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artxyra · 5 years ago

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I got another request! So, Jason is Red Hood at the time when he sees Marinette clutching a backpack (it has the miraculous box inside and some essentials and clothing) as she was falling from a portal (even tho a cloud was covering it so it looked like she was falling from the sky) into a river. He jumps in, saves her, and says something like "Holy sh*t I just saved an angel" He stays hidden for 2 weeks helping her until the fam meet her. [Anything you want from here but end goal is daminette]

It was close to midnight when the Red Hood notice that something was up. Little did he knew was that his next encounter with someone would have changed his entire life. He looked up to the cloudy night sky that always plagues Gotham, nothing felt out of the place. Well, the moment lasted into his begins to see a silhouette of someone falling from the sky. The person was coming down fast, real fast.

Rushing to what he presumed to be the persons landing grounds, he failed to realize that the person wasn’t going to reach the cold hard concrete ground but the river not far from him. As the person was falling quickly than anticipated, he ditched his jacket and ran towards the river.

Splash. Splash.

He breaks for air pulling the formerly falling person with him to shore. Back on dry land, the Red Hood was finally able to get a good look at the person he saved.

“Holy shit, did I just save an Angel?” He whispers to himself brushing back strands of dark hair that clings to the girl’s face.

Looking around for any signs of help coming, he picks the girl up into his arms and disappears into the night, not caring that it was his night to patrol.

Marinette woke up the next day with a massive headache. Quickly leaning upward, she calls out for Tikki as she searches through the blankets looking for her backpack. It hasn’t registered to Marinette that wasn’t at home nor was she in Paris anymore.

Tikki flies up to Marinette, giving the panic guardian a sense of reassurance.

“Where am I? Kaalki?” Marinette finally takes in her bearings as she touches face noticing the lack of glasses that is the horse miraculous.

“Kaalki’s fine, Marinette. Your entry coming here was rather shaky.” Tikki states keeping close to Marinette as the realization hits her. Turning to the side table, Marinette sees the horse miraculous and puts.

“Kaalki, where did that portal send us?” Kaalki finally appears but she scoffs and looks around the room.

“The portal sent us to a place called Gotham. In the Americas, apparently.” Kaalki answers before flying off to who knows where.

“Gotham, like in the Batman comics?” Marinette says before groaning resting her hand over her forehead and lay back down. All she could do is think, how was this possible.

“Hey Angel from the sky, you alright in there?” A voice startles her out of the bed. She stares at the tall muscular man in front of her. He has a turf of white in his dark hair, blue eyes, and wearing the worst kind of leather jacket she has ever seen in her life.

Racking through her brain, she tries to find the words to say in English, “Uh… and you are?”

“I should be asking you the same, but the names Jason, and you look like someone who has been trucked over, twice,” Jason says cautiously take a few steps forward.

Marinette’s shoulders relax. “I’m Marinette.”

Marinette walks over to Jason, shaking his hand, thus creating one of the most cherished siblings’ bonds ever created in the city of Gotham.

Over the course of a week, Jason quickly learned that Marinette’s English wasn’t that great (she knew basic English, but then again who doesn’t know anything past basic English), he also learned that Marinette was only sixteen almost seventeen, just a year younger than this youngest brother. Marinette had learned that Jason lives by himself in this rundown apartment complex, though he does spend a handful of times over at his adoptive family’s house. She also learned he really enjoys guns and rock music, so of course they bond over Jagged Stone’s latest new album.

At the beginning of her second week in Gotham, Marinette was growing anxious and a little stir crazy. After Jason had left to go to work, she decided that it would do her and the kwamis well to leave the apartment and explore. She doesn’t know why, but she found herself drawn to the park.

Pulling out the remains of one her sketchbook, she finds a dainty little bench underneath a tree far away from people. Looking around, inspiration hits her, so she begins sketching out an outline.

Marinette doesn’t know how long it has passed until a ball dropped in front of her. She sets the sketchbook aside and is immediately greeted by black Great Dane wagging his tail. Marinette giggles before bending down to search for a name tag.

“Titus?” Marinette mutters before scratching Titus’ head and neck.

Titus nudges the ball towards her getting the message to Marinette. She managed to play ball with her new furry friend until a concerned voice calls out the dog’s name. The person she assumes is Titus’ owner walks in fury towards her direction.

“Hi, he came over to me…” The owner cuts her off turning his attention to the dog who wags his tail in the owner’s face before walking over to Marinette. Marinette tries and fails to conceal her laughter.

The owner sighs and turns his attention to Marinette, “Damian.”

“Damian,” Marinette test the name, “Well you have a very nice dog. Actually, I’m very thankful for him pulling me out of my zone.” She holds out her hand. Damian shakes it after a moment of eyeing her down.

“Titus does have a tendency to do that.” She’s beginning to wonder if Damian was a person against small talk or better yet talking about himself.

Marinette bends down to say goodbye but not before wishing to see him and Damian again in the future.

Damian turns to Titus who does the same, and Damian could have sworn that he says a smirk on that dog’s face.

After their first encounter, Damian and Marinette continuously met at the park. Their second encounter was by pure accident. Marinette had wanted ice cream the following day and decided to enjoy her soft serve back on that dainty bench. Titus wanted to get out again, so Damian took him back to the park around the same time. After that, they decided to meet at the park every day around the same time.

As another week past by, Marinette finally began to wonder what was going on in Paris. She doubts that any besides her parents would care that she was missing, but she can’t help but wonder whether that person (or group) that was after her left Paris alone.

As Marinette grow closer to Damian, she did the same with Jason. He even took her to the shooting ring for practice one night and was blown away by her aim. Jason now swears that if Bruce doesn’t adopt his newly claimed sister then he would find a way to do it legally.

After having Marinette to his lonesome for two weeks, Jason decided that it might be best to introduce her to the family against every bone in his body. He knows that Marinette is hiding something, but it also seemed like she didn’t know what she was hiding also.

“Hey Pixie-Pop, you would you mind coming with to B’s house?” He asks on that faithful Sunday morning, which is odd considering Sundays were the days he typically leaves Marinette to herself.

“Sure,” She pauses for a moment, “Are you sure that they wouldn’t mind? I hate to be—” She rambles on getting a chuckle out of the older male.

“Nah, Pixie-Pop, they wouldn’t mind.” He tells her easing her growing anxiety.

Marinette smiles up at him before rushing into the guestroom that slowly became her room.

On the back of Jason’s bike reminded her of her Nona. In fact, every time she rides with him it’s a constant reminder of her Nona, the rush of wind blowing through her hair. The feeling of someone close to you knowing that you’re most likely being protected. Marinette had dreamed of getting a bike of her own when she older and in case she can never return to Paris perhaps Jason would be willing to teach her.

“Jay-Jay this a house, it’s a mansion.” Were the first few words upon entering the Wayne Manor grounds. Jason laughs it off by rubbing her head and motioning for her to follow him.

“Sup nimrods, I’m back and I brought a guest. Treat her right and there will be no bullets shooting tonight.” He calls out to the group of people settled into the room.

Marinette squirms underneath all the glances she was receiving but upon seeing the familiar sight of green eyes and a certain Great Dane, she slowly became at ease.

“Hey Damian, I didn’t know you lived here.” Well, ring the alarms because immediately she is greeted by screams of all kinds some projected to the green-eyed teen while one was projected to her.

Ignoring the commotion that is aimed at him, Damian curtly nods to Marinette as Titus rushes over to her. “Hi, Angel.” Cue another round of commotion.

So, dinner was a complete mess, well not like food is thrown everywhere kind of a mess but it was an emotional disaster. Tim was knocked over the table, the like of caffeine and sleep finally getting to him. Dick and was having a heated conversation with Jason about Marinette, all while Bruce sat there in silence. Secretly he was hoping for the chance of grandchildren in the future if this girl can make it through with his family.

Once Damian had finished his food and notice how uncomfortable Marinette is, they managed to disappear down the halls to who knows where. Alfred walks in shaking his head all while cleaning up the dishes.

Marinette ended up moving into Wayne Manor just days after the dinner at the request of Jason who ended up tag-teaming with Bruce. It didn’t take her long to figure their secret identities and it wasn’t long after that when they question her as to why she was declared missing and presumed dead in Paris. Let just say that was another heated conversation because it unleashed a whole lot of emotions.

Damian finally worked up the courage to ask the bluenette out after her staying with them for over a month. Both of them were too afraid of ruining the friendship they created. Not long after they started dating, Marinette learned that the people who were after her in Paris were a part of some cult under the name League of Assassins. This is then prompted Damian to talk about his past and Marinette telling the family that she had known their identities for quite some time. It didn’t them long to meet the kwamis and adding Ladybug to their personal alliance.

Marinette only went back to Paris after some convincing from the Batfamily to at least give her parents some sort of closure that their daughter is safe. She took Kaalki to make the trip easy. Her parents were, of course, mad at her for not contacting them sooner, but after she explained everything it was Sabine that had some choice words to say to some “old co-workers” of hers from her early teen and adult years. As much as they didn’t want Marinette to leave, her parents knew their daughter was happier in Gotham than she ever was after the whole Hawkmoth ordeal and even both that. Her missing person case was closed, and Marinette went back to Gotham with the promise to come to see them again in the summer.

Damian and Marinette finally shared their first kiss with each other after a couple of months of dating. It was Titus that pushed them to do at the park underneath the bench where they meet.

#maribat #platonic jasonette #daminette #ml x dc #mlb x dc #dc crossover #ml crossover

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cosmiclatte28 · 4 years ago

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Was It A Dream? (Sungchan Yuta x reader ft doyoung, jaehyun)

A/N : hello again!! This is a light, and fun fanfiction. It’s intended to make you just imagine how fun and chaotic it is to live with two brothers like Jaehyun and Doyoung. You have your eyes on Sungchan and Yuta, until one day they notice you. Join the fun of bickering and expect some plot twist okay!

WARNING : none, it is not rated and Yuta is flirty here. Doyoung and Jaehyun are your brother, but they’re also finding their way to win their s/o’s heart.

HERE WE GOOOO!!!

"Drooling over those two soccer players again?" Your second brother snickers when he finds you sitting on the podium watching the school's soccer team practice. You don't take your eyes off the two young men who look super charming to you especially when they are playing soccer.

Without looking to your older brother you reply "So what? Like you're not eyeing that cheerleader boy too?" That hits him right on the spot, Jaehyun has no words to attack you back. Just when you thought you can gaze on the two princes of your life; your oldest brother surprises the two of you.

"Yak! Doyoung stop doing that! We can have heart attacks!" Jaehyun wipes his shoulder as if cleaning himself from his own brother's touch. You don't get surprised that much and still watch at the two man, the tall Korean guy from your math class Sungchan and the Japanese guy who shares writing class with you, Nakamoto Yuta. They were both older than you but you've fallen for their charms. Both are the aces of the team and you always stay after school on their training days to just watch them from afar.

"Let's go home! I can't believe my sister and brother are this creepy." Doyoung shudders when he sees how focused Jaehyun is in watching that cheer squad leader, Taeyong and his sister (y/n) is sending laser beams to Yuta and Sungchan. 2 men at the same time! Doyoung just shakes his head and notes his watch, it's time to go home. It's almost five and as a student on his last year, Doyoung has extra classes to attend and he was tired. He wants to just go home and sleep, unlike Jae and you who still have the energy to sit there and look like a creeper.

"Okay we're going home now." He stresses his words and pinches yours and jaehyun's shoulders before walking away to the parking lot. "Aish why Doie can't let us have our time?! He's just jealous he doesn't have anyone to look at." You complained Jaehyun reluctantly picks his bag and stands up "Come, I am not walking home." He reaches out his hand for you and you take it. He pulls you to stand and you reluctantly leave the stadium.

"Oh she's going home already?" Yuta asks to his friend when there's a slight break and he sees you being dragged by Jaehyun. The tall man looks to the area Yuta's watching and nods "Guess Jaehyun brought her home by force."

Yuta smiles "She's never taking her eyes off you." Says Yuta and playfully punches sungchan to tease him. Sungchan laughs "I thought she has her eyes on you! I swear she's always sending you that heart eyes when you're running on field."

Yuta smirks "Was she checking out on both of us at the same time?"

Sungchan shrugs his shoulder and finishes his last bottle "I don't know, shall we see who is she actually crazy for?"

Yuta ponders but curiosity takes over his mind "Actually I am curious of that! What do we do?" Sungchan whispers something to the Japanese guy's ear and his smile widens when he imagine how fun will this be. "That sounds interesting!"

---

"Hey (y/n)-" Sungchan taps your shoulder before you stand up from your chair to leave the class. You turn to look at the man tapping your shoulder

"Oh Sungchan-" you look a bit surprised. The tall guy smiles "I saw you yesterday on the podium, guess you like soccer huh?" Your mind wants to scream "no i'm just there to watch you and Yuta...." but you'll just creep him off so you nod your head "Um yeah I grew up with two brothers so I'm more into sports than drama." You lied. Your brothers don't watch soccer :")

"Cool I have a ticket for you so you can watch us. It's the VIP pass. You can come meet us when we're done." Sungchan hands you a ticket and you can't contain your happiness. Well the VIP ticket is expensive and hard to get, even if you have the money sometimes the tickets are sold out already so you're super happy when you get this.

"Woah thank you! I'll definitely come and watch you!" You keep the ticket and walk with Sungchan in the hallway. Your heart is not calm at all, you're going to burst any time soon if this guy did not stop talking to you. "What's your next class?" Sungchan asks you since he also has another class to attend. "Writing, I gotta go." You nervously squeeze your bag and Sungchan did the most unexpected thing. He nods and brings his hand to ruffle your hair "Okay then, guess I'll see you again on my training day." He winks and walks away leaving you speechless with his words and act.

Before your mind can work again someone else has already place a hand over your shoulder. "Hey writing starts in 5 minutes, if we don't rush there, we'll be late." Another deep voice greets your ears. You shake your head, trying to get rid of all ridiculous hallucinations you're having but when you feel your shoulder heavy and someone is breathing next to you.... your legs feel like giving up. "Yuta?" You stammer Great… Sungchan just left you after his heart fluttering actions and this flirty Japanese guy is here.

Well Yuta's known for his flirty side and his tsundere side looks like he is on his flirty side today. "Come (y/n) we need to rush." He squeezes your shoulder and drags you to walk with him to the class. You follow his large steps, your heart beating even faster when you feel his body sticking into yours. You made it on time to the class. The last chairs available are the one in the back and you're sitting next to Yuta for the first time. Yeah you never have the balls to sit beside him, you'll just get distracted and you don't need that right now. But here you are! Seating next to Nakamoto Yuta who's laid back on his chair, playing with his pen, and then focuses on scribbling something. You try to keep your eyes on the board but his hand movement you can see from the side of your eyes caught your attention more. In the end, like attracted to a magnetic field, you turn your head to find out what is making him super focused.

Yuta caught you staring into his paper, trying to figure out what he is scribbling and before you can look away, he holds your hand rips his notebook and places the paper on your hand. Then he pushes your hand to you, and you stare at the paper on your hands. There Yuta just drew a sketch of you holding a hand banner with his jersey number on it. On the bottom corner right, he added his signature and a small note "For my number 1 sweetheart fan

You want to gawk at him that no you're not his number one fan, or yes you are but your mouth can't say anything. "Wow this is nice. Thanks Yuta..." you look into the Japanese guy and wonder just how many more talents he had that you never know. You know Yuta's great in writing, especially since this class is about fictional writing, he aces this class. His plots and imaginations are wonderful and now his drawing skills can make him a successful comic writer if he did not want to be a soccer player! Really Japanese people are mostly great at arts eh?!

"You like that?" Yuta asks when he sees the glimmer in your eyes. You nod "I love it! Gosh Yuta you can be an illustrator and even make a comic out of your stories."

He chuckles "I know, but that's not what I want."

"So what do you want?" You curiously ask him and the man smirks "I want you to come with me this afternoon to a cafe I love."

Boom! Yuta just asked you out on a date. "Me? You're asking me?" You point yourself Yuta nods "Yes you, who else am I talking to?"

You stutter "I- I mean yes I'd love to." He closes his notebook and picks his pen "Okay then, see you at two on the union building."

He leaves after throwing a sweet smile to you and you're once again glued to your seat. You squeal secretly when there is no one and what did you dream of having two of your stars hitting on you. You meet Yuta that afternoon, he treats you on a coffee and both of you ramble on your favorite anime that he watched too. With his Japanese tone he can tease you with some of the male lead lines and you're really dying inside. "Yuta, thank you for the treat, it was great talking to you!" You bid farewell because he needs to attend his soccer club.

"No problem, you're going to watch me?" He asks while standing up and picking up his bag. "I want to, but I have essays to write." You frown.

Yuta ruffles your hair "Himnae! You can watch me in the real match this week. See you!" He waves when he sees your ride has arrived. Yes Jaehyun picks you up and you disappear behind the door.

“Pinch me! Hyung pinch me!!” you shake Jaehyun’s shoulder. He looks at you with an annoyed face and pinches you on your cheeks.

“Happy?” he mischievously grins and pulls your cheek harder. You wince at the pain and slap his hand away “Enough!”

“You ask for it!” he taunts, and you bring one hand to soothe the red cheeks, “I AM NOT DREAMING!”

Jaehyun just shakes his head at your antiques, he drives safely back home while you’re busy opening your bag to check the ticket Sungchan gave and Yuta’s drawing. When you find both of them in your possession, you kiss both papers and laugh happily. Jaehyun really looks at you like you’re being possessed, and he should slap you to reality, and he did that on the red light.

“WHAT?!” you yell when he slaps you hard enough.

“I thought you might be possessed.” He shudders

“I am not. Look, I got a VIP ticket for this week’s match and a nice portrait of me from Yuta!” you show your brother the papers and he pulls out an “Eeew you’re like a crazy in love teenagers.”

You taunt at him, “Admit it if you’re jealous. I don’t care what you say. I am not dreaming; today is not a dream and this week I’ll be seeing my men up close!”

Jaehyun laughs at you nevertheless, well he is happy as long as you’re happy and Doyoung? Guess he’ll just stay quiet until Doyoung watches you boast about the same thing to him too.

“For your information, you just got a ticket right?” Jaehyun suddenly asks you when both of you are taking the lift to the sixth floor.

You nod your head and Jaehyun just smirks, “I won Taeyong’s number already.”

If the lift door is not opened, you will already scream out loud “What?! When?”

But since the door is opened and other residence and your oldest brother comes in view you decided to stay quiet.

Doyoung notices the fishy look on Jaehyun’s face and your surprised face. He wonders what silliness he should deal with again today, but he won’t ask if no one is going to tell.

In the end, Doyoung figures out about your meeting with Sungchan and Yuta. He also hears Jaehyun boast around about his closeness to Taeyong now, and he’s tired watching the two of you bicker about being closer to have them in your hands.

“You two, actually (y/n) bet to me that Jae wouldn’t get Yong’s number but he did, so you owe me 20.” Doyoung suddenly smirks as he hands out his palm of hand and you roll your eyes as you stand up to get your wallet and pay him.

Doyoung then turns to Jaehyun, “And you, when did you win Taeyong’s number?”

Jaehyun thinks for a while, “Yesterday?”

Doyoung smirks, “I have gotten Jeno’s since last week. Pay up!”

You hang your mouth when you realize just how smart and tricky Doyoung is in making you lose and Jaehyun lose too.

Jaehyun felt cheated, but in the end he has to pay up too. Both you and Jaehyun look cross to Doyoung and together mutter,

“JUST WAIT AND SEE.”

end.

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taliaquinn · 5 years ago

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Why Me!? Chapter 11

True Bee: I have been abandoned Betrayed UNLOVED

Maribug: I haven't even been gone for FIVE minutes, Didn’t Juleka confiscate your phone privileges?

True Bee: Right now she's occupied keeping the class from killing each other

Maribug: You should be helping her!!!

True Bee: I am, I'm giving the others the glare

True Bee: Wait Aurore and Kagami just stormed in

True Bee: ooooo now Kagami is yelling at Adrien

Maribug: Does she have her Saber? Please TELL ME SHE DOESNT!!

True Bee: Aww Aurore pulled her away before I could check :(

True Bee: Wait No, Now Aurore is yelling at Adrien

Maribug: Why the heck isn't Bustier doing anything!?

True Bee: Man I should’ve brought popcorn

True Bee: Oh Snap Mendeliev just walked in to pull Aurore and Chloe away

True Bee: Oop she’s glaring at Bustier and Alya now

True Bee: Lila is being Lila

True Bee: Not even 10 minutes and the class is already in Chaos without you

True Bee: Speaking of DUPAIN CHENG I EXPECT A MORE THOROUGH EXPLANATION!!

Maribug: Woman keep people from killing each other and I’ll Tell you soon

Maribug: Actually no keep the people we like safe, I Don't care about the rest

True Bee: Yes Ma'am

True Bee: KAGAMI HAD A SWORD I REPEAT KAGAMI HAD A SWORD

Maribug: Good Luck

True Bee: TRAITOR

Marinette felt bad she really did. But then again now the class wasn't her problem anymore and she felt joy. She prayed Chloe could keep the class together for a while. With a sigh, she walked up to her room to finish her packing. Her Maman was now busy calling Mr.Wayne to ask about the arrangements. Dick said that if Bruce wasn’t ready she could stay with him at Bludhaven in the meantime. Damian was texting her about the “rules”.

No mistreating his pets, Don’t try to become Graysons Favourite sibling “because that spot is already filled”. Don’t try to seperate Tim Drake from his Coffee, Cassandra Cain is dangerous but awesome and Jason’s Existence was to not be mentioned outside of the manor.

What was even that family? Seriously she knew that they all had interesting backgrounds but Wasn't Jason Todd murdered by an Arkham Crazy a few years ago? Seriously that family sounded like a perfect base for a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode. Huh maybe her secretly being a superhero won't be the strangest thing in the family.

Marinette quickly packed her sketchbook and made sure to put the horse miraculous box into her purse. Master Fu was updated to an extent that she was going to be out of the country, out of continent really, for a few weeks. Luckily she had Kalki to help with teleportation. She didn't have to panic about customs or anything. Mr.Wayne had a Private Plane. She’ll be flying over to Gotham with her parents and they'll be staying at a hotel for a few days. Get her “acclimated” to an American city and the customs. Paris will have to go without delicious sweets and treats for a few days.

Taking a final glance around the room Marinette was suddenly filled with a sense of homesickness. Didn't matter that she hadn't left,she didn’t even know when she'd come back. Sadly she had to leave some of her sewing and designing things. She had made sure to finish all of her commissions. However only a quick glance at her emails and her MDC website revealed that a lot of purchases and commission inquiries were being made. As soon as she gets to Gotham she will have to try a good fabric store and buy a new sewing machine and mannequin. She wasn’t a fool, she is definitely taking some of the expensive fabrics, Alexeis Fencing uniform was safely packed along with her saber.

With a final glance around she crawled down. And let the door shut with a final click.

Gotham City U.S.A 2:30 pm

“Sabine Sabine Sa- Of course, Marinette can stay with me for a bit longer. Yes yes, Dick already told me the basics about the situation. Are you sure you don’t want me to get involved? You really should get the police involved. I don’t like bullies or liars.” Bruce stated. Seriously Bruce was really tempted to fly over to Paris and press charges against those little demons. Heck, he wants to press charges against the foolish teacher and idiotic principle.

“Bruce calm down, trust me I will handle the school and the bullies, right now I want to get Marinette away from them” Sabine stated with a growing smirk. Oh, don’t mess with her. Bustier and Damocles are going down. However, she had to be a little patient and play the long game. She knew Marinette wanted to handle her classmates.

“Fine don’t worry about it, what are you two planning to do about school?” he asked, a bit concerned. Seriously another one of his kids was getting bullied and harassed.

Bruce was having flashbacks to the bullying and harassment Dick and Jason went through when they went to school. Dick dealt with months of being called things like gypsy trash, charity cases, and circus brat before he finally built up the courage and told Bruce. Jason on the other hand, Bruce found out really quickly about his bullying. Mostly because Jason would get into fights. Tim didn't deal with bullying that bad, sure he got called a nerd and orphan trash but Bruce handled that very quickly because by then he was an expert. Bruce wasn't willing to put Cassandra through school. No one dared bully Damian Al Ghul Wayne.

“We actually haven’t thought that far,” Sabine admitted sheepishly. “But we have the necessary paperwork prepared”

“Why not enroll her in Gotham Academy along with Damian?” Bruce suggested

“It's a private academy, the tuition is in the 30,000’s” Sabine suggested exasperatedly.

“You’re kidding right?”

“I’m just saying I don’t think Marinette would be comfortable with going to a school like that.”

“She went to school with a Model, The Mayor's Daughter, and a comic book artist”

“Bruce!”

“I’m just saying Gotham Academy has already been the school where all of my older kids have attended, plus it has the best security due to the fact that I funded it.” Yes, Bruce was an overprotective parent. Sue him.

With a sigh Sabine couldn’t help but give in she was also an overprotective parent. “Fine but You’ll be the one to deal with her freakout over the costs”

“Deal”

Orly Airport Paris, France 5:00 pm

With a quick hop, Marinette couldn’t help but gape at the private jet with the blaring WAYNE INDUSTRIES on the side. Once they were inside they made sure to get comfortable. It was going to be at least an 8-hour flight. Marinette took out her sketchbook and quickly sketched out a few new future designs. however, she took a quick glance at her parents and saw that her mother had dozed off on her father's shoulder. She quickly flipped a page that revealed a few ideas for an altered ladybug outfit. She needed a redesigned outfit. No more skin-tight suits or pigtails. She's doing a loose outfit and braids, being a superhero with loose hair was plain impractical.

Seriously there is a reason why all superheroes either have short hair or have their hair tied back. With a few final touches, she was done with the redesign, now all that was left was to show Tikki the new design. That's another worry for Marinette. Finding time to talk with Tikki was easy enough to do with her parents. They were bakers who had to wake up early so they usually went to sleep really quickly and early plus she was also an only child, which made it easy for Marinette to slip away for her Ladybug nightly adventures and talk with Tikki. How is she gonna manage that in a house filled with a bunch of people?

Marinette flipped to another page and decided to start sketching a new dress design. She’s curious about what type of colors she wants to use. Maybe Marinette should make it all black? No, too dark. Maybe a few touches of blue? Nah. Red? Nope, she has enough red clothing. Purple? Yuck. Red and Green? Nope, she doesn't want to look like a traffic light. Gold!! Black and gold would be perfect!! Cape? Wait no, Edna Mode the animated icon made a good point on why capes should be banned.

Taking a quick glance around she finally risked taking a peak on Tikki. Tikki was comfortable situated and munching on a bunch of sweets. Marinette softly closed the purse and decided that sleep was the perfect course of action. Wrapping her sweater around herself she allowed the warmth and darkness to overtake her.

Cesaire Apartment Paris, France 7:30pm

“Okay listen up gang since Marinette abruptly dropped out, it’s up to us to raise the money for the school dance and the end of the year field trip which is a few months away,” Alya said.

Lila was quick to point out how horrible and awful it was for Marinette to leave them with all the work.

Alya couldn’t help but notice that only a few people showed up to the meeting. Noticeably absent was Chloe, Juleka, Sabrina, Max (who said Markov needed a reboot or something) and Ivan. Alya couldn’t help but be concerned by the absences. They needed their help to get all the planning ready and everything.

Rose was squealing at a thought of being able to decide on planning the theme of the dance. “Oooohhhh I can’t wait for the dance, do you think Marinette would still make me a dress?” Rose asked while glancing around. Sudden realization seems to hit them all. This year they will most likely have to pay and buy their own dresses and suits. Marinette always made them their outfits and that was part of the reason that they became the talk of the school after a dance. They always looked stunning.

“Rose Marinette wouldn’t dare not make you a dress, you’re one of the sweetest girls in the school if she refuses to make you one then she is Heartless” Lila stated fervently. Oh, Lila was making sure to get her claws completely in the class, she didn’t have an obstacle anymore.

“Lilas right, Marinette would always help you no matter how mad she is at you.” Adrien chimed in. All of a sudden their phones started pinging. Adrien quickly took out his and gaped at what he was reading in the class group chat.

Sabrina has left the Chat

Ivan has left the Chat

Juleka has left the Chat

Max has left the Chat.

Chloe B: Max, Sabrina, Ivan, Juleka and I have made the collective decision to transfer to Ms. Mendelievs Class, Our Transfers were approved quickly, thanks to yours truly :)

Chloe B: Have fun figuring out how to pay for everything Your end of the school year class trip :) :) :)

Chloe B: Oh Marinette is no Longer doing free commissions, have fun with dress and suit shopping :) :) :) :) :))))

Chloe B: Toodles~ you will all haunt my nightmares for years to come

Chloe B has left the chat

A/N:

Hi guys, I don’t know what happened but suddenly theirs more of you :D. Thanks for taking a chance on me. Hope y’all like today's chapter. I wanted to quickly post for my insomniacs. Please Like,Reblog, comment and Follow :)

Taglist:

@damianette-is-life @amayakans @parallelparabox @miukiiu @valeks-princess @toodaloo-kangaroo

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #marinette deserves better #maribat #dick grayson #damian wayne #tim drake #jason todd #bruce wayne #lila salt

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mcrmadness · 4 years ago

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Madness draws: Behind the Scenes of the latest Farin&Bela pencil drawing.

Aka the one that’s also my icon, even when that was a big risk to take because normally I start hating the photos I have once drawn, especially if I have failed miserably. This is how the drawing itself turned out:

ATTENTION: The original post about that drawing, with better image, behind this link.

This post is solely about the process itself with lots of pictures and also plenty of gifs, because I promised to do one if people would like to see that and I got some comments saying that they’re looking forward for that. So, here’s now that post!

For starters I have to apologize for the terrible quality that is the photos. I used my phone camera only and never thought about posting them, I just took them as a reference for myself and to show the progress to a friend and only after finishing the drawing I noticed that the angle of the camera causes a huge impact on the perspective of the drawing, so I sometimes might have done useless work when I thought some perspective was wrong when it was actually the photo that was wrong and not my work! I mean, take a look at these photos of the finished piece:

You see that? I realized this when I took maybe the second photo of the Farin sheet and looked at it and couldn’t believe my eyes because I didn’t remember drawing his torsto THAT small! And then I looked at the drawing and was like “wtf???” because it looked nothing like in the photo and then it hit me...

Also, another thing that I learn was that I might need to pay more attention to the perspective of the whole thing also because when I draw, I sit at the table so I am constantly seeing the drawing from my perspective instead of looking at it from above so that’s probably also going to affect the way I draw. I try to keep that in mind in the future so I can avoid redrawing things again and again just because my perspective is different than the reference photo’s.

Also the giant forehead of Farin’s in the photo on the right might have caused me to laugh a bit too much but anyway, let’s continue~ Or more like: let’s start for real this time.

Here’s the reference photo to y’all:

What I did in photoshop was to draw a line between them to see how I can divide the photo on two A4 papers. I had been thinking about this photo for some time already because it’s one of my favorites (but now I just feel cringy looking at it after I have drawn it... goddamnit!), and I got this idea that I could try drawing it on two papers in case I fuck up so I can start over or try again without having to do twice the work! Which was actually a good decision because this was the first version of Farin:

And it was awful. I also realized I had never drawn Farin’s face from he front. I have drawn him before from the side a few times but maybe once it came out actually good so that was why I decided to do the 2 paper method - because I knew it was not going to be an easy job! Bela is relatively easy to draw so I knew already that I would not have too many problems with that one.

I struggled with Farin’s eyes the most, at first.

It took me a while to figure out how to do that white line in his lower lid. Keep in mind that this was my first face portrait in over 10 years so I was very, very rusty and I just didn’t remember how to draw like anything anymore. (The photo is tilted because Bela’s face is a bit tilted and my hand can’t draw anything that is not straight [lol] so I have to rotate the photo in order to even draw the sketch of Bela’s eyes.)

So I took my sketchbook and tried to do some eyes...

I was still struggling so much here until I remembered about blending. And I didn’t have my hopes high but grabbed the eyeshadow applicators (my fave tool for blending) anyway, and switched to my other sketchbook in case the paper was the issue and:

Blending. It was all about blending! So with that in mind, I realized I can continue and I don’t need to do these in my old way, everything doesn’t have to have a lineart done but some of the job is done not with the pencils but with the eraser.

Anyhow, the previous Farin looked really bad and was too big as well so I just discarded that and started a new sheet because the old lines were not coming off properly anymore. I don’t remember if this is the old face or new but I think this might still be the old one:

Yes it definitely is the old because look at those lines! This is the new sheet:

And in the photo you can see one of my pencils - I use Derwent Graphic pencils, it’s a 12 pencil set with very soft pencils, starting with H, F and HB and ending to 9B. With this one I used F, HB, B, 2B, 5B, 7B and 9B. The white pencil is actually my new love aka the eraser pencil Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth. It’s amazing, I recommend! I just didn’t order 10 new ones this other day. I actually used about 1,5 full eraser pencils on this drawing alone so that’s why 10.

Here’s a “little” gif of the process on Farin:

I felt crazy when I went for the shirt, and I felt like I was going crazy MEANWHILE drawing it but in the end I did it and I’m super proud of it!

Below is the reference photo, it was pain in the ass to follow all those lines with my eyes and try to find what was I drawing and where was I but I think I did good. That was a fun challenge.

Okay so, when I was done with the new lineart, I decided to go for the shading and blending because that’s what really makes the drawings to pop. I started with the left (his right, my left) side of Farin’s face because I’m right-handed, and in the first photo I had done just the left (right) eye and mouth and nose, but in the second there’s also the other eye done already:

Keep in mind this was not the last time I drew the eyes. Not even close.

Something was off with the right (left) eye so I had to do that one again and I noticed that when you blend but haven’t erased and cleaned it yet, it looks like a black eye :DDD So here’s the before and after images of that cleaning. (Cleaning = I draw, blend, erase, draw and blend more when needed and then erase again, and repeat this as many times as I need until it starts to look ready to my eye.)

So here Farin was “finished” but if you still remember the final piece or compare it to it, you might notice it looks quite different. And you’re right. But more about that later, because at this point I started to work on Bela.

It actually started really well - I also had to do the whole lineart again because it did not match the size of “finished” Farin. I don’t remember if this is the first or second eye but when I had drawn his eye for the first time, I noticed it was not in line with Farin so I had to redraw it. A gif of the progress:

What’s that brown paper I’m using, you may ask? Well I noticed that people have some sort of paper on top of their art to keep it from smudging and I have no clue what that is so here’s my poor artist recommendation: baking paper! I tested it and it works (if you just remember to keep it under your hand, that is...) so that is, in fact, baking paper! :DD

I have drawn Bela’s face a few times before and he’s just so much easier to draw. In fact I used 4-5 days on Farin but I managed to start and finish (this version of) Bela just in one day. And that means that out of 12 hours (because I literally used the whole day for drawing) I used maybe like... 5h or something on Bela. That’s how much easier he really is to draw.

I don’t know wtf is wrong with Farin’s face but he’s extremely difficult to draw and I’m not the only one who has been saying this. I guess he just looks so regular but still unique enough to be difficult to draw. Bela then again has features that are very unique and very... caricature-like? I mean that just by drawing his nose or chin you can make a comic book Bela look exactly like himself, and with more realistic style his eyes already do a lot, but Farin’s really the opposite. My comic book version of Farin is literally the most basic version I can draw, it’s how I draw those characters and the only thing that makes him look himself is the hair, and his nose in a side profile. So I think that’s why it’s so difficult to draw him because he doesn’t look too regular but still regular enough to make is a very challenging task to do properly.

So yeah, the same day as I started working on Bela, I was also “finished” with the drawing:

Also look at how different it looks like from this perspective:

With the reference photo open in photoshop and I don’t understand how Bela looks more like himself in my drawing than in the photo. Also when I showed the WIP to my brother, he said that I somehow had succeeded at making Farin look more like Farin than what he does in the photo even. It’s weird.

But we were still far from finished. I was going to use the fixative on this soon but it just kept snowing the whole week so I couldn’t so every time I walked past the drawings, I stopped to fix this and that. For days I kept telling myself “I’m done, I can’t do more than this, I can’t do better than this.” and considered the drawing finished but still kept fixing things. Every time I was “done” with the other drawing, I saw something to fix in the other one and once that was done, I felt like the first one wasn’t as good and had to fix something from it too. And that led to a cycle where the other drawing was always better than the other and the worse one needed to be fixed. In the end I was hating the whole process and myself and my skills and I was already ready to abandon this whole thing and call it a day and never ever show it to anyone “because I cannot draw”. The photo above, here’s a list of things I redrew after that:

Bela’s eyes, the right (left) one at least twice.

Bela’s nose.

Bela’s mouth a couple of times.

Farin’s eyes x588045028520

And a list of things I kept fixing and fixing:

Bela’s chin.

Bela’s neck shadows.

Bela’s hairline.

Farin’s whole face was tilted so I tried to fix that.

Farin’s face was too wide, which meant also partially redrawing the ear.

Farin’s hair was too long and wide too.

Farin’s nose.

Farin’s mouth might be the only thing I drew only once and I’m actually still extremely proud of how it came to be. I did the lips solely with blending so that was super exciting to notice how I can use it for drawing and don’t need the pencils for everything!

During Bela’s eyes and nose and mouth especially I was hating myself so much and I felt like I was taking the risk of ruining the whole thing and a few times I was certain that was what I had just done too, until I somehow was able to save it again. But because of that, I wasn’t able to make Bela’s mouth any lighter anymore, the color wasn’t just coming off the paper so had to use what was there and make it look like it’s how it’s supposed to be, too.

Here’s a gif about those changes on Bela - the first one has the old eyes and nose, the others have minor changed on the nose and mouth:

(The blacks probably don’t get any blacker in reality, I did add more color to it all the time but mainly it’s just the lighting and my phone camera changing the brightness.)

I did the final details on his nose without even using the reference photo anymore. The photo didn’t seem to make any sense anymore at all so I was just using my mechanical pencil and the blending tool and eraser to make is look better. To my eye it looked more like a very flat nose with a big tip of the nose and he doesn’t have a flat nose and I tried to get rid of that illusion. I still feel like it makes him look bit weird but I’m not entirely sure how. Maybe it was because of my improvisation, idk...

So, Bela was then finally finished for the last time. In the Farin piece his left (right) eye had been bugging me the whole time and I didn’t want to touch it but still I felt like I have to do something about it because it was bugging me way too much. I then figured I could draw the eye line by line and take a photo of it each time to see if it looks right already or not, maybe I could then avoid doing all the phases before I was sure what to think about it. I mean, now the only way to see if it was correct was to draw e.g. an eye from start to finish, I couldn’t see from just the lineart or unblended eye if it was in the right spot etc. And here’s that progress on a gif:

The gif about only the eye would look so nice if Tumblr didn’t make the gifs so HUGE - this one is actually only 300px or 400px or something:

Apparently I also wasn’t happy with the other eye because:

But good thing is: I really enjoy drawing eyes. I love seeing them to “come alive”, my favorite part was to eraser a bit of the color on the iris to make them look like they are actually shiny! It feels like something so small to do and yet it makes a huge impact on the drawing!

And here’s yet another gif of the whole Farin sheet with all of the changes, including the last changes that made his head narrower, and less tilted and more in line. Look at the left side of his head especially to see that:

I can also see his nose changing between the first few photos. I keep forgetting about that but yeah, I also fixed that a little at some point.

And last but not least, the whole drawing in some sort of a timelapse gif:

Last two are the same but just a photo and the scan of the finished drawing. I still keep seeing things I would do differently but no can do, I already used fixative on it, also to keep myself from obsessing with it any more :D And to use it as a study of some sort. I have never been able to draw a perfect pencil drawing and this isn’t one either. I probably never can draw perfect drawings from references.

I do enjoy the whole shading and blending process, so much so that when I was editing these photos, I just wanted to start drawing something so bad but I also figured that I start to lose motivation when I get to the point where everything should be finished but I just can’t make it perfect. Like the current WIP I have, all I should do is to get the proportions and perspective and the lines of their faces correctly and I would be ready but it feels more like a superpower some people possess and I’m not one of those. I don’t know what is it but I just feel that I cannot see. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can’t see what I try to do and somehow keep drawing everything the wrong way. Just like in this post’s drawing too. There’s still things that are wrong and I know what it is but I don’t know how to solve it. My hands just don’t listen to me and they can’t do what I think they should. I also think the reason I cannot draw perfect copies of photos is because you can always see my “handprint” in them. If I copy a photo, it will look like a photo and not like a drawing made by me. So I believe that in my drawing there’s always a part of me visible and I’m not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or not. On bad days it’s not a good thing, obviously. On good days? Well I guess it’s good then because it just means I have my own style which I really should appreciate. But I wish I had my style only when I want it to be visible, but I can’t control it. Just like I cannot write text by hand that would look like it was written with a computer, so I guess I should just try to get used to it, no matter how much it’d bug me sometimes.

#mcrmadness draws #mcrmadness draws: behind the scenes #dä fanart #die ärzte

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ravenwolfie97 · 4 years ago

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2020 Art Summary

Yep, it’s 2021 already. 2020 is finally over. It felt like it lasted forever, and it felt like the end would never come, but here we are. Crazy how the time flew by.

I felt like I didn’t get much art done this year because of Current World Event, but I made a lot more than I thought I did. Even some of my new favorite pieces came out of this year, so I think that’s worth celebrating and looking back upon!

I was insanely productive during the first month of 2020, and looking back I was surprised at all the stuff I did, but then I remembered that that winter season was actually one of the best times of my life! I started being more socially involved, and I think my newfound drive at the time translated into all the art I pumped out this month. This is just a small fraction of what I made in January, but I only have so much space. Quite a few complex pieces in both style exploration and polishing my own style.

Apparently February was a rather intimate month. Things began to slow down in terms of my own art here, with me spending more time in social settings and school work ramping up, I didn’t have as much time to coop up in my room to draw. I did wanna do something for a friend’s Valentine’s Day OC art challenge, so I drew my lovey-dovey couple from Dance of 1000 Words havin’ a dance. Nothing actually came of that challenge, but it was fun to do regardless.

One of the things I was most proud of in the winter season was making more friends, and one of the closest friends I made was completely coincidental. I met a person named Kiri on the bus one night I decided to volunteer somewhere by myself, and we ended up chatting and getting along. They quickly told me their tumblr username, and I shot them a message immediately after they left. A couple days later, we met up for brunch, and we started becoming really close friends and creative partners!

Not much else happened in March cuz that’s when Current World Event started becoming an issue, but Kiri and I still kept in close touch and we randomly started developing a concept for a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Galar Edition. These are a handful of characters we thought up, with Skipper the Scorbunny and Dross the Dreepy as the main characters, Morgrem as the main antagonist, and some shopkeepers such as those of the Greedent Bank and the Indeedee General Store. This was also my first time drawing all of these Galar Pokemon (except Scorbunny, but I also made Skipper a bit more unique than a regular Scorbunny).

Lots of events happened this month. First of all, Steven Universe Future ended, one of my favorite and most influential shows was no longer continuing. I had to do something as tribute, both as a send-off to one of the greatest cartoons in the world and as a cathartic release for my feelings towards it.

A while later, I got the opportunity to start playing an MMO in beta called Fer.al, by the same people who made Animal Jam, which coincidentally I had also beta tested for back in the day. I ended up getting really attached to my first character, a Senri I named Sasha, and though I’ve made more characters than them since, they’re still my absolute favorite. Though I haven’t touched the game in a few months, I was really engrossed for a long time and enjoyed playing through the beta and early access phases.

At the end of the month, some friends of mine invited to a roleplay group with some mutuals, and we all played characters in a crime syndicate. Just a bunch of ragtag thieves and criminals who ended up together in order to protect an artifact called the Crown of Thieves, which was essentially a flag to be taken by other groups to prove that they are the best thieves in the land. My character was based heavily on my sona (if it wasn’t obvious) and was also influenced by Cloud Strife, since the FFVII Remake had just come out and I was super into watching the cutscenes at the time. My character’s (code)name is Valkyrie, and they are a mercenary, going between multiple different employers to carry out whatever duties they need to do. They have a more complicated backstory, but presently they were recently hired by recommendation of their friend Shark (played by @shmoots-universe who is also My friend now ily maya) who works with a group called the Court Cards who are currently in possession of the Crown of Thieves. Valk never really had a place to call home, but staying with this group of people had to be the closest they could get to that feeling. They still sleep with a knife under their pillow because of trust issue but that’s okay.

Okay, so technically these examples started in April, but I continued making content with them in May, and the month was just pretty void of art in general, so here I am addressing them.

There were two main things I worked on this month: a Steven Universe AU of my own and the whole #sixfanarts thing that kicked off around then. Let’s start with the fanart bits. I did two and a half of them (six in April and nine in May), and it was so much fun to be able to draw stuff I don’t normally do! My personal favorites are shown here: Blake Belladonna from RWBY, Roll from Megaman, Yuki Konno from Sword Art Online, and Link from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The other thing I’d been planning for a while was a Steven Universe AU, probably to cope with the show being over but also because I was inspired by a lot of those SU AU artists I started following at the time. I won’t share the details here because it’s gonna have its own blog at some point, but the example I’ve shown here is of a comic I made loosely in order to introduce a divergence in the plot of the story as well as introduce a character unique to my AU. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to draw the characters and get a feel for the style.

As the year progressed, my amount of art I made per month began to dwindle, this time mostly because school was kicking my ass especially hard with finals. However, I took what time I had to get some backburner pieces finished, like the Tigerlily picture which I sketched out a couple months back, and the Gunvolt picture which I started working on SIX YEARS AGO. I don’t quite know why I got the urge to work on it again after so long, but it was nice to finally realize. The other drawing for DOTS was done in the dead of night but I was really happy with how it came out.

Despite only having two summer classes left of school, this month was really rough because they demanded a lot of my time and attention. I did not have the gumption to do anything digital, so I stuck to my sketchbook to get out what I felt like getting out.

My friends and I did a stream of the game Helltaker, and I really enjoyed the concept, so in following my friends I made my own Helltaker demon OC named Raksha the Ravenous Demon (it’s a pun but also got mythical insp). I also got super into Hazbin Hotel at this point, mostly because the Addict music video dropped and I couldn’t get enough of it, so I doodled Angel Dust cuz I felt like it. The other drawing I did was actually a free commission I gave a friend of mine as a prize for a trivia game show I ran back in June. He along with a couple other friends got some free drawings from me for getting the top three scores, and this one in particular was fun because of how interesting it was. He wanted me to draw a video game reviewer called the Irate Gamer from a specific moment, and I decided to go ham and just make it as dramatic as possible.

University classes finally wrapped up and right after that I was in the process of moving out of my apartment and getting adjusted to living with my parents again. I did a couple of agg.io drawing sessions with my friends from the Court Cards group as well as a new Dungeons and Dragons homebrew group I had joined. I drew some more of Valkyrie and came up with a design for my DND character Qakuqtuq (or Kai for short). He is monkey grandpa and I love him.

My main focus was on finishing a polished piece for my friend Cake, whose birthday was in the upcoming month. I wanted it to be as amazing as possible, so I put a lot of time into getting more detailed and making them look good. In addition to that, I did a few TOME doodles just for fun. The creature on the bottom was for this month’s art challenge on my Discord server where we made original TOMERPG monsters, and I created Hundylow, a Crystal-element monster based on the Grindylow from English folklore.

This month was a lot more productive than the past few had been. I tried to do a 31-day art challenge called Creatober but failed to get past the third prompt because I was still swamped with other work. I’m still happy with what little I did, including the piece with my characters Kyle and Guarudan from DSWD.

I don’t remember how, but I also suddenly rediscovered an old Flipnote Hatena series called Tales of LostClan, a Warriors fan series that I would say was the most obscure thing I’ve ever been super invested in. It was what got me into the actual Warriors books, and I liked it so much I redrew the animations into a comic... twice. Didn’t get nearly as far the second time but clearly my love for this little fanfiction had not waned after nearly a decade. I felt like drawing a book cover/movie poster for the series, just to get it out there and see how much I’ve improved over all that time.

Also I felt like making a vampiresona just before Halloween because I never dress up for Halloween in art (or real life anymore, for that matter), and I wanted to do something like that for once. It was short-lived but I really liked the design!

The focus of this month was definitely on Pokemon stuff. As per usual I contributed to the current Gotta Draw ‘Em All collab, and I was tasked to draw Regieleki. It was really fun to figure out how to make it stand out and look like it was made of electricity.

I also committed a lot of my spare time to my Fakemon Gym Leaders, as I had been working on bringing them to life in the past year or so now. As of this post, I’ve finished rendering their full body poses and gym badges, but I’m still working on completing all eight VS portraits, the first half of which are shown here.

I... didn’t draw anything this month, actually. What I’m showing here was worked on in the last few days but has actually been in progress for a couple of months, and I just finished it earlier today, in 2021. But I needed to show something off, and it’s also about time I mentioned it.

Back in October, I kept seeing people rave about this game called Genshin Impact, and I was interested but not so much as to start playing it... until my friends started playing and I was like “fuck it, let’s download it”. Since that day, I have been super immersed and in love with this game, to the point I came up with my own canon based on my gameplay experiences. This also included the creation of an original player character: Astra, the non-binary Traveller. And now, I’ve finally drawn them and brought them to life.

It has been one hell of a year. I had some of the highest highs and lowest lows in 2020, lots of changes, and I have now officially moved onto the next chapter of my life now that my time at university is finally over. I’m very excited for what 2021 has to offer, and I’m going to go forward with great ambition.

#my art stuff #art summary #this is always a joy to do every year and i'm glad to keep up the tradition for the sixth year in a row #this year was super good for this as well just to look back on what i was actually able to accomplish #long post #tome #hazbin hotel

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blackfemmecharacterdependency · 4 years ago

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32. God Bless the Child

Previous || Word Count 7132

The next year was eventful for a tremendous amount of reasons.

First and foremost, Grace had a World Tour scheduled for the end of spring, entire summer, and beginning of fall. That meant that Hazel had the chance to travel, stuck with staff most of the time, or her mom the OTHER portion of time. She didn’t want to do that. Hazel liked seeing new things and traveling, even being around crowds of people, but she was going through puberty and often just wanted to chill with her friends or even by herself, to write poetry, maybe record some of her raps, and work on comics. Of course, Grace told her that if she could do that anywhere, it was in the tour bus.

Simon’s final book was going to be released in the summer, and he was going to begin working on the movie production for the (hopefully first and not only) film in the fall. Whether or not the studio would want to make more would depend on the success of this film, and the budget would be determined by what types of sales this last book made.

Grace was always going on about “an ecosystem,” a concept that one of her favorite influencers spoke about. Basically, she believed that whenever you had the chance to give people that you knew of/believed in a shot, you should do that. So, Simon wanted to get the studio in business with the tech company that he currently worked for, for numerous aspects of the production.

Simon already had multiple prototypes for animatronics and pointed plans for various aspects of this movie. A deal like that could really help the company (that he may or may not be staying at once he finished with this huge movie project), which also might be a situation in which he could be working on many of these things and get paid from his company as well, in the meantime for the work that fell under the studio’s umbrella. It would help all of them, and save money and trouble in other areas where he might have problems with CGI concerns and such.

Simon had been preparing for if Esmoroth took off big his entire life. He still had models at home, and years worth of world building, sketches, schematics, simulations, mini movies, files of programming for how various scenes looked in his mind.

These things being considered, whenever Simon put his and Grace’s schedules side by side at the beginning of the year to find opportunities and plan special events… well… They were not matching up very well. “I don’t like this Grace. I know that sometimes we take a few days apart, but our longest stint has been 2 weeks and 4 days… This calendar makes it look like we might see each other in increments of 6-8 weeks at a time, more than once and the fragments in between are…” He started breathing hard and she wrapped her arms around him from behind. He placed his hands over hers. “Okay. You’re right. We can do this.” She just smiled. She hadn’t said that, but that was basically what she wanted to convey. “Montanus’ arrival is scheduled for the 4th of July weekend.”

“Yeah. I’ll be flying out there. Are you coming?”

“Can’t. But, I’ll be there for the christening… which… you have a show the night before, so… Are you going to be there?”

“I’m planning on it. My show the night before is a few hours away, so I should be able to make it the next morning and still dash out to the next venue.”

“Sweet. Then, I’ll catch the show that night.”

“My period is that weekend.”

“Ugh. I mean… not that I don’t still love you then…”

“We both know why you’re here,” she said, chuckling.

“Because I can’t function outside of your divinity,” he replied, quicker than she was prepared for. He made note of all the spaces that he would have to possibly see her on this tour and started looking into the accommodations that he would need whenever he did.

Grace had hit after hit after hit on her album, her old original stuff was starting to receive a resurgence of streams and her pages were getting more traffic than her current team was able to handle some days. But, she simply reached out, within her ecosystem for others that might be able to join said team and make things flow better. Meanwhile, she didn’t get onto social media much. One of her problems with fully letting down her walls was the fact that surfing the Internet always made her have to take a look at how people viewed her. She had to start considering that no matter how well she did or how hard she tried, someone out there would have a problem with her, and because she was famous, it would be a lot of someones.

Hazel was online more with her work. She liked to enter freestyle challenges, submit her spoken word, publish her poems. She called her current brand of creativity “Doetry,” and she had a pretty increasingly large following. Simon usually helped to administrate, because Grace was never great at that type of thing and also because he didn’t trust Internet weirdos enough to not be involved.

She was going through things, but he never censored her or intruded. He monitored to make sure that nobody was making her life any harder than it had to be, being raised in NYC and the daughter of a very public figure, and also Simon, who was important enough, depending on who you asked… and he was getting to the point where he might reach notable fame.

May 19 was a Tuesday that year, so they would be spending the previous weekend celebrating Hazel’s birthday and her actual birthday would just be a school day that everyone on social media sent her birthday wishes on. Simon took time off to take Hazel, Lucy, Lindsay, Alex, Todd, and Louis to Grace for the weekend. The way that the schedule was set up, she wouldn’t have had the time to leave and come back and go to her next venue, but they would have the time to come to her. Hazel suggested that she just miss out, but Grace was NOT going to do that, especially with the year that Hazel had been having. So, she paid for Hazel’s friends to come with.

Simon found it fascinating that these kids’ parents were entrusting the children to him to get on a plane together, travel to another state, spend more than one night there, and fly them back home safely.

He supposed it was similar to a Scouts trip, or a school trip… but he was just the “parent” of another child. He wasn’t a scout leader or teacher. Then again, those were just people too, he guessed. He would NOT feel comfortable sending Hazel on a plane with any of these children’s parents, except for maybe Lucy’s.

But, Simon found that his old scouts instincts kicked in when being responsible for a group of kids, but this time around he had that nagging dad-like behavior that the past couple of years around Hazel had given him.

Being off for Hazel’s birthday, she arranged for them to have a spa day retreat. The kids and some of the staff were included in this, though not as advanced a day as Grace and Hazel. Whenever they met up and had their indulgences, Simon could barely keep his hands off of Grace. Hazel felt a little bit slighted.. It was HER birthday, after all. They didn’t have to be cozied up the whole time. Of course, Grace presumed she wanted to spend most of her time with her friends, and whenever they finished with cake and began listening to music and chilling, Grace and Simon left them with the Nanny so that they could have some alone time. Hazel aired her grievances to her friends. She hated that Grace was on tour. She hated that their home life was separated into different worlds that she had to board and unboard. Lindsay understood it perfectly. Her dad was sometimes not home for weeks or months. Sometimes, she didn’t see her mom (who actually lived with her) for days. Sometimes, whenever she did see her, the woman was busy with making appearances and performing shows, and she DIDN’T have a nanny. She just had to be at home by herself a lot. Whenever her dad was there, he’d have his friends over a lot. They would disrupt Lindsey’s quiet, but she would be grateful that she wasn’t alone. She would LOVE if her parents tried to include her in their worlds like Grace and Simon did with Hazel.

Lucy’s parents were usually there whenever she needed them, but they didn’t seem to be very happy. They were always together, but the only time that she saw them smile at each other or talk to each other was whenever they were out in public. Her father was a politician, and her mother was a public figure, simply for being his wife and being a good conservative wife who followed his guidelines. Lucy… didn’t care for any of it. She would’ve liked to just have two people who love each other like Grace and Simon seemed to.

Hazel felt a little better, because apparently, she had pretty good parents. She also didn’t feel a little better, because she still felt dissatisfied.

Whenever Simon and Grace made it back, after the others were asleep, Hazel talked to Simon about letting her stay home with him after the school year ended. Both Grace and him loved her, right? So, she should be able to stay home, near her friends, in her comfort zone, and then she’d see Grace when she got home, and she’d be crazy excited about it, like she used to be when she didn’t get to see her everyday. Like she was whenever she saw her this weekend!

Simon reluctantly let her know he would be much busier in the summer than he was at the moment. He was at home with her and the Nanny as much as possible, but he reminded her that there was less than a month left of school and then she would be with her mom again. Her mom had ONLY been gone now for about a month… Hazel didn’t know if he could hear himself basically saying, “It’s only a couple of months away from your mom, both of you changing over that time in different ways and potentially growing apart, then you get to be awkwardly thrown back together because I’m not actually your parent and can’t wait until she can take you back!” He didn’t say that, but that was what she heard. She nodded her head, sadly, and Grace chimed in to remind her that she’d be on tour with her! They hadn’t been able to be together in almost a month and after one more, they would! Hazel smiled. “Of course, Grace. I can’t wait. We’re gonna have a lot of fun.”

Hazel finished off the school year with the Nanny and Simon. They flew out to meet with Grace, in June, spent a couple of days together, then Simon was headed back home, to focus on his stupid important things, Hazel couldn’t help but think. And she was pissed at him, too. She had been mopey and basically on autopilot most of this time, even with Grace trying desperately to cheer her up whenever she had some free time.

She just wanted a summer where she could hang out and have fun if she wanted to. Grace asked her to at least give her a couple of weeks to prove that this could be a fun experience. However, Grace kept running into that troublesome hassle of the public being pushy and entitled. Hazel and she kept either getting rushed in and out of places and trapped for a while, bothered every few minutes when they weren’t holed up, or surrounded by staff getting things done in between performances. Hazel lasted two weeks, then cried and begged to go home and be able to see her friends. It broke Grace’s heart but she promised to let Hazel go back with Simon after the stop in California for her baby brother’s birth.

Grace felt super rejected and cried about it, but if that was what Hazel really wanted, she didn’t want her career to make her feel stressed out. Her mother was quite a smartass about it. “Who would have thought that it might be difficult to focus on a demanding career while raising a child?”

“I didn’t call you for this.”

“Of course not. What did you call for?”

She wanted to know how the surrogate was. Grace didn’t know what it said about someone that they would rent out their body to grant someone else a child, but she could totally understand the flipside. Whenever Simon mentioned babies, she was extremely willing to adopt again, even the smallest baby that they would be able to be matched with… but nothing statistically made her have an inkling of wanting to actually change her entire body, probably for the worse so that she could potentially die to bring someone else into the world that she would immediately begin having to take care of and put everything into. It was hard enough to do with Hazel, and getting harder all of the time.

When that child’s period came around in February, Grace picked her up from school, gathered up the products she was most interested in (products from Grace’s own line), provided snacks, emergency meds, just in case, and any information that Hazel wasn’t certain about. Simon came over with a gift basket of stuff that had been suggested to him by browsing nice things to do for periods. They really wanted her to be comfortable and safe. She just wanted them to stay the fuck out of her room and let her lay down and write poems.

She didn’t get how Grace had period yoga, and heightened self care. The LAST thing Hazel felt like doing was caring about anything, even self. She wanted to rest and to rage. That was it. Grace would buy her flowers and say something silly like, “Whenever my period comes around, sometimes, flowers make me feel happier,” Then just… leave a pot with an orchid, or geraniums, or a peace lily in her room… to have to what? Care for a flower now TOO, as well as self?? Hazel hated the way her period made her feel. She spoke to her therapist about it and was advised to speak to her mother and potentially a gynecologist about it as well. Hazel put that conversation off, though.

She seemed her happiest whenever she was able to go to her grandparents’ to wait for the baby with them. Grace… didn’t understand…

Simon explained, “You don’t remember being 12 and not wanting to be around our parents?”

“Our parents sucked though! And she WANTS to be around my parents!”

“She wants to meet her baby uncle,” Simon told her and wrapped himself around her.

“Has she mentioned anything to you? I know that sometimes she feels more comfortable telling you stuff than she does me, since you aren’t her parent…”

He let go and frowned, “Wow.”

“I mean… There’s paperwork, Simon. You aren’t…”

“I know, but, I step in as much as you did before that, maybe even more. I understand that she technically isn’t mine, but she's important to me, too, Grace.”

“I know, but…” she sighed and shook her head, “I’m not trying to start a fight. Of course you’re as present as any father has ever been for her. I wasn’t trying to downgrade that, and I didn’t mean to sound like I was. I just wanted to know if she’d said anything to you about me.”

“No. She’s not talking to me. But, she does express herself via Doetry.”

“Her content is so angry and dark…”

“What she shares, at least…” Grace threw him a warning look. “I’m not saying make it a habit, but maybe taking a peek into her personal stuff might give you some type of clue as to what she needs right now.”

"I'm not snooping into Hazel's things, Simon. There's a reason that she shares what she shares and hides whatever she hides, IF she's hiding anything. I don't want to parent that way."

"Okay."

"And I'm also saying that you shouldn't."

"Noted."

"Okay… what I meant by shouldn't is don't do it."

"So, it's an order?"

"Yes."

He sighed. Hazel WAS Grace's daughter, legally, and he didn't want to do anything that he didn't have permission to. "Okay." It took him longer to say it than Grace had gotten accustomed to, but she knew he meant it and that it was hard for him to agree to this wish. She strummed his cheek with her thumb and he leaned into it and smirked. It was also easy to make him forget whenever she upset him. She leaned up just enough to kiss him on the nose and he blushed. She giggled. “What?”

“The fact that you’ll blush when I kiss you on the nose when you literally have been putting your nose right in between my thighs for almost 2 years.”

He blushed even more and shrugged his shoulders, “I’m blushing then, too. You just don’t notice because you’re usually quivering in pleasure.”

Sha gasped, “Cocky,” she said and elbowed him playfully.

“Confident… and accurate.”

“You don’t have to SAY it,” she said, now blushing herself.

He didn’t call her on it. Just seeing it was enough. Simon kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “I love you…” Her smile vanished and he furrowed his eyebrows, staring at her mouth in disappointment. “Sorry. I thought…”

“No… Don’t be. I guess it had to come up some time…” She stared at her hands. “I don’t know how to… I feel like my actions should… I know sometimes people just need to hear it, I just…”

“Please, stop.” He laughed, but was red and she had a feeling not from blushing. “You’re making it worse.”

“I just… Had an immediate flashback to the first time you told me and… I don’t know. This was so different, and you’re so different, and I have no idea why my brain is doing this to us…”

He wanted to say because of what he did to her, but hell.. That was really long ago and like she said, everything was different now. One day, she HAD to forgive him! He shrugged his shoulders, “You can’t control how you feel any more than I could.”

She frowned and nodded. Then, fortunately, Hazel came rushing in, "He's coming!" Simon and Grace both rushed into the birthing quarters where Mrs. Monroe, the documentation crew, the surrogate, midwife and such were. Hazel and Simon stood out of the way while Grace rushed to the surrogate and asked the midwife what she should do. (She was designated as her birthing partner, as she felt bad that her parents didn't seem to see her as anything more than a vessel) Grace spent a lot of time reading up to try to prepare for this.

It was a powerful time. It LOOKED as painful as it sounded from everything she read that discouraged her, but she tried to be strong for the surrogate. Simon was really impressed with how much Grace was able to do for her. He knew that she had become very empathetic over the years, but it was honestly a side of her he still hadn't seen. Meanwhile, Mrs. Monroe looked on, excitedly, but useless.

Whenever Montanus was born, Grace and the surrogate were both crying and Grace complimented her and told her how she was stronger than (Grace) could ever hope to be. When Grace tried to show her the baby, Mrs. Monroe cut her off and collected him, then gave the nurses some instructions for seeing to her. She was about to have delivery day photos taken.

"None with Astrid, Mom?" Grace wondered, still holding the woman's hand.

"You can, if you insist," she said. "Bad enough your father is late. I don't want to hold everyone up."

Grace was going to say more, but the surrogate squeezed and tugged her hand to get her attention and shook her head. "I signed up for this," she said, quietly. "It's not like he's mine…"

"You held him. You changed. You grew. You hurt. You bled. You cried. You.."

"Signed up for that." But she looked sad. Ao sad that Grace decided at that moment of she EVER DID have a surrogate, it was going to be a fellowship. A sisterhood. A loving connection in which she repaid the person with respect as well as her fee. She was a human. How her mother was able to just plant Montanus inside of her and basically discard her afterwards made Grace feel sick. She didn't even go with Simon and Hazel to see the baby. She was more concerned about this woman who had to put on a strong face after a really hard job.

Later, when she had to leave and also send Hazel off with Simon, she cried on him. "I'm not gonna do that to my surrogate. It was really mean, right? That was so cold…"

Simon rubbed her back, "Grace… it's a business transaction."

"He's not a transaction! He's my brother and he JUST got here, and Mom's ALREADY treating him like an asset. She messed up one kid and she’s had two decades to learn better emotional intelligence. The restart doesn’t look good to me.."

"She's bad at the emotional stuff, but she's trying," Simon offered. You aren't like her and you'll never have to be. You can treat your surrogate as sweetly as you please. But...I have to agree with your mom that they didn't need to connect. That'd just make it harder.

"She couldn't even say hi to him? After all of that?"

"It's what they agreed to. She would have taken one look at him and tried to keep him."

"She wouldn't be able to. He's from my parents' DNA. It was just… so uncomfortably cold. You should bring a baby into a warm life. I was too upset to even see him. I didn't want to give him the negative energy I had."

Hazel shrugged, "You didn't miss anything he looks like… a potato."

Simon gave her a shove and she wondered what was wrong with the truth. "He hasn't developed his looks yet. But he was cute in that it's a new life way."

"I… did not see that," Hazel admitted.

"You saw a potato," Simon repeated.

"Yep."

The christening was closer to the end of Grace's tour. She was going to be seeing her parents, new brother, Simon, and Hazel all again for the first time since she'd been on the road alone. Hazel and Simon went early so that he could help his dad with some things and Hazel would stay with her grandparents while he was doing that. Grace arrived in the morning and headed straight to the church.

They were supposed to wear neutral colors and earth tones, meanwhile, Montanus was styled to be in brilliant white with silver and gems. Grace had flashbacks to seeing photos of her own day. She had been draped in gold and yellow and dressed in something that was probably more expensive than reserving the building. She had been "clothed as the sun," and now nearly 25 years later, they had a boy "clothed as the moon."

Her mother told her that she has her outfit selected. She has to change in a room that brides generally used and Grace was a little thicker than when she had initially been fitted, so she squeezed into it and was far more voluptuous than she wanted to be in a church. Non-believer as she was, it simply seemed distasteful. She loved her halo crown for the event. It was pretty fancy, as she seemed to be reprising her role as the sun.

The officiant said something about the sun giving light to the moon, just as she, as his sister and godmother would give her own form of light to him and other poetic and sweet things about love and support, God and stuff and he blessed the baby and allowed them to put him on display for another photoshoot.

Grace ducked out, because she was STARVING, so of course Simon and Hazel came with, as they hadn’t had a chance to spend time with her in weeks. Old stomping grounds made them feel nostalgic and gave Hazel more fodder for imagining them as kids. She loved those times. Them, her age or a little bit younger or little bit older - she wished she knew them then. She wished for adventures like theirs with HER friends. She would never let it turn out how they were for a while, but she was also glad that they had each other now. The past few weeks with her and Simon had been very challenging, as he was more strict in Grace’s absence than when she was home, but he wasn’t abusing it. He just didn’t have Grace there to override him putting his foot down. Hazel hated THAT, but he didn’t care about certain other things, like she got to hang out with her friends longer, stay out later, and stay up later. Grace was a little more about her keeping a certain structure, which was fine a few years ago, but now it was unnecessary to Hazel and fortunately, Simon didn’t care because it was summer. So long as she was upfront about what she was doing and checked in, he was pretty chill. BUT, if she went outside of the boundaries, he was VERY strict. Almost like he felt betrayed. She hated to make him feel that way. They worked out well, though. At the end of the day, they were always friends again.

Grace noted that they had a few inside jokes and stuff while they were at lunch. People kept looking at the trio, in their fancy dress at this little burger dive. A few people came to see if they could get autographs and stuff. Grace was pretty open to that, even when it was uncomfortable. Simon reflexively wanted to step in, but she would brush it off and give him a look to ask him not to, so he gathered his sense of territory and possessiveness and choked it down. He didn’t have consent to defend…

Then… Something else happened. They were getting ready to get into the car and someone rushed up on them for an autograph. Simon would have been impressed with his quick reflexes if it didn’t go so… terribly infuriating…

He stopped the person in their tracks and they threw their hands up, and said that they just wanted a photo with Grace. Simon let go of the guy’s collar and looked at Grace. Hazel had her hand over her heart. Apparently Simon wasn’t the only one caught off guard by the Flashlike fan. “You okay, Haze?” he asked.

She was breathing hard and staring at the man. Grace stooped down to get on her level. “She’s fine,” the man said. “Could I get a photo?” Grace took a deep breath, ignoring him and repeated her question to Hazel. She wasn’t sure why her baby girl was reacting so intensely. Sure, it could be that this motherfucker came out of nowhere, but also… she could have known him from before, because they were in the same area they used to live, OR she might have had something recently happen that made this spook her today. WHATEVER the case, Grace was concerned and trying to talk to her. “I’ll just get a photo and leave you to it.”

“Chill,” Simon warned. He was getting pissed at this person and also worried about Hazel, because she still hadn’t responded. The guy scoffed and Simon clenched his fist. Realign your patience, Simon. Realign.

“Haze?” Grace repeated. Hazel took a deep breath and nodded.

“Sorry. He scared me. I’m fine.”

“Told you she was fine,” the dude said, really annoyed. Simon bit his lip and was practically digging holes into his palms with the balls that were his fists.

Grace wrapped an arm around Hazel and politely told the man, “I’m not currently taking photos. We just stopped to eat and we have to get back to something.” She was now too upset to take a photo. This was her boundary.

She opened the car door for Hazel and the man said, “Ugh, you were signing stuff inside, I saw you.”

Simon stepped in front of him and reiterated, “Yeah, but she told you no, so I advise you to step away from Grace and her daughter. You’ve already startled her and were extremely insensitive about it. You didn’t even apologize to her.”

“She said she was fine, just like I said.”

“She also is clearly not fine, and you, as a grown man should have been keen to it and respectful of that, especially considering that YOU were the one asking for something!” Simon’s canines were bared and Grace had to admit… she was not against seeing this Simon emerge again… not in this situation, at least.

“That’s not even her real daughter…” CRACK! Hazel called Simon’s name. He didn’t hear her. He had taken that balled up fist that he had been tempering and connected it to that man’s jaw. Grace held Hazel back and said softly, “Maybe cover your eyes, Baby.” Because she wasn’t gonna interfere. Simon looked at the man after he had punched him onto the pavement and some people had gathered. Then, he remembered! He turned towards Grace and Hazel, worried that he had just royally screwed up. Hazel’s face was alight with amusement and Grace’s alight with… something else.

“It just snapped…” He explained.

“It’s okay. We all mess up, right MOM?” Hazel asked, smiling at Simon.

“Yeah, Haze, but he didn’t mess up. Sometimes, people deserve it.” She took Simon’s swinging hand in hers as the ex-fan rushed off crying and complaining about pressing charges. “Let’s get back to my folks so I can tend to this.” She kissed his hand and smiled at him. He smiled back, swelling with pride. Hazel took his other hand and kissed it. These two hand kisses were very separate and different things. But, both mattered to him more than anything in the world.

“I lost my patience, but i don’t feel bad. Nobody’s gonna hurt either of you, as long as I’m there. You ARE Grace’s REAL daughter.”

“I know that, Simon. I’m yours too,” she said with the casual shrug of her shoulders, but he knew that it was a huge thing for Hazel to say such a thing.

Simon got to hold the and he was extremely enchanted. "Grace! He's so beautiful. Oh my God. He looks just like YOU!"

Mrs. Monroe offered, "Or, he looks like ME? Grace got her beautiful genetics from me."

"Yes, Mrs. Monroe. You look like Grace, too," he said, not turning away from the baby in his arms. She frowned and folded her arms. "Grace, if we have a baby, I hope they look just like Monty!"

"His name isn't Monty," Mrs. Monroe said. "It's Montanus. It means mountainous. He's the highest point of my life."

"Wow, Mom. Screw me then, huh?" Grace joked. This kid really WAS precious.

Mrs. Monroe said, "You put me through months of HELL, and quite frankly depression and misery. But… after a very long and painful journey pity of my body, we looked at each other and I felt like seeing your face delivered me from all of the worst of all of that. I'd been given grace, and I told your father after he snuck that hideous photo of me gawking at you that would be your name. We were going to call you Soleil. Like the Sun. But, I met you and I said, No. This is my Grace." Mrs. Monroe cupped Grace's chin and Grace smiled while Simon's eyes watered.

"That's a beautiful story." He nuzzled Grace with his nose and whispered, "I can't wait until we have a beautiful birth story."

"You certainly CAN wait," Mrs. Monroe said and eyed him up and down.

"So, you put Grace in THAT dress and let me look at THIS baby and you think I'm NOT going to think about knocking her up?"

"He's joking. We don't even do that,"Grace said.

"Doesn't mean I'm joking. LOOK at him, Grace. This has got to be the most beautiful baby that has ever lived!"

Grace scoffed, "Um. No. I'm sure that was me as a baby."

"I don't know… I can't imagine any baby ever looking more adorable than this one." He shook his head and looked at him, then pulled him close to hold against himself.

He heard Mrs. Monroe whisper, "I think he thinks he's ready for one." He shut his eyes to listen to the infant breathe. He… hadn't held a baby since he had been helped in holding Hope when he was a little boy. He'd had a similar reaction to her… but he didn't know what she looked like anymore and he didn't even have feelings for her anymore. He remembered her as someone who was lost way too soon, someone that he accidentally hurt, someone who would remind him to always handle the innocent with extra care. "I would kill for you," he whispered and kissed Montanus'" head. For his own. For Hazel. For Grace.

Grace wondered, "Can I hold him?" The way that he was feeling about this baby… He didn’t want to let him go… but then again, Grace was still not wanting kids and Simon rationalized that holding “Monty” was gonna change that for her, so he reluctantly handed him over in the hopes that she might be swayed. “Wow…” She said staring into big brown eyes, like her own but more bright and full of wonder. He reached out for her and she let him hold her finger. “Okay. I absolutely want one,” she joked. Simon smiled. He knew the feeling, even though he also knew that SHE didn’t really mean it. She did have a point, they still hadn’t actually had sex. They had… done a lot. Very gradually over the past year and a half, but not that and she seemed to get anxious whenever things approached it. Simon always stopped and confirmed whether or not she wanted to do more. That out that he gave her, she always took it. It was why he kept checking. He worried that if he didn’t, she might just go along with things, and that could be something else to resent him for down the line. Affirmative consent. It was a small price to pay to keep the amount of trust that HAD been rebuilt intact, and maybe someday it would pay off.

Someday was closer than he’d thought. They eventually surrendered that baby back to his parents and Hazel, not wanting to cry jealousy, but feeling a way retired to her room to meditate and write before bed.

Simon and Grace retired to her room, afterwards. “I am lovesick with baby fever,” Grace said. He was on her like prey, with his hands sliding up her sides and his nose tracing her neck. “Slow down, Gray Eyes,” she said with a chuckle, looking at them in the vanity mirror. How many times had they looked at themselves in that mirror when they were younger? It was never like this… They didn’t even look the same to her. They didn’t feel the same, but somehow, everything was all coming back to her, just being in here, with him.

The good and the bad. Luckily, she would be able to say goodbye early in the morning and not see him for a couple of weeks. Tonight could just be… fun. She tried to push out the old thoughts, the old fights, the old Grace and Simon. They were Simon and Grace before The Apex and they had become another Grace and Simon. New and improved.

“This dress really isn’t helping in the “slow down” department.”

“I’ve gained a little weight,” she said, a little self consciously.

“Mmm hmm,” he said, appraisingly, tracing but not touching the curves of her cleavage. She hadn’t given him permission. Simon was very disciplined, now. Very diligent in not crossing any boundaries, but he certainly danced the fine line.

“Will you please help me out of this dress?” She whispered, not taking her eyes off of the obediently trained blond man in her mirror.

“Yes, ma’am.” He carefully unclasped the back and slowly unzipped, revealing each inch of her skin with utmost reverence and full throttle desire, contained, but entirely visible as she studied his face. She stepped out of the dress and carefully placed it aside. He noted that specifically, because he remembered how she used to just toss them on the floor. He was making more and more notes of how much more thoughtful she was about her things and surroundings. “Grace?”

“Yes, Simon?” she was cleaning off her makeup, still in her undergarments and halo crown.

“I just wanted to thank you for letting me back in. I know that it takes a very big person to be able to do that and I’m grateful that you’re so big of a person and I’m also proud of you. You’ve changed a lot in a lot of ways that I tried to stop before, because I was scared that you’d outgrow me and leave me behind if you came to be this bigger person. I’m glad that I’ve realized that becoming a better you was exactly what type of person who could give me another chance. It makes me want to be a bigger, better person. It makes it easy for me to be good, and I’ve realized that I do it for you, but also for myself. I feel better, and I just want you to know that you’ve done so much towards that.”

She wanted to make a joke about how he must’ve really wanted some tonight to be spilling all of this, but he was so genuine, she was entirely too touched. Between that and his protecting Hazel earlier, not to mention Hazel claiming him?

She set her cloth down, turned around and kissed him. No other response was needed.

The kissing grew, she didn’t break apart while they carefully made their way to the bed and… well… it wasn’t really a discussion or a question. The time had come. Simon opened his mouth to confirm that she was sure and she silenced him with her lips while she took off his clothes.

At every point that he wanted to ask her for permission, she took initiative while simultaneously kissing him to stop the question. If she thought too hard about it, if he asked her about it, she would think too hard about it - If she thought too hard about it, it might never happen.

At some point, she began crying. Simon panicked. He tried to pull out, but she clasped him tightly with her legs and held on to him, sobbing into his ear. Were they happy tears, or had he made a mistake? It was fucking with him. “Grace?” he whispered, slowing down, at least. She urged her hips to make him speed back up and he started crying too. “I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong!” he whimpered, terrified of her tears right now.

“Does… it mean something to you, Simon?” She asked in an insecure voice that he hadn’t heard in so long that he forgot how she sounded when she wasn’t sure of herself.

He lifted his head to look her in the eyes, moving her chin to face him so that she couldn’t avoid it.

“Everything. It means everything to me, Grace. You mean everything to me.”

She sobbed and began to move her hips again, somehow holding on even tighter to him. “Never let me go again. Never push me away.”

“I promise. I won’t. I swear on my life.”

She’d mentioned before that her period was that weekend, but she wasn’t on it. The stress of touring probably knocked her off of her schedule. At any rate, she wasn’t one it, as she had planned to be. That worked out perfectly for Simon that night, but he wasn’t even thinking about those details at the moment. He had to spend the rest of the night making sure that she knew things wouldn’t be like they had been before.

A couple of weeks later when she came home from the tour, Hazel and Simon had her welcome home party under way. It was lowkey - just the 3 of them and the cat. Simon cooked everyone’s faves, and they didn’t ask tour questions. Hazel kept using “Mom” and “Dad,” despite the official paperwork. Grace felt super at ease, considering.

“Hey… We have to talk about something, as a family…” Hazel and Simon looked at each other, both a little worried, as she sounded super serious out of nowhere. Did something happen to her on the tour? Were they about to have to kick somebody’s ass? What was she about to say?? “I have an announcement…” She took a deep breath and took something that she had on her person out.

Simon gasped and got up to rush over. Hazel asked, “What is that?? What’s the announcement??”

Simon took both of Grace’s hands and searched her face, “What do you want to do? You know I’ll support anything. If you aren’t ready, I understand…”

“UNDERSTAND WHAT?? WHAT IS THAT, MOM???”

“I’m ready,” Grace told Simon, then to Hazel, “Mom’s… having a kid…” She winced, unsure of how Hazel was going to feel about a bio on the horizon. She SCREAMED. “OMG! Lindsay and Lucy are gonna be JEALOUS. SO JEALOUS! Lindsay thinks her kinkajou is SOOOO cool… and it is, but I’m gonna have a SIBLING! Oh… unless we’re being quiet?”

“For a while. I’m still… taking it all in…” Grace said. She looked at Simon. She was scared shitless.

“I’m going to do whatever you need.”

“I know. I trust you with my life.” He smiled brighter than anything she had ever seen. She collected Hazel and him, “Both of you.”

#If They Didn't Get on the Train #AU Infinity Train #Infinity Train #Nesha Fanfiction #Infinity Train Fanfiction #fics

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hard--mode · 5 years ago

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various asks

I don’t have a lot of time or energy to put in the level of effort and detail that goes into the colored pages, at least not now. Plus, the sheer effort was absolutely preventing me from working on this at all because the step by step process of painstakingly lining it all with the unruly brush I used and trying to block in so many colors was agony.

Sometime if I feel like it, I might go back and finish some pages that I particularly love, but my focus is going to be finishing this before I make it look nice because if I make it look nice, it’s never gonna get finished. And by god, I want to complete something for once in my life lol

:pensive: i love the way my sketches look

pretty crazy. i’m in the middle of my busiest month i’ve ever had since I started freelancing which sounds stressful but I’m actually having a blast with it, much more so than I used to. I was in 3 Hollow Knight zines that all are wrapped/wrapping up now. and since i’m actually making money I got a flight to visit my partner in a couple weeks. I killed my savings to buy a new computer so I could like... keep my “job” and I only just finally downloaded all my 500 fancy brushes yesterday. i’m probably setting up a studio because i found out its like. illegal to make more than a certain amount of money without being incorporated in certain states.

I’ve been working on nothing but original projects whenever I have the time. This is the first time I’ve really delved in to drawing fanart in a long time and man it felt great actually. even if im really not into ut at all anymore it feels great to just. draw a comic with characters ive been working with for years. it’s so comfortable.

anyways since i got a new computer i dont have my flowey folder anymore so thats why he’s not here

yeah my resolutions are to learn how to use blender (i’ve been crippled by maya tho) and unity. i also made a decade resolution which is to publish original work

<333 im glad you’ve enjoyed it and I hope you still do even without the pretty colors :’)

#not a comic #asks #my entire life storys basically here if anyones curious

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lcngview · 5 years ago

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✈️ — ⌜park jimin, cismale, cis male⌟ ↝ have you heard ? it seems like the heir of the HAE was very close to Liam Yu too. they go by ISAAC and they were Liam's MUSE. their network is of 87M and they’re only TWENTY FOUR … what a burden it must be. i heard they can be very ENERGETIC and LIGHT-HEARTED but these last few months, their RESTLESS and EMOTIONAL personality has been showing more. the media is sure having a filled day with them! i hope this road trip with friends will help them. did you know that LATE NIGHTS AT THE DANCE STUDIO, NEW TATTOOS THAT HIS PARENTS CAN’T SEE, A GRILLED CHEESE WITH TRUFFLE OIL AND HANGING OUT WITH THE FAMILY DOG DURING DINNER PARTIES really show their true persona ? maybe Liam was the only one who knew that.

hello my darlings!! i’m lis and this is my cinnamon roll isaac. he’s a old muse of mine that i’ve decided to repurpose so there’s still some random holes in his backstory i still have to figure out so pls excuse me. i’m kind of a hot mess all the time honestly but ily all already and im v excited to start writing with you! you can find me on discord ( *𝙡𝙞𝙨.#2158 ) or we can just chat on tumblr <3

oh also you can find isaac’s pinterest here! its not totally finished but u know.

basics.

name: isaac hae gender: cis male. age: twenty-four ( 24 ) sexuality: homosexual. birthday: december 14th. zodiac: sagittarius hometown: new york, ny.

physical.

faceclaim: park jimin. hair: naturally black, currently dyed and styled like this. eyes: brown. build: despite his small stature he has an athletic build with strong legs from dancing.

tattoos: [he has a few artsy ones mostly on his back and ribs where his parents can’t see them but i'm too lazy to list them rn, i’ll get to it eventually jfkjsbjk] height: 5′7″

languages: english, korean

+ traits: energetic, light-hearted - traits: restless, emotional

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bio.

↳ isaac hae was born and raised in new york ctiy as the only child to two real estate developers turned luxury hotel owners in december 1996.

↳ his parents weren’t around much when he was growing up so he was raised mostly by the families butler Simon; as a result, isaac isn’t really all that close to his parents. to this day, despite having lived on his own for the past 6 years he still makes it a point to go to the family estate to see Simon when he can.

↳ isaac was around five when his parents began enrolling him in various afterschool activities; soccer, piano, tennis, archery, but he knew he had no interest in doing any of those things. he wanted to dance. after a few months of begging his mother gave in and enrolled him in a contemporary dance school. while his father was never silent about his dislike for his only son being interested in dance isaac never really cared, he barely saw his dad anyways.

↳ it didn’t take long after he started dancing for his teacher to notice his natural talent and isaac quickly became the most skilled dancer in his year, the competition trophies and metals quickly filling up the bookshelf in his bedroom.

↳ when isaac was around twelve his mom was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer almost out of the blue. this dropped a bomb on his relatively normal life up until that point. the next nine months were spent in and out of hospitals as his mom got treatment from the best doctors in the world. despite the fact that he was never all that close to her the fact that she was sick and not getting better made him rethink their relationship, she was his mom after all.

↳ after his mom passed isaac spent the next few years throwing himself into dance more than usual while the relationship with his father quickly deteriorated. the only time his father made it a point to talk to his son was to ask about school and how the college search was going, only interested in the future reputation of the company his son would take over.

↳ isaac eventually graduated high school and ran off to college, wanting to escape being under his father's thumb as quickly as possible. this was where he met liam. the older boy had wandered into the dance studio one day while isaac practiced for an upcoming showcase asking if he could watch and while he was confused at first he eventually agreed.

↳ the first few times all liam did was sit in the corner and watch isaac while he practiced, only asking a few questions but not really speaking much beyond a greeting and saying goodbye. by the third or fourth time liam showed up at the studio he didn’t come empty-handed like normal, instead he had a sketchbook which he had immediately opened once isaac started dancing.

↳ it wasn’t until a few weeks had passed that isaac learned what liam had been doing, why he had continued coming to the studio even after that first time and was now sketching him. he had been painting isaac... and not just once either. after some coaxing liam eventually showed isaac the paintings.

↳ it was from that point on that liam and isaac developed an interesting relationship, anytime the older boy was feeling particularly uninspired he would come watch the younger one dance. isaac wasn’t totally sure what it was about his dancing that inspired liam but he didn’t ask, genuinely enjoying the company as he was usually alone in the studio at night. eventually the two became actual friends, keeping in touch even after liam had graduated.

↳ the next few years isaac spent dancing and working towards his business degree (to appease his father and the board of directors) before eventually graduating and moving into one of the penthouse apartments owned by his father's company in downtown new york city.

↳ despite being in the same city as liam (most of the time), with their crazy schedules it was difficult to see each other as often as either one of them would have liked. but liam still made a point to come to the studio to watch him dance when he had time.

↳ currently isaac works for his dad and dances at a nearby studio whenever he’s not at work.

tldr; isaac is just a dancing cinnamon with some parental issues spurring from his moms death and father just not being around.

------

personality.

isaac can be a sassy little shit when he wants to be, typically always joking around and always in a good mood. it’s very rare to see this boy have an off day. despite this isaac has the most insane worth ethic which is why he is either practicing at the studio or working, rarely letting himself have any sort of off time (he prefers it this way tbh). at the end of the day isaac is really just a giant ball of sunshine wrapped up in a cinnamon roll. all he wants is to be your friend and make sure you feel loved. (he doesn’t always save a lot of that love for himself though asfjhg)

-------

headcanons.

↳ third generation korean-american, his grandparents moved to the states in the early 1960′s.

↳ despite being comfortable with his sexuality he hasn’t totally come out of the closet to his family and doesn’t see that happening anytime soon. outside of his friends, he tries to keep his sexual preferences on the down-low, not wanting the media to get wind of it.

↳ is NOT a morning person, never was and probably never will be. the only time isaac doesn’t have his sunshine personality on full display is in the first couple hours after he wakes up so he makes it a point to avoid everyone until he feels more like himself.

↳ isaac is absolutely terrible about his phone. it’s always dead or broken (despite being able to buy a brand new one) and he almost prefers it that way. this boy always has at least 17 unread texts and 9 missed calls at all times. if you are trying to get in contact with him it’s best to just give up.

↳ while in college he did his best to keep his family's wealth a secret, not wanting people to look at him differently just because he had a large trust fund waiting for him.

↳ it wasn’t until a couple years ago that isaac realized he had a crush on liam and it scared the crap out of him. almost immediately after he came to the realization he knew liam could never find out and shoved the feelings deep down. isaac valued their friendship too much to ruin it but now kind of regrets not saying anything now.

↳ the duality this boy possesses is almost comical. day to day he is just isaac, the ball of sunshine and happiness most people know him to be but the moment he steps into that dance studio he turns into a different person. he becomes the type of person you probably wouldn’t want to bring home to your parents. isaac can turn this side of him on and off like a switch though most of the time he doesn’t realize that he is even doing it in the first place.

#mytime; intro #* ♡ ˙ ˖ ✧ — ⧼ 𝚒𝚜𝚊𝚊𝚌 𝚑𝚊𝚎 ⧽ ⋰ * ✧ intro.#this is almost obnoxiously long #and honestly kinda terrible #so if u make it through i'm v proud

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saiilorstars · 5 years ago

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The Beginning of Everything

Fandom: Doctor Who

Pairing: Female OC x 10th Doctor

(OC Renata’s Face claim: Marjorie de Sousa) (Gabby’s face claim: Victoria Moroles)

// Story Masterlist //

~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~

DISCLAIMER: This chapter’s plotline is from Doctor Who’s comic stories. Most of the dialogue is directly written from the comic. The plot is NOT mine.

Ch. 16: Between the Lies There is Truth

Chapter Summary: The Doctor takes Renata to a quaint town so they can have a talk about Renata’s past. Meanwhile, Donna and Gabby make their own trip to see an old friend.

Unlike Renata who preferred to go out and eat when she spilled a centuries-old secret, the Doctor chose to talk with Donna in the console room. He doubted Renata would be coming back anytime soon. Gabby was probably off in her own room too. It was just going to be him and Donna for the rest of the 'night'.

And starting to talk wasn't that hard, least not the part of how he and Martha ended up in 1913; the Family who was chasing him; the Chameleon arch; hiding amongst humans for 3 months. But then he got to the part where he'd met Renata. That's where it got harder.

Donna could tell it was too. He'd shifted away from her, his sentences became more like fragments with a few stutters here and there. "When did talking about Renata make you this nervous?" she ultimately asked just before he got to the part where he, as John Smith, was going in search of Renata in the nearby town with Matron Joan.

"I don't know!" he defensively said. "This wasn't me!"

"It kinda was," Donna made a face that pretty much told him he was being dramatic. "You sought her out, went looking for her in the town...all cos you wanted to see her."

"That's not true!"

"Yeah? Then what happened afterwards? Did you find her?"

"You know what, I think this story is done!"

"Oh no, spaceman!" Donna latched onto his arm before he would take off on her. "You started the story, now you finish it!" And by the hook she had on his arm, there was no getting out of it.

With a sigh, the Doctor answered in a very quiet tone, "Yes, I did. And she wasn't happy about it! Nearly shut the door in my face!"

Donna let go of his arm but only to laugh.

"It wasn't funny! She practically threw me out so I had to go looking for her in the town where there were no doors!" The Doctor then went on to explain how he'd been responsible for knocking poor Renata out in the town.

Donna may have laughed again and told him that definitely sounded like him. The dynamic between the two Time Lords may in fact be like that. The Doctor was very discouraged to continue, but Donna promised him she'd take him serious and listen from now on. So, he went on.

He told her about the journal John Smith had created, full with his actual memories. He told her about the dance he'd invited Renata to (and how she'd been practically forced to go along with it thanks to Matron Joan), the Family chasing after them, and finally the decision John had to make to save them all. Of course the ending was what got Donna.

She was completely serious then. "Doctor, you mean to tell me you fell in love with Renata?" her eyes were wide and blinking fast.

The Doctor, for his part, was fervently shaking his head. "I-I didn't - John Smith did! He fell in love with her, not me!"

Donna's eyes narrowed on the stammering Time Lord. "Then why are you so defensive about it?"

"I-I'm not!"

Donna raised one eyebrow at him.

"...am I?" the Doctor took a moment to think about things. He looked away from Donna but even when he tried to think about 1913, his mind refused. Each time he thought about it, he remembered everything he did. From the moment he met Renata to the last moment they shared.

But thankfully he had Donna to point out things for him. And she did.

"Doctor, you sought her out-"

"-he did, not me-"

"-you sketched her-"

"-lots of people do that-"

"-you asked her out on a date-"

"-well, I-"

"-and then you kissed her right before you saved the world," Donna finished with a very big smile, though there was a trace of amusement on it. "The 'go big or go home' thing took a whole other level with you. Kind of romantic, in your own alien way."

"Donna," the way the Doctor said her name was more like a plead than anything else. "I didn't...I did more harm than good, okay? And John Smith just going out there and falling in love with her was the worst mistake he ever did."

Donna folded her arms with purpose. "Doctor," she moved up to him with a hard look in her eyes, "Look me in the eyes and tell me that again. Tell me that you mean it."

The Doctor wanted to look away but he just couldn't. And it was frustrating! "I don't know! "You know what? It doesn't even matter! This isn't why I told you the story - it was to show you how I already screwed up, okay? That's what I always do - I screw up."

Donna's face softened once she realized the real point of the story. "You're guilty. You don't ask Renata questions that you want to because you're guilty about what happened in 1913. Whether it's about the deaths or her heart - hearts - you feel guilty."

The Doctor's shoulders slumped as his head hung. "With what face - what audacity - would I go and pry about her past? I can't, Donna. I just can't."

Donna rested a comforting hand on his arm. He wasn't alone in these crazy thoughts and she wanted him to know that. "I get that, I really do, but I also think you are entitled to some answers if she is living in your TARDIS."

"I stole her," he said with a sour smile. "I literally kidnapped her."

"But she still stayed, out of her own accord. She lives here because she wants to, Doctor."

The Doctor had wanted to believe that for a long time too, but there was always an inkling of doubt gnawing in the corner of his mind. Renata was so different from him, the polar opposite actually. Maybe one day she'd grow tired of the way their trips went or even himself and she'd...leave.

"Why don't you let the night pass and then tomorrow you and Renata can go out somewhere, just the two of you," Donna suggested after a few minutes of silence. "Gabby and I can take it easy here while you're out." Just as the Doctor shook his head, Donna added, "You know you want some answers, don't play stupid. Do what I'm suggesting and you'll get some answers."

"What if I push her too much?" there was a clear fear in the Doctor's eyes that made Donna sympathize with him. "And then she wants to leave?"

"She won't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because Renata is fair. If you deserve answers, then she'll give them to you." Donna seemed very sure of what she was saying. It almost let the Doctor to believe it too.

Truth was, he was still scared.

~0~

Renata hadn't slept that well. She'd tossed and turned in her bed, hoping that the world would take pity on her and let her sleep just for a few hours. This was one of the days she actually needed sleep and of course it happened on the day she'd royally screwed up. Just when she'd finally clambered onto some sleepy trance...someone knocked on her door.

That's all the sleep I'm getting, she concluded with a tired yawn. She got up from bed and sleepily walked to the door.

Of course the Doctor stood on the other side. Of course.

"Yeah?" she yawned and brought a hand up to her mouth in an attempt to cover it up.

The Doctor could tell she was incredibly tired. He'd waited as patiently as possible for a few hours of sleep to pass by before gathering courage to come up Renata's door. It didn't look like the waiting had been for anything since it was obvious she hadn't slept at all.

"Uh, I...morning?" As he said that, his expression showed even he was confused. Why would he say that? That's not what he wanted to say at all.

Renata pulled a hand over her hair. "Morning."

"We, um - well, I'd like to...have a word with you," the Doctor finally got it in one go, but now he had to anxiously waiting for Renata's reaction.

She looked nervous but not surprised. "Umm...let me just...let me get changed, okay? I'll meet you in the console room in a bit."

"Sounds good," he nodded. She quickly looked away from him and closed the door. Yeah, she definitely was avoiding him.

Inside her bedroom, Renata was beginning to panic all over again.

She went all over the room looking for something to wear, but the truth was she was making time to think of a good reason to tell the Doctor why she knew the name he had never spoken to her. After about fifteen minutes, Renata finally found the will to get dressed and leave her room. She came out in a button-up, three-quarter sleeve green blouse tucked under a long cream-colored skirt. She pressed down her long hair then took a deep breath before she started for the console room.

Of course the Doctor was nervously waiting for her there. Soon as he saw her coming in, he straightened his body but he might have shifted a few times as she came up to him.

"Where's Donna and Gabriella?" she asked first since, on her way to the room, she hadn't heard a noise. It was almost as if it was just them two again.

"They, uh...Donna asked to be dropped off at home for now," the Doctor rubbed the back of his neck. The request had come at a perfect moment since he wanted to talk with Renata and could do without the questions Gabby kept throwing his way. The girl was curious about Renata's behavior and she wanted answers.

"And Gabriella?" Renata feared for the young girl's attitude towards travelling now. After how she treated Gabby, Renata thought sje might want to leave now before things got worse.

"She's off with Donna. She's never been to England, actually," the Doctor offered Renata a small smile.

"I need to apologize to her," Renata sighed. "I am a terrible teacher."

"She was fine, honestly. You don't need to worry about her."

Renata nodded, but she didn't look very convinced. "So...where are we going, then?"

"Umm, I thought somewhere nice and calm might be good. I know you prefer that."

Renata's eyebrows raised together. "What did you have in mind?"

The Doctor just smiled. He preferred to show her.

~0~

He does listen, Renata concluded when the Doctor led her out of the TARDIS into a quaint town in France. It was far from the nearby city - which so happened to be Paris - but close for Renata to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. As soon as she'd stepped out of the TARDIS, Renata was greeted with a peacefulness that she hadn't had in quite a while.

Not to mention the air smelled sweet. Somewhere, there was a bakery she was sure.

"1923 Sceux," the Doctor walked beside her along the short sidewalk. "Nice town, perfect for visitors just wanting to...talk." The smile on his face was soft and well-intentioned but it was still nerve-wracking for Renata. "And best of all, it is always nice and quiet here."

Renata raised her eyebrows in content. "I'm impressed. You do listen to me sometimes."

"I always listen. Sometimes you just happen to say things I disagree with."

"You mean like checking the environment before you leave the TARDIS?"

"Ah yes, that would be a big one. There's a sense of excitement when you go into the unknown."

"Not really," Renata shook her head, though there was a light smile on her face when she looked away. "Sometimes you can get into real trouble, which I'm sure you've already done before."

"Maybe so."

The Doctor led her towards a small shop on the edge of the street. Renata instantly knew this was the place responsible for the sweet smell in the air. Renata chose to sit in one of the tables outside the shop. She actually really loved the scenery and wanted to soak it up as much as she could.

"Do you like crepes?" the Doctor asked after taking a seat across the table. "They have really good crepes here."

"I've never had one," Renata made a face at the dessert.

The Doctor's mouth fell open in shock. "What!? You've never had a crepe before? How!?"

"Because it's a dessert and far too sweet for my liking," she raised one hand to wave. "I remember Joan liking them but they always had too many things in it."

"Oh, you have no idea what you're missing out on, Renata. You should have one."

"I'm curious, do either one of us have money to pay for what we want to eat here?"

There was a smug look on the Doctor's face when he reached into one of the inside pockets of his coat. He showed her (or rather waved) a couple bills in his hands. "I knew you would ask," he then said because he never carried money otherwise.

"Ah, so you really do know me," Renata looked away in embarrassment.

"Well, bits and pieces of what you tell me. But...I know there's more. You're 756, how could there not be, right?" Renata's face expressed a guilt the Doctor picked up on fast. "Oh I didn't mean you're obligated or anything, I just...I mean…"

"It's alright, Doctor," Renata cut into his panic moment. She knew he meant well - he always did. "You have questions and...I owe you some answers." It's just she didn't exactly want to give them. "Go ahead, ask away." Truth was...she was scared. She'd kept this lie going longer than she thought she'd be capable of and now telling him scared her even more. He would be angry with her, so angry. It would be a natural reaction but it was a reaction that, lately, had been keeping her up at night when she desperately wanted to sleep.

"I'm not going to pry into your past lives but...there are some things that just don't make sense," the Doctor admitted. "Specifically things around you and me. Like...how do you know so much about me?"

"Everyone knew who you were back on Gallifrey," Renata started with the technicalities of honesty. "You...did a lot of things that earned you a reputation."

"Yeah, but...certain...things about myself are things that only someone who actually knew me would know."

"Like?"

"Let's start with the fact you seemed to know, straightaway, that my inventions don't usually work. How would you know that?"

"I…" Renata knew she didn't have the right answer to that she didn't want to give away her real identity.

The Doctor waited a decent amount of time before he started coming up with his own ideas...that he shared out loud. "I mean, there's also the facts that you didn't want me around back in 1913 and it wasn't due to what I did to Gallifrey," - and just as Renata opened her mouth to retort, the Doctor added - "You told me that. You didn't even care what I did. That means you had something else against me." And the fact he still didn't know what it was, irked him. She had no reason to despise him like that if it wasn't for what he did in the war. He tried, often times, to convince himself that it really was the reason why she hated him in the beginning. But in the end, he knew that was a lie. There was something else about him that made her despise him and he wanted to know why. "And then there's the name…" his eyes seemed to bore into Renata's, making the Time Lady lose air suddenly. "A name that you shouldn't know. A name that only I, in this present world now, would ever know. Zuriah. How do you know that name?"

Renata swallowed hard. This was it. The pivotal moment that would change everything between them if she dared to answer with the truth. It was her chance to come clean; a chance to finally rid herself of the guilt she carried.

But it was also the moment she had feared for so long. Her stomach churned at the thought of his reaction, his fury. He would surely think she'd been playing him, making fun of him. All the things he told her so far about himself, some of them included things of Zuriah…

Tell him Renata.

Tell him right now!

Renata opened her mouth, bit it was incredibly dry.

Tell him and get it over with!

Do it!

Do i-

"I'm…" Renata swallowed hard, feeling something sharp at the end of her mouth. "I...knew her."

~0~

"How did you get us in here so easily?" Gabby quietly asked Donna despite being alone in an office...of UNIT. Without much struggle, Donna had gotten them into the UNIT headquarters. The place was high-tech and secure, which only led Gabby to be even more confused how they pretty much just walked in like nothing.

"Oh, we recently had a run-in with UNIT," Donna leaned against the desk behind her. "You know the ATMOS car incident?"

Gabby's eyes widened as she remembered the catastrophic event. "Yeah. Those were done by the aliens, huh?"

"Oh yeah," Donna folded her arms. "Big time. Well, the reason the Doctor and Renata even knew about it was because an old friend called them."

"An old friend? You mean, someone they know works in UNIT?" Gabby asked just a second before the office door opened.

Dr. Martha Jones walked in with a smile indicating her surprise to see Donna back. "I thought they were kidding when they said Donna Noble was requesting to see me…"

Donna smiled back at the woman. "I never kid."

"It's nice to see you again," Martha chuckled and hugged the woman. "What's it been for you? I hope not years. I'd be terribly offended."

"Nah, just 2 months."

"Good." Martha pulled away and turned her head in Gabby's direction. The young girl had been studying Martha since she'd walked in. "And this is…?"

"New companion - Renata's companion, actually," Donna gestured to Gabby who started to silently wave.

"Renata's companion?" Martha caught the words fast. Her eyes were wide, clearly stunned, but a smile slowly started making its way across Martha's face. She almost laughed even. "Really?"

"Yeah," Donna nodded then looked at Gabby. "Well, c'mon, talk! You can definitely talk!"

Gabby was well aware she was being weird again, but something about meeting a previous companion of the Doctor's and Renata's made her incredibly nervous. Donna told her they were visiting an old friend but...this woman seemed way put together. She was a doctor at UNIT. It was a bit intimidating. It meant that Renata and the Doctor made friends with important people.

"I'm Martha Jones," Martha took initiative and held out a hand to shake Gabby's.

"G-Gabby Gonzalez," the girl shook hands with Martha, but it was done in a trembling manner. "S-sorry. I-I'm sort of new and…"

"It's all still a wonder, huh?" Martha laughed, totally understanding it. She figured she must have worn Gabby's stunned face for at least the first two adventures she had with the Doctor. "Totally natural. But I'm really glad to know that Renata took on a companion. I never thought she would! You must be one hell of a girl to make her do that."

Gabby blushed. "I-I didn't think so, but..."

"You are," Martha told her again. She then moved around her desk to take a seat. "And I never thought you'd come visit me. Are Renata and the Doctor alright?" she asked in a tone that made Gabby wonder if something bad happened even before she arrived to the TARDIS. She looked at Donna and saw that the ginger had also gone a bit grim.

"They're moving on from Jenny," Donna assured Martha, "But now they're sort of having problems between them."

"Oh Donna, you have no idea how long that's been going on," Martha sighed. She presumed that Donna still didn't know about their past, so Martha would keep out the fact that Renata and the Doctor had been having problems before any of them were even born. "I assume neither of them know that you're here?"

"Yeah," nodded Donna. "I told the Doctor I was just visiting home while he and Renata went off somewhere else. Gabby hadn't seen England so the Doctor never asked."

"They're off together, then?" Martha raised an eyebrow, a hint of a smile trying to spread across her face.

"Not in that sense," Donna gradually took a seat across and prompted Gabby to do the same. "Although now I'm starting to sense that type of vibe from them. I mean, I had before too but I didn't know whether to believe it or not."

"Alright, so to what do I owe this visit?"

"Honestly, we want to know more about Renata but...that Time Lady doesn't really talk, does she?"

Now Martha scrunched her face. "Yeah, not really. Took me a whole year to crack her shell but even then it was a struggle. Still is."

"We're not being nosy, we just want to know why Renata is the way she is," Donna said then glanced at Gabby. The girl would never say it so straight-forwards but she was thinking the same thing as Donna.

"It doesn't make sense," Gabby ultimately added. "There were some...things that happened to us on my first trip and...when I tried talking to Renata about them, specifically the things concerning her, she snapped. It was like I trespassed into a different world...one where I didn't belong."

Martha figured Gabby must have prodded (accidentally) into Renata's love life and elicited the wrath of the terrified, love-stricken Renata. God knew that was a side of Renata no one should have to deal with. "I'm sure Renata feels terrible about that," Martha said first. "And if she hasn't apologized then I'm sure she will in a matter of time."

"It's okay," Gabby sighed. "I don't want to anger Renata by saying the wrong words. She's my teacher but...I'd like to see her as a friend too."

"And we're in luck," Donna mused with a smirk on her face as she gestured to Martha, "Because Dr. Jones here is Renata's only friend up to date; she's the only one Renata actually confides in. Don't know how you got her to do that."

Martha playfully rolled her eyes. "It's not a big deal."

"Yeah, because you already have what we want."

"Listen, Renata is a...complicated woman. She's sort of like the Doctor: she has so many secrets because she's so old."

"She's 756," Donna remembered from her breakfast with Renata.

"She's 756!?" Gabby repeated in shock. "But she doesn't look like she'd be!" Anyone would say that Renata looked like a woman in her early thirties. Everything about her screamed elegance and classiness.

"The Doctor's 902," Martha said just to see Gabby's stunned reaction again. It was rather fun being on the other side of the conversation, especially since Gabby was much younger than her and Donna. "They're the type of aliens that don't show signs of age...except in the eyes. If you look closely into their eyes, you can see just how ancient they are."

"I...I never thought to do that," Gabby scrunched her face. "What kind of aliens are they? I've asked Renata but all she says is that she's a Time Lady. What's that even mean?"

"They're from a planet called Gallifrey, but they don't really like to talk about it," Martha explained, figuring she could help Renata by making Gabby avoid that topic altogether. "Their planet is gone. That subject is truly raw for them so...don't bring that up unless they do."

"Got it," Gabby dutifully said as if she were taking notes. And maybe she was...in her mind.

"They never really talk," Donna sighed. "I mean, I just got the Doctor to tell me about 1913 with Renata. You were there, huh, Martha? When that happened?" Martha solemnly nodded. "The Doctor's still very guilty about that, you know. It's why he allows Renata to keep her entire life bottled away from him."

"Well, Donna, she's not obligated to tell the Doctor anything about herself," Martha felt the need to point out.

"No," agreed Donna. "But there are some things that she should say. And I think she should probably start with why she hated the Doctor from the gecko. It was 1913 and Renata slammed the door in his face when he hadn't done anything to her." And the more Donna watched Martha uncomfortably shift in her chair, the more she suspected Martha knew a lot more about that incident than the poor Doctor did.

~ 0 ~

The Doctor was stunned; beyond stunned actually. Renata had just admitted to knowing the one person he had loved the most in his lives. "You...you knew Zuriah?"

Renata absolutely hated herself right now, despised herself. How could she have told him that type of lie!? When had her mind come up with that incredibly stupid answer!? She had the chance to come clean and she blew it.

Like always, she blew it.

"Y-yes…" she brought a hand to her warm forehead.

"What - and you never said!? Even when I told you her name!?" there was that hint of anger Renata feared. She could only imagine his reaction if she'd told him the straight truth.

"I-I panicked," she said. That wasn't a total lie. "You...you know how Zuriah was...what you and her...what you...were…"

"She told you," the Doctor stated, getting his confirmation from her lowered gaze. "She told you about us? How...I am very confused here. Zuriah never told anyone about us. She was embarrassed of us-"

"-no," Renata cut in sharply. She may be a liar and a terrible person but she would not allow him to ever think that about her. "She wasn't embarrassed of you. She was just aware that the relationship was a dangerous one. But she was never embarrassed of you."

The Doctor still didn't seem very convinced. "I just...I don't understand...how did you two…"

"We worked for foundations," Renata said, thinking it was the easiest (and logical) reason to give. If she was going to go with the lie then she might as well make it work. "She led her own foundation. Our paths ultimately crossed."

"And how did you two get so close enough that she would tell you about us?"

"We just clicked. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't think it would be important."

"It is," the Doctor nearly snapped. "Do you realize I have never met anyone else who knew about Zuriah? After things ended between us, it was like she disappeared. She made herself disappear."

"She regenerated," Renata bit her lip. If anything, this lie would at least allow her to divulge information that wouldn't give her up but would give some clarifications on things like these. "She regenerated a bit before she graduated. You can imagine that, after the way you two ended, she wouldn't want you to see her anymore."

"So her regeneration came as a blessing then," the Doctor shook his head with a sour smile on his face. "Right. Because I was always a nuisance."

"Don't say that," she scolded, but it just irritated him even more.

"I was! I loved Zuriah so much that I was willing to leave everything behind just for her. I asked her to run away with me, to get out of Gallifrey where it wouldn't matter if we were together...and you know what she said, right?" the sourness that covered the Doctor's face was so uncharacteristic of him, it pained Renata.

The blonde Time Lady gave a small nod of her head. Her face was guilt-ridden, but the Doctor didn't notice due to his own feelings. "She said no…" she whispered her answer.

"Yeah," the Doctor nodded. "Because, I guess, in the end...we were too different. She was a proper, high-class woman and I was just too...me."

"You were high class too," Renata pointed out.

"But I didn't act like one."

"Doctor-"

"-and I guess no matter how hard I tried making Zuriah live her best life, she just wasn't all the way convinced. And you know that. She had to have told you…"

Renata chewed on her lower lip until she felt the oozy blood on her tongue. "Doctor, just stop! If there is anything you need to be sure of is that Zuriah loved you so much! She was a scared, naive girl that should have said 'yes' but...her circumstances..." Renata couldn't say more, she just couldn't. If she started going into full details on why she had to say no to his proposition all those centuries ago, she would definitely break down. "Doctor, you have to believe me when I tell you that Zuriah loved you so much. You were always the love of her life."

~ 0 ~

"You know why Renata hated the Doctor so much, don't you?" Donna asked Martha. The UNIT employee nodded her head.

"I am so confused," Gabby admitted quietly. "I-I just got on board and suddenly there's so many secrets and backstories I-I don't know what to think or say."

"Gabby," Martha gave the young girl a kind smile, "I'm not going to lie, having Renata as your teacher is going to be a bit...complicated. She's a reclusive woman but it's not because she doesn't like you. She's just been a cautious woman all her lives that...it's become a part of her personality."

"Lives?" Gabby picked up on first. "And what do you mean she's been cautious?"

"Yeah, I'd like that explanation too actually," Donna pointed.

"It's those secrets," Martha told them both. "Renata's had them all her lives. She's learned to be cautious at a young age and she's just gotten used to it now."

"What kind of secrets could she have?" Gabby asked.

"She's 756," Martha reminded. "Her secrets may not be as dangerous as the Doctor's - because he's traveled so much - but Renata's secrets are very powerful too. They could hurt some...people...very badly."

"What - so she just carries them around like a burden?" Gabby frowned. "But that's...that's insane! She can't tell anyone!?"

Martha shook her head. "I'm afraid she chooses not to."

"But you know?"

Martha then nodded. "But I'm not the person that would alleviate those burdens."

"It's the Doctor," Donna deduced quickly. "I knew there was something going on between those two."

"Donna," Martha tilted her head, but the ginger shook her head.

"No! This just confirms one thing you know?"

Martha dreaded what Donna might come up with.

"Renata has feelings for the Doctor, doesn't she?"

Gabby's eyes were wide as could be. Was Donna really right!? She looked to Martha to see any indication of the answer…

~ 0 ~

"I never understood why Zuriah said no to me." There was a type of distance on the Doctor's face as he spoke. He was remembering the pure anger on Zuriah's face when she turned down his offer to run away. There were lots of tears in her eyes and her screams could have echoed in the building. "I mean, on some level I knew that I was, inherently, asking her to leave her family for me but...I thought she would say yes, because she loved me and...we wanted to be together above all."

Renata blinked fast to get rid of tears in her eyes. She remembered it too. The images had stayed so clear despite the centuries that passed by. She would never forget that night - it'd been the worst moment of her lives. "Family is important, Doctor. It was to her. But you know what? She loved you the most, she did it for you."

"For me?" the Doctor scoffed so harsh that Renata flinched in her seat. "She said 'no' to me...for me?"

There was one secret that she just couldn't bring herself to say, the very one that was the core reason she declined his proposition, but that one was just too painful. "I know it's terrible but trust me. Besides, there were more things in the play. If she had said yes, she would've broken an innocent man's hearts."

"But she broke mine instead," the Doctor said quietly. "She chose everything above me. But I can't fault her, can I? Because that would make me selfish. But sometimes...sometimes I think…" he sighed, "How would things have turned out if she had come with me? I would have...showed her the world. Anything she wanted, I would have given it to her. I would've told her each and every day how much I loved her. And who knows, maybe she would still be alive right now."

Renata's face softened. She couldn't help it now; her tears rolled down her cheeks. It was too late now to say the truth. She'd dug her own hole and now she would die in it. Still, her feelings pushed her to do one more thing.

She got up from her chair and moved to the Doctor's. She didn't pull up another seat but instead wrapped her arms around him for a tight hug. It was a surprise for the Doctor but he accepted it nonetheless. She always had such nice, soft, warm hugs. He'd be mad to turn one down.

~ 0 ~

"I cannot confirm nor deny that," Martha cleared her throat and pushed her desk chair forwards.

"Oh please," scoffed Donna. "You're Renata's best friend. She had to have told you that."

"Donna, it's not my secret to tell-"

"-yeah, but I know it now," Donna said with a straight-forwards face. "It makes sense. And I suppose it would make sense that doesn't want to outright tell the Doctor things about her life if it included her marriage and whatnot."

"Okay, hold on," Gabby spoke up and for the first time since they'd arrived at UNIT, she spoke not out of nervousness. "We're no one to pry into that possible love story. We only came here to figure out why Renata acted so reclusive and we got that, Donna. She just has a lot of secrets and, even though I wish we could help her...we can't force her. Least now we know to be a bit more understanding."

Martha slowly smiled at the girl. "You're going to do wonders for my Ren." Gabby took the compliment with a beam. "Would you ladies like to grab a cup of coffee before you head back?"

Gabby exchanged a glance with Donna then both nodded.

"Lead the way, Dr. Jones!"

~ 0 ~

When the Doctor and Renata finally returned for Donna and Gabby, the two women were back in Donna's home as if they'd never went in search of Martha.

"Oh, it smells kind of nice," Donna sniffed the air in the console room. "Like chocolatey…"

Renata raised a white box in her hands. "French crepe. I thought maybe you and Gabriella might like one. I tried one myself and I had to admit it was rather nice."

"Told you," the Doctor flashed her a smug smile from across the console. She rolled her eyes and looked at Donna again.

"So you two are fine, then?" the ginger asked the two aliens while slowly taking the box from Renata.

"Yeah," the Doctor was the one to answer. He gave Renata a smile that she returned. "Did us some good to be alone and talk."

Renata only wished she could have done more...but she was a full-blown coward. And one day, she was sure, it would come back to bite her. Still, it did seem to do some good talking. Least the Doctor didn't look at her with suspicion anymore. Of course now he felt free to mention Zuriah more often so that would be fun later on.

"Enjoy the crepe," the Doctor told Donna and Gabby. "They're the finest, if I say so myself."

"You probably do," Donna playfully rolled her eyes. "C'mon Gabby, let's have us a sweet snack!" She headed for the hallways, but just as Gabby was about to follow, Renata called her aside.

Needless to say Gabby was more than nervous as Renata brought her into the first door the hallway would give. "Look, I'm so sorry!" the girl blurted as soon as Renata closed the door behind her. "I shouldn't have asked so many questions about yourself! I'm really sorry! But please don't bring me back to Earth!"

"Oh Gabriella, I would never," Renata sighed. She was so responsible for screwing Gabby up so badly. "I'm the one who needs to apologize. I should have never yelled at you like that, much less threatened you like that. You should know that...that I have a very hard time getting along with people. I-I'm not that good at socializing. I don't get human social queues very well due to a lack of travelling."

"Oh," Gabby blinked. She'd learned from Martha that Renata did indeed have difficulty making friends, but she wasn't expecting Renata to confess that herself. The way Martha put it, Gabby shouldn't be expecting anything from Renata in terms of conversations.

"And you should know one more thing," Renata drew in a deep breath before confessing, "Everything I said back in the gallery - all the information I told you about the art work - wasn't coming from me. I sort of...read the Doctor's mind to know the information."

"Come again?" Gabby tilted her head. "You can read minds?"

"Not 'read minds' per say, but...we can sort of telepathically communicate and see into each other's minds. The Doctor, of course, knows all about that gallery since he was the one who visited it all the time, not me. He was the one who knew about the artwork and he...he let me see into his mind in order to make you believe that I knew the artwork." Renata sighed and awkwardly folded her arms over her chest. She was even shifting on her feet which truly surprised Gabby, because up until now she hadn't seen Renata be nervous. "The truth is, Gabriella, I can't be a teacher to you because I don't know anything. I haven't traveled much - in fact I only started a couple months ago. The Doctor should be your teacher. You should be his companion. I'm not apt for that job. I'm sorry." She couldn't face Gabby out of sheer embarrassment. Admitting you were useless wasn't something easy to do, but Renata felt she should at least do one good thing today and if it wasn't towards the Doctor then Gabby should be next.

"That's not true," Gabby's response drew Renata's gaze again. The girl didn't look very disappointed, or upset, by Renata's words. "You're wonderful. And, yeah you might not know everything but...no one does."

"The Doctor does," Renata smiled. "He'd be a great teacher."

"Okay," shrugged Gabby. "Then he could be our teacher, but I want to be your companion."

"Why?" there was an honest confusion in Renata's tone, and expression, that motivated Gabby to explain it thoroughly so that Renata wouldn't have a doubt in her mind.

"Because you're classy, you're proper and, you're an alien that still acts like...well, a human. I mean, you remind me of my Mom. You give stability and in a place like this-" Gabby gestured to the TARDIS, "-where everyday is danger and unpredictability, I really need someone to bring home back to me. And I don't mean home as my actual home on Earth but... you teaching me that my home can be anywhere. Because home isn't just where you live, it's where you feel nice and warm and...happy. And you give that to the Doctor and Donna. Plus, you see things differently than the Doctor. You're more...elegant, and you act in a way that makes me want to follow. I don't want to be you, but I'd like to be a better version of myself and I'd like my teacher to be you."

Gabby actually brought tears to Renata's eyes. "Oh Gabby," Renata pulled her into a tight hug, the action startling since Martha had warned Gabby that Renata also wasn't the touchy-type. "Thank you so much."

"Uh, no, thank you," Gabby patted Renata's back. These aliens were so strange. When they pulled apart, Gabby only had one more thing to say. "So, about what the alien said about your song…what did it mean it would end sooner?"

"I'm not sure-"

"-I think you do. Are we ever going to tell the Doctor about it?"

"No," Renata said without even a moment of thought. "I don't want him to know."

"But it sounds really important and...well, isn't that sort of a prediction about your...death? 'Your song will end sooner'. That's got to mean that you'll die earlier?"

"Gabby, it doesn't matter," Renata tried to be casual about it. "Because guess what? Even if I do die, my people are the type that when you die you just change faces and it's a done deal. I would just get a new body and move on. So we need to move on too." She offered a big smile as she headed for the door. "Now go and have that crepe with Donna. It's truly delicious. Couldn't get rid of the Doctor's smug face after I told him that. Go on."

Gabby nodded and walked out, but she wasn't able to let go of that topic like Renata wanted her to. Without even realizing, Renata had given Gabby one powerful reason not to let go. Renata had called her 'Gabby' instead of her full name. Renata vowed that she would never use nicknames in place of a person's name. She had to be nervous. She had to be scared. And why shouldn't Renata be scared?

Death was coming for her and earlier than previously thought.

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