pushing his hair back from his face.  It was a far cry from its usual perfectly-coiffed state.  “Colonel Casey’s providing security detail; a team she’s hand-picked personally.  She says it’s the least she can do.”  The GDF’s failure to be of any use at all had to be a sore point on the woman; Kayo could understand that.  No doubt they were also fuming at the fact that the Hood had fallen into WASP hands rather than their own.

Kayo didn’t care where he was as long as it was nowhere near her true family.

“WASP reported in,” John continued.  “The ship’s been captured and the Hood is under heavy guard.  They swear he won’t get away.”

“He won’t,” Kayo agreed, her mind flashing back to a crumpled, bleeding body and steely amber eyes. The look John gave her said he didn’t want to know.

“How’s Scott?” he asked instead.  “I’ve got the medical scan, but… how is he?”

Kayo put her head in her hands.

“Unconscious now,” she said. “It would have been better if he’d been unconscious the whole time.  It’s bad, John.  Gordon couldn’t get a rebreather on him until he passed out.”

“Do we know what the Hood wanted?”  She looked up at the hologram.  “Some sort of information?”

“That would be my guess,” she admitted.  “Most likely on International Rescue.”

“He wasn’t after information.”  She jumped and turned around to see Gordon standing by the door.  His eyes were furious, and with a start she realised he had his gun in his hands.  “Not unless he’s stupid.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.  The cartridge slid into place with a snap and he eyed it for a moment before putting the weapon back in his baldric.

“Scott couldn’t talk if he wanted to right now,” Gordon said, striding forwards.  Kayo vacated the co-pilot seat, but he didn’t sit down.  “That’s just sloppy if you want information. Either he already got what he wanted – but Scott’s trained to resist for longer than five days so I doubt that – or information was never the aim.”

“Then… what was he after?” John sounded genuinely confused, but Kayo could see what Gordon was getting at and it made her blood churn.

“Not information,” she said, her voice painfully short and curt even to her own ears.  “Revenge.”  Why? The Hood had always been dogging International Rescue, but why?  What reason did the Hood have to hate them so much?

Beside her, Gordon was ramrod straight, his hands balled into fists.

“He wanted Scott to die.”

“What?” John paled, clearly visible even across the hologram.  Gordon sat down in the co-pilot’s chair, and Kayo reluctantly perched in Virgil’s.

“He didn’t succeed,” Gordon said firmly.  “And he won’t.  Give me control, John.  I’ll get us there. You get your ass home.”

John didn’t argue, signing off a moment after Gordon took over manual control.

They flew on in silence, Gordon concentrating on getting them to New Zealand – definitely not the closest, but security was the priority, and there was only one hospital on the planet Kayo would trust with her biggest brother right now – and Kayo trying and failing to compartmentalise everything.

Her uncle had tried to kill Scott.  The Hood had tried to kill her brother.

Gordon had shot her uncle. Her brother had shot the Hood.

“They don’t need to know the full story,” Gordon said suddenly, jerking her back into the present and away from the mire of her thoughts.  “Even if it’s the Hood, they wouldn’t agree he deserved to be shot.”

“It’ll be on record,” Kayo reminded him.  “WASP know it wasn’t them.”  Deserved to be shot?  Kayo wished she could believe that so whole-heartedly, but whenever she thought about it, she remembered the uncle that used to be kind, once upon a time.

Why hadn’t that lasted? Why had he turned so cruel?

He’s never hurt you, her mind reminded her.  Even now.

“They won’t check the records.”  Gordon was confident.  “John doesn’t want to know and the others don’t care what happened as long as Scott’s okay.”

“But he’s not.”

“He will be. He’s Scott.”

Gordon was a tough young man, spine of steel – not just metaphorically – and cold as ice when required. Despite that, he was still Scott’s little brother, still clung to the need for his big brother to be okay.

Kayo understood.  She couldn’t imagine Scott not recovering, either.

The hospital was the same as ever, doctors she knew the name of – and every inch of their background – there to carry her brother away.  The GDF personnel were equally known to her; Colonel Casey had been thorough with her selection.  The final reassurance was the pink Rolls Royce, and Kayo exchanged a distant nod with the lady inside before returning to Thunderbird Two.

Gordon was waiting for her in the cockpit.  Virgil would be staying at the hospital; Kayo was unsurprised.  It would take a miracle to tear him away from his older brother now. Not when he blamed himself so whole-heartedly for the situation.

She’d be back later, in Thunderbird Shadow.  But first she needed to wind down, destress until she was capable of being the best security she could.

For that, she needed her bedroom, and peace and quiet.  Gordon disappeared who-knew-where – Thunderbird Four, most likely, to stow away his gun before Alan saw it.  Kayo made a beeline for her sanctuary, shut the door, and threw herself face down on her bed.

There, she let everything she’d suppressed bubble up.  The confliction over blood family versus her true family, the guilt and shame for there even being a confliction when her uncle – the Hood – was willing to commit such atrocities.  The state Scott had been in, battered and broken, all done at the hands of a ruthless murderer who had already broken her family – her real family – once.

Her bed dipped, someone sitting by her head.  They didn’t speak, but they didn’t need to.  Only one person would ever dare intrude without knocking.

“I hate him, Grandma,” she sobbed.  “I hate him.  So, so much.”  She couldn’t get the memory of the Hood, slumped and bleeding, out of her mind. She shouldn’t care.  She shouldn’t.

A gentle hand ran down her hair, comforting.

“I know, dear.”

They’d done this dance before, after Mr Tracy’s death, her father’s disappearance.  Every time her uncle tore apart her true family.

She hated him, but there was still a part of her that loved him, even now.

Part VII

[yukippe]

flowers so very delicate

@pjofemslashweek day 2: au (soulmates) | read on ao3 | word count: 3.1k

new rome is a city of flowers. 

the myth says that people were once two sided. that they were whole. that zeus took them and tore them in half, full of jealousy. myths, of course, are all based in truth. 

all mortals might have other halves, but it is when the children and chosen of the gods share souls that are able to find their soulmates. when two soulmates touch; flowers bloom. in new rome, a city of the gods favoured, the streets are full of colour and petals.

 -

reyna grows up in a family blessed by bellona. her and her older sister are the goddesses children, but her family has always been favoured. flowers are not unheard of and prized, but they are also hidden. a soulmate could be a weakness, a soulmate is unheard of for mortals that do not know of the gods. when she and her sister escape and find themselves on circe’s island a scarce handful of the women have flowers. those that do keep them on display. 

when the men take over the island, reyna thinks very little of flowers and thinks much more of trying to escape. 

it’s in the after, when she finally settles in new rome, that she thinks of soulmates. 

not everyone in new rome has a soulmate, after all not everyone falls in love or stays in new rome. most people in new rome have a soulmate. 

reyna comes to new rome alone with flora free arms, and no one minds. she meets jason when they’re both twelve and she starts to know she’s in the right place as he laughs with her and fights with her and somehow they both know to very carefully avoid skin to skin contact. soulmates are something special. what she has with jason is special - he’s her best friend. and neither of them want to know if being best friends isn’t enough. 

they go to the movie theatre in the city and carefully separate the popcorn into the extra bag they asked for, they go to the cafe and they never grab the others drink first to pass it to them, when they spar the winner doesn’t pull the other onto their feet. reyna knows the legion and the city thinks the two of them are being silly, that they should just touch and the flowers will be there waiting. 

but reyna’s lost more than she should. and all jason knows is the legion. neither of them are ready to risk it. so they shove each other in the winter when they are bundled up in layers, and keep space between each other when they sit and watch the sunset. 

they make it two years. at fourteen reyna falls off scipio and jason saves her. it should’ve been a moment of relief, instead they both freeze at the sight of their still empty skin. jason finds reyna after the mess of it all. 

  “i don’t care if we aren’t soulmates,” jason says, sitting next to her on reyna’s bunk. 

  “i do,” reyna tells him. she hasn’t met his eyes since he held her and nothing showed on their skin. now, she turns her head to meet his gaze. “i care that we aren’t soulmates. but, you’re still my best friend. and you aren’t going to stop being my best friend just because we aren’t separate halves. your girlfriend can be your second half, or something.”

  jason opens his palm to her and she takes it. he smiles at her and she smiles back. “well,” jason says. “i can hug you now.” and then he throws his arms around her and they fall of reyna’s bed and reyna doesn’t even mind that much that their arms aren’t covered in flowers. instead, she laughs and laughs and squeezes jason tight. 

  after that, if they’re within two feet of each other some part of them is touching the other. when people ask reyna ignores them, jason smiles with his too sharp teeth and claims they’re making up for the two years of their friendship when they always kept apart. 

  they aren’t soulmates, their connection isn’t enough for vines to grow around their limbs, or for sunflowers to sneak across their faces, or for bluebells to be found hiding between their fingers as they hold hands. reyna cares, but only because she cares about jason. reyna doesn’t mourn a half she’s still going to find, instead she teases jason about who’ll be brave enough to come close to the wolf boy. 

  and then she meets venus in charleston and the words she hears swim around in her head, promising a life so barren no child of ceres could heal it. no demigod will heal your soul. she will never know her other half. reyna will never be blessed with the sight of her flowers on another’s skin. her touch will never cause life to bloom. she takes venus’s words and she buries them in the half of her soul she will never know how to fill. reyna might live her life without a soulmate, but no one else has to know that but her. 

-

reyna sees soulmates find each other more times that she can remember. new rome is a garden of souls finding their missing half. reyna tells herself half of a soul isn’t soulless. 

by the time they give her praetor there a few members of the legion her age that are never seen with flowers. reyna thinks of the women on circe’s island and she does not cover her arms. she is not lesser without a soulmate to be found. 

she drives the legion forward, she hugs her friends and doesn’t ache for petals she will never know. she rides scipio and from the sky she can’t see the gardens growing on skin. she takes care of those she loves and she is reyna avila ramirez arellano. no one mentions that she has not found anyone. she is 16 and she has time, in their eyes. more importantly, reyna makes herself into the perfect praetor. 

and then jason grace goes missing. 

-

even perfect praetor’s are not able to rule alone. she does her best. she does everything right. reyna dodges octavian's touch, even though she’s felt his slimy fingers on her arm before. he wants to fill a space that belongs to her best friend, the boy who could’ve been her soulmate. soulmate praetors are a dream in the eyes of many. reyna couldn’t care less. 

instead of wallowing she searches for jason. and after months of looking, percy jackson arrives as a saving grace. part of her would prefer the grace she knows, percy jackson comes with faded flowers he traces everytime his eyes catch them. he is a mystery and reyna has no idea how to solve him, nor the time to try. instead she watches him leave on a quest and breathes easier when he comes back. 

someone who has already met their soulmate taking the place of praetor eases reyna’s worries. reyna doesn’t need to feel bad about not being his soulmate if he already has one. 

except it can’t be that easy. 

-

there’s a war. there’s seven to answer the call, and only six to come home. reyna finds herself with a new praetor by her side and her best friend across the country on a semi-permanent basis and he doesn’t even remember her well. 

reyna’s been having a very bad year. but she lives with it. she adjusts. she hugs frank and laughs when he asks if it’s true that she and jason are secretly soulmates, and then he helps her set that rumour to rest. 

there are meetings with camp half blood and jason becomes a liaison, and when he visits camp jupiter again they watch the sunset. it’s another sunset of so, so many for reyna. but she watches jason’s face more than the sun as it drifts down through the sky, because it’s the first for him. 

reyna and frank raise the ages of when demigods start their service and lower the number of years needed significantly. she goes to a game of capture the flag and is thoroughly surprised when the greeks beat her team of romans. she shakes the hands of all of piper’s siblings as piper watches hopefully, she is patted on the back slightly aggressively by the children of ares and she gets pulled into a very awkward group hug by a cabin lead by two almost identical boys with mischievous smiles. 

flowers never sprout. reyna lets it go, she’s had time to learn to let it go and learn to not care and she’s gotten very, very good at it. 

what she cares about is being happy, now. and she has that. She’s had that since she first found camp jupiter and the son of the camp’s namesake welcomed her with a smile better fit for a wolf.

-

and then, reyna starts to grow up. at seventeen she surprises two camps and a hidden city and chooses to go to a university other than the university of new rome. she goes to fucking harvard. 

“harvard?” frank asks her as she slings her bag over her shoulder. 

 “yeah,” reyna says smirking. “fucking harvard. being the mayor of a small town looks really good on college apps, i think. and i’m getting the legion to bankroll it. imperial gold is a lot more in mortal currency.”

  “okay,” frank says. “but like, did you do high school? Because i haven’t really been doing high school since before i got here.”

  reyna laughs at that. she puts her bags back down and pulls out her phone to text frank some links he really should’ve had, “i do night school and online school. the entire legion should be? I guess you can go bother them all to start while i’m at harvard.”

  frank shakes his head, but then he pulls a hat out from behind his back and reyna starts laughing again. it’s maroon and in big lettering on the front it has the harvard logo. reyna asks him where he got it, but he pays her no mind.  he puts it on her head and pulls it down too far in front of her eyes. before jumping back out of her range. “well, i guess you’re going to harvard. stay away from frat parties!” he smiles at her and reyna rolls her eyes at him and pulls him in for a hug. flowers don’t grow, but reyna doesn’t need them to know that frank was the best co praetor she could’ve asked for. 

  and then he walks her to the bus and she sits at the back of a bus no one else gets onto. it stops in new rome and no one ever gets on or leaves, reyna doesn’t know why but she’s always like the idea of how confused the bus driver must be. she certainly startled him when she stepped on and paid her fare, and reyna smiles at the driver when he makes eye contact with her in his rearview mirror. he doesn’t make eye contact with her again for the rest of the trip, not even after other passengers filter on. 

-

  harvard, for the most part, is easier than being praetor and (probably being the only roman demigod) doing high school. her classmates are mostly awful and reyna would like to show some of her professors why monsters fear her name almost as much as percy jackson’s, but she shows restraint. all those years with octavian finally come in useful. 

  no one at harvard has flowers that came from their other halves' touch. reyna thinks there are one or two greek demigods also on campus, but she doesn’t see the telltale flowers anywhere. so either they’re very good at avoiding her gaze or the other demigods at harvard are also bloom free. 

  it’s nice. she gets to laugh at her own jokes and she goes on dates with girls that aren’t watching for petals as their fingers brush and none of the friends she makes try for touch too much or too little. reyna can’t remember the last time that skin contact didn’t mean something. she entertains getting a tattoo of a dead plant on her shoulder, but she lets her roommate talk her out of it pretty quickly. 

  when she goes back to new rome for the summer in the tiny apartment she gets for her service as praetor she teases her friends who are stuck in summer school because they never thought about high school until frank made a big fancy assembly after reyna left in september. frank and leila have grand plans for high school education - even though neither of them have finished high school yet - and reyna sees construction ongoing for a school behind one of her favourite parks. it makes her smile. 

  there’s a reunion for the seven and company when reyna’s in town, leo makes a crack about how she’s been missing longer than he was and reyna’s eyes soften as she she’s the red camellias and hyacinth jason’s touch leaves on leo as he puts his arm over leo’s shoulder. they weren’t there until after leo came back from death, but no one knows why. then, leo tugs piper close and reyna is properly surprised when she sees geraniums and asters grow on piper’s arm. (later she will find piper and get the story out of her. once she has the story she’ll go to hug jason and tell him how happy she is for them all)

  she’s forgotten the way it feels to be around soulmates. but there’s frank and hazel who are as free of flora as reyna remembers, like her. nico covers the flowers of the boy he’s been seeing he’s trying to keep a secret from her she thinks he’s worried she’ll threated the mystery boy. he’s not wrong) and percy and annabeth will never be found without each others jasmine, thyme and chrysanthemums. reyna finds it hurts less, even knowing that it’s likely one day frank and hazel will find flowers too. 

  reyna has a life where no one knows of souls that make their mark with blossoms. 

-

  reyna joins the harvard climbing team her second year for kicks and also out of spite. she goes to her program’s societies events and has been known to drop by the chess club to and make the members cry. she’s involved. but, as dakota had pointed it out with far too much glee, she’s not on any sort of athletic team or club. 

  so she picks up climbing. if she’s going to fucking harvard she might as well join the fucking harvard team. 

  later, dakota will say she owes him. reyna will offer to spar him for credit when he mentions it and he’ll back off. 

    in reyna’s second year when she joins the climbing team, a first year named zia rashid joins too. zia’s originally from egypt, but she did high school in brooklyn where she was staying with family friends. she’s majoring in history and has a minor in earth sciences and is planning to do her masters in archaeology. she’s a little addicted to smoothies and reyna is going to fall off the climbing wall one day because of her. 

  their friends, really, just friends. they spot each other on the wall and zia is one of reyna’s few friends at harvard that knows she was the “mayor” of a “small town”. reyna really, really wants to go out with her. 

 they’re getting lunch together after they leave the gym when reyna finally gets up the nerve to ask her out. she’d been teasing zia for ordering a smoothie even though she’d had one as they walked over to the cafe. 

  “uh,” reyna laughs as she watches zia’s mouth maybe a little too closely. “how many smoothies is that today?”

  zia sighs at her, “well i didn’t know we were coming here. the restaurant next door - i wouldn’t have ordered a smoothie there. but this place is my favourite.”

  reyna raises an eyebrow, “you didn’t give me a number.”

  zia pulls her straw out of her mouth and sighs. “here try this,” she says. “it’s the best thing you’ll ever taste. try it!” she starts waggling the drink at reyna and reyna grabs it when zia’s smile turns soft and teasing. 

  she tries it. “okay,” reyna says, still holding onto the drink. “maybe you have a point.”

  zia gives her a knowing look and then reaches for her drink back, but reyna moves it out of zia’s reach. zia’s mouth drops open, “i. you.”

  “i like it,” reyna says with a shrug. and then she steals herself and goes for it. “let me take you on a date and get you another one.”

  the hand zia had in the air that was trying to get her drink back freezes. for a moment, reyna worries she read their quiet moments and late night perfect grammar text chains wrong. the hand drops to her side, though, and zia’s face turns warm. “yeah,” zia says. she pushes her hair back behind her ear and reyna thinks she just got a hint at one of zia’s little gestures she’d been curious about. “yeah, that sounds good.”

  for a few moments they just smile at each other across the table. eventually, their hands find each other under the table and reyna gives zia her drink back. in those few moments though, reyna is reminded of sunsets with jason and nights with nico after shadow jumping across the ocean and horseback rides with hazel and calls with her sister.

  they don’t let go of each other’s hands until they have to pay. all reyna can see is zia’s eyes and they wander out from the cafe bumping into each others sides and reyna can’t remember the last time she was this close to someone. 

  zia pulls reyna down to a bench and reyna bumps into zia softly, her heartbeat faster than normal in her ears, but it doesn’t sound like it’s racing. nothing needs to be a race with zia. reyna brings their linked hands up to her mouth to kiss when she sees it. 

  she’s never seen roses bloom when soulmates touch before. she could’ve sworn she’d bumped into zia before in some way that would’ve had their skin touch, but reyna had grown used to being kept apart and carefully not getting close enough to be disappointed. 

  zia’s eyes are wide and reyna’s mostly confused as to how she didn’t know. 

  “i haven’t seen you in any nome, though,” zia says. 

  “um,” reyna says. and then she realizes what nome means as she remembers a story from percy and annabeth about magic and a different pantheon. “oh. that’s because i’m roman.”

  zia blinks, and then understanding flashes through her eyes, reyna giggles lightly and zia squeezes their still linked hands. “we both have long stories to tell, i think,” zia says. 

  they share them. soulmates are not unique to the children and blessed of the greek and roman gods, reyna finds. and as she listens to zia’s stories she knows she would’ve found zia with or without the roses on their palms. 

[master-sass-blast]

Out With the Old, In With the New, Part Two -Because Men are Often Worse Still.

IT’S ALMOST 1 AM THIS TOOK SO LONG TO FORMAT AND YEAH I COULD’VE STARTED EARLIER BUT S T I  L L-

Part Two of “Out With the Old, In With the New.” To recap, Piotr is kidnapped while on a mission, and you take things into your own hands when Nathan, Wade, and Neena turn up missing as well. In the process of tracking down Piotr, you run into and team up with Angel Dust -aka Christina--who’s looking for her missing daughter. You then ask Frank Castle for help in freeing your family, friends, and Christina’s daughter, then join him, Christina, Ellie, Yukio, and Russell on a mission to rescue everyone. Just when it seems like you’ve won, though, the mastermind behind the kidnappings --Nathaniel Essex--escapes with Christina’s daughter in tow, leaving you all with no other choice but to pursue him.

Yeah, it’s a lot. If you haven’t read part one, you definitely should otherwise this is going to be really confusing.

Rating: Tish for pyschological torture, injury, feelings of failure/probable rejection sensitivity dysphoria, and near death situations.

Pairings: Piotr Rasputin x Reader, Nathan Summers x Wade Wilson, Frank Castle x Karen Page, Ellie Phimister x Yukio, and Alexandra Rasputin x Nikolai Rasputin,

Taglist: @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @super-darkcloudstudent, @girl-obsessed-with-things, @nebulous-leo, @dandyqueen

Alright. Let’s start with the good news.

The good news is that Piotr is –mostly—okay. He’s a little dehydrated and a little roughed up from being knocked out and captured, but other than that he’s fine.

(According to him, Essex and his team of scientists seemed more interested in Neena, Wade, and Madeline; he and Nate were merely proxy captures.)

The bad news is that everything else is going to shit.

Scott basically hit the roof once he found out you left –with the teens, two known criminals, and a Hell’s Kitchen vigilante that is in the legal gray area in tow—without authorization, and is none too thrilled when you return with three more mutants that fall on the vigilante-assassin spectrum and a mutant super weapon with no tongue.

(Fortunately, Alex sends him packing with a none-too-welcoming glare before he can verbally rip you to shreds.)

Your home is a veritable madhouse, now. True to his word, your uncle flew in, and has since taken your dining room hostage with various laptops, weapons, and stacks of paper. Nate and Frank are shoulder to shoulder with him, going over various strategies and pieces of intel; Wade, Ellie, Piotr, and Christina are arguing about Francis and the Weapon-X program, while Mikhail, Yukio, Alex, and Russell are having their own other conversation about the lab and everything that happened there—

It all blends into a cacophony of noises, none of which is helping you think right now.

Shit.

You notice Neena sitting off to the side, staring out the darkened window that overlooks the back deck. You skirt the chaos that starts in your dining room, trails through the hall, and spills into the kitchen, and sit down next to her on the couch. “You okay?”

She sighs heavily, then gives you a weak, tired smile. “Not really. But I will be.”

You want to ask her what happened in the lab –what Essex was so interested in—but you know now’s not the time for that question. That there may never be a time for that question. “Why don’t you go lay down in the guest room upstairs?” You look over your shoulder at the multiple arguments and conversation, then back at her. “Not to say we don’t need you, but I think we’re covered as far as opinions go.”

“Thanks,” she says with a small smile, “but Wade actually called Dopinder for me. He’ll be taking me back to my place.”

“Are you sure that’s safe?” you ask with a frown.

“I’ve got a good feeling about it.”

You let out a little huff of laughter. “Well, if you want to go chill upstairs until Dopinder comes, feel free.”

“That actually sounds good. I think I’ll do—”

The sound of glass shattering cuts Neena off –along with every other person in your home, save for one.

“You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about!”

You whirl around and see Christina advancing on Wade, who quickly gets Russell out of her warpath before picking up the nearest, largest shard of glass from the broken mirror that he can find and angles it at her.

“I will fucking shank you,” Wade snaps, voice entirely lethal. “You –you, of all people—do not get to tell me what is and isn’t a job! Your fucking sugar daddy turned me into a moldy avocado that got facefucked by a naked mole rat! You two built an entire scam off torturing innocent, desperate people just so your psychopathic main squeeze could get his rocks off and feel like some sort of Zeus-wannabe—”

“You don’t understand shit!” Christina snarls, advancing on Wade. “You’ve never tried to take care of a kid—”

“—playing God and crushing people under his feet—”

“—with no way to get a decent job or pay child support—”

“—and then you helped kidnap my future baby momma—”

“—and no resources or avenues to help you out—”

“—and you think I’m just going to forgive that?”

“—so you take what you can get!”

“Alright, alright, easy,” Alex says with an air of unchallengeable authority. With a simple gesture of her hand, she uses her telekinesis to back Wade and Christina away from each other, before flicking her wrist again, sending every last splinter of glass off the floor and into the kitchen trash can. “There’s bad blood between you two, that much is obvious. None of that changes that we have child to rescue. You two can duke it out later; now, we focus. Ponimayu?”

“If you think,” Wade spits out, still glaring at Christina, “that I am working with some fucking Cara Dune knock off—”

“She will not be joining us,” Alex interjects. “So that takes care of that.”

“Since fucking when!” Christina growls, advancing on Alex with her fists balled up. “Maddie’s my daughter, I’m not—”

“Risking losing her permanently by possibly getting your ass caught in some less than legal actions, while associating with less than legal people,” Alex finishes, standing and crossing her arms over her chest. “Because you have criminal history, da? Which means you do not have full custody, da? And if you get caught in further such activity, you will lose custody to ex who decided to give your daughter to man we are tracking, da?”

Christina visibly seethes, but says nothing.

“Our goal is to protect your daughter, which also means protecting you,” Alex continues, voice gentler. “Otherwise, we end up right back here. So, you stay here, we bring Maddie back to you—”

“—and my ex still has custody rights,” Christina finishes, bitter and defeated.

Alex casts a glance at your uncle before shrugging. “Maybe not. We’ll work something out.”

Christina squints at her, expression perplexed. “Work ‘what’ out?”

“Also, sidebar,” Wade interjects. “Since when am I just getting looped in on this?”

“You want to leave young girl in hands of experimenting scientist?” Alex asks, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

“No.”

“Then you help. Anyone else want to say anything?”

“What about us?” Russell asks, gesturing between himself, Yukio, and Ellie.

“You three stay here as well –I will handcuff you all to chairs myself if it comes to that,” Alex adds before any of the teens can argue. “Anyone else?”

“How’re we gonna track this shitstain down?” Frank pipes up. “He could be anywhere.”

“We can go through the intel we already have,” your uncle says, jumping into the conversation. “Chances are he’s still local, since it’s not easy to keep multiple sites running across a widespread area. We sift through everything, we might find something—”

“I can do you one better.” Ellie rummages in the cargo pockets on her suit, then pulls out a miniature hard drive. “I downloaded the compound’s entire database while trying to open the last containment tube. If he’s got other contacts, other places he’s been setting up, it should be on here.”

Your uncle takes the hard drive from Ellie’s outstretched hand with an impressed nod. “Nice. I’ll get working on this, start doing some basic search eliminations so that we aren’t wading through so much information.”

“X-Men are still involved in this,” Piotr says, speaking up for the first time since Christina punched the mirror. “Things cannot go too far off rails.”

“I’ll go along,” you say quickly when you catch the expressions that flicker across Nate’s, Wade’s, Frank’s, Mikhail’s, and Alex’s faces. “To make sure things don’t get too crazy.”

Piotr frowns. “Myshka—”

“I’m already knee-deep in this shit when it comes to Scott,” you mutter, shrugging. “No need to yank anyone else in. And you need to rest. So there.”

Piotr purses his lips, then nods towards the stairs. “Can I talk to you for moment? Please?”

***

 By the time you step over the threshold to yours and your husband’s bedroom, your stomach is in your shoes. You don’t need to see Piotr’s face to feel the disappointment, disapproval, and dissatisfaction radiating off him.

You knew it’d be coming. You’d just hoped that it would wait a little longer than this.

Piotr sits on the bed, waiting until you close the door behind you. The door latches shut, and then he lets out a sigh twice the size he is.

This fucking sucks.

“I wish I knew where to start,” he says quietly, gazing across the room at you.

“You’re upset,” you manage, throat already tight with emotion.

“I am,” Piotr confesses, still quiet. “I know you knew better. Are better.”

And there it is. Less than ten words, and he’s already got you on the verge of tapping.

“I didn’t have any other options,” you say, voice shaking. You sniff, then swallow hard and tilt your chin up. Don’t break down. Not now. “I really didn’t.”

“You always have other options, myshka. Options better than involving children and likes of Frank Castle. You could have asked X-Men for help—”

“Scott was the one on patrol monitor duty. Do you really think he gave me the time of day?”

Piotr frowns deeply. “You are X-Men. If you request assistance—”

“I’ll never be an X-Men in Scott’s eyes,” you spit out, voice breaking embarrassingly. “Look –there’s a young child missing, and she’s in the hands of a fucking maniac. Right now, that takes priority. You’re already disappointed in me—” You choke back a sob, then spread your hands in a ‘what else can I do’ gesture. “We all knew that was coming. So, let’s just leave it there, and next time I’ll try ‘extra hard to be good,’ or whatever.”

“Y/N—”

Whatever he’s going to say next you can’t bear hearing it.

You turn on your heel and all but run out of your bedroom and back downstairs.

 ***

 You catch your uncle as he leaves the dining room.

“Woah, punk –you okay?”

“Yeah,” you lie, scrubbing your face dry. “You get through everything?”

He stares at you, hard, for a long time, but ultimately drops your evident falsehood. “Yeah. Team’s in there concocting a plan right now.” He nods towards the dining room. “Should probably hop in if you want to keep tabs on shit.”

“Yeah, yeah. Look, uh, could you do me a favor?

“Sure. Name it.”

“Can you get her—” you nod towards Christina, who’s sitting on your family room couch and staring off aimlessly into space “—on one of your teams?”

Your uncle raises an eyebrow. “I thought she and your brother had bad blood.”

“I’m more worried about her daughter. If we can give her something mostly legit to do, she’s more likely to be able to keep her, and then…” Images of your childhood flash through your mind, and you swallow hard. “And then another little kid doesn’t have to spend the rest of their life with someone who hates them.”

Your uncle’s expression softens. He nods. “Yeah, punk. I’ll get her set up.”

You nod in thanks –then hug tightly before heading into the dining room. Job’s not over yet. Not by a longshot.

***

 Ellie’s mass download turns out to be more fruitful than anticipated –namely in that Essex has a righthand man that never visited the compound –to avoid potential capture if the location was compromised. A string of email communications shows that the righthand man knew about all of Essex’s secondary locations and developed the teleporter for Nathaniel.

And, with a little bit of working and some mostly illegal hacking, Nathaniel’s righthand man can be traced back to an apartment in Northern Manhattan (thank you, Micro, aka “Lieberman”).

The plan is simple. Mikhail teleports the rest of you inside the building’s stairwell to avoid being caught on camera. From there, you follow Alex, Mikhail, Nate, Wade, and Frank up to the proper floor.

Simple. Now all you have to do is execute it.

Your heart starts pounding in your throat as you follow the gaggle of assassins into the hallway. You’d agreed to come along, and you’d known that things would get… less than kosher…

But for the first time, you really take in the various guns everyone else is packing, and the body armor that Frank, Mikhail, and Alex all wear, and your stomach churns.

Dammit, Y/N, what did you just get yourself into.

Both Frank and Wade make to kick the door in –and then get yanked to the opposite wall via telekinesis.

“What, you want to alert entire floor?” Alex hisses, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves. “And get your fucking gloves on, Castle. We are not leaving prints if this guy decides to squeal.” She puts a glove hand on the doorknob, then frowns in concentration—

The door unlocks with a quiet click and swings open with a barely audible squeak.

You trail after everyone else, careful to stay outside any lines of fire—

And then everything happens in the blink of an eye.

The righthand man –Jason Cross, according to the name on the WiFi bill that Frank’s tech spook had tracked down—gets up out of his chair and makes a dive for a cell phone, only to hit the floor empty handed.

Alex summons the phone to her hand with her telekinesis, then swiftly pockets it. “Quiet, or this gets worse for you.”

“Get him in a chair,” Nate growls.

Frank, Wade, and Mikhail all rush Jason, physically picking him up and manhandling him into a wooden chair.

Mikhail pulls out a roll of duct tape from the duffel bag slung over his shoulder, then restrains Jason’s legs and arms with several loops of the stuff –all while whistling what sounds suspiciously like Katy Perry’s “California Girls.”

Because this night can’t get any weirder.

Wade rubs his gloved hands together, and the eyes on his Deadpool mask widen as he stares down at Jason. “Ah, this is gonna be fun! Whatcha feeling, baby boy? Chinese hot sauce water torture? Car battery to the nips? Poptart up the ass?”

“Why overcomplicate things,” Frank growls, voice sounding less like a human’s and more like if a pile of gravel learned how to talk. He towers over Jason, glaring down at him like Death personified. “Talk.”

Jason, to his credit, doesn’t piss his pants –though it’s probably a near thing. “L-look, man, I –I don’t know what you want, or what you’re hear for—”

“Wrong answer,” Frank snarls, then rears back and balls his hand into a fist.

“What the fuck is wrong with you!” Alex snaps, voice hushed. She bats his hand away from Jason with her telekinesis, then glares Frank down. “Eat a damn Snickers and sit the fuck down! For fuck’s sake!”

“He knows were the girl is,” Frank argues.

“And we are not going to get information if you start messing with his head –or if neighbors overhear you beating his ass. Sit down! Just –give me a minute.”

Frank scowls, but sits down on the nearest chair.

Alex lets out a huff, then starts stalking around the apartment.

You visually follow her trail as she snoops around Jason’s apartment. She does a cursory search of the kitchen, eyeing the pristine white coffee mugs all arranged with the handles facing left. She glances over the meticulously maintained coffee pot, then goes about checking through the cabinets.

“Whoa. Looks like someone’s a caffeine fiend,” Wade jokes when she opens one cabinet door to reveal several unopened bags of the same type of coffee.

Alex ignores Wade as she continues her circuit around Jason’s apartment. She eyes the immaculately white area rug and furniture, the precisely spaced pictures, and the flawlessly dusted coffee table before moving into his bedroom.

“Is there something specific we’re looking for?” Frank grumbles.

“Patience,” is Alex’s only reply. She opens the nightstand drawer, then pulls out a black leather-bound journal.

You get that sinking feeling in your stomach as you watch her flip through the journal’s pages, but stay quiet.

At this point, there’s really not much you can do to stop this ride.

Alex strides back out of the bedroom and tosses the journal onto the coffee table next to Jason, letting it land with a resounding thwap. She stares him down for a moment, then heads back to the kitchen.

“We’re looking for a missing kid,” Frank points out irritably.

“I am well aware,” Alex fires back, tone dry. She casts one more glance at Jason, then starts to shuffle through the rows of coffee cups –messing up their arrangement, touching them all over, sending the handles askew. She eyes one, coughs on it, then sets it back in the group before picking one from the back.

Jason stares after Alex, jaw clenching and unclenching feverishly. “Look, whatever it is you want—”

Alex ignores him as she withdraws the coffee pot from the machine. She turns towards the sink, then freezes halfway and sneezes into the pot.

Jason goes whiter than a sheet. “Just –look, I can’t tell you anything—”

She fills the pot with water, then sticks it in the machine. Alex tosses the already opened bag of coffee around for a moment –spilling a sprinkling of grounds on the counter and floor—before yanking one of the cabinet doors open and pulling out an unopened bag.

“Look, I –just stop!”

Alex pauses in her actions, glancing over her shoulder. “You know where the girl is.”

“I already said, I don’t know any—”

She turns away from him and rips the bag in half, sending coffee flying all over the kitchen.

Jason lets out a noise close to a sob.

Mikhail tosses a knife up and down as his mother portions out coffee grounds into a filter. “Is going long? Because, if is, I order pizza.”

Wade perks up. “Ooh, yeah! Burnt crusts and pineapple with olives!”

“No fucking pizza,” Frank growls, grimacing at Wade’s topping choices. “‘Specially not like that.”

“Terpeniye, ognennyy shar. We are just waiting for coffee to brew.”

“Betcha there’s a Postmates option that gets the pizza here faster than that.”

“Later, gorgeous,” Nate murmurs, gently squeezing his boyfriend’s hand.

Alex sets the coffee to brew, then strides into the main living area of the apartment, trailing coffee grounds with her. “Alright, we have few minutes. Let’s talk.” She fixes Jason with a stern glare when he all but lets out a shriek of agony. “You stay quiet, or I make this worse for you. Ponyal?” When his mouth screws shut, she nods and leans against a marble topped end table. “You know where the girl is. Where Essex took her.”

“Look, I don’t know—”

“Your email is listed in compound records,” Alex lists, starting tick off items on her fingers. “You own the blueprints for teleporter –which you also designed. Your journal mentions Essex by name and working with him. You have record of unethical scientific practices and aligning with agencies that promote or practice testing on mutant individuals. You know exactly why we are here and what we want, you are able to give it to us, and there is no ending in this that you do not come out fucked.” She stares him down for a minute, then shrugs. “You only control just how much it hurts.”

Jason gulps, then looks away. “Okay, look, I admit I know the guy –but if Nathaniel finds out I told you anything, he’s gonna kill me!”

“Should’ve thought about that before you sided with the guy that experiments on kids,” Frank growls.

“He’s going to kill you either way, considering we’ve been here,” Nate adds, leaning against the nearest wall. “You want to save a little girl’s life, or not?”

“You guys don’t understand,” Jason says, voice and expression suddenly earnest in a way that makes your skin crawl. “The gift this child possesses is too extraordinary to simply pass up on. The advancements that could be made for mankind are innumerable.”

“She’s a kid,” Frank snarls, finger tapping against his thigh. “Not a resource for you shitbags to exploit.”

“What even do you want her for?” Wade pipes up. “Aside from whatever sick torture porno collection the two of you are creating.”

“Subject Fifty-Eight has the ability to mimic other mutation sets and already displays remarkable ability to control and use said mutation. On her own, she could be an amazing asset in law enforcement and conflict de-escalation—”

“Which means you want to use her as a gun,” Wade surmises. “You sick cumsock.”

“It’s more than that!” Jason insists, leaning towards Wade as much as he can until the duct tape restraints stop him. “Nathaniel was making good headway on isolating the chromosome that carried the mimicry ability. If he’s able to separate it out, stabilize it, there’s not limits to what it could be used for. Soldiers and policemen with the ability to mimic fighting styles or power sets of alien opponents. Weapons with artificial intelligence interfaces that can adapt their ammunition to whatever they’re up against. Technology with programming that lets them adapt and overcome any type of malware. Vaccinations that could adapt to viruses—”

“We aren’t your ‘Godsend!’” you interrupt, crossing your arms over your chest. “Mutants aren’t a resource that you can just exploit for some type of breakthrough!”

“Not to mention, you held us against our will and put us in giant test tubes,” Wade adds furiously. “And we’re talking about a kid!”

“Sounds like dystopic book,” Mikhail interjects. “Like Hunger Games.”

“I think it’s more of a Divergent, technically—”

“I can’t let you stop the pursuit of science,” Jason says, so sincere and earnest that it’s disgusting.

You stare at him, shocked to your core. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

Mikhail turns to face his mother. “Mozhem li my prosto udarit' yego uzhe?”

“Almost.” The coffee maker beeps, and Alex strides back into the kitchen. She pours herself a cup, then walks back into the living area and sits on the couch, directly across from Jason. “Alright. Let’s try this one last time.”

Jason watches her, shifting in his seat (as much as the duct tape lets him). “Look, I already told you—”

“All you told me was a bunch of self-congratulating bullshit that, frankly, made me want to put your face through that end table,” she cuts him off, nodding at the marble end table to her right. “I’m giving you one last chance to do something other than waste my time, and then I’m personally shipping you out to a Siberian gulag, where you can spend the rest of your pathetic, disgusting days sniveling in a cold, dark cell and getting pissed on by gangsters who think you’re a fun bitch to bend over.”

As a credit to his tenacity, if not his common sense, Jason holds strong.

He gulps, and lets out a shaky breath, but shakes his head. “I can’t. I won’t.”

“For fuck’s sake, why aren’t we just breaking this shitbag?” Frank snaps, lurching up off the couch.

“Oh, we are,” Alex says, voice eerily soft and a calm, as she slowly raises the coffee cup to her lips. She maintains full eye contact with Jason as she takes a small sip—

Then she lifts the cup over the immaculate, pure white carpet, and tips it over.

Jason panics, lurching and struggling against his restraints. “No! No, no, no, no—”

The coffee stops, hovering in the air in a massive, rippling, dark brown blob.

Jason pants and gasps, eyes darting between Alex and the coffee.

Alex gently sets the empty mug down on the end table, expression completely inscrutable. She keeps her eyes locked on Jason, practically staring down into his soul.

If he has one left, you think bitterly.

Jason’s chest heaves, breaths slowly relaxing as the coffee continues to float in the air—

And then the blob begins to slowly –inexorably—pour towards the carpet.

Jason’s expression contorts into one of grief. His brow furrows. His eyes widen. His mouth strains into a grimace. His hands grip the armrests of the chair, knuckles going stark white. “Look –I can’t –I’m not—”

Alex merely raises an eyebrow –looking like the pinnacle of unimpressed—and continues to let the coffee flow sluggishly towards the ground.

Jason’s face goes deathly pale, then flushes as he starts to cry. Tears form in his eyes as he yanks at the restraints on his wrists. “Stop it… just –stop it!”

“Careful,” Alex says, voice perfectly smooth and neutral. “Struggle too hard, and you’ll knock over your chair. Might break something.”

His shoulders shake as he watches on, as he stares at a small drip of coffee that rolls down the outer edge of the blob and drops off, falling away from the liquid mass and towards the flawless white carpet—

And he breaks.

“Okay! Okay, okay, okay.”

The drop halts mere inches away from the floor.

Alex raises an eyebrow expectantly.

Jason sniffs and shudders, then hangs his head and starts talking. “The teleporter’s a prototype. It works, but it has a limited range and limited coordinate functions.”

“Useful stuff,” Alex says, voice going gravelly for the first time. “Or I’m dropping this whole cup and going back for the damn pot.”

“It’s in New Jersey. Near Cape May. There’s a second lab there that Nathaniel planned on retreating to if shit hit the fan.”

“And he’ll be there? With the girl?”

“Unless he’s decided to take her somewhere else, yeah.” Jason sniffs. “It’s the only other place he has that has the equipment he needs.”

Alex narrows her eyes. “Coordinates.”

“There’s a flash drive in my safe, underneath my bed. It has a backup of all the information and programming for the teleporter, in case the thing wiped itself clean.”

“Encryption?”

“Yeah; Nathaniel was paranoid about opposition from other companies and scientists. I can—”

“We’ll manage,” Alex interrupts him briskly. “Security measures on the safe?”

“There’s an alarm wired to the door that texts Nathaniel’s phone when it’s opened without the proper code.”

Alex nods at Mikhail. “Cut the back open.” She goes back to staring at Jason, bracing her elbows on her knees. “Security measures at the compound in Cape May.”

Jason squirms. “Look, I’ve already told you—” He lets out a pained whine when the coffee mass drops two inches, then starts talking once more. “It’s pretty spare. We couldn’t afford to have it equipped like the New York one. There’s some cameras, maybe three or four moderately armed guards, and some lockdown functions on the lab doors and windows, but that’s it.”

Alex watches him for a few moments longer, then turns her attention to everyone else. “Anyone else have questions?”

Frank scowls and shakes his head. He lurches off the couch, stalking towards the bedroom where the sounds of Mikhail cutting through the safe drone on. “Broke for a fucking carpet. Disgusting son of a bitch.”

Nathan shakes his head when Alex looks at him. “I’ve heard everything I need to hear.”

You pass on asking any questions, which only leaves Wade—

Who is staring off into space, fists clenched at his side.

You look at Nathan –who shakes his head—then back to Alex. “I… think we’re all set?”

Jason lets out a whimper when Alex collects the coffee back into the cup –mass, single drop, and all—then crumples as much as his restraints let him. “So, what are you going to do with me now?”

Alex shrugs. “Nothing.”

He frowns. “What?”

“Well, you said it yourself,” Alex says. “Essex will kill you just for ratting him out. We don’t have to do anything.”

Jason sputters, mouth opening and closing as he stares at Alex. “I—”

“I mean, look at you,” she continues, smiling enough to show a hint of teeth. “There’s not even a mark on you. Your apartment’s in one piece. All we really did was tape you to a chair and just… talk to you.” Her smile grows as Jason’s expression morphs to one of horror. “You broke for a carpet. If he doesn’t kill you for that, I’d be amazed.”

Jason’s chin trembles as tears roll down his cheeks.

Alex smirks, stands, takes a sip coffee, then grimaces. “You have shit taste in coffee.” She chucks the cup against the nearest wall –which elicits another groan from Jason—then peers into the bedroom. “Ognennyy shar! Skol'ko dol'she?”

“Uzhe sdelano!” The sound of the safe-cutting stops, followed by some rustling noises, and then Mikhail appears in the living room. He tosses the flash drive to Nathan. “Here goes.”

Nate catches it, then raises an eyebrow at the manila folder and envelopes in Mikhail’s other hand. “What are those?”

“Identity thieving.” He crams them in his duffel bag, then nods at Jason. “What do with him?”

Alex makes a ‘hmm-ing’ noise, then glances over at Jason—

Who promptly passes out.

“What did you do to him?” you ask.

“Pressure point and telekinesis.”

“And we’re just leaving him here?” Frank growls, emerging from the bedroom. “Letting him walk away?”

“With any luck, Essex will handle him for us,” Alex says, dropping the empty coffee mug in the kitchen sink. “If he doesn’t, we take things from there.”

You gulp. You know you should protest the idea of executing another human being –on some level, you want to, the justice system exists for a reason—

But you also know there won’t be any swaying any of the people around you. And… you doubt the world would mourn the loss of someone that broke for a damn carpet.

“Alright, we’re done here,” Alex declares as she strides towards the front door. “Let’s go.”

***

 “What the fuck was that?”

You’re all back at the van –which was parked a few miles away from Jason’s apartment—stationed around it while you all wait for Frank to finish his argument with his “tech spook” and for the flash drive to be unencrypted. Frank’s at the open tailgate, doubled over a laptop while grumbling into a shitty flip-phone. Mikhail and Nate are going what the former lifted from Jason’s safe, and Alex—

Is currently being glared down by one very, very irate Wade Wilson.

He has his mask off, which is the biggest tip off that he’s genuinely furious and not just making an argument for the sake of making an argument. The dim lighting and the scars covering his skin cast his face in shadows, but it isn’t hard to miss the sound of his ragged breathing, the way he keeps clenching and unclenching his fists, or how his body is so tensely coiled that it seems like he’s only three seconds away from physically lashing out at Alexandra.

Everything goes silent –save for Frank’s frustrated muttering—as you all glance between the two assassins.

Alex, to her credit, seems none too ruffled. She blinks slowly, raises an eyebrow, and calmly crosses her arms over her chest. “In regards to what?”

“That fucking interrogation!” Wade snaps, sounding almost like a feral dog. “You said we were going in there to squeeze this guy until he coughed up his juices, and then you just –you just—”

“Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.” She shrugs. “Evident from the state of his apartment, his reactions to his order and cleanliness being disrupted, and the journal entries talking about his therapy sessions for the condition.”

“You fucking—”

“I got results,” Alex states. “Without alerting neighbors, authorities, or leaving a trail of evidence that would lead back to us or X-Men.” She raises an eyebrow. “You have problems with that?”

“Oh, I have fucking problems,” Wade seethes. “You don’t just… you don’t just force your way into someone’s brain and turn it fucking inside out! You don’t use something against them that they can’t help or control!”

Even Frank’s staring now, having stopped his quiet swearing and arguing.

“How many therapy sessions do you think this guy is gonna have to go through, now, just undo everything you did to him? You don’t –you don’t just—”

“Presuming he lives that long,” Alex interjects, leaning against the side of the van, “that is not my problem.”

Wade shakes his head vehemently, mouth twisting into a scowl. “We’re not supposed to be that. We bend the rules, we’re morally gray, but we do not sink to the bad guy’s level.”

Alex stares at Wade for a long time before finally speaking. “If you think you’re the first man who has problems with how I operate—”

“It has nothing to do with me being a man!” Wade shouts. “It has everything to do with you emotionally manipulating that shitbag on stuff that he can’t help and can systemically destroy his mental well-being! You beat the shit out of them, you make them piss their pants in fear, but you don’t purposefully look for their weakest spot and keep beating on it until they have nothing left to give you!”

Silence falls, save for the sound of taxis honking and various sirens in the distance.

Nathan steps towards Wade, gently putting his arms around him while Wade gasps and shakes. “Easy, sweetheart. Deep breaths.”

“Semantics of the ‘ethics of interrogation’ aside,” Alex continues once Wade catches his breath, “you are not the first person who takes issue with how I operate. Our goal tonight was covert operation and quick answers. I did both. That nets a win.”

Wade shakes his head against Nate’s shoulder. “You can’t.”

“You don’t want to. I don’t take issue with it.” She shrugs. “Next time we have to do something similar, we stick you on lookout duty instead. Simple.”

You swallow hard as silence stretches on once more, gaze darting between Wade and Alex as the two stare each other down—

And then Frank’s phone starts yelling.

Frank blinks, then lifts his phone’s speaker to his ear. “Yeah, I’m here… dammit, Lieberman, why didn’t you say you were fucking done? …yeah, yeah…” He crouches and peers at the laptop screen, where there’s a few different folders open. “Alright, what are we looking at?”

***

 The secondary compound is markedly smaller than the first. It’s fairly non-descript, planted in the center of a vast, weed-choked, otherwise abandoned parking lot.

“Used to be a pharmaceutical processing center,” Nate says as scans the warehouse through a pair of night vision binoculars. “Records say that Essex bought it through a third-party once they shut down due to budget cuts.”

“Good for him,” Frank grumbles as he sips down a cup of coffee. “How do we crack this place open?”

“Should be able to break in through the South entrance,” Nate reasons. “It’s the least defensible from the inside. Get in, gun our way to the lab.”

You drink from your own cup of coffee as you mull your dad’s suggestion over –it’s three in the morning, and it’s only going to get rougher from here on out—then shake your head. “No. We can’t risk losing Madeline.”

“She’s right,” Alex chimes in. “Going in ‘guns blazing’ will alert everyone and give Essex time to escape.”

“Anything we do is going to alert him,” Nate huffs. “The lab has security camera feeds that let him see the whole base. At this point, it’s about speed.”

“Unless we draw him out,” Wade suggests.

Silence falls over the group as you all consider the idea.

“How would we do that?” Nathan asks.

“Like you said, he has the camera feeds,” Wade explains. “So, figure out where the cameras are, and send out a ‘bait team’ to trigger them and bring him out. Then, while they have Essex distracted, the rest of us go in and save Madeline.”

“Is good idea,” Mikhail agrees after a moment of thought.

Nathan considers, then nods. “Alright. Let’s do this.”

***

 “Do you really think he’s gonna come out here to fight us?”

You’d teamed up with Alex and Nate to distract Essex, leaving Frank, Wade, and Mikhail to extract Madeline from the compound.

At the time, it’d seemed like a good idea.

But now, as you’re strolling up to the warehouse-style building, in full view of any cameras and with no other cover, you’re starting to have second thoughts.

“He’ll come,” Nate says, charging up his gun.

There’s an undercurrent to his voice –tension, anger, you’re not sure what—that makes you think he knows more about this situation than he’s letting on—

But then there’s a flash of light, and Nathaniel’s standing less than twenty feet away from you, and you don’t have time to second guess anything else.

“You really thought that splitting up would work?” He smirks, self-assured. “Like I don’t already have your whole plan figured out.”

“Working so far,” Nathan grits out, setting his sights on Essex. “You’re out here.”

Nathaniel’s smirk broadens into an arrogant, borderline crazed grin –and then whips his hand to his left.

A rusted metal shipping container, long since left discarded by the previous owners, scrapes across the pavement as it moves towards you three. It picks up speed, moving faster and faster, until it’s practically hurtling towards you.

You gasp and crouch, split seconds away from grabbing your dad and Alex and flying for it—

And then Alex flicks her hand –deftly, casually—at the container.

It stops in its tracks, crumpling in on itself like an empty Pepsi can.

Nathaniel stares at her, mouth gaping in awe and horror.

Alex glares mutely at him, stalking across the parking lot towards him before pulling out her own gun and opening fire.

Nathaniel erects a telekinetic shield to deflect the bullets, then reaches for the teleporter mounted on his wrist.

Before he can touch it, though, Alex flicks out a thin cord of energy from her hand, wraps it around his upper body, then flings him across the parking lot.

Nathaniel grunts as he tumbles along the ground, teleporter sparking when it smacks into the hard pavement. He rolls to his feet, tapping at the device’s display screen, then curses when it doesn’t work before launching more scattered debris at Alexandra.

You watch, somewhat awestruck, as Alex deftly dodges the various projectiles as she charges Essex once more. “You think she’s got that covered?”

“Here’s fucking hoping,” Nate grunts as several black-clad, well-armed men sprint out of the nearest entrance to the warehouse.

The fight becomes less of a ‘fight’ and more of a ‘dodge the multiple flying chunks of metal’ challenge as you and Nathan try to take down Essex’s hired muscle and Alex deals with Nathaniel himself.

You yelp as you duck a straight blast of energy from Alex, which goes on to score out a chunk of the asphalt behind you. You try to fly into the air to avoid getting hit by anything else –then nearly get taken out by a spray of gunfire from one of the guys Nathan’s chasing down.

You’re in over your head. You’re in way over your head. This is so far above your pay grade it’s not even funny anymore. You can handle the various scrapes the X-Men get into, and you’ve managed to come out on top in a few rougher fights than that, but trying to keep pace with literal professional soldiers and assassins is a step too far for you. Several steps too far.

Get home to Piotr, you chant in your head, like a mantra. Get home to Piotr, get home to Piotr, get home to Piotr.

You unleash a whirlwind of air, knocking several gun-bearing men away from you.

Get home to Piotr.

You bounce away from what sounds like a grenade going off, sailing through the air and dodging pieces of shrapnel as best you can as you go.

Get home to Piotr.

Something hits you hard in the back, and you plummet to the ground with a choked grunt. The pavement is none too forgiving to your comparatively fragile, fleshy body; pain sparks in your head and your right knee, alerting you to their discontent with being abused like this.

Your vision goes blurry, and the world slows for a minute as you try to get your bearings back about you.

Get… home…

“…hardly even a challenge.”

You look up, and see Nathaniel Essex standing over you.

He’s grinning nastily, which only further offset by the blood caked to the side of his face. He flicks his hand, and sends you tumbling across the ground once more. “I know the X-men have low standards for fighting capabilities, but this is depressing, even for them.”

Get home… to…

You stagger to your feet, gritting your teeth together as your head and knee throb in vengeful unison. Your stomach drops when you think of Alexandra –granted, your vision’s blurred, but you can’t see her anywhere—but you quickly push it aside when Nathaniel launches a steel beam at you.

He has the decency to look somewhat impressed when you bat it away with an air shield. “Not bad.”

Before you can think, you feel an invisible hand close around your neck, shutting your airflow off as it lifts you off the ground.

“But not good enough.”

You claw at the invisible force –not that it does any good. Your feet kick and thrash as you cough and sputter—

And slowly, the world goes dim.

Piotr.

I’m sorry.

Your face throbs, pulse slowing as you begin to pass out—

No.

Absolutely. Not.

I refuse to go out to this jackass.

With your last bit of consciousness, you force yourself to stop struggling against the pressure around your neck and focus instead on the air around you –to do something with it, anything.

You manage to create a shockwave, sending it out in all directions around you—

It’s enough.

You drop to the ground as Nathaniel goes flying –hitting your other knee in the process, because that would be just your luck—gasping and sobbing as oxygen flows back into your lungs and body. Your ears are ringing slightly, and you throat feels like you’ve been drinking sandpaper—

Get home to Piotr.

You’re alive. Now you just need to do something with it.

You get to your feet, vision swimming as your eyes adjust from having hit your head and then nearly been strangled, but you manage to make out Nathaniel, groaning and laying a few yards away from you.

Get home to Piotr.

You clumsily unleash another blast of air at him, shoving him further away from you and getting a few good, pained swear words out of him for your efforts. You stumble to the side, then gear up to hit him again—

A flash of brilliant, golden energy slams into Nathaniel, rocketing him across the lot and into one of the warehouse walls. A few seconds later, it’s followed by a none too happy Alexandra, who storms after Nathaniel like the human equivalent of a particularly angry swan with a gun.

Seeing that Alex has Nathaniel well handled, you opt to drop down to your knees –hurting both of them this time, fan-fucking-tastic—then crumple against the asphalt on your side and curl into a ball.

Get home to Piotr. Get home to Piotr. Get home to—

A pair of hands grip underneath your armpits, and then someone hauls you to your feet.

“Come on, Rasputin,” Frank grunts, steadying you as you whine and curse. “We’re not done yet.”

“I am,” you mutter. “Hit my head.”

“Yeah, that’s probably why you’re bleeding.”

“Shit.”

A few feet away, you can see Mikhail handling the last of the gunmen, while Wade sprints clear of the fracas, holding a crying little girl in his arms.

Further away, you can make out Nathan and Alex, who’re working on taking down Essex.

You squint, then let out a frustrated sigh when that does nothing to clear your vision. “Who’s winning?”

“Your guy’s mom,” Frank says, sounding somewhat… amused? Impressed? It’s impossible to tell, with him. “She’s uh… she’s pretty much stomping him.”

There’s a few more flashes of Alex’s energy powers, accompanied by the tell-tale sound of your dad’s “future gun”—

And then there’s a flash of white light, and everything goes silent.

Dread sinks in your stomach. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

Frank lets out an irritated grunt that confirms your fears.

“Okay,” Wade says as he gently rocks Madeline back and forth. “Who pressed the Staples’ button?”

Mikhail looks around for any sign of Essex, then looks to his mother. “Chto teper'?”

“Now, Alexandra sighs as she flicks the safety for her rifle on, “we go home.”

“What about Essex?” Mikhail asks.

“He will surface again, eventually. For now—” she nods at Madeline “—we get her back to mother.”

You raise your hand. “Question: does this mean I can pass out now?”

 ***

 The ride home –since Mikhail’s too tired to teleport everyone and the van you’ve been using back to Xavier’s—is exhausting. By the time you reach the school, the sun’s already rising into the sky.

The process of going through the medical checks –which takes even longer for you, since you have a definite concussion—is excruciating. You’re past running on fumes; all you want is a hot shower, a warm bed, and to not be interrupted for about seven to twelve hours.

It’s all worth it when you see Madeline dash into her mother’s arms. For all your misgivings against Christina –and, considering what she did to Wade, there’s plenty—there’s no denying that she and her daughter have a good bond.

Your uncle intercepts you as you trudge up the porch steps, steadying you as he guides you towards the door. “We’ve got her—” he points discreetly at Christina, who’s still hugging Madeline “—step up. She and her kid should be safe.”

You nod, too weary for words, then make to enter your home—

Except Christina stops you, quickly ushering Maddie inside while your uncle leaves to talk to Nathan and Frank. She steps between you and the door, gaze darting between your uncle and you. “Who the hell is he?” he hisses, jerking her chin towards your uncle. “And why did you even help me? He told me you asked him to set me up with… basically everything?” She narrows her eyes at you, regarding you with hostile suspicion. “The fuck are you trying to pull?”

You want to say something about morals and doing the right thing, about taking the high road, about mutants needing to stand together regardless of their respective pasts…

What comes out, though, is, “My parents paid a telepath to remove my mutant abilities, and all it wound up doing me was nearly killing me and left permanent psychic scarring on my brain.”

Christina blanches, blinking repeatedly. “…Shit.”

You shrug. “Pretty much. Look, your daughter needs a safe space to grow up in, and despite my vast misgivings against you… it’s clear that the two of you love and trust each other. As far as I’m concerned, I did all this for your daughter, so that…” You throat constricts with emotion, and you swallow hard before pressing on. “So that she wouldn’t have to endure the kind of childhood I had.” You sigh, wipe away a few stray tears, then level Christina with an exhausted glare. “Let’s be clear, though –you hurt Wade again, and I’ll fly you out to the middle of the fucking ocean and drop you there.”

Christina rolls her eyes. “Ooh, I’m so scared.”

“Whatever. Please get out of my way so I can go take a fucking shower.”

She smirks, but steps aside nonetheless.

You sigh heavily, then finally step into your home.

Somewhere during the period when you were gone, Illyana and Nikolai showed up –and brought Karen Page with them, too. They, in tandem with Piotr, are monopolizing your kitchen, making breakfast for everyone.

You wait until everyone else from the “rescue group” files into your house, then use the distraction of everyone being reunited to slip upstairs unnoticed. You beeline straight for the bathroom in yours and Piotr’s bedroom, shucking your clothes as you go, then step into the shower and turn the water on full blast.

You can barely keep your eyes open. The only thing that’s keeping you from curling up and going to sleep in this shower is that you don’t fancy the thought of drowning… or accidentally plugging the drain with your foot, flooding the basin, and soaking the bathroom floor.

(You’d been sick; it’d been an accident.)

You do the bare minimum to get yourself clean, then shut off the water and sag against the tile wall. It’s a full five minutes before you can convince yourself to get out of the shower, and even then it’s with a great deal of mental swearing and complaining.

You get dry, find some pajamas (which are really just one of Piotr’s shirts and a pair of clean underwear), then crawl onto the end of your bed and curl up under the throw blanket you keep there for decorative purposes.

And, finally, sleep claims you.

 ***

 You get all of five minutes before the door to yours and your husband’s bedroom opens.

“Myshka.”

You groan and crawl further under the throw blanket. “Y/N is not available right now. Please leave a message at the sound of the ‘fuck.’”

Piotr laughs softly, and you can hear a plate and a glass clatter against his nightstand before the soft, rustling sounds of the blankets and pillows being moved fill your ears. “Come on, moya lyubov’. Breakfast is—”

“I will jam a pancake up your ass.”

He laughs again –then gently cradles you in his arms and sets you at the top of the bed, against a pile of pillows. He sets a warm plate of food in your lap, then sets a fork and knife on the top edge of the plate. “You need to eat, myshka. You have had long night.”

You groan, reluctantly pry one eye open, then sigh resignedly when you see a stack of chocolate chip pancakes, a helping of bacon, two slices of banana bread, and a heap of hash browns. “Carbs. You would know the way to my heart.”

“I would hope so.” He sits next to you on the bed, takes your hand in his, and kisses your bruised knuckles. “You are moya zhena, after all.”

He looks better than when you rescued him from Essex’s clutches. He’s showered, shaved, put on fresh clothes, combed his hair. There’s still shadows under his eyes and a bruise on his cheek, but he looks more like the Piotr you know and love.

You lift your hand to gently rub your thumb along the swell of his cheek, skirting the edge of his bruise –but then your low mood catches up with you, and you drop your hand and look down at your breakfast plate. “You don’t have to stay with me. I know you probably don’t want to.”

You can hear the frown in his voice when he speaks. “Why… why would I not want to be with you?”

“Because you’re ashamed of me,” you eke out, fighting back tears.

Piotr sighs heavily, then leans over and kisses your temple. “I am not ashamed of you. I love you. And… I owe you apology.”

“Apology?” You frown, then set your plate aside before looking up at him. “For what?”

“For not standing up for you more, to Scott.” He grimaces. “Ellie told me what happened. How Scott treated you.”

“That –that’s not your fault, Piotr,” you protest. “Scott’s an asshole because he wants to be; you’re not responsible for his dickotry.”

“Perhaps not—”

“And I can stand up for myself,” you add, eager to soothe his worries. “It’s –it’s not your job to have to do that for me. I’m more than capable of standing up for myself, I promise.”

He smiles softly, then kisses the back of your hand. “I know. It is nothing about ‘capable’ or ‘job.’ I… I know he picks at you. And others. And perhaps it is because I am complacent or non-confrontational, but… I do nothing. And that is not okay. And for that, I am sorry. I am sorry I have not protected you better, and I hope you can forgive me.”

You sniff, then wipe away the tears trailing down your cheeks. “Of course, I can forgive you, sweetheart. I…” You sniff again, and –finding yourself at a loss for words—repeat yourself. “I forgive you, Piotr. Always.”

“Spasibo, moya serdste.” He kisses your forehead, letting his lips linger for a moment, then leans back to rub at his own damp eyes. “Ellie also told me about… conversation she and you had before rescue mission. About position she and others put you in. We had long talk about respecting authority and listening to those with more experience; she wants to apologize, once you are ready.”

You let out a shaky breath, then nod. “I think I want to sleep first.”

“Konechno. After breakfast.”

You laugh wetly and roll your eyes. “Yes, fine, after breakfast, you big dad.”

He chuckles along with you, then none-too-subtly sets your plate back in your lap. “Shoe fits, I wear. Plate in front of you… you eat?”

You laugh at the adorable, impossibly hopeful look he gives you, then heap up some hash browns and pancake on your fork and shove the bite in your mouth. “There. Happy?”

“Immensely.” He hands you the glass of orange juice he brought up, but it slowly ebbs as he watches you eat, contemplation evident in his expression. “Why… why did you think… that I was disappointed in you?”

“Is this your way of saying you weren’t?” you ask tiredly.

He purses his lips, then sighs heavily. “Initially, I was… frustrated. And small bit disappointed. But once I understood,” Piotr says, angling his head to catch your gaze until you relent and look him in the eye, “I was not disappointed with you in slightest. I know you. I know you are not needlessly reckless. I know you would not carelessly put Ellie, or Russell, or Yukio in such dangerous position.”

“But you thought I was. Reckless and careless.”

“It looked that way, but I knew it was not you,” he says, sincere. “And I knew that you had to be desperate to turn to Mr. Castle, I just… did not have all pieces. So, again, why did you believe I was disappointed in you?”

“Because why wouldn’t you be?” You set your fork down, chest tight with hurt and sorrow and regret. “I –I failed! I couldn’t do things the ‘right’ way, I asked a vigilante and a –a murder for help, I couldn’t –I couldn’t keep Ellie and Russell and Yukio out of it—”

“You did your best,” Piotr says softly. He sets the plate back on the bed and draws you into his arms when you start crying again. “You knew that we were in danger –that child was in danger—and you had no help, so you went and found it.”

“But –but Ellie—”

“Put you in unfair position and did not respect your authority, so you did what you could to keep her and Russell and Yukio safe,” he murmurs, kissing the top of your head. “You did your best, myshka. And that is something I am very proud of.”

You burst into sobs, relief pouring over you, washing away the grief and hurt and self-loathing you’d held in over the course of the night. You cling to him, clenching the material of his shirt in your fists as you shake and sniff and whimper.

And Piotr holds you. Rocks you back and forth. Whispers how much he loves you and how proud he is of you and kisses your hair and the bridge of your nose and your tear-streaked cheeks.

Eventually, you calm down. You catch your breath, inhaling and exhaling shakily as your husband rocks you back and forth. You lay your head on his shoulder, blinking the last of the tears away. “She’s right, you know.”

“Who is?”

“Ellie. About being an adult. We won’t be able to… to tell her what to do forever.”

“Nyet,” Piotr agrees, kissing your forehead gently. “But this is different. And she understands that now.”

You let out a shaky breath, then hug your husband tightly. “I love you, baby.”

He hugs you back just as tight. “And I love you, myshka.”

You tip your head back so you can kiss him, then let out a contented, relieved sigh when he presses his lips against yours.

You’re okay.

[trashmenofmarvel]

Devil’s Backbone - Chapter 10

Pairing: The Winter Soldier x S.H.I.E.L.D. agent!Reader

Summary: With your team dead and your mission failed, you’ve been taken by the assassin to an unknown location and are at the mercy of your cruel tormentors. (This fic is explicit, 18+ only, mild dubcon)

Chapter Warnings: Violence, death, Winter Soldier whump

Word Count: 6k

Tag List: @pandalandalopalis @insidethemindoftrent @wheresarizona @iampietromaximoff

AO3

A blood-curdling scream rent the air, and the plastic cup slipped from your fingertips.

Adrenaline surged through your chest, your body gripping onto raw instinct, wanting to run from the horrific sound. Your training was too ingrained to let you to succumb to that animal terror, so instead of panicking, you switched to crisis mode.

When the sound of gunfire erupted, you dashed to the sink and crouched behind it, making yourself a smaller target. Searching around desperately for anything in reach you could use as a weapon. There was nothing except for your shoelaces. They could be turned into a garrote in a pinch, but you probably needed your boots on your feet more than you needed a weapon.

There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and listen to the screams and gunfire, growing closer, louder, with each second. Had S.H.I.E.L.D. found you? Possibly. But as a general rule, STRIKE didn’t do rescue missions for their operatives. If an agent was captured by the enemy, especially a hostile government, they knew not to expect a risky extraction.

Plus, there usually wasn’t this much screaming when STRIKE raided a compound. Your team used precise infiltrative methods, opting for speed and stealth, not turning the mission into a bloodbath.

And bloodbath is exactly the word you would use to describe what was happening outside your cell.

With one last scream that cut off abruptly and violently, silence reigned. It was loud and oppressive to your ringing ears. You waited, tension making your shoulders ache so you forced your body into a relaxed stance. Whoever came through that door, you would be ready.

The lock turning in the door made you tense again but you stayed in a crouch behind the toilet-sink. Your breathing sounding too loud to your own ears. You continued to wait for the door to open…

…but it never did.

You peeked over the edge of the sink, straining the limits of your hearing for anything at all. No footsteps or voices. The small window in the door was empty. It could be a trap, but why trap someone already in a cage?

Maybe they were trying to draw you out without risking bodily injury to themselves. Again, they could just storm your cell and riddle you with bullets if that were the case.

The only conclusion left to you was either the person on the other side was a sadist and wanted to give you a glimpse of freedom before gunning you down.

Or. The person on the other side wanted you to escape.

Unsure of which was the more likely option, you crept toward the door, moving noiselessly over the concrete on the balls of your feet. You reached out to the door, surprised at how steady your hands were, and you gripped the latch inside the depressed groove of the unlocked door.

With one last steadying breath, you pulled on the latch and pushed the door open. It was heavy but yielded easily on oiled hinges, barely making a sound, and you looked out into the corridor and found you were alone.

This was it, your moment of opportunity. A chance to escape. Or the last day of your life. If you were captured again, you didn’t plan on being taken alive. Either way, you were leaving that cell and never coming back.

You moved down the corridor of cells, hugged to the walls, keeping to the shadows where you could. Now that you weren’t being dragged or carried through the building, you realized the facility was abandoned to some degree. Many of the overhead fluorescent strips were dead or dying, but without fail, each door window you peered through showed an empty isolation room. It seemed you were the entire occupant of the cell block.

You saw something up ahead lying on the floor. Several dark, lumpy shapes that you thought might be abandoned piles of dark clothing. Your heart picked up its steady rhythm once your brain realized what you were seeing.

Corpses; a lot of them. Each one told a different story. Some had gunshot wounds, others had blunt force trauma. Caved-in chests, shattered limbs, bloody concave skulls. There was even one body that was practically torn in half, pulled apart like it had been caught in the claws of a bear.

The bile rose in your throat but you pushed it back down. The casual violence on display was brutal and efficient. Cold. You had no doubts about who had done this. You just didn’t know why.

When you reached the white room you hesitated in the doorway. It was like walking through a solid wall, your body physically resisting returning to the place of so much pain and horror. Known and otherwise.

Pushing past your fear as well as the threshold, you peered inside to see a reflection of the massacre in the corridor. The doctors hadn’t been spared, executed with the same ruthless expertise and precision as the soldiers.

The centerpiece of the room was unavoidable, your eye drawn to it like a dread magnet. The chair looked sinister; the metal device above it a hovering, hollow black beetle. It looked no less innocuous than before, and possibly looked even more haunting with the bodies strewn before it.

But there was something strange about the chair positioned under the device. The metal restraints along the arms and legs were torn and bent back and impossibly, broken. You reached out a hand and ran your fingers over the twisted metal. Forcing down the lump in your throat, you turned away and surveyed the bodies. From their positions in a semicircle around the chair, you assumed this was the origin of the massacre.

Stepping over the dead, carefully but briefly examining each one, you found what you were really looking for. The guards who interacted with you never carried guns; a smart move on their part. But the ones who safeguarded the white room had been fully armed.

You eyed the carbines lying on tile floor or in the hands of the dead guards. None of them had had a chance to be fired and you knew they were fully loaded. But you ultimately decided against taking any of them. They were too awkward and clunky; what you needed was speed and stealth. You unclipped the HK45 with its holster from the dead man’s belt and pulled the weapon free to inspect it. You ejected the box magazine, checked the ammunition, and replaced it once satisfied.

You clipped the weapon to the waistband of your pants and left the room. You didn’t look back.

Your next mission objective was to obtain a working vehicle. The assassin might be under orders or he might have gone AWOL. Both options were shit options, and the last thing you wanted was another face-off. If you had to choose between his life and yours, it wasn’t really a choice at all. But the idea of putting a bullet in him made your stomach turn, and your boots hit the concrete faster.

You didn’t run into anyone as one bland hallway bled into the next. Even the bodies were absent now. The security gates partitioning each corridor and cell block were all open. This only made you more uneasy, not less so. Someone had seemingly paved the way for your escape. You didn’t trust it one bit.

You realized it might not matter in the end; you suspected you were growing lost. Every hallway looked the same, and there weren’t exactly any marked Exit signs. But you kept going, and eventually you felt a backdraft of cold, winter air coming from the corner up ahead. You came to a stop and cautiously peeked around to find a door. Or rather, what was left of one. It lay on the dirt outside, torn off of its hinges, bent in the middle as if it had been hit with a car. But you knew it was no car that had made that dent.

You moved down the short hallway and stopped again to do a quick survey of the dark landscape. You made out the rough lay of the land with the aid of the moon high overhead, which you were grateful for, but it also meant you could be spotted as well.

The frigid nighttime air whipped your face unpleasantly. You definitely weren’t clothed for venturing outside in the winter, so leaving on foot wasn’t an option. You had to find a ride, and fast, because you weren’t going to survive in 30 degree weather wearing tac pants and a tank.

As luck would have it, you saw no sign of the assassin. Some of the tension left your shoulders—relief that perhaps he had left the compound and you wouldn’t have to deal with him. But something nagged at the back of your mind. If he had done all of this, as stated by the evidence, then had he also unlocked your door? Why?

Why, why, why. Everything he did made you question why. You had no more answers now than you did when the convoy was attacked. Only more questions. You prayed Rumlow would have the answers, but in order to get back to him in one piece, you had to cover the wide open space ahead of you and find where these assholes were stashing the vehicles.

You took a deep breath, knowing it was the last bit of warm air you would breathe for a while, and bolted from the doorway.

The closest cover was a squat building 100 feet ahead beyond an open dirt area. You were about halfway across when the world flashed white around you.

The searchlight lit you up like a beacon in the dark. You stumbled but didn’t stop, shielding your eyes from the blinding light. Your heart exploded in your chest when you heard a shout followed by the telltale report of a M134 Minigun. Bullets impacted the frost-bitten earth behind you, tearing up the dirt so violently you could feel the force of it through the soles of your boots.

You kept going, heart pounding wildly as your legs pumped faster. You were exposed, moving target practice, and if you stopped you were a bloody, pockmarked corpse.

You were twenty feet from the building when you knew you weren’t going to make it. The realization hit you in the chest like a punch, despair making you choke on the freezing air.

A figure separated from the shadows, directly out from behind the corner you were hoping to reach, and headed straight at you.

You didn’t have time to stop or even change direction. The figure grabbed you, spun you around, and held on tight enough to knock the air from your lungs. You heard the sharp clang of bullets impacting hard metal, and you turned your head to see sparks flying off a silver arm.

The assassin was holding up his metal limb, shielding you both from the machine gun fire.

Before you could fully process what was happening, he grunted and stumbled forward.

Without hesitation, you grabbed onto the straps of his harness and pulled him the last few feet around the corner into the safety of the shadows.

You blinked at the sunspots from the blinding searchlight, trying to clear your vision and catch your breath. Your lungs burned and your nose and fingers were beginning to go numb. Shit. The building you were hiding behind wasn’t nearly as large as you thought it was, and if you moved out of cover you’d be exposed again.

You turned your head and openly stared at the assassin, but he wasn’t looking at you. He was leaning against the painted brick wall, holding his left side as puffs of white air escaped his lips.

No time to sit and wait; they would be on you soon. You pulled the pistol out of the holster and flicked the safety off.

He looked up at you through damp strings of hair, his eyes hard and wary. But you simply put your hand on his shoulder and pushed him away from the corner, moving in to occupy the space, your back to the wall. You edged carefully toward the corner, foggy breaths swirling in front of your face as you steadied your hands.

With great care, you glimpsed around the bend, noting where the searchlight was located before pulling back. It was a good thing too, because machine gun fire peppered the ground and the edge of the building, breaking away chunks and forcing you to shield your face from the concrete shrapnel.

You ignored the gunfire and focused your thoughts, laying out in your mind the image you had glimpsed. You marked the elevated catwalk, the guard towers, and the area where the gunner and searchlight operator would be.

The deafening rapid-fire rotary of the machine gun went silent. They were either replacing the feed belt or getting ready to move on your position. This was your one shot.

Just as you were about halfway turned around the corner, you were hauled back by a hard grip on your upper arm. A rain of bullets slammed into the corner right where you had been standing; the spotlight operator using a carbine to cover his ally as he reloaded the machine gun.

You stared at the assassin as your heart raced in your chest from the near miss. If he hadn’t pulled you back, you would have been a block of bloody Swiss cheese on the ground. Gratitude plucked at your throat.

He watched you in turn after he removed his hand, once again holding onto his side. He tilted his head, as if listening for something, and then he gave you a tiny nod.

You pivoted your arm around the corner, braced your shoulder against the wall, and fired five shots.

The first bullet shattered the searchlight in a shower of sparks, plunging the yard into darkness. The second and third impacted the gunner—you heard the heavy clang of him dropping the machine gun—but you knew you had missed the searchlight operator when you heard panicked shouts in German.

You pulled back quickly and leaned back against the wall, internally wincing. You should have taken out all three targets. Now he would call for help. Sloppy.

Sensing eyes on you, you turned your head and found the assassin watching closely, his eyes holding an odd expression in them.

“I have three bullets left,” you told him stonily. The high of combat had always given you clarity and focus, and for the first time in days you felt in control. “Am I going to have to use them on you?”

The assassin eyed you for a moment before shaking his head. And then he slid several inches down the wall, his feet skidding across the hard earth as he tried to catch himself. Only then did you notice the dark liquid pooling around his left leg, staining the ground.

You didn’t think twice about it when you tucked the gun into the stolen holster and grabbed his arm, wincing at the freezing bite of the metal, but you didn’t let go; you kept him on his feet long enough for him to steady himself. The sharp scent of copper carried on the winter air, making your stomach twist.

“You’re hit,” you said, your tone no longer as steady as it was. He didn’t respond, but his harsh confirmed it nonetheless. “We gotta move. Can you walk?”

He looked up at you, his brows furrowed as he studied your face. He looked almost confused.

“Can you walk?” you repeated, impatient as you heard more shouts in the distance. It wouldn’t take them long to find you.

“Yes.” His answer was strained as he rasped out, voice like gravel. You tried not to shiver, telling yourself it was just the cold. Your fingers and nose were now quite numb, and it wouldn’t be long before you couldn’t pull a trigger or hotwire a car.

“Where are the vehicles?” you asked quickly. Your hands were still on his arm, and though the metal was cold, it wasn’t freezing like it should have been. You wondered if it had some kind of internal heating mechanism to keep it from freezing.

“There,” he said with a nod of his head toward the other side of the main prison complex.

“Come on.” You instructed, not waiting for him as you let go of his arm and moved. You made it maybe twenty feet before looking back, hearing his footsteps becoming more and more unstable. You saw he was favoring his right leg and was putting as little pressure on his left as possible.

Biting your lip, you weighed your options. If he kept on like that, he was going to slow you down. And if he collapsed altogether, you didn’t think you’d have the strength or energy to get him on his feet again.

With an anxious curl of your fingers, you dashed back to him. The assassin stopped when you reached him again, his expression was unreadable. Figuring if he’d wanted to murder you by now he would have done so, you reached out and cautiously pulled his metal arm away from his side, and braced your shoulders beneath it. His breath seemed to catch and he wobbled on his feet, but you managed to keep him upright.

You didn’t say a word, and neither did he. The feel of his metallic arm across your shoulder blades, the hard lines and planes of it pressing against your skin, it made you feel uneasy. Evoked memories you needed to forget.

You also wanted to ignore the feel of his weight against your side, but he was so damned warm, bordering on hot, his body heat a balm against the cold. You were starting to lean against him, using him for warmth as much as he was using you for support. And goddamn if it didn’t bring you a modicum of comfort, too.

You deliberately shut the thoughts from your mind. Survival was the priority. Nothing else mattered.

You listened carefully as you both made your way to the squat building, alert for any signs you were being followed. The shouts hadn’t drawn any closer, though you thought you could hear footsteps echoing off the brick walls of the buildings. You realized too late the footsteps belonged to someone else as a silhouette pulled out from the interior of the garage.

The assassin didn’t hesitate. He lashed out so fast you could barely track it, hitting the man in the chest with his right fist. But the strike lacked real strength; it only made the man stumble, so you pulled out your firearm in one swift movement and pulled the trigger.

He fell to the ground. You knew he was dead without having to check. At this range, you couldn’t miss a headshot. His bulky torso had registered in your mind as a Kevlar vest, and you had responded accordingly.

You killed him with unfeeling efficiency. But when the dim light of the interior garage revealed his face, you froze. You knew him.

“Jones?” you whispered, confused. Not that he could respond. After all, you had just murdered him. A member of STRIKE. A teammate. The kid was only in his mid-twenties, born and raised in the cornfields of Iowa. He was still green. Had been.

Someone will have to tell his mom he’s not coming home, you thought faintly, automatically, your shocked mind already detaching from the horrific act.

Had the rest of your team come to rescue you? Had you just committed one of the worst offenses possible and killed an ally in friendly fire?

It didn’t make sense. Jones was alone. And even though he held a familiar special-issue M4 carbine, he was dressed in plain black tac gear. No STRIKE patch on his shoulders.

It didn’t make sense. He shouldn’t be in plain tac gear. He shouldn’t be alone. And he should have called out before engaging.

It didn’t make sense—

You were shaken out of your growing numbness when the assassin began to weigh more heavily on your arm, and you realized he was sinking towards the ground. In the light cast by the overhead fluorescents you could see the extent of his blood loss by the shine of wet liquid coating his left leg.

You hissed between your teeth and pulled him into the garage, frantically glancing around for a suitable getaway car. You stumbled and nearly lost your balance as the collapsing assassin became mostly deadweight. Before you could lose him entirely, you leaned him against the side of a plain black van.

Guess we’re picking this one.

“Hey,” you said, trying to get his attention as your fingers curled into his shoulders. His eyes were closed and his face was unnaturally pale.

“Hey. Hey, c’mon. Stay with me.” You thought about shaking him but thought better of it. “Don’t die on me now.”

He slowly opened his eyes, shifting his blue gaze to yours. His expression was hazy but he managed to focus on your face.

“Good. That’s good,” you muttered, trying to sound encouraging. “Stay here.” As if he was going anywhere, half-dead as he was.

You let him go and waited to see if he would collapse, but he managed to stay upright against the van. Satisfied enough, you backed around the van and ran around to the driver’s side, finding it unlocked. You got into the seat and searched, hoping to find keys, and they practically fell into your lap when you pulled down the sun visor.

Finally, some good fucking luck—further proven when you put the keys in the ignition and the van started. And it had almost a full tank of gas.

Not wanting to tempt fate by remaining a second longer, you turned the heat to max and got out, stumbling as you did so. You couldn’t remember when you had started to shiver, but your hands were almost insensate from the cold now.

The assassin didn’t look much better. When you returned to him, he was leaning with his head back against the van, his eyelids barely opening at your approach. And when you put your shoulder under his right arm, he almost dragged you down with him.

“Just a few more feet,” you spoke between strained breaths. He was even heavier than he looked, and it took the remainder of your strength to pull him to the passenger side door. You opened it and looked up at the seat helplessly. There was no way you could get him inside on your own.

Apparently, he didn’t need it. The assassin reached inside with his metal hand and pulled himself up, falling back into the seat with a sharp inhalation as he bared his teeth. He was nearly sheet-white now and his forehead was beaded with sweat despite the freezing temperature.

You didn’t waste any time running back to the driver’s side, even as your mind frantically yelled in big red warning neon, What are you doing! Why are you taking that killing machine with you! Leave him or you’ll end up a bloodied corpse!

The voices went ignored. You threw the van into reverse, spun out of the garage, and shifted into forward drive. You followed the concrete drive, pressing down the accelerator when you saw the chain-link fence at the end of the drive. You smashed through the rusted links with ease.

Hitting something with a car had never felt so damn good.

You sped down the road as fast as you reasonably could without spinning out the van, but the concrete road was cracked and clearly not maintained. Each jostle made you wince, and you prayed the assassin wouldn’t bleed out faster because of the rough ride.

You told yourself he had to stay alive because he was the only one that could give you the answers you needed. It wasn’t entirely convincing.

Two pairs of headlights flashed in your rearview mirror, followed by the flash of muzzle fire.

“Are you fucking kidding me—“

The crack of bullets impacting the side panels interrupted you, the sound deafening in the confined space, but the siding must have been armored because none of them broke through.

You swerved and dodged, creating a moving target for them while also making it impossible for them to pass you. There was a turn-off at the road ahead, and you could see smooth, black asphalt in the dark.

You had made it to a highway. What should have been cause for celebration now made your job much more dangerous. It was narrow and two-laned; you swerved into it so fast it almost tipped the van, but you straightened out and put the accelerator to the floor. Oak trees lined the road so thick you couldn’t see past the bends in the road.

“Give me the gun.”

You nearly swerved off the road at the sound of the gravelly voice next to you. You glanced at the assassin and saw he had his considerable gaze leveled at you.

“What? Why?”

“Now.”

You scowled.

“If you think I’m just going to—“

You flinched as another cascade of bullets rained down against the back of the van. Sooner or later, one was going to hit a tire.

“I can stop them,” he answered, his tone still calm but there was a slide edge to it. He held out his hand, the metal appendage reflecting the blue neon light of the digital clock. You internally cursed.

“Fine,” you snapped, irritated but keeping your hands firmly on the wheel. “But you’re going to have to grab it. I’m preoccupied at the moment.”

You kept your eyes hard on the road, even as you sensed him moving across the middle and into your personal space. His warm breath puffed against your ear, noticeable somehow even with the heat blasting through the vents. You remained rigidly still as you felt the metal hand graze across the tops of your thighs as he reached across your lap to the other side of your hips. You heard and felt him tug the weapon free of the holster.

You didn’t realize you had held your breath until he retreated back to his seat.

“Only two shots left,” you commented, gripping the wheel tighter.

“I know,” he answered in a low murmur. Before you could react, he rolled down the window, grabbed the edge of the door, and pulled himself up, sitting on the edge of the window frame.

What the hell is he doing?!

“What the hell are you doing?!” you shouted aloud.

He didn’t respond, though you weren’t entirely sure he had heard your indignant yelling over howl of the wind whipping past the van. You kept your fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel, keeping the van as steady as possible. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?!” you shouted for good measure, just in case he could hear you.

The resounding boom of a gunshot was your answer. You were shocked to see the headlights in the rearview mirror begin to weave, as if the driver was drunk. You would have been impressed if you weren’t about to probably die.

There was a bend to the road coming up, and you could see the assassin was only holding onto the door with his flesh hand, his mechanical one being used to aim the gun. There wasn’t enough time to warn him.

Oh, hell.

Just before you made the sharp turn, you quickly reached over and caught his leg just above the ankle. It was the right move; as soon as the van moved sharply to the left, the assassin lost his balance and his leg nearly slipped from your grasp. But you held on tight, fingers desperately digging in as you kept him from tumbling out of the van.

The first car behind you never made the turn, instead careening off into the forest and smashing into the trunk of a tree. The second vehicle was hot on your heels—at least until the assassin took his second shot.

The car swerved as the entire front of it erupted into flames, and it too went hurtling off the highway. An explosion of light followed, briefly igniting the forest in yellow before it faded into a deadly ember blaze.

When you felt him begin to move back inside the van, you quickly let go, putting your hands on the wheel so tightly your knuckles went white. The assassin maneuvered himself down from the door and collapsed into the seat with a barely audible grunt, his hand once again on his left side.

He then held the gun out to you, his metal fingers wrapped around the barrel with the grip pointed in your direction. You both knew the clip was empty, but even an empty gun was handled as if it was armed. Every soldier knew that.

You took the stolen gun without a word, replacing it in the pilfered holster. There would be ammunition where you were going, and there was no sense throwing away a perfectly good weapon.

With the immediate crisis over, you didn’t know what to say to him. Thanks for coming to my rescue, and also, what the fuck?

You could see him staring at you out of the corner of your eye, and you tried not to react. Tried not to notice the heat that was spreading up your chest, which couldn’t be blamed on the warm air vents. Or the way your heart beat a little faster, which had nothing to do with your daring escape a few moments ago.

He turned his head forward, leaned against the seat, and said nothing either. The silence stretched on and you focused on the road rather than disrupt it. You were never good at making small talk, anyway.

Thanks to the dashboard GPS, which you briefly used to find your location and reorient yourself to the world, you chucked it out the window so you couldn’t be tracked. According to the map, you were a half hour north of the edge of the DC metro area. The dark Maryland highway was mostly deserted—unsurprising at this time of night. Nearly midnight. When you had looked at the date on the GPS, your heart had sunk in your chest.

You had been held captive for three full days. You didn’t know what to do with that information. It certainly didn’t feel real. You felt like you had been held in that place for much, much longer.

There was nothing to do except drive the speed limit, pray the van didn’t have any other trackers on it, and hope that the assassin sitting next to you didn’t die.

He hadn’t said a word since asking for the gun. You glanced over at him at least every couple of minutes, checking to see he was still breathing. Every time you had looked, his eyes had been stared straight forward, unreadable and reflecting the sparse headlights on the road.

It was time to check on him again. Your glance was quick, expecting him to be the same, but you did a double take. His eyes were closed, thick lashes lying against his cheeks.

“Hey.”

No response.

“Wake up,” you said a little more loudly. The tightness in your voice betrayed the demand you were going for.

When he remained as he was, you detached your right hand from the wheel and reached over. But then you stopped short, your fingertips a few inches from the red painted star on his silver shoulder. You didn’t want to startle him, knowing one blow of that arm could crush your chest or crack your skull. You’d seen it in action too many times, both on your teammates and on your captors, to not respect its deadly power.

“Can you hear me? Hey!”

His eyes fluttered open, languid and heavy, and then his gaze shifted and focused on your hand hovering near his arm. You retracted it quickly.

“Don’t go to sleep,” you said, feeling his pales eyes on you. “Stay awake. Okay? We only have another thirty minutes to drive.”

You didn’t expect a response, so when he asked, “To where?” you almost jumped.

“A S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house.”

“No.”

His answer was so prompt and intense that you turned to stare at him. His eyes were hard on your face.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t be trusted.”

“You’re the second person to tell me that,” you remarked heavily as you looked back at the road. The traffic was thicker now that you were closer to the city; the streetlights overhead drove away the rural darkness. “It’s an old location. No one’s used it in months and it’s not even on the current safe house list. Only the STRIKE team uses it.”

You pressed your lips together. And half of them are dead because you killed them, you didn’t add. You didn’t want to think about that now and you knew it would be smarter not to. Better to put it all away until you were at a safe location.

But as the heavy silence drew out between you and you navigated the traffic lanes of the city, you couldn’t help but remember all the pain and misery this man had caused you. He had massacred not just your teammates, but your friends. People whose lives you had saved, and had saved yours. A woman and her son would have died if you hadn’t been prepared to sacrifice yourself so they could escape.

He had prevented you from leaving that place when you had first broken free. He had bodily carried you to be at the mercy of cruel hands, and had watched you scream without a word.

All of that was there, and you could never forget it; but he had also killed all of those people. The guards and the doctors, all of them. To break you free? You didn’t know. You couldn’t imagine why he would do such a thing, least of all for you.

Even as you denied other memories, they flooded your thoughts. Soft touches. The heated scrape of flesh. The release of pleasure and the resounding relief afterwards.

And then the shame arrived, heating your cheeks and making your eyes prickle.

You wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened in that cell. It would be buried with you in your grave.

By the time you turned onto the right street, found the correct house, and drove up the driveway, your muscles were taut and your jaw ached from the tightness you had maintained most of the way through the capital.

Without a word, you parked behind the house and turned off the van. You pulled out the keys and then shoved them into your pocket and opened the driver’s side door. The motion detector picked you up and a light flared to life, making you blink your eyes. The illumination helped you find the keys to the house once you made your way onto the back porch. They were hidden behind a specific shingle in the wall next to the door, and you pried it free. The keys were inside the hollow, and you breathed in relief when you slid them into the lock and the knob turned in your hand.

At the sound of the van door closing and uneven footsteps on gravel, you turned back around. The assassin was trying to limp his way toward you, his metal hand braced against the hood for support.

Just like that, the stony wall around your heart crumbled, just a little, and you walked up to him and ducked under his normal arm. Without a word, he wrapped it across your shoulders and allowed you to help take the burden of his weight as you led him up the steps and into the house.

Next Chapter

[migleefulmoments]

awesome-fanfictionada * tumblr * com / post / 615676095589728256 so anon ask how it's possible that no one's ever let the cat out of the bag this entire time (not to mention no one's ever captured a surreptitious pic of C/D together) and the answer is a rambling response filled with fake rumors and inane talk about smiling at each other. basically, there is no answer for how darren's "incompetent" team has kept a lid on this secret for nearly a decade. cuz they haven't. cuz it's all bullshit.

The first thing to keep in mind is that awesome is a newbie- she popped up in January 2020. Everything she knows is from "researching” the ccers favorite gifs and answers Abby and co gave to their nonnies in the last few years. She was trolling through the cc masterposts but most of them are long gone so she basically learned through their favorite gif playlist-if you put all the gifs together and took away the slow-mo feature it was probably a total of 4 minutes or less of Chris and Darren’s lives and all of it was from the Glee set or during promo for the show.  

I wrote my comments after her post: 

Anonymous asked:

So, we're 8-9 years? into this whole situation. I want to know how no one has ever let something slip about the truth. There's a lot of pieces in motion...PR houses, SM, appearances with beards, them being together (physically in the same place, like living together) without public knowledge. There's also a lot of people that would have knowledge of the situation. And some of them are not that bright or discreet. It's an incredible amount of time to maintain all of this.

Dear Anon, I’m not sure about the tone of your ask and if you want me to convert you or reassure you? However, I’ll just comment on the things you say. It’s not correct that no one has ever let anything slip about them, there have been in the past people who (2) tweeted about them as a couple just to dleete the tweet shortly after. Not always, some tweets are there still. (3)There have been IG posts and radio interviews with the voice of one of them in the background when there was supposed to be no official interaction. There have been other let’s call them (4)“clues” - even if they weren’t meant to be such. (5) It’s been many years, yes, and with the years comes the ease and the routine, everybody is aware of the situation, teams know what they have to do to keep it going (though sometimes they also slip up, some more than others). With the years the startling suspicion that they might be indeed a couple subsides and nobody cares about it anymore (but us), no one goes out to investigate because why should they? (6)Who cares about D marrying to hide the fact that he’s gay? He’s not the first nor the last to do it. (7) And he’s not that famous that people will want to know at all costs or have tabloids to pay for the scoop. (8) No, it is still his team that needs to pay to get articles out (talking about M mostly). And based on the comments they get on such articles, D’s secret seems to be an open one. Why would anyone tell about them? In HW everyone knows everything about everybody but they seldom tell cause they are all in it together - so who should tell and whom to? (9) Besides - there are plenty of couples in HW and around HW who are pretty secretive about their relationships and have been for years without anyone finding out anything they did not want exposed. Some couples are never seen together anywhere but are known to be married because they have at some point or another confirmed their relationship. (11) It is a long time to maintain this but if the parties involved are fine with the outcome (I doubt D and C are now, but for argument’s sake) nothing will get in the way to disturb the situation.

Do you want me to confirm to you that they actually live together? I cannot. That they have been together all the time? I cannot. (12) But look at them interact at the G/lee reunion and tell me honestly that there isn’t anything going on between them - they have been looking at each other that way for almost 10 years now. Have they at any time looked at their official SO in the same way? They make each other smile and laugh, that counts for very much in a relationship.  

Yes, I started on 2...ignore there is no 1. 

2. She mentions the Tweets that were soon deleted- this is one of my favorite arguments because it’s the most pathetic proof and proves just how easy it is to con a tinhat. Faking a Tweet has been easy for many years and anyone with photoshop skills could do it from day one. Tweets that showed up, then quickly disappeared but luckily ONE person managed to get a screencap? Riiigggghhhhttttttt. We also know that a couple of those famous disappearing Tweets were never real but were written about as part of the “news” post that GleekinthePink mistook for real but was later proven to be fanfiction. 

3. The videos where they hear the voice of the other -usually in a laugh- aren’t “proof” of a relationship. First of all, the obvious, we don’t know who it is since they are off-camera and the person on camera never makes a face of surprise like I would expect if the other outed them. It also makes no sense to imagine that Darren married Mia to protect the secrets but they took a risk by having the other in the room during a live or while shooting a video they posted to social media. I can’t imagine taking a chance like that on something as stupid as a promo Livestream or a haircut-maybe to attend a small family event like Chris’s mom’s funeral or his dad’s wedding, but not a haircut. 

4. What clues did they give away exactly? The not-actually-matching shirts? The not-at-all matching duvet covers? The song lyrics? None of these “clues” are evidence of a relationship. They are simply evidence of a fandom obsessed with making everything into confirmation bias and Abby’s talent at bringing everything back to Crisscolfer.   

5. Now she starts to layout her argument that “everyone knows and they are willing to keep it a secret because who cares”? This argument is so weak I would hope that her community should see right through it, but I’m sure they don’t. I’ve learned through my interactions with Trump supporters and ccers that people who are in a group because they want to win and to be special, people who are bonded together through anger, misogyny, and hate require very little fact-based information. They thrive on short sentences-repeated often- and in anger and having a scapegoat to hurl all their shit at. Having someone to hate is like meth- it’s highly addictive, it rots their brains and it keeps them coming back even after it is killing them. I am sure that any ccer who reads awesome’s post will accept it all at face value.  Hollywood isn’t a close community full of people who either love and respect each other enough to protect Darren or are indifferent as long as it doesn’t affect them. The fact is, Hollywood is a small community, yes. If cc were a couple, everyone would know but being a small community and one willing to hide another’s deep dark secrets aren’t the same thing. Nobody has a reason to protect Chris and Darren by lying or actively working to protect their secrets.. People like and respect Darren because he’s genuine, honest, kind, and interesting but ccDarren is none of those things. He’s a liar who is hiding in the closet because he’s can’t give up his fame, he “treats Mia like shit”, he continues to work with the man who put him in the closet using THE Contract. THE Contract alone would be HUGE and go well beyond tabloid fodder. The NYT and WaPo would be all over the story of Ryan Muphy and Fox TV forcing Darren into the closet, forcing a beard and forbidding them to interact for a decade. 

The biggest reason her theory is nothing but a naive fantasy is that Hollywood isn’t a static community.  Over the last decade, many people came and went and there is no way you will ever convince me that in 10 years, not one person let it slip or was willing to sell them out for their own 15 minutes of fame or blackmailed one of the players get something they wanted. Darren is a vary social man and lots of people consider him their friend. He attends a lot of functions where people see him with Mia. Either ccDarren and ccChris never go out in public- for 10 years they have kept their relationship inside at one of their homes and only a couple of friends know the truth or it’s statistically inconceivable that someone hasn’t slipped or outed them. Glee had a huge cast and crew- add the plus ones and we have a crap ton of people who know, but not one person told a friend who let it slip? Nobody told a friend who works at TMZ or knows someone who does or who is on TMZ payroll? Puh-leaze . 

The tabloids would LOVE to get ahold of CrissColfer- not simply because they are gay, but because Darren has presented as straight for over 10 years and he just married a woman! He also said as a straight man he won’t play another gay character. A gay Darren would be tabloid fodder at any level but as Abby loved to point out, he just won every award; he’s one of the Ryan Murphy Players and his career is on fire right now. CDAN has posted multiple blinds about Darren being gay over the years which proves that tabloids would be interested in such a story.  

6. In 2020 it would be big news if a celeb married to hide a gay relationship.  Especially if that man was famous for playing gay characters and who has been in a relationship with the woman he married for 10+ years. Awesome is dreaming if she imagines nobody would care about such a story.  It’s a story about deception and lies but if you add in the shit they believe, THE Contracts and being forced in the closet, a paid beard who abuses Darren and hidden relationship with another man who has presented another man as his long-term boyfriend? Yeah, that would be huge news. 

7. I have no clue why she thinks he isn’t famous enough to have a tabloid pay for information. Has she read TMZ in the last 5 years? It’s full of stories about Farah Abrahman and other reality stars and their shenanigans. You don’t have to be a huge blockbuster movie star to get a tabloid interested. You only need a sordid story about love mixed with deception, sex, money murder or abuse of power. The tabloids feed off stories like the tinhats have written CrissColfer. 

8. I always love the comments about his team forcing articles out -especially Mia. WTF? His team doesn’t force out articles- they get him publicity when he has a project. Darren hasn’t done all that much press I would call fake, certainly, not many that are written by his team or read as if they just pieced together PR pieces written by his team. Maybe ccers are finding nonsense articles that are clearly written for clicks (they were debating about one last month that was clearly written by someone who Googled Darren and cobbled together his story from what they found online without trying very hard. It wasn’t even written well.  It’s super easy to avoid those articles- if they say “sponsored” that’s a good clue. If you have to click through paragraph by paragraph or photo by photo, or you can barely see the article among the flashing ads, you’re probably reading something of poor quality and not worthy of your time. Stick with articles that are more reputable-actual entertainment publications that cover the industry and including interviews or stories written by journalists. BTW, when was Mia in an article last? I mean more than a mention or two? She was quoted in some for TSG’s opening but other than that she isn’t in the pieces.  

9. There are plenty of couples who keep their relationships quiet but Darren Criss is NOT one of them. Neither is Chris Colfer... but especially not Darren Criss. He doesn’t talk about his relationship per se but is mentioned in places where one would normally talk about one’s spouse. Mia is always by his side and clearly enmeshed in his life- they share old friends and live and work together. The people awesome is referring t-those who keep their private lives private- aren’t running around with a fake wife or fake husband to protect their actual relationships- they are just keeping everything quiet-think Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes or early Angelina and Brad. Arguing that because some celeb’s keep their private life private, it is rational to believe that Darren and Chris are simply one of those couples is a fallacy-but it’s almost 3 am and I’m too tired to think about which one it is. 

11. Now she’s arguing that in over a decade in Hollywood, the people in Darren’s and Chris’s lives have been static and therefore there isn’t anyone to rock the boat and out them. An interesting argument in light of Darren’s resume over the last 9 years- Broadway (4 different shows (2 Hedwigs)), TV (Royalties, Hollywood, Glee, AHS, ACS), music (including a few tours, 2 albums, multiple one-off shows, and several music videos), Elsie Fest, two feature movies and all the award shows, charity events, fundraisers, and other random things that Darren does. He also owns two businesses that we know of- TSG and The Motley.  That’s a shitload of people that he’s interacted with just at work in the last decade. Oh and add all the people who worked on the wedding-the vendors and their staffs- it’s unrealistic to believe that not one of them realized something was ccUp. Chris entirely changed careers adding all the people in the publishing world that an author works with. He also has done a couple of shows for TV. I’m not even considering the charities they both work with. Not only is this a LOT of people who are keeping their mouths shut, but it isn’t a static group-Darren filmed Hollywood and Royalties this year and rehearsed Amerian Buffalo bringing in an entirely new set of people to work with. If Chris gets his TLOS movie off the ground that will be hundreds and hundreds of new people with him  The fact is, Hollywood isn’t static- it’s the most unstable business I can think of with new people coming to seek their dreams and others giving up or going off to do something else like music or Broadway. There are alwasy new people coming and others going. If Darren and Chris were in fact in a relationship then lots of people near htier homes would know- grocery store workers, restaurant staff, dry cleaners, etc. Yet nobody with this type of evidence has ever even suggested they are a couple. The legit media has never sniffed around trying to find out if Darren is actually gay or with Chris. That says a lot about the validity of the story. Darren would have been hounded by the media when he started playing Blaine but was telling everyone he was staright and showing up at events with Mia. 

Hollywood isn’t known for being altruistic and kind. It’s a ruthless industry full of people with huge egos and big power and people who are broke and just want to get hired for a part, they want their dreams to come true. Hollywood is a town of desperation for so many with big dreams and a quick buck selling a story to a tabloid or the 10 minutes of fan that it would bring- hell even someone making a deal with TMZ to cover them for a period of time in exchange for info about Chris and Colfer is wayyy more credible rational than believing Hollywood is static and nobody has a reason to out Darren.  

12. Laughter and joy are important in a relationship but smiling at someone during a charity online reunion isn’t proof of anything- it’s just common courtesy to be polite in that scenario. Notice they once again are relying on a photo- a stillshot from a video- 1 single frame is “PROOF they are in love” because Chris is giving heart eyes to Darren.   

If your entire argument is they have overwhelming chemistry then you must know that nobody will take you seriously and you should really get listen to an objective opinion by someone who isn’t desperately searching for confirmation bias that they are a couple. Good chemistry doesn’t make a relationship-lots of people have good chemistry and they aren’t in a relationship and lots of people in relationships have poor chemistry. It isn’t proof of anything except that ccers have no evidence.   

[the-house-of-the-nine]

In Mind of Misery: Reflections, Part 4

[Forward:  Since the end of “In Depths Below” the Nine have been busy trying to reclaim Lazarius’ family fortune, rebuilding, and forging new allies.  We are current in the WoW Timeline with this entry, NZoth has risen, the world is in chaos, and now, the Council of Nine are at a disadvantage.  New Readers, please note each of the roleplayers as the following...

[ L.K ] - Lazarius Kashebahl,  Algus Kross, Doctor Whistletorque, Marseille

[ V.D ]  Verzatea Duskflame , Pame

[ S.K ] Siida-Ray Kashebahl

[ K.A ] Koltun Ancientveil

[ J ] Jursol (AND JIMBA!)

And as always, thank you so much for continued support, posting, reblogs, likes and friendly messages!  Please enjoy! ]

[ V.D ]   The rush of emotionally provoking events had been lost upon the Confessor. True, she'd admire the affection shared between old friends - a welcome moment of serenity and wholesomeness - but there was the weight of Lazarius's original decree. Temporary leave? Loss of precious lives, of the Nines council no less, on top of the sense of hopelessness that awaited the world.

Rather than stand and fight, they had to thin out to ensure longevity of their people? War was afoot. A raging war of titans beyond mortal knowledge come to wreak havoc in ways few were prepared to fight. And the Nine were meant to hide in their underground layer and... Wait? The structure could very well become their tomb if they weren't careful.

But in Teas heart, while she wanted to remain and protect the last of her family... She also wanted to protect them in ways that meant directly fighting the enemies threatening their world, outside of the Bastille, in the battle fields. It wasn't long before the confusion became an expression of determination, her eyes flickering down toward her wand briefly before tucking it away.

If magic was out of question for the time being, then perhaps she'd have to touch up on her skills. The art of the sword had been a passion before the wand became a new challenge for her to perfect. But of course this entire monologue went along in the span of a minute, filled with silence from the shifty eyed Confessor who'd return to writing in her journal.

This would be timed perfectly with Lazarius's quiet plea for validation of Varis safety-- it'd surely mask Teas plotting with a look of discomfort over the possibility of Varis fate that lay in the unspoken sight... Koltun walked in alone.

Pames silence could easily be written off as the kaldorei doing what she did best. Quietly lurking in the solitude of being the wallflower, her arms remaining firmly crossed over her chest whilst observing. Soaking in the whims and words of those inhabiting the library. Though it was clear in Pames eyes, similar to Tea, she had a distant reflection in them. What the world was coming to made right and wrong a difficult game to play.

[ K.A ]  Vari wasnt here... The line of Koltun's back stiffened beneath Lazarius' question, his expression darkening. She should be here. There were no other places she would go, would even WANT to go after everything in Silithus. He couldn't look at Laz or the others, dipping his head down and to the side to avoid their looks and nearly smacking Laz on the head with a horn.

Stupid stupid stupid stupid. She should BE HERE!! fury welled within the pit of his stomach, coiling about the ball of fear that forced his gaze away and burned it's way up into his chest.

Felfire seared dark circles through the worn fabric of his bandana wrapped about his head, covering the empty sockets of his eyes.

"We got separated." The hunter practically growled, inhaling deeply to try to calm the building storm within him.

“There was, an attack.  Not just our operation, but the Alliance and Horde.  Silithid swarmed from the gates, overran everything.  We fought as long as we could. . .Loki, Krazzlowe. . .everyone that was there, gone.  If we weren’t fighting or killed, they were rounding up anyone who was alive.  We had to abandon the site. . .”

The demon would slam his fist into the table as he snarled.

"I searched for her and her forces in Silithis with my elite, but their trail was lost within a storm of sand."

He licked his lips, taking another calming breath.

"I broadened my search the next day but all my men and I could find were strange, mutated Silithids... they wreaked of the old God... "

Whatever happened after that seemed to pain the Bladewarden, clawed hands clenching into fists until the leather wraps around his fingers creaked.

"Vari and I had decided should we become compromised or separated, we would rendezvous here... after I salvaged what I could and helped whoever was still alive. . .I buried my men and returned here as we had planned..."

“By the sunwell... dont let me lose her again..” he thought.

[ S.K ]  Hearing what had happened to her sister, after trying so hard and spending so much time attempting to bond with her; the young heiress would calmly stand from the table and walking out the back door.

 She needed to center herself, find calm, and hopefully make things right here.  If she had lost her elder sister; it would not be because she failed, nor would she allow anyone else to falter because she was not upholding her duty as Matron of this order.

[ L.K ]  Lazarius would not let the man who had come to be his brother suffer in his rage.  Nor would he allow him to blame himself. “Koltun...”. Lazarius exclaimed; rather direct and form.

“You saved innocents by doing what you did.”. He placed his wrapped mummified hand against the chest of his brother. “Vari too.  None of us could have prepared for this . . .”.

Lazarius was partially gripping Kolts shoulder and squeezed, it was enough to give him that reassurance. “We WILL find her.”.

“If I may...”

Suddenly from the back of the room came a voice that split the hardness of the reality.

“...I will find Lady Kashebahl, walking death myself I am much closer to the realm she suffers.” Kross was not wrong, and Lazarius knew this when he peered over at the families eldest; the old steward who had cared for their family for so long.

“You would venture out? Alone? Find her?” “Lazarius peered toward the old Gilnean.

“Should I fall in my quest my phylactery remains hidden; it will take time for me to be restored but as endless as my service to you; so too will be my determination to find Pyravari.”

Lazarius would look toward Siida first; he knew she would approve, but his eyes fell on Koltun.

“You need rest, and to see the doctor.  Hydrate and get well.  I will need you to help us...will you allow Kross to go in your stead?”

[ V.D ]   There was a pause for a moment, one filled with Verzatea watching quietly before finally putting herself to action. She moves across the small area, walking on the outside of their gathered circle to touch and brush her fingers across surfaces, her fingers swirling with a pale purple magic. As she walks the magic could be visibly connecting each surface she touches with a thin solid purple line (as thin as twine, surrounded by a pale haze).

In the end, after completing the circle, those physically outside of the drawn circle would hear muffled voices speaking utter nonsense. In other words... She sought to offer them privacy.

"Surely the spectral alone is not all to be sent for our Harbinger?"

Verzatea weighs in then, confident to speak with added privacy, concern evident in her golden irises.

"The prospect of Old God soldiers having been so close--," Tea sighs softly, shaking her head before remarking,

"There’s a chance great peril is at hand. Too much for a one man rescue team. I'd recommend more going with Kross to scout the area; Defenses are sparse with lack of bodies to fill the guard roles, but the Bastille will protect it's patrons. We can spare the expense of lacking bodies for these two missions-- Both the issue of Raelyndias magic. . .,"

Teas eyes review Lazarius before eyeing Koltun,

"And locating Pyravari."

[ L.K ] “As you say the world is falling into chaos and You would risk the lives of our own in a time of great peril, than allow me to do my job.  I cannot die again Confessor.” Kross stated as he peered between the other members of the acting council.  

“Any additional aid will not only slow me down but get in the way.  If NZoths forces kill me I will return to my phylactery.  If they capture me; they will be in desperate need of aid...” Kross remained firm in his stance.

“I can do this...it is my duty to this family...and to someone I am especially fond of.  Please...”

[ K.A ] None of what was occurring around him helped his anger. It bubbled violently, rumbling up through his chest and out into the thunder of an agitated growl. Such were the issues that arose with the particular brand of demon Koltun had; out of hatred and despair, chosen to bind himself too. He had gained a temper. Felfire eyes darted between Laz, Kross and Tea, chest rising and falling with each desperate inhale of fury.

They each quarrel over what is mine to find, and seek to ground me! his thoughts rampaged. weak, in need of rest? Stay and do nothing? Break the promise? NO!! "Enough!!"

The hunter suddenly bellowed, large, leathery wings snapping out in dramatic emphasis to his command. His inner self fought to reign in his anger, cracking his voice when next he spoke, sweeping the others with his glowing gaze.

"Kross is right. But I will not be grounded here. I'm going with him."

Koltun looked to Lazarius, regarding the man briefly before covering his bandaged hand with the clawed one of his own and squeezing.

"I am fine. Give me supplies. It's my duty as much as Kross'. I failed her once, Lazarius. Please don't make me fail her again. I can keep up with Kross, and should Vari's mental stability be lost to us, I can bring her back. What is left of my elite will stay here with you and set up defenses. I cant take them with me anyways. Few can fly and to become what we are, you have to lose a part of your mind. They would be a liability... I've already witnessed it."

He sighed, anger leaking away to leave his shoulders slumped slightly.

"I lucked out. I got the broken piece back, and  that piece is out there now. Besides... Kross loves my company, right old man?"

[ V.D ]   There was genuinely nothing that had encouraged a reaction from Pame throughout the conversations besides the roused aggression of the demon hunter. The Kaldorei stiffened, her eyes fixated solely on the side of Kolts head whilst a single hand dropped to grip the handle of her blade. Yah know... Just in case. She wasn't terribly familiar with the being, though he certainly made her feel .. On edge.

Verzatea's narrowed gold eyes soaked in the hypocrisy that was the senile old ghost, deeply offended at the prospect of him accusing her to be... Stupid? Naive? How fucking dare! The grip she held her journal and quill with tightened greatly in an effort to ground herself before her lips part to defend her position.

Though it was Koltuns timely flare of anger that roused the Confessor. She'd instead stare at Koltun, brows furrowed now whilst glancing around for other reactions. Surely no one else thought his behavior normal and acceptable? Well, when ever had Tea been one to quietly abide the recklessness of others without challenging them. Thus, with as level a voice she could manage, Verzatea appeals toward Koltun,

"I'd recommend against you aiding the spectral. Rest assured, its not a matter of you cannot help, but rather your affections for the missing in action could cloud your judgement. Perhaps your... Anger," she carefully jots down something as she speaks,

"Is better spent on another job to distract you; Otherwise, in certain scenarios that are probable, your anger and gung-ho attitude could be a liability."

With that concern raised, Tea interjects secondly.

"Though if you genuinely will entertain his request, Lazarius, Id recommend that before the mission starts you should have Whitsletorque give Koltun a mental and physical health check before sending him back into the field."

To Be Continued: In Mind of Misery: Reflections, Part 5

@pyravari-kashebahl

@miss-irascible

@thebladeitself

@whatadarkbitch

@siidaraykashebahl

@zandalaridruidofgonk

@frompage112

[alliance-volunteer]

OC Personality Test Meme

I was tagged by @cyrraluu​​ a long time ago, so sorry for noticing it just now and responding even later DX and thank you! In this meme I chose my three kids c:

Rules:

Go to this site.

Choose an OC and take the test for them.

Put their stats here.

Avery

Strengths

Honest and Direct – Integrity is the heart of the Logistician personality type. Emotional manipulation, mind games and reassuring lies all run counter to Logisticians’ preference for managing the reality of the situations they encounter with plain and simple honesty.

Strong-willed and Dutiful – Logisticians embody that integrity in their actions too, working hard and staying focused on their goals. Patient and determined, people with the Logistician personality type meet their obligations, period.

Responsible – Logisticians’ word is a promise. Logisticians would rather run themselves into the ground with extra days and lost sleep than fail to deliver the results they said they would. Loyalty is a strong sentiment for Logistician personalities, and they fulfill their duties to the people and organizations they’ve committed themselves to.

Calm and Practical – None of their promises would mean much if Logisticians lost their tempers and broke down at every sign of hardship – they keep their feet on the ground and make clear, rational decisions. Peoples’ preferences are a factor to consider in this process, and Logisticians work to make the best use of individual qualities, but these decisions are made with effectiveness in mind more so than empathy. The same applies to criticisms, for others and themselves.

Create and Enforce Order – The primary goal of any Logistician is to be effective in what they’ve chosen to do, and they believe that this is accomplished best when everyone involved knows exactly what is going on and why. Unclear guidelines and people who break established rules undermine this effort, and are rarely tolerated by Logisticians. Structure and rules foster dependability; chaos creates unforeseen setbacks and missed deadlines.

Weaknesses

Stubborn – The facts are the facts, and Logisticians tend to resist any new idea that isn’t supported by them. This factual decision-making process also makes it difficult for people with the Logistician personality type to accept that they were wrong about something – but anyone can miss a detail, even them.

Insensitive – While not intentionally harsh, Logisticians often hurt more sensitive types’ feelings by the simple mantra that honesty is the best policy. Logistician personalities may take emotions into consideration, but really only so far as to determine the most effective way to say what needs to be said.

Judgmental – Opinions are opinions and facts are facts, and Logisticians are unlikely to respect people who disagree with those facts, or especially those who remain willfully ignorant of them.

Unreasonably Blame Themselves – All this can combine to make Logisticians believe they are the only ones who can see projects through reliably. As they load themselves with extra work and responsibilities, turning away good intentions and helpful ideas, Logisticians sooner or later hit a tipping point where they simply can’t deliver. Since they’ve heaped the responsibility on themselves, Logisticians then believe the responsibility for failure is theirs alone to bear.

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

Avelyn

Strengths

Tolerant – Protagonists are true team players, and they recognize that that means listening to other peoples’ opinions, even when they contradict their own. They admit they don’t have all the answers, and are often receptive to dissent, so long as it remains constructive.

Reliable – The one thing that galls Protagonists the most is the idea of letting down a person or cause they believe in. If it’s possible, Protagonists can always be counted on to see it through.

Charismatic – Charm and popularity are qualities Protagonists have in spades. They instinctively know how to capture an audience, and pick up on mood and motivation in ways that allow them to communicate with reason, emotion, passion, restraint – whatever the situation calls for.

Altruistic – Uniting these qualities is Protagonists’ unyielding desire to do good in and for their communities, be it in their own home or the global stage. Warm and selfless, Protagonists genuinely believe that if they can just bring people together, they can do a world of good.

Weaknesses

Overly Idealistic – Protagonist personality type can be caught off guard as they find that, through circumstance or nature, or simple misunderstanding, people fight against them and defy the principles they’ve adopted, however well-intentioned they may be. They are more likely to feel pity for this opposition than anger, and can earn a reputation of naïveté.

Too Selfless – Protagonists can bury themselves in their hopeful promises, feeling others’ problems as their own and striving hard to meet their word. If they aren’t careful, they can spread themselves too thin, and be left unable to help anyone.

Too Sensitive – While receptive to criticism, seeing it as a tool for leading a better team, it’s easy for Protagonists to take it a little too much to heart. Their sensitivity to others means that Protagonists sometimes feel problems that aren’t their own and try to fix things they can’t fix, worrying if they are doing enough.

Fluctuating Self-Esteem – Protagonists define their self-esteem by whether they are able to live up to their ideals, and sometimes ask for criticism more out of insecurity than out of confidence, always wondering what they could do better. If they fail to meet a goal or to help someone they said they’d help, their self-confidence will undoubtedly plummet.

Struggle to Make Tough Decisions – If caught between a rock and a hard place, Protagonists can be stricken with paralysis, imagining all the consequences of their actions, especially if those consequences are humanitarian.

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

Saxan

Strengths

Creative and Practical – Virtuosos are very imaginative when it comes to practical things, mechanics, and crafts. Novel ideas come easily, and they love using their hands to put them into action.

Spontaneous and Rational – Combining spontaneity with logic, Virtuosos can switch mindsets to fit new situations with little effort, making them flexible and versatile individuals.

Great in a Crisis – With all this hands-on creativity and spontaneity, it’s no wonder that Virtuosos are naturals in crisis situations. People with this personality type usually enjoy a little physical risk, and they aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty when the situation calls for it.

Relaxed – Through all this, Virtuosos are able to stay quite relaxed. They live in the moment and go with the flow, refusing to worry too much about the future.

Weaknesses

Stubborn – As easily as Virtuosos go with the flow, they can also ignore it entirely, and usually move in another direction with little apology or sensitivity. If someone tries to change Virtuosos’ habits, lifestyle or ideas through criticism, they can become quite blunt in their irritation.

Insensitive – Virtuosos use logic, and even when they try to meet others halfway with empathy and emotional sensitivity, it rarely seems to quite come out right, if anything is even said at all.

Private and Reserved – Virtuoso personalities are notoriously difficult to get to know. They are true introverts, keeping their personal matters to themselves, and often just prefer silence to small talk.

Easily Bored – Virtuosos enjoy novelty, which makes them excellent tinkerers, but much less reliable when it comes to focusing on things long-term. Once something is understood, Virtuosos tend to simply move on to something new and more interesting.

Dislike Commitment – Long-term commitments are particularly onerous for Virtuosos. They prefer to take things day-by-day, and the feeling of being locked into something for a long time is downright oppressive. This can be a particular challenge in Virtuosos’ romantic relationships.

Risky Behavior – This stubbornness, difficulty with others’ emotions, focus on the moment, and easy boredom can lead to unnecessary and unhelpful boundary-pushing, just for fun. Virtuosos have been known to escalate conflict and danger just to see where it goes, something that can have disastrous consequences for everyone around if they lose control of the situation.

[thedistantstorm]

Project Compass 05

Read Along on AO3 Here

<< Previous Chapter <<   >> Next Chapter >>

This time: Un’hee confirms sinister forces at work, both past and present. Thrawn is delivered harrowing news. Ezra observes and contemplates his course of action.

Next time: Ezra encounters the Grysks. Thrawn has a confrontation. Vah’nya does something that could jeopardize everything.

-/

Six months. It had taken almost all of that time for Ezra not to feel entirely out of his depth amongst the Chiss. It was only recently that he felt comfortable enough to wander around alone and actually make conversation with the rest of the crew in their native language. Suffice to say he wasn't great at speaking Cheunh, but he could get by - and didn't mind the pronunciation corrections and tips as much as he let Thrawn believe.

He also suspected he was in the best shape of his life. In addition to his need to learn language, the team that assessed him felt him lacking in hand to hand combat. They didn't care about his abilities with a lightsaber - it wasn't as if they were anywhere close to kyber in the Unknown Regions - so that was another deficiency Thrawn set out to correct in their free time.

It was… strangely good to have Thrawn as a teacher. Thrawn, who, despite what Ivant had suggested, wanted Ezra to call him by his core name, who never demanded formality behind closed doors or during lessons was a good teacher. Ezra might even, with only a small amount of begrudging and a tiny bit of hand waving over their shared past, call him a friend.

Okay, so maybe he just considered Thrawn a friend, the rest of it be damned. Time, getting to know Thrawn, seeing him at work painted a different picture than what he'd seen with the Rebellion. And he wasn't fifteen anymore, it wasn't as simple as good versus bad. Thrawn had done bad things. But the Force stopped whispering caution and started murmuring trust a while ago, in conjunction with Ezra's shifting perception.

And, because he considered Thrawn a friend, Ezra had a lot to think about. Aside from their tasks: menial, semi-useful but mostly time-consuming, and Ezra's training and education, they didn't really do much. The ship they were on trained Navigators. It was an extensive nine month program, by Thrawn's estimation, an orientation and adjustment period, followed by theory and education, followed by practice in what was deemed a relatively safe space. Literally. Several times they had docked either on Chiss planets or tethered to larger ships and a Navigator had gone on their way to their new post.

This wasn't why Thrawn had further risked Ezra's ire to slowly slowly earn his trust. And it was, as he felt like he said almost every day, a waste for Thrawn to be forced to spend all his time and attention on him, to be forced to complete tasks more appropriate for people half Thrawn’s age (or whatever he assumed Thrawn’s age was, he hadn’t really seen any old-looking Chiss).

Something was happening here. Something that wasn't being talked about, that perhaps not even the majority of the crew knew of. Thrawn didn’t say anything to Ezra about it, but he was obsessed. Rarely did he leave the door to his quarters open - only if Ezra was working on something and would call for help with a translation - but Ezra’s understanding of the Chiss script was better than his sloppy spoken linguistics. Thrawn was looking into the Navigators and news surrounding them, and similar ships to this one. There weren’t any.

At first, Ezra suspected Thrawn's search for knowledge stemmed from his previous role, the amount of control he exuded over a situation. But as time went on, he realized that wasn’t entirely the case. Thrawn, someone Ezra viewed as the eye of a storm, a moment of calm despite chaos all around, was at odds with himself. He could feel the Chiss’s imbalance in the Force. But it didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t felt it before they arrived here, and no matter how much Ezra pressed him about his prior rank in comparison to his reprised one and all of its far less glamorous tasks, Thrawn never betrayed any hint of his emotions to Ezra after that first time. Not once.

So maybe, Ezra was starting to think, it wasn’t rank. In fact, for a short while, he almost forgot about it entirely, because Thrawn was acting more or less normal. Still very focused on the truth of whatever was happening aboard the Compass, but normal for Thrawn. Then, they had been put on alert, forced to travel far and away due to Grysk activity in their sector that had claimed two Chiss ships, seen three Navigators taken captive and the vast majority of the crews of both vessels slaughtered...

Un’hee had come to their quarters late. So late that both Ezra and Thrawn had been in their respective quarters, Ezra asleep and Thrawn brooding (or whatever he did since Chiss didn’t seem to sleep like humans did). She’d slammed her palm so hard into the control panel it rocked the wall of the suite, alerting Thrawn, but Ezra had been able to sense her fear in his dreams, and had fallen out of bed over it.

It had taken them a long time to get her to do more than cling to Ezra, burying her face into his chest while she sobbed. In the end, Thrawn had sat across from Ezra on the low table, using the most docile command-tone Ezra had ever heard from him (it wasn’t kind, but it wasn’t laced with the malevolent undercurrent that some of his more gauche statements had been). Slowly, his simple questions that were answered with head shakes or nods fell away and she spoke of her own free will.

“Eli and Vah’nya are busy,” She said to them softly, tilting her head away from Ezra’s chest, although her eyes remained closed. She seemed to be counting through her breaths, Ezra realized in hindsight. It was something he’d seen before, after Kallus had joined their group. Zeb would sit next to them sometimes, and the two of them would sit shoulder to shoulder while Zeb counted inhales and exhales, speaking softly and un-Zeb-like until Kallus’s Coruscanti accent fell into place again.

“Busy with what?” Thrawn asked. Normally, he’d mention the lack of formalities, but this was not the time, and they both seemed to know it.

“They took Navigators,” Un’hee cried. It took her another moment to compose herself. “They said it was a slaughter.”

“The Grysks?”

“Yes,” The Chiss girl confirmed. Ezra had a hard time reconciling these Navigators as the children they were at times, but this was not one of them. “T-they’re consulting with the Admiral, and I couldn’t-”

“It’s alright, Un’hee,” Ezra had said. “You can stay with us.”

“It’s not alright,” The little Navigator said, crying harder. “I know how they think,” She said between gulping breaths, “They’ll put themselves in danger again. They’ve already been captured once,” She cried.

“They?” Thrawn reared back, watching Un’hee very carefully, trying to gain context without interrogating her. “Who was captured? The Navigators?”

Un’hee shook her head. “Vah’nya wasn’t supposed to go, but her Sight told her she needed to go with him, so she did. The Admiral was furious, and then-” She looked up at Thrawn. “It was a ch'accuscehn ch'erei,” She said.

Ezra didn’t understand, but looked to Thrawn instead of asking.

“A suicide mission,” Thrawn translated slowly, the words rolling dangerously off his lips in basic. “Vah’nya and who?”

“Eli,” Un’hee held Thrawn’s inquisitive gaze. “He wanted to protect all of us,” She murmured, small blue hands scrubbing at her eyes. Their red glow illuminated the damp tracks of her tears. “I don’t want him to do it again. He was gone for so long,” She whispered. And then she reached for Thrawn.

Ezra had been careful not to cage the girl in with an embrace, but Thrawn drew her against him as though it was second nature, and Un’hee seemed far more comfortable in his arms than she ever had been in Ezra’s.

“Captain Ivant-” Un’hee flinched. “Eli,” Thrawn revised slowly, the word sounding awkward on his lips, as though he’d spoken without permission. “He is not going to fight the Grysks today. Our orders were to set course for a sector closer to Wild Space. We will not engage with them, Nav-” He caught himself, “Un’hee.”

“They’ll come after us.”

“They are our enemy,” Thrawn had said, but he was frowning with just his eyes, locking onto Ezra. The young Jedi looked concerned, but stayed silent while Thrawn rose with the child in his arms. She was still short, likely anticipating a major growth spurt, or perhaps it was simply that Thrawn was that tall. “If not the Grysks, the Vagaari,” He said softly. “We must strive to protect that which we care about. It is why we serve, is it not?”

There was a moment of silence between them. “I don’t want Eli to die," She leaned back in Thrawn's grip and looked up at him. "Last time,” Un’hee trailed off. Thrawn tightened his grip on her. If Ezra hadn’t taken stock of his ramrod straight posture, he would have assumed he was comfortable with cradling the child to him as he paced the length of their shared space. “I didn’t want to see, but I had to,” She said. “Vah’nya wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t-”She shook her head.

“You do not have to tell us,” Thrawn soothed. “Not if it troubles you.”

“You want to know,” She said. “And this is what I can tell you.”

Ezra’s lips pursed, his brow furrowing as he focused on the child. The Force hung around all of the Navigators, not Light, not Dark, not like it did a human. It was present and alive and neutral, almost like the Bendu had been, but different still. Right now, around Un’hee, it was a maelstrom of emotions: fear, guilt, and sadness. Behind it, small and growing, a feeling of safety. Comfort. But it wasn’t just Un’hee. He felt Thrawn, too. Thrawn’s worry was strong in the Force. Palpable. And with each word from Un’hee - how the Captain, then a Lieutenant Commander, had managed to kill and escape what the Navigator called Scratchlings, saving Navigator Vah’nya in the process, how he’d been promoted on his deathbed by Admiral Ar’alani, unsure if the long-term injuries would be something even a Chiss could survive - that worry went deep and grew stronger until it churned with fear and longinging, a lonely pain that Ezra felt in his core.

When the Navigator had inevitably cried herself out, falling asleep on Thrawn's shoulder, Ezra made a quiet joke about how Thrawn was going to pace a track into the duracrete tiling. Thrawn hadn't responded, and Ezra finally took it upon himself to stand in Thrawn's way, easing the exhausted girl out of his arms and settling her on the couch.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Ezra asked him as he stepped into his small room to pluck the blanket from his bed, throwing it over the child. He knew the answer would be a negative, but he left the option open.

Thrawn lingered in the doorway of his room, stiff-spined and wound. Ezra leaned against the wall that led to the tiny front corridor of the suite, where his quarters were. They stayed that way for a long, long time.

"Eli Vanto was present when I was found by the Empire," Thrawn said evenly. To Ezra, it had felt like being briefed on a mission. "I persuaded the Emperor to give him to me as a translator. We worked together for more than a decade, in service to the Empire."

"You were friends," Ezra said, connecting the dots.

"I-" Thrawn looked to Ezra in that moment, and it struck him that a man like Thrawn did not have many friends. He had allies. Enemies. A brother, apparently, though who knew where they stood with each other. "I had hoped so."

… And that was that. Thrawn had never given Ezra more than those few words. Not that he had to. Ezra was careful not to bring it up again. But he watched, now. He saw how Thrawn was not eager to please, but willing to pull his weight. He wanted to earn the Captain’s trust, but that seemed impossible. Ivant was never in the same room as Thrawn for longer than five minutes, it seemed, and if it was that long, it was because he was speaking with someone.

Their longest conversation had been during a report in which they’d been sent down planetside to a world that spoke more Sy Bisti than Cheunh, about a month after Un’hee’s stay in their quarters. It had been a standard debrief, nothing much had happened, but Captain Ivant had spoken with Thrawn as though they’d always had this relationship. Ivant’s Sy Bisti was more impressive than his Cheunh. His drawl fit in perfectly with the language, sounding polite and yet inviting.

Afterward, Ezra pretended not to hear the slam of a datapad across the desk inside Thrawn’s quarter’s and left him to his own devices.

But it had him wondering. And that was why he’d decided to do some recon of his own. Not on what the Chiss were up to. He had a feeling that would reveal itself in due time. There was a reason he was in this place. He’d felt that in his meditations for a while now.

Un'hee slipped into the mess with a big yawn. Her braids were definitely slept in, and she tucked a stray blue-black lock behind her ear with one hand while she waved at Ezra with the other.

Hardly anyone was here at this hour, the Chiss tended to stay up late and sleep until later in the morning, rather than sleep and rise early. It worked out in his favor. He was usually awake before Thrawn, who readapted to Ascendency life rather gracefully. It had been quite a surprise to the Chiss at first to find Ezra an early-riser, but some things about Rebel culture were ingrained. Ezra pushed down some of his homesickness and looked into his caf - black, the way he'd gotten used to drinking it after Kanan was injured to save their remaining sugar for his tea - then pushed it back altogether and he saw Un'hee approach him from the corner of his vision. She reached for his mug and refilled it with the warming kettle she must have gotten from the mess staff.

It was nearly empty, but Un'hee dashed to return it. The interaction with others was enough to wake the young Chiss up. "You're here early," she said as a greeting. "Is everything well?"

"Everything's fine, Un'hee."

"It does not seem like it," She said, frowning over a warm cereal that Ezra tried once and hated. Apparently the bread was the most modest of food offerings amongst the Chiss, but Ezra had always believed himself to be a rather simple guy. Stranger still was that he shared a common taste in Chiss cuisine with his suite-mate (except for that dreaded half the crew drank).

“Humans are used to getting up early and sleeping when the sun is down - so at the end of a standard rotation,” He explained in Cheunh. It was slower than speaking in basic, but Ezra was trying to do as Thrawn instructed and speak only in Cheunh during the day. It was getting easier. He still dreamed in basic for the most part, but that was likely to continue regardless of how many languages he learned. “I think the standard day here is a little longer.”

“Yes,” Un’hee agreed. She set down her spoon rather than point it at him. The young girl had a tendency to talk with her hands when she was excited or off-duty, and this was at least the latter, though he was sure she’d be more excited if she hadn’t just rolled out of bed.

“Why are you up so early?”

“Oh,” Un’hee shrugged. “No reason.”

“You don’t have anything for another five standard hours,” He said, looking at the chrono-projection on the wall. “It’s definitely too early for you.”

Un’hee reclaimed her spoon and pushed some of the cereal around. “I have supplemental lessons,” She said, quietly. “Like your language ones.”

“For what?” Ezra’s face wrinkled with his frown. “You aren’t struggling with any of your studies.” That, Ezra knew, was true. Un’hee, despite only being nine years old, had the maturity and intelligence of a being at least five years older, and a recall that was otherworldly thanks to the strength of her Sight.

She shrugged. “I didn’t ask for them,” She said, sharing a sly smile, and the tiny twinkling of a giggle with him. With an eye-roll more befitting an ornery teenager, she continued, “I just go as ordered.”

Ezra nodded in sympathy. He understood how that went. “Don’t let them work you too hard,” He said between bites of his bread. Today he’d had some kind of butter put on the flat slices. It was a more savory than sweet flavor, and Ezra found that he liked it more than the sweet jam Thrawn always slathered over his own. He pushed away the thought of how strange a sweet-toothed Thrawn was, and tried to keep his focus on Un’hee. Though their abilities in the Force were minimally similar, the Chiss Navigators always managed to tell when his thoughts wandered.

“So,” She said, when most of her cereal was gone, and she had only a glass of some milky green juice left, “Why are you up and in the mess this early? You almost always wait for Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”

That was a classified question, but Ezra could hardly give the girl such an answer. He had to come up with something. His goal had been to eat a quick breakfast and see if he could make it to the workout center on the second level that the Captain was rumored to frequent in the mornings. Like the Navigators, he had been given permission to use whatever training facilities aboard he wished, while the rest of the crew were assigned to facilities by rank and proximity from their lodgings.

“I’m-”

“Navigator Un’hee,” An authoritative voice called from behind the girl. In an instant, the young Navigator was on her feet, at attention.

“Admiral Ar’alani!” She squeaked, both surprised and elated. It appeared to take an effort in the girl's part not to run to the superior officer.

Ezra was quick to rise as well, shoulders and back straightening to Chiss standards. "Good morning, Admiral," He said in Cheunh when Ar'alani's intense gaze - like Thrawn's, but more obvious about looking for slip-ups - trailed over him. It felt heavy and appraising, much now Ezra had considered Thrawn in the past. He forced himself to stay still under her scrutiny.

"Good morning, Ezra'Bridger," She replied. "At ease," She instructed them next, and though she gave no indication, she seemed approving of Ezra's understanding of the instruction, shifting to parade rest rather than relaxing fully like Un'hee.

"It seems Mitth'raw'nuruodo has provided adequate instruction," Ar'alani moved closer. "Do you understand what I am saying?"

"Yes, Sir." He replied, again in Cheunh.

She nodded. Her voice was interesting, Ezra decided. Dangerous and silky like Thrawn's, but more melodious. Coiled, like a deadly predator, waiting to strike. "You do not have supplemental lessons like Navigator Un'hee this early, is that correct?"

Ezra stiffened. "No, Sir."

The smallest hint of satisfaction curled her lip, there and gone before Ezra could blink. "Excellent. Will Mitth'raw'nuruodo be necessary to translate for you?"

"I should be alright, Sir."

"Fine. You will ask if you do not understand. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

She nodded, satisfied. To Un’hee, she instructed, “Finish your meal. When you go to your supplemental session, please Vah’nya know he is with me. Captain Ivant is aware.”

Un’hee nodded while Ezra reached for his datapad, sitting beside his tray on the table. “Should I inform Commander Thrawn?”

“No,” Ar’alani said, lips thinning. Ezra’s finger’s stilled over the datapad before he could open his communications. “With me, Sky-walker.”

[smolbeandrabbles]

Science & Faith - Talos/Keller (Captain Marvel: AU)

I AM NOT FOLLOWING CAPTAIN MARVEL CANON. For reasons that will be obvious if you’ve seen it / when you read this.

Author’s Note: Special Thanks to @my-world-of-imagines for our AU discussion! 😘 Okay.  I was dumb enough to write this before seeing the movie.  I was dumb enough to think this was going to work out for me.  I can’t just leave it sitting on a word document on my computer. Because it deserves to be read... I wanted to give you this, not because it follows canon. But because one damn picture inspired this...!

Gonna tag it with spoilers just in case. But I wrote it essentially right after his poster was released. (HOW COULD I NOT!?!?) Not x Reader... But I didn’t want to waste her... Just... uh, I’m flexing a few writing muscles here...! 

Disclaimer: She is my OC baby, she is all I have!  setting in an AU to Captain Marvel for obvious reasons. I’m really not into Keller, I’ve called him Jonathan Richards Comic Canon! For TOO long! But, Keller it is! Premise: Talos is no ordinary man, but he can’t tell her that... If he does, he will break her. If he doesn’t, he risks destroying himself. Word Count: 2467  Warnings: Sexual Relations hinted at. Deceit

You won't find faith or hope down a telescope You won't find heart and soul in the stars You can break everything, down to chemicals But you can't explain a love like ours.

It's the way we feel, yeah this is real. ---

Talos studied her from the doorway as she stirred under the sheets. The sunlight streaming through the open blinds bathed his white, clinical apartment in a dazzling haze. He'd thought about vocalising it more than once, who he really was... He'd gotten so far as to being half way through a confession before he'd stopped. He couldn't. Not with the way she looked at him when he was in this form. He himself had never really expected to fall for her either. She came all the way from Xandar, though, she herself was not Xandarian. And she'd told him, or, she'd told Jonathan on more than one occasion that she was surprised that she would fall for a human. Problem being, she hadn't...

Her ship had crashed in a remote part of the US and he just so happened to be the lead of the S.H.I.E.L.D team sent to investigate. After being tasked with studying the ship, they had found her. She looked human enough; only three things distinguished her - her natural shades of pink and purple pastel hair (though. In the day and age...) her blood - thicker than many races he’d seen, a deep blue-purple - not unlike his own, and the distinctive patterns of light that rolled over her skin when she experienced heightened emotions - or was with a lover. But she had to have their DNA for that. Which in the long run he hadn't been so unwilling to give.

 At first they had captured her and taken her back to the lab to study. But for something that looked so human he had soon put a stop to something so inhumane. He had decided to study her on his own terms. At first, he had allowed her to wander as freely around his S.H.I.E.L.D research facility as she wished as long as he was accompanying her. He'd ask all the appropriate questions, blending what his job description was with furthering future plans for the Skrull empire. It made him more than uneasy that she was not hostile about answering him; perhaps she felt humans posed no threat to her. He guessed that she would be right - but he was a shapeshifter, and knew he could do her more harm than her him. But it was when she began asking questions back that startled him. Why would she want to know anything about humans? About Earth? He'd perfected blending as a part of his race, his very DNA... But she didn't need to. And yet she was fascinated, with him in particular. Talos had given Jonathan Keller a back story, a life he'd never really had - but the more he told her about it, and the more she wanted to know. The more he found himself believing that it WAS his life...

 She called herself Maliyah Saal. A name he recognised (but of course pretended he didn't) from Garthan Saal; head of the Nova Corps. The strongest military power in her sector of the galaxy. He was related to her by name only - she had come from a dying planet and had been adopted by his parents on Xandar. She'd travelled very far in her short life span; flitting between planets and jobs like it was nothing. She'd been a prominent member of the Nova Corp herself, before being sick and tired of being tied to one place and looking for adventure, had joined a crew of Ravagers - before eventually settling in with Yondu Udonta. She obtained her own break out crew within a short period of time after that, and, after what she called a disagreement but he could already tell was so much more, broke her small crew away and began treasure hunting - essentially sounding to him like being a Ravager without the attached title. Then she'd given her crew a break and linked back with her brother at the Nova Corps - stolen a ship to explore the galaxy and had proceeded to crash to Earth. Only for him, of all people, to find her.

 Maliyah had a child like innocence about everything she discovered on Earth. 'What is that...?' 'What are you doing?' 'Oh! We have something similar back home!' 'Really!? That's SO cool!' And an Elders lament about everything Earth didn't have '...Dollars?! Pounds!? Euros!? Why so many damn forms of currency, just use credits..!' 'You know if Earth didn't spend so much time caring about itself it would be intergallactically trading by now' '...Is this what you do with all - sorry, Aliens? - that crash to earth? If you spent less time studying us and more time letting us help you your tech would be vastly superior. Then you'd actually get to GO to Xandar. And you should! You humans don't know what you're missing."

 Eventually Talos knew he couldn't keep her locked up in the S.H.I.E.L.D base, so in a moment of recklessness - which hadn't as yet cost him anything - had transferred her to Jonathan's apartment. Bare and clinically white she instantly added the colour it needed. And she started telling him things about home her home, both the planet she came from and her house on Xandar. It felt less like he was studying her when she wasn't in the lab, and the conversation flowed much freer. He wasn't prepared to let her explore yet, but he knew she wanted to go into the open world every time he watched her stand on the balcony. Sometimes she glanced at the stars, but she never talked about going back. Something was keeping her here, and he hadn't been naive enough to believe it was him.

 He crossed his apartment to her, buttoning his waist coat and straightening his tie; the one problem with keeping her here was that he still had to work at the lab. He missed her any time he wasn't with her. But he could only make a working from home excuse so many times a week, this wasn't one of those days. She was still lost in dreams as he brushed her hair from her face delicately with his fingertips. When he grazed her skin the patterns that ran nearly the entire length of her body began to glow faintly in his colours. Every mix of DNA created a different pattern, and a different set of colours. Maliyah had her own that would run with her emotions. But every time he touched her it was his all over her skin - her race could sense emotion too; so every time his emotions ran into extremes she would know about it. She would also glow when he was in proximity, if their bond was strong enough. And part of him wanted that - but she had not entirely let him in yet. He wondered what she was really reacting to; he didn't have Human DNA as such, but had the physique... wouldn't she know if she was mixing her own DNA with a completely different race? Skrulls and Humans must feel different to her? Must feel emotions differently? Did she even know what a Skrull was? He couldn't believe she didn't.

She stirred under his touch and opened her eyes; he perched on the bed and let his fingers linger on her skin. She turned those purple-blue eyes on him as she focused, then she sighed in discontent; "You are leaving..?" "I would stay. You know that." She sat up quickly; "Well. Hurry home." She always said it like they were really living together - and not cohabiting. "I miss you." He looked away from her for a second, it tore him apart nearly every day. The way she looked at him - Jonathan Keller she trusted… she loved... Would she look at Talos in the same way? Every second he didn't tell her, that he let her believe the lie that Jonathan was the real him would give her so much more reason to hate him when he finally had the courage to tell her what he really was,  "I know you do..." She placed a hand to his cheek, brushing his hair into place around his glasses. Her eyes searched his for something more than that, for something he couldn't give her. Until she smiled, leaning forward she pressed her lips to his and the soft colours on her skin burst into life; dancing across the white walls of his apartment for far longer than the kiss lasted. She pressed her forehead to his "Be careful." He chuckled; "Maliyah... What about my job is dangerous?" He stood, easing himself into his gun holster "This is merely precautionary." "Because you're human... And when you've seen as many lifeforms as I have that could crash here like I did..." She eyed his gun, weaponry was about the most dangerous thing humans had and she didn't like that he had to carry it. "...I would just hate for you to have to use that. Or get called out and not come back..." He slid his jacket on and smoothed it out; "Maliyah, that's never going to happen... Trust me." "I DO trust you." And it was her one mistake. She tilted her head; "Only, with your eyesight I just..." It came back to his glasses again. They had been little more than just a stylistic choice. However, Talos' eyes didn't accustom very well the amount of endless small print reading he had to do. He needed glasses. And Maliyah was fascinated. Apparently she'd never seen any other life form with them. He had, once or twice, they weren't exclusively a human invention. But glasses whose function was not fashion or that didn't hold a technological dynamic. Glasses that you had to wear all the time or you couldn't SEE!? To her it was a completely a foreign concept. He raised an eyebrow; "You think just because I don't have 20:20 vision I'm going to miss?"

She made a shrug like she didn't know what he was talking about. He knew she was just making excuses. He liked to feel like he could at least defend himself. And all S.H.I.E.L.D agents had to wear one, it was the rules. He could tell by the look on her face she wanted to ask him something more, but she wasn't meeting his eyes - chewing her lip. He bent as far as his perfectly tailored three-piece suit would allow. Which, he had to give credit to Humans, was pretty far - and took her hands in his; "Maliyah... I want you to be happy... What can I do to make you happy? What is it you aren't telling me?" The words cut both ways, look at everything he wasn't telling her. She laced her hands with his; "Every time you walk out of that door you are too far away." Her statement hit harder than his ever could; and his eyes betrayed him because he hadn't expected it. Did she even realise what she was saying? He sighed and looked to the polished wood floor. Then to his balcony... Maybe, just maybe...

"I'll make my excuses as soon as I can. I promise you, I'll be home early..." He nodded to the outside world "I'll take you out of here..." She turned, and he saw her breath catch, the smile on her face; "But you have to do everything I say, alright? Not everyone is going to understand who and what you are..." He stood, running his fingers over the colours on her skin; "...They will not understand this...." She nodded. She knew. Every human was the same, afraid of what they could not comprehend. Afraid even of things they could. His race had infiltrated easily because they COULD; if his race was incapable of seamless blending no doubt humans would more than fear them. He gathered her hands to his chest; his heartbeat. "I know I am too far away. But I promise you, it will not always be this way. Someday they WILL understand you..." He tilted his head "I get the feeling, Maliyah, that you will not be the only shooting star to fall." He meant it as a compliment - but also in reference to the necklace she wore. Jonathan would call it a North Star; for that is what it resembled. Maliyah referred to it as Nova. Jonathan would say Super Nova - the final hurrah of a dying star... Talos didn't know what Nova was - It wasn’t an obvious link, despite the name to the Nova Corps or Nova whatever considering her planet of origin - but it was obviously Xandarian. Never the less, she smiled at his reference. So, he made another, "You are... a Super Nova..." She stood then, a glint in her eye told him that meant far more to her than just a scientific expression. "...Jonathan... I..." She let it go, whether important or not he would never know, but he wanted her to call him by his own name. His real name. His heart ached as she wound her arms around him again. Instead she opted for an even more devastating sentence. "I love you." And by the look in her eyes she really meant it "If something ever happened to you... I..." He could tell by the way the lights on her skin changed that she was making herself sad. So he silenced her with a kiss. "I know..." But in truth, he didn't. "Nothing will happen to me Mali..." He loosed himself from her embrace reluctantly and collected his bag - pointing back to her as he exited his apartment. "I promise you that." And he was glad he could make Jonathan sound so sincere. She nodded, like she believed him. "I'll be back before you know it." He added in reassurance as his apartment door swung closed. Then he breathed out, his heart was being pulled apart... running his hand through his hair he stared at his door for a few more seconds, it crossed his mind more than once to walk back in there and tell her, tell her NOW. Instead he took a step back, and then another. She loves him... How could he promise her nothing would happen to Jonathan? Jonathan was a mirage. Jonathan wasn't real. This visage was unsustainable; Talos couldn't stay like this forever even if he wanted to... How could he make a promise like that without thinking it would have consequences? He stepped into the lift and stared hard at the reflection in the polished steel, he looked down at himself - this body... these finger tips. All of it foreign to him... But every little thing she truly loved. He closed his hands into fists, then opened them flat again and placed his head in his hands.

All he knew right then - Is that the only promise he could ever make to Maliyah. Is that he was going to break her heart.

And it would destroy him. Because he loved her too.

Geez, can someone just GIF every Keller scene for me ASAP?! Will be #ForeverGrateful 😘❤

[cleucilaynesaustralianlitblog]

10 Interesting Australian Novels

The Secret River by Kate Grenville

“In 1806 William Thornhill, an illiterate English bargeman and a man of quick temper but deep compassion, steals a load of wood and, as a part of his lenient sentence, is deported, along with his beloved wife, Sal, to the New South Wales colony in what would become Australia. The Secret River is the tale of William and Sal’s deep love for their small, exotic corner of the new world, and William’s gradual realization that if he wants to make a home for his family, he must forcibly take the land from the people who came before him.” (Amazon.com)

2. The Brush Off: A Murray Whelan Mystery by Shane Maloney

“Murray Whelan is the political advisor to the newly appointed minister of culture, Angelo (“Tell me, Murray, what are the Arts?”) Agnelli, and he’s hanging on to his job by his toenails. On his first day, the disgruntled young artist Marcus Taylor is found dead, drowned in the ornamental moat outside the National Gallery. The police rule it a suicide, or perhaps an accident, but Murray is not so sure. Besides, this ugly incident occurred on Agnelli’s watch, so the heat is on. A born detective despite himself, Murray digs, and the deeper he goes, the more puzzling the mystery becomes. Who is this other painter, Victor Szabo, also dead, unknown in his lifetime and now the darling of the art world, with works fetching crazy prices—funded in part by the government? And what about suave businessman and art maven Lloyd Eastlake, who is whispering financial sweet nothings in Angelo Agnelli’s ear?” (Amazon.com)

3. The Dragon Man (Inspector Challis Mysteries) by Garry Disher

“A serial killer is on the loose in a small coastal town near Melbourne. Detective Inspector Hal Challis and his team must apprehend him before he strikes again. But first Challis must contend with the editor of a local news-paper who undermines his investigation at every turn and with his wife, who is attempting to resurrect their marriage through long-distance phone calls from a sanitarium where she has been imprisoned for the past eight years for attempted murder.” (Amazon.com)

4. Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

“When Ellie and her friends go camping, they have no idea they're leaving their old lives behind forever. Despite a less-than-tragic food shortage and a secret crush or two, everything goes as planned. But a week later, they return home to find their houses empty and their pets starving. Something has gone wrong--horribly wrong. Before long, they realize the country has been invaded, and the entire town has been captured--including their families and all their friends.” (Amazon.com)

5. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

“In True History of the Kelly Gang, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged.” (Amazon.com)

6. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

“Rosie Jarman possesses all these qualities. Don easily disqualifies her as a candidate for The Wife Project (even if she is “quite intelligent for a barmaid”). But Don is intrigued by Rosie’s own quest to identify her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on The Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie―and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you.” (Amazon.com)

7. Cocaine Blues (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) by Kerry Greenwood

“The London season is in full fling at the end of the 1920s, but the Honourable Phryne Fisher―she of the green-gray eyes, diamant garters, and outfits that should not be sprung suddenly on those of nervous dispositions―is rapidly tiring of the tedium of arranging flowers, making polite conversations with retired colonels, and dancing with weak-chinned men. Instead, Phryne decides it might be rather amusing to try her hand at being a lady detective in Melbourne, Australia. Almost immediately from the time she books into the Windsor Hotel, Phryne is embroiled in mystery: poisoned wives, cocaine smuggling rings, corrupt cops, and communism―not to mention erotic encounters with the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse―until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.” (Amazon.com)

8. The Dry by Jane Harper

“After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.” (Amazon.com)

9. Voss by Patrick White

“Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is White's best-known book, a sweeping novel about a secret passion between the explorer Voss and the young orphan Laura. As Voss is tested by hardship, mutiny, and betrayal during his crossing of the brutal Australian desert, Laura awaits his return in Sydney, where she endures their months of separation as if her life were a dream and Voss the only reality. Marrying a sensitive rendering of hidden love with a stark adventure narrative, Voss is a novel of extraordinary power and virtuosity from a twentieth-century master.” (Amazon.com)

10. Breath by Tim Winton

“On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrillseeking and barely adolescent boys fall into the enigmatic thrall of veteran big-wave surfer Sando. Together they form an odd but elite trio. The grown man initiates the boys into a kind of Spartan ethos, a regimen of risk and challenge, where they test themselves in storm swells on remote and shark-infested reefs, pushing each other to the edges of endurance, courage, and sanity. But where is all this heading? Why is their mentor’s past such forbidden territory? And what can explain his American wife’s peculiar behavior? Venturing beyond all limits—in relationships, in physical challenge, and in sexual behavior—there is a point where oblivion is the only outcome.” (Amazon.com)

Bonus 11. That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott

“Bobby Wabalanginy is a young Noongar man, smart, resourceful, and eager to please. He befriends the European arrivals, joining them as they hunt whales, till the land, and establish their new colony. He is welcomed into a prosperous white family, and eventually finds himself falling in love with the daughter, Christine. But slowly-by design and by hazard-things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is progressing. Livestock mysteriously start to disappear, crops are destroyed, there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever-stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind, and Bobby is forced to take sides, inexorably drawn into a series of events that will forever change the future of his country.” (Amazon.com)