#and somebody I trusted decides it’s ok to destroy what I do have

[nuala-luna]

I wasted eight years of my life being friends with someone who didn’t care about me at all and abandoned me for no reason at the drop of a hat without so much as a word and now I’ve completely lost my ability to socialise or form meaningful connections with other people thus making new friendships impossible so I am literally completely alone every day I feel like I’m going to be sick

[jungshookz]

Hey Cee, I don’t want you to answer this publicly if you don’t want to, but I hope this reaches you. I don’t mind my story being shared, I just want you to know that you are not alone.

Last year, I also got into my first real romantic relationship and it was literally horrendous. I loved that man more than I loved myself, I allowed him to lie to me about multiple women, take advantage of my kindness, his girl best friend bullied me and lied about me and destroyed my reputation with his friends, family, my friends and he picked her side until I put myself in the hospital over what she did to me and I lost everybody trying to keep my relationship alive. I lost my connection to BTS (men who taught me to love myself and who gave me so much joy in my life) chasing this man who did nothing but demonise me, weaponise my response to his disrespect, invalidate my feelings and then lovebomb me on good days so that I’d stay. I tried so hard to wait for him to wake up and change but change never came, he only expected me to become more and more tolerant of his disrespectful behaviour.

We broke up over and over, every time I was blocked on everything because I’d call crying over and over begging to talk it out while he’d go game with his friends and say awful, awful stuff about how crazy I was just because he did something that upset me. All of his friends took his side, from speaking to exes to not including me on his twitch streams or game clans or publicly showing he had a girlfriend. I was crazy, I was controlling, I was a demon in their narrative, just so that he didn’t feel guilty about leaving me to cry for days on end while he gamed and got high. It got to the point where I wasn’t allowed to be unblocked on Facebook or Instagram so I couldn’t see what girls he was following or talking to, and so he didn’t have to show he had a girlfriend.

I really felt like I was going to d-word either by my own hand or by the stress because of how toxic and disgusting his behaviour was towards me, so believe me when I tell you that I understand. I understand and I’m so sorry that a relationship where you were supposed to feel safe and loved left you so down that you abandoned what seems to be your calling and your passion - writing. I’m so sorry you didn’t get the sweet love that you so often write about, and absolutely deserve.

I came to your account a lot, you’ve probably seen my messages missing you and hoping that you were okay. Your stories are part of the reason I finally decided I needed to leave. I want the love you write about, not the love I was offered by a manchild. Thank you so much for making me realise what I deserved with your works. You deserve that too.

I walked out with trust issues that will likely never heal, commitment issues I never had before, no desire to get married or have children despite desperately wanting those things for years before I met him. He traumatised me and completely changed who I am as a person.

I just want you to know that you will be ok, even when you have those days when it hurts and it feels like the whole world is pressing on that hole in your chest and making it hurt so much more than it has been recently. You are so dearly loved, and you were so missed by so many people while you were away. You are an inspiration and a large chunk of joy for a lot of people who follow you and support you and we will continue to support and love you no matter what, you give us so much with your stories it’s the least we can do. Please do not feel guilty for leaving us, it was not your fault, you were in love (I suspect) and did what you felt you had to do.

Sometimes, love makes us do stupid things. And when you love somebody more than they could ever imagine, and more than they could ever return, you will do everything trying to latch on to what is simply not meant for you just because you feel that connection so strongly. Whatever happened in your relationship, do not blame yourself. You did everything you could have, and I promise you are better off alone than with somebody who makes you miserable. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY is worth destroying your mental health and I’m so sorry that somebody you loved and trusted has put you in a position where you now have to heal from whatever happened.

I am so glad that you are safe and ok, and if my story resonated even a little, I’m so sorry. Nobody deserves that pain.

Welcome home, Cee. You were sorely missed 🖤

ok this is gonna be a long one but it’s 3:30 and i am wide awake and just flooded with emotions so 

i read this when i was on the train earlier and it made my eyes glaze over not just because it was so saddening to read about what you’d gone through but also because i just felt so much love and warmth from your words. thank you so much for sharing your story and even taking the time to write this out and send it in to me… i’m so, so sorry that your first real romantic relationship turned out to be like that and i’m even more sorry that it’s completely changed not only how you see yourself but how you see the people and the world around you. you did not deserve ANY of that treatment and i hope that one day you find a love that that makes you feel genuinely happy, safe, and comfortable.

i’m so relieved to read that you’re out of it now and (hopefully) healing, and i’m glad that my account and the stories that i left behind could still be there for you even when i couldn’t be here myself. i wish i could’ve been there for you back then, but i am back NOW and as you’ve probably already seen, back to writing and posting again!!!! so i really hope that the blog can continue to be a source of love and comfort as you continue to heal <3 i know i probably say it a lot but every single one of you guys mean so much to me and i really would be nothing without you — you guys are part of the reason why our little corner of the internet is always so lovely and warm and supportive and i am so grateful that we have each other even if we’re separated by screens. it is still so wild to me that some of you have been here as long as you have… time really does fly when you spend it with people you love! 

everything that you said that happened to you completely and 200% resonated with me. the demonizing, weaponizing, invalidating, and lovebombing — everything that he said to me still sits heavy on my mind and i find myself wondering how someone can claim to love you and want the best for you but also call you names and degrade you in the same breath. 

part of the reason why my love for writing had completely fizzled out was because he’d say my degree in undergrad was completely useless and stupid and that if i was so good at writing i would’ve had something published by now, but clearly i didn’t — so obviously i wasn’t meant to be a writer. and if the man that i loved and who was going to be my future partner said i wasn’t cut out for writing, then it had to be true because he just wanted me to succeed, right? i’d think about it all the time and i’d try to write again, but absolutely nothing would come to mind and at one point i had fully accepted that he was right and that i wasn’t a good writer at all and that perhaps i should just continue working at the CONSTRUCTION SITE (hardhat!cee era) that i was working at because at that point we’d moved in together and i had to pick up two jobs while trying to get through my senior year. my parents had completely cut me off, i’d lost friends and other friends had distanced themselves from me and i just felt like i had absolutely no one but him to guide me. and when i got into my program for grad school he doubled down on the uselessness of my degree and i still remember him saying that one day, i’m going to fuck my wife in the back of my mercedes-benz while the little english literature student is at home babysitting our kids. i suppose that i stopped writing love stories because i thought the love that i was experiencing was how real love was like and it felt wrong to be writing about love the way i usually did when clearly real love wasn’t that way at all. i am so sorry that i left the way that i did because i really just disappeared one day — i hope that i can make up for lost time now that i’m back :-) 

i do want to tell you guys a little bit more about what happened because i feel like i owe you an explanation!! i really want to share as much as i can with you instead of just being like :p yeah i was in a bad relationship :p anyways back to writing :p because just like you, this first real romantic relationship completely traumatized me as well and i know i’m not the same person i was before i met him. 

to discipline me, he made me swipe for him on tinder to find a girl for him to go on a date with (because he said that he HAD to do it to smarten me up) and he ended up sleeping with her to get back at me for talking to my friends about all the questionable things he’d said/done (he read all my private texts with my friends and said that it wasn’t normal and that no good partner would ever do this to anyone, hence the ‘disciplining’ method he came up with) and to this day i know he thinks he didn’t cheat on me because he’d “broken up” with me at the time  

he’d break up with me over and over again over silly reasons (the last breakup we had was because he was trying to motivate me to lose weight??? because i needed to show him that i could lose weight now so i could do it to get rid of baby weight after giving birth to his baby one day???)  but in between the breakups he’d reach out to his ex and it’d be okay because we were technically “broken up” (despite him still living at my apartment rent-free and us still going out and doing everything a couple would do) and so technically he wasn’t doing anything “wrong” and at one point i was actively trying to get myself pregnant in hopes that having his baby would force him to change and now that i’m typing it out i’m realizing how crazy i became just to try to stay with this horrible abu$ive man!

there’s an endless list of things that he did that i could give you but that would literally take hours and hours but my god i remember he ripped up our photos because i finished watching a show on netflix without him and i sat there until like four in the morning taping them all back together and i just remember how embarrassing it was going to staples and asking the guy to help me laminate these shredded photos up 

anyway i won’t go on because this has already turned into a literal essay but thank you once again for your kind words of love and support — i’m very happy to be home and to be surrounded by such a caring community. let’s continue to heal together <3 

[lord-shitbox]

ok kicks clutter out of the way and sits down with a notebook. i gotta figure out more bite's vampire dad semantics. mutuals very welcome to chime in

vampirism lore notes:

i could see turning someone into a vampire as something you do to a trusted friend or partner.. aw fuck ive gotta outline if people are born as vampires or not. the worldbuilding catches me again. shelving that for later

i do want there to be uneven power dynamics in siring for Bite's case specifically because yada yada young adult vs parent angst we've all been there. maybe something about the origin of vampirism lends it to uneven power dynamics but in modern society its typically looked down on to lord that power over others without good reason? specific laws about it so courts can rule that it's unjust for someone to be doing that if they're abusing the power, like domestic violence cases..

in that case I think a vampire parent would have legal precedent for maintaining sire power over their child but is generally obligated to "free" their dependent by relinquishing the power they hold over them and giving them control over themselves when they're 18 or so.

Bite lore notes:

Bite's birth parents are not part of the relevant picture at all and he's not too torn up about it. he would've been turned & taken in by his vampire father as a child...he's basically his adoptive father but with an extra tangible power difference because of the vampire siring part.

New angle of discussion.

Sire power: Bite's father can control how quickly he ages, because vampires can just do that for themselves if they have enough blood to feed on (a Lot of it) & could definitely force him to freeze on the spot n shit like that without touching him. Bite hates that shit. he can't control or have a say about what happens to his own body so of course hes balls to the walls touchy about his personal space. like a cornered animal

Bite's vdad wants him to stay small forever & refuses to let him grow old -> bite never gets old enough to legally obtain his own autonomy -> cornered desperate animal mentality

of course. given enough time and legal documentation he could definitely make a legal case that his vfather has been forcing him to stay a child for well over the time hes supposed to have been an adult by now & have his autonomy handed to him by legal means. but that takes Time and Legal Documentation. and if his vdad destroys his birth certificate and all other records of his birth who's going to believe him?

somebody will, Given Enough Time, but trans allegory "holy fuck i dont want to wait several years until i can choose what to do to my own body" hes going fucking crazy.

SO: he kills his dad

except he can't, because of the stupid vampire siring thing. he can't kill his vampire sire. he can get reaaaallllll fucking close but no matter what he does he's going to HAVE to get someone else to finish the job for him.

if he destroys his dad's body thoroughly enough his dad loses his control over him tho! yay! he gets to physically be as old as he should be as long as he remembers to destroy his dad's living corpse every time it starts forming enough to start exerting control over him again

He does this for a good couple years at least & he's better but he's also incredibly Stuck now. if he lets his dad reform he's going to be back to square one and who knows what his dad will do to him in return? he's kept him on the absolute brink of death for several years theres no fucking way he's gonna be happy with him about that. He needs to find someone who's willing to kill his dad & not tell the cops about what he's done because there's no way hes not going to jail or worse.

These are the circumstances he's under when he comes across Bark & this is why he keeps asking Bark if he'd kill someone for him (like would you love me if i was a worm except worse because hes worse). also this is where IM stuck cos i cant decide how to end it

Either Bite's vdad relinquishes control to him or Bite's vdad is killed. there has to be some end to the cycle he's stuck in

His dad relinquishing control feels..incredibly anticlimactic but is also realistic to my experience. could not stand my dad but he gave up on micromanaging me and now we're chilling. i think theres definitely something about parent/child relationships that are extremely combative in teen years but then end up reconciling later when the kid has grown up some more & the parent has realized they're their own person and not some toy

Bark could kill Bite's dad. this is a good quandary for him because he does not want to hurt anyone but also comes to understand Bite's situation and realizes the reason Bite is such an awful individual to deal with is because he's got this shitshow of a cloud hanging over his head all the time. Plus Bark's also like. definitely hurting people because he's refusing to deal with his own shit. even though he doesnt mean to. atp what's one more

third secret option Bite manages to kill his dad himself. this would go extremely awfully for him im sure it would damage him extensively and also would not help his isolationist "im the only one that can save myself" problems in the slightest. but he would have a GREAT cry in Bark's arms about it. i could make him do that anytime though now that i think about it. hehehe (the haver of thoughts)

SO. thats all that. Maybe if I squint at Bark's set of problems and figure out how he gets fixed by the end this half will just knit itself together nicely when im not looking. such is the life. anyone who read and processed all 900 of those words is entitled to compensation ill doodle you something tbh. what do yuou guys think

[theskyexists]

gundam eps i hadnt seen yet

i feel the most sorry for Nika. and Guel of course.

Nika seriously is trying to root them out on her own???? she threatened you with a KNIFE

is Nika going to uh. die? wow. Suletta be strong. Nika honestly is so damn cute lol. shes drawn so....tiny. short and stocky.

their covers instantly blown??

suletta’s shounen power is SO POWERFUL that it trumps all of the realistic stakes in the show. which is why the show is  so amazing. it plays the shounen tropes straight IN A REALISTIC WORLD has them work AND have most everybody LOSE as a result. anybody else would have been SPLATTED.

but Sulettas extreme (useful) naivity is actually not frustrating because MIORINE sees through it all. She KNOWS that Suletta was manipulated by her mother. She knows that she is being manipulated also. Question is - does she realise that she needs to prepare to take over the Benerit Group.

how did prospera know that rembran was trying to take over every information system in the world? was it really to stop all war? he was leader of a group selling war machines in order to stop all war? he didnt want pilots suffering experimental tech - alright. he didnt want experimental tech to do the killing - alright. no automated drone strikes basically. hes been cast the villain of course. because he was such a huge dick to mio. and also ordered the strike which killed suletta’s dad and all her mum’s colleagues. why did he do that? because he genuinely believed that they were a threat?

damn, suletta is exactly the wrong person to have seen sophie and norea try to kill nika and hear them talk. because shes so UNBELIEVABLY dumb.  idk i think the data storms DO do something bad to her brain. like....shes....shes got low iq for sure. thats ok! its just a little frustrating sometimes. makes for a handy key to the narrative though.

Suletta saw sophie and norea almost KILL Nika but she doesnt respond to them any differently. why does elans stand-in know about norea. why would norea have agreed to the duel with suletta. does she realise shes just that dumb

‘what does she mean about killing miorine-san’ she means LITERALLY KILL HER. KILL HER witH HER HANDS HER GUNDAM HANDS. LIKE YOU DID!!!!

its a good thing Suletta is completely invulnerable to ptsd, unlike everybody else on the team

jezus did they just kill Lauda as well. they’re really letting the game fall apart. (just before i was thinking: isnt it super easy to miss the antenna and kill somebody??)

these girls are not gonna die but damn you kind of want them to FUCK OFF. why are they being so fucking horrible to Nika - its unforgivable they have zero solidarity they are COMPLETE PSYCHOS. i wont forgive it just because earth is a shithole

ok so this is why Norea decided not to splat Nika and Suletta? but now Suletta could beat them in her aerial.

wow the terrorists aim for the cockpit and dont have the regulation program installed. what a suprise! get CHUCHU OUT OF THERE NOW

what the FUCK is their aim? to kill grassley senior? is the Prince trying to get rid of his dad? make way for the new generation?

I LOVE that this series is saying: yeah you got a big trauma at the plant - you THOUGHT we were going back to games bakc to normal nobody talk BUT NO VIOLENCE AND WAR AND THE REALITY OF WAR MACHINES IS COMING TO THE GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ah earth was absolutely destroyed by gundams. and earth seems to be the factory for gundams, going by nikas child labour story

actually i go back on this - sophie is cool as fuck. DO YOU PILOT THAT TOOL OF MURDER FOR HER???? FUCK YEAH. NO PROSPERA SHOUNEN MANTRA IS HOLDING UP TO THAT DELUGE

has shaddiq ACTUALLY set all this up to take over benerit group? damn. does Earth really trust him?

holy fucking SHIT. HOLY SHIT. WHAT???????????????????????????????? Eri....Aerial. wHAT??????????????? what happened. was her hand forced??? did she do it just out of a chance for revenge?? Suletta looks so much like her NO WAY she’s absolutely a clone. for SURE. so eri is taking the curse?? is suletta special at all? is aerial only doing the gund-bits or??

SULETTA’S CONDITIONING ACTUALLY HELD UP TO THAT SHIT????? HOLY SHIT. to sophie dying???screaming about how she wants food, a warm bed and a family? How the gundam are all weapons???

that ending soundtrack is insanely effective. the singing is like beautiful screaming.

and norea didnt even kill suletta for it. she really let suletta live TWICE and sophie died because of it. EVEN THOUGH sophie died because of it.

shes aiming for an even higher permet score than necessary for controlling ALL INFORMATION SYSTEMS? what the hell does that mean. she wants to make eri happy. HOW

jezus. guel needs to suffer less. everybody needs to suffer less.

the opening and ending animations are always soooooooo Suletta/Miorine and i know for this season Miorine is ghostlike bc shes not there. BUT DUDE I NEED THEM TO BE THAT TEAM THAT BLUE/RED TEAM THAT ACTUALLY HELPS PEOPLE....ah please

really? norea blames Nika for sophie’s death? what? its her own fucking fault lol

wow - anyway - Nika didnt even do her phonecall. its not her info that is endangering the cell. fucking hate Norea. her violence is despicable. HATE HER. HATE HER. HATE HER SO FUCKING MUCH. because she beats on the weakest - her OWN. HER OWN FUCKING PEOPLE

SHE NEVER FINISHED HER CALL??????????????????????but now the anime insists that she did. ok i guess i gotta accept that she did?? i find that so fucking hard to accept. just because she WOULD have said SOMETHING to police doesnt mean that she DID and endangered all those people.

ah. shaddiq considers himself earthian. but i didnt understand that economo-babble at all. is it the translation? ‘war partitioning’? which finances space development. why - if you break it, does earth become a place of proxy wars? he wants to give earth weapons in order to deter such wars...but who the fuck is fighting who here. what proxy wars? the worldbuilding is so impossible

are they seriously standing up to a full contigent of the group’s armed forces?? shouldnt the pilots run? arent they precious? ah they distractions. but how can they run after?

i get no sense for how Earths population is doing. tbf if you didnt want dad to die maybe he shouldn’t have gone in to shoot everybody to shit. but i guess in that world, you die wether you use violence or not.

i cant get over Norea blaming Nika for this. Shaddiqs girl literally took the phone from her hand. why the fuck did they send Nika to school if she wasnt fully indoctrinated....why treat her as a disposable asset who doesnt need to know instead of an important LITERAL go-between?

wow what a fucking idiot that jalil. he actually drew their attention. wow. what a fucking dumb idiot bitch

theyre losing SO MANY FIGHTERS and MATERIEL. they must REALLY believe in shaddiq to have risked this.

what the fuck lol. olcott didnt feel a heartbeat? left her to die? turned out shes not dead? shes not even so dead that she became conscious and is surviving being carried around. wtf was olcott doing. i think guels going to be fighting his own company...AGAIN

the person inside the cockpit was toast but the robot was fine???

ah. thats what olcott was thinking. he realised he coldnt get her medical help in time. he made a hard decision.

Guel sure went through uh. character development.

love how first we see them terrorists in faceless suits threatening to murder our protagonists and then we see benerit soldiers murdering the faceless suit terrorists daughter. anway.

wish Suletta and Miorine....could break out. BREAK OUT OF THIS.

so i was right - cathedra really was a response to ONGOING WAR consuming pilots like expendable parts. automating killing. they deliberately gave no context for this at the beginning.

youre telling me that dad rembran set up the marriage game to marry miorine off to a powerful person because she would be safe? how dude lol. and his toxic masculinity prevented him from EVER COMMUNICATING WITH HIS DAUGHTER ABOUT THIS? what the actual fuck. what a terrible father. worse than any other father in this anime

anyway i love how miorine ALWAYS goes around attempting to verify and check information for a full picture. shes so damn smart.

these openings and endings really need to start becoming reality. but how is Suletta going to ACTUALLY make any fuckign difference if she will not acknowledge that she is NOT making the world a better place. that shes flying a weapon. that shes a hypocrite. that shes a pawn. that her mother is not perfect.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WAR-PARTITIONING????????????????? how am i going to understand any of this without understanding this most fundamental anti-war economic strategy??

[alvie-pines]

It's so frustrating because I hate Aaron for being a complete wreaking ball to the story. (And because he was a mysterious forest man with questionable morals back when Vylad was stuck in the nether so I was worried he was replacing him but that's more personal) But the more I think about it, the more Aaron as a character is,,,, I don't know. I'm still reluctant to call him good, but he makes me angry at Jess, not angry at him, and I'm realizing that now.

I mean, it's kind of trope-y but having that sort of an anti-hero with an arc centered around grief and recovery and revenge, and him sometimes having conflicting morals with some of the rest of the group could be really cool! (and also different from Vylad, with Vylad basically putting his moral compass into Garroth's hands, which is its own issue as he can actually have a more nuanced, complex, and compassiate view but I digress) And a really cool way to show that Aphmau as a character is not inherently perfect and sometimes there's not a solution that pleases everyone.

But no. Of course not. Once he trusts Aphmau they really never have any real fights I can recall, and his wife, son, and everyone he cared about are mentioned only in passing instead of being a longer arc. And of course there's the whole romance between them which ends up just scrapping all of the previous narrative build-up with Garroth/Laurance. Once again, not a bad thing for the character, necessary, (although arguably she could've handled it better, she isn't obligated to like or date anyone of course) but narratively, it just felt like so much of the momentum was dropped the second he came into frame.

Like how do I say that I think Aaron as a man is interesting and I think that his traits and backstory could make for a really good character, but I also lothe him as a symbol of Jess's incompetent writing?

gods vylad youre so right about all of this

1 - "wrecking ball to the story" is the PERFECT way to describe him. he didnt fit, and when he was forced in he destroyed a good chunk of the story to make room

2 - thats what's so frustrating about him! though he's a bit basic, he certainly could have had something. with a bit of good writing he could have been wrestled into a character that was at least up to par with the rest of the cast. but no; he wasn't there to be a good character. he was there to be jason's self-insert and to spite larmau and garmau fans.

3 - side note--i want to hear your thoughts about vylad putting his moral compass into garroth's hands, that sounds very interesting

4 - yeah! unless jess decided to write her endgame relationship as a polyamorous one (and lets be real, nobody ever does :/), somebody's feelings were gonna get hurt. and narratively, thats ok. that makes for a good story + thats exactly how it works in real life. to have aphmau choose one or neither or both, any of those would have made for a good story, but having aaron come in and wreck everything that was being set up? no. he prevented there from being any good payoff with larmau & garmau and instead we just got them sulking in the background.

5 - i hate the fact that hes still in love with his wife but its only mentioned to make him seem more tragic, and then he turns around and knocks up aph in the woods. thats no healthy relationship, luv. and that would be ok, except that its constantly portrayed as the pinnacle of healthy, and theres no exploring anything about the repercussions of aaron seeing aphmau as a replacement for her, or anything like that. it just. isnt satisfying writing in the slightest. (i dont watch mystreet, but i hear this is an issue with ms!aaron too.) (actually i heard somewhere that aarmau was based on jess and jason's actual marriage and that makes me slightly concerned. on several fronts)

6 - laur and garroth were dropped entirely after aaron came into the picture, not just romantically. this is probably what makes me the most angry, because garroth is my favorite and laurance is definitely up there. and garroth could have had such a wonderful arc in o'khasis in season three, but jess just had to relegate him to babysitting duty all season.

[disturbedbydesign]

The Widow and the Wolf - Chapter 3

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x dark!exWidow!reader

Summary: After Natasha Romanoff took down the Red Room, the former Widows scattered to the wind. Raised to be a killing machine and released into the world with nothing and no one, you decided to use your newfound autonomy to take down the bad guys of your choosing. But now Natasha is riddled with guilt for leaving you on your own. She wants to recruit you, rehabilitate you, make you part of a team again. But the rest of the squad has reservations, and no one is more against you than Bucky Barnes.

Warnings: Graphic violence; Mentions of domestic violence, rape, pedophilia, human trafficking, child sex trafficking; eventual Dubcon (not Bucky); eventual smut; slow(ish) burn enemies-to-lovers. [More warnings will be added as necessary but these are the Big Bads.] 18+ only, no minors.

If you prefer to read on AO3, you can do so here.

Chapter Three

If you had a home, it would be Bucharest, even though you despise the place. It was the first place you went when you got free, because you know he’s here somewhere, conducting his evil machinations from the shadows, shielded by layer after layer of vile men across the globe doing his dirty work. There are plenty of men out there deserving of your particular brand of justice, but no one more so than the Viper. Sometimes you think that, if you can just find him and take him out, you might be able to move on—try to make a normal life for yourself, whatever that looks like. You don’t allow yourself to think about what will happen if you finally achieve your life’s goal and it’s still not enough for you.

You remember everything about the day you learned of the Viper’s existence. You were just 7 years old, one of many little girls packed into a shipping container. You had no idea how long you’d been in there or how long you would be in there. It smelled rancid, and there was never a moment of quiet. Most of the girls were screaming or crying, but a few (like you) were silent, just observing. You don’t know who sold you from your orphanage and shipped you off to Dreykov and you never will. What you do know is that you had no family to miss and no one to miss you, so you didn’t understand what the others were so upset about. From the very beginning, you adjusted to life as a Widow almost effortlessly, which is its own form of tragedy.

Others, though, they were stolen away from people who loved them. This seemed a foreign concept to you when you heard about it from the tiny, sobbing girl huddled next to you in the shipping container—the girl who told you about the Viper, the girl who would become your first and only friend until Dreykov took control of all of your minds. Once you were given the serum, your memories were locked up inside your own heads—none of you could have talked about your past lives even if you’d wanted to. Your words were not your own. You didn’t know what was real and what was planted there. Sometimes you still don’t, and nothing terrifies you more than that.

You have no idea how many little girls the Viper funneled to Dreykov over the years, but it was probably a decent amount. His real bread and butter had always been sex trafficking, and he’s still doing it—on an even larger scale if your intel is correct (which, of course, it is). But he won’t be operating for much longer, not now that you’re so close you can almost taste the venom. You were barely 8 years old when you decided you would kill him, and now you have your chance. You are so close, closer than you’ve ever been, but he keeps slithering out of your grasp. And so you’re in Bucharest, again, looking for answers, again. But you have other business, too—almost as important, if not more so.

You head to the safehouse on the outskirts of the city. The building doesn’t look like much on the outside, but you’ve made sure the inside is comfortable enough for the women and children who live there. The matron greets you at the door and you hand her this month’s envelope, which contains enough cash to feed everyone for the next two months, keep the lights and the water on, and some extra to fix the plumbing issues that have been plaguing the building since you bought it.

The building can house about 40 people comfortably—it’s not nearly enough, and you’re determined to create as many safe spaces as you can, but it’ll do for now. For now, you have to select your charges according to a very strict criteria: they are all women and children (and the children of women) who have been bought and sold by the Viper. Some of them escaped on their own; some of them had assistance from you and the very few people you trust in the city. But all of them have suffered, and all of them have information that you need. Individually, it’s not much, but the more women you talk to, the more pieces of the puzzle you have to work with.

Besides for the cash drop, today you’re here to see the newest resident: Irina, a 19-year-old beauty your Bucharest contacts had managed to snatch from one of the sex clubs. Irina was delivered to the Viper at 12, and her life since then has been an endless nightmare that you can’t think about for too long without feeling physically ill. She’s sitting by the window in the living room, cupping a steaming mug of tea, when you approach her. You walk towards her slowly, and when Irina looks over at you, there is recognition in her eyes even though you’ve never met.

“You’re the Widow,” she says.

“Not anymore,” you reply. “But if that’s what you’d like to call me, go ahead. May I sit?” She gestures to the seat opposite her and you settle in for a chat. “I’d like to ask you some questions, Irina. Is that ok?”

“The others told me you’d be coming.” She speaks softly, her voice hoarse from screaming or crying or both. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’ll never catch him, you know.”

“I disagree,” you say, “but I need more information.”

“Alright,” she agrees, “if you think it will help,” and you begin the gentlest of interrogations.

Irina tells you that for the first several years after she was taken, she hadn’t heard anyone mention the Viper. She thinks that a lot of the girls probably knew about him or came directly from him, but no one would talk about it because it was too dangerous or traumatizing (or both). Things were different at her last club, though. When you ask her how many of the girls at Delirium knew about him, she tells you that several of them had passed through him somewhere along their journey. One of them—one far too young to be working there—even admitted that she’d been with him only two months earlier.

Finally, after all this time, you’ve got a clear line from point A to point B. You feel it in your bones that Delirium holds the answers, that if you can just get in and poke around a bit, you’ll be able to find him. You take Irina’s hands in yours and thank her for her help, and then you hear it: heavy footsteps coming down the hall. No woman or child in the building weighs enough to make a sound like that, and no men are allowed on the premises. You know who it is before you see him.

*****

Bucky watches you enter the building from his position on the roof across the street. His contact had told him that there were whispers of a Widow safehouse at this address, though no one would dare set foot within 10 blocks of the place to find out. Bucky doesn’t believe the rumor, though. He knows you work alone, that you pride yourself on it. He assumes this is just one of many places where your targets meet their ends, and he knows enough about Bucharest to know that there are a lot of men in this city who fit your modus operandi.

Still, something is off. It’s not an empty building. There have been women and children coming and going all morning, and nearly all the apartments seem occupied. Why would you choose to do your dirty work in a place with so much activity, with so many innocents around? That seems not only impractical but beneath even you. He’s lost in these thoughts, checking each window with his binoculars, when he settles on a beautiful young girl staring out the window, looking desperately sad. She turns to look at someone he can’t see, and then he sees you emerge from the shadows and take a seat opposite her.

There’s a softness to your face—a gentle kindness—that knocks the wind out of him. Bucky can’t take his eyes off of you, analyzing your body language and facial expressions to try to figure out what the hell is going on. This is the last thing he expected to see, and he tells himself that this woman must be hiring you for a job—except the woman is nothing but a broken child and doesn’t look like someone who would be taking out a hit on somebody (and certainly not someone who could pay for one).

It’s unnerving, watching you this way, and Bucky is no longer sure that what he’s doing is right. There’s something about your interaction with this girl that makes him feel like a voyeur, witnessing an intimate moment that he should not be seeing but that fascinates him nonetheless. Still, he’s here, you’re his mission—albeit one he took upon himself—and he needs to finish it. By this time, Natasha and Steve are almost certainly on their way, and Bucky needs to get to you before they show up. He went rogue and committed to this plan; now he just has to execute it. He’ll deal with the consequences later.

Bucky makes his way across the street and around the back, where children’s toys litter the small yard of weeds and dirt. When he gets to the back door, he notices that it isn’t the usual ancient rusted lock that one finds on the old buildings in this neighborhood; it’s brand new tech. There’s a pretty decent security camera setup around the building, too.

What the hell is this place?

Bucky has two choices: he can rip the door off the hinges, or he can scale the building and climb in the open window on the top floor. You’re going to be homicidally pissed either way, so he might as well not destroy any property—you may be a monster, but the other tenants here look like civilians, and he doesn’t want to sacrifice their security in his quest to bring you in.

Bucky makes it into the building and weaves his way through the hallways. Along the way, he runs into a few women, and each one of them freezes when they see him. They are shocked and deathly afraid—a look he knows far too well—and they scurry back to their apartments and lock the doors. With his hair cut short, baseball cap pulled down, and leather jacket and glove hiding his prosthetic, it doesn’t seem possible that all of these women would immediately recognize him as the Winter Soldier. That’s what it feels like to him, though, and it’s a gut-punch sensation he does not like at all.

When he gets to the sitting room, the girl you are with has the same look of terror, and for a moment, so do you. But you snap back to yourself quickly—having gone from soft to terrified to hostile within a span of about 15 seconds. Before he can react, you stomp towards him, grab him by the jacket, and hiss, “Not here.”

Bucky hears you speak to the girl in Romanian, “Don’t be afraid, Irina. He’s a friend,” although he knows you think him anything but.

The second you get him into the hallway, you’ve got your knife to his throat. Even with your cold blade nicking his skin, Bucky fights the impulse to disarm you. He doesn’t want to fight you. He knows that he’s intruded on something here, though he doesn’t know what, and he actually feels guilty. He could break you in half if he wanted to, but he lets you pin him to the wall—lets you feel like you’re in control.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” you growl.

“You know why I’m here,” Bucky replies, but he doesn’t know—not really, not anymore. “What is this place?”

“It’s somewhere safe,” you say, “or it was until you showed up. No boys allowed, Soldat. Time to go.”

You catch him off guard when you flip him around and throw him through the nearest door, and before he can regain his balance, you kick him straight through the window and into the yard two storeys below. The fall is nothing to Bucky, and he knows that you know that, but it certainly made a statement. He looks up at the broken window he’d just crashed through and sees you peering out with a satisfied smile on your face.

Bucky calls up to you, “I just want to talk.”

“Bullshit,” you snap.

“I mean it,” he says, and he actually does. “You can pick the place.”

He watches as you consider his offer, weighing your options—you obviously don’t trust him, but it’s clear that the sanctity of this location is important to you. Now that he’s violated it, you can’t just let him wander off. You agree to meet with him that evening—in public, at a club in Old Town.

“Come alone, Soldat,” you call down to him, “and if you tell anyone about this place, I’ll throw you out a higher window.”

Bucky tries to hide his tiny smile but he knows you see it, just like he sees the little quirk of your lip just before you disappear. He hoists himself off the ground and brushes himself off. When he turns to leave, he sees a little girl holding hands with her mother. He has no idea how long they’ve been standing there, but the girl is pointing and giggling at him.

The little girl asks, “What happened to him, mama?”

“The Widow’s bite,” she replies.

*****

“He’s not going to hurt her, Natasha,” Steve says as he prepares the Quinjet for landing.

“She might not give him a choice,” she replies, strapping herself in. “What the hell was he thinking coming here alone?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “There’s something about this girl that’s really gotten under his skin.”

Natasha looks at Steve, asking the question with her eyes she wouldn’t dare say aloud, and he picks up what she’s putting out.

“He’s not the Winter Soldier anymore. All of that programming… it’s gone. You know that. He’s just Bucky now.”

Natasha nods in agreement, but a part of her still has questions—not whether the deprogramming worked, she knows that it did, and she trusts Bucky with her life. No, Natasha’s concern is what is going on inside Bucky’s head. He was doing well, he was adjusting, he was finally ok, but the existence of you seems to have triggered something in him that the words never had. The words made him cold and empty and ready to comply, but you—you make him think, and Natasha knows how dangerous it can be to dwell too much on things you’ve left in the past.

When Steve and Natasha arrive at Bucky’s old apartment, it’s empty, but there are small signs of life—the indent of a head on the pillow on the floor in the corner, an apple core just starting to brown. He’s been there, and recently. Natasha and Steve don’t know who he would still have contact with in Bucharest, so they are left with nothing to go on. Bucky knows how to cover his tracks, and he left them just enough crumbs to get them to Bucharest but not enough that they could find him when they got there.

“He wants us to trust him,” Steve says, “to wait for him to bring her back here.”

“I can’t just sit around waiting for something to happen, Steve. I have a really bad feeling about this.”

“So what do you suggest we do?” Steve asks.

Natasha sighs and looks out the window. “I have no idea,” she replies, and that’s when she sees it: a piece of graffiti spraypainted on the wall of a building down the street—a coiled snake ready to strike.

The memory hits Natasha like a freight train. She knows that symbol. She knows what it means. She knows exactly who you’re looking for and it seems absurd to her now that she hadn’t thought of it before.

“Let me make a call,” she says. “I think I know why she’s here.”

[elysianslove]

hihi, can I request smth! Idk of this comply to your request rules cause I can't find it in your blog (sorry!!) The request is hc with Atsumu, Kuroo and Iwaizumi with an s/o that is considered a bitch by people. Like they don't let anyone walk all over them, people are scared of them but admire them esp in terms of academics but they're actually v loving and a big clumsy mess.

hii!! yeah i don’t really have a set of rules for requesting mainly cause i couldn’t think of any haha, but your request is more than okay! i’ve been obsessing nonstop over atsumu especially recently, and today wasn’t the best of days for me, so this was nice to write heh. thank you for requesting it. i hope you enjoy <3

miya atsumu 

atsumu is obsessed w you

seriously, he is just enamored by you. the way you hold your ground and always stand up for yourself, never letting anyone saying anything about you pass by you, your presence so intimidating. he loves it so much. he’s especially fond of the way you’re not even a bitch, you’re just confident in who you are, and everything you’re good at.

he observes from afar at first, the way people shrink in comparison to you regardless of your height. your aura just seems so. powerful? he really wants to approach you, and because this is miya atsumu, the first thought that crosses his mind is this person needs to be mine <3 no he will not take criticism.

so he does. approaches you, introduces himself in a way like you’re already meant to know who he is and he’s just doing you a favor. his heart breaks into tiny little pieces when you just go, “sorry, but no.” 

like literally just that you don’t go in detail or anything. you just reject him so plain and simple it’s actually worse than a full fledged out angry rejection. osamu’s so impressed he ready to have you added to his future will. 

he grows on you, though, over time. atsumu’s so quitter, and your rejection had only spurred him on. he would’ve backed off, because is a consent king, as they all are and should be, but you’re always so prepared with a quip back at him and you never actually push him away. it’s like a flirty game of tug of war between you two. eventually, he asks you out again, and just for old time’s sake, you jokingly say no lmao. all blood drains from his face that you actually kinda feel bad.

generally, he’s very proud to have you as his s/o. he himself has dealt with people constantly being put off by him and his attitude, so to see you deal with it so well is kind of? encouraging? uplifting? yk? 

he also likes how people are both scared of you and admire you. like. he relates to them! you’re incredible! 

he’s always snickering when he sees a student approach you literally trembling like a leaf and asks for your help in something academics related. you always say yes, which is something that just. pinches at his heart. the student is also always so surprised at the fact that you’re willing to help. god. atsumu will never have enough of their reactions to you. 

when you grow more comfortable with each other, and he discovers what you’re truly like, the person you really are beneath, atsumu just straight up falls in love. he didn’t think you could be any more perfect for him, honestly. 

he’s loves the way people are so intimidated by you but he knows that just a few minutes ago you were doodling little hearts in his notebook. 

a part of him wants so many more people to be aware that sometimes you can trip over air, and that you’re not as elegant and stoic as everyone thinks you are, but then he’s reminded of the fact that only he knows you’re truly like this, and he shakes that part of him off. atsumu genuinely adores knowing this additional, secret part of you. he doesn’t think you’re fake at all for having what’s seemingly a facade. he just thinks not enough people know what you’re truly like, and that you’re a gem, truly. 

he’s also like weirdly obsessed with the two of you as a couple? he knows people are intimidated by him, and it’s so painfully obvious people are intimidated by you. he just. eats that shit up. 

he’d also be really supportive if it ever gets to you. super ready to fight anyone. he’ll always tell you “these fake bitches don’t matter babe we the only real ones 😼💯” god havejkdkd 

anyways i been fantasizing about having miya atsumu as my bf somebody help im going insane 

kuroo tetsurō

kuroo knows of you. everybody does. you’re like, exceptionally good at being one of the most talked about people and also being the most mysterious person in school. the duality has him heart eyes for you. 

what probably catches his attention is the way people talk about you, in general, but specifically regarding academics. he overhears a group of people like whispering to each other about you while you’re just standing there minding your own business. they’re just encouraging one of them to approach you and kuroo’s like hm ! let me butt in bc why not ! 

as a joke, he slides up next to you and points at the group of students and whispers, “they’re talking about you.” 

this obviously ticks you off and without looking back you stomp over to the students and just go, “if you have something to say about me say it to my face!” and kuroo’s just watching like ,,, damn that’s hot. the students are so confused and ten times more scared than they first were and one of them just squeaks out that they only wanted to ask for help and you just , “oh. okay! :D.” kuroo’s just ,,, he’s losing his damn mind. 

he finds you really interesting, honestly, the way you’re just so strong? like mentally especially. you’re really mature, and you have a strong sense of self. he admires that about you, and continues to love that even when you start dating. 

he does ask you out, and he’s a little surprised you said yes, he’s not gonna lie. but you did, from the first time, and he just took you out to a simple picnic date. it was very cute, and the whole time he made you laugh and you were a completely different person than what he had first seen and expected. 

he really likes the fact that you’re really confident in yourself in that you won’t let anyone step on you or walk all over you. like he just loves watching you hand someone’s ass to them because they decided they wanted to make a smart comment about you. seriously, he’s insanely in love with it. 

he realizes pretty quick that the only reason people are so thrown off by you or are scared to approach you is because no one really gives you a chance to be yourself? like they’re always expecting the worst from you, having heard all these terrible things about you that half aren’t even true, that they don’t even bother trying to get to know you. and that fact really bothers him a lot, he’s not gonna lie, because he believes you’re the best person he’s ever had the pleasure of meeting. 

he really loves that you don’t let it bother you though. he’s impressed with how it doesn’t matter if some friends turn out fake, because, in your words, “good riddance.” 

the two of you kind of feed off each other’s energies? like he’s super confident in himself, and so are you, so you two only benefit each other in your presences. 

to put it simply, kuroo is incredibly impressed with who you are as a person, and it warms his heart so much how you’re so incredible of a person in so many ways, in that you neither let anything pass you by, and in that you’re the cutest, kindest soul he knows. 

iwaizumi hajime

brat tamer #1 <3 

i think iwa genuinely doesn’t care. not about you! about the things people say. like he hears so many rumors about you and he’s like .... ok. oikawa’s always feeding them to him but he’s just? not bothered by it? doesn’t care? it’s irrelevant information for him anyways? 

but then. 

but then. 

he walks past a scene where he sees you just destroying this poor kid. you’re verbally destroying him. the kid’s buried six feet under at this point. you’re not even yelling, but the guy’s shrinking under your gaze and your words and iwazumi’s so mesmerized by the way you do it so flawlessly. you don’t stutter because you’re so sure of your words and so confident in your stance. iwazumi. hums in approval. like. hm. good for them. as they should. 

after that he starts paying more attention to anything he hears about you, because he wants to know more. he doesn’t know why. he just does. and then he hears all these different things like “they’re so good at everything they do they can’t be real” and “i would never speak to them if they were the last person on earth” like ? he’s so confused WHICH IS IT

so, because iwaizumi’s a pretty straightforward person, he approaches you. 

do not confuse this though, because iwa is a blushing and flustered mess as he asks you to hang out. he’s never done this before, and this is not his style, but he’s just so interested in who you are as a person he was doing it before he realized it happened. 

the way you react is so? sweet? 

it’s so different than that day he saw you murdering that guy for talking smack, you seem so light and loving he actually feels his heart beat a little too fast in his chest. 

as his s/o, iwaizumi likes that he can trust you with yourself. like a part of him will always have that protective side to him, because that’s just the person iwa is, and he’ll always feel the need to step up and speak for you. but another part of him is really amazed by the way you can and are so able of speaking up for yourself. he feels really proud at the lack of insecurity. 

he also feels really smug about being with you. because he knows people are intimidated by him, and especially by you, but now that you’re together, he feels untouchable, and he knows you are too. he likes that feeling of power a little too much. 

if you ever step out of line at some point, iwaizumi will definitely let you know. he’ll point it out, and if you resist, he knows how to get you down off the pedestal. he’s had brat taming training for years lmao 

but he doesn’t think you’re a brat, not at all. in fact, he thinks you’re the sweetest person ever. he loves the versatility of your personality and attitude, in that you’re not just black and white and there’s so much more to you, there’s always grey in between. he likes that you’re endlessly dimensional and that he’s always learning something new about you. 

he especially loves the side of you that’s so soft spoken. it’s so endearing to him how you’re one moment so angry you could murder someone in cold blood but then all of a sudden you’re pinching his cheeks and kissing the tip of his nose telling him how cute he is. 

yeah iwa really loves you hehe <3

[supercorpkid]

Mind Controlled – The Series.

Part 4 – There’s no forgiveness.

Supercorp, Kara Danvers x Daughter!Reader, Lena Luthor x Daughter!Reader.

Word count: 2190.

Warning: Injuries, pain, angst.

Previously on the series - part 1, part 2, part 3

Kara lands in the backyard when the first ray of the sun hits the sky. You’re still glued to her, covered in blood, sweat and tears. Your throat hurts like you’ve been screaming for hours straight. Your mind feels lazy, like for some reason you’ve lost part of your brain function. There’s blood coming out of several parts of your body, and you don’t know how any of those bruises ended up on you.

“Water, please.” You beg, when Kara goes inside the house and she takes you to the kitchen, still carrying your floppy body everywhere. You look at the kitchen wall. Bricks exposed, dust and broken parts on the floor and you gasp at the image imprinted on the wall. “I hurt you.”

“No, baby.” Kara sits you on the stool. She grabs water and pours cereal into a bowl for you. You don’t move. You can’t take your eyes from the wall. “You know I have super strength. You didn’t hurt me.”

“But I tried to.” You drink the water, so your mind gets occupied with something. What have you done? “Where’s mom? Did I hurt her too?”

“Baby.” Kara goes to you, and holds your face, gently. “I know you don’t remember anything, but you have to believe me. You didn’t hurt a single soul, ok?” You want to agree, but it’s hard because you really don’t remember if it’s true. “Eat something. You really need to shower this blood off, and you need some sleep.”

“But-” You try to argue, but Kara doesn’t want to talk anymore. So you look to the floor, finding impossible to stare at the wall and the proof you’ve acted like a monster. “Oh my God.”

“What, baby?” Kara follows your eyes to the floor.

“Mom’s vase. I broke mom’s vase.” You get up from the stool, stumbling your way to the vase. You fall on the floor, collecting one of the pieces. “She loved this.”

“My love, it’s just a vase.” Kara makes her way to where you are, crouching next to you.

“But you brought as a gift from that time you went to Japan, and she… SHE LOVES THIS!” You cry, trying to collect every piece, bleeding on the porcelain. “She will never forgive me.”

“Baby, no, no.” Kara takes the broken pieces from your hands, and picks you up. “That’s enough of self-loathing, come on.” She sits on the stool again. “Eat, please.”

You do as she told you to. It doesn’t take long until you’re clean and wrapped up in blankets and Kara’s arms, and you fall into a turbulent, but still needed sleep.

When you wake up, it’s the middle of the afternoon. You make your way to the kitchen, feeling equally shitty on the outside, but at least you can stand up now. On the inside you feel worse, like you have done things so horrible your brain is refusing to let you remember them. It sits heavy on your stomach and on your heart. You hope to Rao you haven’t done something irredeemable.

You walk in the kitchen and look around. Kara already cleaned the vase, and even though the wall is still broken, she somehow managed to make it look less like her body-shape. There’s so much food waiting for you, it looks like Kara is trying to feed a Kryptonian army.

“Hey, baby. Got some rest?” Kara comes closer, and she grabs your hands, studying them for the marks there. She looks at the marks on your wrists, and even lifts your shirt to look at the raw flesh of your ribcage, to make sure your injuries are better. They are not. “You need sunlight.”

“Momma, I’m not a sunflower.” You huff, while Kara picks you up again, taking you to the backyard, to the table there.

“Yes, you are.” She jokes and you look up to her while pouting.

“You are a sunflower.” You cross your arms, making Kara laugh.

She comes back into the house to pick up the food, and a few seconds later most of the food is in front of you.

“Where’s mom?” You ask, looking around, and since you don’t have your glasses, you can use your x-ray vision. “You said I didn’t hurt her, so why isn’t she home yet?”

“You didn’t hurt anyone, but you broke some stuff.” Kara grabs one slice of pizza, and sits next to you. Your eyes grow bigger.

“Besides her vase?” You still can’t forgive yourself for that. Kara nods. “What else?”

“Your training center.” She sighs, and your eyes are filled with tears right away. “You burnt it, actually.”

“I’m so sorry!” You cover your face with your hands, feeling embarrassed and sad. You loved going there and practicing with aunt Alex and your momma. Why the hell did you do that for?

“It wasn’t you.” Kara pulls you into a hug, and kisses your forehead. “You didn’t want to do or say any of those things. We know, baby.”

“But-” You tried to argue, still not understanding.

“Baby, you were mind controlled.” Kara breathes out her answer. “You did things you didn’t mean to. Someone else was pulling the strings. None of that was inside of you, none of that was what you once thought or wanted to do, ok?”

“Is that why I don’t remember a thing about it?” You ask, confused. Kara agrees with her head, and you look down trying to think. That’s a good thing. To know none of that was inside of you, and to know you didn’t mean to do any of that. But still, somebody used your body and your memories to hurt the ones you loved and the places you love, so that is terrifying. You look up to her again. “Someone, who?”

“Lex.” Kara lets out and you agree with your head, not wanting to hear anything else.

Ok, so you didn’t physically hurt anyone, but you know Lex (or at least his reputation), so you know that he probably found other ways to hurt people. And Lena, poor Lena, was probably his first choice for that, because he genuinely hates her.

You really want to apologize, so you can’t wait until Lena to get home for you to do so. But she doesn’t come. You wait and wait, but Lena never arrives. You probably screwed up with her big time.

Kara keeps reassuring you that you didn’t, that none of it it’s your fault, but it can’t be true. So, one day Lex mind controls you to beat up your momma, destroy important places to you, and you’re supposed to believe this has nothing to do with Lena not coming home to you?

You wake up before Kara does, and you go to the kitchen to make her breakfast, so you can somehow apologize for whatever it is that happened on the day and night before. You make her all of her favorites, and leave a note under a flower on the counter for when she wakes up.

You are the sunflower.

You don’t wait for her to wake up, though. Your heart has been desperate for hours wanting to see your mom and have her forgiveness and feel her comfort. There’s nothing more comforting in the world than Lena’s hands on your hair while you place your head on her lap.

You listen to her heartbeat, and you go to her. You land on Lena’s balcony at L Corp, looking inside to where she is sitting on the couch. You also notice other things: Her overnight bag pushed to the side, untouched food in front of her, her red eyes and puffy cheeks. It breaks your heart all the more.

“Mom.” You go to her, kneeling on the floor in front of her and placing your head on her lap. “Please, forgive me. Please.”

“Come on, baby, stand up.” Lena tries to hold your hand, but you settle on her lap, weeping mercifully.

“I don’t know what I said, or did, but I know I’ve hurt you. Please, please, forgive me.” You ask between the tears and the cracks in your voice. Lena’s hands go to your head. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

“It wasn’t you.” Lena strokes your hair, gently. “It was Lex mind controlling you. Babygirl, I’m not angry. Everything is ok.”

You lift your head so you can look at her. Lena gives you a sad little smile, while cleaning the tears on your face.

“But-but you’re here.” You look around. “You’re not home, because you can’t be around me anymore.”

“What? Baby, no!” Lena holds your arms gently, making you stand and sit next to her. She gives you a comforting hug, that feels too nice to be fake. And cups your face, right after. “This has nothing to do with you. Do you hear me?”

“I don’t understand.” You furrow your brows, looking scared and lost. “You’re sleeping in your office at L Corp right after I was turned into a monster. How can this have nothing to do with me?”

“Babygirl, do you trust me?” Lena asks. Her eyes flicker, anxiously, studying your face, like she’s afraid of your answer.

“More than myself.” It’s your most truthful sentence. She gives you a soft smile.

“Then believe me when I tell you, I’m not mad at you, and I’m not here because I can’t be around you.” She strokes your cheeks with her thumbs. “I love you more than anything, and I’m very, extremely, deeply happy that my baby is back.”

“I am.” You repeat, agreeing with your head. “Then, please come back home.”

“I can’t.” She kisses your forehead, and then lets go of your face. “Not now, anyways.”

“Mom.” You try, but she shakes her head like she’s telling you to stop this conversation.

“Please, have breakfast with me?” She asks turning to the food before you, and even though you already ate, you refuse to say no and let her eat alone.

When you’re finished eating, and you see that Lena actually ate something, you decide to pick the subject back again.

“Mom, I know I was mind controlled, but, um, I need to make sure I didn’t physically hurt you or said anything too painful.” She looks at you, pointing at herself, like she’s saying that she’s not hurt. “Right. And the second part?”

“Baby, I told you. The things you said? All Lex.” She kisses your forehead again. “Stop worrying.” You wish it was that simple. That you could just simply stop worrying, but you look at her face, you see the sadness in her eyes, and you know you would do anything to make her happy again.

Your phone starts ringing and she looks at it, reading the name in it.

“Answer it, so Kara doesn’t worry about you.” She says, and you furrow your brows.

Kara. Heart beating fast. Breath stuck in her lungs.

“Hey, momma.”

“Kid, where are you? You made all this breakfast and left me here to eat alone?”

“Came to check upon mom.”

“Oh, um, right. How-How is Lena?”

Lena. Choking on her words. Dear Rao. This isn’t about you at all.

“Sleeping at her office, so not great.”

Lena raises an eyebrow at you, and you hear Kara sucking on air.

“You guys want to tell me something?” You ask on the phone while looking at Lena.

“We’ll talk when you get home.” You hear Kara’s voice, and then the dial tone. You lower your phone and keep waiting for Lena’s response.

“It has nothing to do with you.” Lena says, holding your hands, and stroking your bruises lightly. “This is between me and your momma only, ok?”

“Mom, please, come home. Whatever it is, you two need to talk.” You ask, and she shakes her head in denial.

“Please baby. Let’s not talk about it.” Even though she added the ‘please’ you know it’s not a request. You know your mom, and you can see it on her face that you better drop the subject right now, or you will make things worse.

So, it seems that none of your moms are mad at you, or sad about the things you’ve said and done. It looks like it has nothing to do with you, and it’s a fight between them.

Alex also doesn’t seem to care, when you see her in the middle of the week, she just smiles and waves at you. She doesn’t even want to listen to your apology, she just cuts you off with a “kiddo, save that apology for a time you do this with your worst intentions. This wasn’t your fault, so I don’t need no apology.”

And you wish that could go into your brain and make you forgive yourself for the things that you know, now, you’ve done. But there’s still exposed bricks on your kitchen wall, there’s still no place for you to practice, and there’s still no Lena in your house. And as the week goes on and on, and you don’t know if she’ll ever come back, there’s no forgiveness you can give to yourself.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S5 Ep 18: A Series of Ecological Disasters

Booting up ye old Yugioh, booting up a new aesthetic playlist to type to. (today’s playlist is webcore, which would feel like such a damn fake aesthetic, if it weren’t that every single one of these -core aesthetics are pretty damn fake and everyone knows it.)

Anyway, it’s been so long that, I’ll be honest, I thought I booted up the wrong episode:

I usually skip the anime intro, but I try to watch it once each arc, cuz the intros change, and this arc was like “screw it, here’s all the other villains, just pretend this arc isn’t happening.” They had Pegasus, they had Marik, they have Bakura (who is kind of in this shot as well, you can see him phasing in there.) And like...I guess they’re hiding the villain of this arc or something because that was it. Alexander the Great got just nixed from this villain list and that’s a shame.

Just a real weird choice, but since apparently this arc didn’t air in Japan they probably had to outsource this anime intro and whatever studio in charge of it just cobbled together stuff from every other season and then a couple of shots of capsule stuff.

Speaking of capsule stuff: get a load of how many freakin lines the animators have to deal with every time they draw Grandpa.

Bro saw this and was like “oh yeah, this is a Shonen Jump” and yeah. The hair does give those vibes. We got a good look at what Vegeta would look like if he really let himself go.

(read more under the cut)

Sorry, my playlist started playing a song where every single line of the song is “Adrien Brody” and it took me like a few minutes to realize I was listening to “Brodyquest” completely seriously.

Damn it, webcore, don’t betray me like this.

Anyway, this arc does something super surprising: Yugi actually hugs somebody and doesn’t look like he’s going to pass out standing up.

It is pretty fitting that the good Yugi hug would go to Grandpa.

And, as night falls, Joey Wheeler has gotten hungry, and there is nothing to eat but his new best friend and spirit animal, baby dragon. Unfortunately he shares life points with the dragon, and I think if you eat it that just instakills you.

And directly underneath him--since this world is like 100 feet wide and things just conveniently happen--Tea has told everyone that they needed to stop worrying about Joey. Which is a lot coming from Tea, because her worrying about Yugi/Yami getting hurt is most of what occupies her headspace in this series.

But even Tea was like, screw Joey, I guess.

Who kinda just falls directly into them upside down, and shows us what Joey’s hair looks like when it’s sticking straight up.

For reals, admire how long Joey Wheeler’s hair is. If Tea were upside down, she would have the same length of hair.

Also speaking of Vegeta, I am low key concerned that Joey has what appears to be a significant amount of male pattern balding going on for a teenager.

Apparently getting set on fire many, many times did have an effect on Joey, and this massive pompadour he wears is a combover. Poor baby.

Holy crap, if this is what card stress and getting killed multiple times did to Joey Wheeler, can you imagine what’s going on under Seto’s bangs? That’s probably why his bangs ride so low, Seto likely wears a freakin toupee.

Guys, Joey’s gonna lose his hair at 25 at this rate. Those locks just aren’t long for this world. Poor baby.

After Joey rejoins the party, he immediately eats all of their food. Not sure why they can’t just have Baby Dragon eat like...whatever Baby Dragon naturally eats...and then transform that into shared Joey Wheeler life points, but it’s not clear exactly how much of a life-connection they have with their Yugioh monsters. Not like it matters because Joey Wheeler is default starving all the time anyway.

Tristan has decided we should start laying blame, I guess because Duke Devlin isn’t here anymore to be the local kill joy. This doesn’t seem to be important at any point, and most of the characters are just ignoring Tristan because like...once you’re in the haunted game in a haunted tomb in a random part of India--it’s kind of moot to argue about who’s fault that is, youknow?

Joey reminds us that he found this quest item in a treasure chest under a secret waterfall. No one says “that was convenient that you landed there after getting chased through a ravine by man-eating birds after you got your dragon from when you got your crotch injury from getting spliced by that tree.”

Which is when Tea says “Wait! We haven’t had a plot thing happen in like 4 seconds! Wait!”

Hey what degree of “I don’t trust nature” do you have to be to assume that all the flowers are trying to eat you?

Like what level of anxiety is Tea where she not only is like “pretty sure the flowers are going to destroy us?” but also...she’s correct? Like she’s not wrong.

They set the dog flowers on fire, but unlike the Jungle Book this doesn’t solve any problems (which apparently got taken off the Disney+ kid’s menu so...yet again, I make a Disney reference in these recaps that future generations will not understand because so much of the Disney library has been banned from the vault. It’s almost like Disney should let go of that copyright they held on for like a hundred years, because what they’re holding on to is only going to get more racist with time. But nah. Gotta hold on with their greedy mickey mouse gloves.)

So instead of using fire, Tristan used his monster to electrocute the air (?) and blind the dogs. Wisely, the animators quickly jumped to this other scene so we wouldn’t have to analyze why it’s suddenly daytime or why that plan would even work.

Joey and Tristan do a lot of buddy buddy stuff this arc. Usually we see a lot of Joey and Yugi’s bottomless friendship, but we don’t get this much Tristan/Joey love. So shippers rejoice, these two seem to have several coordinated dances and songs...and I’d say that teens don’t typically do that, but I went to summer camp, there are situational places where teens will sing the entire vacation and make coordinated dances.

Weirdly, since Joey and Tristan share so much time together, this also means Tea and Yugi actually sit next to eachother for a lot of this arc, almost as if they were a couple. Mind you, they’re chaperoned closely by Grandpa, but youknow...that’s a different energy than I’m used to seeing.

That and like, they can’t have Tea dance with them because last time she did a dance, it was like a DDR fight and she elbowed some guy like it was a fisticuffs situation. Like there was some sort of dance war going on behind the scenes of Yugioh’s card war, and it came up once and I guess Tea resolved it and the dance fights haven’t come back since.

Overall, if they did a dance with Tea, they would get kneed in the face, so that’s probably why they insist on doing cancans as a duet and not a trio.

After Joey and Tristan freak out over having no food, Tea decides to just start eating in front of them.

and like...didn’t Joey eat that food yesterday? Like last night? The short term memory loss on all these fools.

Immediately after this we realize something weird in the water. That’s right, it’s a massive head.

Yugi seems to have forgotten they lit this turtle on fire and electrocuted the entire sky the night before. Not that it mattered.

There were like...nesting birds on those trees on that island. What the hell? They just killed so MANY of those man-eating dogs that are flowers.

Seriously are land turtles allowed to just...dive underwater for long periods of time? How does that ecosystem even work? It’s like...That’s wild to think about.

Inside the temple, they have to fight a genie or something.

In case you were wondering, the only reason Tea and Grandpa got iced is because they were the closest to the door. The two who were actually standing out of harms way were the closest to harm the whole time.

Bro tells me this is also what will happen to you if you are in the front or the back of the party while playing Cthulu D&D

Anyway, Pharaoh decides to disclose that his big problem of feeling guilty all the time and taking all the blame, which he did all of last season...is still a huge problem he will probably never tackle.

Straight up, don’t be fooled by my caps, everyone else has completely forgotten about Alex, who is still running around that temple up there. They haven’t even asked Grandpa “hey is this your protege? Is this your mentee you never told us about?” Nah. They already forgot. 

How wild is it that Pharaoh thinks this is all his fault when he was the only one who was like “YUGI IT’S A TRAP DON’T GO IN THE- well...OK I guess we’re doing this, fine.” Is he upset he didn’t take control from Yugi and walk back to the plane? Because that’s the only way he could even be partially responsible, He was the only guy who was like “I see the end from the beginning on this y’all, and it’s the massive pyramid in India.”

Speaking of forgetting, they came across this language Pharaoh has decided to have nothing to do with.

This was actually a riddle and it was like...it was a riddle, sure, I guess.

And so Joey Wheeler does not hallucinate his dead wife from a previous incarnation and get on the back of his Baby Dragon to sail away into the sunset. Instead they’re just gonna walk.

Too bad Tea’s orb covered in wings only seems to hover a bit. Every single wing on that weird orb is absolutely useless.

And then Pharaoh’s pokemon is just a fire--which is hard to sit on--and Celtic Guardian...who would allow it, sure, but probably doesn’t fly (I think. He might fly)

And then Tristan’s Pokemon kinda seems like if you sit on it, you will get electrocuted. It can probably fly though. It’s very round. Seems like an anime thing that the more round your mascot character is, the more likely it can at least bounce a good distance.

So, next time, I’m just going to assume that we are going to do even more camping. And youknow, if you told me exactly HOW MUCH CAMPING was in this card game show with super future tech, I would not have believed you. But like...a lot of this series is set in the woods right? Like a lot a lot? I have grown to appreciate the woods.

Anyway, as always, if you just got here, this is a link to read these in chrono order:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

See you next time!

[rubykgrant]

(Wash)

The first video plays for them all, automatically.

He’d set it to some kind of timer, they aren’t sure how he figured out how long to make it last… had he actually calculated the exact right amount of time it would take for them to win the fight? Even with all the unknowns and variables? It doesn’t seem possible, but it also seems to be what happened.

There was just enough of a pause when the battle was over for them to barely catch their breath, and start to feel cautiously optimistic. They did it, they won. In fact, that is exactly what he tells them.

It doesn’t feel like a victory.

The first message plays for them all automatically. They don’t have a choice but to listen to it. Carolina and Wash hear it together, Doc hears it alone, and the rest of them hear it as a group. When he’s done talking, and what just happened starts to sink in, they each notice they have another message waiting for them… from him. Individual messages, sent to them all. These need to be opened and played voluntarily.

None of them play these videos. None of them talk about it, either. Because of this, they don’t even realize he sent a message to ALL of them. They wonder, why did I get another message? If they listened, they would have their answers… but none of them do, and none of them talk about it. Perhaps if they did, things would have happened differently. They would have seen that he had, in fact, said good-bye to everybody. They would have understood how they each felt about this situation a little better. They would have made different choices later. Instead, they don’t talk about it, and they don’t listen to the messages…

Wash doesn’t listen because he honestly doesn’t trust himself to… he doesn’t know how he’ll react, hearing Church’s voice again. He’s not sure what this message is, but it sure isn’t something Wash needs to hear. He’s not entirely sure WHAT he needs to do right now… and when in doubt, a Freelancer trains.

He’s not over-doing it. No really, he’s NOT. Just light work-outs, and lots of stretching. He wants to feel loose in case any left-over space pirates try to start something. This isn’t being over-prepared, it doesn’t make him a “workaholic”, he’s just being REALISTIC. Things could still happen. It wasn’t as if Church had magically solved all their problems… there was aftermath. Consequences to actions. Even if things seemed OK, that could change, SUDDENLY, and Wash… he just wanted to be ready.

He had wanted Tucker to be ready… he had tried to prepare Tucker for whatever difficulties they might have to face, but Wash hadn’t even considered that they’d be separated and then tricked into taking part in a fabricated civil war. He hadn’t considered that Tucker, without his best friend OR his mentor around, would bond with a manipulative killer, only to be betrayed and humiliated. He hadn’t considered that Carolina and Church would suddenly return. He hadn’t considered that Church, who was really EPSILON, would go and…

Wash should have done a better job, but he had failed them. Nobody was looking at him with a glare or talking to him with a tone of blame, but that was just because they couldn’t see how much of this was his fault… not just here on Chorus, but before. WAY before. He should have done better on his Recovery missions. He should have figured the truth sooner; that Church was the Alpha. Wash should have SAVED Church, not let him destroy himself with the Emp (E-M-P, dang it! E-M-P! THEY GOT HIM DOING IT NOW, TOO!). Wash should have… not been so willing to hurt them all…

That still felt so awful to think about. He had decided that yes, it was totally a good idea to go on a murder-mission with the empty husk that, once-upon-a-time, had been a friend of his. Why? Oh, just to avoid being locked up. Who was going to lock him up? Why, the same people who had been pulling the strings from the beginning… they sold him a lie, and he willingly bought it, then told them to keep the change. Brilliant. Great choice. Best decision. Of all time. Ever.

The same people he had tried to kill decided to go ahead and basically adopt Wash, like a hissing stray cat that scratched and bit them… but they still took it home. They took Wash home with them, and it had actually been… OK. Weird, for sure, but mostly OK. Wash was starting to almost think he could get back to his “real self”, somewhere between the dork he always felt like around the other Freelancers, and the serious professional when he worked alone. He hoped this was the real him, it seemed the most “natural”, he wasn’t trying so hard to be something else or felt like he was losing control…

It was only in retrospect that Wash could see that the whole time he’d been working with the Meta, he hadn’t actually been in control. Sure, he had looked calm at times, but that was like the eye of a storm; deceptive and secretly violent. Looking back, it was clear he had been slowly going through a break-down that entire time. Cowardly and cruel. It was so OBVIOUS now, but when it was happening… he’d been willfully ignorant. The only other time he can think of… when he’d been so out of control, and yet later saw how things had been clearly building up to something awful… he’d been a kid. A stupid kid. A kid who had been dealing with a lot, too many problems that never really went away, nobody to help him, and then… he had hurt somebody. By the time he was sorry about it, it was far too late.

Wash wanted to try and think of problems BEFORE they happened, save other people the trouble of being hurt, either directly or indirectly by his actions. Tucker, Caboose, the others… they were his FRIENDS now. He wanted to keep them safe. He wanted to help them. Carolina was actually his friend now, too. After everything that happened, they were together again, and… Tucker hadn’t been ready. Wash hadn’t prepared him enough. Wash wasn’t good enough for ANY of them. Epsilon… Church… he had destroyed himself again. It wasn’t even the same “Church”, it wasn’t the Alpha, but still… he had deconstructed everything he was made of. Given his life to protect everybody. Again.

These were the consequences of Wash’s actions, the aftermath of his poor choices. When he heard that message, Church telling them they had won… Wash felt lost. Now that he’s learned to recognize his own emotions, Wash can sense something building up to a break-down. He doesn’t want to break anymore… himself, or other people. He has to step away from this, find a way to calm down. He can’t talk about it, because then everybody will KNOW this is all his fault. He can’t listen to Church again, either… he’ll lose control if he does, somehow, he’s not sure, but it feels too dangerous. He can apologize to everybody else, but he can’t apologize to Church... or forgive Epsilon, for what happened when they first met... when Epsilon had been out of control. Wash doesn’t play the other message.

[lovelylusts]

Kinktober || Day 2 || Threesome

A/N: It’s that time again, lads. Remember to check out my masterlist and requests page!

Seokjin:

“You… huh?”

He was a bit unsure about it at first, but the more he thought about it, the more he actually really loved the idea

He wanted to let you decide who to invite, so you called Namjoon because of how close they are

You blow Namjoon while Seokjin fucks you from behind, since he was still a little unsure about having somebody else fuck his girlfriend

But, with some encouragement from both you and Namjoon, he let’s Namjoon fuck your pussy after he’s finished while he plays with your nipples

Yoongi:

“What, am I not enough for my little slut?”

While outwardly, he degraded you for having such a naughty idea, you knew that he was not-so-secretly on board

He invited Hoseok over since that’s his best friend who he trusts with his life, so he knew he could trust Hoseok to both take care of you and absolutely destroy you (let’s just say this wouldn’t be their first time in the rodeo)

Yoongi knows that Hoseok is more than eager to ruin your ass, and he finds comfort in fucking your pussy

He learned that he was not only obsessed with the sounds that you made, but the sounds the Hoseok made as well… this definitely ended with both of you falling for Hoseok (but, I mean, who wouldn’t?)

Hoseok:

“I guess that could be pretty fun!”

Hoseok had never really shown interest in a threesome, but he had shown an interest in double penetration

You both decided to invite Seokjin over because he knew how to be super soft and caring, but can also flip the switch in an instant and be quite domineering

He eats you out from behind while you give Seokjin a handjob, and this progressing into Seokjin face-fucking you while Hoseok preps both holes

This form of double penetration - Seokjin fucking up into your pussy while Hoseok fucked your ass - was way better than any toys you two could ever use

Namjoon:

“Are you finally ready for it, baby?”

You and Namjoon, over the span of your relationship, had discussed your kinks and things you’d both be willing to try, and having a threesome was high on his list

He decides to invite Taehyung because they both have similar kinks and know there’s a very high chance you’ll be split in half

He let’s Taehyung fuck your pussy, with protection obviously, while he fucks your ass

And he was definitely right about you being split in half - you couldn’t walk without pain for days

Jimin:

“You’re a dirty girl, aren’t you?”

You were in quite a dom mood, and the idea of having someone else help you dominate your sweet boyfriend turned you on beyond belief

You invite Yoongi because you have every intention of making sure Jimin is a fucked-out mess and you know that the rap leader would be excellent help

You and Yoongi both have very skilled tongues and Jimin is convinced that it was the best blowjob he’s ever received in his life (meaning it was definitely not the last time you three would do this

Both you and Yoongi praise Jimin while you ride him and Yoongi pounds his ass, and yes, he was absolutely wrecked

Taehyung:

“Would you be ok with that, princess?”

It was actually his idea due to a late night, very drunk, very explicit conversation with his groupmates

He invites Jungkook because, well, he wants to dom both of you (it’ll essentially be like a food chain with you at the bottom, and himself all the way at the top, with the maknae in the middle)

He and Jungkook actually share your pussy because he knows the stretch will hurt you, but Jungkook is more than eager to help him wreck you

He calls both of you whores for wanting to share him, but he loves the attention and he knows you both love serving him too

Jungkook:

“Holy fuck, I thought you’d never ask!”

He had had an immeasurable amount of wet dreams regarding you being pummeled by both him and one of his older group mates

So you both call up Jimin because that was Jungkook’s most recurring fantasy

Neither boy was exceedingly harsh because this was also their first threesome, and also your first time receiving any sort of double penetration - they just wanted to look after you

Instead of double penetration, you all opted for Jimin fucking your pussy while he fingered your ass, while you blew Jungkook… it was all around just really soft and loving

[kiarune]

late-night coffee

Inquisitor!Cal x Reader // fluff

a/n: this is the first fic that i wrote and actually posted anywhere. it’s not perfect and i’ll probably edit it someday or even rewrite it entirely, but it deserves to be seen by somebody. so, enjoy!

word count: ~2k

***

"Do you want some coffee?"

He was standing by the counter in a tiny kitchen, focused on pouring the dark liquid into a small cup. The grey T-shirt suited him, although it was very different from his usual Inquisitor attire. It was a warm evening, a couple of faded lights brought the poorly lit apartment to life, allowing me to notice the dark bags under his eyes. I could only guess it was a long and wearying day for him.

"Yes, I'd like a cup, thank you," I replied, shifting my position on an oddly comfortable couch. I knew the Inquisitors had better accommodation than us, the Purge Troopers, but I had no idea it was that cozy.

"It's smaller than the other ones, anyway." He placed both cups on a wooden coffee table. I raised a brow, not sure what he meant. "The apartment."

"You've read my thoughts again." I sighed while he took a seat beside me.

"Sometimes it just happens, I can't always control myself." He shrugged, turning his face to me. "How are you feeling? Any better?"

"Honestly? I thought I'd be fully healed by now." I bit my inner lip and leaned in to grab the coffee, minding my injured leg. During our last mission on Kashyyyk one of the Rebels shot me, leaving an ugly wound that I've been treating for two weeks now. I took a sip from the cup and continued. "No training, no missions... I don't know how much more I can stand doing nothing."

"It's better that way, you know. If you come back to normal too early, you'll just make your wound worse." He paused to yawn and reached out for his cup. "I can wait for you a little longer, no worries."

"Wait for me? For what?" I chuckled, punching him lightly in the arm. "You must be so bored training without me and want me back in the dojo, just admit it."

"What's there to admit? I miss you on the sparrings, obviously." He shook his head playfully. "But you need to heal first before I can kick your ass."

"Yeah, I wouldn't be so sure about that. Next time we fight I'll beat you, you'll see." I let out a small laugh and glanced at his green eyes. "Hey... Thanks for having me here for the evening. I really appreciate doing something different than these small trips from my room to the med wing and back. The rehabilitation is boring me to death."

"I'm sorry I couldn't invite you earlier, but I still had some things to take care of..."

I didn't have anything to say to that, so I let us stay in comfortable silence for a while, just enjoying each other's company.

Cal wasn't always like this around me. He used to beat me up during training like every other trooper, with so much power in his fighting style. Unlike the other Inquisitors that I fought, he wasn't infuriated, he just seemed... hurt. He intrigued me, that's why one day I stood up to him and fought back harder than usual. I didn't beat him, but after the sparring, he came to me and we talked for a while. It was a good talk, it must have been because he kept coming back after every training. From that moment we started eating together at the cafeteria and went on missions together, fighting side by side. And like that, I became friends with the most unique Inquisitor this Fortress ever had.

He's changed a lot over these couple of months. Firstly Cal was really distant, never wanted to talk about himself too much. He slowly opened up to me, although I still don't know what happened to him before he became an Inquisitor... I hoped he would let me in more, but I didn't want to push too much, even if I knew his past haunted him still. I was happy to have him as a friend, he really needed someone that cared for him. One day, if he felt a need to tell me about his past, I knew he'd do it, I just had to give him time.

"Can I ask you a question?" He broke the silence, placing his empty cup on the table.

"Yeah, sure. What's on your mind?"

"Just answer me honestly ok? And let it stay between us." I nodded, giving him the confidence to continue. "Do you ever... think that maybe what we're doing is wrong? That the Empire is not the right side to be on in this war?"

I took my time, thinking about what to say. "No, I never really gave it a thought. I trained for years to do this and I guess that I've always assumed I was doing the right thing." His face changed – the corners of his mouth dropped while a blank gaze settled in his eyes. It got me worried. "Why are you asking?"

I tried to move closer to him and when I moved, my leg started to hurt again. I wanted to adjust myself, but couldn't quite make it.

"Here, let me help you."

Cal took my coffee and set it aside, carefully raised my legs from the floor and placed them on the couch, then helped me lay down. My head was almost on his lap now, just an inch or two from his thigh.

"I want to be honest with you. It's just– well... When I became an Inquisitor, I was all alone and I hated myself for more reasons than I can explain to you now...." He stared down at his hands, almost as if he blamed them. "It's like a void inside that eats you up. The hatred, the pain. Do you know what I mean?"

"I... I think, yes." It was surprising how he bottled up his feelings all this time and managed to keep them that way. I closed my eyes to focus – even if I was glad he finally talked to me about it, this was all hard to process. But he needed me to understand... so I listened.

Cal smirked, more to himself than me. "I never thought I'd find a friend here. I imagined that I'd probably die alone, somewhere in the battle the Empire forced me to fight. After I was made an Inquisitor by them and–"

"You were made an Inquisitor?" I interrupted. "So you didn't want to be one?" My eyes widen.

"Yeah, it's complicated..."

He started to play with one of my hair strands, probably without even realizing it. I didn't even flinch as he twirled his finger back and forth around my hair, actually, it was... comforting. I gave in to the feeling, it reminded me of my childhood and my mother. Better times.

"What I mean to tell you is that... You helped me. Helped me survive from day to day, made me laugh when I thought it was impossible to." Cal paused. "You were my light, reminded me who I am. And I know now that I'm not an Inquisitor, not anymore... I can't continue to be the Empire's executioner. I need you to understand..."

I didn't know what to focus on now. How am I the reason that he changed his mind? I've been nothing less than loyal, I could never... And what does it mean he can't be an Inquisitor?

"Cal, that's– that's a lot to process." I raised myself on my elbows and risked a glance at him. His warm gaze contrasted with a tense expression that painted on his face as if he waited for something to happen. "I can't imagine what you went through. If you were forced to become someone you didn't wish to be– just... Thank you for telling me all this. If there is anything I can do... Just know I'm always here for you, no matter what you need."

I decided to take a risk and laid my head on his lap. He responded by stroking my hair slowly, with his fingers barely touching the top of my head. The situation felt different than what we were used to, but in a good way. I didn't want it to get awkward, so I pursued the left topic:

"Assuming we're on the wrong side of this war," I started, trying to gather my thoughts. "What is there to do? We can't just leave. They would kill us."

"So you would consider leaving the Empire?" His face lit up.

"Well, it's not an easy decision to make. What do you want me to say?" I sighed. "I have nowhere to go, the Fortress has been my home for so long... This life's all I have."

"You have me. I–" His cheeks burned with red, enhancing his fiery hair. Oh, he was so handsome. Why haven't I noticed it before? "What I mean is... Here all we have is an ideology, something that the Empire believes, and that's not necessarily a good cause. Just think about it: they tell us that every planet we invade provides us resources, but nobody even gives a thought about all the lives we torment, the environments we destroy... and for what? So the Empire keeps its power and does it all over again?"

I shifted my focus from examining his flawless features to what I was going to say. "Okay, I agree, it makes sense. But what about the Jedi we hunt down? They're the ones that caused all that disaster in the first place." I raised a brow.

"It wasn't like that... Listen, you just need to trust me for now, okay? I promise I'll tell you everything when the time is right, but please come with me. I've been working on a plan to escape for some time now. I know I'm asking for a lot and that you're skeptical about the idea, but... Just think about it, okay?"

I thought about my life in the Fortress, the missions, my purpose. What was really holding me here? Not fear, certainly not faith in what the Empire was doing. Maybe Cal was right and I didn't belong here. Just maybe, I could have a life somewhere else, a good life, with him by my side as a friend, or...

Screw it.

"I agree. I'll go with you."

"That's..." He pulled me into a tight embrace, holding me against his chest. The cold apartment suddenly became warmer, and I stopped caring for what will happen. As long as I was with Cal, I knew it was going to be okay. We had each other, that's all that mattered.

"What changed your mind so sudden?" He asked, not letting me go.

"You did." I breathed in the scent of his shirt. He smelled like rain and coffee beans. "I can't stay here knowing I might never see you again. I need you." He didn't say anything, just pulled me closer.

I had no idea how much time has passed, but despite the caffeine in my system I started to fall asleep in Cal's arms. It must've been really late into the night, with no sound coming from anywhere in the Fortress, filling it with a soothing silence.

"Stay here tonight."

I hummed in question, only half-awake.

"The medical wing must be locked away for the night by now and someone needs to look after you."

He carefully laid me back on his lap and placed one of his hands under my knees, and the other on my back. I could feel the pressure of the couch beneath me leave as he raised himself up, carrying me to another room. His bedroom, I suppose. In a matter of seconds, I was put down on a fluffy mattress and wrapped in a heavy blanket.

"I'll take the couch." Cal sat beside me. "Goodnight, sleep well."

As my mind drifted away into sleep, not knowing if it was already a dream, or still reality, I felt his lips softly pressing on my forehead.

My mind probably just made it up, though.

[365days365movies]

May 10, 2021: Blade Runner 2049 (2017) (Recap: Part Two)

Said I’d talk about artificial humans in sci-fi, so...

There are a HELL of a lot of examples of artificial humans in science-fiction, as well as the ethical and philosophical concepts that their existence raises. Now, your definition of “artificial” may differ from medium to medium. At its base form, these are humans that are not born, but made. I’ll be talking fleshy organic humans, not robotic ones. The most common of these is, of course, clones.

A clone, strictly speaking, is a genetically identical copy of a pre-existing organism, in this case a human. While this isn’t technology we’ve applied to humans as of yet (due to the NUMEROUS ethical problems and questions), we have done so with animals, mostly sheep and cats. It’s actually a good way to de-extinct certain species, and we’ve already done experiments with that. Of course...that has its own concerns.

Keeping up the Jurassic Park reference streak! Anyway...

There are a FUCKTON of examples of clones in science-fiction, but since I’m a massive comic book nerd, I’ll use Superboy. The genetic combination of Superman and Lex Luthor, Conner Kent is one of the most prominent clone superheroes. He’s not the only clone of Superman, of course. He’s not even my favorite clone of Superman, to be honest...

Bizarro am the worst. ME WILL LIVE ON THAT HILL.

Oh, and let’s not forget THE most prominent artificial human in comic books PERIOD. I don’t care what her origin in the movies is, that’s never been my favorite version of Wonder Woman. Making her a demigod robs her of something important, in my opinion.

...Should I make a comic book blog? Shit, thinkin’ about it.

OK, before I do that, these are just my favorite examples. Fact is, there are FAR too many examples of artificial humans to go into, whether they’re built, grown, sculpted, conjured, or a chemical reaction with an extra ingredient in the concoction.

And look, I could go on all day about this, but we got a long-ass movie to get back to. SO, lets jump back in. Part One is here!

Recap (2/2)

Understandably exhausted, K returns home, confused and conflicted. However, he’s greeted with a surprise from Joi: a prostitute! Namely, this is Mariette (Mackenzie Davis), one of the girls who approached him earlier. Joi’s called her here in order to be “real” for K, the effect is impressive, if somewhat...off-putting. Still, while K obviously didn’t need this to be happy with their relationship, Joi might, and Mariette’s all on board.

And it doesn’t take K terrible long to get on board, either. As both Mariette and Joi strip, it makes me wonder...how much does this subscription service for Joi cost. There’s no goddamn way this is free, right? Like, how exclusive IS this AI? And they cut from that scene to a Joi commercial, where we hear that Joi becomes anything you want her to be, and does anything you want her to do. But something tells me that...well, that it’s not quite so simple.

Once the night is over, Joi tells Mariette to leave, and not nicely either. Mariette leaves, rebuking her on the way out as well. K, meanwhile, knows that the Blade Runners will soon be coming after him. He’ll be going on the run, and Joi wants to go with him. And so, they put her inside of a remote device, while deleting her information from the main apartment console. This gets the attention of Luv, who head over to the apartment to figure out what’s going on.

K goes to Doc Badger (Barkhad Adbi), who analyzes the horse for him. It’s discovered that old radiation can be found there, and that amount and kind of radiation can only be found in areas where a dirty bomb has been set off. This would be in the desolate and weird-ass ruins of Las Vegas. While nobody lives there at this point, K and Joi go to check it out.

An IMMENSELY frustrated Luv, unaware of K’s discovery about himself, goes to confront Joshi about K’s whereabouts. Luv berates her for being afraid of change, and tells her that she “can’t fend off the tide with a broom”. Which is a great line. However, as Joshi is no use to her at this point, Luv just straight up kills her. Which, I’m sure, will go over well with the whole “Replicants aren’t dangerous” thing.

Meanwhile, in Vegas...shit is WEIRD. First off all, the desolate wasteland is full of statues of giant sexy wimmin, and I mean GIANT statues. Beneath one of them is a series of beehives, which K goes into to get a hand of beeeees. After that, he goes into an abandoned hotel/casino, rigged with tripwires and booby traps. OK. What.

So, somebody’s using this place as a hideaway, despite the entire city being destroyed by a dirty bomb, and probably extremely radioactive. K searches around and finds it empty. He begins to play a piano, hoping to draw someone out. He ends up drawing out a dog, as well as the inhabitant of the hotel.

Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), baby! Quoting Stevenson’s Treasure Island and holding K up at gunpoint with dog at side is the original Blade Runner himself, Rick Fucking Deckard. God, I love this. Deckard hunts K down throughout the casino, where we see some trippy holograms, and the future of Vegas stageshows (probably).

The two fight, but eventually call a truce and decide to get a drink at the bar. K gets to it pretty quickly, and confronts Deckard on his potential child with Rachael. He confirms that Rachael was indeed pregnant by him, but he had never met his child. Which was the plan, to be fair. He wanted their child to be protected, not hunted down and eventually dissected.

Sometimes, to love someone...you gotta be a stranger.

To an old Frank Sinatra song, a forlorn K (now calling himself “Joe”) looks around, and sees carved wooden animals that resemble the horse that’s haunted his life and memories so much by this point. Which makes sense, considering the foil unicorn from the previous film. Neat little tie-in there.

But paradise is not all it’s cracked up to be, as someone soon comes to find both K and Deckard, despite the fact that K came alone. Although, now that I think about it, Joi may not be one that you can truly trust. Deckard and K try to escape their pursuers, but are caught pretty quickly. In the process, K is injured, but manages to get up in order to fight back. However, this is Luv with these people, and she beats K down EASILY. Turns out that Luv is actually an enforcer, rather than just a secretary. And when Joi awakens from K’s device to ask her to stop, well...she kills the device, and she kills K. In the process, she also takes Deckard away, leaving K behind. Fuck.

K wakes up, only to discover Mariette standing over him in the Las Vegas wasteland. She takes care of him as he wakes up, also stitching up with wounds from the explosion. She tells K to trust her, as well as her compatriots. One of them is the hooded woman from earlier, a Replicant named Freysa (Hiam Abbass). An old friend of Sapper’s she saw the delivery of the child, the “miracle”, and also hid the child away, as it was a symbol that the Replicants are more than just slave, that they are their own masters.

Freysa is building a revolution in order to free the Replicants once and for all. And I’m hard-pressed to disagree with their cause, not gonna lie. However, this comes at a price. In order to prevent Wallace from killing the cause, K must prevent Deckard from leading them to Freysa. They must do what they can until they can reveal the child to the world. For she will be their leader.

Fuck.

Understandably COMPLETELY crushed at this revelation, and more confused than ever, K collapses. Freysa tells him that they ALL wish they were the one, and they all believe. It’s at this point, that K realizes exactly who the Hybrid is: Dr. Ana Stelline. The horse from earlier, it turns out, did in fact belong to her, and she planted her childhood memory with the horse in K’s mind as a Replicant. Damn. DAMN! That’s why the memory moved her so: because it was hers.

Meanwhile, Deckard awakens to a separate nightmare: Jared Leto telling him how he feels about him. After all, Deckard helped to create the first Replicant-human hybrid. He asks him for his help in obtaining the child, so that the key of Replicant reproduction can be further unlocked. And he proceeds in convincing Deckard by playing audio of Rachael and his first meeting (from the first film, of course).

Niander fucks with him further, by suggesting Deckard was summoned all those years ago specifically to fall in love with Rachael in order to father a child with her. But despite all of this, Deckard refuses to give up any of his information. And so, Niander pulls out his ace-in-the-hole...and it’s a real shitty thing to do to a man in mourning. 

Damn. Dude rebuilt Rachael, tries to tempt Deckard with her, FAILS, then lets Luv shoot her in the head. Fucking power move, and fuck Niander for playing it. Dude is a DICK. Meanwhile. that one visual from every single ad of this movie is happening, and I can FINALLY use one of the 8000 GIFs of it, goddamn.

Not gonna lie, it’s an iconic appearance, so I get why it’s so famous. Anyway, K considers a suicidal option, now that he knows the truth. However, before we get to see the final decision, we get to see Deckard being taken back to LA for interrogation by Wallace. However, to prevent him from potentially leading Wallace to the secret of Ana Stelline, K suddenly appears, opening fire on their ship.

The craft is downed, and K exits the car to engage in a firefight with Luv. He appears to win, but Luv isn’t killed once she’s shot. The two have a fistfight out in the rain, and Deckard waits for water to slowly kill the craft that he’s still inside of.

As expected, Luv handles herself well, and despite a number of close calls, she JUST. WILL. NOT. DIE. Damn, she’s resilient. However, despite K, Luv, and Deckard all nearly drowning in an INTENSE fight between the Replicants, an enraged and crazed Luv finally eventually drowns, ending her threat for good. 

K saves Deckard from the sinking ship, and agrees to stage his death, allowing him to meet his daughter for the first time. Once at her facility, K returns Deckard’s horse to him, knowing that it was a gift from him. He tells Deckard that his best memories all come from her, implying that this makes him similar to Deckard’s son, which he picks up on when he asks if he’s OK.

Deckard goes to meet his daughter, and K hangs out on the stairs outside. He feels the snow fall on his hand, and he just...watches it all fall around him. He sits, and he watches it all. And meanwhile, Deckard meets his daughter for the first time.

...Can I just say...GODDAMN!

That movie was absolutely stellar, and it’s definitely landing in the high ‘90s for me, calling it now. I...wow. Seriously. Amazing.

See you in the Review!

[hereisisa]

What's your take on the boat scene, right after the shipwreck scene? Do you think Elsa and Anna are written in character?

I get the feeling this is about this?

I think my name is mentioned more than Elsa’s. Should I be flattered?

Should I pay more attention to who I reblog? It’s hard, considering I have one blog, with one opinion, and I don’t understand why people need more. Whatever, who cares? ;)

But I like how this convo basically goes as:

“I’M SURE ISA THINKS THIS AND OMG SHE IS WRONG AND I AM RIGHT, BECAUSE.....”

Ops. Sorry. I don’t believe what you think I believe.

Maybe you can feel good about yourself without using me as a paradigm. Would be healthier, and it would be real. Cause the minute I’ll say “but I don’t think what you say I think”...your whole "I’m so much better cause I believe this and she doesn’t” will vanish.

Now, back to the topic:

1)

I think it’s SO in character for Elsa to send Anna away.

She’s the same girl she was years ago, who takes distance from Anna to protect her, who doesn’t trust her relationship with her sister enough to see her as an equal partner, who wants to do everything by herself.

And this tells me how 3 years together were not enough. Not remotely enough. Elsa learned...nothing. Zero. Nothing at all in these 3 years.

She made the same mistake she made on Frozen, in OFA, again and again.

I don’t blame Anna at all for being mad, I would have slapped Elsa in the face for what she did, I’m still bitter Anna didn’t do it when she realized Elsa was alive ;)

Now, I’m sure F2 defenders would say Elsa learned to trust Anna since she dumped Arendelle on her shoulders.

But I don’t think so. Isn’t it so convenient? She didn’t trust her 6 hours before, but then she magically does? Why? Cause she convinced somebody else to destroy a dam? Not enough. Sorry.

Too easy. Why?

Because Elsa wasn’t there. Anna was forced to act, cause there was no other way. Elsa wasn’t there to decide “ok, I trust my sister and I let her do this, I let her help me”. She did it while Elsa couldn’t veto it. So...It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t count.

Elsa couldn’t say a word about it. It can’t be used as exemple of her growth.

I want to see Elsa opening up to Anna. Not in a Christ-like way as she does at the end of the movie, but an heart-to-heart, talking about what she fears and what she wants. She hasn’t learned to do that yet.

2) I’m skipping the racist rhetoric crap cause it’s a bunch of lies and not even relevant now.

3) I don’t think the writers hate Elsa or Anna at all.

I think the writers have a favorite, cause...OMG THEY SAID IT LOL, and it shows.

This is a problem when they started the movie thinking “ok i want my favorite to be queen, because....(IN THEIR OWN WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!) She’s just that kind of girl, you know?”

Which means fucking nothing. lol It shows how they just went with something they liked because they liked it, not because it made sense.

So their favoritism for Anna helped them making a bad movie, unfortunately. But it’s not Anna’s fault ;)

And the fact that they don’t know Elsa at all, helped them making a bad movie, unfortunately. But it’s not Elsa’s fault. ;)

They don’t hate Elsa or Anna. They just wrote what they wanted and liked, without thinking if it worked for those characters. And it doesn’t.

[simsadventures]

After All This Time

Summary: You’re Steve’s sister, who fought with him and Bucky during the war, but one day after Bucky’s death, you disappear. Steve believes it’s because your hidden feelings for Bucky. Almost 80 years later, both men see someone long lost from their pasts, and the welcome is not as warm as they both would like.

Warnings: angst, violence, swearing, did I mention angst?

Pairing: Bucky x Reader, Steve x platonic!sister!Reader

Word Count: 2403

A/N: So this is my first ever request, so be patient with me, please. The full length request is here: Bucky x reader. Where the avengers are sent to intrude destruction of hydra and shield bases and when they find out who has been doing it they are horrified to see that it is Steve’s little sister who they were forced to leave behind when they went to war. (Y/n went to hydra with the goal being to kill her brother and Bucky for abandoning her and forgetting her)

I changed the request a little, hope the nonnie who requested it is ok with that. I listened to this song while writing it, so here you go. Let me know what you guys think. I might have made a mistake with some of the history/geography things, so feel free to call me out. Love you all so so much.

Masterlist

Steve knew his mission. It was actually fairly easy, easier than the last few missions he had to endure. Buildings associated with both HYDRA and SHIELD were being blown up almost every day. Although neither of the organisations existed anymore, the person or the agency behind these attacks could have easily destroyed valuable material, crucial for Earth’s further development. Moreover, whoever was doing was being reckless and hurt a large number of people in the process.

It’s been going on for almost two weeks. When the first blew up, nobody really cared, thinking it was a coincidence. But by the end of week one, 5 facilities were destroyed. Nobody really cared about the buildings as such, even though they could still serve some purpose in the future, reconstructing them into inhabitable properties.

It was the fifth one in a row which cause the biggest fuss because it was precisely that one in which a few civilians were injured. None of them fatally, but that didn’t matter to the Avengers. Steve and Bucky decided that they could take whoever was doing it on their own, taking a few days away from the whole team to recharge and catch some assholes in the process.

Because they didn’t have any idea who could be behind something like that, destroying buildings of agencies working in direct opposition to each other, they had to calculate their next move. There have been two mishaps, once they thought the destroyers would come to Siberia, HYDRA base near Omsk, but they later found out the people actually blew up HYDRA’s another base, in Kazakhstan. Steve and Bucky knew that SHIELD was next because that has been the pattern for all of the attacks. One HYDRA. One SHIELD. And repeat. But they couldn’t catch them there either.

Their next best guess, based on the trajectory of the attacks, which were all situated in Eastern Europe now, that they wouldn’t want to stray too far from that. There was one particular hidden HYDRA base that Bucky liked for the attack. It wasn’t the best-known location, but the attackers proved that they knew a lot about hidden places. This one was in Georgia, in the Northwest region, because it was excellent political placement. It was extremely close to Russia, but the Georgian government has been more lenient ever since its independence. And because there were still two different sides of revolutionaries fighting against each other, giving HYDRA a perfect hiding place in the midst of it all.

Steve and Bucky were laying on a hilltop, hidden by a bunch of firs, and looking down at the base. It looked just like any bunker, but at a closer look, one realised that it must be massive, because of the door and the construction itself.

They felt like it was a dead-end after another half day, and were close to giving up and telling the rest of the team to come up with a different strategy. But then, from the corner of Bucky’s eye, he saw careful movement. The whole team thought that it must have been at least another team of people, being able to pull something as big as this mission.

But Bucky could see only one, slim person, and from the movement of them, he assumed it must have been a woman. Bucky nudged Steve lightly, and he immediately gave his full attention to the target. They both watched the woman nearing the bunker, but then, as if she could see them, she turned around, faced the hill and crossed her arms.

The men shared a confused look but stayed hidden. They weren’t sure if the girl could really see them or if she was waiting on somebody, just coincidentally turning in the direction of their hideout.

“You know, I can see you, boys. And I’m pretty sure the serums in your bodies are making you hear me. So what do you say, will you come down or should I go up to you?”

As soon as she spoke up, the blood froze in both Bucky’s and Steve’s bodies. They knew that voice, and they both knew it intimately. But it couldn’t have been. No. You were supposed to be dead a long time now. You were supposed to have a normal life and then died peacefully. This wasn’t possible. It was some kind of trick to lure them both out. And by the look on Steve’s face, it was working.

Bucky wanted to stop his friend, but he was in too much shock himself to be able to move. They told him you were dead, that they killed you because he misbehaved.

Steve was the first one down the hill, walking cautiously with his shield in front of him, but fast enough that had there been any mine, he would’ve blown up. But he didn’t care about any of it. If it was right, and he prayed to God every step he took closer to you, that it was, he would’ve been the happiest man on Earth. His little sister.

You were one of the few women admitted in the US Army, the lack of volunteers made the government take few skilled women as well. You always like to fight, being more a guy than Steve used to be pre-serum. You ran around with him and Bucky, always bugging them and tailing them, making your mother sick with worry. You used to be grounded so much that Steve actually thought that you’d never see anything else than the school.

It was a few days after Bucky fell off the wagon that you disappeared, and because Steve knew about your crush on his best friend, he never made too much of it. You were tired and heartbroken, losing who you called the love of your life, even if Bucky didn’t know anything about it. He assumer that you finally had enough left for good for Brooklyn, and you were safe. The whole war was so chaotic that he didn’t really have the time to look into it. And when he woke up, he just assumed you died alongside your husband, or whatever, and that you had a happy life.

But here you were, clear as day.

“What is it, big bro, you look as if you saw a ghost?” You smirked at him, and he took in your appearance entirely. Your hair was much longer than you used to keep it in the 40s, and the right side of your skull was hairless. At a closer look, he could see a shining metal covering where should have been your bone.

“Y/N, what, what are you doing here?” He stuttered, and he could hear someone coming behind him, realising that it’s Bucky, finally getting up and running down to meet you. The look on his face was no less cautious than Steve’s, but a great sorrow was displayed alongside it.

“What does it look like I’m doing, Stevie? I’m making the world a better place, without HYDRA and Shield,” you said, your face and voice completely void of emotions. Steve wanted to run to you and pull you into a bear hug, but the hand on your holster was telling him that it wouldn’t be the best idea he had.

“What happened to you? I thought you left the war and led a happy life. I went into the ice, knowing that you were taken care of.”

You scoffed and rolled your eyes. “You’ve always been the naive one, Stevie. The day I “left”, I was abducted by HYDRA. You were their target, the serum and all of that, but because they couldn’t get to you, they got me. And oh boy, did they have their fun with me. They trained the Winter Soldier and me here side by side, and we were created as a deadly duo, at first. Right, Soldier?” You turned your attention to Bucky this time, and so did Steve, and he could see the hurting all over Bucky’s face.

“Why, why didn’t you tell me when you woke up that my sister was still held captive, Bucky?” Steve asked with disbelief laced in his voice.

Bucky dropped his head between his shoulders, breathing heavily, trying to not let the situation get the better of him. He needed to stay calm and controlled.

“Because they told me she was dead,” Bucky whispered, and if the two people in front of him weren’t superhumans, they would have no chance catching what he said.

“Why are the two of you so trusting, huh? One trusts his instinct to the fault, and the other trusts the organisation making a monster out of him. Wow, you two are extremely stupid, I never realised this.”

Steve and Bucky stayed quiet, knowing that you were right. They automatically believed that you were either safe or dead and moved on, never looking into it.

“That Steve believed such a thing, I’m not surprised. Pissed, sure, but not surprised. But you Bucky? After all, we’ve been through together? How could you just forget all about me so easily?”

You wanted to stay strong, but your voice betrayed you. The little crack made both men look up to you. Bucky could see tears welling up in your eyes, despite you trying to keep your game face on.

“I never forgot, doll. I’ve been thinking about you every single day! They took you away from me, and I never forgave myself for it!” He was screaming now, tears streaming down his face. He always thought that your death was his fault. That he lost you because he was disobedient. Hydra came in after a failed mission, grabbing you by the neck and dragging you away from him. He was in his Winter Soldier mode, he couldn’t feel much, but he knew you were important to him. And when they came back without you, they told him that you were dead because of him. That his failing resulted in your death.

“They did things to me that I never dreamed off in my worst nightmares! And every night I hoped you would remember me and would come barging in the door, saving me. I wasn’t strong enough without you, and the second they realised it, I was just a test bunny for them. All of the things they needed for the new generations of Winter Soldiers, they tested on me.” You were now crying as well, letting your emotions run for the first time in a while.

Steve was so confused that his brows couldn’t furrow any more. He was looking between the two of you, both crying and shaking with all the bottled up emotions.

“They tried to breed us, you know, Stevie? They told us we would be the perfect specimen, so they had us out of the Winter Soldier mode for a while, letting us be humans and breed. But when it wouldn’t happen for months, they used some kind of chemicals to prevent us from ever running away and trying on our own.”

“And we fell in love during those time,” Bucky whispered sadly.

“Obviously not enough for you to fight for me,” you said bitterly and turned around from them, wiping your tears away.

“You were the two I could always count on, or at least I thought so, and when I realised that I was all alone, it broke me. I got free from Hydra and roamed the Earth, trying to do some good with the powers I acquired. But then I saw you in New York, Steve, fighting the alien ships, all glorious and famous. And then Germany happened, and I realised that both of you were alive and that neither of you ever looked for me.

So I made a straightforward plan, destroying both the agency that built me and the one that created you, Steve. I hope they would send both of you, so we could have some fun one last time.”

Bucky made a step towards you, but you quickly pulled out a little device, which looked like a detonator. Neither of you stood close enough to the bunker for the explosion to hurt you, but the boys still didn’t want to risk anything.

“I wanted to see you one last time. I thought I’d kill us all, but seeing the two of you,” you scoffed a little at your own emotions, “I can’t do that. I love you two too much, I might be a ruthless killer, but I can’t hurt my boys, however stupid they are.”

“What are you talking about, Y/N? Don’t talk about death when we just found you.” Steve pleaded with you, his face constricted in pain.

You smiled and took the few steps that were between you and hugged him tightly. “I’m in so much pain, Stevie, and no matter what, it will never go away. The things they did to me and the things that I did… I can’t move on. But I love you, even if I hated you for the longest time. Be brave and do good, big brother.” You whispered against his cheek and kissed him lightly.

You then stepped away and looked at Bucky, who looked like he might blow up from all the tension in his body.

“You. Forgive yourself for everything. You are a good guy in the core, I know that for a fact. I’ve always loved you even if I blamed you for a lot that happened to me. I’m sorry, James. You’ll be fine, you got that punk right here, and you two can tackle anything that will come your way.”

You kissed his lips, remembering the feeling of his plump lips against yours. You were meant to be, but the fate hated the two of you and didn’t want to let you be happy.

You smiled at them sadly, and before they could react, you sprinted towards the bunker and pushed the button in your hand, and for a split second, you finely felt free.

The scene left behind you was heartbreaking. Both men were crying hysterically on their knees, flames licking around them, but they didn’t see nor feel them. They just felt the anguish inside their souls, losing you once again. They both hoped that a new era was starting, the three of you together again, but it was ripped away from them again, and this time, there was no turning back.

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[glon-morski]

@ All the Newly-Born Hawks Haters, Some Food For Thought (Be mindful of manga spoilers)

Chapter 266 of the manga left a lot of readers shaken. And with good reason. It was an emotional chapter and a very beloved character has a 99.9999999% probability of having met their end (yes, I’m leaving that 0.00000001% there, sue me, he haven’t seen the body). As a result, Hawks is getting a lot (and I mean A LOT) of hate for having done the deed. But let’s look a bit at facts, alright? And not just chapter 266, but also the two chapters before it.

Alright, so first thing’s first, little reminder: the first thing Hawks did was use his feathers to catch Twice off guard and immobilize him. And he did just that. He caught Twice off guard and had him at his mercy. So let’s point out something very important here:

He could have killed Twice right then and there. He chose not to.

Instead, what did he do? He talked. And what did he say?

Hmmm... sounds to me like he’s telling Twice the only reason he was on Hawks’s radar at all was his Quirk. Because his Quirk made him dangerous due to the fact that he can... well... multiply ad infinitum. He’s basically a never-ending One-Man Army. Add to that that each clone can also make multiple clones of other people, too, just to spice things up, and it gets worse from there.

Friendly reminder, this is one of the biggest reasons (or, actually the reason, because without this, Shigaraki never would have gotten to Re-Destro and never would have beaten him) LoV defeated the Meta Liberation Army:

Spinner hits the nail on the head right there. Twice can handle it all by himself due to his sheer numbers. Second friendly reminder: the real Twice isn’t even anywhere near there at that point. He’s still with Toga, making a double of her to give her a blood transfusion to save her life. These are all self-multiplying clones. And that’s all that gets to Re-Destro’s tower until the real Shigaraki crumbles it. It’s what saves Giran. Clones.

So yeah, from a mere logical standpoint, Hawks certainly has a point. Twice has a very dangerous, very OP Quirk that’s basically broken when used right. The only reason it hasn’t been an issue up until now was his trauma.

(You know who else has a potentially game-breaking, OP Quirk which they can’t use at least partly because of trauma? Someone who manga readers have in the past worried about? And who anime onlys have the same thoughts about now? Eri. Funny that Twice didn’t get the same treatment, huh. But I digress, that’s a point for another meta entierly. Moving on.)

So, yes, looking at this, Hawks definitely has a point. Twice is dangerous and needs to be dealt with, otherwise the heroes stand no chance simply because they’ll be overrun. This is further proven in the newest chapter, when the last clone manages to save Compress’s and Toga’s asses.

Look at that! They’re perfectly willing to ALL bunker down in the basement and let Twice handle everything BY HIMSELF. That’s how much they trust him, but that’s also just how dangerous he and his Quirk are to the heroes. And these aren’t some random villains that joined not long ago. That’s Compress and Toga, who have been Twice’s comrades for a very long time. They know he struggled before. They know he was nearly useless before. But now, they’re willing to leave everything to him. That’s how powrful he is and how much they trust him. So, again, Hawks has a point.

Having made my case on that, here’s the main question: how did Hawks handle it?

Well, as I already pointed out above, he started out by catching Twice off guard and immobilizing him. Then he explained why he was so cautious of him in particular. He had the perfect chance to kill him right then and there and he chose not to. Why?

Simple. Because when it comes down to it, Hawks might have been trained to kill, but that doesn’t mean he wants to unless it is absolutely necessary. And at that moment, he decides it is not. So he doesn’t do it. He could, but he doesn’t. Instead, he talks, He explains himself and insists the only reason he singled out Twice is his Quirk (which, again, is valid). And from there?

All in all... he's telling Twice that he's been doing his job, going after the most dangerous guy as far as his Quirk went, but that he doesn't actually have anything against Twice himself. Never once does he say Twice is a villain or Twice needs to be stopped because he has bad intentions or anything of the sort. It's literally only because of his Quirk and because he's loyal to the League. If he were still traumatized and couldn't use his Quirk, Hawks would have left him alone. He was going after the biggest threat, because that was his job.

Going further:

Hawks proves that he doesn't dislike Twice as a person, doesn't even think him a villain beyond what he has been made to do. He actually wants to help 'rehabilitate him'. And yeah, maybe that's stuck up because Twice doesn't think he needs rehabilitation or anything like that, but it can't be said that Hawks isn't trying. He already had more than enough time to kill him. He doesn't even mention doing that at this point and he doesn't do it. He wants to capture him, have him pay for his crimes and then live as a normal civilian because he honestly believes Twice can do that. He doesn’t want to kill him and he’s actively trying to avoid it. And I mean, yeah, it could be a ploy. Hawks is definitely a damn good actor and we all know he can control even his facial expression at all times perferctly. Because that’s what he’s been trained to do. But fake or not... his expression here doesn’t look like the face of someone who wants to kill the person at their mercy and are holding back on it ‘because it’s the heroic thing to do’. He genuinely believes Hawks to be a good person.

So then, why do things escalate? Why do they start fighting?

Because Twice is loyal to the League and is happy right where he is and... well, he doesn’t want Hawks’s so-called help.

Once again, friendly reminder that Hawks is a damn good actor who can always control his expression. Look at what little we see from his face here. Look at the way he scowls. He tells Twice to stop and then calls his name and I don’t know about you, but I can hear the warning in those words. Because Hawks knows what he’ll have to do if Twice won’t stand down, if he doesn’t let himself just be taken in. And he doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to have to do it. Hell, he even downright SAYS he doesn’t want to have to fight him, with an expression that’s as much warning as it is pleading, because again, he knows what he may have to do if Twice won’t stand down.

Twice refuses to stand down, though. Look at Hawks’s expression in that second panel when avoiding a fight becomes impossible. I don’t know about you but... Hawks looks pretty resigned there if you ask me. Resigned and sad.

Ok, so from there, they fight. But... funny thing there.

Hawks clearly dominates Jin. He doesn’t even have to move, his feathers take care of everything. He easily destroys the clones. But guess what? He could destroy the real Jin just as easily. He doesn’t. Instead, he just destroys his mask to be able to keep track of which one is the real one... likely to not kill him on accident.

Once again, he has a prime chance to kill Twice and chooses not to take it. Instead, he once again offers him a peaceful way out. And once again, it’s Twice who refuses the offer, who insists to keep fighting.

This is the second warning Hawks gives. Saying these words in that moment imply that’s what he thinks of Twice. He‘s a villain like that. He’s determined and experienced and he’ll refuse to get knocked out. Ergo, if Hawks has to stop him, he has to kill him. By acknowledging that, Hawks also acknowledges he’s ready to do it. He’s warning Twice. Telling him to stand down while he still can.

Once again: he could not bother and kill Twice right then. For the third time, he chooses not to.

“When neither side wants to give, somebody has to die.” That’s what Hawks says next, after actually, physically overpowering Twice, showing him yet again how outclassed he is, how much he has no chance. This is as clear a warning as Hawks can get. If ‘someone has to die when neither side is willing to give’, that means he’s very much willing to get blood on his hands. Because he cannot let Twice go.

And again: he could have not stopped his blade then. He could have stabbed Twice. Hell, he could have cut him in half a second earlier with how easily he got the hit in and how open Twice’s posture is.

Hawks chose not to.

What follows is probably a good minute (or at least 30 seconds or so) of talking in which Hawks all but states he’ll kill Twice. He could have used all that time to kill him. He could have stabbed him, ended the mission and been on his merry way.

He chose not to.

Then Dabi shows up abd basically tries to burn the whole room, people included. What does Hawks do?

He saves Twice.

He didn’t have to. He was going to kill him anyway, right? So why bother saving him from Dabi’s fire? Why not just let him burn and at least not have the blood on his hands?

It’s simple, really.

Because this entire time, he has just been trying to put him out of comission.

Yes, he hurt him. Yes, damaged his organs. But he’s made sure it is not fatal. Because he doesn’t want to kill Twice. He wants him to live. And he thinks he’s out of comission now, he can just move him elsewhere, somewhere away from the fight, which is what he’s planning. Likely has been all along despite his cold attitude.

Speaking of, friendly reminder again: Hawks is a damn good actor. All that cold attitude and saying he’ll kill Twice earlier? All an act. He would have done it at least four or five times over already if he really wanted to. These here are his thoughts, the first ones we get to read in a while, and it’s about how Twice is wounded but not fatally and how Hawks plans to move him. Not kill. Not finish off. Move, likely to somewhere where his wounds can be treated and he can be taken into custody.

Except Twice doesn’t intend to let that happen.

He shouldn’t be able to move, but he does. As Hawks has predicted, he ‘refuses to be knocked out’. And Hawks actually loses his composure there, because, well... he never said Twice shouldn’t move. He thought it. He assumed he wouldn’t be able to due to his extensive but not fatal injuries. And he knows real well that if Twice continues to try and keep fighting beyond that point, well... Hawks’s hand will be forced. It’ll be a choice between letting him go (which would be a disaster for the heroes, so he can’t do that) and actually killing him.

And that is exactly what happens. That’s the choice Hawks is faced with in the end, because Twice refuses to stand down and escapes.

Dabi yells at Twice to ‘go wild’. It’s pretty obvious what he means by that. It’s just as obvious that Twice is willing to do it. He plans on doing it. So Hawks can’t let him leave.

And again, someone (this time Dabi) says Hawks is ‘too fast’. And that’s true, he is fast. Which means he has been holding back for as long as he could have because he’s had more than enough time to kill Twice multiple times already, and he chose not to each time.

And this right here... this is the moment Hawks’s hand was forced. Because Twice managed to get out, managed to get one clone away from that room. That clone could multiply itself, could make an army of itself as long as the original Twice was alive. Doesn’t matter he’s tired and on the verge of passing out, doesn’t matter he’s wounded. The first clone is made and as long as Twice lives, more will follow. So Hawks can’t offer Jin another out. He literally can’t. So he does what he must. In this instant, unless he wants to betray the heroes and let the entire raid fail, he has no choice.

So he does it. Finally. After having at least five or six separate chances to do it and choosing not to each time, after trying to convince Twice again and again to not fight, to just let himself be taken into custody, after warning him over and over what Hawks will have to do (and what he will do) if he refuses to stand down... he does it. Because he had no other choice.

And how does the fandom react to it? By hating on him. Not everyone, obviously, as always, there’s a big divide, but those who hate, hate hard. And I mean... come on people! Yes, I loved Twice, too. He was (is) a great character with a wonderful story arc and a past that just makes you want to hug the life out of him. There’s a reason people felt protective of him these past few chapters.

But he’s no child. The moment Hawks revealed his true intentions, Twice knew what he was in for. And he’s been warned over and over and over again. He chose not to litsen. Hawks gave him as many chances as he could, held off on the deed as long as he could have. Do you think he made that choice lightly? Considering my entire wordvomit above... I sincerely doubt it.

In conclusion, is it sad that Twice is most likely dead? Yes, very much so. He was a great character and it’s sad to see him go. But does Hawks deserve even a sliver of the hate he’s getting for it? I personally believe not. Because it’s not like he made the decision lightly and had fun doing it. He didn’t want to do it. He hated having to. And he did all he could to try and avoid it. It’s just that in the end, his hand was forced. If he hadn’t done it, all the heroes in that raid would have eventually been overrun and killed. You can hate Hawks all you want, but these are just facts.