#and i loved seeing the few survivors drawing a line and saying 'enough is enough; this isn't right'

[ctcaptaincorgi]

Ok, so I JUST finished my first playthrough of KOTOR 2. I played light side female. And we gotta talk. First, I actually gasped when I saw Carth and Bastila talking about Revan because I remember seeing a recording of Bastila that was meant for Revan, but that's only after I got enough influence with T3-M4 so I thought I'd never see her again. So I was VERY happy to see her without having to pry that information from T3's cold dead hands.

I found that a lot of the stuff that set up Revan to be gone for 300+ years, seemed to have been seeded in this dear game. I will say, one thing I hate about playing KOTOR 2 is the very depressing thought that in less than a year after the end of the game, the exile is going to die trying to save Revan. I like happy endings, and that's always denied from the main characters. So to cope, because I'm already needing a new desk top wallpaper anyway, I'm drawing a little scene of Revan and Meetra with some of their companions being happy after successfully killing Vitiate's current body. Scourge can see whatever visions of the Hero of Tython killing the Emperor all he likes, but I seriously need the KOTOR protagonists to have happier endings. Like, Revan can be captured for 5-6ish years no problem for the angst. But I need him coming back to Coruscant to be a dedicated Jedi, husband to Bastila, and father to Vaner. I need that so badly. Also, a thought occured to me. Revan doesn't have his own last name, because the last name that got passed down through the family, is Shan (e.g. Satele Shan and Theron Shan). So... Is Revan's current legal name Revan Shan? That's my head cannon.

ANYWAY, I honestly liked a lot that Nihilus doesn't really... Speak at all. The sounds that comes from him are almost that of an Eldritch horror because of how otherworldly they are. It really sells to me that he truly isn't human anymore. He is ONLY his hunger power. And prior to facing Nihilus, I let Visas meditate, which I didn't realize could've impacted the fight and her ultimate fate until I got the pop up to tell me I got LS points and that she has come to terms with the death of her world and likely some of the survivor's guilt and hatred towards Nihilus. I really wonder what would've happened if I said no. Welp, something to try out next time.

Those beasts on Malachor were freaky. I don't have much else to say, but I needed to say that. I'll be real, I had heard years ago that Sion was in love with the female exile, and while playing I was kinda like, "I don't know what kind of death sticks those people were smoking to get this mass delusion" but then, I was talking to him before facing Traya. And yeah, he was at least attracted to her. He still tried to kill me to spare me from getting broken by Traya. But y'all didn't contour that idea from nowhere.

Also, Atris used my character as bait to lure out the sith. Yay... Atris is honestly interesting in this respect. She hates the sith so much, that she justified her feelings and learning about them to stop them so much that she became like the very thing she despised. I still don't like her, but it's interesting.

Also, Kreia's line about falling really hits hard. "It's a quiet thing to fall..." But I truly love the reasoning behind Kreia's Darth name being so literal. I remember having a conversation with my brother about how most sith names seem to be a negative word and then remove or add a few letters. He asked for examples so I was like, "Plagueis = plague, Sidious = insidious, Nihilus = nihilation, Traya = betrayal" I honestly thought it was a bit silly for a sith Lord to want to destroy the source of her power, but her reason for hating the force is such a sithy reason because she hates that the force seems to have a will of its own and tries to control others. Being a sith is about assorting control and with the ultimate goal of never being the one controlled. So from the sith's perspective, it actually makes a bit of sense.

I decided to ask Traya before she died about what would happen to the various worlds I visited and my companions. I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE MANDALORE BEING CANDEROUS ORDO. In this run I at least attempted to get everyone on the Jedi train, so they're the lost Jedi that were alluded to earlier in the game. She was able to tell me pretty much about all of them (Mira, Visas, and the Disciple) but when I asked about Atton she was like, "That idiot? The force will favor him as it does with all fools." And I saw the option to ask if Atton loves the exile and Traya's like "Stupid is as stupid does". She for real spent her final moments prophesizing about the long lives of my other companions and that they'll lead happy, better lives for having known the exile, and then is just dissing Atton. Like I might for real make something about this because it was just so funny to think about.

So for my next playthrough of this game, I'm moving on to the restored content modded version. Because I couldn't take it sometimes with the regular switch version.

[unlimited-sciuridae]

Dazzledoll Ship Chart!

Wooo okay so I was too tired to do this last night so let's break it down. Because my ass over thought everything buckle up and you will see my vision!

What it felt like doing this at 3am:

let's start with the art I put Mimzy in a dress I designed after her "flapper" dress, a subtle hint about how Vel likes to dress her up. Mimz is posses for a fan photo and Vel is taking a selfie.

Height: Velvette gives angry short person vibes so no she won't tell her height- fuck off. Mimzy is cutesie about it as "fun size". Honestly figuring out the height of shorter characters is difficult. Vox and Alastor are 7 feet tall and both ladies go up to the men's shoulders. Scale is so wonky, I suppose that would make them actually 6 feet? But then Charlie is 6' 6" and Lucifer is shorter than her commonly thought of as 6' :

Here mimzy and Luci are closer to the viewer so all and all mimzy is probably 5'10"ish. They'd be the same height. They aren't short just surrounded by giants. Niffty is short though, like 3 feet? Anyway.

Age: I answer this as age at time of death and not chronological age. I headcanon Vel is a "new adult" she's described as the youngest of the Vees. Mimzy won't say a lady never does. But late 20s maybe 31 at the oldest is my headcanon.

Relationship status: They live for the drama its on again off again and a few times they "broke up" because it was a publicity stunt.

Gender: This is actually a Lil juicy. I'm a fat woman the reason I put Lady is that I'm gifting my gender whoahs to her. She's used to being degendered by assholes who want to "put her in her place" for being too self confident and fat. Don't get it wrong people have the right to get pissy she does underhanded things but she doesn’t like the feeling of having her identity as a lady denied. Lady was the ultimate gendered compliment in her time, you should treat a lady a certain way, be nice to a lady ectra.

Velvette has had similar experiences along the lines of degendering and masculization of woc. Vel grew up when she likely had racists treat her differently than they would a white woman. Her femininity was ignored if she was too loud and opinionated- stereotyped. Different lenses to view womanhood and what it means to deserve your gender.

Sexuality: Vel is a confirmed Lesbian 🎉 and Mimzy is "sapphos sister" which isn't actually a period accurate term persay but I think it describes her pretty well. My headcanon is that shes likely m-spec with a preference for men but isn't afraid to explore her Sapphic side.

Occupation: Pretty straight forward, in the playbill it mentions Mimzy owning a club at a point and I headcanon that's her ideal job now. She can sing as much as she wants. She used to want to be a movie star but she mostly gave up on that because movies in hell are not to her taste.

Both are extroverts, Mimzy less so. She's used to smaller crowds of people on her wheras Vel is handling thousands.

Everyone knows when they are together and when they aren't they do have enough self awareness not to talk mad shit when broken up by playing coy about things.

Vel would kill for the people she cares about and has the power to back it up. Mimzy was always a bit squeamish about murder at least directly with a knife. She would put out a hit on someone or poison them. Her main issue is that she has very little power. It's more in her nature to be a bit selfish but if she loves you she'll die for you or with you. Bonnie and Clyde or Thelma and Louise. She's more of a sentimental romantic in that way imo. Vel will kill you or put out a hit on you or use her magic to make your gaudy scarf choke you to death. She a survivor by nature, she won't die for you but she will make your death everyone elses problem.

Vel takes a while to fall in love and like I mentioned Mimz is sentimental and a romantic falling faster.

Vel is messy in crunch time but will clean up, Mimz works better in choas.

I purposely draw them switching spoon order it depends on whose feeling which role. Mimzy slightly prefers little spoon but not by much.

Mimz can cook a limited amount of food very well. Vel I imagine died in the early 2000s and like I see a lot in British media had more take away and convince food with her mom cooking when she could at home. Vel didn't get to learn her mom's recipes. Now as a powerful Vee she has a chef and will sometimes eat hells version of microwave Ramen when homesick. Both are sentimental about food and flavors. "Coke hasn't been the same since they removed the cocaine" and since Europe in general has stricter food additive laws Vel would probably lament the way a certain chemical tasted good but can't get anymore. Mimz would try to recreate Vels mom's food for Vel.

Vel finds being in love (vs lust) unsettling. She's had her guard up for so long. Mimz actually loves the way love makes her feel wild and out of control.

Because of my 2000s headcanon Vel has had more dates and attempts at relationships. Mimz had her fair share but just not as much. Both eras (and today) have stigmas about dating around but it's easier to find like minded people now.

If I understand this scale right they both like to do stuff like this:

Whenever possible but due to height they don't get to that often. See above: surrounded by giants. If one of them is standing and someone else is sitting its open arm rest season.

Because of their nature of on again off again it's hard to tell but mimz is much more comfortable with a long term relationship with Vel whereas at least for now Vel can feel overwhelmed. The longer they are together they'll sus out their issues. Have a few mean fights about it. They are a messy couple with ups and downs and I love it. I did draw them getting married before but who knows if that'd be where they actually end up in my own headcanons.

Fundamentally they are attention seeking creatives. They are creatives in different areas which allows them not to sabotage each other.

Whats the appeal I take to mean as what they see in each and like it says they match each other's freak. Both are this guy:

If you gotta get people murdered for art so be it.

Howd they meet was so fun to imagine! Someone with a cell phone recorded a song at Mimzys club and it went viral. Which put Mimz on Vels radar.

(Actually it'd be hilarious if Vox is trying to remember where he knows Mimzy from as a running gag in the relationship. Velvette doesn't give a shit that Mimzy knows Alastor but thinks its hilarious that Vox can't remember and is letting his old man show)

A note on font: I wanted fonts to show their styles and then a generic font for other information. Basically implying they wrote some of it and I the creator wrote some of it.

[dingergum]

(Characters are from @canisalbus)

Something very different from what i usually draw and from my last Vaschete fanart. I love those guys so i really wanted to make more fanart, but i didn't know what to draw exactly.

Here, i tried to paint Machete, Vasco and Smollchete in the style of the character portraits in Disco Elysium. I don't think i quite achieved that effect, but i still liked the end results.

Smollchete is further away from the usual character portraits in DE, but it was on purpose because i wanted to emphasize how he's just a little guy. And the little guy gets smaller and smaller...

In retrospective (because i finished this art a few days ago) Disco Elysium's style of painting doesn't really seem to mix the colors, which i did a lot here, specially on Machete. Also not a lot of gradients like i did on Vasco. They also shade with much more wild and different colors.

I'm going to put all the rest of my madman ramblings below. It's long and your mileage may vary if you played Disco Elysium or not (no spoilers tho.)

---

Okay, so... As i had the idea of making these disco elysium style portraits but with the gay catholic dogs, i had just beaten Disco Elysium. And so, as i was doing my things in my day to day life, waiting for the opportunity to actually draw them, i kept thinking about skill interactions with the boys, like if your main character talked to them and had enough points in the skill.

Things like Half-light identifying Machete as a brutal and hardened survivor just by looking at his eyes, but Physical Instrument doesn't believe that because Machete looks like just a spindly noodle. And Half-light would be like no bro, trust me, this guy is hardcore.

Shivers or Spirit-de-Corps would tell you how Machete is treated among his fellow bishops and how he's either vilified or seen as a tool. And at that Inland Empire would pipe in saying “He is treasured. But not here.” because yeah we love him. Despite almost everyone in his world hating his guts

Also yeah Reaction Speed clocking Machete as super paranoid. Specially considering maybe in this universe you'd be investigating one of his assassination attempts or maybe even something sinister that Machete had done.

Reaction Speed: “His eyes dart across the room, checking if you have any backup. Then, a twitch of the ear, followed by a sideways glance." Logic: "He is making sure he isn't being flanked.” Inland Empire: “But he's all alone...”

I also feel like Rhetoric would have a field day with Machete. Like, finally, a worthy opponent.

Empathy would get the feeling that despite his reputation, that there is someone else behind Machete's bug eyes, someone other than Machete, the pale eminence. If you have enough points in a skill, it would try to pipe in saying who they think it is, judging Machete (e.g: Authority: "A man superior to you."; Pain Threshold: "It's just sweet pain all the way to the bone."; Half-Light: "A survivor."; Encyclopedia: "The inside lining of the eye is covered by special light-sensing cells that are collectively called the retina. It converts light into electrical impulses. Behind the eye, your optic nerve carries these impulses to the brain. The macula is a small extra-sensitive area in the retina that gives you central vision.") concluding with Drama: "No one he'd want you to know, sire."

That would trigger a dialogue option for an Empathy white check to try and see who's actually behind Machete's eyes and see beyond his reputation and demeanor. I'd imagine you would get a +2 if you talked to Vasco before. And if you pass the check, the screen would go white and Machete's model and portrait would change to Smollchete and you'd be able talk to him for a moment, the little guy, and learn a little bit more about his backstory, stuff that he hides behind the Machete persona. That's why i painted Smollchete too. I don't think Empathy has this same kind of metaphysical effect like others skill in-game, but i thought it would be cool.

Talking to Vasco for the first time would just straight up heal you 1 morale. No skill check necessary. Here, have some free morale.

Your Encyclopedia would recognize his coat of arms and maybe deduce that Vasco is a diplomat or a politician. Then your Composure would tell you straighten your posture and put up your serious face, Suggestion would tell you to flatter him while adressing him strictly formally, but the two of them would be thrown off-kilter as Vasco starts acting very casual and down-to-earth. Maybe Authority would judge his attitude to be unfitting of someone in such position. Idk. This is all random ramblings that were bouncing in my head that i needed to let out.

Hope this isn't too weird, i just had a lot of time between having the idea to draw this and actually sitting down to draw it, so these ideas were just popping up in my head. I wish i could've just put those in the tags, but it waaaay exceeds the tag limit.

[panharmonium]

@dreamersscape​ - in response to your notes on that other post, oh my gosh, YES, i didn’t even write anything up about Guy, but he really was a HERO in these episodes.  You described it so well - his way of taking care of Kakashi is clumsy sometimes, but it’s in such a pure way that it doesn’t matter.  

I remember thinking something along the same lines after I finished Season 10, when I saw that episode where Kakashi is about to be named Hokage and Guy challenges him to a footrace - I loved that one so much, because it was right after Kakashi and the kids got back from that horrible confrontation with Sasuke, and I remember I felt terrible because Kakashi was coming back from a situation where he a) discovered the real history behind what happened with Itachi and the Uchiha clan, and b) thought he was going to have to kill his own kid, and then before he even has a chance to breathe, the village is like “someone needs to step in as hokage we’ve nominated you,” and he doesn’t even want that job; it’s the last thing he wants to do right now, but he feels like he has to do it, and I just wanted someone to ask him “hey uhh are you okay” - and then Guy showed up!

And like you said, he takes care of Kakashi in his own kind of clumsy, sometimes shortsighted way - he doesn’t understand what’s happened, and Kakashi doesn’t confide in him, either, but Guy still literally checks him all over from head to toe to make sure he’s not hurt, and then he challenges him to that stupid race, which turns out to be the best possible thing anyone could have done.  Kakashi has FUN; he’s LAUGHING; he tells Guy, “This was just what I needed.”  

Guy may not be the friend who always understands everything, or with whom Kakashi necessarily wants to have deep, spill-your-guts conversations about his innermost thoughts, but that’s not the only kind of friend a person needs!  Sometimes you need somebody who will just BE THERE, and who will work to cheer you up whether you talk about your problems or not.  Guy’s particular type of caring is perfect for Kakashi, who doesn’t necessarily open up to people and who would really be in trouble if “sharing your problems” were a prerequisite for people trying to help him - Guy is so determined and passionate about being a good friend that it doesn’t matter to him if Kakashi is as unreceptive as a rock; that just spurs him on to greater heights XD

Guy takes care of Kakashi like this, basically:

and Kakashi just has to deal with it.  It’s good for him.

[larcenywrites]

From Cali’ with Love

young!Tony Stark x Reader

Warnings: mild sexual references/scene | fluff | kinda sad at first?

Word Count: 4.5K

Summary: After his parents' passing, Tony leaves without a trace. Your only clues are a few doodled-on postcards from the Golden State that come in from time to time, but when an important day finally comes around that you'd once hoped to share with him, and no postcards or letters in sight, you have to wonder: did he finally forget?

Two years. Two years since your Tony ran away from all the shadows that haunted him here. So quick, he even left you behind. I can't stay here anymore, he'd said one night, barely able to even side-eye you. You could only nod, agreeing to go with him and as far as he needed. It haunted you when his only reply was turning away. Your family was here, your university was here, your friends were here-- he couldn't do that to you. No matter how willing you were. But you figured he wanted to run away from you, too. You'd seen too much. The tears that soaked his pillow and his snappish words when you tried to get him outside. You were as gentle with him as his mother was, and always by his side. You're pretty sure he just couldn't take the added pressure. And the only way to get it to stop was to just leave. Without telling you so that you couldn't argue with him or worry over him. Hopefully he knew what was best for him. So when the next few days were spent with an uncharacteristic amount of sorrys and the clinginess he'd lost had returned, you couldn't say you didn't know what was coming when you discovered he'd left. 

Of course you grew worried. Where had he even gone? Tony was always a survivor, but he'd hardly learned how to cope. He couldn't even find escape through his new job. Not when he had to pick up right where his dad had left off. Not when you could practically hear Stane griping something along the lines of, "well, this is how your father did it!" Was he sleeping okay? He always had problems, but such a demanding job probably didn't help. He used to tell you that it helped when you were nearby. The thought of him alone in bed killed you as much as being alone in yours. Maybe he'd taken that fuzzy brown shark plush with him to keep him company. One of the sandbar sharks you got at the aquarium. Oftentimes you had to force yourself to stop thinking about it. After months of sorrow and suffering, you just knew it had to be him when your mom said you had unmarked mail. You'd pulled a small postcard from her hands, stiffly hurrying back to your room to investigate. 

Join Us in Malibu was printed fancily and across a clear blue sky, and colorful houses dotted a California coast. Your eyes were drawn to the obvious break in the flat horizon, a rising cliffside right at the edge of the ongoing beach. But it was quite the reason you were drawn to it. A childlike doodle of a house sat on top of the hill, complete with a little chimney and a squiggly line of smoke. Even with tears in your eyes, you giggled. You knew for a fact he could draw a little better than that, but maybe he knew you'd find it more endearing. You stared at it for a little longer, wondering if that was, in fact, the home he drew this up in. Flipping it over, you were disappointed to see that there were no notes written between the blank lines. There wasn't even a return address. But the little stamp he'd chosen to put in the corner was enough when you finally read it. White borders surrounded a cartoonish yellow sun rising over a churning ocean, two words on top and two words on the bottom: From Cali' with Love. 

For now, it was enough to know he was alive, and still thinking of you, hopefully as much as you thought of him. You anxiously waited for another one. Surely he'd send something else! Months went by again, and you swore you'd looked at that card every day. And with the start of the next semester came another! Big letters were filled with other images, but the bolder white outline spelled out a city you recognized much more this time. Los Angeles spelled out over its city skyline. Nothing popped out this time, but your heart raced when you turned it over. Halfway decent drawings of angelfish swam between the black lines, little lines of bubbles in the shapes of hearts came from their mouths. At the top was a shark, obviously drawn with a bit more care than the fish. And next to it was that same stamp. From Cali' with Love. You smiled, touching over the fish as if you could feel the hands that drew them. He must have found an aquarium he liked. You wondered if it had a cute cafe like the one here did. The one where you watched the light ripple shapes across his face as it filtered through churning water behind the glass and he'd always avoid getting seafood because he didn't want to offend the fish that swam by the glass. He joked about it, but you were pretty sure he legitimately felt bad. You could only hope to join him there one day, but hoping only made more tears fall, and you didn't want to smudge his cute drawings. 

Another semester, another postcard. You hoped he kept up the tradition. Santa Monica read in fancy yellow letters against a dusky blue sky. Below it was the famous Santa Monica pier with its Ferris wheel and colorful restaurant roofs. Though you had something else to inspect on the front, you excitedly flipped it over, ecstatic that this one had writing! 

      It's not as fun as coney 

      island was with you :(

Your smile was bittersweet as you read his semi-neat handwriting. The letters were always so close together but the spacing between his words was always a little too far apart. You knew how that felt. Turning the card back over, you briefly studied the part on the Ferris wheel that you and Tony had been in when the ride got stuck that one time. There were no silly doodles there, but you had already noticed the red lines that encircled a part of the beach. The shoreline stretched away from the pier towards you, mostly empty aside front the silhouettes of two figures holding hands. A red sharpied heart was doodled around them, one side flatter than the other (he was never very good at drawing hearts). The sentiment was nice, but any romantic beach walks didn't last very long when he was more interested in finding seashells and kicking chilly water your way. But maybe that was what made it romantic, especially when he got so excited to find those smaller, cone-shaped shells and presented them out to you in his palm. 

His next card was from Hollywood. You could make out the Walk Of Fame, which probably wasn't so empty of crowds in real life, surrounded by ornate buildings. Between them was a probably not geographically correct mountain side where the large white Hollywood sign sat. Nothing really stood out to you, so you flipped it over.  

    I haven't found my star

    yet, but I did find you 

You snorted, shaking your head as if he were in the room saying it. Always a flirt. Just like the others, it joined the pile on your nightstand, but not before making sure to read over your new favorite words: From Cali' with Love, to be reread and ogled until his next one came in. 

But you hadn't gotten one this semester. Had he forgotten? Maybe he got busy, or maybe it got lost and he couldn't have known. Your dependency on a few little cards was pitiful, but it was all you had of him. He hadn't even called! He knew the house number. Then again, it was easier to hide behind handwriting than to actually speak and keep up a conversation. You couldn't blame him for that, especially after the way he left. He'd been so ashamed even when he first brought it up, and his eyes had held such deep sorrow when he'd asked if you knew that he loved you. You'd already forgiven him, but he didn't know that.

Two years and you still hadn't gotten over him. As far as you were aware, you weren't supposed to! He was coming back— he said so! Of all his flaws, he did keep his promises, even if they were kept as imperfectly as his hectic love. He tried his best. Besides, you were finally graduating soon! If anytime was great for another card, it was now. Hell, he had helped you through those first two years, and used to joke about all the ridiculous things he'd yell out when you finally walked across that stage, mostly when you were threatening to drop out or doubting the day would ever come. As if him embarrassing you was supposed to motivate you more. A creeping thought always ruined the memory of good times.

Had he found someone else out there? 

You looked over at the pile by your bed, specifically the card on top. Two figures walked down along the shoreline below the pier, with an imperfect heart drawn around them. It hurt to think the feminine outline could be someone else, holding his hand while they walked the beachfront, with the fun-filled pier in the background. Just like Coney Island. You picked up the rest of the cards, only lit by lamplight, rereading them and studying them as if some revelation would hit you, but instead of some secret code telling you when he'd be back, all you got was pinching sadness in your heart. At least it looked like he was having fun out there. Maybe he'd found some peace. You'd done this many nights, staring down at the cardstock in your hands, as if doing so would make the waiting go by quicker. Maybe this time, it did. 

You nearly jumped out of your skin at the faint tapping that came from your window, a rhythmic sound that you'd far from forgotten. You still hesitated, however, silently creeping toward the drawn curtains and peeking between them. The male figure, slightly below you due to your window being a bit high off the ground, was turned away from you, keeping a lookout. You couldn't discern any recognizable features in the dark, but who else would have fought their way through rose bushes just to stand patiently under your window? 

You slid the curtain to the side, letting warm light illuminate the dark figure on the other side of the glass that quickly turned around. You hardly recognized him, but the big brown eyes that shined up at you could only belong to one person. You drew in a breath you didn't know you were holding, staring down like he were a ghost. Was he? You weren't sure. You spent two years waiting for this day, and all you were able to do was stand and stare? Making quick work of the latches on either side of the window, you lifted the squeaky panes as quietly as you could. A rush of cool air drifted into your room. 

"Tony?" Your tone was soft with emotion, but you weren't even sure which one. You flipped through them like every color of the rainbow, but you were pretty sure you were somewhere between red and yellow. 

"Hi," he readily responded, smooth voice somehow deeper, but still honeyed enough to make you weak. Or maybe you still weren't breathing enough. Those baby cheeks you used to kiss were more lean, and partially covered with dark facial hair that you could remember him shaving every other day. Two years was more than enough time to change, after all, but puppy eyes still looked just as soft as the tousled curls that still fell over his forehead, and neither seemed quite as tired as they used to. You had to wonder if he was thinking something similar with those studying eyes. 

He leaned forward against the wall of your house and rested his arms over the windowsill. As cool as he always tried to be, his wide grin had always given him away as the affectionate dork only you got to see. 

"I was just thinking about you," you joked nervously, falling into old banter. 

"What a coincidence," he bounced back, glancing over your body as if to make a point. You bit your lip, thumbing at the wooden panels on either side. 

"I was waiting for another postcard," you teased with a disappointed tone. He gave you a brief laugh before held up an arm to reveal the blush-colored rose he'd been concealing in his hand, between himself and the wall. "Will this work instead?" He asked a bit bashfully, glancing at the flower between his fingers as if to study it with you. You were pretty sure it was one of the same roses that dotted the bushes that ran the walls on this side of your house, but you gratefully accepted it regardless. Well, you could help but tease him about it. Just a little. 

"Did you just pick this?" You twirled the flower between your fingers, lowering to sit on the floor to finally be eye-level with him. 

"No," he started matter-of-factly, a trace of your favorite pout on his lips. "I picked it ten minutes ago so I could cut off the thorns."

"You've been out here for ten minutes?" You looked over at him, forgetting to keep your voice low. He hummed thoughtfully, glancing down for a moment. 

"Maybe closer to thirty," he murmured, smiling awkwardly at your bewilderment. "I was a bit scared, okay?" 

You laughed at his defeated confession, turning back to your rose in hand and carefully playing with the soft petals. "What made you come back?" Your question sounded bittersweet. It wasn't that you were afraid of the answer, but if he came, then eventually he'd have to go, too. 

"You, obviously," he replied with his always loving sarcasm. His smile faded a little when your eyes were more serious. It really hurt when he left, and as much as you'd love to go back to normal again, you weren't quite there yet. Playtime was over for now. "I, um," he stuttered, "I heard you were graduating." Your eyes met his, so much more bright and hopeful than the ones that had left you. "So I thought I'd stop by." You smiled at him again. 

"You're a few days early," you chuckled, "It's not until Friday." Not that it was a bad thing. Now he was stuck here, right? 

"Maybe I thought we could," he trailed off, licking his lips, "do something," he shrugged. "Like old times, you know?" 

Your heart swelled at the thought. "It's been pretty boring without you around," you whispered. His next smile looked relieved. Maybe he was afraid you'd found someone else to have fun with, too. You leaned into your side of the wall, bringing your face a little closer to the eyes that couldn't help but flick to your lips. 

"What have you been up to?" You asked suddenly, not so much out of curiosity for the sake of keeping conversation, and to distract those wandering eyes from getting you worked up. 

"Ah, you know," he shrugged and looked down, "building shit, pissing people off," he rattled off half-heartedly. His lips were still parted as if to continue. He played with his hands, nervous. "Drinking," he admitted sheepishly, a familiar look was back behind his eyes when they glanced back up to you. "What I usually do." He tried to smile, but his mood had been dampened. You panicked, instinctively reaching out to take his hand in yours. His skin had been a little calloused, but the fingers that curled around you seemed rougher. You searched for anything to make it better. 

"You know I've kept your postcards by my bed since I got them," you said suddenly, flashing an encouraging smile that widened his again. "What's it like out there?" That spark came back. 

"Beautiful," he said dreamily. Something about the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice had you looking away with a toothy grin and warming cheeks. You're pretty sure he wasn't entirely talking about the other side of the country. You waited for one of his flirty lines that never came. "Got a house right on the ocean," he continued instead, playing with your entwined fingers, "like we used to talk about." 

You smiled at the memory, nights spent talking about a home by the water. "Is it big?"

"Have you ever known anything about me to be small?"

You rolled your eyes with a small shake of your head. You couldn't hide the smile on your face, especially when you felt a scruffy kiss on the back of your hand. He smiled into your skin when you looked back at him. You gently tore your hand from his, swooping your fingers through those stray curls and brushing over his cheeks. He seemed to lean into your touch, eyes never leaving yours. "This is new."

"Thought it would make me look more business-y," he said flauntingly with a raise in his brow. "Do you like it?" 

"It's growing on me," you chimed. His face was scratchier, but you had to admit that he looked a little more handsome. You sat in silence for a few moments, simply basking in one another's presence. You almost had to keep yourself from throwing your arms around his neck the longer you held him in your hand and searched his eyes. 

"May I come in?" His honeyed voice sang to you. You bit your lip and glanced back into your room, studying the door as if you'd suddenly hear your parents on the other side. The coast was clear, for now. "Can you behave?" 

"I always behave for you," he hummed a little too seductively, turning to plant another kiss to your palm. You pretended to hum in thought, side-eyeing him. "Please?" He reversed his antic, pouting into his crossed arms and fluttering his lashes. "It's cold out here," he pleaded dramatically. Somehow it still managed to pull on your heart. 

"Fine," you easily gave in with a laugh, "just try to be quiet." The triumph in his grin wasn't lost on you. Just as confident as it used to be. You rose from your spot by the window, reluctantly pulling your hand away and feeling that chill he was talking about. You watched him slide his way over the sill, not as graceful as he once was, landing facedown on the floor. You giggled. Affectionately, of course. "Nice to see you haven't been climbing through anyone else's windows," you teased down at him. He awkwardly got to his feet, standing tall in front of you. You were sure he had a witty comeback behind that soft smile, but the usual mischief behind those eyes was nothing but love. You had to give in, breaking the obvious pining that you'd both let go on for too long already. 

You nearly tackled him, wrapping your arms around him and shamelessly burying your face into his chest. You squeezed even tighter when familiar arms hugged back, keeping him as close as you could so that he couldn't disappear again. He smelled of fine leather and vanilla, not exactly as you remembered it, but at this point, everything new and everything old was all just as comforting when his hand was petting over your hair. Even after two years, it felt like nothing had changed. You could almost cry, probably trembling with the effort not to with every lingering kiss in your hair and to your temple. 

"This has got to be better than a postcard," he quietly joked, once again breaking the shared silence. You snorted, lifting your face and barely backing away to get a better look at him. He stole another scruffy kiss to your forehead, but he must have noticed the plea behind your eyes. He leaned ever so slow, nose barely bumping yours before you eagerly closed the gap, lips gladly greeting his once more. Somehow you swear it felt even better than your first kiss. He barely even moved against you, instead letting you both lose oxygen to nothing more than a hard-pressed liplock while you found your way to the soft hairs on the back of his neck. 

 You finally had to pull away, tilting your head down to keep him from chasing you. You gripped at his shirt while you caught your breath. Tony nosed his way back, forcing your kiss back to his. You chuckled against his mouth before going in for another round, one that pushed you back against the bed and parted your lips. You hadn't even noticed the nice button-up he was wearing until you'd already worked down the line of buttons, nor the lighter colored dress pants until they were hitting the floor. 

Tony lied. He never behaved. 

You were back in the warmth and safety of his embrace, hands locked together as he loved you in the only way he really knew how. You muffled his whimpers of apologies into your neck, and he silenced your sweet sounds with his shushing kiss. You said his name like it would be the last time he'd get to hear it from you, and carved all the pain you'd felt for the last two years into his back. Those stray curls clung to his face, and rested against your forehead when he leaned down to you. One of the most powerful men in business right now, and you had him limp in your arms. 

His beard tickled the sensitive skin of your neck and down your chest when he nuzzled his way into the space beneath your chin, making himself comfortable in his spot on top of you. You raked your fingers through his hair, pulling back those damp curls. Back in the warmth and forgiveness of your arms, at least you didn't have to worry about him getting any sleep. Yeah, this was much better than a postcard. 

You were starting to think you'd never get to see the way the stars seemed to reflect in his eyes, or watch them become wide with wonder when he reached out to touch the stingrays in the exhibit (and then practically have to force him to wash his hands right after). You thought you'd never get another cheesy, film-like kiss on top of the Ferris wheel, or help him keep an eye out for shark teeth even though it was supposed to be a romantic walk down the beach, and he'd readily let go of your hand when he thought he saw something. Postcard by postcard, you followed the same trail he'd taken alone, this time going with him on the dates he wanted to do with you again. Somehow it felt like falling in love all over again. He came all the way from the other side of the country with more love than when he'd left, and with a new excitement to be out of his cage. 

Something about it had you dreading what would happen after you finally walked across the stage. Tony had to go back at some point. He actually had work now. He was important now. He'd always been important to you, but now he was bigger than whatever you currently were with him. Was he this happy when he was alone out there? Was he alone? You sure had been. Lost in your thoughts, you didn't even have the courage to join the peers you hardly knew in celebration, too busy frantically searching for Tony as if you were on a timer. For all you knew, you were, but luckily he found you first. You were probably more excited to see him than the degree in your hand. You eagerly threw your arms around his neck, cap in hand pushing him closer into the kiss he greeted you with. You still weren't entirely used to the prickle of facial hair.

"You did it," he quietly cheered, a praise just for you. Your free hand came around to cup his face. 

"No thanks to you," you hummed playfully, pressing your thumb to his lips before he could close the gap he made. He frowned, eyes flicking up and down. "I didn't have anyone to help me with my homework anymore," you pouted pitifully. An apologetic smile spread across his cheeks, the same one that used to smile encouragingly when you couldn't quite get a problem right, and those same eyes looked at you with that sympathy. 

"But you still did it," he murmured, softly kissing the pad of your thumb. 

"But I still did it," you echoed, smiling back. You brushed your thumb over his cheeks instead, studying the features of his face as if it were the first time you'd seen him in years. You would have loved to stare up at him for hours more, and feel his hand on your back, but the crowd rushing by and their loud laughter was ushering you to move on. He wasn't leaving just yet. "Come on." You started to back away, but not without taking his hand in yours first. "My parents might wanna see me," you explained, feeling a bit bad for breaking up the moment so suddenly. "Maybe they'll even take us to dinner," you playfully chimed, turning to lead him away, but he didn't budge. 

"Wait," he stopped you, unintentionally pulling you back with the way he didn't move. Your heart sank for the worst, turning back to a nervous stare. It looked too much like one you'd seen before. His jaw tightened with his grip. "I didn't really come prepared, but," he started, nervously licking his lips and searching the ground for his words. He took a breath that mostly left as a laugh. "Would it be crazy if I asked you to marry me?" 

You were probably looking at him as if he were, glancing him up and down to make sure he was real and lips parted in an answer that could come to mind. In the short absence of your voice, he nervously continued. 

"You could go back with me, and- and," he started to stutter, "I know you just got that degree you worked really hard for, but you don't even have to work if you don't want to." He knew you were still listening when you smiled amusedly at that, his tone implying that that would be the cherry on top. "I mean, I know it's been… a while, but," he kept rambling desperately, "I never stopped loving you." Wide eyes begged for approval, and blushing cheeks probably regretted it. Maybe it was simply the tall rollercoaster of emotions you'd both had over these last few days--even years, but you really couldn't think of a reason to say no. This time you weren't going to let him leave alone, especially not when he needed you this time. If your words couldn't come out, then your mouth could relay the message better against his, you decided. You ignored the crowd around you, bringing your Tony down by his collar for a kiss deeper than the Pacific and longer than the 3,000 miles you'd always been willing to travel for him. You finally tore away, hiding in his neck. A hand drifted up your spine. 

"Is that a yes?"

You just had to pull back to look at him, his wide eyes dazed and confused, and blush almost matching the red in his lips. You nearly scoffed. Affectionately, of course. 

"Yes, you goof!"

[doe-writes-stuff]

Hello! I was wondering if I could request:

Daryl Dixon x Younger! Brother or Sister (depending on what you write)

Maybe after the fire on the farm , Daryl and his sibling reunite!

Also, just wanted to quickly say that I love your blog!! Thank you 🤎☺️🤎

Ahh, thank you! I've written so little so far, but I'm happy you're enjoying what content I do have already <3 Please enjoy, and I hope this is to your liking!

WARNINGS: Canon-typical violence, reader is a bit of a hothead (as all Dixons are), strong language

The farm is a total loss, and it didn't take a genius to realize it.

If the flaming barn lighting up the night with an amber glow didn't make that abundantly clear, then the few hundred walkers closing in from the surrounding forest certainly did. Too many to possibly fight off with your ragtag group of survivors. You hadn't heard so many growls in unison since the very beginning of the world falling apart. It set your teeth and nerves on edge. And a familiar paranoia set in.

What the hell had happened? It was one thing after another; first the barn, then Randall, then suddenly a massive horde shows up and everything is in chaos. Where the hell were Rick and Shane? Fuck, where was Carl? You hoped the kid wasn't by himself in this mess.

On top of that, you couldn't find Daryl anywhere. Last you knew the hunter had gone out with Glenn to track, but you'd not seen him return. He was capable and you really weren't worried about him. It didn't matter how many of the dead cropped up, your older brother was a survivor. He'd be fine. Definitely.

You for sure were not worried.

...ok, maybe you were. But Dixons didn't let that shit show, as Merle had taught.

Stray shotgun shots echoed nearby and drew in the horde with more vigor. Herschel, the stubborn bastard, unwilling to give up his home without a fight. You could respect the sentiment, but you didn't plan on dying tonight. Couldn't he see there was no saving it from this many dead?

Your knife finds its way into the head of the closest handful of walkers that approach, felling them one after the one with smooth stabs. But there's always another behind it waiting to get its decaying hands on you. Ugh.

You're making your way towards the house, unsure why but picking a direction and sticking with it. Maybe, if you could find any of the other survivors, you could get the hell out of here in the limited number of vehicles left.

The dead were everywhere. You put down one just to have another 2 closing in from another direction. It was pissing you off, frankly, but there was nothing else to do but keep moving. By coincidence--or maybe by design, you couldn't guess--your uncoordinated path through the walking corpses leads you to Herschel himself, who was practically backed up against his home, shotgun still in hand dealing lead death to any reanimated corpse close enough.

And it's then that you see Carl and Rick beside him, trying to convince him to leave. The sight of others lights a fire under your feet, and you run the last distance towards them.

"Hey!" Your shout draws their attention. "Are we gettin' the hell out of here, or what?!"

"She's right." Rick turned to the old farmer again, laying a hand on his shoulder and shaking his head emphatically. "The farm is gone, we can't stay here!"

"This is my land! I'll sooner die on it than give it up." He stubbornly replies, face set in determined lines. The flaming barn down aways gives a frighteningly loud and groaning creak as the timbers within burn. The structural integrity was weakening, and none of you were sure how long it would hold out.

You're forced to turn and take care of the several walkers that had taken the opportunity to sneak up behind your back. All this standing around...it irritated you beyond belief.

"Old man, stayin' here is suicide!" You yell. "Think of Maggie n' Beth! What the hell do you want us to tell them, huh?"

He hesitates, the reminder of his family somewhere out there starting to shake his resolve--he even gives a glance down at the wide-eyed and frightened Carl who hadn't said a word thus far--but Rick steps in with the finishing argument. The former sheriff shakes Herschel's shoulder roughly.

"Don't leave your daughters without their father! They need you, and you need them."

You look around, realizing that the dead were coming in denser and more numerous waves. You didn't have long before escape would be impossible. And damn it all if you died because of some old man's stubbornness and stupidity. Not on your watch.

Not waiting around to find out if he was in agreement, you grab Herschel's arm.

"We're out of time!" You begin dragging him in the direction you think is most clear of the dead, offering all of you the best chance of escape. He allows it with little resistance, thankfully. Rick and Carl are barely a step behind, eager to be away from the remains of what had once been home, shelter, and safety.

You're several hundred yards away when the sound of the barn collapsing within itself echoes across the clearing, sparks sent high into the dark sky.

Where was Daryl? You'd practically chewed your thumb nail down to nothing, worry presenting itself as a nervous tick. Where the fuck was he? You'd been waiting on this highway for several hours and there was no sign of anyone other than you, Herschel, and Rick.

Well, and more of those dead fuckers who'd caused all this mess in the first place. Only now, with the threat of the horde turning in your direction again, you were forced to hide and stay quiet, hoping for the others to show.

It was testing your patience beyond its limits. Sitting around on your hands, waiting, wondering...it was the worst.

On top of all of that, Herschel was getting on your last goddamn nerve, talking about leaving while you still could.

That was the last straw.

"We are not leaving this fuckin' highway until the others get here." You spit with a scowl, voice low so as not to draw more attention to yourselves.

Whether it's your words or your tone that makes him give you a withering stare, you're not sure. He tightens his grip on his shotgun. "Young lady, we have to think of Rick's boy now. There's no guarantee the others made it off the farm, and waiting around here is only going to put him in more danger-"

"Oh, don't even start with that." You scoff, ignoring the way Rick placed himself between you to try to placate the fighting. The old man's attitude coupled with the last vestiges of adrenaline wearing off had put you in a foul mood. To the point where you didn't even care if Carl was there to witness it. "You wanna know something?"

"Y/N, that's enough." The former sheriff emphasized, but you were too riled up at this point, pushing past him and pointing an accusatory finger at the old man.

"You put us all in danger refusin' to leave the farm last night."

Rick tried again. "Hey, hey, let's all just calm down-"

"We did you a favor draggin' your sorry ass out here to live another day, so until everyone gets here, and I mean everyone, I don't wanna hear a damn word from-"

The rumble of an engine draws all of your attentions, abating your anger momentarily as your gaze swung to the other end of the highway. Hope bubbled from underneath the boiling fury, settling your nerves. Was it...?

It was!

Thank fuck.

The moment Daryl's--well, Merle's--bike came into view a weight lifted from your soul. You'd already lost one brother in Atlanta. You don't know what you'd do with yourself if you'd lost the other. In the lead of the small band of vehicles approaching, Daryl came to a stop several feet away from where you, Rick, Carl, and Herschel were standing behind a stalled-out car.

The reunions commenced, loved ones and friends reuniting, but you only had eyes for your older brother. Walking up to him, an equal amount of relief is in his own eyes, masked to all except you. His eyes swept over you, probably checking for wounds. It was a familiar gesture, from years of hard childhood.

You'd hug him, but you were both Dixons.

Sour mood quickly dissipating, you punched his arm hard with a smirk. "Could've waited up on me, bastard. Bet you didn't even look for me, did you? Some brother you are."

The words were callous and snarky, but you knew he could read between the lines.

I was fucking worried about you.

"Crazy bitch, always hittin' me." Daryl complained, rubbing at his arm to ease the punch. "Almost wish I'd saved myself the trouble lookin' for ya."

I'm glad you're ok.

You give a huffed laugh. "As if you'd get anywhere without me. Still remember which side of those bolts are the pointy end?"

I love you.

"Fuck off, Y/N."

Love you, too.

You caught a glance of a few confused or concerned looks from the other survivors--mostly Lori and Carol--but you didn't give a shit what they thought. It wasn't as if they'd been all that welcoming to the Dixon clan when you'd first settling into the Atlanta camp. They didn't know shit about your family.

Whatever happened after that point, you vowed to stick close to Daryl from that point, never leaving his side, never risking being separated again.

And if his steady gaze was anything to go by, you think he felt the same.

[justabigassnerd]

Protecting you

Pairing - Daryl Dixon x teen!reader

Word count - 1,296

Warnings - TWD style violence, guns, blood, wounds, needles, swearing

Summary - on a run with Daryl you pull a stunt that ends up with you getting hurt and Daryl shifting into overprotective mode

A/N - hey y'all it's been a hot minute since I wrote for Daryl ain't it? I still love the bastard and I can't wait for the next part of season 11 because that cliffhanger was something else! This was a lovely request sent in by an anon and I hope I did it justice. As per y'all, please please send in requests and enjoy!!

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

“C’mon kid, we gotta get as much as this back to Alexandria before it gets dark.” Daryl’s voice shakes you out of your daydream as you return to the task at hand. The two of you had gone on a supply run and by some miracle found a place that wasn’t completely looted or overrun by walkers. You managed to find a lot of food and supplies and filled your bags as much as possible, wanting to make sure Alexandria is well supplied because who knows how long it will take until another treasure trove like this appears.

“I don’t think I can fit anything else in my bag.” You call across the building, eyes searching for any sign of Daryl.

“Me either. Let’s go.” Daryl’s voice making you jump and turn around suddenly, your hand instinctively moving to your gun holster but relaxing upon seeing Daryl as he zips up his bag and puts it on his back with you following suit. You then both exit the bleak building and step out into sunlight which makes you squint due to its brightness. You head back to the road that led almost directly back to Alexandria and started the walk back home.

“I hope everyone will be happy with what we got.” You say, knowing that Alexandria is such a large community, and you want to make sure everyone will be satisfied with the haul you and Daryl are bringing back.

“They’ll love it. We can send some people out early tomorrow to collect some more stuff from here.” Daryl replies, walking alongside you along the road that’s littered with abandoned, rusting cars.

“There’s the fuckers, get them!” A shout from the nearby woods sends both you and Daryl diving behind one of the abandoned cars as bullets start ricocheting off the metal.

“Give us our shit you thieves! We’ve been scouting that place for weeks waiting for the walkers to clear out!” Another voice yells as you fumble for your gun, pulling it out of your holster and checking your ammo while Daryl loads his crossbow. You fire some bullets in the direction of the shouting, hoping you’ll hit someone, not enough to kill them but to at least deter them from attacking you any further. Daryl, however, was shooting to kill. After a few minutes of firing back and forth between you and your mysterious attackers, it soon became clear that they had a lot more ammo than you but not many more people. You figured three or four people at most so without thinking, to make sure Daryl was safe you darted out of the cover of the car until you were behind another, drawing their fire so Daryl was no longer their primary target. You heard Daryl call out your name in a panic as you moved from the second car to the third and you made the mistake of turning to look at him because the second you did, a bullet entered your thigh making you fall to the ground with a pained grunt, dragging yourself into cover as bullets rain down upon the car.

Seeing you clutching your leg, desperately trying to stop the blood from flowing, Daryl felt something snap. He already wanted to kill these people for attacking him in the first place, but they fucking shot you. That was crossing the line. While they were distracted with you, Daryl was able to take the three men out with ease, their distraction meaning they weren’t paying attention to the wellbeing of their fellow survivors. Once the threat was eliminated Daryl ran to your side, digging in his bag for bandages to bind the wound until you made it back to Alexandria.

“We gotta get out of here in case those guys have friends. Can you stand up?” Daryl says once you’re bandaged up, sticking his head up to survey his surroundings before standing up. Nodding, you force yourself to your feet with a wince. Daryl wraps an arm around you as you mirror his actions, limping alongside him as you hurry back to Alexandria. Once Rosita opens the gate, you hand her your bag, telling her to take it and put the stuff in the appropriate place.

“Are you okay?” She asks worriedly, noticing the blood staining your hand as you give her the bag.

“She got shot, I’m gonna take her to get it checked out. Could you take my bag too?” Daryl says, tugging his bag off his back and handing it to Rosita without giving her a chance to answer. Daryl took you to the infirmary where Carol immediately ushered you to a spare seat so she could treat your wound.

“You’re not usually one to be working in the infirmary Carol.” You attempt to joke, wincing as she unwraps the bandage.

“We need people working wherever they can.” Carol replies, busying herself with checking your wound out.

“Good news is that the bullet went straight through.” She mutters as she cleans the wound, apologising lowly when you wince and move away slightly.

“The bad news?” You press, knowing it’s better to just get it over with.

“You won’t be able to go on any runs for at least a couple of weeks. You’ll be stuck here to make sure you rest this leg of yours.” Carol continues, threading the needle so she can give you the stitches you need. You sit through the discomfort of having your leg sown up and bandaged before Carol dismisses you to head home and get some rest. Daryl returns to your side and helps you limp your way back to your shared house in Alexandria. Once you made it up the stairs, you sit on your bed, easing your shoes off gently, restraining yourself from moving your leg too much in fear of ripping your stitches. When that task is done successfully, you lie back against the headboard of your bed and notice Daryl watching you with a soft gaze.

“Are you okay Daryl?” You question, wondering why he looked so upset.

“You coulda died.” He mutters lowly, his eyes darting to look at anything but you.

“But I didn’t.” You argue gently.

“But you could’ve.” Daryl shoots back, eyes flicking up to meet yours. The worry and fear clear in his expression and his voice.

“I don’t regret what I did Daryl. We were stuck and something had to be done. But I am sorry that I let myself get shot.” You say gently, hoping Daryl understands where you are coming from.

“It was still stupid, you runnin’ off like that.” Daryl says, making you roll your eyes jokingly.

“Look at the life we’re living Daryl. In this world you have to take risks to protect the people you love and care about. I wasn’t about to let some fuckers hiding in the woods take you out. Besides, I knew you’d be able to kill them if I drew their fire.” You explain, watching Daryl’s expression soften further at your words. Daryl slowly approaches your bed, perching on the edge of it.

“You’re right kid. Just promise me somethin’.” Daryl says, glancing at you as you nod.

“Anything.” You reply, wanting to make sure Daryl is able to trust you to go on runs again once you’re better.

“No more runnin’ into dangerous situations without at least discussing a plan with whoever you’re out there with.” Daryl says, a small smile on his face. He knew he couldn’t stop you from being reckless. You were too much like him, even back when he first found you when the apocalypse had not long started. While he couldn’t stop your recklessness, he could at least make sure you plan something before diving headfirst into a dangerous situation.

“Alright. Deal.”

[dragonclaude]

May I pitch a fun "alternative chapter 5" in place of "oh Sakura just didn't die". What if it's something along the lines of "She enters a deathlike state that fools even Monokuma" and essentially pulls a Romeo & Juliet on them with only Hina in on the plan (she still does the whole disrupting the crime scene thing because *acting*) and Hina eventually wakes her back up... of course neither of them are chemists and it takes a few months for Sakura to wake up (thus allowing for an Upgrade Tree!)

See, that’s pretty interesting but I don’t know if the two of them would be able to convince Monokuma since he could hear everything while they’re talking about the plan. Even if they go somewhere like the bathhouse where he couldn’t see or hear it, he would know something fishy is up. Sakura was currently betraying him and that should be enough to lead him to believe she would be pulling something drastic.

Though, I do think there could’ve been more fun things done with the chemicals in the room. Could you imagine if someone with vague chemical knowledge used them to make an explosive substance??? Goodbye data lab door, we’re gonna go kick Junko’s ass directly.

But also this ask reminded me of something I’ve forgotten about for a while. It’s an idea I had before even starting the Roaring Cherry Blossom stuff. It was closer to “what could Sakura’s Revenge look like?” with the emphasis of making a spinoff that could fit into canon somehow. In the end, I kind of just took the gameplay idea and drew it for RCB but now that I think about it again…. It might not be a bad idea as a different way to start RCB instead of making it strictly an AU of DR1. I'd like to know what y'all think.

That’ll take a little bit to explain so bear with me. And also, @bananacreamphi it’s REALLY funny that you sent me this *during* the time I was typing this down xD

It’s not the exact same but you might want to read below ;D

Long read with a few colored drawings below!!

For the rest of this, I will refer to Roaring Cherry Blossom as RCB for shortening sake. If any of you reading don’t know what it is, make sure to see my tag that has all of my AU drawings or click this link to start looking!

--------

Okay so, in this version, Danganronpa 1 happens. Same survivors, same deaths, same apocalypse. People are fighting for their lives, the Remnants are running rampant and the future foundation is struggling to fight them back.

But, here’s the thing. When the remnants went to Hope’s peak to retrieve the parts of Junko’s body, they also decided to desecrate the bodies in the bio lab for despair reasons. While opening and examining all the bodies, they notice that all of the bodies but Sakura’s are at a point of no return…...and Mikan gets a great idea.

What if she revives Sakura and brainwashes her to become another remnant?

She did briefly work under Junko and she could get it right this time. The remnants would have one more strong fighter on their side and would massively catch the enemy off guard.

So they take her back to the remnant’s base and set up a brainwashing room directly in the medical room. Mikan revives Sakura with her medical knowledge, she wakes up immediately being brainwashed into thinking everyone she knows and loves is dead and that she failed her family’s legacy. Nekomaru welcomes her to the team, and we begin the tutorial of learning the controls. You would have reeeally brutal attacks at first, Nekomaru would be empowering you to not hold back and just murder as much as possible.

Here was a drawing of her I made in late 2020 that I decided to redraw with her RCB clothing, enjoy.

I don’t think she would have the Kanabos at first but I think it looks cool xD

It would also be cool to see what life was like on the remnants’ side and how camaraderie could show up with people who’ve fully succumbed to despair. Nekomaru and The ultimate Imposter would be the general leaders I’d say. The first to motivate the group in battles and the other focused on infiltration and enemy Intel.

But anyways after some time going on missions and wreaking havoc, Sakura finds out about the future foundation and that her friends are still alive; sparking a speck of hope that is enough to start messing with her thoughts. When bringing this up to the others, they recommend she go and destroy the source of the issue to bring her the despair that she needs. She lets Hiyoko destroy whats left of her home and next comes planning how she is going to kill her friends. (maybe delving into the thoughts she had during the time she was a spy in DR1)

For the sake of this, let’s say she goes with a plan that revolves around baiting them out from the foundation and picking them off one by one. Long story short, Sakura gets very close to killing Makoto but the foundation pulls out everything in their power to knock her out. (say, chain binds, chemicals, stunning explosives, or tranquilizers perhaps)

…...And now Makoto gets a great idea.

We will take Sakura and test out the current version of the Neo World Program. If it works on her, then we can be sure it will work with the others.

They bring her to the room, memory-erasing happens and the brainwashing is removed. Sakura regains consciousness in Jabberwock Island like Hajime did and is very confused. (She would likely have her DR1 outfit on)

She soon finds Usami, and maybe even Chiaki, to explain why she’s here and how to escape. Artistic rendition because I like this idea C:

She does the Usami chores while getting a little more interaction with the digital characters and “graduates” from the trip. There could also be a moment where the foundation members from the outside communicate with her inside of the program to give her more context and to assure her she's not just stranded in some island.

Then she comes back out, has a touching moment with her friends now that she’s back to normal, and gets straight to work finding the remnants like regular RCB. But, this time she knows how the program works and can vouch for it if she ever needs to convince someone.

Man, imagine how the reunion with Kenshiro would go once she reaches Towa City.

So yeah, this is another option without making an entirely new AU of DR1. I hope this didn’t stray too far from the original point, I just thought it would be fun to finally write it down! C:

I would like to know you guy’s thoughts on this too, maybe it’s a little too much Idk xD

======================================

Since this post is kind of an anchor point for this whole AU, here’s a TLDR for the whole plot!

======================================

DR1 happens

Dead Sakura is taken when remnants took Junkos parts

Mikan revives Sakura and turns her into remnant

Remnants cause havoc and gets attention of Future foundation

Sakura tries to capture Makoto, the foundation manages to knock her out

Makoto brings Sakura to the Neo World Program and undoes the despair

Now the game’s goal is to find and capture all the remnants to put them into the Neo World Program too

I’ve drawn lots of this idea, so if you want to see more into the game, look at my pinned post!

[acerace]

...you have opened my eyes to a vast universe of VintageBeef lore that I was unaware of. I knew about the New Hermit Order, of course, and the UHC invention, and I've watched a few of his CTM things but -- I will take all the info and lore you feel like giving out because Beef is amazing and my knowledge is so small.

Vintagebeef my beloved <3

So the thing is, right, until about 2016 I only watched two (2) youtubers- Vintagebeef for Minecraft and aDrive for Pokemon (and funnily enough both of them are named Dan irl). So I've watched most of Beef's videos over the years and have a general knowledge of most of his stuff, except because it's been like a decade I don't remember where most of the lore comes from XD

The thing with him is that he doesn't do Lore tm the way other mcyters often do lore- he doesn't have an extensive RP series to draw from like Grian, doesn't have a solo world with steadily increasing amounts of lore like Etho or Zisteau, and while he's played on SMPs and been involved in storylines before it's not really the focus of his episodes unlike with Evo or Legacy or Empires

So where does that leave us?

IRL, Beef always has multiple series running at the same time. Often he's playing on an smp while doing a singleplayer, often modded, series as well as a CTM or modpack with a group of friends. For example, right now he's playing on Hermitcraft, doing weekly Pixelmon and Building a Zoo episodes, and a CTM map with Slip. And to me, this translates to one thing: Beef is an adventurer. He travels frequently- he explores a world and when he decides he's done, he leaves for the next one. That's the basis of my personal interpretation of his series and his character for my writing.

Ok so reading this back, this got extremely long and didn't explain much in the way of lore, somehow? If anyone has any additions to add please do so, I am very definitely leaving out a lot and would love to see what other lore people remember and are using for Beef! I didn’t include the Hermitcraft stuff since my memory of season 4 is blurry (his base was themed after the Martian, that much I know, and he and Iskall were buddies :D) and most of the s5 NHO lore is best watched from Bdub’s perspective from what I remember, and the only s6 stuff is a single line in Hermitgang and then the Area 77 arc with its possibility of an NHO reunion which we did not get rip. And s7 of course had the cloning machine and also the Podzol Party as the main lore. So all the original rambling is still below the cut though it is very long, and I'm gonna bullet point the main stuff here instead:

Actual canonical things:

Invented UHC and was the only survivor of the first ever uhc (Mindcrack UHC s1)

Married to an ender dragon (one of the UHCs I think), later father to a different dragon (Mindcrack season 3? I think?)

Might not have legs if you choose to take that joke as canon (Mindcrack s2)

Was a wizard (RAD)

is a zookeeper (Building a Zoo) 

Had a wife and kids (Sims in Minecraft)

Part of the Trial of the B Team court case (Mindcrack)

NHO founder, founder of the Podzol Party (Hermitcraft)

Created a cloning machine that sort of works (Hermitcraft)

Played the Forest which is I believe the first time he and Keralis played together (look up the trigger warnings for this one, it's a horror game)

Was the creator/owner of Sourceblock SMP (featuring some familiar faces if you know Legacy, Empires, or MCC) and there is literal magic from a mysterious sourceblock of water that teleports people and summons mobs and probably more stuff that I haven't seen yet since I'm still watching it myself

Things you can infer:

Good with animals (Life in the Woods, Pixelmon, Ark)

Is a car nerd (irl and all of the car games he's played)

Is a highly experienced adventurer who has traveled through dozens of worlds both vanilla and modded, across multiple dimensions (Twilight Forest, the Aether, the Betweenlands, Limbo), completed dozens of monuments, fought in blood sports, survived apocalypse after apocalypse, tamed dinosaurs, and played a lot of prop hunt and golf with your friends

If you're looking for what to watch for lore purposes, I'd say the Mindcrack UHCs and Team Canada's RAD series are pretty good, definitely Sourceblock and HC s5, plus the Diversity CTM maps and Ruins of the Mindcrackers maybe? And Mindcrack Prank Wars for the chaos and the origin of Team Canada. And if you can handle horror than the Forest is fun and if you don't do horror you can watch the Pojkband play golf or prop hunt they're hilarious I love them sm I want a Pojkband reunion So Bad 

Beef's first series was a singleplayer series in beta 1.4_01 though he had played the game extensively before that, and was a big fan of Guude, having watched his own Minecraft videos. The series was functionally a hardcore one where if he died Beef would delete the world and start again! I haven't actually Watched this series so idk if he died or how often lmao. When Guude made Mindcrack, which was btw one of the very first Minecraft SMPs, he also hosted a competition for people to join, and Beef submitted a video (which is still viewable on his channel I believe!) and won, and was added to Mindcrack in season 2 :D (fun fact, Guude said that even if Beef hadn’t won he would have added him anyway) 

Two running jokes emerged from Mindcrack- pulling a Vintagebeef and Beef doesn't have legs. The first is a reference to Beef dying of fall damage (I believe the exact instance was him trying to jump into his swimming pool and failing spectacularly) and after the incident, every time someone died of fall damage they were pulling a Vintagebeef. The second joke comes from Guude, who joked that the reason Beef wasn't going to a convention was because he didn't have legs, and then he pranked Beef's base by building a giant pair of legs at the entrance to his castle so you had to walk between them to get into the base. This joke has long since died and both Beef and Guude feel pretty bad about it iirc because there were people who genuinely thought Beef was disabled and were emailing him supportive messages and stuff oops. So if you go looking on the Salad or find old Mindcrack fics, you might see references to Beef having prosthetic legs!

Mindcrack also brought about the creation of several Player groups- Team Nancy Drew, Team Canada, and GOB to name a few relevant to Beef. Team Nancy Drew consists of Beef, Pauseunpause, Guude, and Baj, who formed to investigate a prank on one of the members but I forget who. They're named Nancy Drew after the detective! Team Canada also formed in retaliation to pranks, with it consisting of Beef, Etho, and Pause, the three Canadian members on the server (not including Adlington who moved to Canada but never joined the group). There was also a Team America who pranked them with American flags everywhere. GOB is Guude, OMGChad, and Beef, who played stuff like the Ragecraft, Pantheon, and Monstrosity ctms together but that's way down the line lol

Team Nancy Drew is also notable for inventing UHC. It was Beef's brainchild but it was the four of them who first played it! The first UHC had the four of them working to kill the dragon with no natural regen, with everyone dying but Beef, who "won" the UHC. The second uhc was still dragon focused and iirc is where Beef married the dragon? Memories are hazy but they do kill the dragon in this one I think. UHC was then revamped as a pvp event and became a regular Mindcrack game every few months, featuring most of the Mindcrackers and several special guests, including Dinnerbone, who as we know Thanos-snapped Doc's arm out of existence as a result of Doc killing him in one of them

In one of the seasons of Mindcrack, Beef invited swedish Mindcracker and good friend Anderzel to go caving with him and invented ABBA Rules caving, where the winner takes it all. ABBA Rules is a game where each ore (and also dungeon loot like nametags) is assigned a point value and the person with the most points at the end wins and gets to keep all the stuff collected from the game.

In Mindcrack season 3?, Beef punched the ender dragon in an... awkward area, so when the dragon died and left the egg behind, Guude said Beef was the father of the egg XD I don't remember if I watched s3 so I have no idea if anything Happened with this concept but *history of the world voice* you could make lore out of this!

So Team Canada has played a Lot of CTM maps (which fun fact were pretty much invented by another Mindcrack member, Vechs, with his Super Hostile series! Super Hostile has a bunch of things called "Zistonian", which are references to another Mindcrack member Zisteau, who has a very wild singleplayer series with even wilder lore but I digress). In Ruins of the Mindcrackers, they had a running joke that Beef was Etho and Pause's mom, which is a joke we can leave in the past actually /lh. They also played all the Diversity maps, Sky Factory, Terra Restore, Uncharted Territory uhhh and a couple more ctms and adventure maps! Each map kinda has its own story so in Diversity 3 for example they were trapped in a simulation? I think? Team Canada also recently played the Roguelike Adventures and Dungeons modpack, aka RAD, in which Beef was a wizard with a magic staff that could do anything from summon lightning to control hostile mobs.

Sourceblock SMP is a vanilla survival 1.14 series that ran for one season and the series starts with each of the Players being drawn to a strange sparkling water source that, once they touch it, brings them to the Sourceblock world. It also summons a giant zombie at one point. There's probably more lore for this series but like I said I haven't watched it all the way through yet 

He has a Patreon server called VintageCraft and has done a series or two on there as well, and played a few UHCs with them, so lore that how you will! 

Beef also played a few popular mods, notably Pixelmon, Life in the Woods, and Feed the Beast, with LitW being singleplayer and the other multiplayer. He's also recently played the Zoo and Wild Animals mod a lot. He did a short series with the Minecraft Comes Alive mod where he married one of the villagers and had two children, so that's canon now :D he’s played a Lot of Pixelmon starting when the mod first came out iirc (he chose Turtwig in his first series and built a Grass gym, then made a Normal gym in another series in uhh 2016) and he still plays to this day. Quite a few Hermits played on his Pixelmon servers with him, like Wels, Etho, Iskall, Stress, Slip, Zueljin, and also Guude and Phedran (a Mindcrack adjacent player and creator of the LitW modpack) and a few Mindcrackers on the older servers 

Mindcrack and friends played a lot of other games too- 7 Days to Die, Ark Survival Evolved, Unturned, to name a few, so you can pull a lot of lore out of these as well. Speaking of friends and non-Minecraft games, Beef teamed up with Pause, Keralis, and Slip (a former Hermit) to play the horror game the Forest, which saw them stuck on an island trying to survive against terrifying mutated human... things. They played it a few times as the game updated but as afaik it's the first time Beef played with Keralis and possibly Slip and since the game starts with the Player's airplane crashing, that could totally be how Beef first met them in-universe 

I... think? that’s everything I mentioned in the tags? There is probably way more stuff I’ve forgotten that stems from inside jokes and things that happen within each series, but I hope that was a) helpful and b) at least somewhat comprehensible lmao 

[glorified-red]

What is the boys go to method of persuasion (read: manipulation) and how would someone persuade them in turn?

This request took wayyyy too many of my brain cells, thanks fish, you’ve killed me

Batboys Method of Persuasion

word count: 1390~

warnings: none

I’ve been wanting to write angst for a few days now and I am so close to diving into Nightmare and never coming back until the whole series is written.

Dick Grayson

Dick uses social influence consciously and subconsciously all the time

Social influence is how we are all wired to believe that if the people we admire are doing something, then that behavior is normal and we should act that way as well

He uses this to his advantage whenever he leads the titans or any of his siblings

A role model of sorts

Dick acts like the perfect vigilante and people subconsciously follow

It started with Jason when he was first learning about Robin, then with Tim, and eventually with Damian

Going out to patrol with Jason and being very careful about what he’s doing in front of him in the off chance that he picks up the habits Dick has

Knowing Tim watches him so closely so Dick might as well take advantage of it to keep his brother safe with protective patrol actions

Seeing Damians adoration for Dick and genuinely trusting what his older brother says, so why not slowly show Damian how to assimilate into the family through his actions

Theres plenty of different ways this affects Dick however

The constant pressure of needing to be perfect and make the right choices

The feeling of everyone and no-one watching him at all times

And even people pleasing tendencies, because what else is left of his self-importance without admiration?

Which is exactly why the easiest way to persuade Dick into doing something, is making sure he likes and trusts you

He couldn't care less about what strangers think of him, but those close to him? Those inside his circle of influence? Dick wants them to love him

Thats exactly why he tries to keep the family together; exactly why he takes every argument with his siblings to heart

The Liking Principle: we are more likely to comply with requests made by people we like

Ask Dick to do something and he will cross a valley for you not only because he loves you, but because he feels like he has to go through with it to make sure you still love him.

Jason Todd

Jason loves to use reciprocity

He exploits it every chance he can when he’s the Red Hood, how else would he have gotten so powerful?

Reciprocity is how we feel obligated to give back to others what we receive from them, especially if there was no cost to begin with

Jason spared plenty of criminals as Hood to use them for deals or favors later, always bringing up the fact that he could've killed them and could kill them now

He’s not afraid to say to those criminals, “Remember when I did this for you? Yea, I want compensation now.”

He doesn't use it much to his family aside from the typical sibling drama of Jason driving to get Tim food and then bringing it up again to get a few pop tarts during patrol

The more the time passes though, the less he can use reciprocity since it'll lose its draw

So he tends to use it within a few days or weeks

Jason keeps tabs, especially when it comes to crime lords or mob bosses

With his family he kinda just remembers? He’ll see a cookie and automatically remember that Dick owes him a pint of ice cream

But reciprocity works both ways

Jason knows this, so if anyone is smart and cunning enough to see through his manipulation and do it back? He’ll comply

The best way to do this is through consistency and commitment

Make Jason commit to his morals or word by bringing up statements he’s made in the past

His word means a lot to him so twisting it or holding him to it will definitely make him cave

Especially if his word was public and other people were there as witness

But be sure to reward him and reciprocate so that he keeps doing it ;)

Tim Drake

Tim’s method of persuasion is so meticulous 

Anchoring: the tendency to rely heavily on the information presented first when making a decision

He mostly uses this at work because it works better with numbers

Having a point value presented for the company so he can appease the snarky board of directors

Twisting and manipulating how the stock market values look by prefacing inflation or previous values from months past 

Or maybe shifting employee percentages around to make it seem more successful than it really is, not by a lot but enough that Tim can get them off his back

It’s not lying, he’s just presenting the information a different way that makes it seem more pleasant for his side

Since Tim is well aware that information can be tweaked or presented in a bias manner, persuading him can be a bit tricky considering he’d much rather do his own research

The Ellsberg Paradox, a wonderful experiment that showed people tend to lean towards things they know about rather than take a chance on unknown factors

Like the true introvert he is, Tim needs to know every detail before he makes a decision on something instead of going in blind and regretting it

Want to persuade him into going to a party? He needs to know exactly who's going, what to wear, what’s being served, what’s the earliest time he can leave—the list goes on

Trying to persuade him into doing something risky? Give him the details and he’d have no choice but to sigh and go through with it

Damian Wayne 

Damian and the hot-hand fallacy

When someone experiences a success, they’re more likely to continue that streak

He uses this to his advantage when it comes to Robin

Showing his father that he is self-sufficient because Damian busted this ring by himself and took down this villain too

Setting down a steady foundation of success to persuade more privilege and independence with the cape on

It’s a way to prove he belongs as well as keep the line of success for Robin going, purifying the colors so to speak

Dami also uses it on his siblings, especially when Dick took Batman’s role

Taking a weak, low point and showcasing the success that was brought to the mantle through him rather than previous Robins

It’s his confidence, his drive, the passion to maintain success lest he break that streak and tarnish his name

He's also used it to present new tactics or weaponry to the family, stating the success rate or how it has been used in the family before

However, with the inflated importance of Robin’s role, it doesn't take much to persuade Damian back into line

That’s where his weakness of persuasion comes in, The Authority Bias

Authority figures are perceived to be correct and have a stronger influence on others because of this

Damian not only grew up being forced to respect Ra’s and Thalia, but its so deep rooted in him that it is very rare for him to speak out against someone of higher authority than him

Hence why he respects Dick so much as Batman, or even Bruce because he is Damians biological father

So the easiest way to persuade Damian into doing something is to assert authority or dominance over him

There has to be merit behind it however, or he will call your bluff and not take you seriously

Bonus

All of the batboys share one method of persuasion that can also work on them: Mimicry

Its natural for us to respond more positively to people who act, look, or sound similar to us

This comes in handy with survivors on patrol, each of the boys mimicking body language or softening their voices to appear less threatening

In Jason’s case, he likes to appear more human by taking off his helmet so his voice doesn't sound as intimidating, it sounds similar and soft

For Tim, he sometimes takes off his cape to seem less like a super hero and more like an ordinary guy, especially for younger kids

In general though, it’s an unspoken bond between them all that they can tell exactly who each brother likes just by watching mimicking body language or adaptation of speech—very easy to tease each other about it

And of course, mimicry works on each of them as well

Makes them all—in their own way—feel less outcasted

Taglist ♡

@anothertimdrakestan

@bungunz

@red-hood-redemption ​​

@missredrobin

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

Words: 5,266 Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader Reader pronouns: she/her Era: Alexandria Warnings: Language, violence, sexuality, nudity, typical TWD A/N: I didn't do nearly as many read-throughs with this one so there are probably typos. Also YA'LL. ARE. GONNA. LOVE. THIS. A/N: This is part of a series! Find the previous parts on the Masterlist! Summary: After the visit from the Saviors at Hilltop, Daryl and Y/N finally head back to Alexandria, waiting on the edge of war.

Your name: submit What is this?

That night, after the Saviors left, was to be your last in Hilltop before you returned to Alexandria to officialyl kick the hornet nest. You had said something about going to talk to Maggie but after a while you still hadn’t returned and Daryl went to see if there was anything he could help with. He knocked on the door of Jesus’ trailer and Enid pulled open the door. Everyone was there, except for you.

“Hey. Y/N ain’t here?” he drawled. Maggie noticed how his brow drew down low over his eyes, a clear expression of worry.

“She was but she left a while ago,” Jesus said, climbing to his feet. “I assumed she was headed your way.”

“Nah. She ain’t been back.” His stomach twisted a little with anxiety. “Alright… Thanks,” he said, turning to leave.

“Daryl, wait!” Maggie called after him. She got up from her seat at the table and walked over. “You’re leavin’ early in the mornin’, right?”

“Mhm,” he hummed. “Headin’ back.”

Maggie nodded. “Alright. Then let us say goodbye to ya now in case we don’t see ya.” She grabbed Daryl into a tight hug before he could protest. He was stiff at first but he soon pressed a hand to her back and returned it. “You be safe. And we’ll see ya soon.”

He nudged his nose up in a nod. Sasha grabbed him briefly into a hug. Enid waved from her place on the couch and Jesus strode forward to shake his hand. “Thanks for all your help here,” he said. “It really means a lot.”

Daryl nodded again. “Mhm. We’ll be rid of ‘em for good soon. See ya’ll.” The archer’s broad frame disappeared back outside. He stopped for a minute and scanned the open space for your familiar frame, but he couldn’t see you anywhere. The first places he checked were all the guard posts along the wall but there was no sign of you. He tried Abraham and Glenn’s graves next, but no luck. Then his eyes fell on the stable and he knew you sometimes went there in an attempt to quiet your mind, and after that interaction with Negan today, the things he had said loud enough for everyone to hear, Daryl suspected that your mind needed a little quieting.

His guess was right.

You came into view, leaning up against one of the stall doors, petting a mare who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the attention. There was only the glow of a few lanterns to light the space and your expression was cast in shadow when he came in, the soft hay making his steps nearly silent.

“Hey,” he said, drawing your eyes. “Been lookin’ for ya.”

“Sorry,” you said softly.

“Nah, it’s not¬—nothin’ to be sorry for,” he said, crossing the space to you. You didn’t have a smile for him this time and his concern grew. “Ya alright? Today was…” he broke off, not even sure what word to use.

You were usually quick to reassure him that you were fine, but this time you didn’t. You just stared ahead and absently smoothed your hand down the horse’s neck, trying to gather your courage to speak.

Daryl stepped closer to you until he was leaned up right beside you against the stall door. “Hey. C’mon. Talk to me. What is it?”

He watched you gulp and shut your eyes for a moment, gathering yourself. You shook your head a little and let out a shaky exhale before you glanced over at him. “Negan. What he—he said—and… everyone… the rest of the day today, I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. And you know that feeling you get when you enter a room and people were just talking about you? It felt like that in all of Hilltop today.” You bit the inside of your cheek to stop the tears burning in your eyes from spilling out. “Everybody here must just think I—”

“Hey, c’mon. Stop that. Nobody thinks anything about it,” he said trying to reassure you. But you turned your eyes down toward your hands.

“The way some of them were looking at me? Yeah. They do, Daryl… Now all of Hilltop knows that I—that I slept with Negan. With him.” It was hard even to get the words out. “And I can’t even really blame them. Maybe I deserve it. Maybe I never should have allowed—” you said quietly, breaking off and shuffling your feet back and forth anxiously in the soft bedding on the barn floor. You could no longer stop any of the tears from spilling out and Daryl saw them cascade down your cheeks as you finally looked back up at him and met his blue eyes. “I can’t even blame them for what they probably think of me. What you must think of me…” You hastily wiped the tear streaks from your cheeks. “Hell, a lot of the time—” you shook your head, staring down at your hands again, “I think the worst of it myself…”

Daryl’s brow furrowed more deeply. His gaze was intense. He hated that you had been put in that situation. He hated that circumstances had ever collided in just such a way as to put you in a place where your only option was to submit to Negan, to allow him to lay a finger on you. And then you’d gone back. For him. “Ya want to know what I think? Ya were victimized by him. But ya ain’t a victim. You’re a survivor. That’s all ya did. Ya survived. And ya saved my ass! Ya didn’t have a choice. And any of them who are too stupid to figure that out ain’t worth it. They don’t know a damn thing about it. All the rest of us, Maggie, Jesus, Rick, Aaron & Eric, we know. We know. I’m proud to even know ya. And I consider myself lucky that ya’ve chosen me as bein’—as bein’ someone worth yer time.” He watched you wipe another tear off your cheek, your eyes wide and glassy as you looked back at him. He tilted his head gently at you. “C’mere.” His expression was soft and one you never could refuse.

It was all you needed. You fell into him and his strong arms wrapped around you tightly and pressed you into him, like he needed you there against his chest. Daryl breathed in the scent of your hair and settled you against him, smoothing his hands over your back lightly. You squeezed your eyes shut tight and focused on that feeling of safety. “S’alright. I ain’t ever thought less of ya because of what happened to ya. It ain’t your fault. Wasn’t a choice. And if anybody so much as looks at ya sideways, ya just come tell me and I’ll knock them on their ass, alright?”

You couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. You pressed your hand flat against his chest, loving how you could feel his heartbeat beneath your fingers and the expansion of his lungs as he breathed. You pulled back slightly so you could look up into his handsome face. He looked worried still, anxiously chewing on his bottom lip. But, finally, you gave him a smile, albeit still a little teary, and he relaxed some. His fingers smoothed through your hair and you sighed, feeling a return of the warmth he always gave you. It grew and spread outward in your chest, spilling into your face, and you arched up onto your toes and kissed him.

You were setting your heels back down when his arm snaked around your lower back and pulled your hips into his. You looked up and met his eyes again and he nudged his nose up once. Daryl’s request for another kiss. You gladly acquiesced and this time you both sank into it, breathing each other in. Daryl’s hand clasped your face and his thumb traced the edge of your jaw gently as your lips moved in sync with his, effortless. The sensation of your hands light on his sides was enough to send him reeling with electricity.

“Thanks,” you said softly, after you finally broke apart. Daryl’s hands were landed on your hips and he gave you a questioning look. “Just—for what you said.”

“Ain’t gotta thank me. S’just the truth,” he said. He gave your hip an affectionate squeeze. “C’mon. S’late and we gotta get up early to head home. Let’s get some sleep.” He nudged his head in the direction of the door and you nodded.

You smiled as he laced his fingers with yours and tugged you back to the trailer.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Daryl’s bike rumbled down the road and he pulled it into the garage at Aaron and Eric’s which was standing open. You were still climbing off when the door into the house burst open and Aaron and Eric both came bounding down the stairs.

Aaron reached you first and barreled into you, drawing a laugh from you as you stumbled backward a little before regaining your balance. Daryl watched the interaction with one corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile.

“Oh, it’s so good to see you,” Aaron said, his eyes squeezed shut tightly.

You patted his back. “You too,” you said fondly, smiling widely.

“Alright, quit hogging her!” Eric said, shaking his head. Aaron pulled back and gave you a warm smile before stepping aside to let Eric wrap his arms around you. “We’ve missed you,” he said.

“Missed you guys, too,” you replied, shutting your eyes and giving Eric a final squeeze.

“How’s Hilltop?” Aaron asked as you finally withdrew, glancing between you and Daryl.

Daryl shrugged. “Ready as they’ll ever be. Maggie’s got it,” he nodded. “How’re things here?”

“Ready,” Aaron said. “For the most part. We’re expecting The Saviors today thanks to your intel.”

You felt your stomach twist and you nodded. “Yeah… Hard to believe we’re really about to do this.”

“It’s time,” Eric said, looking suddenly sad. “You heard about Olivia and—and Spencer?”

You nodded. “Yeah. We heard,” you trailed off. “Olivia was sweet. That shouldn’t have happened to her, of all people. But Spencer? What the hell was he thinking?” you asked, shaking your head sadly. “He put himself right in the line of fire… he was naïve, but nobody deserves what happened to him.”

“He couldn’t handle Rick being in charge after his Mom,” Aaron said. “Thought he could do better.”

“Only someone who was completely clueless about what that means would say that,” Daryl drawled. “Ain’t an easy job, what Rick’s doin’. And he feels responsible for every damn thing that happens to everybody.”

You sighed. “That’s a lot of weight to carry around…”

“Speakin’ of,” Daryl said, glancing back over at you. “I wanna go see everybody. Check in with Rick.”

You nodded. “Go. I’m gonna catch up with these two for a bit.”

“They’re gonna wanna see ya, too,” Daryl said.

You felt your cheeks flush a little, nerves still at the idea of being brought so fully in as part of Daryl’s ‘family’. “Alright. I’ll meet you there in a little while,” you said with a nod. “Promise.”

He nudged his nose up at you in a nod. “Alright. See ya soon, then. Aaron. Eric,” he said, nodding at each of them. Daryl disappeared out into the bright morning sun.

Considering what he knew was coming, Alexandria seemed quiet.

But when he pulled open the front door of the house his group shared and paced into the kitchen, he was surrounded by his chosen family. Rick placed Judith in his arms and smiled as Daryl cooed at the little girl. “It’s good to have you back,” Rick said, clasping Daryl’s shoulder when he could.

Daryl nodded. “Yah. Good to be back.” He bounced Judith a couple more times and then glanced at Carl. “Hey. Take her for a minute, would ya? I gotta talk to your dad.”

Carl accepted his baby sister and Daryl straightened Rick’s old hat on the teenager’s head, eliciting a smile.

Once Carl was out of ear shot, Daryl leaned onto the counter with his forearms and sighed heavily. “We really doin’ this?” he drawled. “Ready?”

Rick nodded. “We’re doing it. And we’re ready. Everything is set.”

“And Negan?”

Rick scowled. “I’ll take care of him when the time is right.”

Daryl stared down at the pattern of countertop for a moment. “What if I get the chance first? Or Y/N? We ain’t supposed to take it?” he asked. “If anyone deserves to put that bastard in the ground it’s her. I can’t tell her not to.”

The muscle in Rick’s jaw twitched. “Yeah… I know. But—for now? We need to knock down what he’s built first. Can’t just be him.”

“I know. But if we get a shot at him… Rick, I want him dead,” Daryl growled. “For what he did to Glenn and Abraham. For what he did to all of us. For Hilltop, for the Kingdom… but most of all for her.” The archer straightened up. “If we get the chance, no hesitation. He’s dead.”

Rick eventually nodded, a tentative agreement. He wanted to be the one who pulled the trigger on Negan, but how could he argue for you or Daryl to not get the job done if the opportunity presented itself. “Where is Y/N?” Rick asked.

“Catchin’ up with Aaron and Eric. She said she’d come by in a bit.”

“Good. That’s good…” There was the weight of many cares on his shoulders. “When they get here, I don’t want either of you two anywhere they might be able to see you,” Rick said.

“Why? They saw us yesterday at Hilltop. They already know we’re part of this.”

“I know. I just don’t want to give them an opportunity to take a shot at either of you,” he replied. “And after yesterday, at Hilltop, with what they now know? They might.”

Daryl sighed and anxiously chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “Ya, about that… Negan said somethin’ yesterday. He wants Y/N alive.”

Rick stared at his friend, his brow furrowing more deeply. “Alive?”

Daryl nodded, pacing a little restlessly. “That’s what he said to his douchebag lieutenant Simon. It seemed genuine. He wants her prisoner, and I don’t think he’d kill her after he got his hands on her.” Daryl’s face darkened with rage just at the thought. “So, that means that wherever we think Negan is gonna be, Y/N needs to not be…”

Rick considered the grave expression on Daryl’s face. “Will she agree to that?”

Daryl shrugged. “I dunno. But she’s gonna have to. I ain’t puttin’ her somewhere he might be able to get his hands on her again.”

“Not sure any of us can boss Y/N around,” Rick said, a small smile curving his lips despite the grim topic.

Daryl let out an amused exhale in place of a laugh. “Ya… tell me about it.”

As if on cue, Daryl and Rick heard the front door open and soft footsteps up the hall and into the kitchen. You had a small smile for Rick and the others who were gathered in the living room. Rick returned it as you came to stand beside Daryl. “Good to see you,” Rick said. “We sorely missed having both of you around. And not just because you two can get supply runs done in record time.”

You laughed a little lightly, exchanging a look with Daryl, and nodded. “We missed being home too.”

“Listen, I was just telling Daryl—” Rick hesitated. “I don’t want either of you anywhere near the gate when they show up. I don’t want him knowing you’re here.”

You straightened up and looked at Daryl briefly. His blue eyes met yours and he nodded once to show he was onboard. “Alright,” you said, turning back to look at Rick. “We’ll hang back.” Inside, you were hoping that if Negan didn’t see you there wouldn’t be a repeat of what he had divulged loudly for everyone at Hilltop the previous day. You sighed and looked at Rick. “Once you do this today, there’s no going back. And people are going to die. Our people.”

Rick’s expression was grave, but he nodded. “I know. But if we leave it be, more people will die anyway. At his hands.”

“Yes,” you agreed. “I just want to make sure you really understand what we’re all getting into. Negan, he’s—” You broke off, unable to continue and sighed.

“I know,” Rick said forcefully. “We’ve all seen it with our own eyes.” You weren’t looking up at him. “Hey—” he said, forcing your eyes back to his. “Whatever happens isn’t gonna be on you. You told us all you had to tell. You stopped us from rushing in unprepared. And you didn’t even have to do any of that. We owe you. More than I can say. And I—” Rick pressed his hand over the center of his chest, “I’m so grateful.”

At length, you nodded. “We’ll get it done. We will. I know it.”

Daryl was looking at you in awe of your strength and he watched with a swell of happiness as Rosita grinned at you and waved from her place in the other room and you went striding over to greet her.

“Daryl.” Rick’s voice drew his eyes again. “Whatever happens… we’re fighting the good fight.” And it was then that Daryl suddenly realized that Rick was worried that perhaps you might not make it through this. And he was worried about what that would mean for the archer. It was war. Anything could happen.

Daryl straightened up to his full height and chewed on his bottom lip anxiously. “Ain’t gotta worry. Y/N and I are both making it through this. Rick, she’s—” he paused and glanced back over at you, feeling himself soften as he watched you laugh at something Rosita had said, tossing your head back, your eyes crinkled closed. “She’s stronger than me. And she makes me strong. We’re gonna be just fine.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

Daryl was surprised when he woke the next morning and realized you weren’t beside him. He shot straight up in bed, his heart pounding, and that’s when he realized that he could hear the shower running and the gentle sound of you humming to yourself over the pattering of the water. He flopped back down onto the pillow and reached over to your side, wanting to see if the warmth of you was still there.

Your side of the bed was cool but Daryl could still see the shape of your body in the sheets and the impression of your head on the pillow. He heard the shower turn off in the bathroom and the sound of you opening the door and stepping out. The archer climbed out of bed and made his way over to the doorway. He leaned against the door frame, taking in the shape of your figure wrapped in a towel, a comb in your hands as you ran it through your wet hair. You finally caught sight of him in the mirror and you gave him that megawatt smile that always sent electricity jumping up his spine and his heart skipping a beat.

“Hey. Morning,” you said, turning to look at him leaning up against the doorframe.

“Ya left me alone in bed?” he drawled. “Real nice…”

A small smile still curved you lips. “I’m sorry. You were really deeply asleep still. Must have needed it. I couldn’t sleep anymore and I just really wanted a hot shower.”

Daryl left his place leaning against the doorway and walked over to you in front of the mirror. His hands landed on your hips and you felt a flush of heat in your chest and face at the contact.

“Yah. Ya didn’t invite me to that either,” he joked quietly.

One of your eyebrows quirked down low over your eyes and you gave him a look, obviously trying to read what was on his mind. “Should I have?” you asked, turning around again to glance in the mirror. Daryl’s hands stayed on your hips and you soon felt his body pressing up against yours.

“Always,” he said, his voice deep and a little gruff with sleep still. He bent and kissed the bare skin on the side of your neck. The stubble on his face was exhilarating and you felt goosebumps rising on your skin immediately. He next pressed his lips to the skin on your shoulder. He thought you smelled of lavender and vanilla. His fingers gave your hips a gentle squeeze.

You bit your bottom lip. “Daryl Dixon…” you said softly. Your tone was smoky, silky, and it drew his eyes to yours in the mirror. “What are you doing?” you asked him playfully.

One corner of his mouth twitched up but then his expression was almost serious. He gently gathered the wet strands of your hair, his fingertips sweeping your neck softly, sending another electric jolt through you. He pressed his lips to the back of your neck and pulled you back against him more tightly.

You felt your lips part slightly of their own accord and your eyes closed. You let out a small exhale and Daryl straightened up again, taking in your expression in the mirror and feeling a flame of heat growing in his chest. After a moment your eyes opened again and met his once more. “Do you know what you’re doing?” you asked quietly. Your breath and heart were increasing in pace and the tingles running through you were becoming impossible to ignore.

Daryl ducked his head a little bashfully for a moment, but only for a moment. When he caught your eyes again, he tilted his head back toward the doorway into the bedroom.

Now your heart was absolutely pounding. You broke from your gaze in the mirror and spun to face him, your brilliantly colored eyes searching his face. You peered up at him and once again Daryl was taken aback by the vulnerability he saw in your eyes. All he wanted in that moment was to wrap you up and make you truly his, show you exactly how goddamn head over heels he was for you. “Are you sure?” you said, and then you hesitated. “I mean, am I—am I reading this right?”

One of Daryl’s hands lifted from your hip and clasped your face gently. And he swept you in against him, his other hand on the small of your back, kissing you deeply and insistently. You felt your knees start to go weak but there was no chance of falling with Daryl’s arm around you, pressing your hips into his. His tongue flicked over your bottom lip and you granted him entrance, letting out a small noise of pleasure as he deepened the kiss even more.

You suddenly pulled back, your hand landing flush against his strong chest. “Wait. Wait…” you breathed, looking up into his handsome face, his blue eyes connected with yours. “Are you—is this—”

Daryl studied your expression and smiled at your hesitation as he realized you were worrying about him. He clasped your face again in both of his hands delicately, his eyes flickering between both of yours. “I’ve wanted this with ya for a long time. I just—I needed there to be other things first… I didn’t want to—to risk ruinin’ this because I rushed anythin’.”

You nodded though there was some mixture of confusion and disbelief on your face. You gently rested your hands on his sides. The lightness, the delicate quality of your touch drove him crazy…

“Hey, I—” he paused for a moment and licked his lips anxiously, his eyes never leaving yours. “Y/N, ‘M in love with you.”

You blinked. Once. Twice. Daryl’s heart was pounding as he waited for your response.

The confusion and disbelief in your eyes was suddenly replaced with a wild happiness that grew, like your smile, by the moment. He felt your fingers curl more tightly into his shirt. “I love you, too,” you said. You let out a joyful laugh as you looked up at him and then immediately arched up onto your toes, crashing your lips into his again.

Daryl kissed you back eagerly, feverishly, but he pulled back suddenly leaving you wanting more. He stared down at you and you gave him a questioning look again, but were unable to stop smiling. “Can you, uhh—could ya just say that again?” he asked, a little self-consciously.

You grinned at him and looped your arms around his neck, looking deeply into his eyes. “Daryl Dixon. I’m so in love with you.”

His heart leapt to hear those words leave your lips and he crashed into you again, his arms pulling you into him and lifting you off your feet. When he set you back down, your lips didn’t separate and you pressed your hands into his strong chest, pushing him backwards into the bedroom again. You pulled his bottom lip in between your teeth, dragging them lightly over it, and smiled into the kiss as the action elicited a chesty growl from him. His fingers dug more deeply into your hips.

He broke from you for a brief moment and looked into your face. His eyes were intense, wanting. “Are ya ready for this? This okay? We don’t have to—”

You grinned at his sweetness and captured him in another fiery kiss briefly before pulling back again. “Get your damn clothes off right now,” you said breathily, grinning at him. “How is this fair? I’m already in just a towel.”

His pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth briefly and shook his head at you like he couldn’t believe this was happening. You grinned and grabbed the hem of his shirt, pulling it off over his head. Your eyes wandered over his strong shoulders and bare chest down to the V of his hips, hitching again on the scars crisscrossing his skin.

Your hands went to him immediately and you leaned into him. He gulped a little nervously, staring down at the unmistakable desire in your eyes. You wrapped your arms around him and arched up onto your toes again, your lips meeting his hungrily, and Daryl happily sank into it. Suddenly he felt your fingernails raking gently down his back and he almost shivered at the sensation. He felt the overwhelming warmth in his chest blooming outward, causing his head to go vaguely fuzzy.

Before he could even think about doing it himself, he felt the towel wrapped around you fall to the floor and suddenly his fingers were wandering over the bare shape of you, unimpeded by distracting or cumbersome fabric.

He smoothed his hands from the flared curve of your hips up the narrowing of your waist and onto the angles of your ribs. His fingers reached around your frame and felt the sharpness of your shoulder blades. You felt small beneath his hands, delicate, despite the fact that he knew you were no wilted daylily. His lips wandered from yours to leave a trail along your jaw and down your neck to your collarbone. You heaved in a small breath at the sensation. Your fingers found his waistband and soon both of you were only skin, completely reeling with the sensations of one another.

A moment later you let out a surprised gasp as Daryl picked you up as if you weighed nothing and laid you down in the bed beneath him. He leaned over you, propped up on one elbow, moving aside a strand of your hair with the other hand. You stared up at him wantingly, your lips parted and waiting again for his. His hands, a little rough but so gentle, clasped your face as he kissed you before tracing the line of your collarbone and wandering down to explore all your curves and angles. You pulled his lips back to yours and tangled your legs with his, gasping in pleasure as the two of you became one and moved in sync together effortlessly.

Daryl was sweet and gentle but needy and fiery all at once and you were both just bounding hearts and sensations, curling toes and waves of rising pleasure. He kept one hand laced with yours and couldn’t take his eyes off you beneath him as you moved together unless it was to press kisses to every part of you. You relished the feeling of his strong muscles moving beneath your fingers, and when you both finally reached the peak his lips on yours were insistent before they softened. He drew back to watch the expression on your face as the two of you came down from your high, rushing breaths and a heartbeat that was loud in your ears.

Daryl settled down beside you, his chest heaving and an arm draped over you which you rested your hand on.

“Oh my God,” you gasped breathily, glancing over at him with a starry smile on your face. You turned onto your side so you were facing him, knowing your face and cheeks were flushed. Your fingers traced over the scars on his chest and despite the afterglow you were basking in you felt a twinge of anger and sadness at what he had gone through.

“Yah,” he agreed, a smile curving his lips. “I can’t even tell ya how long I’ve wanted that.” You thought you saw a blush in his cheeks too. His hands smoothed up and down your side from your shoulder to your hip, memorizing the feeling of you.

You sighed contentedly. “Same.”

Daryl nudged his nose up at you and you gladly acquiesced and pressed your lips to his softly, clasping his face and running your thumb along the line of his strong jaw. You watched his blue eyes open and you drank in the softness in them. His hand came to rest on your hip and his thumb drew absent strokes on your soft skin. You pressed a hand flat to his chest so you could feel the racing of his heart and the rise and fall of his breath.

“Wish we could stay here like this forever,” you said softly.

“Mhm. Me too. We can for a while though at least,” he drawled, moving closer to you again so he could feel your weight and your warmth. You draped your arm over him, the tips of your fingers brushing his back. Daryl watched you fondly as you settled in against him and closed your eyes.

At that moment, it was hard to believe anything could ever break the sense of fulfillment and peace both of you had.

[jenstar1992-2]

Here with You

Pairing: Echo x reader/ Hunter x reader

Warnings: Mentions of nightmares/ trauma, reliving a traumatic experience, Order 66 (because it’s a warning in itself)

Word count: 7,103

A/N: Well, I knew it, it hasn’t been a whole day since I saw the Bad Batch premiere, and I’ve already gotten my first writing idea (yes, this took me like two days to write because I kept getting interrupted). I just couldn’t get the image of my poor baby Echo in that med bay and seeing the trauma those damned Separatists caused him out of my head. All I want to do is hold him and never let go, he deserves the world. This was originally just going to be an Echo x reader, but it turned into a Hunter x reader as well, because I just couldn’t help myself, I love them both, and wanted both of them to get some lovins. Also, I get the sense that Omega is a smart kid, and that she’s pretty well spoken, so I tried to write her as such, while still keeping that childlike innocence, so hopefully it comes across that way.

So much had transpired within the last few days and you were still trying to wrap your head around all of it. The jedi had been almost entirely wiped out in a single day, and while you were certain their had to be other survivors besides yourself, you were unclear as to what that number was. Luckily for you, you had been amongst friends when Order 66 was given, and your men turned on you. If it weren’t for the Bad Batch, you were certain you wouldn’t be alive right now.

As you sat in the cockpit of the Marauder, the memories began to flood your brain, which caused involuntary tears to fill your eyes.

You and your men had been sent to Kaller to aid Master Billaba and her troops. However, upon your arrival, you were greeted with a pleasant surprise. It turned out, Clone Force 99 had been on planet already and had taken out a large amount of the droids before you even landed.

You had worked with this group before and had even enjoyed the experience. While your men thought their tactics and unprofessional antics were unnecessary and even a bit annoying, you found the group to be, for lack of a better term, fun. You had been around stuffy, uptight individuals for so long, it was nice to have a change of pace, and while your men were great, they tended to be sticklers for the rules and rarely wanted to take risks.

You also got along with this team rather well, enough to consider them good friends, but you were especially close with their newest recruit. You and Echo had known each other well before he joined the Bad Batch, even before his accident at the citadel, and had been friends for just as long, although as time went by and you found yourself encountering him more and more in your life, you slowly realized you might feel more for the trooper than you should, more than you’d ever admit aloud. So, when you’d heard of his survival and rescue, you had been elated, and that happiness resurfaced at the thought of seeing him again.

You exited the gunship and saw the rag-tag group of clones speaking with Master Billaba on the now quiet battlefield. They turned as you and your men made your approach. As you got closer to the group, you scanned the faces of its members before you found him, smiling brightly as your eyes connected, he did the same.

You came to stand before their leader, raising your gaze to meet the man’s unwavering stare.

“Sergeant”, you greeted him, extending a hand formally, which he took without hesitation, shaking it firmly.

“General, good to see you again”, he said with a smile.

“You too”, you responded.

You’d always liked Hunter, from the beginning he’d always struck you as a respectable man, and you admired the fact that he could allow his men to be their reckless selves while also keeping them in line, but only when necessary, it seemed. There was something else too, something you hadn’t noticed right away, but after a few more encounters with the man, you put it together, coming to an all to familiar realization, one that brought butterflies to your stomach, while also bringing about a slight anxiety. How could you let this happen, it was bad enough falling for one man you couldn’t have, but two, you were sure the universe was out to hurt you.

“General (L/N), I’m glad to see your trip was a safe one, and better late than never I suppose”, Depa said, drawing you from Hunter’s gaze to hers.

“Sorry Master Billaba, we were assisting Masters Luminara and Yoda on Kashyyyk when we got word of your need for reinforcements, we got here as soon as we could”, you said, then looking around at the desolated droids scattered across the landscape. “Although, from what I can tell, you seem to now have a handle on things.”

“Yeah, thanks to these guys”, Caleb, Depa’s padawan, exclaimed, gesturing to the group of men before you. “You should’ve seen it, they took all those droids out in a matter of minutes, it was incredible.”

You chuckled. “Yes, I’m well aware of the marvel that is Clone Force 99, and they do put on quite the show”, you said, shooting a quick glance Echo’s way. “Incredible indeed.”

Your words caused the trooper to smile shyly at you.

“Yes, well, we’re still glad you’re here, we just launched a counterattack, and the more assistance, the better”, Depa said.

You nodded. “You need us, we’ll stay”, you said before turning to your troops. “Men, a counterattack has been launched, I want you to rendezvous with Master Billaba’s troops and aid in the attack, Commander Roran, you’re with me. Let’s move!”

With that your troops dispersed, leaving you and your commander where you stood. You turned back to face everyone.

“So, how can we help”, you asked.

“Actually, I don’t think we’ll be needing your assistance after all, in fact, this war might soon be over”, Tech spoke up, causing you to give him a confused look.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, according to the encrypted comm chatter, Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi has found and engaged General Grievous on Utapau”, he responded.

“If he captures, or kills Grievous, the separatist command structure will collapse”, Echo chimed in.

“And most likely the droid armies along with them”, Tech finished.

“It can’t be that easy, can it”, you asked, looking to the jedi master.

“While it is an interesting theory, I would not bet our hopes on it, we should focus on the task at hand”, she replied.

“I agree, we should focus our energy on this attack, strike while we have the advantage”, you said.

Hunter nodded. “Any orders, or shall we do what we do”, he asked, directing his words at Depa.

“What do you think General, should we let them ‘do what they do’”, she asked you.

You chuckled and folded your arms over your chest. “Probably our best bet, what do you think Caleb”, you asked the padawan.

“I say we let them, but only if I can go with them”, he responded.

You looked to his master, raising an eyebrow in question.

“Very well”, she said, giving the boy permission.

“Ronan and I will tag along too”, you stated, then looking to Hunter. “Just in case you guys need a hand.”

“Hope that wasn’t a jab at me”, Echo said, coming to stand beside you while simultaneously lifting his cybernetic arm.

You immediately regretted your choice in words and stammered your defense.

“N- no, I didn’t mean, I would never.”

He let out an amused laugh. “I’m just messing with you General, sorry”, he said.

You then scowled at him before poking a finger at his chest plate.

“Not funny”, you said, but couldn’t keep the smile from forming on your face.

“I said I was sorry”, you heard him say as you began walking in the direction your troops had gone. He soon caught up and walked alongside you.

You chuckled. “Well, it’s nice to know you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“Nah, but I did lose a couple other things”, he said, face turning slightly serious.

You stopped walking and just stood for a moment, a sad expression now adorning your features. Noticing your actions, Echo ceased his movements as well and looked back to you.

“What is it”, he asked.

You went to stand in front of him before you spoke your next words. “Echo, I am sorry for your loss, truly I am, but honestly, I’d rather you be here and missing a few limbs, then for you to not be here at all. I’m just glad your alive, and that I get to see you again.”

He stared at you for a moment with an unreadable expression before smiling and nodding.

“I guess you’re right, and I’m glad our paths crossed again, I…”, he began, clearly wanting to say more, but stopping himself. You caught on though and decided to voice it for him.

“I missed you too”, you said, giving him a warm smile, prompting one of his own.

You both began walking once more to catch up with your comrades.

“You know, I was actually surprised you recognized me, what with the countless differences and all” he said with a chuckle.

You shook your head. “You can change all you want, I’ll still know it’s you”, you said.

“Yeah?”

“Yep, you might’ve changed a lot on the outside, but inside, you’re still the same Echo I’ve always known and loved”, you said, saying the words before they fully registered with your brain, but once they did you nearly froze in your stacks, your face instantly reddening with embarrassment. You quickly tried to back track before he could respond. “I mean, uh, well, y- you know what I mean.” Smooth.

He chuckled, amused at your obvious embarrassment of your less-than-ideal choice of words yet again.

“It’s okay, I know what you mean”, he said, giving you a reassuring smile before seemingly letting the subject drop, much to your relief.

You nodded as you carried on toward the others.

Suddenly, a wave of emotions flooded your mind, and it was as if hundreds of voices were crying out within the confines of your skull. You stopped, placing a hand to the side of your head in an attempt to stop the dizziness that accompanied the voices.

Echo noticed and came to your side, placing a steadying hand to your back.

“Are you okay”, he asked, clearly concerned.

“S- somethings wrong, I feel… death, so much death, I don’t know…”, you began through heavy breathes, but you were soon cut off by the sound of blaster fire.

You both looked to see Master Billaba’s men attempting to gun her down as she deflected their blasts with her lightsaber. Before you could fully process the sight in front of you, you heard Caleb yell for his master, seeing him rush past you, saber ignited and ready to jump to her aid.

“Caleb, no…”, you shouted, but before you could run after him a burning pain in your left arm stopped you.

You grabbed your now wounded arm and turned to see Roran facing you, blaster raised and aimed directly at you.

“Commander”, you said in confusion, but before you could get another word out, he was firing again. You were able to deflect the blasts with your saber, yelling at him as you did so. “Roran, why are you doing this?”

Suddenly, the blasts stopped as Echo came to your aid, wrestling the blaster out of the commander’s hands before knocking him out cold. He then rushed to your side once more, seeing you kneeling and clutching your head.

“General, (Y/N), (Y/N), can you hear me? Say something”, he urged, but try as you might, you couldn’t form the words to respond.

Your head was swimming in a sea of pain, death, and betrayal, most of which you were certain weren’t coming from you, more like from the force itself. You’d felt disturbances in the force before, but none like this, it was all encompassing and soon you found yourself slipping from consciousness from the intensity of it all.

***

When you finally came to, you found yourself laying in a bunk aboard the Havoc Marauder. When you tried to sit up a hand caught your shoulder and gently coaxed you back down.

“Easy (Y/N), you don’t want to push yourself, you sustained a pretty bad injury, you should rest”, a familiar voice said softly.

“Echo, what, what happened… they turned on us, why would they do that”, you asked, looking at him with confusion and sadness mixing in your expression.

“I don’t know, we’re still trying to figure that out ourselves, but you’re safe now, I won’t let them hurt you again, you have my word. Now rest”, he said, trying to comfort you, but knowing it wouldn’t help much given what you’d just been through.

“No”, you heard someone say, the volume of it startling you slightly, and you looked to see that it was Hunter, who had just entered.

“What do you mean ‘no’”, Echo asked him, confused.

“I mean, she can’t stay here, it’s not safe”, he explained, and when you both gave him a befuddled look, he continued, “It’s Crosshair, there’s… something wrong with him. I think whatever happened to those soldiers is happening to him too, but I can’t be sure.”

“What makes you think that”, you questioned, finally sitting up and turning to place your feet on the floor.

He looked behind him, making sure you three were the only ones in ear shot before bending down to your level.

“He tried to kill that padawan”, he said, so low it was almost a whisper.

“Caleb, is he alright”, you asked, fear and concern thick in your voice.

“He’s alive, but other than that, I’m not sure. He ran off after…”, he began, but the words died on his lips.

You nodded in understanding. “So, what should I do, where should I go?”

“Stay here, on Kaller, find somewhere to hide. We’ll go back to Kamino and sort this out, once it’s safe, we’ll come back for you”, he said.

You nodded, agreeing to do as he said, knowing you really had no other option at this point.

Shortly after this conversation you readied yourself to leave, Tech giving you some medical supplies in case you would need to re-bandage your arm before they returned.

Echo ended up accompanying you in your search for shelter, telling the others he wasn’t going anywhere until he knew you’d found somewhere safe to stay. You had resisted the gesture, wanting him to get as far away from danger as possible, but he insisted.

You found a cave a few miles from the ship’s current location and decided it was as good a place as any to crash for, what you were hoping would only be, a few days.

“You sure you’re going to be okay here”, Echo asked, looking into the cold, dark cave.

“I’ll be fine, I’ve stayed in worse places. Besides, it’s the safest place we’ll find in the wilderness, and it’s dark, perfect for hiding”, you said in a poor attempt to lighten the mood, you didn’t know why, force of habit you guessed. Although, all this earned you was a sad smile from the trooper.

“We’ll be back soon, just stay out of sight until then, okay?”

You gave a small smile, bringing your hand up to your forehead for a two fingered salute. “Yes sir”, you said. This actually earned you a small laugh, which at this moment was music to your ears. You lowered your hand and looked into his eyes, taking on a more serious expression. “Just… be safe.”

“I should be telling you that”, he said.

“Yeah, well, I beat you to it”, you said, half grinning.

“I will if you will.”

You nodded. “Then I will.”

Suddenly your body was moving without you telling it to, and you found yourself wrapping him in a tight hug, closing your eyes to keep from crying, and soon the gesture was returned, leaving the both of you in a long embrace.

“Don’t forget me, okay”, you said, the threat of tears evident in your voice.

He squeezed you a little tighter. “Never.”

***

Turns out, you didn’t have to hide out in that cave long at all, as they had returned to retrieve you within two days’ time, with a new crew member, but without Crosshair. You two hadn’t been the best of friends by any means, and the man’s standoffishness really irked you sometimes, but you’d always known that deep down, he wasn’t such a bad guy. So, when the boys had told you what had happened between their return to Kamino and their escape from the planet, it put a surprising strain on your heart. You wanted to be angry with Crosshair for his actions, for attempting to kill Caleb and other innocents, but you just couldn’t, especially after you were informed of the inhibitor chips planted within every clone trooper. You couldn’t be mad at him, you couldn’t hate him, because it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t any of their faults, they were being used just like the jedi had been, if not more so, and this knowledge extinguished any hatred that had grown in you since the day that order was given.

Thinking back on all of this had you shedding silent tears as you watched the streaks of light pass before your eyes, attempting to let yourself to be swept away in the beauty that was hyperspace. This always seemed to calm your mind, but it didn’t seem to be working this time, so you simply stared and let the tears run down your cheeks.

“Hey, you okay”, Hunter asked from the seat beside you, having temporarily taken over piloting the ship in order to allow the others to rest.

You were snapped out of your thoughts by his words and quickly wiped the tears from your face before answering.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine, still just trying to figure all of this out”, you replied somberly.

He nodded. “I understand, we still don’t have it all figured out either and with every answer comes new questions”, he said.

You hummed in agreement. “I guess my biggest question is, why now, why did Palpatine wait so long to put this grand plan in action? I mean, he could’ve done it years ago, but no, he waited… waited for us to get close to those who would eventually become our executioners, and worse, he took away their free will to do it. Those troopers, they weren’t the men they used to be, it’s like they were brainwashed.”

“Tech said they were programmed and when the chips were activated, it basically took over their minds, so I guess, in a way, they are brainwashed”, Hunter said, looking back out at the blue glow of hyperspace.

“Those poor men”, you said after a moment of silence.

Hunter turned his head to look at you, an astonished expression over his features, he then let out an amused huff.

“You are truly a wonder, you know that?”

“What”, you asked him, confused by the comment.

“Even after everything you’ve been through, and after what they did to you and your kin, you still feel pity for them”, he explained. “You’ve always been able to see people for who they really are, and forgive them for their faults, it’s commendable, and it’s something I’ve always admired about you.”

“You admire me”, you asked, raising an eyebrow and grinning in amusement.

He gave you a single nod. “Always have”, he said, giving you a soft smile.

The way he was looking at you made your cheeks begin to heat as a light blush covered them, and you turned away in an attempt to hide it, but he noticed, and his smile widened a bit as he looked back out the view port.

“I think you’re right by the way, about Palpatine waiting so long to execute his plan. I think he wanted you all to build those relationships, that trust, with your men, so that, when the time came, he could not only take you all out, but destroy your conviction as well”, he said, his voice lower than before.

“That’s a bit ominous, given our current situation”, you said, only half joking.

He turned to you suddenly, eyebrows raised in mild shock.

“(Y/N), you don’t think we’d… we’d never hurt you, I’d never hurt you, we’re on your side, I promise”, he said, hurt in his eyes. Did you really not trust him?

Seeing his reaction made your heart squeeze, you hadn’t meant to hurt him, you were just confused and scared. You felt as if your whole world had come crumbling down around you, and you were still trying to resurface from the rubble. But you knew you were wrong for thinking, even for a second, that you couldn’t trust Hunter and his men.

“I know, I’m sorry. I do trust you, all of you”, you said, trying to sound reassuring, but it only came out as sadness.

It looked as if the sergeant was contemplating something, his hands reflexively grabbing at nothing as they opened and closed on his lap. You knew he wanted to do something, wanted to comfort you, but he also didn’t want to invade your space, worried that would be crossing a line. So, you took the initiative.

You reached over and took one of his hands from his lap, holding it softly before giving it a reassuring squeeze and sending a smile his way. This prompted him to smile back, and you both just sat like that for a minute.

Suddenly, you heard a commotion from the bunks, and your name being called out by a desperate voice.

Recognizing the voice, you jumped up from your seat. “Echo”, you said, concern in your tone, before looking back to Hunter.

He simply nodded. “Go”, he said softly.

You gave a confirming nod and let go of the hand you’d still been holding, before quickly making your way to the bunks.

When you entered the room, it took you a second to assess the situation before you. Echo was laying in his bunk, breathing heavy, head shaking from side to side, and body trembling, as if he were in a state of terror. All this while Omega stood by the bunk, watching with concern. She looked back to you when you entered, then ran to you.

“I tried to wake him, but it’s not working, he keeps calling for you, you’ve got to do something”, she said in a rush, voice and eyes full or worry for her new friend.

You bent down to her level and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, I know what to do, you go wait with Hunter, okay? Everything will be fine”, you told her, attempting to quell her worry.

You then stood and made your way to Echo, sitting on the edge of the bunk and looking over him with your own worried expression. You really didn’t know what to do, you’d never been faced with something like this before. He was clearly having a terrible nightmare, and you wanted to help, so you just acted on instinct.

You placed a hand on his shoulder and shook lightly, softly calling his name, trying to wake him as gradually as you could, as you figured startling him awake would be counterproductive. However, this didn’t seem to work, and hearing your voice only caused him to say your name more. Seeing him like this broke your heart, and for a moment you felt totally helpless, but then you had an idea. You moved your hand from his shoulder, bringing it to cup the side of his face, your thumb instinctually beginning to rub soothing circles on his cheek, and you bent down to speak quietly in his ear.

“Echo, it’s (Y/N). You don’t have to be scared, I’m here, I won’t let them hurt you anymore”, you said, gently grabbing his flesh hand with your free one and holding it to your chest. “I’m here for you, I’ll always be right here with you, it’s okay. Wake up Love. Come back to me.”

As you spoke you could see him slowly calm, and with your final request, his eyes fluttered open, finding yours instantly.

“There you are”, you said softly, a smile spreading over your face. You were just relieved that the nightmare was over, and he seemed to be calming more with each passing second.

As he took in your presence before him, he let out a relieved sigh, but then looked to you with a strained expression.

“(Y/N), I… I was back, back with them, back to that day, I… I didn’t know how or why, and I just…”, he said in a desperate rush.

You shushed him, and let your hand continue to stay where it was in an attempt to sooth the frightened man lying next to you.

“I know, it’s okay, you’re okay now, you’re here with me, you’re safe, I promise”, you reassured him.

This seemed to work, and he let out another sigh as he closed his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing once again, coming back to a steady pattern in no time. When he opened his eyes again, he noticed the position you both were in; you were sitting very close beside him, one hand resting on his cheek, while the other held his hand close to your heart, with his clutching yours in return, like you were his lifeline, which he had to admit, wasn’t far from the truth. You were the one he could trust without question, the one he could confide in, always had been.

You noticed this too and immediately went to pull away, slowly dropping his hand as you did, cheeks now burning. You didn’t get very far though, before he grabbed your wrist with his newly freed hand. “No”, he said, and pulled the hand back towards his head, coaxing you to return it to its previous spot. “Don’t stop… please.”

You stared at him for a moment with an unreadable expression, before finally giving him a tentative nod and continuing your earlier action of rubbing your thumb in circles on his cheek. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the pillow, relaxing easily under your touch, this causing you to smile, glad you could be of comfort to him. You stayed like this for a while before your curiosity got the best of you and you voiced the question that had been on your mind since you first heard him call your name.

“Echo”, you said in a questioning tone. He hummed in response, not opening his eyes. “Why, why me?”

He looked at you then, confused. “What do you mean?”

“When you were having your nightmare, you, you called out for me, I was just wondering, why me”, you explained.

“I did”, he asked.

“Yeah, quite a few times actually. Was I in your dream or something?”

He looked away, a bit embarrassed.

“Not exactly”, he said.

You used the hand that was still on him to lightly pull his head to face you, speaking once his eyes were fixed on yours once again.

“Echo, you know you can tell me anything. What is it”, you asked.

“You weren’t in the dream, technically, and it wasn’t really a dream, more like I was reliving a memory, the memory of the citadel, and…”, he explained, his words dying off as he found it hard to voice them.

You placed a reassuring hand on his chest and gave him a nod in understanding.

“So, you were reliving that day, I’m sorry, I know that can’t be easy. But I still don’t see what that has to do with me, I wasn’t there, if I had been, I would’ve taken that blow for you”, you said, suddenly feeling tears behind your eyes, but you fought them back internally.

His eyes widened and he quickly grabbed your hand from its spot on his chest, squeezing it firmly.

“No, don’t say that”, he said urgently, suddenly sitting up, causing your hand to slip from his face, instead falling to rest at the intersection of his shoulder and neck.

“But…”, you tried to say, but he cut you off.

“No (Y/N), I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, least of all on you”, he said, staring directly into your eyes. You could only nod sadly as you tried to keep your emotions in check, which was getting harder as this interaction continued. He then softened his gaze and let out a long breath. “You were there, in a way.”

You gave him a confused look, about to ask what he meant, until he continued.

“After the explosion, I just laid there for a long time, feeling everything and nothing all at the same time, I was basically just waiting to die”, he told you. Your heart squeezed at his words, as the tears threatened to rise. “But then, I heard someone’s voice calling out to me, your voice. You were telling me not to give up, not to leave you, to keep fighting, and so I did. I bared the pain and rejected the urge to just slip away, even after they took me, I fought through all of it, because I knew that if I survived, then there was a chance I’d make it back to you, and… I really wanted that.”

That’s all it took, his words hit you straight in the chest and flowed through you, causing the flood gates to release and the tears to fall. Echo looked worried then and released your hand, bringing his to cup your cheek, wiping the tears away with his thumb.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you sad”, he said, internally wishing he hadn’t said anything.

You shook your head. “You have nothing to be sorry for, and I’m not sad that you told me, I’m glad you did”, you said, wiping the tears from the other side of your face. “Honestly, I’m just happy your alive, and that you did find your way back to me. I don’t know what I’d do without you in my life. When I heard what happened on Lola Sayu I couldn’t believe it at first, it didn’t feel real, but once I accepted it was… I had never felt true grief until that moment, and the sense of longing was almost unbearable. All I kept thinking was how I was angry with myself for wasting the time I had with you, lying. Lying to you, and to myself.”

“What are you talking about, lying about what”, he asked, sliding his hand down to hook a finger around your chin and turn your face back to face him after you’d turned it away during your confession.

You took a deep breath before speaking next. “I lied to you before, when I acted like that slip up was just a poor choice of words, I meant exactly what I said. See, the truth is, I was upset with myself because I never told you…”, you paused, finding this confession to be much harder than you had thought it would be to get out, “never told you that I…”

After another long pause, Echo decided to take the initiative, seeing as he knew exactly what you wanted to say, as it was the same thing he’d wanted to say to you all that time ago, still did. He used the hand that had a hold of your chin to pull you to him as he caught your lips in a kiss, one that while soft, was full of so much emotion it was almost palpable. You were surprised at first, but soon melted into the kiss, feeling completely content with staying there as long as possible.

Much too soon for your liking, Echo pulled away, but only to place his forehead against yours and let the long overdue words slip from his lips. “I love you too.”

Your smile reached your ears as his words filled you with untainted happiness, which prompted him to smile widely himself. Why had you both waited so long to do this, you didn’t know, but you were glad it was finally happening.

“Why did we spend all that time hiding, when we could’ve just done this”, you asked.

He chuckled. “Because we were both cowardly idiots”, he said.

You hummed in agreement. “I still can’t believe you did all that for me”, you said in a more serious tone.

He pulled back to look into your eyes. “Of course I did… I’d do anything for you (Y/N)”, he told you.

“Anything?”

He nodded in response and you smiled again.

“Kiss me again”, you said, it was more of a request than a demand.

He smiled and pulled you close so your face was mere inches from his.

“Yes Ma’am.”

***

It had been a good fifteen minutes since the cries had stopped and no noise could be heard from Echo’s bunk. Omega was no longer worried, knowing you had it handled, but her curiosity was starting to get the best of her.

“What do you think their talking about in there, it’s so quiet, maybe I should…”, she said as she got up from the co-pilot seat, moving in the direction of the bunks, but she was stopped by a hand grabbing her forearm, causing her to turn and stare at Hunter questioningly.

“Don’t, they’re fine, and it’s none of our business what their talking about, so just let them be, alright”, he said, giving her a warning look, one that wasn’t all that intimidating to the young girl, but she listened nonetheless and returned to her seat.

After a moment she spoke again, not being able to take the silence any longer.

“So, what’s the deal with those two, are they together, or is it some secret that everyone knows about except them”, she asked the sergeant.

Hunter laughed, this kid really was perceptive, not that anyone with eyes couldn’t see the attraction between you and Echo, it had always seemed so obvious to him, which is why he never spoke on his own feelings for you.

“Yeah, there seem to be… unspoken feelings between the two of them, but I’m sure they’ll get their acts together soon enough, especially now that they’ll be around each other more often”, he told her.

She thought on this for a moment before responding.

“I think so too… and what about you”, Omega asked him.

“What about me?”

“Are you going to get your act together as well”, she asked, raising her eyebrow and grinning at him.

“What are you talkin’ about kid”, Hunter asked, wondering if she’d somehow figured it out.

“Seriously, I’ve only just got here and I can see it”, she said.

“See what?”

“That Echo isn’t the only one who has feelings for the general.”

Hunter turned to the young clone, a look of surprise on his face. Very perceptive indeed.

“Why don’t you just tell her, at least one of you should pluck up the courage to do it”, she said.

He exhaled heavily as his features returned to a more neutral expression.

“It’s not that simple kid, there are just some things you’re not old enough to understand. Besides, it’s not reciprocated so there’s really no point, she’s made her choice, and I have to respect that”, he explained, hoping that would be that. However, he wasn’t going to be that lucky.

“Your wrong”, Omega said simply.

“What?”

“Your wrong, those feelings, they are reciprocated, yeah she likes Echo, but she likes you too.” She said it with such confidence that it made him wonder if the statement was true.

“Really, and how do you know that”, he asked, an almost sarcastic tone in his voice.

She shrugged. “Female intuition.”

He raised a suspicious brow at her but decided not to think too much on it.

“Hm, well, even if you are right, she’s still made her choice, and I won’t get in the way.”

“Won’t get in the way of what?”

Your voice made both of them jump a little. You had just made your way back to the cockpit and had clearly overheard the last bit of their conversation.

“Nothing”, Hunter said, watching you come to stand beside Omega, perching your arm on the headrest of the co-pilot chair and leaning on it.

“Really? Didn’t sound like nothing”, you said, raising your eyebrow in suspicion.

Omega suddenly perked up and turned in her chair to look up at you.

“Hey (Y/N), do you think it’s possibly for someone to love more than one person at a time”, she asked.

You were a bit taken aback by the question, but figured you’d answer, seeing as how you were being very honest today.

“Yes, I do, it actually happens a lot more often than you think”, you responded, purposefully avoiding Hunter’s gaze as you looked at the child.

“And what does that person do, you know, when they realize they have feelings for more than one person”, she then asked.

“Well, usually that person then has a decision to make, and they just hope they don’t break any hearts in the process. You see, love can be a tricky endeavor. However, I think if someone does fall for two individuals at once, then there are other options”, you said, rather matter-of-factly, given the topic at hand.

“Like what?”

“Those involved could always enter into a relationship all together, I suppose”, you said, wondering just how far she was going to take this conversation.

“And that would work”, she asked, seeming almost hopeful.

“It’s possible, yes, but only if all members involved are okay with it. They all need to know that’s what’s going on, and there can’t be any secrets”, you explained.

“Huh, I guess that makes sense”, Omega said, seeming content with your explanation. Then another thought seemed to hit her. “Hey (Y/N)?”

You hummed in response.

“Have you ever been in love”, she asked curiously.

“Omega”, Hunter said firmly, giving her another look of warning.

“No, no, it’s fine”, you informed him, not wanting him to reprimand the girl for just being curious. “To answer your question Omega, yes, yes I have.”

“With more than one person”, she continued.

You raised an eyebrow at her and crossed your arms over your chest.

“What’s with the twenty questions, am I being interrogated or something”, you asked, only half joking.

She shook her head. “No, just curious is all.”

“Uh huh, well why don’t you stow that curiosity away for later and go get some rest, it’s quiet now”, you told her.

“What did you do, I mean, how did you get him to stop”, she asked as she stood from her seat.

“I just let him know that he was safe, and that there was nothing to be afraid of”, you said, which wasn’t a complete lie.

“That’s it”, she asked.

You nodded. “That’s it.”

She gave you a look of suspicion but didn’t act on it.

“Okay”, she said, drawing out the word, and made her way to exit the cockpit.

“Sleep tight”, you called after her as she disappeared down the small corridor. You then turned back to the view port and took a seat in the now empty chair, sighing heavily before finally looking to Hunter. “Well, that was interesting, care to tell me what that was all about?”

“Not really”, he said, turning back to face forward.

You raised a brow. “Seriously?”

He shrugged and kept his gaze where it was.

You sighed again and leaned back in your chair. “Alright then, but I think it’s worth mentioning that the kid knows what she’s talking about, you might want to listen to her every now and then, she’s quite intuitive.”

He looked to you then, confusion on his brow.

“What do you mean”, he asked.

You laughed. “I mean, what she said about me is true”, you said.

His eyes widened a bit. “You, you heard that”, he asked, and you nodded in response. “How much of it?”

“Enough”, you said simply.

He looked away again as he spoke. “Then you know it doesn’t matter how I feel, you’ve made your choice, and I’m okay with that, I’ll have to be”, he said, trying to keep up this act of indifference.

You turned in your seat to face him. “You keep saying that, but, what if I don’t want to choose, because how you feel does matter, Hunter. At least, to me it does.”

He turned his head to meet your gaze. “What exactly are you proposing”, he asked.

“Nothing yet, just letting you know that, I know, and that the feelings are mutual.”

He smiled at this and nodded his understanding.

“What about Echo, have you told him yet”, he asked.

“We talked, and confessions were made… finally”, you said with a smile.

You both laughed then, happy to finally air things out a bit, all the pent-up emotions were wearing on all of you it seemed, and it felt nice to not have to hide it anymore.

“How do you think he’ll feel about your non-proposed proposal”, he asked with a grin.

“I don’t know, but we’re all adults, we can sit down and have a civilized conversation about this, and… we’ll figure this all out”, you told him.

He gave an amused huff. “You make it sound so formal.”

You nodded and gave a light chuckle. “At first, yeah, but I get the feeling that once this proposal is made, all persons involved will be… willing to give it a try”, you said, taking his hand and holding it in both of yours. “Then things will get more… informal.”

He smiled. “Yeah, how can you be so sure”, he asked, leaning toward you.

You smiled back and leaned in as well, your faces now only inches apart.

“Female intuition”, you whispered, your smile turning a bit smug.

He chuckled in amusement. “You’re ridiculous”, he said, before closing the gap between you.

The kiss was sweet and felt just as right as the ones you’d had with Echo, and just like those ones, this kiss ended all to quickly, but you were content to sit back and bask in the afterglow, you didn’t want to rush things after all.

You both sat there a moment, leaning back in your seats, staring out the view port, arms stretched as your hands sat, intertwined, between you. Maybe this really could work, only time would tell.

After what felt like hours, but in reality, had only been minutes, Hunter looked to you with a soft smile.

“I’m glad you’re here with us”, he said.

You smiled back and gave his hand a light squeeze.

“Me too”, you said, and you both stayed like that for a long while, enjoying a view you each thought was much better than the one outside the view port.

Little did you know, behind you Omega stood at the entrance of the cockpit, looking on silently and grinning from ear to ear, feeling quite pleased with herself.

[happi-tree]

Sixteen

Hello, lovebirds! Here’s a bit of fic that I wrote inspired by @shima-draws‘ BNHA Distortion Link AU from Nexus’ POV! Check out her blog for more info about it. I’ll put the fic under a read more, so continue on if you’re interested! TW for blood and vague, semi-graphic descriptions of corpses.

Midoriya Izuku is 16 years old when his world is ripped out from underneath his feet. 

He awakens to silence - not the peaceful quiet of early mornings that he has become long accustomed to, but to a sheer and utter absence of sound. Not a whisper of birdsong, not a single utterance of cacophony caused by the morning commute traffic in Musutafu. The quiet is eerie, anticipatory, waiting to be shattered, and Izuku gets the distinct feeling that he’s the final character in some horror flick. 

His alarm clock blares “The morning is here!” again in a robotic facsimile of All Might’s voice. Izuku startles, badly, slamming his hand down on the alarm to silence it. A breeze outside grows in intensity, slamming into the walls. The ticking of clocks, the groaning of a house in its death throes, and the rushing of blood in Izuku’s ears are the only sounds now. 

Something is very wrong.

Izuku picks his way across the room to his window, lifting the blinds, and nearly retches at what he sees.

The streets aren’t clogged with cars or buses; the sidewalks are vacant of pedestrians. Instead, the concrete is dyed red with blood, puddles of it seeping into potholes, into gutters. Bodies, for as long as the eye can see, line the walkways and the asphalt at irregular intervals, their eyes unseeing, their mouths open in shock, their forms contorted and still in pools of burgundy-ebony. Newly deceased, the analytic, detached part of Izuku’s brain observes, noting the absence of stench and lack of buzzing flies. 

As much as Izuku desperately wants this to be some horrible nightmare, he knows deep in his bones that this is all too terribly real.

And then he looks up.

Up to the sky, where his fated enemy is silhouetted against the soot-stained crimson of dawn, wreathed in clouds of smoke like the angel of death incarnate. But Izuku knows that this man is far from angelic - there is no mercy in these deaths, no just judgement present in any fiber in his body as he hovers, gloatingly, backlit by the red-orange sun. 

All for One, in all his age, has never been a creature of compassion.

With the taste of bile and ash in his mouth, Izuku frantically grabs his hoodie from where it lays across the back of his desk chair, shrugging it on. Throwing open his closet door, he pulls on the boots of his Hero costume, barely managing to fumble their laces into a proper knot and swiping his gloves from where they sit draped over his tool belt. 

One for All rockets to the surface of his skin within milliseconds, his racing heartbeat and heightened anxiety calling the Quirk to activation in record time, and Izuku breaks down the front door of his house, sprinting into the streets of the world on its final day with eight souls singing across the lightning in his veins.

It is not enough.

-

Midoriya Izuku is 16 years old when he opens his eyes to the Beyond for the first time. 

The confusion only lasts for a few moments before memories - billions of them, thoughts that are not his, were never meant to be his - shove themselves into his still-growing mind, flooding his neurons until they threaten to combust. All at once, Izuku knows where he is. Izuku knows what happened to his world; rather, the world that was once his.

Now, Izuku knows everything, and it is with absolute, mind-numbing certainty that he knows that his universe is gone.

He is the sole survivor, the lone occupant of this plane of in-betweens, where both nothing and everything is real. He feels at once impossibly heavy and weightless, power sitting leaden in his bloodstream, pulsating in time with his paradoxically-beating heart, countless lives weighted and compressed upon his mind, their taste like copper on his tongue. 

Tears flow freely from his eyes, saline globules suspended in the not-air of the Beyond as he weeps and as he feels. Seven billion lifetimes of emotions flash through his mind’s eye like an old film reel, impossibly fast, impossibly hard to differentiate. Love and heartbreak and joy and sorrow and anger and contentment and longing and desperation and too many other feelings to name overcome him, and Izuku cries out, his strangled voice the only sound amidst the deep shifting colors of the void, utterly human and utterly alone. 

Even heroes need to cry, sometimes, Todoroki’s voice seems to whisper to him, and Izuku’s body wrenches with the force of his sobbing, clinging to himself and wishing beyond anything for the phantom comfort of a friendly hand upon his shoulders. 

How can I ever call myself a Hero when I failed my entire universe?

After a time - perhaps seconds, perhaps centuries - Izuku’s cries pitter out, and he straightens enough that his feet find contact with something solid. Opening his eyes once more, he finds that his tears, spheres of liquified crystal, lay suspended across the not-space, twinkling like so many stars. For all the pain that they had caused him, Izuku finds beauty in their sorrow, trying not to tear up again as he thinks of the shifting constellations of his homeland, their lights forever extinguished. 

The memories threaten to overturn his mind again, but Izuku holds firm, pushes past the grief and the sorrow. He is the sole occupant of the Beyond, the Nexus, a realm that oversees every universe, every timeline. The weight of countless worlds rests on his shoulders now, and Izuku cannot allow himself to crumble beneath it any longer. Infinite power - so much that the feeble, human part of his mind can scarcely begin to comprehend its beginning or its end - resides in his soul, stitched into the fabric of his being. 

<If I could not be the Hero my own world needed,> Izuku speaks into the void, curling his hands into fists, <maybe I can be the Hero that the rest of them deserve.>

So many lives are in need of protection, in need of saving. And now, here I am, with the power to look after every single one of them. What kind of Hero would I be if I didn’t use this power to help them? For the first time in a long time, Izuku laughs - a hollow, broken laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

<Plus ultra.> Izuku says to the unspeaking, unblinking void. He cracks his knuckles, takes a deep breath, and then gets to work overseeing the multiverse. 

-

Midoriya Izuku is still 16 years old when he feels the first disturbance in the Beyond. 

The new presence feels scarcely like a blip on his radar, as quick and meaningless as the blink of an eye. But after centuries and centuries of absolutely nothing, a spark of excitement - an emotion almost foreign to him, now - makes itself known in the cavity of his chest, bright and white-hot. Alongside it, an equally strange feeling: hope. 

The fabric of the Beyond bends itself around him, malleable and fluid as it bows to his whims and carries him to the source of the disturbance.

Izuku watches as a corner of his world blurs green. A figure, human, falling endlessly, glitching in and out between this plane and the one to which they belong. Reaching out with his mind, Izuku nearly reels back in shock with what he discovers.

Because the figure trapped between realms is him.

Well, one of him, Izuku should say. Across the multiverse are countless Midoriya Izukus. For whatever reason, this one seems to have gotten himself into a bit of trouble.

A constant for all Izukus, getting into trouble, he muses as his other semi-conscious self falls infinitely. 

Probing further, it looks like this particular Izuku is from a world quite similar to his own. Time slows, solid in his grasp, to allow him to decipher the teal of his Hero outfit, bits of blood scattered across his freckles from a previous fight. Clearly, this Izuku had no intention of coming here, and is likely feeling very out of sorts. How he got here in the first place is a wonder, but not for long.

Memories of his double flash through his mind. The patrol assignment. Uraraka, Todoroki, Ojirou, Shigaraki, Kurogiri’s faces come to mind in consecutive flashes, and his knees nearly buckle at the sight of their familiarity. One for All activating in tandem with Kurogiri’s portal, disturbingly reminiscent of the moment that ripped the fabric of his homeland apart.

Ah, there it is.

Izuku’s power comes to grasp the connection tethering his doppelgänger to the Beyond, and he hears a gasp. 

Well, that wouldn’t do. Not that Izuku has ever seen this happen before, but he has the sinking feeling that shoving his other self back into his own universe will not erase the connection entirely. There’s something wild about it, unstable. Dangerous.

Izuku walks closer to his double’s side, time grinding to a halt.

<I’m sorry for this, but you’ll likely see more of me,> he says to himself, taking in the other Izuku’s gaping expression and wide eyes, imprinting the familiar lines of his Hero suit into his vision alongside the spattering of freckles and the smears of dirt. 

<For now, though, I’ll try to get you home. You’re doing so well, you know. I’ve been watching.>

Gently, Izuku presses a fingertip to his doppelgänger’s forehead and watches as he reappears through the tear into his own timeline.

A universe away, provisional Hero Deku returns to his friends with shaking hands, a phantom warmth between his brows, and an odd feeling of recognition in his chest.

-

Nexus is 16 years old when he sees the sky again for the first time in millennia. 

[arrivisting]

I’d love author commentary on basically the whole scene at Ekkaia in all my war is done (or any individual part of that scene, if your prefer). Taken together, it’s one of the most beautiful and emotionally complex and heartrending things you’ve written, from the description of the sea itself, to the difficulties of Fingon and Alqualondë, to Gil and the ocean and his ‘mother’, to Fingon and Gil beginning to tackle the thorny subect of Maedhros.

I should admit something about all my war is done: it's the most fugue-like my writing has ever been. I jotted down a few notes on my commute into work - I was deeply underwater with my PhD at the time, three months away from submitting - and then the idea of writing a sequel to scion seized me so profoundly that I sat down in the Starbucks where my bus stops, took out my laptop, and wrote instead of just collecting my coffee and walking down to my office. I wrote 15k. In one day. In about five or six hours. I've never achieved anything like that before or since - I do have good days where I can knock 2-4k out easily, but not 15k. (You might note that the posted part of all my war is done is only 12k, but I wrote all the way up into the next bit with Fingon in Tirion that you've read, up until Turgon at the dinner table). I didn't sit down or plan events; I didn't actually know much about what would happen: but I knew they were going to Ekkaia and they'd have some kind of resolution there. These are my phone-notes, from that morning:

You can see, I think, something of the way an idea hits me. I note down a few snatches of plot, not necessarily in any order, some lines I think people should say at some point, although I might not use them, sketch out some things (Formenos's ruins were going to feature more heavily, but they're waiting for a later story).

(It makes me laugh, the words my phone doesn't accept - Gil-galad, for one - and the ones it automatically capitalises from where I've yelled enthusiastically about elf things at people. I never stop long enough to correct spelling etc when I'm trying to get something down).

I clearly knew from inception that I wanted Fingon's place to be called the hill of waiting, and had tried out the name in Sindarin; because my verbs are not good, I came up with Amon Dartha. It was when I was redrafting that I realised Amon Darthir had existed actually in Dor-lomin(!!!) and the name was even more perfect symbolically than I'd meant it to be! Did I know that, unconsciously? I don't know.

You can see, too, that the Sea of Ekkaia was almost the very first point to hit me, and that I knew it and the scene there would be important, and that I knew that the story was about Fingon finding a way to tell Gil-galad that he had been loved, and wanted, and that meant talking about Maedhros; and that at the end I wanted Gil-galad to be gently, impersonally, firmly clear that he would not, could not, be staying to wait with Fingon.

Okay, DVD commentary proper - I'm sorry, I remember awfully little about writing this, given the fugue state and my thesis and everything, so I'm not sure how useful this will be!

“Oh,” said Gil-galad when they broke out of the woods and began to ride down over the dune-lands to the rocky shore. “Oh!”

The Sea of Ekkaia was beautiful, in its own way, but that way that was like no other place in Arda, in either Aman or Middle Earth.

It was a dark-blue that was almost black, even in the late afternoon, and the shore was less sand than gravel, a strange inconsistent rubble of rock and broken sea-shells that had been dashed to pieces by the constant fury of the waves. Staring out to sea, one did not see the far-away horizon the way one did on the gentler coast of Belegaer: there was no gentle faraway blue haze through which one might, perhaps, on a clear day, imagine that Middle Earth could be glimpsed, or at least the Straight Path.

No: instead along the horizon there was a seam of silver light, and then a great blackness, where the Sea of Ekkaia met the Uttermost West that was not quite the Doors of Night, but was certainly the end of Aman itself. If you stood on the shore watching, the seam would ripple with a pulse of light, sometimes green and sometimes white.

It was so far from anywhere the Eldar of Valinor lived. While they clustered around the Belegaer like moths to flame, this shore seemed instead to repel them. Was it the sight of the world’s end itself? It might be; yet Fingon thought there was more to why this wilderness was so little visited, this howling black sea lashing itself against a grey shore. It was beautiful, but not in the way Elves liked things to be beautiful: it was too raw, too unfinished, too savage.

It was too close to where Mandos kept his Halls, which were not only a thing of spirit but also matter, at least in the way that things in Aman were both. Too close to where Nienna’s tower looked out into the Void and where she wept, and wept, and wept. It was too close to death and to rebirth, to judgment and to pity.

There's a little Dawn Treader, I think, in this idea of the uttermost West. I don't know why I thought the seam of the world should pulse with strange light, but it's an uncanny kind of geography, so near Mandos and Nienna, and I like the sense that this is the end of the world, but not the end of the universe.

A lot of this came together serendipitously. I knew some kind of memorialisation of the river that bore Gil-galad needed to be part of his story; that meant going to the sea; and it's clear from the notes that I had already decided that couldn't mean Alqualonde because of kinslaying reasons and memories. (And that that too would need to be confronted). Therefore: roadtrip to Ekkaia. Therefore, the question: what would Ekkaia be like? We don't really know anything about it - only the good qualities of Belegaer. This was really written by a process of inversion, a way of pulling what we know about Belegaer inside-out, and imagining a place at the world's edge, a place that was empty, a place that was uncannily close to difficult things, to Mandos and Nienna; a place that seemed to repel the Eldar as surely as Belegaer drew them like iron filings.

I was thinking visually about New Zealand, too. I spent my childhood summers on the beaches up north, mostly around Tūtūkākā, which are bright and lovely, with golden or white or tawny sand, with gnarled pohutukawa and blue-green water. Like this:

That's what beach and sea meant to me, and it was a shock the first time I went to one of the black sand beaches where the wind howled and the colours weren't blue, green, gold, but iron, grey, navy, black. I loved it, but it felt so other, so passionate, so strange. That shock and that wild beauty and desolation were things I wanted to get at, though Ekkaia would be far more wild and desolate still.

They left the horses in the thin sea-grass, and their shoes, too, and walked down to the water. “I missed it,” Gil-galad said, and closed his eyes, breathing in the brine. “I missed it badly, all the long years besieging Mordor before I died.”

I think Gil-galad would be very marked by his upbringing first in the Falas and then on Balar; you don't lose that, if you grew up by the sea.

The wind took up his long dark hair and made a banner of it as they walked along the rough crescent of rocky ground where the waves met the shore, and around their bare ankles small stones tumbled back and forth in the lace-edge of the water.

When I was young I used to stand in the water and let the waves bury me up to my ankles, watching the water move in, out, spreading skirts of lace overlapping as new waves came in. I could do it for hours. There's something very liminal about the water's edge, between the solid land and the sea, which is why I put this conversation in it, I think. They're in a liminal space and at a liminal moment. It's the scene the whole story has been inexorably building toward, the point where all Fingon's painful scraping-away of his barriers finally reaches his skin.

“Sometimes in Middle Earth it became very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said, his eyes still closed, “in the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.” He opened his eyes and looked towards the Uttermost West where the world ended. “And here it is impossible not to. Look at it!"

This is a little more hopeful than the original version, which I don't have anymore, but went pretty much:

"Sometimes in Middle Earth it was very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said. "In the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.”

It was a comment more about Gil-galad's rueful scepticism than wonder - because he fought the Dagorlad before he died, because he spent the last ten years of his life in mud and blood and filth and horror. I work on the First World War - its literary legacy and traces in the decades after, more than its immediate experience or actuality, because there was a ten-year period after 1918 where it was more latent than overt, a traumatic lacuna of silence, a Nachträglichkeit- and I thought in the blood, and the mud, and the filth was a little too on the nose.

I kept it, though, because Tolkien was drawing on his own memories of the trenches with the Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes, with those blurred lines of solid land and mud/bog, the living mixed up with the remains of with the dead, all the themes you see again and again in the war poetry and the officer war-books. (Santanu Das is very good on this, as is Eric Leed). Paul Fussell is a bit old-hat now, but his argument that WWI altered the sensibility of its survivors because of their close, consanguinous co-existence with the dead is something I still find valuable. I think there's a lot of WWI survivor in the way I think of Gil-galad, actually, I'm just realising - not that he survived the Last Alliance. He's detached in a different way from Fingon. Fingon's built himself a thick layer of repression/denial, a kind of callous to protect himself from confronting or thinking about what Maedhros did, and what that means for him and to him; Gil-galad is entirely present, but somewhat detached in some ways, the way people who came back from war could be. Not that Fingon and Finrod aren't also separated from the Amanyar by their time in Beleriand and experience of war and death, but Gil-galad lived there for millennia, and he fought a longer, harder, more total kind of war than they did.

But he's at the Sea of Ekkaia, as west as you can get. So much of Tolkien is about that endless longing glance west, that movement: why is this very westernmost edge so under-explored?

I wanted Gil-galad to be softened by this encounter with the sea, so I went back and let his wonder be as much at the spectacle itself as the sea, like the greater hand at work he had sometimes doubted being visible was something wonderful rather than something to be bitter about. I wanted to position him to be potentially open to, perhaps, the Valar; perhaps, to Fingon. I hope he doesn't come off as closed-minded: I think of him as having a fair mind, and good judgment, but - despite placing him here between the sea and the shore - very clear personal lines between what he thinks is just, and what is not. Certainly, it helps a lot, never having known the Feanorians when they had not fallen.

The seam of the universe pulsed with light, and beyond it was – what?

Unutterable nothingness, something worse than death.

Perhaps Maedhros.

This is an important line for Fingon. He hasn't though the name of his own accord for much of the story, flinching away from it; it's only come in when Finrod and then Gil-galad speak the name. This is the first time he's thought it clearly of his own free will, and this is I think the first signal that he's brought Gil-galad here to be as honest and earnest with him as he can be, however much it hurts, or however much it might drive him away. Because if he isn't, and doesn't, Gil-galad will be driven away anyway, and Fingon wants to be connected with him, the first time he's wanted that kind of bond with anyone since he returned.

(I think of Finrod as someone who just kept turning up, regularly, and forcing Fingon to associate with him; and then bringing Amarie; and then his children; and not taking no for an answer. It bothers Turgon rather terribly that they seem to be friends now, when they were never that close Before: that Fingon pushes him away, but allows Finrod to keep pushing; that Finrod does push. He doesn't know about Gil-galad, of course).

He's brought Gil-galad here to show him if possible that he was wanted, to conjure up lost Ringwil where she might be felt if not found; and to do the same for Maedhros. This is a signal that this journey to the sea is as much about Gil-galad's missing father as his missing mother.

The almost-forgotten tang of salt in the air always mingled with the smell of blood in Fingon’s worst memories, and he was not the only one who remembered. The waves were gentle around Gil-galad’s feet, but they boiled furiously around Fingon’s, delivering small spiteful slaps at his calves.

Spiteful was probably the wrong word here. I don't necessarily mean a dramatic boiling or bubbling; but the water is harsh where it touches him, the kind of slapping roughness you get when the tide is coming in rough.

It took Gil-galad longer to mark the difference, engrossed in the joy of the sea and spectacle as he was, and when he did, his face changed. There was something terribly sad in his eyes when he lifted them from the water to look at Fingon.

It wasn’t why he had brought Gil-galad here; but Fingon didn’t want to imagine the look he would receive if he brushed aside the silent question. “No,” he said. “I am not forgiven.”

“So I see.”

They could probably leave it there.

But Fingon won't, because he's trying. He's really trying to connect after all the time flinching away from it, and he's remembering what Gil-galad said about talking, and what Finrod said about mistakes and silences in their first life.

He said, “You said you loathed the thought of being the son of – a murderer. But my own hands have not been clean since Alqualondë, and death didn’t unstain them. All the time you thought I might be your father, you must have known I was a Kinslayer, too.”

I tried to signal this in their earlier tower conversation with Finrod, and Gil-galad's changing of the topic, but I feel like it's a little abrupt here.

“Yes,” Gil-galad said, and his expression didn’t change. “And when the knights that had served you came to me, they told me that you killed that day in ignorance, that you came upon a battle already being fought; that you took up your sword to save those you loved and didn’t question whether it was just. I heard that from others, too, those who had less reason to bend facts to a flattering pattern; survivors of Gondolin and of Nargothrond. I did ask."

“Ignorance wasn’t an excuse. I died ashamed of it, and I live again with the shame.”

"Good!” said Gil-galad, and there was no forgiveness in his voice, even when Fingon jerked his head up in shock. Instead there was the stern ring of a king used to weighing the ideals of justice against the world as it was, the king who had walked arm in arm with Eonwë the Maia, led his people through many full-fledged wars, and held court and meted justice to them for an Age. “That gives me a far better opinion of you than any of the stories did! I’m glad.”

I remember talking to you about this in the comments, about what it meant that Gil-galad wasn't forgiving him. I think I really meant condone, but I also don't think it's Gil-galad's place to absolve Fingon - he wasn't the one wronged! - and that it's important to me that, because Fingon does truly regret it, he doesn't wish to be absolved, to slide away from it. I don't mean he ought to wallow in it or flog himself with it daily, but I think it would be important to him to shoulder and own that guilt rather than ever allowing himself to put it behind him or have someone else tell him it’s quite all right.

I think this is a moment where I show that they're quite similar, too, because even if Fingon wasn't aware that a bracing, clear assessment was just what he wanted, it was what he needed, rather than people being kind (which he's had a lot of, since he returned; and which hasn't touched that central guilt he's hidden from them, that he loved Maedhros, who had done such terrible things. It's prevented him from accepting kindness made him block people reaching out to him. Gil-galad is not being kind, but just, and still reaching out).

It felt like Fingon had been struggling to take a full lungful of air for a long time, and now something constricting in his chest had loosened, as it hadn’t even after the Valar themselves had judged him. It was only now that he realised that he hadn’t wanted Gil-galad to forgive or absolve him. He had wanted – needed – Gil-galad to be better than him, to withhold forgiveness when it was unmerited; and Gil-galad had. He had become the shining legacy they had all hoped he would be, the thing they had all somehow done right.

The water slapped at his ankles again, in impatient reminder.

This is too brief a transition. I should have fleshed the join out more.

“I think Ulmo would come to you here, if you called. You were a king by the sea in Middle Earth, and you may not remember it, but it was a river who gave you life.”

Gil-galad looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “What?”

“I brought you here for a reason,” Fingon said. “Where did they go, the drowned and poisoned rivers of Beleriand? I don’t know; but Ulmo might.”

I've really personified the rivers, but I think it's a clear and easy extrapolation from the Withywindle and the River-daughter in The Fellowship of the Ring that I don't need to justify in order to argue that every river might have had its own attendant Maia-spirit. It does make what happened to the Rivers of Beleriand much worse, though, and I wanted to look at the way a character that was a throwaway mechanism in scion ended up being sickened and dying as horribly as Beleriand did; this story was really about following all those lighter bits in scion home, to the end of the line, and looking at the long-term impacts of something that began more lightly. In this verse, Ringwil was a river, but also a person; and I think of her and Finrod as sharing a strange human-river friendship and overlapping enthusiasms.

He clapped Gil-galad on the shoulder, hoping it said all the things he meant it to say. Affection had been so easy for him once, in the life that had been taken from him by the fiery flails of the Balrogs, but now it came hard, and the sea-smell was in his nose, the terrible memories too close to the surface.

He had surely outstayed Ulmo’s tolerance by now. Fingon left Gil-galad there in the water, and didn’t dare glance back until there was thin sandy soil under his feet again.

Only then did he look once more towards the sea.

Gil-galad was standing in the shallows. His broad shoulders were bunched tight, as if he was readying himself for something very difficult, a confrontation with one of the Valar he had long doubted.

Then he spread his arms out, empty-handed, and tipped his head back, and the light on the horizon grew unbearably bright, whiter than white, more silver than silver; and a face began to move upon the water.

I really like this, honestly. Which I can't/don't say often! The temptation to overwrite this was strong, to show this encounter, to describe the Vala: but I think it's often stronger not to show something numinous, to pull away, to let the mind fill it in.

Again, this is Gil-galad as I imagine him: still somewhat distanced from the Valar by the Dagorlad and the things that happened there (and I think perhaps doubly unhappy in that he lived through the end of an Age once before, and that time, at least, the Valar came: they did not come in the Second, nor send so much as a messenger, and such obscenities as the fall of Ost-in-Edhil and the drowning of Numenor had been allowed to happen, and Men and Elves were left alone to come together and break Sauron's grip). Doubting, but not angry; doubting, but still curious. Open to listening.

a face began to move upon the water is of course a deliberate sideways reference to

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

-

It took a very long time. Fingon could not watch; his eyes dazzled.

Can you tell I was teaching The Duchess of Malfi at this time? Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. That sense of a light too bright and white to look upon; that sense of guilt; that faint reference to life lost untimely. This wasn't meant to be a direct intertextual reference, but that net of meaning was there, lightly. Again, I wanted to under-write rather than over-write. I know I have a tendency to over-write.

And of course - there's a sense here that Fingon is refusing the kind of close enoucnter with Ulmo he could/might have. There's water in his eyes. From the wind?

-

“Thank you,” Gil-galad said when he rejoined him at last. His eyes were glowing, and he whistled Ceredir to him from where he was tearing ropey roots of sea-grass from the dunes with great relish. “Thank you for bringing me here;” and he didn’t say it the way he’d thanked Fingon for the horse, or the armour, or the sword, or even the lance.

Because this is a real gift, something that means something to both of them, something more honest/painful. Fingon's been trying to connect through gifts but not serious conversation or sharing, like some estranged parents do, throwing money at the problem rather than giving of their time or their selves, and however well-meant, it hasn't worked.

“I didn’t truly do anything."

“You brought me to the Sea. I know – I could see – how difficult it was for you."

"Well,” Fingon said lamely. He cleared his throat. “What did Lord Ulmo say about – oh, I can’t call her your dam! – the Maia who bore you? Did she – was she there?”

The dam pun is Finrod's. Don't blame me.

A little of the light dimmed, but it didn’t quite fade away. “No, she’s gone. Back to the Timeless Halls, he says; but one with him again, Ulmo, at the same time.” Gil-galad made a noise. “I don’t pretend to understand any of it, all the metaphysical nonsense of the Ainur! But he was kind to me, and he told me something of her – that she delighted in the making of me.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “I left the flowers we gathered earlier in the waves for her and the sea didn’t dash them back onto the shore. I’m sure Ulmo broke a few laws of Arda there.”

I like this image of the flowers suspended in the water. I had it clearly in mind from before I began to write.

"You were wanted.”

“I’m beginning to believe it,” Gil-galad said.

“You should,” Fingon said. He took a breath. Talking is how you sort things out; and a long time ago, Fingon had been known for his valour. Gil-galad deserved to know how much he had been wanted, who had called himself a political compromise given birth. The truth of that had stung.

And it was less than the truth. Fingon could still remember the first time he had opened his mind to Maedhros over the leagues between them and let him see Gil’s small face through his own eyes, holding nothing back. He had shown Maedhros the dark long lashes and the squashed baby nose, the milk-blister on the bow of Gil’s upper lip, the way his whole head turned an alarming red when he wailed; shared with Maedhros Gil’s fondness for being tossed in the air, his splashing joy in his bath.

This is is me trying to describe a baby without being too sentimental about it, because Fingon wasn't all, oh look at the toesie-woesies, or my son, my son: his eye was more detached, and you see him in scion thinking of Gil-galad as it.

I've been thinking about why Fingon in no way allowed himself to consciously dote on the baby, why that streak of denial that's so strong in his second life was there in his first light, and really: it would have been dangerous to let himself love him, to see Gil as his son and Maedhros's. He was born at a time of terrible loss, after the Flame, when they all expected they could die themselves. He was moved around Beleriand like a game-piece. Fingon was always going to lose him: he wasn't going to get to raise him, after all, until and unless Morgoth was defeated. Maedhros wasn't going to meet him, until and unless &c. It was easier not to let oneself get attached than it was to confront those hard facts and let oneself be hurt by them. Easier to think of him as a baby Finwean prince, and that only: a political pawn, not a son.

Conversely, Maedhros maintains a physical distance, but not an emotional one. Here's a bit from Maedhros's perspective:

Finrod had told him that. They had written, back and forth, in the long months as Ringwil’s belly swelled, as the child formed, as it began to move and stretch and turn frog-like inside her. They had corresponded constantly during the first months of the child’s life in Nargothrond, and during the first months of his life, Finrod had sent long scrolls detailing every change in Artanaro’s weight, his length, his hair colour, his eye colour, how much milk he’d consumed each day: screeds winging forth to Himring until the child was old enough to survive the secret trip north.

Fingon’s letters had been infuriatingly spare of useful information while the child was fostered at Barad Eithel. Beloved, ineloquent Fingon: Fingon, who had nevertheless shown him the child as no reams of paper could.

Fingon had given him forever the rounded bloom of his full cheeks, and the pursed mouth, sullen in sleep: the feathery, rather cross-looking eyebrows, and the small hands with their deep dimples and smaller fingernails, curled into the edge of Fingon’s furred mantle.

Maedhros had felt the way Fingon hovered between wonder and confusion at what they’d wrought: the way he couldn’t quite manage to think of the child as his own, this thing spun out of air and calculation and freshwater into heavy, solid life. He could have loved him so desperately, Maedhros knew that. He was halfway there, hovering in terror on the edge, afraid of falling. If the baby had stayed in Barad Eithel longer; if Fingon had watched him begin to creep around on fat little knees, to pull himself up on the furniture and to take his first steps – to hear the baby babble turn into words and speech – his heart would have opened to him like a flower, and the child would have become the centre of his universe, the sun in his sky.

Fingon had never known what to do with Idril as an infant, either, but he’d easily become an adored uncle as she grew up. If they’d had more time – if the child had been permitted to stay with Fingon even a month longer before being sent for safety to Cirdan –

Well, they’d never had enough time.

There had been few walls between them then, so he had felt Maedhros’s bright joy, the painful love, in its moment of birth: swelling and swelling like a cloud with rain, as though his heart was growing and his blood was leaking out of him at the same time, transmuting into pure tenderness and iron purpose.

I like this because I think of the Ekkaia scene as a cloudburst, full of emotion that has been swelling and swelling and now released. This is one bit of the breaking-through.

He had never needed to ask whether Maedhros considered Gil-galad a son.

“I don’t want to talk about – him,” Fingon said with difficulty, and the salt breeze stung his face, his eyes. “I know you loathe him, and rightly; and I do, too. I do hate him; or I hate what he did. I do! But you should know – you deserve to – that he wanted you, badly, although he never met you; he never wanted the shadow on him to touch you or to taint you.

And this. You can see here where I spun off into cliffs of fall, which isn't a scion story, but sprung out of this speech. It was already there in those sketchy notes, too, a lot of what Fingon's saying here: this important line about hating Maedhros, or what he did (that movement from clear certainty to trying to separate the deeds from the loved one; to urgent reptition - I do! I mean it, I really do! - which means he doesn't, can't: this is the heart of Fingon's guilt, because he wants to hate Maedhros utterly, but he can't, and he is profoundly in denial about that).

“He always wanted children; I took that from him even before the Oath did, but I gave it back to him with you. I loved you first of all for that, but he loved you for yourself. Because you existed, against all hope and possibility and fate and chance; and because you were ours.”

Gil-galad said nothing. There was still a wildflower tucked behind his ear, but the brilliance had quite left his eyes.

“Well,” Fingon said at last. “I needed to tell you that. You should know that you were never – not only – you were wanted very much."

Beloved ineloquent Fingon, &c.

-

They were some miles from the beach when Gil-galad said, “‘Ours’?”

“Yes."

-

I was trying to let the gaps and breaks talk for me in the text. Under-writing.

The beginning was full of these little breaks, too, because they didn't yet know how to talk to each other; now at the end, that connection, and their conversations, are breaking down again. It's echoing that ride together at the beginning very strongly, but now it's not Gil-galad trying to become acquainted and Fingon giving light, unsatisfying answers. These are the real questions/answers at last, and the whole story has really been about getting to the point of Fingon and Gil-galad in Aman where they actually could have the kind of conversation Gil-galad was trying to have at the start.

-

Some miles further, Fingon said, “Did you ever meet him in Beleriand? After I died. I always wondered.”

“No,” Gil-galad said.

It didn’t seem like he was going to speak again, and Fingon had begun to assimilate that knowledge, that pain – that Maedhros had never seen him, had only ever known him through Fingon’s own eyes – when he added,

“But I saw what he did. Have you ever seen a whole city ruined, and known the ruiners to be Elves? It wasn’t even a city, poor Sirion! It was a refuge, a place for the desperate, as far to the West as they could get, as close to the safety of the Sea. They had so very little. No great stone palaces, no towers, no spires. Little enough fresh food. They were able to grow so little, and they lived on fish, and sea-weed, and what brave hunting parties would bring back; and hope. They lived on hope, and they thought Elwing wore it around her throat, but the Valar didn’t come for them: Maedhros Fëanorion and his brothers did instead, and they burned and killed and ravaged. I’d say they salted the earth, but it was salt already. To fall on any innocent Elven city would be a horror: on poor Sirion it was the greatest cruelty I ever saw, and entirely pointless."

They said nothing more.

I like this, too, actually. You see a little here of why Gil-galad might be healthily sceptical of the Valar - they didn't come for them: Maedhros Feanorion and his brothers did instead - and that very post-war experience of seeing a descrated, destroyed town. Worse when you had seen it when it was whole, when you knew the dead and fled.

Sirion is, I think, the worst thing the Feanorions did. I find it worse than even Doriath or Alqualonde (though they're all awful!). These were desperate survivors, huddled together at the edge of the sea for protection. So many of their leaders had been killed or lost. Idril and Tuor had disappeared; Earendil was away; Maedhros and the others struck while only Elwing was there, and she was so young, and so alone, and so damaged already by what they'd done in Doriath. And now they’d come again. There's something about the revictimisation that gets me. It's awful.

I wanted it to be weight and counter-weight - that soft, painful, remembered moment of Maedhros seeing baby Gil-galad through Fingon's eyes, something Fingon has clearly not deliberately thought about since he was reborn, but dredges up now for Gil-galad, because he should know: and which is echoed in the beginning by Fingon's question to Finrod. But Maedhros is still the person who did the things he did, and I wanted to set that soft moment of truth against his deeds at Sirion, another truth, to point out clearly why Gil-galad would recoil so hard from this offering, this honesty Fingon wants to be able to give him. This is the dichotomy at the heart of the story: reconciling Maedhros and how one felt for him with what he did, and how one feels about that. It is irresolvable, at least for Fingon, at least at the moment I've ended it at for now.

I don't know if this is quite what you wanted, @warrioreowynofrohan, especially because like I said, I wrote this story in a frantic fog, but I hope this in some way suffices!

[chalkrevelations]

SO. Word of Honor, Episode 10, and everyone is deep in their feelings … well, their feeling, which is misery.

First, due diligence, and I really mean it on this one: SPOILERS not just for this ep but for the entire show. Out of the car, for now, and come back later, if you want to watch the whole thing unspoiled.­­

Well, it’s the breakup episode, y’all. Everyone is wallowing in misery, and Our Couple is taking that out on themselves and in some cases (:cough:WKX:cough) ­on everybody around them. We open on sad-sack Wen Kexing digging sadly in the dirt with a sword, the bodies of the Four Sages of Anji laid out beside him as he gives a RIP speech about how you have to be careful when making friends, because they’ll turn out to be bad news, which is clearly yet another warning about himself, because I don’t think anyone in the mob who killed these aging hippies in the last ep was a friend (although I suppose it could be argued that WKX is talking about their friendship with Gao Chong getting them killed) and anyway, you have to understand that WKX is a demon under the skin, not even really human, you guys, and he’s only ever going to disappoint everyone. Has he not made this clear by now? His sword breaks at this point, which probably ought to tell him he’s not going to be able to bury any of this mess. Then Zhou Zishu shows up and is understandably unhappy at the way his decision last ep to walk out on faith for this guy has gone completely pear-shaped, and he asks some rather pointed questions about whether four dead Sages of Anji is what WKX wanted and if he’s happy now – questions that sound, my dude, a little confrontational. I mean, I think you’re entitled, given the situation, but I’m just sayin’. WKX flings off ZZS’s hand and wants to know if “Leader Zhou” has only ever killed bad people, which is a hit that lands, and it hurts, just like it was supposed to, and this is definitely one of those nightmare scenarios where everyone just keeps digging themselves deeper. ZZS is all, FINE THEN, and leaves. Again. Because WKX is apparently a demon in human form who’s only ever going to disappoint everyone. Including his zhiji. I love you with all of my heart, ZZS, but a little bit, you come off like you only showed up to twist the knife, my man. Anyway, ZZS stomps off to go mope at Yuefan Tower, the scene of his bad decision to trust this guy BEFORE finding out he sets up revenge murders for fun. We’re treated to a flashback sequence of some of ZZS’s Tian Chuang state-sanctioned violence, including a pile of bodies in a burned-out house with a little girl who reaches out to him and calls him “shushu” (which I think is a reference to something that actually happens in Qi Ye); killing that official dude and making Jing’an drink poison, from Ep 1; inserting the Seven Nails into Bi Changfeng - a whole bunch of bad shit that WKX has dug back up way more successfully with a few words than that grave he was trying to dig with his broken sword. ZZS sighs mournfully and unfairly beautifully (your FACE, my dude) over the fact that he thought he found his soulmate, but he was apparently WRONG, and meanwhile, we see Han Ying lurking worriedly and devotedly in the background.

Then, both of these morose motherfuckers proceed to drink themselves (even more) stupid over each other, WKX in a brothel and ZZS moping by himself downstairs at the (No Longer) Getting Lucky Inn, leaving poor Han Ying and A-Xiang to eventually deal with them. ZZS is literally falling over as he calls for more wine – you are a sloppy drunk, laopo, although I have to admit, you’ve worked your way through a lot of bottles, so I suppose it’s understandable – and WKX proceeds to drink his four ... five? ... four, I think, girls under the table and clearly has no intention of sleeping with them, because it might interfere with his waxing drunkenly and mournfully about finding a thing you thought you’d lost forever but not being able to keep it at the price of giving up your big revenge murder plan you’ve been working out since you were 8 years old. (Also because he’s gay af. I’m just sayin’.)

So, yeah, Han Ying and A-Xiang eventually have to deal with these two, and for my money, the single most important scene of the ep - thematically, at least - is the one we get between A-Xiang and WKX, where a couple of big things are going on. One of the themes I see again, running through this ep, is the separation between the human world and the world of “ghosts,” and how that line is policed, and how Wen Kexing tries to maintain it as a bright line, in order to maintain his own distance from Zhou Zishu and the world. Now that things have gone so spectacularly wrong with ZZS, he’s going to dig in on the “ghost” side of that line for all he’s worth – much harder than he was digging that grave for the Four Sages of Anji, given he breaks the sword and gives up halfway through on that one, but this one he’s determined to get all the way to the bedrock on. So yes, in this scene we get the theme made explicit again, of human-ghost separation - which will echo and rebound throughout the rest of the show, until we see its awful, gory truth made manifest when it turns out WKX is horrifically correct and A-Xiang is NOT, in fact, going to be allowed by “humankind” to leave Ghost Valley and walk up to the human world with her lover, while meanwhile, if WKX is going to get out of the valley, he’s not staying in the mortal world but is going to end up on the icy remote mountaintop. BUT ALSO, this may be the first time we really see the show put A-Xiang forward as a proxy for Wen Kexing. This is going to be an increasingly weighted Thing as we go on, of course, but what I didn’t remember on my first watch-through - even after I realized what they were doing with the A-Xiang/Cao Weining and Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu parallels further down the road – is that, in this first time we really see it, it’s not even about their respective love interests, it’s about their respective relationships with Chengling. I mean, clearly, clearly, when WKX is being a drunk asshole to A-Xiang about how she’s been too long in her human skin (and huh, interesting that, when we also have instances where fake skin disguises are literal), and DON’T EVER FORGET WHO YOU ARE, HEARTLESS AMETHYST FIEND GHOST VALLEY MASTER HEARTLESS AMETHYST FIEND, and who among them would ever pity you me you, he’s really talking about his recent breakup with ZZS, in which he got called a crazed psychopath just for setting up a few amusing revenge murders. But here’s the thing – what triggers the diatribe is A-Xiang saying she feels sorry for Chengling trapped in Yueyang Sect, in the course of nattering on about what’s up with Chengling, and what she and Chengling have been doing together, and how much Chengling misses WKX. Which is, A-Xiang tells WKX, a lot. After which WKX puffs himself up and proceeds to be a drunk asshole to her, because of course, he’s not worthy of having anyone care about him, they might think he’s human, or something, and then he’s only going to get hurt again when they find out he’s NOT. So, all that happens. We also find out in this conversation that Changing Ghost was responsible for the pile of heads; that A-Xiang was at the Funeral/Wedding Game and saw Deng Kuan become the last survivor and get set free in much better condition than he later showed up at Yueyang Sect, so what the hell’s happened to him in between; and that A-Xiang definitely thinks her Murder Dad master is crazy but isn’t afraid that he’ll end up killing her someday. I mean, let’s be clear, I don’t think she’s absolutely positive that he won’t go crazy and kill her – she’s just not afraid of it. Zhou Ye is fantastic here, because she has A-Xiang give WKX this gorgeous little smile that’s so simple yet just so filled with love and trust and faith and everything that must have kept his heart alive all those years, the one that she probably gave him even after he burned her mouth on congee that was too hot, and I end up clutching my chest because I think she’s killed me. And then in a horrible twist on what’s eventually coming down the pike, she tells him that she’d follow him even if he’s crazy, and that if he killed her, she’d even follow him in death, and GOD. MY HEART. Because we’re going to see that in fact, he’s going to almost follow her into death, and then he’s going to dream of her leaving him instead of actually staying with him after death, and the only thing keeping me together at this point is the idea that Nian’xiang will actually be A-Xiang reincarnated so that she can be with WKX and the rest of her family again.

Anyway, all of this is apparently a dress rehearsal for WKX, because he then gets himself dolled up in some luscious green robes and proceeds to go to Tragicomic Ghost’s mansion in order to terrorize the troops and spread the misery. He requests a report from all of his top ten nine eight devils; credits them with three Funeral Games (I guess we don’t get to see the other two), annihilating Danyang Sect, destroying Mirror Lake Sect, killing Mount Tai Sect’s leader (Ao Laizi), and leaving a pile of heads for Yueyang Sect to find. He’s doing his best Lunatic Wen bit, but come on, my friend, do they really deserve credit for ALL of that? Do they really? It sounds like you have your suspicions, as well, because you want to know who was responsible for the Mirror Lake massacre. Everyone looks around, pointedly not meeting his eyes, so, hmm, it must have been Long-Tongued Ghost, right? Right? (Who we last saw getting killed and getting his (Danyang) Glazed Armor took by Wen Kexing while pretending to be Hanged Ghost.) Changing Ghost, who’s supposedly Long-Tongued Ghost’s superior and who’s smart enough to sense the wind shifting, even if he’s not sure in which direction, hastily says that LTGhost doesn’t listen to him anymore. (Yeah, because he’s dead.) At this point, White Grim Reaper is dumb enough to draw attention to himself, and WKX chokes him out just ‘cause. ‘Cause he’s Lunatic Wen, and fuck you, that’s why. Both Tragicomic Ghost and Beauty Ghost look more Completely Done With This Bullshit than scared – in contrast to the men, who are shitting their pants - which is an early indication that their relationships with WKX are different than his relationships with the male Devils. WKX also makes some pointed comment about how oh dear, he’s killed someone, and they were already low on manpower, but as a chief of GHOSTS, that’s all he has to work with, isn’t that RIGHT, Changing Ghost – which sounds on the surface kind of like policing that line between ghosts and humans, but really seems more like he has his suspicions about exactly who Changing Ghost is actually working with, because while he may not be as smart as A-Xu, he’s not DUMB. Now, let’s all come up with a plan to fuck over the Five Lakes Alliance during the Hero’s Conference. Aaaaand … end scene (and ep).

Meanwhile, Han Ying is dealing with his poor, drunk dumbass charge, and we see ZZS wake up in some richly appointed rooms, in some strange bed, and he’s clearly thinking “Oh snap. What I do last night?” Also, feeling the hangover. Once he manages to get his boots on, he notices a shrine, complete with candles, and just about this point, Han Ying busts in like he’s WKX or something (although to be fair, it is his bedroom), and wants to know exactly wtf is wrong with ZZS, getting blackout drunk with his actual face hanging out like he doesn’t care who recognizes him? (I just have to take a moment here, and point out that ZZS, who went all in, in the last ep, and who will continue to be the more open one as this relationship goes on, is being berated here for not wearing a mask, for showing his real self, while the issue for both A-Xiang and WKX is going to continue to be keeping on a protective mask/skin, even though WKX accuses A-Xiang himself in this very ep of thinking the mask is real and not just a cover for her true face. Anyway.) Oh, and also, My Lord, how is your injury? DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO TENDERLY CARE FOR YOU? I like this scene, because Han Ying’s actually kind of angry at ZZS, and a little bit, he shows it, and we get to see that he’s not spineless, even in the (blindingly beautiful) face of ZZS, he’s just devoted. And if that means keeping this dumbass safe from himself, well, Han Ying will try to do that, too, even if it’s enough to drive him to find religion, as we also find out in this scene, explaining the shrine. I suppose he needs all the help he can get. Anyway, ZZS tells him that he’s too mean to die just yet, although he doesn’t expect any blessings on his path, and Han Ying responds – and I think this is important, given ZZS’s decision last ep to spend the rest of his life living instead of dying – that “any day we live is a day gained.” (HAN YING. MY BELOVED.) ZZS pulls some Glazed Armor out of his robes to give to Han Ying, and they both realize that it looks exactly like two pieces Han Ying already has his hands on, gdi WKX. At this point, ZZS reiterates that he just wants Han Ying to lay low and stay safe, Han Ying reiterates his undying devotion, and ZZS has clearly had it with these kids and their starry-eyed devotion. He tries telling Han Yng again to just live a good life - as if Han Ying is at all wired that way – before making some dramatic pronouncement about expecting to have to deal with what’s coming to him in hell and sweeping out the door in the last we see of him this ep.

Let’s see, other things that happened:

Gao Chong, Zhao Jing and Shen Shen confer over their complete loss of face in the run-up to the Hero’s Conference; Shen Shen gets very offended and denies killing Ao Laizi, which is the rumor going around town; Gao Chong says the Ghost Valley isn’t responsible for Ao Laizi’s death (which they are) or for spreading the rhyme about the Glazed Armor (which they are); Zhao Jing says Five Lakes Alliance can’t get a reputation for forcing other sects to do things (when he can manipulate them into doing what he wants), and Shen Shen wants to know WHY THE HELL NOT (oh, Shen Shen) when the jianghu has always been, and I QUOTE, “a place where the strong pery on the weak,” so again, I have to kind of side with WKX on this one about the hive of scum and villainy. Or I would if you guys seemed capable of actually accomplishing anything.

Elsewhere in Yueyang Sect, it’s been Bullying Hour again for Chengling, and A-Xiang is furious when she finds out, threatening to break the legs of whoever’s responsible for smacking him around (she really is like the most delightful Chengxian love-child, I have to say). She also has some Wolong Nuts – crispy and delicious! – for him. Gao Xiaolian shows up with some treats, but Chengling doesn’t want her food, and also he doesn’t want to marry her, because he doesn’t want to be Gao Chong’s puppet, which is kind of new, because he said a couple of eps ago at the Five Lakes monument that he would abide by Gao Chong’s decisions. I guess now that he’s found out from A-Xiang that their Murder Dads are still around, he thinks there’s still a chance to run away with them. Gao Xiolian runs away, crying. Harsh, Chengling, but it does give him the chance to complain to A-Xiang that he’s effectively under house arrest, WHERE ARE OUR MURDER DADS TO SAVE ME?

Last but not least, there’s this incredible scene with Yu Loser Qiufeng, leader of Mount Hua Sect, in which one of the Mount Hua Virgins (tm WKX) comes complaining that everyone is looking down on them. Yu Qiufeng tells him that the entire jianghu is falling apart and to suck it up, and then another Virgin (tm WKX) shows up to say that some people from Mount Tai Sect are here to talk about Dead Ao Laizi, because the Five Lakes Alliance killed him omg. Yu Quifeng’s response is literally “Tell them I’m not here,” and when the disciple wants to know how he can possibly say that, Qiufeng’s response is literally “Say I went out. Say I’m sick. Say I’m dead.” (OMG, Zongzhu can’t see you right now, he’s dead!)

[thegoldielocks28]

45. "Do I even wanna know?" for Tala and Mathilda (because I'm interested in seeing your version of their friendship when she's with or moving towards being with Spencer) Or if that line doesn't work, either of the others will do as long as it has those two :)

Title: Do I even want to know? Pairing: Sergei Petrov and Mathilda Alster romantically, Yuriy Ivanov and Mathilda Alster platonically. Notice: Written from Yuriy´s point of view. Mostly. Also, I haven't yet read the new manga so some of my headcanons for him might be off, aged or not canon. Also, I kept writing and adding to this for ages, and feel it's a bit of a mess. Hopefully, it shows some emotion that I meant for it to show. Not sure if I will post this anywhere else hm...

Yuriy has mastered the art of ignoring others' eyes on him. Easily walking by as if he's clueless of their attention on him. Even if the fact that they were staring was something he noticed before the person themselves knew their eyes were trailing him.

Observant as he is.

During Yuriy´s early childhood, he’d get looks of hatred and disgust as he lived, or barely survived, in the streets. Wearing old and tattered clothes, pale skin almost grey because of malnutrition, and blue eyes desperately searching for help as passerbys continued to choose not to see him. At times, the hatred in strangers´ eyes was better than being ignored. When they pretended not to see the misery Yuriy was in he ended up feeling like he was already dead.

Soon, Yuriy learned of another kind of fear. The fear that came from those who were threatened by his skill in the bey dish, fear because of the harsh fates waiting for them if they lost to him in the days of the Abbey. Once that first child lost terribly to Yuriy, and was never seen again, his peers started to respect him. Respect born from fear.

As Yuriy and his brothers were manipulated and tricked to threaten the safety of the world, he was looked on as both a hero and a monster. A hero who´d give Russia the top spot in Beyblade again.And as something a little less than human, perhaps closer to a cyborg, leading the world towards its demise while being seemingly void of much emotion. Perhaps only rivaled by how power hungry Kai had gotten together with Black Dranzer. Or even by Boris after that match against Rei. Boris had been Balkov´s triumph card. The man is still recovering from the lack of love he got from a young age, and to learn to handle his growing emotions just as his rage.

Today the world knows how all of it ended, and who to thank for their safety and freedom: the Bladebreakers.

After the Demolition Boys´ loss, people started to look at them with yet a new set of eyes. The eyes of those who viewed them as victims of manipulation, of harsh childhoods. Often with pity. It never suited Yuriy. Being a victim. Rather, he aimed for them to be seen as young, free and brave men redeeming themselves and growing into something better. Growing into the people they want to be now when they have a real shot at it.

Survivors.

Today, Yuriy is well trained in observing strangers and deciding whether or not they´re sincere when approaching his team. If they truly want to get to know them, or if they want something from them. Regretfully the Russians often decide it's safer to assume people are out to hurt them than blindly letting strangers into their lives.

It´s a snowy and cold day in Moscow, Russia. The air is crisp, cold and dry. Chilling to the bone. A good winter's day, with a clear blue sky telling of an even colder night ahead. Probably with stars. The streets are busy with people. Families, couples, children playing around. At a corner of a smaller street a coffee shop recently opened, carrying a foreign brand of coffee to Russia.

To the untrained eye Yuriy´s pale face appears indifferent as he thanks the young woman accompanying him for holding the door open. He's carrying some of the things they bought today. Books. Clothes. Some new toys for his pet dog. However, even if he might look like he'd rather be somewhere else, his eyes tell of a new kind of warmth as he looks at his female companion. An attentiveness few earn from him.

Yuriy´s presence has stirred people to life it seems. Staff greets him with almost spooked expressions and “Hi!”s. They must be newly hired, since the shop has just been around for a few weeks. It instantly sours his mood, as he much prefers workers to treat him like any other customer. From that point Yuriy makes sure it seems like he pays little attention to the people around them, but only after he shows his appreciation with a slight nod of his head. There´s this middle ground he has found as of late. Looking strangers in the eye as they gawk at him while fighting nerves. Some are his fans, and they pay a bit of his paycheck through watching his matches. Supporting him and his family. No matter how Yuriy looks at it, his fans matter, they all do in beyblading. Not all of them are stalkers, or want to hurt him or those closest to him. Even if it is hard to remember that sometimes.

The woman with him takes the lead to a small two-seater table at the back corner of the shop. Fairly isolated, yet with a view towards the street outside. She's always considerate like that. Sitting down with his back against the wall and a good view over the coffee shop, Yuriy´s eyes settle at the woman in front of him. The scent of sweet fruits washes over him. Nothing too overpowering. She takes off her coat, observant eyes darting around the place as she too notices the eyes on them. Unlike Yuriy, she can’t hide her discomfort. Yuriy has already deemed the room safe. The usual quick sweep of the eyes he does every time he arrives somewhere, especially somewhere new. Checking where the exits are, if there’s anyone suspicious around. Old habits are hard to break, and this one he won't try to: it has saved him before. Yuriy lets out a soft sigh as he allows himself to relax in his chair. Body grows heavier as he sinks into his seat. Knees falling apart ever so slightly. The only threat in this room seems to be awed struck fans, and those he can handle. At least well enough to make his friend enjoy their short coffee break.

Although Yuriy appears relaxed, his body language erects a barrier between his safe bubble with his friend and the people around them. Nothing about Yuriy is inviting. He leaves no room for strangers to think it's suitable for a quick chat or to ask about a signature: his focus is on his company. The girl in front of him tries to hide the fact that the attention from strangers gets to her, and Yuriy can´t help but imagine what the fans around them think as they see how she squirms in her seat. How they draw the wrong conclusions. The Russian offers her a hint of a smile in an attempt at making her feel more comfortable. If her attention is on him, Yuriy knows she´ll be able to relax and enjoy herself as well.

Ever since his brother started dating her, no one has seemed to want to accept their relationship for what it is. At first, not even Yuriy. The girl in the chair across from Yuriy is called Mathilda Alster. A young woman with a petite frame, big eyes and soft short pink hair. She is still red in the cheeks from the cold outside. Mathilda holds the hot cocoa she ordered tightly in both of her hands as if her fingers would turn into ice if she didn’t. That, or, it´s another sign of her nerves. Yuriy frowns slightly at the sight. Mathilda has been with them in Russia for over a week, and it seems like even the thick clothes he and his brothers helped her get doesn’t keep her warm enough out in the dry cold. It's the major reason why the two of them ended up shopping for clothes together.

Mathilda can't continue to wear her boyfriend´s shirts and hoodies once she gets cold. It works at their home, but not out and about, as most clothes that's supposed to end by the hips reach her mid-thighs or lower. Every borrowed t-shirt ends up a dress.

And Yuriy can't have her get sick.

”...I don’t really go to these kinds of places often, so it’s making them excited.” Yuriy says flatly, talking about the other people who keep stealing glances at them.

The fans are watching from a respectable distance so far, luckily. Yuriy is a very well-known face in Russia but he doesn't doubt people have realized just who is with him. The red haired man crosses a leg over the other and sips at his coffee, adding a bit of milk after a moment as he finds it just a bit too bitter for his liking. Something his teammates surely would judge him for. They always have their coffee black, black as their souls, as Boris says. A part of Yuriy regrets going to a crowded coffee shop during daytime. He loves coffee, but he´d normally have gotten it on the go or brewed it himself at home. However, Mathilda wanted to go for a snack after they were done with what they needed to do in town... so here they are. Not like Yuriy could deny her that when she looked so hopeful, so eager to spend just a little bit of more time together. Without really demanding anything but some of his time and company.

Before they set out this morning Mathilda had told Yuriy she'd keep him company, and that she had something she wanted to tell him. A secret. It made Yuriy curious. Mathilda might be someone who’d never tell someone else´s secret but she wouldn’t be able to hide that she is in fact, hiding something.

”So, you said earlier that there was something on your mind.” Yuriy asks at last.

Usually, the two of them have these kinds of conversations back at home. During Mathilda´s stays with them it has become a habit to gather around the kitchen table, having tea or coffee with something sweet and just talk. Even if she could just lock herself up in his brother's room and spend all the time with him, Mathilda put effort into getting to know all of them better. Never once voicing she thought their lifestyles were odd, but asking if she could help out with meals and chores while she lived with them. After a few days, they realized that all of them had breakfast, lunch and dinner together at the same hours a day. Even if their work, school, or individual practises were scheduled differently. Mathilda had observed, and made a good schedule that´d suit their hectic life-style. Before that, it had mainly been Sergei and Yuriy who were responsible for any home cooked meal. This change resulted in Yuriy and Mathilda growing closer, spending more time together, and learning each other's habits and likes and dislikes.

Today Mathilda was a little bit too eager to help Yuriy with his errands. She seemed almost anxious to get away from the three other men as she spoke with him in a low voice in the hallway. Asking if she could come with. Mathilda would often be content staying back reading when her boyfriend was at his part time job, or hanging out with whoever was at home, but Yuriy didn´t mind that she wanted his company. He has come to enjoy hers, and found the way she seemed to want to rely on him quite endearing.

However, he's certain whatever she's trying so hard to keep a secret has something to do with her boyfriend. It had left him feeling a bit uneasy for a while, as he's concerned it´d be something negative. Yuriy might not be able to admit it yet but he would miss her if Mathilda ever broke up with his friend. His thoughts straying to if it would work staying in touch even if it happened.

Mathilda´s cheeks end up getting a bit redder at Yuriy´s question. Her embarrassment and shyness is always refreshing, especially since it has never stopped her from doing what she wants in the end.

Leaning his chin in the palm of his hand, Yuriy leans forward over the table. Elbow resting just at the edge. ”Do I … really want to know?” Yuriy asks at last, the corner of his lips turning upward in a smirk.

Judging by Mathilda´s expression this won't be about a break up.

Even if Yuriy´d consider Mathilda to be something like an addition to his family by now, it wasn't always that way. It was something that happened gradually over time, until she was included with no questions asked.

Yuriy had learned to be observant from a very young age. It didn’t take long for the captain of the Russian team to notice that someone was getting uncomfortably close to the tight, sturdy and often very solid barrier of safety he had erected around his team. The intruder was that of a young woman, a woman he knew almost nothing about, during a beyblade tournament where their teams were rivals. Every team was the enemy in a sense.

Yuriy´s eyes soon followed Mathilda every time she was around, looking for any signs of ill intent while a small lump of anxiety grew in his chest. That lump grew in size as he realized she had been around for much longer than he had known. Rude as he sometimes can be, he genuinely decided it must have been because of her lack of presence that he at first didn’t take notice of her. She was always in the background, quiet and didn't take up much space. Not an opponent he´d have to worry about in the dish, but if he was going to be fair, his focus had been on other players.

Eventually he was informed about her, and that they had actually been in the same tournament once before. Alongside the fact that her team had too been victims of greedy and manipulative adults.

As Yuriy continued to observe Mathilda, he noted yet again that Mathilda was neither tall nor had a strong build. Her body, and eyes, showed her emotions as if she was an open book for everyone to read. He also realized that Mathilda was always observing too. Always conscious, self-conscious. With a build like that, and emotions so easy to read, Yuriy concluded that Mathilda wouldn´t become a threat to them physically. Whatever she threw at them in the dish or outside of it they'd know ahead of time and be able to counter. Yet, soon, he also realized that she might come too close in a completely different way than he expected.

Mathilda had her eyes set on Sergei.

With a risk to sound egocentric, Yuriy thought of how there have been people in the past who had tried to befriend, for example Sergei or Ian, with hopes of getting let into the Russians´ circle for their own personal gain or to even end up in his or Boris´ bed. Ian has always been the teammate most strangers assumed to be the easiest one to get close to. Often getting played in return as Ian has through bad experiences learned how people wanted to use him. All it took was for the short man to get excited over a friendship only to realize he wasn't the one the person was really there for. Others thought Sergei could be their key in. For some reason, many interpreted his silence for lack of depth, and assumed he´d accept almost any positive attention shown his way. They often realized their mistake when the usually gentle giant showed signs of irritation, and they realized just how intimidating the oldest and tallest member of the team could be.

It took Yuriy a while to realize that Mathilda was having a thing for Sergei. Even if her skin grew red with embarrassment, her voice cracking, she kept on approaching his brother with small conversations. Eyes were bright with delight as Sergei eventually started to return her greetings. Answered her questions, even if he seemed a bit put off balance by the attention and the fact that the girl didn´t stop approaching him.

Yuriy trusted Sergei to shoot her down if he felt she was overstepping, and he forced himself to let it go, only for him to see the two together more often. The lump of anxiety in his chest grew larger. Now, would this tiny girl, who sometimes stuttered out of nerves, be that cunning, to get close to Sergei with a false promise of.... affections... to later hurt him? Hurt their team? Yuriy didn´t want to take any chances. Yuriy knew Sergei had his walls up just like himself. He might seem approachable, at least the most approachable one out of his other teammates, just for the person trying to strike up a conversation feel like they're facing a cold brick wall. However, Yuriy could tell that Sergei´s walls were starting to crack around Mathilda.

Soon Sergei allowed her into his space, closer than any other stranger, and would expect Mathilda to be around. His steel blue eyes searched for her when she wasn't there when he expected her to be. How the quick meetings in the shared kitchen area of their hotel floor turned into longer and longer conversations over tea and coffee.

At one point Yuriy had felt Mathilda´s Captain Miguel´s eyes on him from across the dining area as they had both observed the same thing, and Yuriy felt annoyed. For once not so much over that Sergei and Mathilda were getting closer, but because of how cautious Miguel´s eyes had been. As if he was telling Yuriy to make sure his team behaved.

It didn't take long for Mathilda´s name to leave Sergei´s mouth around his team. It had made them grow quiet, because it had been rare for any of them to have plans with others outside of their small circle. Boris was the first one to break the silence as he made a crude joke about Sergei´s and Mathilda´s difference in size and that Sergei should be careful not to crush her. Boris deserved the death stare Sergei gave him after that.

Yuriy kept fighting his unease, believing that Sergei knew what he was doing, while also getting ready to act if things got out of hand.

The first time Mathilda ate with them she was very nervous, Yuriy could tell, the whole world could tell, but she still sat there with them and tried. Tried to keep up with conversations even if Boris was rude, and spoke mostly in Russian in a childish way to exclude her. Something Yuriy wouldn´t accept, as he instead used the lunch to talk to her. Gently poke her to see if there was any ill intent, testing the waters.

What in the end convinced Yuriy Mathilda was safe and good for his brother was the way she reacted to Sergei getting hurt. It was a minor injury: Sergei had stepped badly during practise and damaged his ankle. Leaving him with a swollen foot and a bad limp he tried to cover as well as he could among strangers. Somehow Mathilda saw through his pretense and realized he was hurt. The usually quiet girl had stopped Sergei as he and Boris were walking past her in the hallway. Voice a bit high-pitched as she asked about Sergei´s limp, and grew almost pushy as Boris told her it was nothing. As he told her to back off.

Mathilda had spent that evening sitting by Sergei’s feet cooling the swelling of his injury with ice and cold water. Yuriy had only realized this when he returned from a meeting with the BBA. The worry he saw on her face wasn’t an act. The challenge in her eyes as she looked at him and his team while staying by Sergei’s side, daring them to ask her to leave, was her true feelings.

Yuriy´s eyes narrow a fraction. He swirls the tablespoon in his now half-empty coffee cup, and tilts his head to the side while taking in Mathilda's sincere expression. Her face tells him that whatever secret she is hiding her nerves is from excitement and not out of anxiety.

“Our one year anniversary is coming up.” Mathilda starts slowly, her cheeks seeming to get even redder as she tries to word her thoughts as she wants them. “And I'm… trying to decide what I can do for him in celebration.”

Yuriy´s expression softens slightly, his concern fading. “...A year already?” He asks, feeling calm again. The thought that something between Sergei and Mathilda had turned bad had made him feel strangely uneasy. The man mentally sighs at himself. Focus returning to the current conversation and not what he dreads of the future. It feels like he met Mathilda just yesterday, at the same time as he feels as if they have known each other for several years already.

Anniversaries. Yuriy hasn´t thought much about it, but have they ever celebrated things like that, him and his family? They do keep track of a few dates, when things changed for the better for them. Boris is usually the one bringing out the alcohol. They always made sure to celebrate each other's birthdays as well. Celebrating they´re still getting older, living. Being free. Sergei was the first of them to get into a serious relationship. This is all new.

“Sergei probably won't expect anything…” Yuriy trails off slightly. “You have a good shot at surprising him, Mathilda.”

Mathilda has been patient and gentle as she guides Sergei through his first relationship. Yuriy thinks Sergei might not be Mathilda´s first love, but her first in many other ways, and they could experience it together at their own pace.

Sergei rarely wants something for himself, or expects others to do things for him. Emotions that Yuriy has seen grow since he started seeing Mathilda, as the man too learned he wanted her attention in different ways. Sergei had gone from only making sure others were alright to having someone, outside of family, who’d get worried sick about him. Who he would fight wars to keep happy and safe.

Mathilda smiles at Yuriy´s answer, and she seems pleased about what he just told her even if it didn't solve her problem of what to get Sergei in the end. Yuriy wonders what she has planned for her boyfriend. Warmth grows in him as he knows that Sergei now has more dates to remember and celebrate. Just like he too has a reason to spoil yet another person, Mathilda, when he wants to.

“I thought of… kidnapping him for a day, taking him to our favorite places, eat his favorite foods… “ Mathilda speaks, excited. “And-- … “ “You want us to be… somewhere else that day?” Yuriy asks with a slight smirk. The smirk is quite natural as he´ s amused imagining how Mathilda would ´kidnap´ Sergei.

“N-no!” Mathilda exclaims, understanding what her friend means. If they want some more privacy, just for them. “Well, it would be nice but--… “

“I'm sure I can get Boris and Ian out of the house for one evening…” Yuriy continues to playfully tease her.

A low buzz in Yuriy´s pocket makes him reach down for his phone, looking at the screen for just a moment.“Sergei´s off work, he's coming to pick us up on the way home.” Yuriy is thankful as he would rather not get on the public transport again today.

Mathilda nods, clearly thinking time must have passed quickly today, as she too checks her phone. Red cheeks slowly return to a normal shade as her embarrassment fades. Mathilda had neglected her phone simply because she was focused on Yuriy today, and there's an unread message from Sergei there waiting for her. The blonde Russian must have texted Yuriy too, due to the lack of reply on Mathilda´s part.

Just like Yuriy calls Mathilda when he can't get a hold of Sergei.

“I'll go and buy something for the others!” Mathilda says, getting her wallet before walking away. Blue eyes watches her as she checks out the display of different treats. Yuriy can already see Ian grinning at the gesture, and Boris not reacting much but whatever Mathilda gets for him will get eaten before next morning. For once, Yuriy isn´t the first one to notice Sergei. Instead his eyes follow how Mathilda rushes over to him, bag of sweets in hand. Taking in how Sergei´s tall and stiff frame softens as he leans down towards her: listening attentively to whatever she's saying. Yuriy gets up from his seat and pulls on his coat slowly, unable to look away at the sight. They look happy. It warms him, from inside out. He gets Mathilda´s things for her before he moves towards the couple. A long exhale through the nose.

Not everyone is out to hurt them.